DARK ARTS
Act One, Chapter One:
Cruel Summer
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rule #1 of necromancy: first impressions matter. even the dead have standards, you know.
♥
Mae's not, like, proud of it, or whatever.
When she was little, she was the apple of her parents' eye, is the thing. Mabel Courtley was supposed to be this perfect version of the both of them, the right mix of her mother's smile and her father's eyes and all the things that make a person a person. But genetics is a lot like rolling the dice, right? Mae knows that better than maybe anyone on the planet – hell, probably in the whole universe – because she was supposed to be a lot of things.
Instead of flawless student or brilliant witch, she's staring at a newspaper clipping with her face on it in the bathroom of a gas station somewhere in Wales. The only light in the bathroom is a pretty pathetic overhead LED bulb, the glow blocked by the movements of several small insects across the glass. But it's just enough for Mae to stare at the newspaper and wonder why in the ever-loving fuck she decided to wear that shirt. It's hideous. Her vision swims, more from sheer exhaustion than emotion.
All she knows is that they left London maybe two hours ago, and since then, her dad has become fucking Columbo, or whatever. They've spent the entire ride so far in complete silence, him gripping the steering wheel of the rental car with white-knuckles. It's some sort of psychological manipulation trick, Mae's sure of it – they'll sit in silence until she breaks down, throws open the passenger side door, and hurls herself into the August air. Not that that would solve many issues. Her dad's got the whole robotic Auror thing down to an art by now, and though Mae would never admit it to his face, it's grinding away at her defenses.
"Tituba's sake," Mae says aloud to absolutely no one but herself. All three of herself, she supposes – real Mae, newspaper Mae, reflection Mae. They all sport the same blonde hair and gray-blue eyes, but they are fundamentally different people. Mae Courtley has been a different person every day for the past two months.
Like, raising the dead wasn't supposed to be this big thing. It wasn't supposed to blow up quite so catastrophically. Retrospectively, Mae can ask herself what the hell she was thinking, but in the moment, there'd been no self-preservation instinct, no sense of right or wrong. Of course, here she is now, one summer older and even less wise, if that's possible. God, Mae is so fucking done.
At any given moment, there are a thousand questions running through her mind, most of them in her father's voice and being some variation on why have you decided to nuke your whole life? Right now, though, the most pressing question is just what, exactly, she's going to do once they get to their destination. The car will pull up in the driveway of some little house in Cardiff, and her dad will walk her to the door and introduce her to people she's never met before, and then what?
Mae's never met anyone on her dad's side of the family. They don't really talk about that at home. Like, ever. Even Mae's mom – a rare ally – has told Mae off for bringing it up on several distinct occasions. So yeah, it's weird that her dad doesn't mention his parents for fifteen years, and then he's suddenly all too eager to dump his juvenile delinquent daughter on their doorstep? Mae's honestly completely humiliated about the entire thing. She's going to be living with them for the foreseeable future, and she doesn't know a single damn thing about any of them, just names: Bronwen and Ed Courtley, their late daughter Eira, and Eira's daughter Gwendolyn. And somewhere, somehow, Mabel Courtley is supposed to fit into this family.
Mae looks at herself in the mirror, and makes a heroic effort to at least smooth some of the frizz from her hair; English humidity has completely screwed her over, which is probably the least of her problems, but it is something she can sort of fix, so she's focused on it. Mae pulls her hair back into a ponytail before instantly deciding that it looks bad. Okay. Okay, she can do this.
She wants – needs – to make a good impression. She needs for them to be able to look at her and see something different from what her father sees. She supposes that teenage screw-up is somewhat better than complete failure. But still. Neither is particularly promising.
"Shit," she says aloud, and pushes the door open, heading back to the car. Shit.
♥
Mae's not evil. She swears. Like, cross her heart, stick a needle in her eye, all of that. But she will be the first to admit that she's the master of toeing the line between forgivable transgressions and actually wicked dark magic.
Mae's sitting with her arms crossed over her chest, the car AC blasting in her face because she's worried that turning it off will make her dad crash the car. (See, she can be considerate!) This whole thing is so ridiculous that she actually wants to laugh. It's not like there's a handbook for this sort of thing; as far as Mae's aware, she's probably the only person in the history of magic to be given a second chance after such a colossal fuck-up. It doesn't make her feel good. It just makes her feel like she's wasting what she has been given.
Everything was so much easier back in California.
And to be completely honest, San Francisco is not, she admits, the perfect place for raising the dead. To begin with, the dead are kind of hard to find. The place itself has been around for millenia, but it only really became this anomalous boom town during the California Gold Rush. Mae did go to No-Maj school before Ilvermorny, and she remembers being awestruck by the idea that a town like San Fran – her town – could've had less than five hundred people back in the early 1840s. Point is, the dead are scattered around the foundations of the city – cemeteries were supposed to be moved out of the limits in 1902, but she thinks No-Maj authorities just got lazy; there's no gravestones in the middle of Grove Street anymore, but Mae feels the skeletons every time she walks past the library there. She knows it's not normal to be able to sense things like that – believe her, she knows – and it's only gotten worse as she's grown older. Retrospectively, Mae can pinpoint dozens of times when she was a kid that she'd been able to just... know things other people couldn't understand. Not even her dad, or other witches and wizards her age. Like, the Lincoln Park Golf Course is built right over where City Cemetery used to be. There is something darkly ironic about it, and Mae feels like the dead are not laughing. She speaks with some authority. It's little things like that, a mosaic of various moments collected over the years, that might as well form a neon sign reading, THIS GIRL IS A TOTAL FREAK.
When she was six, she'd dug up the ribcage of some small animal on the playground, partly by accident, but mostly because she had this headache that just wouldn't go away until she started digging. And it was just buried there amidst the gravel. Her mom drove them home in complete silence – Mae still thinks that magic scares her mother sometimes. Hell, it scares Mae sometimes. Her dad is the only one who still seems to be unaffected, and as an Auror, he's probably seen a lot of bad magic. Worse than anything Mae could do, anyways.
The thought of her mother makes something ache in Mae's gut. She wants to go home – to San Francisco, not to wherever it is that her father's driving to. She'll miss going to Chinatown on spring afternoons and getting milk tea at her mom's favourite shop. She'll miss the rare times Dad let her drive the car up to Twin Peaks, giving her increasingly sarcastic pointers as they went on. She'll even miss the damn San Francisco fog, which is a sentiment that no should share. Ever.
Mae suddenly feels so homesick that she can't breathe. She goes back to staring out the window, watching the street lights blur into each other, painting fluorescent shooting stars across her vision.
It hurts so much that she can't stop herself from saying, "You could be a bit happier, you know. It's just Hogwarts. I mean, I could be in Azkaban right now, or the magical electric chair, if that's even a thing..."
At least it breaks the silence. At least it gives them something to talk about.
"You think," her father says in that painfully slow way, the way that means he's fighting back his anger, "that I'm happy?"
Mae shrugs. "Why not?"
"You think I'm happy that you've dragged me halfway across the world just to humiliate me in front of the Wizengamot? That you've brought me back to the place that I–" His grip tightens on the wheel, knuckles going so white that it must be painful. Mae wishes she knew how he was going to end that sentence.
"I didn't do it to you. The world doesn't revolve around you, believe it or not."
They spend the next few minutes in a tense silence that's worse than if he'd just yelled at her. That's one of the worst things – the whole summer, her father has been tangibly angry, but he's barely even raised his voice, never berated her, never screamed his throat hoarse. He had that first night, at everyone and everything, not just Mae. But ever since then Mae feels like she's been waiting for the dam to break and for all his rage to crush her.
She wonders how far she can push this before he snaps. "You just ran a yellow light," she tries. "And while we're breaking the law, why don't you reverse and run those pedestrians over? I think you missed a few at the last crosswalk."
"I don't need you to lecture me about breaking the law."
"You sure? I'm happy to give you some pointers."
It's a miracle, she thinks, that he doesn't crash the car.
No, he just slams on the brakes at the next red light, whirling to face her. "Adult wizards have gone to Azkaban for less , Mae! Do you – do you even have any inkling of an idea of what you've put us through? Of the example you've set to the world? I have done everything in my power to protect you, but I won't be able to do it if you pull another stunt like the one this morning."
Stunt isn't exactly the word Mae would use to describe this morning, and in her defence, she did try her best. Really and truly. She'd sworn to tell the truth, and so she had, even if it wasn't the kind of thing anyone wanted to hear.
Miss Courtley, the Wizengamot had said, every one of them staring her down with eagle-like intensity, you're a talented witch. You excel in your studies, and you've never shown any inclination towards or affinity for the dark arts, much less necromancy. So please, answer us this: why did you do it?
It was a stupid question, and so, obviously, Mae had leaned forward and said, For fun. Big mistake.
"Tituba's tits," Mae says, leaning back in her car seat, not caring that her dad hates that expression. "What did you want me to say to them? What do you want me to say to you ?"
"Why don't we try driving in silence for a little while? Think you can accomplish that?"
Mae doesn't dignify that with a response; she settles for glaring at the car stereo like that'll fix her problems.
They spend the next half hour driving in silence, her dad occasionally muttering something under his breath when someone cuts him off in traffic. It's too dark for Mae to really look at the landscape; she just gets close enough to the window that if she exhales with an open mouth, it fogs up the glass, and she can draw little skulls with hearts for eyes. Once, her dad looks over, and she swears he smiles. Just a little.
Any feeling of calm that Mae had abruptly leaves her when the car turns onto a quieter residential street a couple of miles from Cardiff's city centre. Aleister Crowley save her, this is it.
Her father parks the car. Mae can see a light in the front windows of the house. She can see shapes moving behind the curtains. Her heart is like a panicked bird in her chest, battering its wings helplessly against her ribcage. Terror – real terror, the sort of terror she only ever gets from nightmares – is making it hard to breathe.
"I–" she starts, but her tongue is like lead in her mouth. "I – can't."
For a moment she is the same little girl who didn't want to go away to Ilvermorny, who cried herself to sleep that first night, even though she loved magic so much that it made her feel like her chest would burst open. For a moment she is the same pathetic person she was at the beginning of the summer, the one who found a dozen Aurors all pointing wands at her and only managed to say, I'm sorry.
Behind the wheel, her father sighs. And then he pulls the keys from the ignition and turns to her. "Yes, you can." It's more of an order than an encouragement, but Mae meets his eyes nonetheless, hoping for something – anything – that might suggest he's not giddy with excitement at the prospect of washing his hands of her.
Mae bites the inside of her cheek. She refuses to cry now, when she hasn't all summer. "Dad, you know that I'm–"
"I know," he says, and gets out of the car.
"–sorry," she finishes, small voice drowned out by the slam of the door. It feels so wrong that this is how they're leaving things. Everything about this – about her – feels wrong.
She presses her scarred palm against the door handle's cool plastic. It hurts in that phantom way, dredging up memories of pain rather than any actual discomfort. But the thought of the injury makes her shiver. In the moment, it hadn't hurt; the adrenaline kept Mae from realizing just how badly she'd fucked her hand up. The pain only hit later, after the corpses had been buried again and Mae was sitting alone in one of the colourless rooms at MACUSA headquarters in New York. The No-Maj doctor she saw the next day – not a magical healer, because for days after it happened, Mae didn't want anything magical to touch her skin – said that it would probably never heal quite right. At least now it has faded to a spiderweb of pale lines running on her left palm, from the first knuckle of her middle finger to just below her radial artery. It's strange to think that the weapon that did this was one Mae yielded. It's even stranger to think that wood could cut so deep.
Mae only remembers bits and pieces of it. She remembers Before – holding her wand in both hands, bending the unyielding wood of her wand as far it could go, bracing herself – and she remembers After. The wand snapping. The slivers of rough hazel wood driving deep into her skin. The way that the shards of wood caught fire, like the magic which had made them into a tool for her to use just... gave up. And Mae remembers, perhaps most clearly, watching her own hand on fire, burning and bloodied. It was a strange, out-of-body sort of feeling. Then again, that whole night was.
Her father raps his knuckles on her window and Mae starts. He doesn't meet her eye through the glass, and so she pushes her door open with more force than is strictly necessary. It doesn't hit him, which is almost worse than if it had. Jesus Christ , Mae wants this day to be over. It's only once Mae's standing on the sidewalk that she actually sees the house where her father grew up.
From the car she could see the outlines of a house, the glow of lights, the idea of a home. Here, though, she can see the little two-story house and the faint dark shapes of rolling hills stretching behind it. They're not far from the city proper, but the lights of Cardiff seem dimmed here. A neat row of roses creeps under the windows. It's obvious that someone has recently tried to tame them back; they're trimmed in a rushed, hasty sort of way that makes something twist with fondness inside of Mae. It is very, very hard to reconcile the boy who'd lived in this fairy-tale house light years away from San Francisco with her father.
"You really grew up here?" she asks, her voice soft and uncertain even to her own ears.
"You'll like it," her father says, which isn't an answer at all.
The front door opens.
Mae's heart clatters to a halt like a wind-up toy that has stopped walking mid-step. She can only see a dark form backlit by yellow light; the faceless silhouette seems impossibly distant. For a heartbeat, the only sound is the night insects chattering amicably. And then a woman's voice, lovely and accented, calls out, "Dafydd?"
Mae knows, in like a weirdly academic way, that her father is Welsh. She hears it every time he opens his mouth, and she can even differentiate between his accent and the posh English ones she hears on TV (a fact she probably shouldn't be quite so proud of). But it's strange to hear someone call him by the name that's on all his documents, on his damn desk at San Fran's Auror office.
Every time her father meets just about anyone, there's that awkward moment as they stare at his name and try to figure out how to go at it. He always puts them out of their misery by introducing himself as Dave Courtley, please, his accent audibly getting fainter, like he is trying to prove himself as a true card-carrying member of the All-American Boys' Club. Mae always thought that was just some sort of masculine pissing contest, but for a moment, she entertains the thought that maybe her father has had to learn how to fit in, too. Maybe it's a genetic thing they share. She feels sick with the realization that any second now she'll have to say goodbye to him. He's the fucking worst, but he's... well, it's still Dad.
Next to her, he winces a little. "Hello, Mum."
The form steps forward and gradually becomes a woman. Mae knows it's only a trick of the low light, but it almost looks like the darkness reaches for her as she descends the path towards them. Mae blinks, and there's nothing abnormal about what she sees. She tries to shake off her exhaustion, but the smile she manages feels like it'll disappear if someone says the wrong thing.
"You're early," the woman – Mae's grandmother – says. It doesn't sound accusatory, just vaguely pleased. "And you must be Mabel."
More instinct than anything, she says, "Just Mae."
"Welcome, love. I'm Bronwen."
To Mae's surprise, Bronwen pulls her in and kisses both her cheeks. She smells like freshly mowed grass and old books, and it's over almost too soon. Mae forces herself to smile.
"Um, hi."
Bronwen returns the smile, and Mae takes the chance to study her grandmother's appearance. She must be nearing her sixties, with curly white hair that falls just past her shoulders. Her eyes are the same stormy gray-blue that Mae sees every time she looks in the mirror. Mae glances between her father and her grandmother, trying to map out the similarities and figure out what might've gone a little awry with David Courtley.
From the porch, another voice calls, "And what might we have here?"
An old man in a canary yellow sweater jogs down the walkway, beaming the whole time. There's a pair of reading glasses pushed up onto his forehead, almost like he forgot them there. When he gets a proper look at Mae, his face lights up even more – more than she'd thought humanly possibly.
Without a moment's hesitation, he throws his arms around her and pulls her into a tight hug. He smells like coffee and caramel. Mae rests her head against his shoulder for a brief second of peace, and then extricates herself from his embrace.
"Hello," she says. "I suppose you're my – um, Edward." It feels wrong to call him her grandfather because he's not, not really, she doesn't even know him.
Almost like he sees this on her face, he says, "You can just call me Ed, dear."
"Okay. I'm Mae."
Ed smiles, eyes bright. Then he catches sight of his son over her shoulder. A little cautiously, he says, "Welcome home, Davey."
He looks like he's about to hug him, but Mae's father just holds out his palm. They shake hands, and it's unbearably awkward. Bronwen doesn't try to greet him any further, though it's obvious she wants to.
Instead, she just claps her hands and says, "Why don't we leave the gentlemen to bring your bags in? Gwenna's friends are over, I'll introduce you." She steers Mae towards the house with a palm on her lower back. "They go to Hogwarts, too. Oh, it'll be wonderful for you to get to know some people before you even start."
Mae wants to agree, but her throat is too tight to form any words. Her heart pounds loud enough that Bronwen can probably hear it. A glance over her shoulders shows her that her father is watching without a hint of humour on his face. Mae wants to yell at him. She wants a single sign that he's going to miss her.
Inside the house, Bronwen leads her to the kitchen. It doesn't give Mae more than a passing glance at the home, but she catches glimpses of photographs everywhere, some of them of people she doesn't recognize, but most of her father and a woman who must have been his sister. Just as she wants to stop to look at what looks like a photo from her parents' wedding, there's a loud crash, like something heavy falling from a shelf, and a curse in a language that must be Welsh.
Serenely, Bronwen says, "Oh dear."
She and Mae follow the sound into the kitchen, where a group of three kids probably Mae's age – two girls and a boy – stand around a bag of flour spilled across the tiles.
The girl on the left points an accusatory finger at the boy across from her and says, "Owen, for the love of fuck, fuck off, you–"
Bronwen clears her throat.
The owner of the voice is an unassuming girl, short, with dark skin and tight curls. She's got on a fading Velvet Underground t-shirt and mismatched socks. She turns to face them and immediately grimaces. " Shit – um, sorry, Gran."
"You've always been one for first impressions, haven't you, Gwendolyn?"
She screws her eyes shut, takes a breath, and then says, "You're Mabel, right? I'm Gwenna. Hi."
"Just Mae is fine." Mae wonders if she should hug her cousin. It feels weird to shake hands – too formal – but a hug is too familiar. So she just gives an awkward wave and smile. Gwendolyn returns the smile, though hers is a little confused.
"Aren't you going to introduce me?" The boy drawls, and Mae glances over. He's a good head taller than Gwendolyn, and he's objectively very good-looking, with messy blond hair that falls into his eyes and a healthy dusting of freckles across his cheeks. When he smiles at her, his dimples show.
"Tosser," Gwendolyn mumbles. "Right, this is Owen Lloyd – he's in your year. And that's Millie."
The quietest one of the group, a small, dark-haired girl with the same brown eyes as Owen, is the first to step forward, to broach No Man's Land. She holds out a hand and says, "Amelie, please. Amelie Lloyd." Mae shakes her hand, and Amelie's smile grows impossibly wide.
"Cool," Mae says stupidly.
"Cool," Bronwen agrees in her lovely accent. With a wave of her wand, the bag of flour disappears, and Owen mouths, Sorry. "Why don't you get to know each other? I'd like to have a conversation with my son." She squeezes Mae's shoulder as she goes. "And behave, Owen."
Once Bronwen's gone, an uncomfortable silence falls over the room. Mae knows they're all studying her, and she can't make eye contact for longer than a second at a time. This is – god, this is unbearable.
Finally, Gwendolyn says, "Tea?"
Mae shakes her head. "I'm more of a coffee person."
"Vile," Owen says, and somehow that seems to break the ice. He pushes his hair out of his eyes and beckons her over. "What're you standing over there for? We don't bite. Well, Gwen might, but that's only because–"
Gwendolyn kicks him in the shin. Laughing, Mae goes to lean against one of the cabinets closer to them all.
Maybe just to be polite, Amelie asks, "What house d'you reckon you'll be in?"
"Oh, um..." Mae tucks her hair behind her ear, wishing that they'd all stop looking at her as if she's some sort of circus animal. "I don't really know them."
Gwendolyn scoffs. "Obviously she'll be a Slytherin."
"Is that good or bad?"
"It's good, definitely," Owen says.
Gwendolyn laughs at that. "You're only saying that because you're in it. Only evil wizards are in Slytherin." She waves her hands in a gesture that Mae guesses is supposed to be threatening, but honestly it just looks ridiculous.
Amelie meets Mae's eye, and they both burst into giggles. "Was that supposed to be scary?" Amelie chides, making a crude imitation.
Gwendolyn just waves her off. "Whatever. Anyways, it doesn't really matter what house she'll be in, because Gryffindor's going to beat all of them for the Quidditch Cup this year."
Incredulous, Owen stares at her. "And why might that be?"
"Because our team is good?"
"Oh, please. Wood wouldn't know good Quidditch if it slapped him across his face."
Mae glances between them. "Who's Wood?"
This time, it's Amelie who chimes in. "Gryffindor's Keeper. He's their captain, too, and he's very–"
"–fucking annoying," Owen cuts in. "That's definitely what you were going to say, right?"
Gwendolyn makes his exasperated noise, like she's heard some version of that exact sentence spoken before. "I would've said dreamy, personally. Wood's proper fit, he is."
"Well pardon me if I've been too busy laughing at his Quidditch to admire his physique!"
Mae can't stop her own snort of laughter. "Physique? Is that a thing people say here, or have I accidentally dropped into 1932?"
When Owen blushes, it makes him look decidedly less tough, and Mae revels in the easy way that he lightly punches her arm. Like she's allowed to make fun of him. Like she's one of them already.
"Quidditch is a big deal at Hogwarts, then?"
"Yeah, do you play?" Owen looks her up and down with a critical gaze that should be deeply uncomfortable, but isn't. He's not sizing her up, exactly, just... Mae's not sure.
Unable to keep the twinge of pride out of her voice, Mae says, "I was captain of Thunderbird – that's a house at Ilvermorny. We won the Inter House Competition last year."
"What position?"
"I'm a Chaser."
"Brilliant," Owen says. "You will be a very welcome addition to Slytherin's Quidditch team, which – not to be funny – is much better than Gryffindor's."
Gwendolyn cuts in, "Bullshit."
"What about Hufflepuff?" Amelie says. "We're–"
"Listen, Mills, I love you, but whatever you're about to say is objectively wrong. Hufflepuff is no Gryffindor."
Owen glares. "Only a Gryffindor would say that. 'Friendly competition', my arse."
Mae glances between them with a half-smile, and finally asks the question that's been weighing on her for weeks. "Do people ever switch schools? Or am I... you know, the first?"
Gwendolyn shrugs. "There was someone in the '70s who came to Hogwarts in Seventh Year. Don't remember why now – anyways, he knew my mum."
"And then there was Psycho Sobczak," Owen chimes in. "She left halfway through her first year to go to some French school instead."
Mae raises her eyebrows. "Psycho Sobczak?"
"Yeah, good old Kazimiera Sobczak. No one really knows what exactly, but something happened with her and Quirrell – that's our DADA teacher."
"Apparently she tried to kill him," Gwendolyn says. "Quirrell, I mean. Poor dab."
"I mean, she was always sort of nuts. Hence the name: Crazy Kaz, Psycho Sobczak. Let us know if you come up with another one. It's really quite fun."
Amelie says, "Owen, stop chopsing."
"I'm only saying–"
"Don't. It's mean, and I liked Kaz."
"Yeah, I bet you did." Amelie blushes, looking away, and Gwendolyn shoots Owen a look that's nearly impossible to decipher. Just like that, Mae's right back to feeling like an outsider.
Thing is, starting at Ilvermorny in First Year had been hard enough. Now, though, every one of her classmates will have known each other for years. They will already have formed their friendships, and probably won't be ecstatic at the thought of welcoming any infamous Americans into their circles.
It's kind of a miracle that Ed chooses that moment to lean into the kitchen to say, "I think David's ready to leave now, Mae."
Mae nods, throat tight. Of course. Of course her dad is going. Of course he's just leaving her here, all alone. And he really is there in the entryway, looking as pristine and professional as ever.
"Dad," Mae says quietly. Everyone is behind her, so she can't say what she desperately wants to. Please don't go. I'm sorry. She digs her nails into her palm. "Take care of Mom, yeah? And – thanks."
"Keep out of trouble," he says, and almost as an afterthought, he pulls her into a stiff hug. Before Mae even gets the chance to put her arms around him in return he's pulling away, not meeting her eye, turning the doorknob–
And Mae can't think of a single thing she could say that would make him not leave her behind. So she says nothing at all, and ignores the pit growing in her stomach. She will not cry over this. Not now, not in front of everyone.
"Goodbye, Mae."
The door closes with a soft click. That's it, then – the ending isn't even a slamming door, just a vaguely pathetic sound that makes Mae even more homesick.
Bronwen clears her throat. "Right. Shall we call it a night there, then? Mae's had quite the day."
Mae nearly sobs with relief. She's pretty sure she could sleep for a week. Owen slips on a pair of very worn-looking runners, leaning on his sister as he ties them. Amelie, who must have the patience of a saint, just shares a smile with Gwendolyn and lets him.
"It was really nice to meet you," Mae says, and then immediately cringes. These are people her own age. She shouldn't be so fucking awkward around them.
But Owen just beams. "Cheers, Courtley."
Amelie waves on her way out. "Lovely to meet you too, Mae."
♥
Bronwen gets them set up in one of the rooms upstairs. It very obviously belongs to Gwendolyn – posters plaster the walls, the bookshelves are disorganized and lined with little knick-knacks. Mae and Gwendolyn make the spare bed up in silence, and Mae makes a point of not maintaining eye contact. Gwendolyn lets Mae use the washroom first; she showers and brushes her teeth and avoids her own gaze, too. She is so ready for this day to be forgotten.
Afterwards, Mae sits on the bed that's hers now, breathing in the cool scent of lavender laundry detergent, blinking against the tears she really, really doesn't want to shed.
"Gwendolyn?" she says as Gwendolyn comes back to the room. "Um, thanks for letting me stay in your room, and everything." Mae hugs the pillow to her chest. "I really – yeah, thanks."
Her cousin gives her a perplexed look. "Just don't touch my Fleetwood Mac posters and we'll get on fine. And seriously, everyone calls me Gwenna."
"Okay. Thanks, Gwenna."
"Don't mention it." Then Gwendolyn – Gwenna – shoots Mae a grin that can only be described as devious. "I'm about to sleep like the dead."
Mae actually groans aloud. "That's the best you've got?"
"Made you smile, though."
And it did. Mae shakes her head, something light and warm beginning to swell in her chest. She lets herself collapse back onto the bed, exhaustion already weighing her limbs down. She's pretty sure there's more to be said to Gwenna, and to her grandparents.
But that is so totally a problem for tomorrow.
♥ ♥ ♥
NOTES
writing first chapters is the bane of my existence so please let me know what you thought! on another lil note: updates will be every sunday (i'm trying very very hard to stick to an updating schedule, i promise!)