cigarette daydream ━━ the raven cycle

7; here lies the king

I SPENT THE NEXT DAY REPAINTING THE CABIN.

My parents didn't specify a colour, so I brought five buckets of pink paint and began my work. I did it partly because the salmon pink colour looked pretty, and partly ( fine, mostly ) because I wanted to see the look on my father's face. The worst he could do was have me repaint the cabin again— and quite frankly, I didn't mind. I found painting to be therapeutic for me. By then I found a new advantage of being a child to uninterested parents; they could use your hobbies as punishment.

It felt nice to have a hobby that I didn't abandon just yet. Over the week I grew to like drawing more and more, filling two sketchbooks by far. I wasn't the best at it, although Penelope would disagree, but I didn't want to be the best at it, either. Yesterday, when I came to the feeling that this wouldn't be a temporary pastime, I dropped out of my Spanish class and switched to art class. There is one other thing I did with the leftover pink paint and stray paint— but i'll come back to that later.

After painting an entire wall of the cabin, I headed to Nino's. When I walked in, I instantly saw Gansey and his friends by the usual booth. As I approached their booth, sliding into the red seat, I noted that there was one unfamiliar face in the bunch. "I'm sorry I'm a little late."

    "Only an hour late."

    "It's alright, I scheduled it two hours early anyway."

I narrow my eyes at Gansey for a moment. "How did you assume I'd be late?"

"I didn't." He shrugged a shoulder. Because I tend to hope for the best in people, the remainder of the sentence was left unspoken. "Blue told Adam you would."

I rose an eyebrow, a sudden intrigue hitting me. I turned to Adam with a resting smirk on my face. "You two are really hitting it off, huh?"

"Can we discuss my love life when we're not in the restaurant she works in?" He whispered hastily.

    I turned over to the left, waved my hand over to the smudgy blonde with combed back fair hair with a prominent dark smudge on his cheekbone below his eye. Another Aglionby boy, I realised by his uniform. "Have we met?" I asked. "I'm Beth."

    "We haven't." He said quietly, putting his hand out for me to shake. "I'm Noah."

   "Our fourth horseman." Gansey said.

    I shook his hand, almost instantaneously pulling my hand back when it met his freezing palm. "Cold." I noted, shaking my head. I turned back to Adam and Gansey. "What are we supposed to be doing, again?"

    "Treasure hunt."

    "One hell of a euphemism." Ronan muttered.

    "We're going to the woods where Gansey thinks the Welsh Kings are buried."

     For a moment I was reminded how ridiculous this all was, but I nodded along. "Where the ley lines are?" I asked, receiving a nod. "In the woods?" I asked again, receiving another nod. "What makes you think I want to go to the middle of the woods with four teenage boys?"

    Adam offered a small smile. "Because we look trust worthy?"

    "We are trust worthy." Gansey restated. "Right?" He turned to the three boys.

"Can't promise I'll be on my best behaviour." Ronan muttered, sipping his drink. I had the faint impression that he was scolded not to bicker with me, otherwise he would've said it loud and proud.

    My eyes drifted to the restaurant's bar stool, seeing Blue mark the shifts paper on the bulletin board and take off her apron, unaware of my presence. I allowed the faint possibility of her agreeing to come along take over me when I said; "I'm going if she's going." I pointed my finger over to her.