𝑆𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑁𝐷 𝐶𝐻𝐴𝑁𝐶𝐸𝑆 // 𝐽𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑃𝑜𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑖𝑐

Chapter 9: Help, Who Needs it? Not them

PSA: I'll switch between povs often in this book :)

Saturday 9th October

Son corps était lourd alors qu'elle s'effondrait sur la chaise, posant sa tête contre—

"Haven't you got detention?"

Nova's stomach lurched into her throat at her roommate barging through the door. She took a long breath, steadying her heart rate before rotating her chair towards the girl.

"Merlin, why do you always do that?" She spoke lightly, watching Dorcas walk towards her chest of drawers.

"To see you jump out of your skin every time," she said, grinning over her shoulder to Nova.

Shaking her head and spinning the chair back to the desk, Nova then replied; "And to answer your question — yes. But it's not for another 15 minutes."

Dorcas was searching through the drawers, tops and trousers being flung onto the floor carelessly, making Nova quail. "And instead of doing something fun, you decide to...?" She questioned mindlessly, paying more attention to creating a mess.

"I'm reading," she began toying with the corner of her book, "That is fun."

A sound of success was heard before Dorcas was stripping off her top to replace it with another. "I'm open-minded. Therefore, I won't judge your interests, but if I was someone else, I would tell you that you could be doing a lot more amusing things than reading a book to spend ur day, especially considering you have detention for the next three hours."

"Four actually."

She watched as the girl strolled over towards her, now standing behind her chair with a hand resting on the desk. "What are you reading anyway? Wait- is that even English?"

Nova watched the way Dorcas transitioned into amazement as her eyes scanned the book in front. "It's French," she informed, "I liked to read books in French to keep my memory of the language intact since I don't often speak in it."

"Is there much of a difference when you read in French? Like, does it take you longer to understand the words?"

"Not really." Nova had never even asked herself that question before and began going more in-depth as she considered it. "I'm fluent in it so most of the words come easy, sometimes there are words where I forget the exact meaning or how to pronounce it. But that can happen reading English, too. I just search up the definitions when I'm unsure," she rested her hand on top of the dictionary lying on the wooden surface, bringing truth to her words.

"Do you get mixed up sometimes? With knowing two different languages, I mean?"

"Only when I'm talking in French and then I need to automatically change to English, sometimes it can take a few minutes to refrain from using French words. But it doesn't happen often, only when I'm talking to my mum then my dad comes in and I continue to use both languages."

"Wait, really? So when you're talking to your parents you use both?" Nova relished witnessing Dorcas' face light up with pleasure when asking questions, the girl has always been up to learning new knowledge and never not interested in the people around her.

"Not so much anymore, mainly because I'm hardly with my parents." Nova expected some type of sadism to appear when mentioning her parents, any sort of grief from missing them. But nothing surfaced. "Sometimes though, yeah."

Dorcas picked the book up delicately, almost as if it would break if she was too rough. "Do you think you could teach me some?"

"I could," she considered, then thought of something better, "only if you agree to read a book and see that it is fun."