The Line

The Line - Part Two

2

My paddy’s called Seph.

    The very fact that she’s called Seph pretty much says it all. Her full name is Persephone, which is just fine. Any normal human being would have taken the obvious route and become a Persi – there, see, how hard was that – instead of arduously hacking their name about to come up with the awesomely ugly, weird and uncool Seph. But that’s Seph all over. Born awkward.

  When I found out I was stuck with her five years ago, when we all moved out of the big communal junior dorms into the two-beds, I wasn’t exactly filled with delight. In fact, I would honestly rather have had any other paddy in the whole Academy than Persephone Beaverbrook, part-time academic prodigy and full-time sarcastic nerdy weirdo. I begged our housemistress to let me move in with Cordi and Guinni by squeezing an extra bed into their room – we all trooped down to her office together to plead my case in unison - but as luck would have it, our housemistress said no. So Seph it was.

    Over the years, however, we have – much to my surprise - come to a pretty good working relationship. I’ve come to feel something for her that is, if not exactly friendship, a sort of exasperated affection. I don’t have a whole lot to do with Seph outside this room – nothing whatsoever might be a better description – but inside it, as paddies, we get along okay.

   When I walk in, Seph’s sitting on her bed with her legs drawn nearly up to her chest, reading a book. The massive hardback in her knuckly little hands looks awesomely ancient, black and decrepit, with crumbling bindings and pages the colour of weak tea.

    I can’t stop myself from asking.  ‘What the hell is that thing?’

    She lowers the book slightly. Her small pale pointed face peeks over the top of it, framed by long straight indifferently unstyled black hair. As always, her big round glasses make her look a bit like an owl. 

    ‘Sheridan le Fanu. Uncle Silas.’

    ‘Where do you even get those things you read? It looks about two hundred years old.’

    ‘Three hundred and twenty seven,’ she says amiably.

    ‘You do realise you could download it onto your multi in ten seconds flat?’

     Seph nods patiently. It’s not her style to point out that she got a full hundred per cent on her Technology exam last year. But for a second, her expression says it for her.

    ‘Personally, I prefer this medium. It adds a certain something extra.’

    ‘Yeah. Like termites.’

     She smiles her familiar secretive, contented, lips-closed little smile. She seems so perfectly and quietly content within herself – as always, really – that I can’t help feeling a bit jealous. 

  ‘It’s okay for you - you can relax and take it easy. You’ve passed First Cut already, you lucky thing.’ 

    Seriously. She was the only girl in our grade they allowed to take the exams a year early. She passed with an average of 97% - she never told me or anyone else, the Head told us all in assembly. Rumour had it that the Head didn’t stop smiling for a month. 

   Seph raises a slightly quizzical eyebrow. Her expression’s faintly curious.

    ‘Are you worried?’

    ‘Don’t be a barry.’ I speak a bit too vehemently, a bit too impatiently. ‘It's a breeze, everyone knows it. I’ve just been trying to explain that to Rinda Macdonald – she’s worried sick about tomorrow, you should see her. Seriously, she’s so paranoid, she thinks they sometimes cut people for no reason when they've done okay, even straight-A students. Just because.’