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Mr Foley asked the class on just a normal day who had met their soulmates. The majority of the class didn’t raise their hands. While finding your soulmate in highschool has become more common thanks to online forums and snapchat, the internet is not a miracle worker. Chase and Melissa hold up their hands instantly, grinning at each other the way lovesick puppies do. Ivy’s happy for them. Seriously, her heart leaps knowing two of her best friends have found their soulmates, especially in each other. Quinston’s a great surprise. Ivy might not be his best friend but she’s close enough that this is the kind of stuff she should know. The hushed whispers that break out across the class suggest that this is the first time anyone’s heard it (besides Quinston’s own soulmate.) He raised his hand higher at the rumours, revelling in the confusion. He turned his head and winked at Ivy. She raised a shoulder and winked back, smirking as Quinston shot her a smile. It’s crooked and way too toothy to be polite but not wide enough to be one of true joy. Thankful Ivy knows and he’d better be.
It’s because there’s a second pair of eyes that burn into the back of Ivy’s skull. They’re purple, a reflection of Ivy’s own. Ivy wished at that moment she had Quinston’s magic of ice. She needed to cool off. Everything burnt and she isn’t sure if it’s from her own blood, rushing through her veins at the knowledge her soulmate's eyes are on her or if it’s the intensity of her soulmate’s glare.
Ivy turned her head to glare at Kaya. Kaya frowned and instantly looked away, burying her head in her workbook.
“Miss White, is there a reason you’re staring at Miss Long so intently. I was not aware the topic of soulmates was one you had to bring personal drama into.” Mr Foley said. Ivy wants to snap, remind Adam that he can’t keep whatever the fuck is going on with Sarah in their own office. The whole ‘whoops sorry I forgot my pencil. Do you have one.’ play was getting old. Everyone knew, they didn’t need to be subtle. And in case Mr Foley was still curious: Kaya Long had everything to do with Ivy’s soulmate.
When Ivy had been seven, books had begun to appear in her hands, on her desk, in her locker. They were fantasies and romances and Ivy had fallen in love with them. When you’re eight the concept of ‘lost’ is still well, lost on you. So Ivy hadn’t realised how she was gaining such wonderful books she’d never give up on a regular basis. Ivy had gone home excitedly to her dad, pointing to the new book of the day and explaining that somehow she kept getting these books! A large smile on her face.
Kaya was in the class next door. She was the daughter to an aristocratic family who dated back into the Victorian era. She had wandered class to class, books similar to those Ivy was falling in love with and hugged to her chest. Her hair was nearly always plaited and it bounced on her shoulders. Ivy hadn’t known what it was. The butterflies in her stomach and the desire to go ask Kaya about her new book and ask her to plait her hair and in return Ivy would teach her how to make daisy chains and share her own recommendations for future reading.
In the end, their first meeting went closer to this: It’s the last period of the day. They had a maths test the term before and now all their classes are mixed up. It’s the first and only class Ivy and Kaya share but Ivy also shares it with her other friends and as much as she wants to talk to Kaya her friends are really bad at maths and need some tutoring, which Ivy is happy to do! The teacher reveals her secret weapon, a seating plan. And suddenly Ivy is sitting opposite Kaya in maths. Ivy doesn’t say a word and Kaya focuses on her maths on her own. She doesn’t engage with the class at all but Ivy can see the green ticks in her books that show Kaya doesn’t need to engage! She’s just that brilliant!
Ivy confronted Kaya about Mr Foley’s lesson exactly two weeks, 1 day, 22 hours and forty five minutes after it ended. Kaya had been passing between the gardens. She quickly walked. Ivy could tell based on the way the grass crumpled up and died faster than it usually did so. What pain it caused her! To have something so close to her shrivel up and die at such an alarming rate. The ache in her lungs and in her skin and bones and joints and ligaments and brain and her heart was constant. This was not an ache. This was a murder, several needles puncturing Ivy from all over. Pricking and jabbing and stabbing until she was a pindoll.
Ivy didn’t have control over herself. A vine left her garden as she turned away.
Kaya came back, screaming and clawing at the dirt. Nature caked her clothes and knotted her hair. Ivy’s eyes widened as she turned to face Kaya, meeting her eyes. The common description of two eye’s meeting is that this is a romantic scenario. Perhaps there is lightning that strikes their nerves making them shiver at the intimacy. Or perhaps the lightning is about the cursed willow trees it strikes down on the night of their engagement.
There was no lightning between Ivy and Kaya. Just fire. Fire that burns so brightly it blinds and fire that’s created the by energy of a fast moving object. The sparks left by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. The fire that burns nature down to it’s very roots and leaves nothing but ash and dust in its wake. Kaya’s eyes burnt and as they threatened to destroy the garden, Ivy was hit by the fact this was not a threat of ruin. This was a promise of mutual destruction.
Ivy loosened her shoulders and sighed. She turned her back to Kaya, the vines shortening with sickening cracks as they withdrew back to the gates Ivy grew them on.
“Whatever on Earth made you do that?” Kaya asked, the sickening calm it always was. She stood up and brushed her clothes. When Ivy did not dignify her with a response, Kaya asked again. That time she threatened to leave of Ivy did not answer her questions.
Ivy brought out of the garden clippers and knelt on the grass as she cut the thorns off the bunch of roses she was growing. “I didn’t. My plants can have a mind of their own when I feel something intense.” It was the partial truth. Ivy was far from out of control of her plants. She had a natural green thumb and years to hone her magic. The most out of control she’d ever gotten was when she’d been mind controlled. If you’re going to count that instance when she wasn’t even in control of her own mind, you’re being unfair. Even then nothing quite like targeting someone in particular had happened. Just lots, and lots, and lots, of greenery.
Kaya hadn’t spoken to Ivy since she’d brought her first pair of hedge clippers and discovered a hatred for the smell of peonies. Which is a quick way of saying: Kaya had no idea of the nature of Ivy’s magic. (Hah! Did you see her pun!)
“Okay…” Kaya trailed off, she gestured behind her with her thumb and backed off slowly. “Am I okay to leave now? I think Miss Canidae wants to talk to me. Equality club meeting. We have a debate coming up and it’s kind of important that we win. Then I need to help Lulu with her philosophy-”
Ivy shoved a bouquet of roses into Kaya’s arm. The trimmed roses were cut off at the bottom of the stem. The roses curled into each other, each petal hugging. Kaya looked down at the bunch and flushed bright pink. She picked one of the roses and twisted it between her fingers.
“Ivy, we aren’t anything. Why are you giving me roses?!” Kaya asked, voice coated in so much doubt that if Ivy hadn’t known Kaya for eight years she would assume the girl was sneering at her, romantic, platonic, peace offering, soulmate gesture.
Ivy clicked her tongue and told Kaya to smell the roses instead. She had specifically grown Liv Tyler roses for their smell. It hadn’t clicked till Kaya’s eyes widened at the smell that Kaya’s favourite smell was peach. The same rich smell of the rose wafted like a bakery store.
Kaya placed all the roses back into the bunch and asked, “Did you grow these specifically for me?”
“I, well no. I grew them for myself but I have offered them to you. If you don’t want them i can take them back.” Ivy said shrugging.
Kaya looked back down at the roses and then back up to Ivy. She pulled them in, guarding them. “I’ll keep them. I’m sure my mum would appreciate them.”
Ivy clicked her tongue at the mention of Kaya’s mother but didn’t say anything more after Kaya narrowed her eyes, as if teasing and daring Ivy to say anything more.
“Anyways, is there another reason you felt the need to drag me here, or you were feeling something so intense that you had to drag me here. Look, if it’s the soulmate thing I don’t hate you anymore okay. It’d be nice to actually be able to ask you for the stuff I loose. You’re just not who I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
“Fair. I don’t get how Quinston, Chase and Melissa are so happy with their’s all the time either..” Ivy hesitated for a second before saying, “Could we be friends though? Like close friends who go clothes shopping together and stuff.”
Kaya thought about it. “I thought we dealt with this with the body swap thing?”
“I mean, close friends. Like me and Mel.”
Kaya’s eyes widened and she nodded. “I’ll think about it.” Before she ran out. This time Ivy had enough tact to not grab her by the vines despite the worsening pain.
It had come to head when Ivy was fourteen, or in year 8. Some girls, she couldn’t even remember their names now, had offered to take her clothes shopping, asked about her garden. It was strange in a way that refreshed Ivy. Like she was a plant that couldn’t shrivel up and die because it had never been introduced to water to grow in the first place. The first few droplets had finally fallen on Ivy’s dirt and she was ready to sprout into a blossoming plant like a fairy hatching out from the darkness.
The tentative friendship built over years of sharing maths class and slow but steady book conversations crashed before it had even reached the clouds. One day, they’d been talking about the latest book to take their teenage hearts by storm. Ivy was suddenly swarmed by her friends and they were linking arms and pulling her away. The book dropped from her grip and before she could grab it, the waves of girls pulled her away. Ivy’s friends nattered away about how lame Kaya was for reading books, for being a nerd with no fashion taste, “the scarf is just so… ew!” and they would all laugh at it. Besides Ivy ,who would look away from them and not say a word, couldn’t stop them.
She never managed to ask Kaya for her own book back. She’d vanished into thin air, lost alongside Ivy’s book. Anytime Ivy saw Kaya in passing the girl would turn her shoulder and push through the crowds. After the third time Ivy stopped reaching her hand out. And like a buoy untied in the sea, they drifted.
The girls Ivy was friends with would lie on pink cushions and twirl their heads. They drew poorly made portraits of how they imagined their soulmate would look like. They gushed over the items they’d lost (One soulmate had lost a rose and the girl was certain it was purposefully done to be a romantic gift to her. Ivy didn’t point out that the rose was yellow, suggesting an impactful friendship, which suggested her soulmate was really just a botanist.) They blushed over their first meetings and how they’d meet at extravagant parties or how he’d ask her to prom and it would all click and they’d know. Ivy tried to point out how a similar event had occurred in one of the romance books Kaya had been begging her to read for months, where a boy loses the invite for a girl to go to prom and the girl starts an investigation into who could have sent the note. Except as they rambled on, Ivy realised that wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted the sweetness, the joys and none of the thinking. Ivy instead said, “I don’t see why we have to have a boy soulmate. I’d love for my best friend forever to be mine. Sisters before misters you know!” she grinned!
Ivy’s friends called her a dyke after that. Everytime they caught her trying to talk to Kaya, everytime she made eye contact with another girl they’d bump her shoulders and call her a dyke before moving on.
The year before high school, Ivy had realised that her nickname wasn’t funny. It especially wasn’t funny when the boys at school didn’t get attractive but the girls did. Her friends' cheekbones raised and they’re hips got wider and they’re jokes about boys made Ivy flushed when the thought of it being her, came up. Kaya’s hair got longer and Ivy wanted to do nothing more than pet it. Her long, too big duffle coats suited her perfectly. Her skin seemed to get softer. Ivy bit the insides of her lip every non-uniform day, where her friends would wear cropped tank tops and use one of their magical powers to hold a water fight in the middle of the field, making their clothes stick to them and their hair damp and.
And Ivy got a boyfriend. He was her best friend at the time’s boyfriends best friend and they had to go out for dinners together. Double dates her friend had called it, slinging her arm around Ivy’s shoulder.
Ivy had hunched in at the initial idea but when the day came? When the day came, Ivy was in a low cut vest in the middle of winter with snowdrops and roses in her hands, blushing bright red as she offered the boy flowers. He had murmured something about thinking Ivy wanted to date her soulmate. She’d made it so clear at the start of the year and if she was being pushed to do this by her friends he would understand. Ivy had forced the flowers into his hands, Kaya out of her mind and told him she’d change her mind. “It’s middle school. I need a little fun before then.”
They kissed. Ivy and Aaron kissed. They kissed a lot. They held hands around the campus and Ivy’s favourite pastime became hanging round his house, lying next to him on his bed and playing with his hair, talking about what was on TV. It was pleasant to be away from the pressure of her friends, who loomed over her every decision. It was nice to be Ivy, the straight girl who was head over heels for Aaron Lucian.
Six months into their relationship, a week before the summer of that holiday, Ivy realised just how much she didn’t miss her friends. She missed Kaya. She missed Kaya like her lungs missed oxygen. So she came round Aaron’s with a vase of flowers and said, “Will you continue to be my boyfriend till the middle of summer but we’re not dating. Because I don’t like boys and I don’t want my friends to know that and yeah.”
Aaron was the first person Ivy ever came out too. It was a weight being lifted off her shoulders even though she told no one else.
They separated socially in mid summer, results day when Ivy got accepted to Everston and Aaron to the science school where he would study to be an astrophysicist. It was a big fight according to the grape vine. Ivy and Aaron had laughed on her bed that night.
Aaron showed Ivy the snapchat story of Kaya’s celebration into Everston, something Ivy had been blocked from seeing. She messaged Kaya her congratulations and was left on read.
Kaya meets Ivy in the middle of town. It’s a peace offering and Ivy is lunging towards it, gripping Kaya’s open hands like she’s a plant that hasn’t seen water in weeks. Kaya is in her same large duffle coat from middle school. Her hair is tied up in a ponytail and Ivy stands there white knuckling her tote bag while her brain tries to process that this is actually happening.
They don’t talk besides Kaya asking Ivy if they want to go to all the bookshops in the area. Ivy was only aware there was one. She says yes instantly and follows after Kaya, letting her lead the way to the first of hopefully many bookstores.
At the first store, Kaya wanders off to the mythology section while Ivy stays on the ground floor, looking over the piles of romance books that she hasn’t read yet. Her fingers brush over their spines. Ivy hasn’t read any of the books, the mainstream having eaten and chewed up the indie authors she and Kaya read back in middle school. The blurbs take away to a land the actual books can’t contemplate. After all, what fake dating book will give Ivy the same rush as kissing Aaron in the final weeks knowing it was all a joke on her friends. No book about botanists finding love in their garden can take on the memories of Quinston in her garden trying to pry out which flowers were the best to proclaim his love to Shawn Mendes when he threw them on the stage at the concert he was going to. After ten minutes of flicking through pages and mindlessly reading first lines (none of them will make Ivy pick up the books.) she takes the escalator up to see Kaya.
Kaya is not looking at the myth section.
“Why not?” Ivy asked.
Kaya shrugged, “I’ve read all the good ones.”
“But if you enjoy them surely they're all worth reading?”
“They don’t have a new meaning. It’s people who saw a way to make money and jumped on the ship. There is no care for the original myth and what to do with the meaning.”
Ivy was silent for a second, “Could I borrow a book. One of the good myth ones from you. You can give it to me at school tomorrow. In return I can let you borrow the third book in the starlighter series.” Ivy winked.
Kaya placed down the book she was reading and laughed, “Yeah sure. Though if you don’t mind broken books. I think I know a shop you’ll prefer.”
They don’t buy anything at the first bookstore.
They don’t buy anything at the second either because every book Kaya pulls out to consider buying Ivy has. Ivy insisted that Kaya shares her books. It’s only natural after all, they’re soulmates. Kaya was always going to get the books, “I’d misplace them eventually.” Ivy admitted and Kaya laughed, saying she does the same.
“I don’t think I could tell the difference. I mean I have that many books. You missed out on so many good recommendations when you were hanging out with those girls who were better than me.” Kaya’s mouth started to snarl.
Ivy didn’t even think about grasping her hand and squeezing it tight. “I’ll explain it later. At a better time, for now what do you think of this book?” Ivy raised a classic book from before the times of Magiclicas and Cyphers and soulmates. (well, before soulmates were part of reality) The cover was falling off and the lines in the book were highlighted, underlines and scribbled over.
“I mean I can’t control what you read.”
Ivy tapped her chin, “I think I’ll try it. Something new you know?”
Pride and Prejudice is the only book Ivy or Kaya buy that day. It goes in a small paper bag, that Ivy puts in her bigger bag.
“Do you want to get lunch?” Ivy asked, “There’s a bakery somewhere around here. I’ll pay.” she winks at Kaya and laughs as if the air is struggling to get in her lungs by how high she wheezes.
“What sort of question is that? I’m not gonna say no to free food.”
Kaya’s bakery order turns out to be gingerbread. She loves the fresh bread but doesn’t want to carry it home since it would get cold. She refuses to trade a bite of her gingerbread (“Not even the foot? What about a finger?” Kaya looked Ivy straight in the eyes and ate the gingerbread man’s entire foot.) for Ivy’s apple tart. She bites around the edges and doesn’t let a singular crumb drop. When Ivy loses a flake or two or her pastry Kaya gives her the greatest death stare.
They sit on a bench while they eat. The flowers that grow between the creaks of the pavement nudge Kaya’s legs, twisting and growing as she stays still while they move. Kaya doesn’t say anything.
Once the pastries are eaten, Ivy taps Kaya’s cheek and asks, “Can I kiss you? On the cheek. The mouth would just be disgusting. I’d get all your gingerbread aftertaste instead of mint toothpaste.”
Kaya nods, surprisingly. Ivy presses a quick kiss to her cheek before standing up. She rearranges her bag and tries to school the large dopey grin on her face to something a little more controlled. “I’ll see you at school. Unblock me by the way, I need you to send me dinosaur facts.”
Then, like a coward, Ivy runs away.
Kaya → Ivy (Private Chat)
Kaya (22:39): Birds are a type of dinosaur btw.