A woeful return
After the months prolonged recess, I was back.
Stepping in the front lawn of Nevermore, I can’t quite describe what I was feeling. Certainly not excitement, I’m no person to feel such strong emotions, especially not about this place, despite the small portion of fondness I’ve grown for it.
After all, she was the centerpiece of a serial murder case and protagonist in all the events that went down last year and took place here.
As I look around scanning for familiar faces there are none which please me, as the average reader must’ve already induced, I was looking for Enid.
After quickly pacing my way to Ophelia Hall, still no sign of the blonde. She was nowhere to be seen, but not for long, as I’m taken aback by the heavy hall door being pushed by a black haired man. He composed himself tall, before looking around, probably as intrigued by my roommate’s absence as I was.
‘’Good morning, my name’s Mortimer, I’m your new botanics teacher. Principal Amelyne asked me to notify all students of the conference being held after class in the common area.’’ He announced before asking me if I had any questions. I quickly thanked him and resumed setting my stuff back down.
‘’Mortimer, huh.’’ I thought to myself, ‘’Latin for dead sea, interesting.’’ And then I heard a commotion outside, caused by a familiar voice.
‘’Oh! Sorry!’’ Enid exclaimed as she bumped into Mortimer on his way out, he sounded unfazed as he gave her the same speech he had given Wednesday, repeating word for word with the same intonation like he was some kind of machine. The blonde pushed the heavy door, balancing with all her trunks and bags as she scoffed, ‘’The new teacher is sooo boring! Yoko already told me all about him on our group chat but oh! Is he boring in person!’’. Wednesday made her way through the room somewhat hurriedly to help her companion with her things, as the other girl had done for her when she was leaving in the previous semester.
‘’Roomie!’’ The blonde exclaimed, stretching out her arms and softly lifting her heels off the ground in a jumping motion, which she did whenever she was excited, ‘’Is hugging our thing now?’’ She smiled widely.
Right. Wednesday had hugged her. She wasn’t a person to let herself get embraced like that. But Enid had saved her life, and she looked like she was gonna fall apart if not for Wednesday holding her still. Enid was an exception for everything so far, being the only person she could trust completely during the murder mystery, being the only person she ever missed and the only person she ever publicly made a display of affection for.
‘’Yes, I suppose hugging is our thing now.’’ She answered.
Enid hugged her, and it was awkward. Or at least Wednesday felt awkward. She took in the blonde’s scent, it was very sweet and… different than it was before, the smaller girl wondered if it had to do with her wolfing out. She wondered if Enid thought about her scent, how did she smell? People never got close enough to feel her scent, but Enid did, and she was a werewolf, she probably knew her scents.
The other girl broke their embrace, and they stared at each other for a minute, and Wednesday felt awkward again.
‘’Did Thing miss me?’’ Enid asked, a serene tone in her voice.
Wednesday felt embarrassed instead.
‘’He did.’’
The day went by uninterestingly for Wednesday, on contrary to Enid who was excited by everything, like a big dog she was. She was chipper, during botanics class Wednesday had a break from all the excitement though, due to Enid's displeasure with the new teacher, whom Wednesday thought was fine.
She was amused by the blonde’s silent judgment and revolted facial expressions, if only she didn’t have to look all the way back to get a glance at her classmate, she considered changing seats, only before looking back to her desk and being confronted by Xavier’s doubtful look.
‘’You do look at her a lot huh.’’ he scoffed. Wednesday did not have the patience to deal with him today, he had the emotional maturity of a child. A very immature child.
She couldn’t help but wonder if all men acted like this, looking back at Tyler and his similar manners, it annoyed her even more.
After class was over, Enid took off to be with Ajax. Wednesday was sure they missed each other, and their makeout sessions, or whatever couples did when they were alone. Wednesday took off to the common area instead, following Mortimer’s instructions intent on attending the conference, which was held by their new principal, Amelyne.
Amelyne was lovely, she wasn’t as tall as Weems, but she certainly loomed over Wednesday. She was a dark skinned woman and wore a black suit with a red tie, a necklace giving away her siren nature. She had a honeyed but firm voice, perfectly balanced as to establish authority and warn students she’s not an enemy at the same time. She came across as a balanced and accomplished person. Wednesday had trouble reading into her contrarily to other people, who were like an open book to the girl, certainly rising a challenge. She made no important announcements, the other students must’ve sensed she wouldn’t, as the crowd was scarce.
After going back to her dorm, she tried making use of the alone hours at her supposed writing time, but she had finished her novel a month ago and was left with a small list of things to do, like working on improving her art. She had picked up painting during break.
By the time Enid was back, Wednesday was out on the balcony with her cello.
‘’Hey roomie, I’m back…’’ Enid said out loud, not sure if Wednesday was in their dorm before she heard the cello outside.
She strolled over to the window and climbed her way out of it.
‘’I missed you playing cello.’’ She mentioned.
Wednesday acknowledged her and put the cello down. They shared a moment, like they did months prior when her roommate opened up about not being able to wolf out, but no one was saying anything now, or crying. Still Wednesday was curious.
‘’Did you have fun with Ajax?’’ The silence was broken by Wednesday.
Enid seemed surprised, ‘’Yeah, I guess.’’ She answered, but the usual jolly tone was missing from her voice.
And with that they fell back into silence, Wednesday not satisfied with the blonde’s answer, she was intrigued to ask more, but it would seem invasive. Why did she care so much about what her friend and her ‘’boyfriend’’ did together? Were they even dating? They didn’t even seem to like each other, as far as Wednesday knew what ‘’liking someone’’ meant. She had never experienced it, and she expected and hoped never to, she didn’t want to end up like her parents, not being able to live without someone. Do high school flings always live up to marriages like this?
It bothered her, thinking about Enid being married to Ajax. Maybe because some small part of her thought that they would share a dorm forever, she often forgot her years at Nevermore were counted and few.
‘’Whatcha thinkin about?’’ Enid turned to her.
She did not know what to answer. ‘Just thinking about how I don’t like the idea of you being married’ didn’t seem like a good answer. So she settled for ‘’Nothing worth sharing.’’. It was true. And Enid nodded, reestablishing the comfortable silence between them.
Wednesday liked having Enid around, even if it was to just sit on a balcony under a cloudy sky together.
As it was just a quarter past 10PM, they left the dorm to grab dinner together. To Wednesday’s pleasure, they didn’t bump into anyone unpleasant on their way. They exchanged waves with Bianca and her servants - I mean, friends - but no further interaction happened. Wednesday dined while Enid filled her in on all the gossip from the first day of class, mostly frugal things only teenagers would care about, but she cared about it, because Enid did.
The evening went quite uneventful, until her little black box rang. She pulled the phone out of her pocket, cursing at herself for even leaving it in there and letting it ruin her night.
It was a text from the same number who texted her last year, consisting of a picture of her and Enid sitting at that very table, she looked around to find no one looking suspicious, a lot of teens were on their phones, and no one was paying particular attention to her.
‘’Finish your food and let’s leave quickly.’’ She told Enid.
‘’I’m already finished. What’s up? Did something happen?’’ The blue eyed girl changed into a concerned expression, frowning her eyebrows and following Wednesday as she got up and left in a rush.
‘’Last semester Xavier gifted me a phone.’’ Wednesday pulled it out of her pocket, showing it to Enid.
‘’And you didn’t give me your number?!?’’ The blonde protested frustratingly.
‘’And I started getting texts from someone, probably a stalker, most of them are pictures. My main suspect would be Xavier since he’s the one who gave me the phone and the SIM number card.’’ The black haired girl continued. ‘’But now I see it couldn’t be him, since I changed my number and this person is still texting me.’’
‘’So it seems you have another mystery on your hands.’’ Enid concluded before whimpering, ‘oh no’. Given how the last mystery strained their relationship, she tried calming herself down. Wednesday was a different person now, more human, somehow.
Enid watched as Wednesday installed heavy duty locks on all entrances to their dorm, the girl never failed to amaze her, with her endless inventory of useful tools and the mysteriousness as to why she had them.
‘’These are going to stay locked at night and when we’re both out of the dorm, only.’’ Wednesday explained.
‘’Maybe you should warn Amelyne about this, you got into trouble for hiding things from Weems last time, remember?’’ Enid regretted saying those words as soon as they had left her mouth.
‘’No, she can’t be trusted.’’ Wednesday tensed up.
‘’Are you sure?’’ Enid wanted to hide, she felt like she had made her roommate angry even though she suggested the most logical solution, but she didn’t want to fight again, so she left it alone.
She watched as Wednesday paced around her side of the dorm deep in thought, pulling her notebook into her lap and logging into Tumblr, no one used Tumblr anymore, that’s why it was the perfect place for a discrete blog… aaand she needed The Sims 4 Custom Content, and all the good creators were there. She missed Wednesday so much during break that she recreated their dorm on Sims 4. She tried recreating both of them, but much to her dismay, the kind of clothes Wednesday wore were mostly behind paywalls. She circled her way around it, though.
She would spend weeks playing in their world, wondering if the other girl missed her too. Their sims spent every minute together, even at school, and Enid would get sad if they fought. That sims world was the only thing distracting her from her overbearing mother, who was hellbent on cuffing her to any boy who would take her. Her mom would trick her into going on dates and lie about her interest to the boys she met, funnily enough, she never put any pressure on her brothers to find a mate.
Enid was sure that as soon as she was out of highschool her mom would begin pestering her about grandchildren. She shook off the thought, turning her attention back to her laptop, then to Wednesday. The girl seemed to be tucking herself in bed, which made sense considering it was past 11PM and Addams had a healthy sleeping schedule.
The other girl was kind of like a mystery to her, sometimes she could swear that Wednesday was soft on her, like catching a glance of her holding back a smile or when Wednesday gave her less piercing stares than she did for other people. Or of course, when she let Enid hug her. Everyone was scared of her, but Enid wasn’t, she was more like a scaredy dog than the heartless monster everyone believes her to be.
‘Maybe I should go to sleep too or I’ll disturb her’ Enid thought to herself, shutting off her laptop and quickly switching into pajamas, she was thankful for the chilly weather that loomed yearlong over Nevermore, as her favorite thing ever was to be under cozy blankets wearing fuzzy pjs. She easily relaxed on her bed, slightly jumping as Wednesday broke the silence.
‘’Goodnight Sinclair.’’
‘’Goodnight Weds.’’