Giant Days Page 14

“You make me sound like a bully.”

  “That makes it sound like it’s not true.”

  “Daisy!” Susan reeled her into the conversation. “Tell Esther I’m not a bully.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Say it! ‘Susan Ptolemy is not a bully.’”

  But someone from three places down in the queue leaned out and said, “You took my phone and deleted the number of the guy who’d sent me a photo of his penis.”

  “That penis was diseased. And unsolicited,” Susan protested.

  “Did you say Susan Ptolemy?” came a shout from a few paces back. “She spent the whole of Introduction to Embryology flicking me in the back of the head with a rubber band because I’d accidentally mistaken her for my friend Matt.”

  “Hey!” A shorter, slightly swarthy, mop-topped young man wearing a red-checked shirt scowled up at him. “I look nothing like her!”

  “She dumped a bottle of water over my head.”

  “Your hair was on fire!”

  “She told me I looked like my face had athlete’s foot.”

  “I said you should see a doctor!”

  “She made me repeat to my reflection that I have terrible taste in men and deserve better.”

  “How is that bullying?!”

  “There, there.” Esther put a condescending arm over Susan’s shoulders. “It can’t be easy admitting I’m right.”

  Susan issued a noise that a vat of blood might make just as it reached boiling point and practically flung her tray in the direction of the till. Esther asked for a portion of wedges, and the man serving leaned forward, glancing fearfully to where Susan was growling at the card machine. “I give that one extra helpings because I’m frightened of the way she looks at me.” He lowered his voice further. “And you can have some extra for being so brave as to challenge her tyranny.”

  Smugness emanating from her pores, Esther pushed her tray containing a triple helping of wedges toward the till.

  “May I have potato wedges too, please?” Daisy asked, but the man shot her an apologetic look and gestured at the empty tray. Choosing a bagel instead, Daisy contemplated the nature of injustice—how Susan got appeasement wedges and Esther got gratitude wedges and Daisy, who only wanted her lawfully appointed volume of wedges, got none at all.

  Despite an inauspicious start, lunch was pleasant enough. With Esther spending more time updating Susan on the many virtues of Vectra than eating, Daisy was able to sneak the occasional wedge from her plate.

  “What’s everyone got on this afternoon?” Daisy asked.

  “I’m going to get these notes for Vectra,” Esther said, not looking up from her phone, where she was relentlessly wearing down Ed Gemmell into giving them to her.

  “Something called ‘Street Medicine,’” Susan said.

  “Ooh, that sounds exciting. Do you have to use cool-sounding slang for all your procedures?” Esther made a complicated arrangement with her fingers and crossed her arms, pouting as she said, “Hey, doc, hit me up with some ’slin for my ’betes.”

  Daisy and Susan stared at her for a full second before bursting out laughing, collapsing into each other, Susan slapping the table as Daisy doubled over, clutching her friend’s arm, barely able to draw breath, she was laughing so hard. Susan did an uncannily accurate impression of Esther’s pose, reaching around to snatch an orange from the person eating at the next table. “My girl, Daisy-Woo? How ’bout some Vit-C to boost that immuno-sys?”

  Susan tossed the orange at Daisy, who could barely see it through her tears.

  But something was wrong with Esther. Usually the first to laugh at herself, her expression had turned from light to dark as fast as if she were a shiny penny dropped into the mud at the bottom of a well.

  “I’m sorry for not immediately understanding what you meant by ‘street’ medicine and trying to make a joke.”

  “You were a joke, all right.” Susan fired a finger gun across the table and blew away the imaginary smoke, winding Esther up so much that she actually stood to leave.

  “Oh, Esther, we’re only playing!” Daisy called after her, but Esther ignored her, sashaying off across the room and tipping the remains of her wedges, which Daisy had been hoping to eat, into the waste bin. She didn’t even glance back before she left the room entirely.

  Daisy looked across at Susan, who tipped back the dregs of her soda can and set it on her tray with a clatter. “In my not-yet-professional medical opinion, I suspect that Esther’s new Goth friend has infected her with a sense-of-humor failure. A common malady among the macabre community.”

  “But . . . Esther’s never been like that!”

  “No, but this Vectra will expect our Es to take herself seriously. Trust me.”

  Daisy didn’t much like the thought of that.

  After parting ways with Susan, Daisy started to make her way out of the building, wondering how her friends would have reacted to her afternoon plans. Not that either of them had shown any interest in asking about them . . .

  Which might be for the best, given that she was attending another session with the Brethren. Her previous commitments had limited Daisy to attending the Tuesday evening sessions, but now that she had more time, she thought she might attend a drop-in session that afternoon. Provided she could think of something to share.

  Deep in thought, Daisy missed her turn in the corridor and found herself exiting the building via the medical school. It wasn’t especially illuminating. As in any other university building, all one got to see of the lectures were the doors. There were bulletin boards, of course, as well as screens displaying information that might as well have been written in a different language, for all Daisy could make of them. It wasn’t until she passed the reception desk that she saw something familiar. Or, rather, someone.

  “Grace!” Daisy brightened, raising her hand in a half wave as their paths were about to cross.

  “Hey, Daisy,” Grace said. Her smile was real, but there was a nervous edge to the way she dodged eye contact.

  “How’ve you been?” Daisy did her best to sound like someone who cared, but not so much that Grace would pull away. The kind of delicate line Daisy trod when feeding Baby Gordon.

  “Oh. You know. Same.” Grace shrugged. “Start every morning with a shot of coffee and an energy drink to get me through the day, then stay up all night worrying what I’m doing with my life.”

  Daisy took a second to check she’d heard correctly. “That’s a lot more truthful than I was expecting.”

  Grace squinted at her as if she wasn’t sure Daisy was being honest. “Most people assume it’s a joke.”

  “Oh. Well, is it?”

  Although she half expected Grace to try to convince her it was, the girl’s shoulders drooped, and she collapsed into a chair. Taking Grace’s cue, Daisy perched on the edge of the chair next to her, hands tucked between her knees as she looked on solicitously, hoping that whatever Grace was going to say, Daisy would somehow be able to help.

  “I’m homesick. That’s all. My course is tough, I miss my boyfriend, and yet all I do when he calls is shout at him. I’m tired. So tired. All I want is to sleep, and all I end up doing is staying out.” Grace looked at her then, properly, as if she was seeing Daisy as someone she could trust. “I just feel so lost, you know?”

  What Grace needed wasn’t night after night out. What she needed was a family.

  “This is a weird question,” Daisy said, “but do you like yoga?”

  8

  DESPERATE MEASURES

  So many weeks of sleepless nights and a relentless schedule of lectures was starting to take its toll.

  “Susan! Wake up!” Kully hissed.

  “Not asleep,” Susan groaned. She wished she was. She’d fallen forward, head pressed on the warm glass over the hot-breakfast section in the dining hall. “I am the waking dead.”

  “Wake a little further. You’re holding up the breakfast queue.”

  Reluctantly, Susan slid her cheek along the glass.


  Last night Susan had stayed up hate-watching every Richard Curtis film she could illegally stream onto her laptop. It had been the only way to distract her from the merry-go-round of anxieties arising from Esther’s new infatuation with this weirdo Goth Girl added to the standard simmering rage regarding McGraw. She’d had to drag herself out of the nadir she’d reached when she found herself contemplating a “Buy It Now” option for About Time, after which point she’d stared at her ceiling until the birds had started singing and she’d eventually fallen into a fitful doze that proved less restful than the things she’d been doing while awake.

  “Carbs . . . sugar . . .” Susan muttered, slathering butter and jam onto her toast, once they sat down.

  Kully gave Susan’s breakfast a dismissive sniff as he sliced an apple over a bow of muesli. “You need vitamins and protein.”

  “I NEED SLEEP.”

  Susan’s snarl echoed around a suddenly silent canteen before everyone returned to their own conversations.

  “So sleep, then.” Kully shrugged. “Snatch a power nap in a bathroom stall between lectures.”

  “A nap will disrupt my diurnal rhythm.”

  “You diurnal rhythm is about as consistent as the Internet connection in F-block.” Kully eyed Susan’s hands, which were now smeared in grease and sugar, such was the accuracy of her jam application. “Are you sure you’re going to be OK to lead today’s Anatomy practical?”

  “What? No!” Susan tried to read the timetable she’d scrawled on her hand before realizing that was left over from yesterday. Pulling up her sleeve, she found faded ink detailing last week’s schedule. No sign of today: Monday. Susan tipped her head back and howled at the ceiling, “Curse you, Richard Curtis, and your inability to distribute gender-balanced speaking roles!”

  Opposite, Kully gave her a mild raise of an eyebrow before reaching into his monogrammed leather satchel and pulling out a can so bright, it could cause a migraine from fifty paces.

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” he said, sliding it across the table.

  “What’s this?”

  “You haven’t ever pepped up with a little ENN-ARR-GEE?” Kully’s face was the picture of astonishment. “Late-night Physics revision? Partying till three when you’re the designated driver?”

  “I have never done either of these things,” Susan said, picking up the can and looking at the label. The colors alone made her eyes buzz, and try as she might to find the ingredients list, the typeface was impossible to read.

  Cracking the lid, Susan downed the lot.

  Since Vectra had talked to her, Esther had upped her sartorial efforts in an attempt to prompt further interaction. Today she was wearing red leather shorts, fishnets, and a “top” that was essentially nothing more than a complex array of stretchy bandages that had taken her half an hour to put on that morning.

  Although Ed Gemmell said he liked it, his expression was one of terror, and he kept casting Esther anxious glances as she spent the lecture calculating the perfect trajectory from bench to door. When the lecture ended, Esther’s plotted course intercepted that of Vectra Featherstone’s exactly three paces from the main door.

  Ever polite, Ed Gemmell held it open for both of them.

  “What? You want a cookie?” Vectra shot him a wry look before doubling back to confuse him with a compliment. “Those notes on how the camera angles encourage a mainstream audience were pretty intense. Thanks for letting me copy.”

  Ed Gemmell started, darting a confused glance in Esther’s direction. She’d not exactly been truthful as to why she’d wanted the notes, feigning an interest in swapping modules for the next semester.

  Never one to let a silence remain uncomfortable, Ed Gemmell cleared his throat and pointed nervously to the necklace Vectra wore.

  “I, um, that’s cool. Is it real?”

  “What do you think?”

  He swallowed, eyes flitting nervously from Esther to Vectra, voice trembling with the kind of tension you’d expect from a finalist on The X Factor. “I think wearing a real razor blade that close to your throat would be very unwise?”

  Vectra rolled her eyes and met Esther’s gaze. “The company we’re forced to keep.”

  We! So delighted at being included in the same pronoun as Vectra, Esther decided to overlook the fact that this comment had come at her friend’s expense, choosing instead to focus on the excitement of discovering that Vectra, too, was heading from lectures to the S.U. With every step bringing them closer, Esther allowed herself the excitement of imagining a coffee together. A straight-out invitation wouldn’t work, but maybe if she casually mentioned needing a drink . . .

  As they stepped toward the glass doors of the S.U., Esther opened her mouth, ready to deploy her plan.

  “Er, hi, sorry, excuse me, are you Esther?”

  Alarmed at the sound of her name, Esther turned to find herself face-to-face with a young man with a closely shaved head and tortoiseshell glasses. When he raised his eyebrows above the round frames, he looked a little like an owl.

  “Back off, stalker.” Vectra stepped between them. Half a head shorter than either of them, she held the same threat as a cocked hand grenade.

  The boy backed off a couple of steps, arms up in surrender.

  “Whoa there! I’m not trying to be creepy. My name’s Anthony—Tony—Grace’s boyfriend. From back home?” He shot Esther a pleading look across Vectra’s head. “I recognized you from one of the photos she posted.”

  “Yes! She told me all about you.” Which was a bit of an exaggeration. “I thought you were down in Plymouth?”

  “I am. I was.” He glanced at Vectra and lowered his hands. “I got the train up today to surprise her, only she’s not around. Her housemates said to try the Union.” He pointed through the doors. “Which I’m assuming is right there?”

  “Why don’t you just call her?” Ed Gemmell said.

  “Her phone’s been off for the last couple of days—that’s kind of why I’m here. I was worried.”

  Just as Esther was about to say how sweet that was, Vectra gagged and said, “Or maybe take a hint?”

  There was an awkward pause in which none of them really knew what to say.

  “You could try up at the hospital. I’ll message my friend Susan—they’re on the same course.” Although lectures were over, and Esther had no idea whether Grace and Susan were rostered to do any of the other weird things on their course together. A dull nudge of guilt elbowed her in the stomach when Esther realized that in the unlikely event of some tenacious paramour looking for a phoneless Susan, Esther wouldn’t be able to say where to find her, either.

  “Something like this happened in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Ed Gemmell said, eyebrows knotted as they watched Tony stride away to find his lost girlfriend. “It didn’t end well.”

  “My mum goes on about that show.” Vectra gave him a disdainful look. “You really need to get a life.”

  “I, er, yup . . .” Ed Gemmell fiddled with the straps of his backpack. “Heh. Can’t really argue with that.”

  “Can you imagine being so naive as to start university already in a relationship?” Vectra returned to the Grace issue.

  Esther was very aware of Ed Gemmell looking at her when she said, “I know. What a chump.”

  Vectra shrugged. “Screw love.”

  “Yeah, screw it. Hammer it. Sand it down like a dodgy plank.” Esther stopped herself. Would Vectra respect this level of DIY puns? It was a risk . . . but Vectra gave her an indecipherable look before nodding toward the S.U.

  “Want to come bitch about love with me over a disappointing panini?”

  “Sure!” Esther beamed, dialing it down a bit when she saw Vectra’s expression.

  “I . . . er . . .” Ed Gemmell looked wildly about and pointed in the opposite direction. “Just got to go do a thing.”

  They watched him scurry off toward the English faculty.

  “You should keep him around.”
Vectra nodded after him. “Virgins make excellent sacrifices.”

  Already, the walk up to the House of Zoise was starting to feel less like a journey to a yoga session and more like coming home. It helped that the walk between the Archaeology Department and the suburb in which Jasper and Elise lived took Daisy through one of Sheffield’s many parks. Sometimes, if she closed her eyes and held her breath, she could imagine she was back in Crickleton, the ploop of an upended duck in the pond, a breeze riffling the last of the leaves, the damp grass turning the toes of her shoes soggy . . .

  The hiss of tires from an oncoming cyclist, about to knock her over.

  You didn’t get that in Crickleton. No one there was ever in enough of a hurry.

  When Daisy knocked on the door, Sister Chloe opened it. Sister Chloe had been inducted into the Brethren the week before Daisy and wore a cyan belt around her robe.

  “Hi, Daisy—no, wait.” She stopped Daisy from coming in. “Zoise embraces you. Welcome, Sister.”

  Chloe grinned as she opened the door wide. She held a duster in her free hand, and a can of furniture polish peeped out of the pocket of her robe. Noticing the direction of Daisy’s glance, Chloe shrugged. “So, I couldn’t get any of my friends to come, and I don’t want to just hand over all my stuff, but, like, I want to progress. Get the goods and the belts. So I had a word with Jasper, and he’s put in this scheme where you can volunteer to share your time with the Brethren. So if I come here, sleep in Mei’s barely occupied bedroom, and do all the housework for a week, bing, bang, bosh, I’ve paved my path to the next level.”

  “You sleep here?” Envy nipped at Daisy’s insides; how lucky Chloe was to spend more time with Elise.

  Chloe’s shine faded a little. “Yeah, well, more than I do in my own house . . . my housemates are pretty hard to be around at the moment.”

  “I know what you mean,” Daisy tried to empathize. “One of the people on my corridor plays really loud heavy metal when I’m trying to study.”

  “I’d take that over obnoxiously loud sex and finding chocolate body paint in with the Nutella.”

  “Oh.” Daisy backpedaled. “Yours sounds much worse.”