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chapter twelve, heart to heart
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DETENTION IS, AS ALWAYS, AGONISINGLY TEDIOUS.
The grandfather clock mocks them from behind Sprout's desk, clicking and chiming to make them go mad while they're confined to the classroom for hours on end. Tangerine streaks across the sky above their heads, slashing the atmosphere to ribbons as pink seeps from the horizon. There's dirt deep beneath Daphne's fingernails by the time she's scraped the ceramic off the ground, the Snapping Snowdrop she rescued from the floor nearly biting a chunk out of her arm.
Her eyes keep flicking between clock face and the distant hills as they stretch with shadows, fearing that she'll be stuck in here until after dark. Flecks of frost are even growing over the glass ceiling, foretelling a freezing winter ahead of them, and that just makes Daphne nervous about going home for the impending Christmas holidays because though she'd prefer to stay at school, Stevie insists that they should be with their family. Even if that means spending some uncomfortable quality time with her dad, who she hadn't spoken to since the start of term. She's only doing it for Stevie, really.
Daphne digresses. Her mind tends to wander when she gets bored, and it doesn't look as if she's leaving her detention anytime soon. Pardon her French, but she's sure to have grey fucking hairs by the time she gets out of this bloomin' greenhouse! Time moves at a snail's pace in there, honestly.
She sighs dramatically, hoisting herself to her feet and dusting her hands on her dungarees. Lily peers up at her with a lackadaisical expression, quirking a brow.
"What are you doing?" she asks. "We still have to tidy this all up before Sprout comes back."
"We need to talk," Daphne declares. If she doesn't distract herself from the black hole of thoughts in her brain, she'll go mental.
Lily drops her dustpan and brush, rising to her feet so she can meet her eyes. ( She's a few inches too short to quite make it, so Daphne has to tilt her head down to make it less awkward. It still is, of course. )
