With Argent demonstrating a string of enchantments at the front, and everyone else doing their best to keep up, there are a few precious moments when no one is staring. And they go by much too quickly.
I feel as if I’ve barely blinked twice when the bell tower tolls, and the tired day students start to filter out of the room.
Ordinarily, we’d split off here.
Kitty for the library, Elsie for her “tutoring,” and me for a late-night snack. But it’s Thursday, which means there’s only one thing on the agenda tonight.
We link hands once we make it outside, and Elsie winks us across campus, dropping us in the center of our little living room.
We kick our shoes off by the door, and Elsie makes a beeline for her pajamas while Kitty and I rifle through the fridge. There isn’t much of anything in here. I mostly eat men, and Elsie doesn’t cook, but there’s always a roll of cookie dough at the back for Kitty, and a few bottles of brew for watching trashy movies on Thursdays.
“Oh, gods, I’m starving,” Kitty announces, snatching up the cookie dough and brew before we all reconvene on the sofa.
“Whose turn is it?” Elsie asks.
“Mine!” Kitty shouts, ripping a chunk of dough off the roll and eating it as she hunts for the remote.
She finds it lodged under Elsie’s left buttcheek, and Elsie yelps as Kitty pinches her to move.
“I already know what I want to watch,” Kitty declares, clicking through the screens.
She navigates with speed, ultimately landing on a red and black image of a young woman dripping in blood.
“Oh, come on…” Elsie groans. “What’s wrong with you two? Can’t you ever pick something happy?”
“I picked something happy last week,” I correct. To which, Elsie cuts me a sideways glance.
“You call that happy?” she says. “I cried my eyes out.”
“He confessed his love for her, what’s not happy about that?”
“Yeah, and then he died!” Elsie shouts.
I shrug.
“Exactly. A perfect ending.”
Kitty interrupts our little debate, holding the remote out like a scepter.
“We’re watching this because it’s my turn. And those are the rules.”
Elsie chuckles, reaching for her brew.
“Okay,Damien…”
Kitty’s eyes narrow, and I snatch the remote and press play just in time to distract her from Elsie’s pointed remarks.
We settle in with Elsie in the middle and Kitty shouting at the screen for the first twenty minutes. She falls asleep about halfway through, and Elsie bails the minute Kitty starts to snore. I hold out until the end just to see what happens, and when the credits roll, I hit mute and leave the TV on for when Kitty wakes up. She doesn’t like waking up in the dark.
I do my best not to disturb her as I sneak off to my room, shutting the door softly before collapsing onto the bed to count the stars on my ceiling. They twinkle gently overhead, the simple enchantment lighting the room in a soft glow as I silently sound off the numbers.
I’m not sure how many there are. Two hundred? Maybe four? But I make it all the way to eighty-nine before the pit in my stomach starts to swell, and I realize no amount of stars is going to solve my problem tonight.
I know what’s keeping me awake—I’m hungry.Really hungry.
I could feel my stomach hollowing out about halfway through Argent’s lecture, but I was hoping it would pass before I went to bed. Honestly, I still am.
I lie there for a while longer, listening to Mother’s voice in my mind as she tells me I shouldn’t be hungry, that I’m greedy. Or that if I just go to sleep, it will be gone come morning. But eventually, I manage to remind myself that none of that is true, and I reach for my phone.
