Chapter 80. Shape of her Lips
I grimaced. “Look. I’ll figure it out. I’ll try.”
Minnelil was quiet for a moment. She sighed a small sigh and pecked a kiss on my forehead. “And I’ll try to let things take their time.”
I nodded. The shape of her lips felt warm and then cold on my skin as the wind touched it. “Do you need to go to get there in time?”
“Perhaps,” she said, pulling away. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck, but it’s going to be fine. I bet Jextor makes more sense when he has less audience.”
“We can only hope.” She walked to the stairs leading down and glanced back at me.
I nodded, trying to encourage her. Maybe I could have run after her, but the stairs were slippery and I wasn’t sure what to think about anything. I watched her walk down the stairs, hands deep in my pockets. She pulled up her cowl before pushing into the gale, a small black figure against the dark stone.
I smacked my lips. Damn it. I had enough stuff to figure out. Why did she have to make things difficult by making me think about them? It was bound to happen sooner or later, but I had hoped for later.
Survive whatever Fek had landed us in. Get rid of the thing on the mountain. Prove to those absolute bastards that I wasn’t a Kertharian. The whole thought made me sick. What the hell was I… It didn’t matter. The orc librarian was looking into it. I should go back and explain what had happened when I ran out. If only I knew.
Once all that was done, maybe I’d know what to say to Minnelil. I had thought I liked Taum, but everyone had liked Taum, and then he had burned. What were you supposed to do when you liked someone? Grab on to their robes, hold on, and prepare to be hurt, like Grit?
Minnelil was a small figure on the other side of the school. I waved at her, but maybe she didn’t see.
“Minnelil went off?” Grit asked when I stepped in.
“Yeah,” I said.
Clickens came up to me and walked eights around my legs until I picked it up. It keps mewing. Its bony jaws made a scraping noise when it opened its mouth. I cradled it in my arms, sitting down on my bed.
“When will your thing with Falar start?” I asked.
“Hnggg,” Grit said.
“She’s jumpy again,” Fek said. “I just made her calm down a bit and now you wound her right back up again.”
“Well, sorry,” I said. “Hang in there, Grit.”
“Wait, you can actually distract me,” she said. “Tell me about you and Min! How serious is it? I bet it’s serious.”
“They’re both so serious that if you put them together, it has to be,” Fek said.
Clickens screeched in my arms, stretching itself long. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know anything. She’s weird.”
Fek waved a hand dismissively. “You’re weird, so what’s the problem?”
“Fair, but that’s still not how it works,” Grit said, shrugging.
I groaned. “Look, I don’t know! I said it already.”
“Twice,” Fek said.
“Anyway, I’ll figure it out. I have a lot going on at the moment. You were there when the old lady came,” I said. “I don’t even know how long I’ll get to stay. If I even survive what insane stunt Falar and Jextor are cooking up next.”
“I guess,” Grit said. “I know Min would like to help you with all that. She will.”
“I know,” I said. “And I don’t want her to do it for nothing.” Grit tried to start talking but I waved her quiet. “Look, it is what it is. I don’t know if I can be serious. I don’t want her going out of her way for me, when I can’t even answer a simple question for her.”
Grit sighed, licking her lips. Her lips made a smacking sound in the silence that followed.
“Should… should I go?” Fek asked. “I think you can finish this between you two?”
Grit glanced at me.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t know if I have anything more to say. Isn’t it lunch time? Let’s go and eat and forget all this. It’s stupid, anyway.”
“Yeah,” Fek said.
“It’s not,” Grit said. “But we can still go eat. You both still need to talk about stuff. I talk about my stuff.”
“And we make fun of you for it,” Fek said. “Come on, lunch!”
Fek marched ahead, probably determined to get to the Lunch Hall before new discussions ambushed him.
I grabbed on to Grit’s sleeve, holding her back. “I don’t make fun of you. And if I do, I don’t mean it. Sorry.”
She smiled at me, nodding. “It’s okay. Fek is Fek. I know you know better. You’ve been there for me. I’ll be there for you.”
I nodded, letting go. “Thanks. Will you really be fine going to Falar? You asked me, so I’ll ask you: how serious is it?”
“How could it be serious? I don’t know either,” she said, sighing. “We’ve all been saying it’s a great opportunity and it’s true, one way or another. A student getting to do research with Falar is like winning the Janitor Raffle twice in a row. It doesn’t happen. Never. They make sure of it, you know?”
“I didn’t, but it makes sense,” I said. “Grit, you’ve deserved it. He saw you handle yourself on the mountain. He remembered your name to begin with.”
“He remembers everyone’s name.”
“Only to say more factually cruel things about them.”
She chuckled, crinkling her eyes shut and shrugging her shoulders.
I groaned. “And you look so happy about it too, you dumb Jonungaard.”
“Fair, fair,” Grit said. “I’ll behave. I’ll be a good assistant. That’s probably the best play with him, anyway.”
“No! You almost did it. Don’t start thinking about plays again.”
Grit grinned and nodded up the stairs. “Fek is waiting for us. Come on.”
“Pretty good,” Fek said, patting his stomach. “Even though I still can’t figure out what Minnelil sees in these potatoes.”
“They’re good potatoes,” I said, holding a piece of bread in my hand.
A skeleton walked to our table and I crouched over my plate. I still had some of the gravy left and I wanted to mop it up.
Instead of grabbing at my plate, the skeleton extended a hand holding a folded paper. Grit tried to take it, but the skeleton dropped the paper into Grit’s lap. It finished the gesture with a disdainful flick of its wrist and marched off.
“That has to be from Falar,” I said.
Fek nodded. “I’m starting to recognize his skeletons from the rest, yeah.”
Grit stared at the paper and licked her lips. They were pressed thin and pale and the tip of her red tongue flicked between them. “I need to go,” she said. “I should have worn the nightgown.”
“Good luck!” I said as she walked away. Her fists were clenched next to her thighs, arms held rigid.
Fek grabbed the paper from the table. “We start early. My office. Prepare to spend the night. Falar,” he read.
“Poor Grit,” I said. “Those two would truly deserve each other.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say about a friend,” Fek said, looking down.
“Struggling to keep from laughing?”
“It’s pretty hard, yeah,” he said, looking up with a grin. “We should probably head back as well. Seems everyone is being called. Look.”
Skeletons were bringing papers to the other students as well. They marched right out after handing them, leaving the other skeletons to clear the tables. Seemed the Bursar had reeled away most of the service skeletons as well. Food had taken a long time to arrive and the cleaning would take a while for the too-few remaining kitchen skeletons.
“You think we’ll get a paper?” I asked.
“Nah, Hector will probably come pick us up himself,” Fek said. “He likes to handle things himself.”
“How does he have time for that? Is he too insignificant or too important to be in a hurry?” I asked.
“Why don’t you ask him,” Fek said. “I’d pay to see how embarrassed he’d get.”
“Students,” Hector said, lighting a cigarette. The smoke smelled sweet and smoky, like he was burning a an old boat, coated with syrup and tar. “I can wait if you want to change. You might want to wear your second-best robes.”
“All our robes are the same,” Fek said. “We got a bunch from the school.”
I nodded.
“If you say so,” Hector said. “I’m still going to finish this smoke.”
I sniffed at the smoke while I waited. When the merchants came back, I should buy some more clothes. I wonder if the Bursar would make the skeletons shop new undergarments for me if I asked.
If the winter continued as hostile as it had been and the merchants stayed away, she’d need to start thinking about that stuff too, not just stocking food and ambrosia. She wouldn’t need to worry about people trying to haggle her over a pair of pants. “If you don’t like. The price. You can show. Your butt,” she would say. Or kill the person second-guessing the purchase.
Maybe it would be better if the merchants came back soon.
“You ready?” Hector said, picking the end of the cigarette from between his teeth with two fingers. His fingers were dark and coarse like tanned leather as he dropped the smoking stub into the bag hanging off his cart. The trail of smoke cut out when the stub fell in. “We’re cleaning a corridor today.”
“We were in one corridor earlier!” Fek said. “Almost got stuck inside.”
“I’m happy you got out,” Hector said. “You shouldn’t wander around too much, though. This place is a maze.”
“It’s a cube,” I said. “With two dozen doors.”
“We went through this already,” Fek said. “It’s not a cube.”
“Have to side with the lad this time,” Hector said. “Some of them doors lead who knows where.”
“Shouldn’t you know where?” I said. “You’re the janitor.”
“He just said the place is a maze,” Fek said.
“Good banter,” the janitor said, picking the small keyring with the three keys from his pocket. “But focus now. We’re going somewhere pretty dangerous if you don’t pay attention. Get locked in here, and you’d look like one of the skeletons in a jiffy.”