Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I was born without words on my skin.

There was no mark of golden ink pressed to the inside of my wrist, tainting the gentle, pale skin I bore. There were no unique words, or even simple greetings, engraved onto my body, which could mean only two things. My soul mate was either mute, or simply didn't exist. But I had accepted my soulmatelessness a long time ago, content on being the black sheep of the Sage family.

Carly, my elder sister, had already found her match. He was a brooding man with an icy stare and hair as dark as charcoal – whenever I met him, he sent shivers up and down my spine, a feeling that was not quite unlike fear. But that didn’t matter. He made my sister happy and, thankfully, was much better than any of her exes.

Zoe, the youngest Sage sibling, hasn’t met her match yet, but the words were there, written on the inside of her wrist in clumsy penmanship and laced with gold ink. Is this seat taken? Every time she took the bus to school, she practically vibrated with excitement. I never understood her happiness. The very prospect of having a soul mate was illogical to me. How come that, in a world of more than 7 billion people, only one of them filled the criteria of your ideal mate? Nonsensical.

“Gosh, Syd,” my roommate said exasperatedly one evening. “It’s love. It doesn’t have to make sense.” Easy for Rose to say. Ever since she’d hit puberty, an entire army of boys was throwing themselves under her feet. Our school, Amberwood Preparatory, held many beautiful and talented students, and Rose was by all standards one of the most popular. However, she swore on her life that she’d ever only gotten serious with two, maybe three of them.

“Well, what do you think about me, then?” I asked, even going as far as looking up from my History textbook. “Apparently, there isn’t a single person in this whole wide world that can be considered my soul mate.”

Rose frowned and bounced down on my bed, damn near crushing my textbook. Ignoring my cry of protest, she worried her bottom lip between her teeth and stared at the eerily blank space on my right wrist. “Maybe he’s mute,” she concluded after a lengthy pause.

“Not very likely,” I retorted, hoping that Rose would let the topic drop after getting to a dead end.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right…” she mumbled. “But it probably isn’t that weird that you’ll end up forever alone. You’re pretty weird, after all.” I flung a fluffy cotton pillow at my roommate, doing my best to shut her up. “Okay, okay!” Rose managed to cry through her laughter. “I yield!”

“Besides,” I said, the pillow now discarded at the foot of my bed. “We have a History test tomorrow. You shouldn’t be worrying about my non-existent love life.”

“Eh, History-Schmistory,” Rose yawned. “That’s not nearly as interesting as boy talk.”

I sighed in resignation, looking at my textbook sadly. Supposing that I could let Rose have some fun every once in a while and that I’m savvy enough with all the dates and events I’ve been studying for the past week, I decided than one hour of boy talk hasn’t killed anyone so far.

“Fine,” I said, closing the textbook and setting it down on the floor with a thump. “My sixth sense tells me that you want to talk about Dimitri. You have sixty minutes, go.” And while I watched the rough, tough Rose melt around the edges and smile fondly as she talked about her boyfriend, I presumed that perhaps – only perhaps! – love wasn’t so bad after all.

Surprisingly, Rose didn’t fail her History exam. She bounded into Amberwood Prep’s gym class sporting a smug smile. “I don’t get it,” I complained as the two of us stretched in a secluded corner of the gym. “I haven’t seen you study at all – scratch that, I’m not sure if you even have a textbook. How did you get a B+?”

“It’s called talent, Sage, don’t go all jealous on me,” Rose smirked. “And Dimitri gave me lessons after school.”

“Somehow, I doubt any actual studying was done,” I said.

“Hey, hey, give me some credit. I’m not as virtueless as you think!” She stood up straight, fixing her t-shirt and throwing one chaste glance around the gym. “Three laps, then volley?” my roommate asked me. I replied with a small shrug and we slowly started running our three promised laps around the gym.

I was surprised to hear Rose striking up a conversation, since she was always intensely focused when she worked out. “I’m going out with Lissa tonight,” she said breathily. “She says she can’t stand Jailbait anymore. Pretty much begged me to get her out.”

I gave Rose a curious look. I thought that Lissa, Rose’s best friend, and her half-sister Jill were getting along nicely. Of course, there was a lot of unresolved tension when word got out that the CEO of the vast Dragomir Corporation had an illegitimate daughter, but I’d never seen Lissa tend to her younger sibling with nothing but kindness. Perhaps things got a bit more complicated after the girls’ father requested they shared a dorm room at Amberwood Prep. It would help strengthen the sisterly relationship, he claimed. Before that, Jill was my roommate, and Rose was Lissa’s. Granted, Jill could sometimes be a handful and more than just slightly clueless, but she was a nice girl.

“Family problems?” I finally asked through labored breath. Rose’s shrug was almost unnoticeable as we ran.

“Dunno, Liss just said she wanted to go out. Double date, she said, Dimitri and me with her and Ozera. Ah, crap, my shoe’s untied.” Rose came to an abrupt stop and crouched down, tugging at her shoelaces with a fierce frown on her face. “So, Syd, I was thinking…” she said just as she tightened the knot. “Maybe you could take Jill out for the night?”

Oh, no. I should have seen this coming a mile away. “You could’ve started with that,” I mentioned curtly. Rose, now standing up straight with a wicked grin on her lips, patted my head playfully.

“I’m not hearing a no!” she said.

“I don’t have time to go out. There’s some extra work I’m doing for Miss Terwilliger and-“

“Blah, blah, blah,” Rose interrupted rudely. “Miss T. loves you, capital L. She’d let you have fun once in a blue moon.”

I sighed. That much was true – Miss Terwilliger did have something of a soft-spot for me. Ever since I decided to take extra work to help her out with the translations of books which were centuries upon centuries old, she did act towards me with more kindness than her other students. And besides, going out did sound a bit more tempting than making chaste trips to the local coffee-shop for Miss Terwilliger’s daily caffeine fix.

I was silent for quite a while and, noticing that Rose was starting to get fidgety, I started running again. “I’ll ask Miss Terwilliger if I can have a night off,” I said. “But this isn’t a promise!”

Rose jumped up, her jog slightly perking. “I’m still not hearing a no!” she cried. Her pace grew faster by each passing second and soon, she left me behind, hurrying to finish her laps.

Chapter Text

Miss Terwilliger, although quite begrudgingly, let me take a night off. Rose thanked me for ‘taking care of Jailbait’ at least a thousand times as she walked around our dorm room, getting ready. And at exactly quarter to eight, an agitated knock sounded on the door. I bounced off the bed to open it, since Rose was too busy with stacking unbelievable amounts of mascara onto her thick eyelashes.

When the door opened, I was greeted by Jill’s smiling face and Lissa’s slightly annoyed grimace. “Hey, Sydney!” the younger Dragomir sibling greeted me, jade eyes glinting happily.

“Come in,” I invited them, stepping aside and letting them both into the room. Jill’s outfit didn’t differ much from the things I’d seen her wear around Amberwood’s campus – a simple skirt and a brightly colored tank top, accompanied by cute flats. Lissa, however, was sporting much more breathtaking attire. With her blonde hair held up in a messily styled bun, and the green dress she was wearing hugging her small frame perfectly, she reminded me of a movie starlet.

“Okay, I swear that I’m almost done,” Rose called out, marching out of the bathroom proudly. “Just a minu- whoa, Liss. You look amazing!”

A genuine smile played at Lissa’s previously sour expression. With a small word of thanks, she returned Rose’s compliment. “I’d be surprised if Dimitri’s jaw is still attached to his face once he sees how smoking hot you look tonight.”

“Believe me,” Rose said, fixing her cleavage with anything but subtlety, “if his jaw doesn’t drop, I’ll roundhouse kick him so hard he’ll be eating liquid food for a year.”

Lissa and Jill laughed at her comment, but my shoulders slugged noticeably as I remembered a memory from not too long ago. “Please don’t beat your boyfriend up again,” I said, rubbing my temples gently.

“C’mon, that was one time,” Rose scoffed. She sprayed a bit of perfume on her wrist, over the small tattoo written in golden cursive, and touched it to the base of her neck. Lissa walked over, fixing the few strands of brown hair which had fallen out of place.

“So, Jill,” I started. The younger girl looked up happily, showing me a bright smile with perfect, pearly teeth. “Where do you want us to go?”

“Oh, there’s this coffee shop downtown,” Jill said, clapping her hands together and intertwining her pale wingers. “I thought we could meet a few of my friends there.

A few of her friends? I threw Rose a nasty side-eyed look, which the brunette ignored. Jill’s comment, however, didn’t seem to escape Lissa’s attention. “What do you mean by friends?” she asked, her tone only slightly laced with worry. I had to hide a small smile which curled my lips.

“No one special – Mia, Adrian, Eddie, maybe Angie…”

“Whoa, whoa, rewind the clock,” Rose said. Her fingers were busy at work, looping a silver earring through her pierced ear. “Adrian’s coming with you?”

I straightened my blouse slightly, paying more attention to the conversation. Even though Rose and I haven’t been rooming together for a long time – only the past semester – I knew a bit about her life from the late-night, alcohol-induced talks we’d had, even though the latter was true only on Rose’s part. Adrian was a name she didn’t particularly like mentioning. A year back, she broke his heart and left him because she had finally found her soul mate. It wasn’t a really uncommon occurrence, but it often left bad blood between ex-lovers. Rose and Adrian weren’t an exception, especially since they hung out in a tightly-wound circle of friends, familiar faces which were too hard to leave behind after a bitter break up.

“Since when do you hang out with Adrian godforsaken Ivashkov?” Rose asked, clearly dissatisfied with Jill’s choice of company. I didn’t know much about Adrian, but I trusted my roommate’s judgment greatly. Chances were that, if she didn’t approve of someone, I wouldn’t either.

“He’s nice,” Jill said. “He’s Eddie’s friend. You all know that Eddie wouldn’t harm a fly!”

I furrowed my brow in confusion and cast Lissa a helpless look. Who’s Eddie?, I mouthed to her, hoping that the two other girls were paying little mind to me.

“We have lunch with him often, - blond, muscular, has a golden heart and the sunny disposition of a Golden Retriever puppy,” the Dragomir heiress helped me out.

I gave a non-committal shrug and leaned back on my bed. Rose and Jill were having an intense stare-off in the middle of my dorm and, for a second, I was reminded of Zoe. She and I used to have a lot of arguments like this back when she attended Amberwood. Last year, she dropped out. Unlike Carly and I, she didn’t seem to fit in properly. Not with the acceptable crowd, or with the school curriculum.

“Yeah, I know exactly how nice he is. He’s an okay guy, but someone your age shouldn’t be hanging around him! Liss, tell her.”

“Shouldn’t you two hurry?” I asked Lissa and Rose, trying to even out the tense situation that started gathering in the room. “It’s already five past eight.”

Lissa’s jade eyes widened as she gave the clock above my bed a quick glance. “Rose! They’re waiting for us out front, hurry up!” She grabbed the small white clutch she’d set down at the foot of Rose’s bed and made a beeline for the door.

“I’m coming, sheesh,” Rose murmured. “Okay, you two, don’t let Adrian poison you with his Sin City mindset.” She gave Jill a pointed look and sighed slightly. Walking over to the door, she threw her head back and looked at me. “And who knows, Sydney – maybe you meet your destined mute guy!”

Without giving me a chance to reply, she closed the door, leaving Jill and I alone in the silence. “What did she mean with that ‘mute guy’ thing?” she asked eventually, frowning in slight confusion.

I shook my head, sighing again. “She’s just being stupid,” I stated simply. One of these days, Rose Hathaway will certainly be the death of me, I thought.

Chapter Text

I hadn’t exactly expected to have a grand time with Jill and her friends, but there we were, sitting in a ratty coffee shop, each and every one of us nursing a warm drink, laughing at some stupid, sarcastic comment Adrian cracked.
I was starting to see why Rose didn’t want Adrian to be around Jill, ‘poisoning her with his Sin City mindset’. He was arrogant, cocky, annoying and probably as full of vices as the entire population of New York. Those things didn’t necessarily make him a bad person, but they certainly made him insufferable. What didn’t help his case was the fact that he absolutely loved to make sarcastic, crude remarks about those around him, me included. That evening, when Jill and I came to pick him up with my car, the first thing he said to me is that he, quote, ‘does not wanna buy a vacuum cleaner, thank you salesman lady’, unquote, which almost led to having the door slammed in my face.
The truth was, Adrian Ivashkov sucked at first impressions – something that was of great importance to me.
“I think I found him,” Jill exclaimed at one point of our evening. The word soul mate wasn’t said, but everyone was thinking it. Mia and Angeline, who were intensely focused on some kind of private conversation a second before, now stood at attention, pretty smiles and wide eyes pointed at Jill.
Poor Eddie almost choked on his coffee and Adrian had to heartily pat him on the back, bearing a glum expression not much unlike mine. Some part of my brain which had, inexplicably, been focusing on that damned man the entire evening made a note of his grim face, urging me to strike up that conversation topic as soon as I could. Perhaps he was like me – someone without the tattoo of their soul mate’s first words, or even a soul mate to begin with.
“Well?” Mia urged. Her blue eyes glinted under the café’s dim light, catching the glow of the candles on our table. “Tell us!”
Jill gathered her courage, cheeks tinted pink, and looked at us all. She almost bounced out of her chair in excitement. “Well, today I went to the library and-“
“Yawn,” Angeline whined, “no good stories start in a library!” Mia slapped the back of Angie's palm lightly, shushing her friend.
“Anyway,” Eddie said. “You met him in the library, then?”
“Yes!” Jill chirped. She hopped up in her chair slightly, bumping her knee against the table and making all of our coffee cups collectively clang. For good measure, I lifted mine and brought it to my lips, trying to drink it before Jill’s excitement brought on any collateral damage. “He was standing in the way and I said ‘hi, sorry, could you move a bit’ and he was like ‘ah, hi’. And then he moved over and I got my book, and that was that. I didn’t even notice he said it until I got back to my dorm.”
Mia sighed slightly, looking over at Angeline. The two of them exchanged pointed looks without saying anything, but it still seemed like the two friends were holding a proper conversation. Eddie rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, did he show any sign of, like, recognizing your words?” he asked sheepishly, dancing around the issue at hand.
“I guess so? He smiled,” Jill said.
Adrian, in his seat beside Jill, passively lit a cigarette and circled an arm around her shoulders. “Jailbait, look here,” he said, taking a long drag of his cigarette. “Those kinds of stories aren’t really action-packed and adrenaline-filled when your soulmate's words are ‘hi’. Everyone and their grandma says ‘hi’ all the time, it’s not really… well, special.”
Jill nodded, excitement killed by our collective lack of enthusiasm, and mumbled that Adrian was probably right. Seeing her so down in the dumps, her ecstasy now replaced with sober seriousness, I felt terrible.
“Hey,” I said, pinching the skin of her forearm lightly. “It’s fine even if your first words are plain, Jill. What’s important is that they’re written there, on your wrist.” I gently took her hand, turning it over and gently dragging my index finger along her golden tattoo, watching the glimmer of the letters under the candlelight’s shine. “These words mean that he really is somewhere out there and that someday, you’re going to meet him. Neither of you could realize it right away, but you will most certainly meet.”
Hearing my words of encouragement, Jill met my gaze. She raised an eyebrow at me, brushing a lock of light brown hair behind her ear. “You really think so, Syd?”
“She does,” Eddie interjected. “We all do. Besides, tons of people have ‘hi’s and ‘hello’s written on their wrists.”
“What does yours say, Eddie?” Mia asked, smiling sweetly. If anyone noticed the slightly blush on Eddie’s cheeks, they didn’t say a thing.
“Similar to Jill, actually… A greeting,” he told us kindly. Angeline huffed by my side, leaning her chin in the crook of her palm. “Mine’s a greeting, too,” she confessed grumpily. “Hey, Eddie, maybe we’re each other’s soul mates!” Poor Eddie leaned back so far I feared he would fall out of his chair.
“What about you, Vacuum Saleswoman?” Adrian asked after grabbing Eddie’s shoulder, steadying the younger boy in his seat. He brought the coffee he’d ordered (and poured an envious amount of whiskey into once the waitress couldn’t see him anymore), taking a long sip. Jill shifted uncomfortably to my right, lightly nudging him with her elbow.
“Nothing,” I said. The skin of my wrist suddenly felt very heavy and I fought against glancing down on it, to make sure it was still empty. Adrian scrunched up his brows in a slight frown. “I don’t have my words.”
No one said anything for a while, a somber silence hugging us all too close for comfort. This was always the kind of reaction I elicited from people. They all either felt too awkward to say anything, or were too busy imaging my future – all alone until the day I died, without anyone by my side.
That’s when Mia shifted in her seat and sighed. “That’s just depressing,” she said, and Eddie looked about ready to punch her for being tactless. “Like we needed any more confirmation about how perfect you are, Sage. God, that’s basically saying that you’re so class A that no one can match up.”
Jill laughed by my side, throwing Mia a grateful look she thought I couldn’t catch. “Leave some greatness for us mere mortals, Syd,” Angela complained with a small smile, downing the rest of her coffee.
“You know, I had this friend,” Eddie started, “who didn’t have his words either. He said that only gave him more liberty to stay a ladies’ man forever.” A fond smile graced his lips and the look in his eyes was wistful, melancholic – like he was remembering a time long since past.
“Oh yeah,” Adrian remarked, squinting his green eyes in my direction. “I can totally see Sage as a ladies’ man.” I tried to hide my smile as Jill burst into laughter by my side.
“Hey,” Angeline said, “any of you know Rose’s first words? I never found them out and, since she’s going out with that hunky old guy, I can only imagine he’s her soul mate.”
And then, like in some cheesy movie or a badly-written book, Adrian and I both contorted out faces in the best Dimitri expression we could muster, eyes cold and face hard as stone. “The pleasure is mine, Roza,” we both said in a monotone, badly-performed Russian accent. He caught my eye, giving me a small smirk, and downed the rest of his coffee. Angeline grabbed my hand, laughing loudly and making almost everyone in the coffee shop stare at us.
Even though he was certainly bad at first impressions, and his second ones weren’t that much of a hit either, Adrian Ivashkov got pretty alright on his third try.

Chapter Text

I slapped Adrian’s hand for the third time since we started driving. “Ouch! Okay, Slapinator, I get it!” he complained, tucking the packet of cigarettes back into his pocket.
“The day you smoke in Latte is the day they lower my cold, dead body into the ground,” I said, turning a corner. “Where do I have to go now?”
Adrian pointed down a road, leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes. During the course of the night, it turned out that his extensive whiskey stash was indeed too much for him. Wondering how that much alcohol can even fit in the breast pocket of a grown man’s jacket, I told Jill to go back to Amberwood with the rest of our company while I drove a drunken Adrian home.
Unlike I originally thought, Adrian wasn’t a loud drunk. After his sixth whiskey-coffee, he got surprisingly quiet, staring off into space far too often. Although, every time we included him in our conversation, he put on a cocky smirk and muttered something non-committal and likely sarcastic, putting a smile on all our faces. No one even suspected he was drunk until he stuttered towards the café’s exit. Well, no one besides Jill. She threatened to take away his flask multiple times during the night, but never once acted on her threat. She seemed to have some sort of sixth sense regarding Adrian and his well-being, often acting like a sister in response to his antics.
“Is this it?” I asked when I pulled over in front of an apartment complex. Adrian leaned against the car’s dash, narrowing his eyes and staring up at the building in front of us.
“I’m pretty sure it is…” he said. Sighing, I unclipped my seatbelt and turned the engine off. Adrian tried to follow my lead, having slightly more trouble with his belt clip. In the end, I was forced to reach over and unclip it for him, rolling my eyes. “Thanks, Mom,” he said teasingly before we got out of the car.
“Can you even stand and walk properly?” I asked, locking Latte up and making my way over to him. With a shrug of his shoulders and a small step forward, he concluded I wouldn’t have to call Eddie to lag him up to his apartment. Instead, I just walked by his side, taking the keys he held out to me and leading him upstairs.
I was surprised at the cleanliness of his apartment. Frankly, I’d expected beer bottles littering every foreseeable inch of his floor and dozens of put out cigarette butts on all surfaces. Thankfully, he kept his liquor neatly arranged and practiced the use of ashtrays.
“You didn’t have to walk me up here,” he said. He kicked his shoes off and shrugged his jacket off, throwing it over a nearby armchair.
I nudged his shoes with my foot, arranging them in an orderly fashion. “If I didn’t, you probably would have fallen asleep in front of the building.”
Adrian scoffed – or chuckled, in his drunken state, I wasn’t entirely sure – and shook his head. “Glad to hear you have high opinions of me, Saleswoman.” He lit a cigarette, throwing himself down on one of the ratty couches he owned. “You wanna stay for a drink?”
I shook my head, brushing down a curve of my coat. “No, thank you. I should probably get back to Amberwood, my curfew is nearing.” As I was about to turn around and wish him a good night and good luck with tomorrow’s hangover, I remembered something. As soon as Jill had mentioned the very idea of soul mates, Adrian’s expression turned grim. He skillfully danced around the topic of his words, never letting the conversation stray that far into his personal business.
“Actually,” I started, walking closer to the sofa he was sitting on. Adrian moved his forearm from his face, looking at me curiously. “I have a question. About your words.”
As soon as I said it, I felt regret creeping up my spine. Adrian’s grimace turned sour, like he just bit down on a particularly disgusting slice of lemon, and I felt like banging my head against the wall repeatedly. People often hated discussing their words unless their soul mate was already known to them. I must’ve struck a sensitive spot in his impenetrable ‘I-Don’t-Care-About-Anything-But-Alcohol’ armor.
To my surprise, he didn’t tell me to shove off. Instead, he made space for me by sitting up straight, grabbing his head in the process. I took his offer, taking my coat off and sitting down on the edge of the couch.
“Let me see your wrist,” he asked. Sheepishly, I lifted up my hand. Adrian took it gently, flipping my open palm over. He ran his fingers over the familiar, empty skin of my flesh, trailing the blue mark of my veins. “I’ve never seen an empty right wrist before. You’re sure the marking’s not somewhere else on your skin?”
I shook my head, setting my hand in my lap. “No, not a single mark of gold on me.” He nodded, taking a drag of his cigarette and huffing out smoke I could barely make out in the darkness of his apartment. We let silence fall over us, soaking it the sheer awkwardness of it.
“Smoking is bad for your health,” he suddenly said, breaking the silence. For a second, I thought he was joking, but the moment I looked up at his face, realization washed over me. Those were his words. As if he wanted to confirm my thoughts, he lifted his right hand up.
Without thinking about it, I reached out to touch his wrist. My warm fingers connected with his cold skin and I ran the distance along his words carefully, like I was touching a small and frightened animal. Under my touch, the writing felt almost familiar, like I’d seen the penmanship already before – the handwriting of his soul mate seemed not in the tiniest bit foreign to me.
“We met already,” he told me. I looked up at him, fingers still trailing the curve of his golden lettering. “We even dated for a while. And, even though she was my soul mate, I wasn’t hers.” Adrian looked down at his cigarette grimly, taking a long drag.
I looked back at his words, trying to make them out under the moonlight which seeped in through the uncurtained windows. “It’s Rose, isn’t it?” I asked him. He didn’t have to answer, I already knew I hit home by the way his hand tensed under my touch. I set his hand down into his lap gently, giving him my best ‘I’m sorry your life got screwed up’ look.
“It’s not like I know what you feel like, Sage,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “But it hurts a lot, too.”
Just like being born without your first words was uncommon, so was having a soul mate who didn’t return your feelings. It wasn’t easy to be part of either exception, to be pitied for never being able to fulfill your one chance at true love. The pit of my stomach ached with sadness, both for him and for myself, as we sat in the dark silence of his lonely apartment.
“Sage?” he spoke up after a few minutes. “I’d like to sleep now, if you don’t mind.”
I nodded, standing up and taking my coat with me. I turned on my heel, avoiding the small obstacles of his apartment the best I could in the dark. I pushed down the knob and pulled open the door. “Hey, Adrian,” I called into the apartment. He gave no response and I had no way of finding out if we were still awake, unless I made the effort to walk over to him. “Thank you for telling me this, even if it was out of pity for my wordlessness.” As I closed the door, I thought I could almost hear a soft murmur of ‘you’re welcome.’

Chapter Text

“Huge problem!” Angeline exclaimed, swinging open my bedroom door and marching inside. Behind her Mia and Jill trudged lazily, shutting the door and giving me small smiles of hello. 

I slowly closed my book, regretting not locking the door before I started studying. With a soft thud, I set it down on my bedside table and sat up straight on my bed, making room for Angeline to sit down. She accepted my offer readily, plopping down on the soft mattress and laying her head in my lap.

 Even though only a week had passed since I went out with Jill and the gang, they all accepted me without a second thought. It was as if I’d been a part of them from the very beginning. All of their antics – from barging into my room like they owned it to Angie treating me as a human pillow – had already stopped bothering me by the time the week ran out.

 I twined my fingers through Angie’s auburn hair, sighing slightly and eyeing the two other girls. Jill and Mia both sat down on the edge of my bed, giving me apologetic looks.

 “What’s the problem?” I asked.

 Angie huffed angrily, squeezing her small fist and thumping my thigh lightly, grumbling incoherently. Mia gently rubbed her friend’s back, taking on the role of a spokeswoman. “Eddie turned her down,” the blonde said simply.

 I felt slight confusion wash over me. “Turned her down for what?” I asked. As soon as the words left my lips, Jill looked at me like I’d just gravely insulted each and every one of her ancestors. Even Angie had stopped her upset grumbling and lifted her head from my lap, staring at me in disbelief. Mia’s clear blue eyes narrowed at me and she shook her head slightly.

 “Does your brain simply ignore everything that doesn’t have the word ‘science’ in it?” she asked. I rolled my eyes at her, mumbling in assurance that I did, in fact, sometimes pay attention to non-scientific things but that this, whatever it might be, mustn’t have been one of them.

 “The Halloween dance, Sydney!” Jill said. “There are posters all around the school! We’ve been talking about it for the past two weeks!”

 Vaguely, I remembered the conversations we’d had during lunch. A book in my hand, I would usually tune out of the conversation my companions were engrossed in. But now, after the three girls stared at me with wonder and emphasized that the Halloween dance was totally important, I tried really hard to remember it. The memory was certainly there, but it felt like I had to reach through a thick, misty veil to reach it.

 Mia finally sighed, exasperated by my selective memory. “You were studying Chemistry the day we first told you about it,” she said, rubbing her forehead slightly.

 “Oh, right! Yeah, I forgot, sorry…” I muttered and threw my textbook a wistful glance. Somehow, I doubted I would get any actual studying done. “The test is in less than a week, though. We should all be studying.”

 “How can I study when my heart is broken?!” Angeline exclaimed. She clenched a fist and pressed it against her chest, between the curve of her breasts. With sadness in her blue eyes, she stared up at me. I patted her head gently and contorted my face into a comforting smile, hoping that it would ease her heartache.

 “If it helps,” Jill said, joining in the let’s-pat-Angie-until-she-feels-better trend, “I don’t have a date, either. And I’m pretty sure Mia’s not going with anyone!”

 Angie frowned and grabbed my pillow, pressing it against her stomach. “You two at least didn’t get shut down in front of the whole cafeteria,” she mumbled into the pillow, hugging it closer.

 I raised my eyebrows. “Eddie refused you in front of everyone?” I asked, the surprise in my voice as obvious as the nose on my face.

 Jill nodded glumly, face fallen, and looked over at Angie’s face, now an angry grimace. Even though it was mean for Eddie to turn her down in front of a mass of people, I could understand where he was coming from. Angie, while certainly a nice person, wasn’t the easiest companion to keep around. She was hot-tempered and, frankly, oblivious to the things happening around her. Ever since day one, she’d been on Eddie’s case – that’s at least what Jill told me. I could understand why he wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea of dating her; hell, I’ve known the girl for approximately a week and she was already using my lap as a pillow.

 “You’ll just have to go with us, then,” Mia said, slender hand fixing her blonde locks as she threw the mirror above my bed a casual glance. “Just us four girls and a spiked punch bowl. We can dance the night away and Eddie Castile can go shove it where the sun won’t reach him.” I wasn’t quite sure what Eddie would be shoving, but I decided to ignore Mia’s foul language, instead focusing on the first part of her sentence.

 “Sorry, the four of us?” I said cleverly.

 Jill laughed, nudging my knee with her open palm. “Well, of course, silly! The four of us will be going together next weekend, since Rose and Lissa have their dates, and Eddie’s been mean to Angie.”

 Angie sat up, her forehead nearly slamming against mine, and hugged the pillow tightly. She regarded me with curious eyes, some glint of her previous anger and sadness still evident behind the blue of her irises. “You’re coming, Syd. Right?”

 “I-I’m not so sure, guys…” I slipped off the bed, taking a few steps around my room and turning to look at the three girls perched on my bed. “You said it’s next weekend? We have exams that week, I was hoping I could study over the weekend. I don’t think I have time for a party.”

 Angie frowned at me and, for a second, I feared that she would fly off the bed and jump me. However, it wasn’t Angeline who delivered the killing blow. “Holy. Shit. Sydney Sage, I from now on forbid you to study this much!” Rose shouted. She was standing in the doorframe, arms akimbo and donning her training outfit – a white shirt and black yoga pants. Behind her, a very uncomfortable Eddie stood, holding both their training bags and glancing awkwardly between Angeline and me.

 “Syd, you have gotta let loose every now and again,” Rose said, walking into the room. She dragged Eddie by the sleeve of his sweatshirt, nudging the door shut with her foot. “You’re an honor student, your scholarship ain’t going anywhere. So, for the love of all that’s holy, just dress up and go to the party with your friends.”

 Jill made her agreement clear, jumping up from my bed and hugging my arm like a tiny koala bear would hug a tree branch. “Sydney, you have to go! Please,” the younger girl begged me. Mia and Angeline, who’d been sneaking murderous glances Eddie’s way, both agreed, saying how Rose was completely in the right here.

 I sighed, clearly seeing that I had no way out of this hellhole I’d dug myself into. “Fine!” I shouted, throwing my head up in exasperation. “I’ll go to the party, only if you promise to let me study after that.”

 Rose clapped me strongly on the shoulder and, ignoring my painful yelp of protest, laughed into my ear. “There we go!”

 “Careful, Rosie, you might break her…” Eddie said, uneasily shifting in his spot next to her. Raising his voice and calling attention to himself was clearly the wrong thing to do. As soon as he spoke up, the three girls lounging on my bed glared at him collectively, making him take a cautious step back and bump into the wall.

 I sighed again. “C’mon, Eddie, let’s get you out of here,” I said, raising my voice so that he could hear me over the sound of Rose’s obnoxious laughter. Saving him and myself, I dragged him by the hand and fled the room where the girls started heatedly discussing the many ways they would like to hurt Eddie Castile.