Holly’s eyes went chilly, unimpressed. “Sure. Fine. Of course you could.”
“But?” Suddenly I wanted nothing in the world so much as her opinion. Holly is the most selfish, brilliant person I know. She’s crazed, but there’s a light in her. Music for her is like magic for me. It fills her up, sets her on fire.
Hebe would tell me to do what was best for myself, and Dec would say a whole lot of not much, with some calculated silences left so I could figure out the right choice on my own. But Holly?
Holly would pick the band over me, every time. I needed that.
“I want this,” she said now, fingernails digging into the paper. “I don’t want you to sell it to Kraken or some other band who will turn it into a big hit. I want to sing it. I want you to sing it. There’s a part for cello in here, I know there is.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, letting out the truth with a big breath. “There really is.”
“I don’t care if it’s not about geeky shit, I don’t care if it’s off brand,” she said fiercely. “We get this one, Sage. We can do it. Yeah?”
I’d never wanted to hug her so much in my life. “Yeah.”
She waved the song at me. “Did you really go back to that craphole town this weekend?”
“Nah,” I laughed. “Meant to, but I got sidetracked with Nightshade. Never made it past the curse markers.”
“We should go,” she said. “Get in the van and just — road trip to Circe Creek. You and me. Work on the song on the way, and paint that stupid magic-hating town all the shades of the super gay rainbow. Hmm,” she added with a frown. “Maybe not just us. We should bring Juniper. I think she’s been feeling left out of the loop.”
“You and me in a van, though,” I said skeptically.
An unfamiliar expression crossed Holly’s face. Lack of confidence? It didn’t suit her. “I know you’d rather hang out with Hebe. But she’s all boyfriended up, and…”
“No,” I said quietly. “Hol, you know — you’re important to me too, right?”
Hebe’s been my best friend for years, before and after she was my one true girlfriend. But Holly is mine too. That moment in the campsite when I realised she was gone and I hadn’t even… that moment, before the anger hit, that was the most scared I’d ever been in my life.
She stared at me now, seeing the authentic truth in my eyes. “Well, this is embarrassing. For you.”
I groaned. “Babe.”
“I hate to break it to you, bro, but our love can never be.”
“Holly, c’mon.”
“You’re an out and proud homosexual, and I could never love a drummer. I mean, I have some standards.”
“I hate you so much right now.”
She hugged me so fast it was somewhere between an embrace and a slap on the butt. “I love you too, you giant bag of dicks. Let’s celebrate our true bromance with a platonic road trip to the town that tried to squash all the magic out of you. We’ll take your song apart and put it back together until it’s so amaze, even our judgiest, geekiest fans will fall in love with it.”
Yeah. I wanted that.
“Let’s do it,” I agreed.
“Awesomesauce.” She was making one of her lists already, stealing from my paper and purple glitter pen stash. “So we’re gonna hex cock-and-balls graffiti to the walls of your old school…Leave Fake Geek Girl flyers in the public loos? Maybe walk up and down the Main Street a few times looking like punk rock hooligans, see if someone asks us to leave town. Am I gonna need a cowboy hat? I think I’m gonna need a cowboy hat. Possibly a duelling sword. And my sluttiest top, obviously.”
We fought all the time, like cats and dogs and bats and owls. Like siblings. When rehearsals got rough, we tore each other to pieces. Sometimes I forgot how well Holly got me.
“All those things,” I promised her. “Also we can visit the pub, where I guarantee an awkward silence will fall the second we step inside.”
Holly unironically clapped her hands. “Best plan ever.”
“Fine,” I agreed. “Pack a bag of trashy outfits, write a note for Hebe, grab Juniper. Let’s go.”
Fake Geek Girl were hitting the road, all over again. We were gonna make magic together — magic, music and a whole lot of trouble.
“It still needs a title,” I said suddenly. “My song.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Holly with a shrug. “We’ll think one up on the way. A really good one — good enough to name the album after.”
Sneaky wench. “Excuse me, but our next album already has a kickarse title.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “We’re not calling our next album Resting Witch Face, Sage.”
Sure we weren’t.
“It’s a long road ahead of us,” I told her. “Plenty of time to change your mind.”
“Yeah,” said Holly. “Good luck with that, babe.”
It was like the whole road trip unrolled before us, letting us know exactly what we were gonna fight about over the next few days.
I couldn’t wait.
The Alchemy of Fine
Or: How the Band Got Together, A Very Fake Geek Girl Prequel
This story begins 15 months before Ferd meets Hebe, and runs backwards from there. Yes, on purpose. I regret nothing.
Chapter 1
Holly & Hebe & Sage & Nora & Juniper Are All Pretty Damn Fine
Fine is a positive word when applied to the weather. It doesn’t mean ‘barely making it over the line’ like it does when it’s applied to feelings, or anything messy like that.
Fine means sunny and bright. A good day.
Today is a good day. The weather’s fine.
Holly and her crew totes rejected the Belladonna University End of Year Summer Solstice Picnic when they first heard about it. It sounded like a whole bunch of fake school spirit and unnecessary sunshine.
But.
They have nothing better to do. So here they are.
Sun garlands and glittering tinsel are scattered all around the campus, except for the bare patches where decorations have been stolen by cheeky students looking to adorn themselves, their broomsticks and their residential halls.
Somewhere, snags are sizzling on a grill. Somewhere else, cold tinnies are being sold out of giant tubs of melted ice, to raise money for some vital cause. Cheap beer is fine if it’s for a) students and b) charity.
All around Holly, the Real and Unreal students of Belladonna U are drinking, eating, making out, getting sunburnt and listening to terrible music.
It’s a good day. The weather’s fine.
Sage and Nora, pissed off about having to postpone their ‘elves rolling dice with tiny dolls and way too much reading’ game for such a mainstream social gathering, have buried themselves in a tote bag full of comics, and a picnic basket of weirdly healthy snacks.
Holly is gonna get a snag in white bread with sauce, as soon as she can be bothered moving from this super comfy tree trunk she is leaning against. No lentil chips for her.
Here’s to surviving their first year of uni.
No, they rocked their first year of uni.
Holly Hallow now has a queer girl rock band, with Sage as the token gay bloke on the grounds that he’s an excellent drummer, and no other band is allowed to steal him. She has friends. She goes to class sometimes. She’s had a couple of terrible boyfriends, a fling with a glamorous international student called Monique, and crushes on two of her professors. She has a share house she loves, with family and friends tucked in close around her.
(She cooked for said friends exactly once, producing a series of Instagram-perfect molecular gastronomy salads and decorative pavlova crumbs which caused great outcry and protest among her flatmates because apparently she doesn’t understand the definition of comfort food. No one asked her to contribute to their shared Saturday lunch ritual a second time which is just how she likes it)
Only this week, Fake Geek Girl — their awesome band, she’s so proud — recorded a second song to put up on YouTube, af
ter the first one did stupidly well. They haven’t hit Publish yet. Maybe later today.
Holly has a new song she’s itching to write, but it’s not quite cooked. Something about loving people who love stupid geeky shit, and how awesome she is for tolerating their deviant behaviour.
“Can you believe it’s been a year, Hebes?” Sage sprawls out on the grass, a rare moment of lazy relaxation for him. You wouldn’t guess that he hates the outdoors.
Nora, all in black with her eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses, lies with her head on Sage’s leg, reading an X-Men comic and ignoring them all.
Hebe, Holly’s favourite twin sister in all the world, is on the other side of Sage, head resting on the slight padding of his stomach. She’s reading something on her phone, holding it as far from Sage as possible so that his ridic all-powerful magic doesn’t spark against the tech.
Sage, the phone killer, destroyer of technology. Sage, who charged through all kinds of advanced extension courses as a first year student, because his professors have picked up on how goddamned powerful he is. Sage, certified goofball and A-grade dork who somehow finds time to hit the gym four times a week.
Keeping him was a good call, Holly concedes from her comfy spot, pressed between a sturdy tree trunk and the equally sturdy Juniper, who might or might not be asleep on Holly’s shoulder. Sage adds value.
“A year what?” mumbles Hebe, not really paying attention.
“A year since, you know.” Sage shrugs awkwardly without dislodging either of the women using his personal wall of beefsteak as furniture. He hums a bar of what is now officially titled Big Gay Breakup Song. Holly considers it her masterwork.
“Since we…?” says Hebe.
“Uh, yes.”
“Oh.”
Holly holds her breath, but only for a couple of seconds before her sister laughs. Hebe lifts her head slightly and thunks it back down against the soft part of Sage’s stomach so he goes ‘oof.’ “You mean, since you rom com ran your way to my doorstep to break up with me?” she says lightly, eyes back on her phone. “Good times.”
It’s a great day. The weather’s fine.
Holly breathes, smiling to herself as Sage and Hebe bicker, the two of them finally comfortable with themselves in a way they haven’t been all year, not really, though they’ve both been pretending really hard.
The mood shifts when Hebe mentions some boy she agreed to go out with later. Sage, on dangerously thin ice, doesn’t reckon the bloke is good enough for her.
Sage, whose taste in men is so bad it makes Holly’s own boyfriends look like beautiful, emotionally well-adjusted rocket scientists in comparison.
Hebe raises both her eyebrows, and Holly braces herself for whatever terrible, sharp and wounded words might come out of her sister’s mouth. “At least…” says Hebe, “…Kyle isn’t under the impression that I am my own twin sister.”
Sage groans with his entire body. “Are you ever going to let that one drop?”
“Not while the world is turning,” Hebe grins, completely relaxed about teasing him.
Oh, Holly thinks in relief. So that’s what fine looks like. It suits her.
“I haven’t heard this story,” chimes in Nora.
“Hang on,” says Holly, catching up. “I haven’t heard this story. Sage, you galah. Did you still think Hebes was me when you first asked her out? Fifteen-year-old you was a disaster.”
Hebe laughs, her head jiggling against Sage’s stomach. “He figured out one of us was the music twin and one of us was the geeky twin but he mixed up our names.”
“Wow,” says Holly, wincing. “Near miss, McClaren.”
“You’re telling me,” Sage snarks. “I like to think my fifteen-year-old subconscious knew better than I did.”
“Well,” says Holly, deadpan. “I wouldn’t say it was 100% on the right track.”
Sage gives her a startled look, all you went there, and Holly offers a smug look in return.
Hebe snorts.
“How did you know it was going to work?” Juniper murmurs, pressing a little closer to Holly. Awake after all. “The band, I mean. All the parts coming together. We’re all so different.”
Sage opens his mouth, and Holly can tell he’s about to launch his ‘musical collaboration is alchemy’ speech. “It’s not magic,” she breaks in, interrupting him before he can say a word. “It’s just people. Any combination of people can mix, as long as they, you know. Bend a bit.”
“I didn’t know flexibility was your strong suit,” says Hebe.
Holly sniffs. “I don’t have to bend. Everyone else can bend around me.”
“So not magic, just bullying,” says Sage. “Sounds about right.”
“Ice cream!” says Nora, jumping up. “That dodgy ice cream van just restocked. Who wants one?”
“I’ll help.” Sage rolls Hebe carefully off his stomach before climbing to his feet and cracking his back. “Any chance we can eat them somewhere with walls and a roof?”
“Grass isn’t going to kill you,” Nora mocks him.
Juniper wanders after them. Holly watches her go. Somehow Juniper has retained all her softness through a year surrounded by hard-edged cynics. It’s admirable.
“So,” says Hebe after a few minutes, one hand shading her eyes from the bright sun. “First year at Belladonna U worked out fine, don’t you think, Hol?”
There’s that word again. “Fine is boring,” Holly pronounces. “I want next year to be half terrible and half amazeballs. Like, a car crash of awesome with a side salad of WTF.”
“Yes,” says Hebe patiently. “But that’s because you’re a very dramatic person.”
“I am not dramatic!” flounces Holly. “You take that back or I’ll destroy everything that you love.”
“What are we talking about?” asks Sage, returning with Nora, Juniper and handfuls of ice creams. “I heard death threats, must be good.”
“Next year,” says Holly. “Which is going to be unforgettable. I think we should each do something crazy outside our comfort level.”
Hebe blinks. “Hol, do you have a comfort level? What would outside of it even look like?”
“I’ll find something. Juniper!” says Holly quickly.
Juniper startles, as she often does when Holly addresses her directly. “Um, what? Okay.”
Holly points a finger at her. “You are going to write a song for the band. Your own song.”
Juniper looks intrigued and horrified. “Right. Yes. If you think I can…”
“Sage. You are going to admit to your course advisor that you actually are planning to do a triple major.” Holly glares at him. “Doing one by stealth is not practical. Honesty saves time.”
“I hate you but you’re probably right,” admits Sage.
“Hebe,” says Holly, pointing her finger of power. “You will come out raging with me one night a month. No complaints, no protests, no attempts to write essays in nightclubs.”
“Fine,” says Hebe, obviously aware she is getting off lightly. “What are you going to —”
“Nora,” says Holly.
Nora holds up her hand. “I’m a year ahead of you lot. Next year, I am completing all my classes. That’s it. Band practice and studying. I like my comfort zone just fine.”
Nora will be graduating before the rest of them. That’s… a problem to deal with next year, not now.
“You will wear a colour other than black every day for a week,” Holly says finally, filing that other and far more uncomfortable thought to the back of her head.
Nora frowns. “Fine. But I get to pick your thing.”
“Okay…” Holly agrees warily. Better than Sage or Hebe picking for her, right? Right?
Nora grins with all her teeth. “You are going to participate in a full D&D campaign. Tabletop. Miniatures. The works.”
Holly’s mouth falls open in horror. “No. With the plastic wizards in unreasonably long robes? NO.”
Sage and Hebe are hooting with delight.
“You can borrow my dice!” squeals Hebe.
“I will totally help you design your character,” says Sage. “How do you feel about goblins?”
“No, she could totally pull off dragon healer,” Hebe argues. The two of them fall into a conversation in which the word ‘orc’ is mentioned far too often. Hebe consults a ‘character sheet app’ on her phone. The world is ending.
Holly stares at them both. They’re finishing each other’s sentences, they’re so excited. This is high school all over again — the good parts of high school, Hebe and Sage so in sync with each other. They really are going to stay friends.
Holly probably doesn’t need the band any more, to keep Sage from falling out of their lives.
Juniper smiles shyly at Holly, and moves a little closer. “Do you think you could help me? Write my song. I’ve never actually done that before, the words part. I can do melody…”
“Make a list of shit you love,” advises Nora. “Or shit that drives you nuts. That’s the best place to start. Holly is the best person to help with the technical parts. She’s got like, a natural talent for composition, it’s super annoying.”
Yeah, Holly doesn’t need the band any more.
But.
She’s gonna keep it anyway.
Chapter 2
The Manic Pixie Dream House is a Tower of Comfort
Comfort Lunch was Dec’s idea. Dec is Hebe’s favourite of Sage’s roommates because he’s a geek, which she understands, and he isn’t a dick about Real studies being somehow more important than Unreal, like Matteus who actually sneered when he found out she and Juniper were studying Literature and Gender Studies.
It’s a random Saturday halfway through their second semester of Year 1 at Belladonna U. The band played a party last night, and they’re still riding on the high of an appreciative audience. They played mostly covers but some of their own songs, and no one hated them.
Turns out, not being hated is Fake Geek Girl #goals. Hebe would never have guessed.
Unreal Alchemy Page 18
