prime numbers ✓

02

"She's only a bird in a gilded cage,
A beautiful sight to see.
You may think she's happy and free from care,
She's not, though she seems to be.
'Tis sad when you think of her wasted life
For youth cannot mate with age;
And her beauty was sold for an old man's gold—

Lily Sparks almost jumped out of her skin when the chair beside her was pulled out with a shrill rattle. It was plain that the person didn't care for the sound either — they gave a small shudder before slumping into the seat, throwing their bag aside carelessly.

Confused wasn't even the right word to describe what Lily was feeling then. She was afraid. Terrified that if she turned to her left, her eyes would meet some prankster's devilish gaze, and she would be left stuttering pathetically to the amusement of everyone watching. She sucked in a silent breath, when all she wanted to do was to gasp and thrash about like a fish out of water.

In an unconscious motion, her head tilted a little to the left. A pair of unfamiliar brown eyes burned into hers, causing her heart to stand stock-still for a moment.

"Hello."

"Um, hi." It took so much more to squeeze the two syllables out that it should have, and Lily's mouth hung open like a goldfish before she clamped it shut, her face reddening.

If the new girl noticed, she didn't say anything. Instead, she busied herself with taking things out of the muted black bag at her feet — Lily was struck with the inexplicable feeling that she was doing it on purpose.

Without thinking, Lily started registering the strange figure before her. Thin arms and even thinner legs, as if she'd skipped dinner three times in a row. Lily was not so surprised; apparently it was a growing fashion amongst schoolgirls these days. This girl had the sort of perpetually downturned lips that you knew didn't smile often, if at all. But most of all, she was paler than snow. So pale that her skin literally seemed to glow.

Lily shivered, even though it was in the prime of summer.

As if reading her thoughts, the girl glanced towards Lily. There was a guarded look in her dark eyes, a mixture of something and something that words simply couldn't explain. No, wait, Lily finally found a phrase to sum it up — an apathetic stare. Like she didn't care one bit about anything or anyone.

The kind of person Lily hated the most. But she hadn't even properly talked to her before, yet there she was, her mind running off with all kinds of unfair judgements of this and that, as if she herself was a saint. Lily shook her head, telling herself to set all first impressions aside, and try to get the newcomer to feel as welcome in this school as possible.

She cleared her throat. "How'd you like Somerset so far?" Cue a wide grin that hopefully radiated friendly energy.

"It's been shit." The girl said bluntly.

It was as if Lily's tongue had become glued to the roof of her mouth. They gawked at each other for a long long time, until the awkwardness became too much to bear, and the former dropped her gaze quickly.

For the entire lesson, the two didn't utter a word to each other, nor spare a glance at one another, not even when the other girl stood up to introduce herself to the class. Emmeline Oakley, that was her name. Lily would never have guessed it in a million years, because frankly she was the furthest thing from an Emmeline. Her reasoning? 'Emmeline' was like 'Emma', and all the Emmas Lily had seen on TV were those blonde, tanned and outgoing best-friend-of-female-lead kind of gals.

The only word that would suffice in this situation was: paradoxical.

Lily jotted it down in her diary when the teacher wasn't looking. It would be the perfect addition to some kind of new poem — in fact, her inventive mind was already generating all sorts of sonnets. Everyone had their own creativity boosters, and for Lily, one meaningful word did the trick.