Chapter 10
chapter ten
lily
Stonehenge was just as tourist-y as Remus had predicted it would be.
Lily thought it was interesting, though—just standing next to something as famous as that felt surreal. Mary made the point that it was pretty pathetic in comparison to the pyramids, which made both girls giggle.
“I mean,” Mary side-eyed Lily, smirking. “It’s less impressive when you think about how ancient Egyptians not only moved stones like this, but stacked thousands of them in a giant triangle. And yet…” She gestured to a gaggle of old women who were looking astounded, hands on chests and slack-jawed in awe.
Lily snickered. “Oh my god, shhh! And I think the pyramid stones might be a little smaller, but I see your point. It’s sort of hard to tell the scale of things from pictures, though, so I’m not sure.”
“Guess Egypt is our next destination, then,” Mary smiled.
Lily’s heart skipped several beats.
A few hours later, the girls began the drive to a nearby campsite. Lily played a true crime podcast, and Mary pulled out a crocheting project. “I didn’t know you crocheted!” Lily said, glancing at Mary before turning her eyes back to the road.
“Yeah, I like making hats and mittens and shit,” Mary said, crochet hooks clicking. “I’m trying to figure out Tunisian crocheting right now, which is sort of similar to knitting. That’s why I’m using two hooks.” She set down her project and pulled up a photo on her phone. “I made a crop top a few months ago!” She tilted the phone towards Lily, and Lily glanced at the image. It was Mary, holding her phone up in front of her face, image reflected in a mirror. The crop top was yellow, with white daisies sewn on. Mary was wearing big daisy earrings and a long white skirt, one friendship bracelet-laden hand on her hip. She looked gorgeous. Lily wanted to look closer—who were the friendship bracelets from? Did Mary make them herself?
Mary turned her phone away, saying, “Sorry, didn’t mean to distract the driver. Eyes on the road, and all that.”
Lily was extremely disappointed. “From what I saw though, it looked awesome!”
“Aw, thank you!” Mary chirped happily.
“Just telling the truth,” Lily smiled.
At that very moment, it started raining. “Oh, shit.” The sky was rapidly darkening, rain pattering on the roof. “Man, and I thought we could have gotten out the tent, too,” Lily moaned.
“It’s okay, Lils,” Mary said. “Rain sort of adds to the ambiance. The vibes, if you will.”
“Sure, if the vibes are freezing to death,” Lily sighed.
“We may not have central heating, but we do have blankets,” Mary pointed out.
“This is true,” Lily replied, smiling. They drove up to the campsite—a small wooden check-in booth surrounded by what looked like endless green grass gradually being covered in a layer of thick mist. That combined with the rainfall basically completely obscuring their vision prompted Lily to turn off her true crime podcast. She decided she didn’t need to be thinking about getting murdered any more than she had to.
Lily pulled up to the booth, rolling down her window, and winced at the rush of cold air and rain that instantly hit her face. The person at the booth opened the little sliding metal door in front of the window, waving to Lily. They were wearing a blue baseball cap and a massive white hoodie, spiky purple hair peeking out and falling into their eyes. Their name tag read “Dora”.
“Hey, I was hoping to get a campsite for tonight if there’s one available?” Lily asked, wiping raindrops off her face.
Dora looked down at a checklist, pursing their lips. “Yeah, sure—site O31 is open. That’s £20.” They handed Lily a little pink sheet of paper, explaining, “Put this on your dashboard so rangers on patrol don’t think you’re here illegally and junk.”
“Cheers,” Lily replied, taking the paper from them.
“Have a good one!” Dora called, smiling widely.
Lily’s brain itched, like there was something she was forgetting. Then again, she was probably just tired.
“Let’s get to the campsite,” Mary yawned. “I’m knackered.”
“Fuck, it’s probably all the way at the back,” Lily said, slowly inching the car forward through the mud. She glanced at the sign beside her. “Yeah, the sites are in alphabetical order. We have to drive for a while.”
“Fantastic,” Mary sighed. “Half expecting to see some creepy shit like little girls in nightgowns or cloaked figures—this looks like the right place for that kind of fuckery.”
“Yeppp.” Lily glanced out the window. The sky was rapidly darkening, making it look like they were driving into a foggy abyss. Lovely.
“Isn’t there anyone else camping here?” Mary asked, squinting at the blackness surrounding them. “We should be seeing, like, lights from tents or something.”
“We’re definitely going to get axe murdered.” Lily grimaced.
“For sure,” Mary said.
After what felt like an eternity of driving and stopping to try and make out the signs scattered sporadically along the side of the road, Mary gasped, pointing. “Look! O31! We’re here. Thank Christ.”
Lily breathed a sigh of relief, pulling into the site. She turned her key with a click, and the soft rumbling of the engine faded. Reaching behind her, Lily flicked on the fairy lights.
“It’s too quiet here,” Mary shuddered, staring out at the inky blackness. Lily nodded in agreement—it almost felt like the whole world was holding its breath, waiting silently for the sun to peak over the horizon once more. The air felt tense, both girls jumping at the slightest creak.
“Okay, enough of that,” Lily said, and opened her phone. “I’ll play an audiobook so we don’t have to try and sleep in silence.” She crawled to the back of the van, and Mary scooted over to sit beside her. “...How about… Lord of the Rings?”
“Sure,” Mary said, looking interestedly at the image of the book’s cover. “I think I’ve only seen the movies.”
Lily gasped, exaggeratedly offended. “This must be amended immediately!”
When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar…
Beside her, Mary’s eyes were slowly drifting closed. Lily turned down the volume a few notches, and curled up among the blankets, facing Mary. Mary slumped down as well, cushioning her head with a hand under her cheek, eyes fluttering softly. Lily exhaled a small breath, smiling a little. As Lily slowly drifted into unconsciousness, Mary shifted her hand the tiniest bit, so their fingers overlapped.
Electric tingles exploded through Lily’s body, and she wasn’t able to fall asleep for a long time.
chapter ten
mary
“Mais ma meilleure ennemie, c’est toi,” Mary hummed, rummaging through her bag for lip gloss. Lily was absorbed in a book beside her, absentmindedly twirling a strand of hair. “Fuis-moi, le pire, c’est toi et moi…”
Lily looked up. “Are you singing in French?” Her cheeks were strangely pink.
“Oh, yeah, I have a song stuck in my head,” Mary replied. Ah, there it was. She uncapped the lip gloss and started putting it on.
“I didn’t know you knew French,” Lily mused.
“I’m not fluent, or anything,” Mary capped the little bottle and put it back in her bag. “Marls is, though, so I tried to learn a little for her a few years ago. So… yeah.” Lily still looked strained, like she had a headache. Mary tilted her water bottle towards Lily, but Lily held up a hand in denial.
“Sirius and his brother are, too!” Lily said, closing her book. “For whatever reason, we know a lot of French people.”
Mary laughed. “Yep.” She glanced down at her phone—the time read 8:34. “So, where are we going today?”
“We’re basically just gonna walk around Bath,” Lily said. She scooted forward, hand briefly brushing Mary’s as she swung her legs into the front seat. “I figured we could maybe get some pastries and ice cream and windowshop a bit?”
“Sounds good,” Mary replied, voice pitching up a little. She coughed. Mary had woken up early in the morning with a dry, scratchy throat, and found that her and Lily’s hands had slipped together sometime in the night. She stayed there for what felt like hours, staring at their twined fingers and barely breathing for fear Lily would wake up. Eventually, she had to get up (as her throat felt like sandpaper) and she took that opportunity to step outside and calm her racing heart.
She stood outside for a few minutes, a cool morning breeze biting against her skin. Eventually, her heart stopped thumping against her ribs. Mary ran a hand through her hair. What was happening to her?
Lily woke up thirty minutes later, looking adorably sleepy and rumpled.
So now they were going to Bath.
God, Mary was in over her head.
Bath was beautiful, so there was that. It looked like a fantastical hodgepodge of Roman and modern architecture, hints of what the city may have looked like hundreds of years ago peeking through the cafes and gift shops. It was a gorgeous day—not too warm and not too cold, the blustery storms of the day before seemingly forgotten. Lily and Mary walked down the cobblestone streets, peeking into shop windows and pointing things out to each other, smiling. Lily was wearing a broad sun hat decorated with sunflowers, shorts with tassels on the edges, and a wide-strapped tank top. She had braided her hair into two long red plaits that hung to her hips, swinging side to side as she walked. Her Polariod camera was slung over one shoulder, and her skin was tinged slightly pink in the sun.
Mary thought she looked stunning.
“Oooh, gelato!” Lily exclaimed.
The girls stepped into the cold restaurant and beheld a rainbow of gelato displayed behind a glass case. Mary pursed her lips, inspecting all the different flavors. Maybe she’d branch out and get something interesting, like honey lavender… or wasabi. On second thought, maybe not.
Lily ordered strawberry from the teddy bear-ish man behind the counter, and Mary eventually decided on cookies and cream. Through a small window that peered into the kitchen, Mary could see a few teenagers (one with cornrows and another with a blue wolf cut) laughing as they moved tubs of gelato from a freezer to the counter.
They paid for their gelato and stepped back out into the sun. Mary took a small bite, smiling. A couple of guys about their age stepped out of the shop behind them, and Mary overheard a snippet of their conversation.
“Did you actually get the wasabi? You need to be studied.”
“Hey, Reg got fucking Earl Grey and you’re not bullying him!”
“Choke.”
Lily looked at Mary, obviously trying not to laugh. The girls not-so-subtly glanced behind them.
“The little one looks like Siri,” Mary whispered.
“I think that’s his brother,” Lily whispered back. “Small world, eh?” Mary nodded, smiling.
“EAT SHIT, BARTY!”
“MAYBE I WILL!”
“OH MY GOD, YOU’RE DISGUSTING!”
Mary and Lily burst out laughing, hurrying away before they noticed. “Yeah, he’s definitely related to Sirius,” Lily giggled, smiling widely. Her eyes glinted in the sun, turning to liquid gold. Mary’s heart tha-thumped loudly in her ears.
Fuck.
~~~
You
5:17
marls
You
5:20
i think i like girls