Carry On

You get warnings when you’re young: For the first two years, if you try to hit or hurt your roommate, your hands go stiff and cold. I threw a book at Baz once in our first year, and it took three days for my hand to thaw out.

Baz has never violated the Anathema. Not even when we were kids.

“Who knows what he’s capable of in his sleep,” I say.

“You do,” Penny says, “as much as you watch him.”

“I live with a dark creature—I’m right to be paranoid!”

“I’d trade my pixie for your vampire any day of the week. There’s no anathema to keep someone from being lethally irritating.”

Penny and I go back to the dining hall to get dinner—baked sweet potatoes and sausages and hard white rolls—then bring it all back to my room. We never get to hang out like this when Baz is around. He’d turn Penny in.

It feels like a party. Just the two of us, nothing to do. No one to hide from or fight. Penelope says it’ll be like this someday when we get a flat together.… But that’s not going to happen. She’s going to go to America as soon as the war is over. Maybe even before that.

And I’ll get a place with Agatha.

Agatha and I will work through whatever this is; we always do. We make sense together. We’ll probably get married after school—that’s when Agatha’s parents got married. I know she wants a place in the country.… I can’t afford anything like that, but she has money, and she’ll find a job that makes her happy. And her dad’ll help me find work if I ask him.

It’s nice to think about that: living long enough to have to figure out what to do with myself.

As soon as Penelope’s done with her dinner, she brushes off her hands. “Right,” she says.

I groan. “Not yet.”

“What do you mean, ‘not yet’?”

“I mean, not yet with the strategizing. We just got here. I’m still settling in.”

She looks around the room. “What’s to settle, Simon? You already unpacked your two pairs of trackie bottoms.”

“I’m enjoying the peace and quiet.” I reach for her plate and start to finish off her sausages.

“There’s no peace,” she says. “Just quiet. It makes me nervous. We need a plan.”

“There is peace. Baz isn’t here yet, and look”—I wave her fork around—“there’s nothing attacking us.”

“Says the man who just thrashed a goblin. Simon,” she says, “just because we’ve been checked out for two months doesn’t mean the war took a break.”

I groan again. “You sound like the Mage,” I say with my mouth full.

“I still can’t believe he ignored you all summer.”

“He’s probably too busy with ‘the war.’”

Penny sighs and folds her hands. She’s waiting for me to be reasonable.

I’m going to make her wait.

The war.

There’s no point talking about the war. It’ll get here soon enough. It isn’t even one war: It’s two or three of them—the civil war that’s brewing, the hostilities with the dark creatures that have always been there, the whatever it is with the Humdrum—and it will all find its way to my door eventually.…

“Right,” Penny repeats. And I must look miserable, because next she says, “I guess the war will still be there tomorrow.”

I clean her plate, and Penny makes herself comfortable on Baz’s bed, and I don’t even nag her about it. I lie back on my own bed, listening to her talk about aeroplanes and American supermarkets and Micah’s big family.

She falls asleep in the middle of telling me about a song she’s heard, a song she thinks will be a spell someday, though I can’t think of any use for “Call me maybe.”

“Penelope?” She doesn’t answer. I lean off my bed and swing my pillow at her legs—that’s how close the beds are; Baz wouldn’t even have to get out of his to kill me. Or vice versa, I guess. “Penny.”

“What?” she says into Baz’s pillow.

“You have to go back to your room.”

“Don’t want to.”

“You have to. The Mage’ll suspend you if you get caught in here.”

“Let him. I could use the free time.”

I get out of bed and stand over her. Her dark hair is spread out over the pillowcase, and her glasses are smashed into her cheek. Her skirt has hiked up, and her bare thigh looks plump and smooth.

I pinch her. She jumps up.

“Come on,” I say, “I’ll walk you.”

Penny straightens her glasses and untwists her shirt. “No. I don’t want you to see how I get past the wards.”

“Because that’s not something you’d want to share with your best friend?”

“Because it’s fun watching you try to figure it out.”

I open my door and peek down the staircase. I don’t see or hear anyone. “Fine,” I say, holding the door open. “Good-night.”

Penny walks past me. “Good-night, Simon. See you tomorrow.”

I grin. I can’t help it—it’s so good to be back. “See you tomorrow.”

As soon as I’m alone, I change into my school pyjamas—Baz brings his from home, but I like the school ones. I don’t sleep in pyjamas when I’m at the juvenile centres, I never have. It makes me feel, I don’t know—vulnerable. I change and crawl into bed, sighing.