Page 19 of Sad Girl Hours

Chapter Nineteen

Nell

“Where are you off to?” Jenna asks. She’s lounging on the sofa the Friday after the party, a book of monologues open in her lap, while I pour the remains of my pumpkin-spiced latte from my pumpkin-shaped mug into my autumn-leaf travel mug.

(I have a strong person brand/special interest to maintain, OK?)

“I’ve got a meeting with my tutor about my first ten poems, then I think I’m grabbing lunch with Saffron after her lecture.”

Jenna closes her book, watching me pull on my best stompin’ boots. “How’s the great autumn bucket list going? It seems like you’re both having a good time.”

“We are, I think. And we’ve still got lots of fun stuff ahead of us. We’ve done loads of the autumn things, but it’s nearly time for Christmas fun too.”

“Please don’t say the C word until after Halloween,” Jenna says wearily. “We have an agreement.”

“First of November, we watch Nightmare Before Christmas to fully shift into the festive spirit. Yes, I know. But I’m an excellent multitasker, even if other people aren’t. I can enjoy Halloween AND feel full of excitement for Christmas.”

“Anyway,” Jenna says, ignoring me, “I’m glad that you’ve got lots still to do. It’s nice that you and Saffron are getting to spend so much time together.”

“It is. I think we—” I stop, seeing Jenna’s face. “Not this again.”

“I said nothing!” she protests, but her face is still doing that annoying thing . “Just that it’s nice.”

“It is nice,” I say, “But not for any reason that warrants such an expression.”

Things with me and Saffron are lovely. I feel really honoured that she opened up a bit to me, even if I do now want to bob down to Exeter and give both her parents a good shaking. But I wish Jenna would stop.

Engaging warfare tactic in three, two, one …

“What about you and Casper? Disappearing off into his room at the party. Was that nice too?”

“Oh goodness, is that the time?” Jenna says, glancing down at her bare wrist. “You’re going to be late.”

“I didn’t tell you what time my meeting was,” I say, my tone tinged with amusement.

“I know, I just have this sixth sense for when people are not adhering to schedule. I was bitten by a radioactive bullet journaller as a child.”

“I hope you got a tetanus jab,” I call back as I head towards the door.

“And rabies, yes.”

The door swings shut behind me. That worked as well as it usually does, I think as I wander down the street towards the bus stop, kicking up the leaves on the pavement so they scatter into crisp leaf confetti.

I don’t know why Jenna and Casp continue to pretend they’re not …

whatever they are. It would be frustrating if it wasn’t so amusing to watch.

“Pumpkin lanterns line the airstrip street

Costumed people trekking dutifully from door to door

They swing open, people ready for their cold-callers

thrusting out baskets of sugar, of toys, of ‘here you gos’

Smiling chit-chat ‘and who are you?’ they’ d ask.

Scanning my costume,

I’ d look down at myself.

‘I don’ t know.’

I look harder, trying to place where I’ve seen these clothes, this mask before.

Nothing.

‘I don’ t know.’ The words echo down the street.

They close the door in my face, bewildered.

I walk back past the grinning pumpkin faces,

wishing the landing strip was leading somewhere I recognised.

The tea lights flicker inside carved faces.

I practise my own carving on my face

and try another door.”

Becks finishes reading the poem out loud, leaning back in her chair with a pensive expression. “This is powerful stuff, Nell.”

“Thank you.” I relax a little.

“I feel like this poem really sums up all the poems in the collection so far. You’ve got the autumn theme and the real sense of an identity in crisis.”

Hmph. I wouldn’t exactly say crisis …

“I guess I’m just wondering.” She fiddles with her pen.

“Is the collection building up to something? Because we could do with a few hints of whatever that something is threaded through early on. To help the poems feel more grounded in the uncertainty. If that makes sense?” she asks, like it wasn’t objectively a pretty nonsensical sentence.

I do sort of get what she means, though (annoyingly), but before I can answer, she carries on. “Have you had any thoughts about when that uncertainty will start to transition to clarity?”

“Lots,” I say, not lying. “I’m just … not exactly decided on when it will be.”

“That’s my task for you then, Nell. The poems are great, but try to get back to basics.

What is the narrator uncertain about? We need to know exactly what the theme of the collection is beyond that sense of unease and the autumn setting.

And we need some hints of incoming clarity in these initial poems.”

“OK,” I say, pushing through the thickness in my throat. “That’s really useful, thank you.”

I leave the office feeling somehow worse than I did when I went in.

And that is saying something, given I get the sweats before every meeting.

I have this fear that they’re going to tell me that my work is so barely a notch above garbage that they wouldn’t be surprised if a rat showed up to give it a little nibble, and then decided that it was too rancid even for them and spat it out of their little ratty cheeks. Just imposter-syndrome girlie things.

I just can’t believe that even my poetry collection about uncertainty needs more clarity.

I thought I’d hacked the system but apparently not.

How am I meant to sow hints of an incoming revelation when I couldn’t find a revelation of my own if it stood in front of me in the street wearing a sandwich board that read Hello, Nell.

This is a revelation especially for you.

I sit on the bench outside, and I suspect my feelings are written across my face more clearly than they ever will be in my poetry.

I text Saffron to see if her lecture’s done and she still wants to go for lunch but, after half an hour kicking my legs back and forth and feeling a bit pathetic with still no reply, I give up and go back home.

That evening, while Jenna and I watch the Sanderson sisters plot evil schemes on the screen, I finally get a reply from Saffron.

But despite me sending it only two minutes after her message she doesn’t reply.

When the movie’s done, I head up to bed, opening TikTok while I sit and brush my teeth on the edge of the bath.

Saffron posted a video an hour ago, another ‘day in the life of an astrophysics student’.

I watch as she gets dressed, makes breakfast – a smoothie bowl with a crescent moon of fresh fruit and nuts on the top – goes to her lecture – with a time-lapse of her typing up notes about something called Rainbow Gravity Theory.

Then she heads to the library, her smiling face appearing as she pulls books off the shelf, studies for a while and goes home.

Next she’s joining Casper at Athletics Club, where she tests him on his space knowledge while they run, both of them impressively not out of breath, managing to run, laugh, joke around while discussing complex concepts and theories.

I know it’s great to have boundaries, and maybe she doesn’t want to be emotional on the internet, fair enough.

But there’s also just … nothing. She comes across as a very lovely, charming person who’s really into space, but that’s all I would know from watching her page.

And I do want to know more. I want to know how she feels about things, in ways like I did at the party – even though she was still kind of closed off and restrained even as she opened up.

I realise the hypocrisy of this as I keep scrolling back through her page, rewatching a video she made the other day that features us taste-testing all of the new festive-themed drinks at our favourite coffee shop in town.

Saffron claimed to like them all, but I called her out on her nose wrinkling when she tried the chilli hot chocolate – a special for Bonfire Night coming up – and teased her until she caved and admitted that one wasn’t for her.

My favourite was the chocolate-brownie mocha. Saffron teases me for getting the whipped cream on my nose when I go for a second chug (she wipes it off gently with a tissue) and for my incurably sweet tooth.

“It’s because I’m such a sweetheart,” I say, placing one hand alongside my face and pulling a hopefully adorable face.

“Ah, so that’s how it happened.” Saffron nods knowingly, turning to the camera. “You heard it here first, folks. If you want to be as sweet and wholesome as Nell, you just have to consume all the sugary beverages you can get your raccoon mitts on.”

I finger-gun the camera, nodding very seriously now. “SCIENCE.”

A laugh bursts from Saffron’s lips, and the video ends with her shaking her head as she reaches for the camera to turn it off.

I smile at the memory. I still don’t massively love being in front of the camera, but I don’t mind it so much when it’s just Saffron and me being me and Saffron.

I flick open the comments, remembering that Casper left one asking us to bring him back a toffee-apple frappuccino.

Sure enough, that comment is still there, but there are also seventy-four others.

I forget sometimes that Saffron’s low-key TikTok famous.

I scroll absent-mindedly through the comments, curious as to what people are saying. They start off very run-of-the-mill:

Brownie mochas sound AMAZING, where can I get one?

Love your outfits – v autumnal xoxo

But I notice as I keep scrolling that there are some comments – a lot of comments actually – saying things like:

You and Nell are so cute together 3

They’re dating, right? They have to be dating

So glad you’re happy. You guys are adorable

Ugh. Can’t wait to have someone look at me the way Saffron looks at Nell

I’m sleeping in the middle of the road tonight, I can’t cope with how cute they are

I grimace particularly at that last one.

I spit out my toothpaste and go to my room, lying on the bed to keep scrolling back through other videos we’ve done together, and find that there’s comments like that on all of them.

It’s weird, I realise, curling myself round my orange duvet and flicking on my fairy lights. I’m not upset by the comments. I feel like I should be – I normally am uncomfortable with things like this, with assumptions – but…

It actually feels kind of nice. This makes a change from people assuming male and female friends are together – doing it with two women almost feels progressive, even though objectively I know people shouldn’t make assumptions of any kind.

But it feels affirming that all these internet people are looking at me and going, ‘That is not a straight person.’ That’s pretty much all I know about my sexuality for sure, so that bit feels fine.

And the assuming with Saffron specifically – well, we’re not a couple.

I know she doesn’t date, and I need to untangle whatever’s going on for me before I do.

But if I was capable of feeling things and she was willing, I would be so lucky to be dating someone like her.

I message Saffron again to ask when she wants to do our bucket-list activities this weekend, before putting my phone down for the night and picking up the Mary Oliver collection on my bedside table, drifting off to sleep with my head full of words about brown bears and wild geese and – a little bit – of Saffron.