First Impression II: At Second Glance

Chapter Nineteen - The Fan Girl Queue

Chapter Nineteen – The Fan Girl Queue

I put my head between my knees, trying to calm my ridiculously fast heartbeat. So much had happened and there was so much to feel. There was embarrassment, no doubt, and plenty of it at that. Even alone, my face coloured and my heart beat faster as I remembered – please self, for the sake of your sanity do not go there.  But there was fear as well. Why was Adrian involved with the likes of Palmer and Moriarty? What was so important that he had to follow them to the club and spy on them there? Did he know how dangerous they were? What Palmer could be capable of? And he just rushed headlong into things. And then, there was the man Adrian followed into the bar. I couldn’t place him but he seemed familiar. I had seen him somewhere before.  I was pretty sure I had…

I dozed off to sleep…

*

I was in a large room bathed with a warm golden light from gently swaying chandeliers. Tall elegant arches stretched out in front of me, supporting a high ceiling covered in elaborate frescos. Holy crap where was I? I looked around in wonder and saw a long queue of girls, all fancily dressed, snaking from the opposite end of the room all the way to double doors where I was standing, too intimidated to enter. I stood on my toes to peer over the heads of the giggling girls and saw a dais at the end of the room on which sat Adrian, one leg carelessly crossed over the other. Holding a scepter and an orb.

I blinked. Okay. Irene was standing on the dais too, dressed in pure white lace and holding a fan, sneering down at the long queue of girls. In fact, all the girls were dressed in elaborate and stylish dresses. Near the top of the queue was Leonora the senior fan girl in a pale blue concoction of tulle with the tiniest waist and fluffiest skirt I had ever seen. She was currently arguing with Audrey who was dressed in a fitting black dress with long black gloves up to her elbows and pearls, a long cigarette holder in her hands. That thing must be almost twenty inches. Somewhere else was Kalista Debon, the Russian heiress I had met what seemed like ages ago. She stood tall and aloof, clad in a grey otter fur scarf and hat. There was another girl wearing what seemed a haute couture dress straight off the runway and that girl wearing a modern geometric dress.

My head was spinning with all the colours. It was as if this was some red-carpet event that I had accidentally stumbled onto by accident. I looked down at myself and to my horror I was dressed in the deep plum dress I had worn on Avery’s birthday. And then, suddenly, two people, I turned around to see Palmer and Moriarty – what the hell were they doing here? -  grabbed me by the arms and frog-marched me to the end of the queue.

Something was very wrong here. Just then, I noticed that walking down the queue was the rest of the Quartet. They held magnifying glasses and were shuffling the girls. That girl with the elegant Classical nose and that girl holding the delicate clarinet got to move up the queue.

I looked down into my hands and realised I was holding a triangle. Great. I was now very confident in my position at the bottom of the queue. Meanwhile, Edward, Edmund and Avery were moving closer. Time to make myself scarce. I raised my hand to cover my face and quietly backtracked, safely planting myself outside the room.

But to my horror, Palmer and Moriarty appeared again and all but threw me back into the room.

Oh no they couldn’t make me stay in the room and I sprinted out again but each time I tried to leave, they simply picked me up and tossed me back in. The three boys were moving closer and closer and I started to panic. No way was I going to get caught in this fan girl queue, especially Adrian’s. No way.

Just then, the double doors slammed shut, cutting off my only route of escape. I could only watch in mortification as they approached, wishing the earth would just swallow me up. Pretty please, mother earth. Like now.