“All done? Good timing,” said Pyrrha, without turning around.
Pyrrha was holding a can of spray-on oil whose nozzle she directed neatly into the pan, where she wiped the pale froth around with a spatula. She was wearing pyjama pants and a string vest and no shirt, so the orange glow of the hot plate ring lit up all the scars on her wiry arms. She was feeling around for the breakfast things in the cupboard with her other hand, so Nona came and took the mesh basket and started counting out plates for her. “Is that pikelet mix?” she said.
“Get bowls. It’s eggs,” said Pyrrha.
Up close Nona could smell the spray-on oil and watch Pyrrha agitate a fork in a beaker of violently orange liquid, radioactively orange even in the dark, before tipping it into the pan to sizzle. Yellow lacework immediately formed where it splashed against the hot edge. Nona replaced the plates with two chipped bowls, and Pyrrha said, “Doesn’t that school of yours teach counting?”
“Oh, but Pyrrha, it’s so hot. Can’t I have something cold?”
“Sure. Leave them to get cold.”
“Yuck, that’s not what I meant.”
“The eggs aren’t optional, kiddie. How’s the dreams?”
“Same as normal,” said Nona, reluctantly taking another bowl. “I wish I could dream something different for once. Do you dream, Pyrrha?”
“Sure. Just last night I dreamed I had to give a briefing, but I wasn’t wearing pants and my backside was hanging out,” said Pyrrha, hacking the shocking orange curds into clumps with the edge of the spatula. During a pause in Nona’s gurgles of mirth, she added solemnly, “It was no fun, my child. I knew I’d be okay so long as I was hiding behind the podium, but I didn’t know what I’d do once I had to sit down again. Die, I guess.”
“Are you being serious or joking with me?” Nona demanded, once this fresh pleasure had subsided.
“Deadly serious. But go put another mark under ass joke anyway.”
Nona was happy enough to get up from the table and cross to the big sheet of brown paper tacked up on the wall; to take the pencil and wait for Pyrrha to say, “One higher, one left, stop right there,” so she could make a blobby tally mark.
She counted up the tally marks and said, “That’s the seventh one this month. But that’s not fair when you keep making them. Palamedes will say you’re skewing the data.”
“I never could help giving the girls what they wanted,” said Pyrrha. She turned off the hob and upended some of the pan into Nona’s bowl, then set the pan back on the hob with a cloth over it to keep it warm. She wiped her hands and said, “Eat. I’ll do your hair.”
“Thank you,” said Nona, grateful for the understanding. “Cam said to ask. Can I get braids?”
“Whatever the lady wishes.”
“Can I get one big braid and two little braids coming off it at the sides?”
“Sure, if we’ve got time.”
“They don’t come loose and the plain plaits do.” Nona added in the spirit of truth: “And I can’t help chewing the ends with plaits. I want to steer clear of Temptation.”
“Don’t we all? I need to stop torturing myself by staring at the cigarette drawer.”
“Don’t start the secondhand smoke argument again,” said Nona in alarm, but then, figuring she’d been harsh: “Anyway, they’re bad for you and I love you, Pyrrha.”
“Prove it,” said Pyrrha, which meant she had to eat the eggs.
Nona ate while Pyrrha brushed out her hair in short, brisk strokes, letting its fine black sheets fall over Nona’s shoulders. It went almost to the bottom of her back now, and it was soft and thin as water: every fourth haircut day they cut it, but not every haircut day because it was a pain, and because people noticed your hair growing less when it was already long, Camilla said. Camilla and Pyrrha both got to have short hair, which she envied. Cam’s was dark brown and bobbed off sharply at the chin and it felt nice against your cheek, and whenever Pyrrha didn’t shave her head quick enough she got a little flat cap of dark terracotta, the colour of wet red earth at the building site. Most of Pyrrha was the colours of the building site: deep dried-out browns, dusty hunks of clay, rusted metal. She was raw and ropy and square-shouldered, and Camilla was long and shadowy and lean. Nona thought they were both exquisite.
Camilla came in when Pyrrha was fixing up the first braid and when Nona had gotten as far as chewing the eggs, which was an agonising step on the journey to eating the eggs. Camilla said unhappily, “Eggs? Have we not invented a new protein?” which meant it wasn’t Camilla at all.