Chapter 10 | White Doves Make Fine Crows

[Song of choice: Betty Who // All of You]

The moon is high in the sky when I wake up; it is a crescent sliver surrounded by ghoulish clouds. Rani's bedroom wears moonshine like a sheer silver dress-everything shimmers when I blink into the shadowed darkness. She is still fast asleep, breathing so softly I have to cup her cheek to check if she's still warm and alive. Asleep, she's thinner than ever. I wonder if Jack notices the sharp ridges of her spine and her jutting cheekbones. I wonder if he realises that the brightest lights cast the darkest shadows.

It's in that moment that the guilt catches up to me, a brick sandwich, shattering my teeth. I've been running for many days, avoiding Jack in class, dodging him in the hallways, skipping school to burrow under my duvet for days on end before surfing the night with Rani. This afternoon, Sam poked her head into my bedroom to ask me if I was going to come downstairs for lunch. I couldn't speak because the guilt hurt so bad. Usually, on Sundays, we eat together as a family. I couldn't even open my eyes to let her know that I was awake. She assumed that I was asleep and left a moment later to check up on Lucas who hasn't left his room much, either.

Sometimes I find myself selling lies and thinking up excuses just to convince myself that whatever affair I'm having with Rani is justified. With my head propped up, I stare intently out of the window in class and fabricate lies until the blanket I've woven is so heavy that I can't breathe anymore. Rani has managed to pull me into a dangerous game. There are no rules, only thousands of consequences to pay for. It isn't the consequence that scares me most, it's what Jack will think when he finds out that I'm the person that Rani has been forsaken for. I'm scared, but it's a terrible delight.

That night, when Rani lets out a soft snore, I bolt upright with a knot metastasizing in my stomach. I wriggle free and keel over, bile burning up throat, a worse burn in my eyes. Being with her feels good until the high wears away and I'm left with a shell casing of the person I started with. She's eating away at my insides, eroding my chest like rushing water in a cave over the course of a thousand years.

I blink rapidly to ease the burn in my eyes, thrusting my leg into whatever trousers I can find. My shirt is somewhere. I make do with a hoodie on the floor, jamming my feet into my boots. I stumble through Remington Manor like a zombie, desperate for a way out. I think I may have bumped into Tate on the way out but my eyes were burning too much to see through. I can't cry; the fire in me has dried out everything.

My sanctuary in Rani's arms is harder to escape than her labyrinthine mansion. Corridors stretch on like mazes, there are dead ends everywhere. Eventually, I grow tired and give up on finding the front door. It takes me quarter of an hour to find a window that isn't locked. The jump from the second floor sends a jolt of pain through my ankle but I make it to the iron gates. A flash goes off somewhere. I climb like a puppy pawing a wall, losing my foothold on the way down and plummeting onto a bed of grass. Three more flashes go off. I break out into a sprint, only stopping to throw up on the kerb.

When I get home, Sam is the first person to open the door. I don't know how long I've been running. I don't remember falling but there are scratches on my palms. She sees my face and cries out, holding the back of her hand to my sweaty brow. I throw up again in the flower pot before booking it upstairs to my bedroom. My body catapults across the room and lands onto the bed, shoulders shaking.

"I did something really terrible, Sammy," I sob, muffled. Ash burdens my heart and I know that burns take a lot longer to heal than it takes to make a fire. I hate her, but I don't. There is no high when it comes to Rani Romano. Only a descent, a rapid fall; the more I go back to her, the lower I sink.

I hear tentative footsteps approach the bed. Sam sounds torn when she asks, "Does this terrible something involve Rani?" I stop heaving sobs, surprised by my sister's bullseye conclusion. I roll over to look at her with wide eyes. "What?" she says. "I'm not blind, Holly. Ever since she joined your troupe of circus freaks you've been swinging between delirium and depressive bouts. It's either love or you're bipolar." There's no joke in her eyes. We both know about the medicine cabinet and Lucas' name printed in block on a dozen orange cylinders. Her voice breaks a little. "Tell me I have no reason to be worried, Monkey."

I don't know what to think or what to say. Her verdict awaits me, but first I need to confess.

"I did something really, really bad," I cry.

Her fingers part my hair, a lulling gesture. I let her pull me close. "Talk to me, Monkey," she says softly. "What is going on?"

Bowing my head, I shamefully admit to my sins. She listens for the longest time, even when I yield to an unspoken silence. If she has any reproachful remarks, she keeps her lips sealed. I'm grateful.

"Will you tell Jack the truth?" she asks thoughtfully.

"I don't know. I don't think I can bear the look on his face."

"Although the truth costs more than lying, it'll be worth the price. He has a right to know."

I hiccup a sob. "I know he does. He loves Rani."

She turns her nose in the air. "I don't think that girl is right for either of you."

"Rani and I are just as bad as each other," I say in between hiccups. "I'm just as much responsible as she is."

Sam is quiet for a while. Her fingers continue to thread through my hair. "She reminds me of my first boyfriend. Dangerous as a berry, no doubt she can be sweet, too. She has that same daydream look in her eye. I ran into her in the kitchen the other day when you were hosting your freakshow club. When she talks, it's like there's nobody home."

I reach out to smack Sam's arm. "Don't say that about Rani. She's lovely."

"Lovely?" she echoes, lips curving wolfishly.

"You haven't seen her first thing in the morning." I sigh and smile to myself. "The quiet minutes before she wakes up. . . It feels like heaven."

My sister snorts a laugh, but her eyes remain quiet and soft. "I could throw up at how sappy you sound right now. No wonder you're so mean to Lucas and I all the time. Love really is gross." She swats my face like a fly, the kindest pat. "Stop being so gross, Monkey. I'm still too young to be exposed to anything above PG-13 rating."

"You're so immature." I laugh throatily, hastily wiping my tears as I feign disappointment. "To think that you're going to be a parent soon is beyond me." I shake my head, and prod her giant belly. "Poor baby has no idea what lies in store for it."

"Her," Sam corrects me.

My eyes bulge out. "A girl?"

She nods, a slow smile. "Lucas and I have finally settled on a name for her. Well, I have. He's not feeling very well lately-his mother's birthday is coming up soon-but I'm sure he'll like it, too." Sam takes my hand and flattens my palm against the swell of her stomach. "Feel that kick?"

The sharp intake of my breath is muffled by the hand I clamp over my mouth. "Holy shit. She's moving."

"That's Mae saying hello to you."

"Mae?" I echo, eyes wide. "As in-"

Sam grins. "Yes, your middle name."

A flurrying sensation falls through me, like snowflakes. "Why name her after me?" I ask, flushing from head to toe as a curling warmth wings through me like a butterfly grazing my palms in the summer. "I thought you were going to name her Anya after Lucas' mother."

"We were but the ultrasound test I had today revealed that I'm going to have two beautiful baby girls," Sam says, beaming like the sun.

I muffle a squeal, grinning from ear to ear. "No way," I breathe.

"Yes way."

"No wonder you've been getting so fat," I joke, throwing my arm around her glorious body.

"Hey," Sam cries. "I still have curves in the right places."

"Right," I drawl, prodding her fleshy arms. "Bingo wings. Check. Double chin. Check. Thunder thighs. Check. Another head because you're so full of yourself. Check, check, check."

She swats me away, but I hold on tighter. "As long as Lucas goes down on me then I don't care how large my thighs are," Sam says with a laugh.

"You might strangle him," I throw back at her, sniggering behind my palms.

When she tries to smack me, I catch her wrist, grinning as she pushes her fingers between mine to squeeze my hand. I return the squeeze and we make a game of it as she replies, "Maybe you'll stab Rani with your stick legs when she goes down on you again."

"Sammy!" I flush red and yank my hand back. "You can't. . . you can't just. . ." A strangled shriek bubbles inside me, frustration building up until I'm ready to shove her so that she falls out of the bed. Too bad I can't wrestle a pregnant woman. "You can't just say stuff like that!"

"Why not?" she sings, waggling her perfect brows.

"Shut up!"

"About your girlfriend?"

Through gritted teeth, I hiss, "Sammy!"

"Yes, Monkey?"

A frustrated groan rips through me. "Stop calling me that!"

"Sure, Monkey."

I snatch my hand away from hers. "I will cut you."

The corner of lip rises into a wicked smirk. "Nuh-uh-uh." She shakes her head. "Murdering a pregnant woman will surely get you into hell."

"I'm already in hell," I mutter darkly. "What's the difference?"

Sam ruffles my hair. "It's not all that bad in hell, Monkey. At least you'll get a taste of heaven between Rani's legs."

"Sam!" I screech, heat searing my cheeks.

She throws her head back, laughing like a wicked witch, mouth wide open so that I can see the vaulted arch and her pink tongue. She apologises when I wrestle her and pin her down, snorting sporadically as she tries to reign in a new wave of giggles. I tickle her ceaselessly.

"You're such a prude," she gasps in a fit of shrieking laughter. "You remind me of Lucas back when he was as innocent as Virgin Mary."

I release her and she sits up, heaving lungfuls of air. "Lucas? Innocent? As if!"

Sam purses her lips to smother another laugh, eyes out of focus as if she's entered a portal to her secrets and memories. I take the brief silence to lower my head and snuggle into her arms, relaxing when she circles my waist so that Baby Mae and Baby Anya are wedged between us. A quartet of Bishop girls, I think happily. The originals and the coming generation of forest-eyed beauties. I wonder if they'll be as strong as their mother or as kind as their father. Maybe both. Maybe better.

"Thank you," I murmur quietly when Sam's breaths grow heavy and my eyelids strain to stay open.

"For what?" she murmurs back, sieving my hair with one hand.

"For being here when I needed you most. For understanding without questioning. For listening."

"I'm here for you whenever you need me. Always."

I grin sleepily. "Even when I'm in hell?"

She kisses my hair. I feel her smile pressing into my scalp, soft as satin and wider than the world.

"Especially when you're in hell."

And, just like that, I'm seven again and she's seventeen, and I'm letting her crawl into my bed like every night she cried for Dad. I see a slideshow of images: a girl with ever-changing hair getting ready for parties and sleepovers, helplessly watching her move to London for the summer, watching her return broken, watching her rebuild herself slowly like a pyramid of cards, so fragile that a trip outside could blow her away forever. I see strength when I look a Sam. I see steel that has been shaped again and again, shining with brilliance. The woman who she came to be, and the girl she left behind. Strongest of their kind. Unfazed.

As I watch the curtains breathe like lungs before the open window, I realise that I was wrong to spend eighteen years wanting to become my sister. I no longer want to be Sam. Not anymore. I want to be of her kind. I want to be shaped like steel, and I know now that I'll have to take a few beatings to find my true form.

"Sweet dreams, love," Sam whispers after a long silence, drowsy as a daffodil.

Buoyed in her arms, I find myself drifting off like a leaf floating on a glassy river. The heaviness breaks apart, butterflies lifting me to a world where becoming my own person won't hinder me from being like my sister. This steel armour will be a part of me as my name is, woven through my being like my unkemptness and tendency to overreact.

***

Sinners cannot become saints overnight. I go back to Rani's house every night for another week, silently slipping out of her mansion at sunrise wearing a sunhat and a borrowed pair of Ray-Bans. The paparazzi outside go crazier than cats over a milk tray when they spot me and I have to power-walk to the town centre before they get tired of my muted glares. As I stroll back home in the basking sun, I begin to wonder how Rani deals with the paparazzi everyday. They're like ants, like pesky rodents, so much worse than squabbling toddlers. They're always too eager, too forward. Ruthless and dangerous. Lately, I've been featured on two national newspapers as Rani's new "best friend".

I purchase two ice creams and balance them in one hand as I jiggle the key into the front door. "I'm home," I call out as I kick off my shoes.

From the living room, Lucas replies, "At half eight in the morning on a Saturday?"

I poke my head into the room with a wide grin, teeth glinting, eyes masked with innocence. I bat my eyelashes and hold out one ice cream, a dripping double scoop, blueberry and vanilla.

"I come bearing gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh."

The shadows under his eyes are bottomless caves, starved of sunlight. He perks up at the sight of ice cream and reaches out to take it. I hold it out of reach. I stop him and ask, "Where's Sammy?"

"In the shower, I think." Lucas shrugs, still eyeing the ice cream like a bug. "Last time I heard her she was grunting on the toilet seat."

I pull a face. "Too much info, bro."

I flop down beside him on the sofa and pass him the blueberry and vanilla ice cream. I'm too busy wrestling the remote from under his thigh with my free hand to realise that my sister has trudged into the room wearing a silk kimono and our mum's Peppa Pig slippers, wrinkled and furry from years of wear. Her eyes latch onto Lucas as he happily laps up the ice cream like a kitten, and then they slide to mine.

"Where's my ice cream?" she demands, hand on her swollen gut. I swirl my tongue over my triple scoop ice cream and shrug. "You bought Kowalski ice cream but you didn't think to buy me one?"

I tear my gaze away from the TV and point to a happy Lucas. He bobs his head up and down like a bumblebee.

"Lucas is nice to me. You're not."

Sam moves towards me like a magpie. I shift my body to protect my ice cream, but it isn't me who's the target. Lucas howls when Sam snatches his ice cream and hoovers an entire scoop into her mouth.

"Sammy," he wails, but she straddles his lap and turns to me.

"Don't even think about it," I threaten her with a deadly look.

"I can't believe you didn't buy me ice cream. How could you buy this puny motherfucker an ice cream and not me? I'm nice to you."

"No, you're not." I lower my gaze to her bowling-ball-sized stomach. "Plus, the twins deserve a proper breakfast." I make a big show of finishing my ice cream, licking my fingers like chicken bones. Standing up, I stretch my arms back before planting them on my hips and leaning back to pop a few joints. "Should I make you something to eat?"

Disgruntled, she shakes his head, but Lucas takes me up on the offer. Sam continues to longingly eyes his ice cream. She heaves a sigh. "I hate you," she says as she rolls off his lap. "Why did you have to go and get me pregnant?"

Lucas smears vanilla on her nose and licks it away before kissing the very spot. "Because I love you."

"Pretty sure it takes two to tango," I inform them but they're too busy squabbling and play fighting to notice.

I notice the way the ghosts under Lucas' eyes fade into spirits whenever Sam is around, like she's the sun hidden behind a mass of rainclouds. Rani and I only work together at night, when the rest of the world is asleep, when I can be a moon that she can howl to. I can be like Sam, but I can't be her. I can't be a sun during the night. It's impossible.

I slip away to the kitchen and cook up a hearty breakfast for Lucas: bacon and eggs with sausages, beans and a slice of toast. There was a time when he tried to be a vegetarian like my sister. Mum figured it was another one of Sam's phases, but she never caved in. It isn't a surprise to me; steel doesn't give way to weakness. But Sam was quite the teenager, indecisive about everything, desperate to make a statement, gutsy, ballsy, impossible to sway. I decide to be an angel and make her a cup of black coffee. When I return, Thing One and Thing Two are curled up like lazy cats, watching reruns of Friends. My space on Sam's right has been reserved but, being a nuisance, I stretch myself across both their laps. In retaliation, Lucas drops his plate on my stomach.

"Hey," I protest. Sam grabs a forkful of bacon and stuffs it into his mouth for him.

"Mmm, so good," Lucas mumbles.

"What about me?" I complain, opening wide when Sam makes aeroplane noises and dances another forkful around his mouth. Her other hand rises and she smacks me hard on the cheek.

"You didn't buy me an ice-cream."

"But I made you coffee. No sugar. Black like your soul."

"Black like your eyes will be when I fork out your eyeballs. Quiet. I can't hear the TV."

I roll my eyes. Sam stays with us for another hour before muttering something about a nap. It's the weekend and despite the endless stack of revision I have to get through, I stay put and let Lucas fiddle with my hair as we waste the day away on horror movies. Sam has been gone for only two hours when he stops braiding my hair.

"Angel?"

"Mmm?"

He raises his bottom off the couch and I yelp, sliding off his lap and clawing the air for something to latch onto. Lucas jimmies a velvet box from his back pocket and sinks back into the sofa. He hauls me off the floor and I lay my head back down and kick up my legs up on the sofa's padded arms.

"Take a look at this, will you? And tell me what you think."

He drops the box onto my palm and I hold it to my eyes, sniggering because it must be another practical joke my sister and her boyfriend always pull on each other. Last summer, during Mum's birthday dinner, Sam got down on one knee in front of the whole restaurant and proposed to Lucas with a Haribo ring. He laughed it off later, but Mum was furious with Sam for embarrassing the entire family. I found it hilarious.

I take a look at the box again. The red velvet is convincing enough. Soft, small, pocket-sized. Perfect. I knead it between my fingers, searching for a giveaway, something that will let Sam detect the prank before it has even begun. Nothing.

I pass the box back to Lucas. "It's great. She'll never know you're onto her. Great job, Kowalski."

His face, blank and blinking, looms over me like a cloud. I turn on my side to continue watching Pyscho, a little bit irritated him for distracting me from the plot. Thrillers are terribly hard to keep up with, even when I've watched this movie twice already.

"I want to propose to her," he tells me.

"Good luck. Videotape her reaction for me so I can upload it on YouTube like last time. Maybe this time we'll get more than twenty thousand views." I reach for the remote to turn up the volume.

"This time it's for real."

"You said that to trick me me, too, last time."

"I mean it, Holly." He gives me the box again. "Look inside."

"I have."

"No, you haven't."

"OK, whatever. Shh, it's getting to the good bit."

The remote appears above my head. Click. The screen goes black.

"Lucas!"

I sit up to give him a good beating, but he lifts up the lid of the velvet box and a flash of silver peeks at me through the small gap. Then the lid is completely pulled back and I have to shield my eyes because the light streaming in through the window sets the silver band in the box on fire. The flame is white light and I blink until the ring is only a bright wink.

Shell-shocked, I blurt, "You're joking, right?" He chew the corner of his bottom lip. I stare at him for a long time, studying his tousled bed hair and soft jaw. Then I laugh so hard my sides split and Lucas flushes pink, embarrassed. "Yeah, right." I laugh harder. "You two? Married? I think a meteor shower and an eclipse happening at the same time is more likely than that."

His face falls. "I'm being serious, Holly."

I sober up quickly. "You are?"

"Yes. I want our girls to grow up in a stable home."

"And signing a bunch of papers fixes the petty arguments you guys have over chopsticks and pencils and road taxes because. . .?"

Lucas shakes his head and pockets the velvet box. "Forget it. You're right. What was I thinking? This is Sam we're talking about."

He gets up but I hold him back before he can leave. "No. Stop. She won't say no if you do it properly." He cocks his head to the side, listening. "But first we'll need Starbursts. Lots of them."

His eyes brighten like Christmas lights, sparkling with awe, recognition and then determination. He knows. He remembers exactly what will make Sam say yes to anything.

I just hope the Sammy he left behind all those years ago is still the same one that moved back in with him.

***

I spend the night at Remington Manor, eating my nails raw with guilt every time Rani leaves me sprawled on her white bed sheets to shower or to take her private phone calls. When the door creaks open, I expect a waterfall of inky hair, but the head that pokes through is the first layer of winter snow.

"Oh," Karl sings, almost as if he regularly walks into Rani's bedroom, "fancy seeing you here, Hecate."

He spits my stage name like it's replacement for failure. I sit unnaturally still on the edge of the bed with my feet half inside Rani's fluffy bunny slippers, a deer, alert at the sign of danger. My hair hangs in solid sheets, not yet steel, but fluid enough to crack open like a curtain. Karl spots my deadly scowl and takes it as an invite to invade the rest of the room.

"Actually," he says, with a glinting smile, "now that we're both here, there are quite a few things that we need to talk about. Don't you think it's time we had a chat? Magician to magician."

I pick up a dressing gown off the floor and turn my back to him, wearing my skin like armour. I shrug it on and tie a swift knot.

"I'm not a magician, Remington," I tell him, turning around sharply. "I'm a performer."

"How synonymous," he muses, still singing. I'm more unnerved that he's wearing a full tailcoat and a top hat on a Monday morning than I am at his strangely elated mood, and the fact that he's acting as though we have been acquaintances for years. "I was just curious about how far along you are with your blueprints. Rumour has it that you're doing Water this year."

"Rumour has it that you're doing Fire." I pick up a deck of cards that Rani and I messed around with last night, half drunk and half shrieking with laughter as I taught her a few tricks. Then I set it on fire, the hardest illusion I've mastered in Madame Penelope's class.

Karl's eyebrows twitch a fraction. It's the first human response he has demonstrated since he walked in, and it's the first flash in his eyes that makes my own lips tick upwards into a lovely, cruel smile.

"You should be careful about Fire. It cannot be manipulated into another form," I say, pacing my way towards him in a confident sashay. "You'll score zero. Everybody knows that the judges despise recklessness."

"Yet I hear that you're being reckless enough to combine two famous tricks. Even Harry Houdini wasn't that reckless."

My insides freeze over. I keep my game face on. I wish I wasn't wearing a dressing gown with Nicoli Romano bedazzled on the back, but at least I don't have to wear cunning to act it out. Karl doesn't let me back him into a wall. I'll give him points for that, if anything. But my teeth are sharp and the moon will be full tonight. He'll be lucky to survive an attack from me.

"You've heard correct. I am doing Water this year," I reply tactically. His face gleams with triumph. "But remember this, Remington: I am a performer, not a magician. I do not combine tricks, I make them anew. Something you'll never quite understand. So if you'll excuse me please, I have class to get to. Not everybody can have their daddy fake their attendance whenever they feel poorly."

"Of course," he says, polite and proper. "Give your father my best."

My hands falter and my lips tremble. The deck of cards singe my palms and I flinch, hissing, curling the ashes into a fist before striding past him with my head held high. I'm irritated with Rani for leaving me vulnerable in front of the enemy, furious that the rumours circulating Millennia about my final trick are accurate. It makes no sense. Only two people in the world know about my plans to combine two of the most famous tricks into one great feat.

I find her standing around the first corner, leaning casually against the wall with a cigarette in one hand and an open window handle groped by the other. The moment I clear my throat, she bolts upright and stubs out the cigarette. She hisses a quick curse under her breath and flings the cigarette out of the window.

"I thought you were my mother for a second there," she says, smoothing out her bed hair.

I tilt my head to one side, my gaze critical. "No, you didn't," I reply too innocently, enough to make her sigh.

"I'm sorry," she says, turning around to rest her elbows on the window sill as she leans forwards to gaze into the lavish back garden. "I wasn't trying to avoid you or anything."

"Sure you weren't."

"It's just that I get overwhelmed by the cold hatred between you and my step-brothers."

"Sure you do."

I stride back into her bedroom, knocking into Karl's shoulder. Rani jogs after me, throwing a handful of explanations at me while I scoop up my clothes and curse her viciously in my head. Whether it be by intention or not, she has placed me in a tight position by letting her stepbrother roam freely into her bedroom. Karl is smarter than Rani. He's almost as cunning as I am, half as ruthless, twice as vicious. He doesn't care about his stepsister's reputation or my friendship with Jack if it means that he can blackmail me into forfeiting my title.

I want to yell at Rani, scream profanities at her. But I can't do that. Not while he's in the room. Rani notes my cold shoulder and orders Karl to get out and get ready for school. Her arms remind me of Madame Penelope, miming entrapment in the water tank, decorous, flamboyant, cheeks too hollow, jaw too sharp. Finally, I tie my bootlaces and stand up to my full height. Karl hasn't moved an inch. He's not even looking at Rani.

He smiles at me, teeth sharp as icicles.

"Hold tight to your crown, princess," he says, invading my personal space to right my top hat. He fixes my shirt collar. Outrage melts me like a candle, but I cool down into a faceless Greek statue when he pulls away. "You might end up with burns if you try to meddle with my showstopper this year. Fire isn't a toy made for little girls."

"I chose Water for a reason," I reply, striding past him with aggressive confidence, each step sure and sharp. "Fire is the weakest element."

"The strongest," Karl corrects me. "Madame Penelope refuses to cover it in Elements anymore because it's so dangerous. Fire can burn. It's so powerful that the marks it leaves behind are forever."

I bare my teeth into a smile of my own. "All the elements are equal in destruction. Air can summon tornadoes and hurricanes. Earth can raise earthquakes and landslides. Water is deadly in excess and in shortage--too much and you drown, too little and you die of thirst. But what can fire be manipulated into? Fire will always be just fire."

"You will lose this year," Karl assures me, dogging after me as I navigate my own way through his wooden dollhouse.

"It doesn't matter," I laugh. His expression dries like a lake in a drought. "As long as you get burned, I've won."

_______________________________________________________________________

A/N: Two months is a long time to be gone. (Sorry!) Today I realised that I don't write when I'm not in pain. I only write stories when I want to forget myself, and recently I've spent so much being me that I forgot to be with you all. I forgot what it's like to burden someone else's problems. I forgot that I'm supposed to be helping you all out like you all helped me last year.

My writing is a little rusty, so bear with me while I get back into the swing of things again. I haven't edited or proofread this chapter.

[Serious Note: Sorry if there were misogynistic tones in this chapter. Karl's views are merely his own. I am a feminist and believe in the equality of both sexes. Also, the scene between Sam and Holly may have been offensive in some respects. The intention was not to fat-shame or skinny-shame. I am pro all body types :)]

The next chapter is in progress but I have a shit-tonne of work piling up. (I have to prepare for the ELAT and do a lot of extra reading. If Oxford don't call me up for an interview then I might die. Who knew that uni applications would be this stressful?)

Love you lots (please say you still love me too),
- Kaddy.