The food line opened up just then, and the ensuing stampede interfered with my brooding, but Liu asked me quietly, “Everything okay?” as we lined up.
I just stared at her blankly. It wasn’t mindreading or anything—she had an eye for small details, putting things together, and she indicated my pocket, where I’d put the last scrap of the note—the note whose actual contents I hadn’t shared, even while I’d passed out pieces with an enchantment that should have precluded all brooding. My confusion was because—she’d asked. I wasn’t used to anyone inquiring after me, or for that matter even noticing when I’m upset. Unless I’m sufficiently upset that I start conveying the impression that I’m about to set everyone around me on fire, which does in fact happen on a not infrequent basis.
I had to think about it to decide that I didn’t, actually, want to talk about the note. I’d never had the option. And having it meant—that I was telling Liu the truth when I nodded to say yes, everything’s okay, and smiled at her, the expression feeling a bit odd and stretchy round my mouth, unfamiliar. Liu smiled back, and then we were in the line, and we all focused on the job of filling our trays.
We’d lost our freshmen in the shuffle: they go last, obviously, and we now had the dubious privilege of going first. But nothing stops you taking extra for their benefit, if you can afford it, and at least for today we could. The walls of the school were still a bit warm from the end-of-term cleansing cycle. Any of the maleficaria that hadn’t been crisped to fine ash were all just starting to creep out of the various dark corners they’d hidden in, and the food was as unlikely to be contaminated as it ever was. So Liu took extra milk cartons for her cousins, and I took seconds of pasta for Aaron, a bit grudgingly. Technically he wasn’t owed anything for bringing the note, not by me; by Scholomance etiquette, that’s all settled outside. But he hadn’t got anything for it outside, after all.
It was odd being almost first out of the queue into the nearly empty cafeteria, with the enormously long tail of kids still snaking along the walls, tripled up, the sophomores poking the freshmen and pointing them at the ceiling tiles and the floor drains and the air vents on the walls, which they’d want to keep an eye on in the future. The last of the folded-up tables were scuttling back into the open space that had been left for the freshman rush, and unfolding back into place with squeals and thumps. My friend Nkoyo—could I think of her as a friend, too? I thought perhaps I could, but I hadn’t been handed a formal engraved notice yet, so I’d be doubtful a while longer—had got out in front with her best mates; she was at a prime table, positioned in the ring that’s exactly between the walls and the line, under only two ceiling tiles, with the nearest floor drain four tables away. She was standing up tall and waving us over, easy to spot: she was wearing a brand-new top and baggy trousers, each in a beautiful print of mixed wavy lines that I was fairly sure had enchantments woven in. This is the day of the year when everyone breaks out the one new outfit per year most of us brought in—my own extended wardrobe sadly got incinerated freshman year—and she had clearly been saving this one for senior year. Jowani was bringing over two big jugs of water while Cora did the perimeter wards.
It was odd, walking through the cafeteria over to join them. Even if we hadn’t been offered an actual invitation, there were loads of good tables still open, and all the bad ones. I’ve occasionally ended up with my pick of tables before, but that’s always been a bad and risky move born of getting to the cafeteria too early, usually as an act of desperation when I’d had too many days of bad luck with my meals. Now it was just the ordinary course of things. Everyone else going to the tables around me was a junior, too, or rather a senior; I knew most of them by face if not by name. Our numbers had been whittled down to roughly a thousand at this point, from a start of sixteen hundred. Which sounds horrifying, except there’re normally fewer than eight hundred kids left by the start of senior year. And normally, less than half of those make it out of graduation.
But our year had thrown a substantial wrench into the works, and he was sitting down at the table next to me. Nkoyo barely waited for me and Orion to take our seats before she burst out, “Did it work? Did you get the machinery fixed?”
“How many mals were down there?” Cora blurted over her at the same time, sliding into her own seat out of breath, still capping the small clay jug she’d used to drip a perimeter spell round the table.