All the other kids in care always think I’m religious. (And they think I smoke a pack a day, because I always sort of smell like smoke.)
I look at the mirror again. Penny’s right. I’m too thin. My ribs stick out. You can see the muscles in my stomach, and not because I’m ripped—because I haven’t really eaten for three months. Also I’ve got moles all over my body, which make me look poxed even when I’m not suffering from malnutrition.
“I’m taking a shower!” I shout.
“Hurry—we’ll miss lunch!” I hear Penny moving around the room while I climb into the shower; then she’s talking to me again from just outside the door: “Agatha’s back.”
I turn on the water.
“Simon, did you hear me? Agatha’s back!”
I heard her.
* * *
What’s the etiquette for talking to your girlfriend after three months, when the last time you saw her, she was holding hands with your nemesis? (Both hands. Facing each other. Like they were about to break into song.)
Things had got dodgy with Agatha last year even before I saw her with Baz in the Wood. She’d been distant and quiet, and when I was injured in March (someone tampered with my wand), she just rolled her eyes. Like I’d brought it on myself.
Agatha’s the only girl I’ve ever dated. We’ve been together for three years now, since we were 15. But I wanted her long before that. I’ve wanted her since the first time I saw her—walking across the Great Lawn, her long pale hair rippling in the wind. I remember seeing her and thinking that I’d never seen anything so beautiful. And that if you were that beautiful, that graceful, nothing could ever really touch you. It would be like being a lion or a unicorn. Nobody could really touch you, because you wouldn’t even be on the same plane as everyone else.
Even sitting next to Agatha makes you feel sort of untouchable. Exalted. It’s like sitting in the sun.
So imagine how it feels to date her—like you’re carrying that light around with you all the time.
There’s a picture of us together from the last winter solstice. She’s in a long white dress, and her mother plaited mistletoe into her milky gold hair. I’m wearing white, too. I felt naff, but in the photo—well, I look fine. Standing next to Agatha, wearing a suit her father lent me … I actually look like I’m who I’m supposed to be.
* * *
The dining hall is half full today. The term starts tomorrow. People are sitting on tables and standing in loose circles, catching up.
Lunch is ham and cheese rolls. Penelope grabs a plate of butter for me, and I smile. I’d eat butter with a spoon if it were acceptable. (I did it anyway, my first year, whenever I was the first one down to breakfast.)
I scan the room for Agatha but don’t see her. She must not be at lunch. I can’t believe she’d be in the dining hall and not sit at our table, even considering everything.
Rhys and Gareth, the boys who live in the room under mine, are sitting at our table already, at the far end.
“All right, Simon?” Rhys says. Gareth is shouting at someone across the hall.
“All right, fellas?” I answer.
Rhys nods at Penny. Penelope has never had time for most of our classmates, so they don’t really have time for her. It would bother me if everyone ignored me like that, but she seems to appreciate the lack of distractions.
Sometimes when I’m walking through the dining hall, just saying hello to people, she’ll drag me by my sleeve to hurry me up.
“You have too many friends,” she’ll say.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not possible. And, anyway, I wouldn’t call them all ‘friends.’”
“There are only so many hours in the day, Simon. Two, three people—that’s all any of us have time for.”
“There are more people than that in your immediate family, Penny.”
“I know. It’s a struggle.”
Once, I started listing off all the people that I truly cared about. When I got to number seven, Penelope told me I either needed to whittle down my list or stop making friends immediately. “My mother says you should never have more people in your life than you could defend from a hungry rakshasa.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I told her, “but I’m not worried; I’m good in a fight.”
I like having people. Close ones like Penny and Agatha and the Mage and Ebb the goatherd and