The Gloaming Girls

EPISODE THREE (Part 2/7)

When I see Callia again, it's less of an adventure than the night we rode through the city on her bike.

We meet after my last midterm in a bar on campus, and I tell myself it's just for one or two drinks, and surprisingly, I manage to stick to my resolve. What I don't expect is that it's thoroughly pleasant. Callia looks just as devastating as the night I met her, and she seems to be on her best behaviour, manic edges worn down, and, to my relief, undeniably sober.

One or two drinks is usually an hour, tops. But we stretch it out into three, and Callia is just as fun to talk to as the first night. She tells me a bit about herself: that she's in her third year, that she lives with several roommates in a house just outside of campus, that she first discovered her specialty when she was thirteen, and that she's an orphan. I tell her a bit about myself: that I'm a harangued roommate, that Nevin has been my best friend for as long as I can remember, that I thought I didn't have a specialty until right before high school graduation, that I also like my coffee so I can't taste the coffee.

I don't tell her about my dad. Yet.

She invites me home with her.

I'd been planning on saying no, but I don't, because somehow all this feels a little bit like liquid dreams slipping through my fingers, never to be had again, and Callia is bewitching even when she's not using her specialty. It's easier to let my guard down, now that I know what to be looking for.

We walk back to her place, shoulders bumping occasionally, fingers brushing together, and I have to blink rapidly to make sure that this girl next to me is the same person who I watched steal a bottle of tequila without batting an eye.

"So, Olyss," she asks, as we wander off the far edge of the campus, "you ever had a girlfriend?"

"You wanna talk about exes?" I raise my eyebrows at her. "That's a little early, don't you think?"

"I like getting the nitty gritty out of the way before it gets messy," she explains.

"I have one ex," I say.

"And she broke your heart?"

I jerk away. "What?"

"You have the look," Callia says, not unkindly.

"I didn't know there was a look." I put my hands in my pockets.

"There's a look."

We walk in silence for several minutes.

I ask her, "You ever had a girlfriend?"

She shakes her head.

"Is that... something you want?"

Callia doesn't look at me. She points to a house—it's old, and I recognize it at once in the half-dark from the last time I was here, though all I can remember from that night is twisting stairways and creeping out before it got light out—and says, "That's mine. You remember?"

"Will your roommates be home?" I don't point out that she never answered my question.

She shrugs. "Maybe."

If they are, they're not in sight, and she doesn't turn the lights on as we slink up the back staircase, up, up, up, to her crows nest attic bedroom, and this I remember with vivid clarity.

"You live up here like Cinderella," I say.

"I like it."

I tell myself I'm not going to kiss her first, but I do.

I tell myself I'm not going to stay long, but I do.

I tell myself I'm not going to fall asleep, but I do.