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Thoughts and Prayers

11 338 words
Summary:
A hapless technophobe, Wednesday struggles with the greatest invention of the twenty-first century: social media. Enid is there to provide guidance and support, with predictably disastrous, and, for the girls, unexpected results.

The first change Enid notices on her return to Nevermore is that the windows that were smashed during the battle with Crackstone have all been replaced. Long hours she spent gazing out of them while the professor of arithmetic or calculus or whatever it was prattled on like a wheezing goat, and walking up the approach to the academy with her swollen sticker-bedecked suitcase in tow she finds she rather misses their moss-encrusted edges and leaded panes. They've all been replaced with sleek new things, dark tinted and sun-proof.

New semester. New windows. New principal. They got a new guy in from Poland. Or Transylvania, somewhere like that. Anyway, the vamps are stoked about it. His arrival gift to the school, in addition to the new glassware, has been to extend curfew, for the benefit of all night owls like himself. A slight rearrangement to the timetable towards evening classes was initially met with skepticism on the online school discussion boards, but a later starting time to compensate has smoothed over the wound. No one is going to kick up a fuss about the promise of weekday lie-ins. Not that anyone's in the habit of kicking up a fuss about much of anything these days. Things—in the way that things do after a period of uncertainty—have calmed down. People are loosening up. And this, as far as Enid is concerned, is good.

On her way to the dorms she passes the statue of Principal Weems. Flowers are piled so high in front of her that they reach half way up her thighs. Nice touch, that. Enid has brought her own, though convenience store daffodils feel like a paltry tribute for such a brilliant woman, it was the best she could do from the little shop beside the station in the few minutes before her taxi arrived. Tumbling left and right through the twisting roads of the forest she wrote a note on the label in blue biro: "For a great woman and a great teacher. You will be sorely missed," and now she hides them underneath a much larger bouquet, from Bianca and the rest of the Nightingales. Then, because she's not sure what the protocol is for someone your best friend fell afoul of multiple times in the space of a few short weeks, and whom through association with you feel more than slightly responsible for the death of, she curtseys. Weems was the long arm of the law while she was alive, the snarling bulwark. But she was also Nevermore's largest protective wing. She deserves to be honoured in stone like this, and to receive much more honour besides.

After a suitably long moment of reflection, Enid at last scans the pile for a single black rose, or similarly stark orchid, but doesn't see one. Then she turns around and grabs the handle of her suitcase.

Open the door to Ophelia, breathe in the musty smell of academia and teenagers. Ah, this is home! Now that's she's inside Enid notices the tinted windows are actually one-way; the corridors with the glass-covered gas lamps placed at regular intervals are no darker or more scary than they had been before she left. Tearing off her hat and gloves, she ascends the teak stairs one step at a time with her desperately heavy suitcase as a sparkly vision in rainbow pastel. On the second floor, Yoko spots her and erupts into an excited scream, which she returns, letting the suitcase slip from her hands and clatter half a storey down onto the interstitial landing below. She is very excited to see one of her two best friends, already feeling a little FOMO since her train was late and she's arrived some hours after everyone else. New dorm arrangements and the coming term are discussed at length—not a few parents pulled their children out of Nevermore after the events of last semester, and Enid takes notes as Yoko lists all the new names and faces, the ones to make a beeline towards befriending, and the ones to watch out for.

In the miasma of meeting and greeting and catching-up—her description of winter in San Francisco, questions about Yoko's family, her pets, dodging questions about Ajax, and crucially herself in relation to Ajax—it takes her several minutes to reach the top floor of the dorm block, and when she does, she's greeted by the familiar hush that always pervades hers' and Wednesdays' shared space.