𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐚¹- hp.

𝐱𝐱𝐯𝐢. can you tell that i'm lying to you?

꧁—— ❦ ——꧂

ST. ATARAH'S SCHOOL          OCTOBER 31
FOR TROUBLED GIRLS               1994

EARLY MORNING, HALLOWE'EN.

The air is brisk as it nips at the exposed bare skin between the rips in her stockings, a frosty chill stabbing a thousand knives into her lungs she seems unable to rid of, fleeting misty clouds unpleasantly tingle her chapped lips, and the brief warmth stings against her numb palms.

Lavinia bounces from one foot to the other, toeing the damp sidewalk and listening as fallen leaves crunch beneath her heavy boots. It was colder than it usually was for October, a forbidding grey that lines the horizon with nimbostratus clouds, and a chill her blazer cannot fight off no matter how many times she draws it tighter around her body. It's simply too cold outside to enjoy any time spent with Katalina and yet here she is, watching with a mix of awed jealousy as Katalina sits on the edge of the large stone railing, one leg crossed over the other and a cig between her teeth — she looks so fucking cool that the jealousy threatens to crack the sidewalk and swallow her whole, regardless of the fact that this is her best friend, and for once she is not the outsider.

"Oh, are you cold?" Katalina asks, clouds of smoke scattering with every breath.

Lavinia nods, blows another breath of air into her hands no matter how much it stings, "It's bloody cold out here."

"Poor baby." Katalina mocks, pouting as she inhales from the cig. A twinge of jealousy, a stab of spite. "What ever shall we do?"

"Piss off." Lavinia scorns, following the trail of falling leaves with her eyes. "Since when do you smoke?"

Katalina furrows her brows in thought and shrugs, twirls the cig between her fingers, "Have for a while, Avie. Where d'you think I've been disappearing too?"

Lavinia shrugs and drops her gaze to her boots. They're covered in smudges of dirt and dried mud, and there's a faint white line on the tip above her toes from where she drags them against the concrete when she wants to cause a ruckus. She never did think about where Katalina was wandering off too, truthfully. She just knew that every few hours she'd slip out of sight and reappear coughing, voice thick and wheezing in a way that still makes her jealous, even if she now knows the reason behind it. Thought you were sick of me, she wants to say, thought you were off making new friends.

"Don't know."

And she doesn't. She doesn't know a damn thing about Katalina. For all the nights that they whisper between the hollow space of their beds and cause girls like Giavanna to cry in the corridors, she could never confidently answer a single question about the brunette. Did Katalina have siblings? Were her parents together? Or better yet, were they even alive? And what was it that caused her father to snap and send her to a school for troubled girls? There were so many what's and why's that remained unanswered, half-truths and well devised lies that made her skin flare with a sudden heat when Katalina so much as brushed up against her. She's like an enigma, when Lavinia thinks about her. Some ancient book about unsolved crimes that the further you read the more you uncover, but it never truly makes sense. It's all pages that are out of turn, mismatched words strewn together to form a sentence, and just when you think you've figured out the mystery of it all, another piece of evidence makes itself known that has you solving it from the very beginning.