ask to be added/removed from tag list!
status — unchaptered, draft 1
summary — in which jackie is invited, second-hand, to hang out with the elites, and first contact is established.
It was not like she'd swapped me out for them - much the opposite, really. Wren spent most her time attempting to reconcile us all, harness the two opposite-drifting planets of her life and swing them into collision, with no thoughts to the casualties that'd have.
I remember she'd invited me once to hang out with them - “It'll be fun,” she'd said. “You already have so many classes in common! I'll give you Birdie’s number, and she'll text you the time and place.”
I'd been hesitant at first, feigned an excuse of bad weather and a throbbing headache. But Wren had been insistent, her cheeks flushed with excitement as she pressed Birdie’s number into my phone.
“They'll love you,” she said. And something in the way she said it almost sounded like a threat.
I took my phone back, thanked her. Something about Birdie’s number being in my phone, put in there by someone other than Birdie herself, felt wrong to me - disallowed. I would later spend an hour just looking over the numbers in my room, tracing the curves of 2 and the angles of 7 until I had them burned on the inside of my eyelids, easily recited by the tip of my tongue.
Birdie became one of the six numbers I had in my phone at the time. Sandwiched between Anton, an older cousin of mine, and Casey, the last kid at my old school to try and invite me to hang out - a kid so insistent I'd finally let him type his number into my phone, and lied about calling him back sometime.
She was also the only one I ever ended up memorizing.
Even after I got as close to the rest of the elites as I did, even after I'd broken past their defenses and had risen the ranks to get their leader herself into my contacts (Piper got starred, just because), it was Birdie’s number that left its shape, bright and burning, in my mind. Maybe because it was the first one to be given to me, maybe because I thought it'd be the last - either way I found myself murmuring it like a prayer, wielding it against anyone who dared imply I was a nobody.
07700 900826. How'd you like me now, St. Salem?
As it turned out, it wasn't a text I would get from Birdie, but rather a call - somehow both more and less than I'd expected.
It was about a week after Wren had given her number to me. I had been studying in the library at the time, poured over some old Latin text Mrs Walden had had the nerve to imply I wouldn't understand, when to my shock and horror my phone started ringing at full volume. It was a simple ringtone, uncustomized - five short, repeating notes, buzzing like bees insistently until you picked it up - but still enough for the surrounding students to give me dirty looks as it broke the library's blanket of silence.
“No phones allowed,” hissed the librarian, as if I'd somehow not noticed the identical signs stapled all around the library saying the exact same thing. “Take it outside.”
And so, face burning, phone buzzing, I had.
“Hi,” Birdie said the moment I answered. There was some sort of noise in the background, blurring her voice. I strained to listen.
“Catherine says you're to hang out with us.”
“Well,” I said stupidly, taking a bit too long to piece together that Wren and Catherine were one and the same, “if you'll have me.”
“Birdie, are you gonna be getting some breadcrumbs or what?” someone said in the background. Laughter.
“No,” Birdie said. She didn't say anything else, didn't specify her order, but someone else picked up for her -
“A hot chocolate, double whipped cream.”
“Just as whipped as she's got you,” the earlier person howled. More laughter, this time more forced. By now I had pieced the two to be Piper and Beth.
“We're at Somerset cafe,” Birdie said, again to me. I nodded, then realized she couldn't see it.
A pause, and a whisper in the background I couldn't quite make out.
“Florence says not to be late.”
She hung up. Slowly, almost automatically, I began to look up directions to Somerset cafe, which I had only ever heard about and never actually been to.
Only now telling this story again has it occurred to me I could have simply asked her for directions - and even now I know I wouldn't have.
Something about the finality in Birdie’s tone, the clipped off consonants and ease with which she let me hear the background crowd she was with, made me feel almost like this was the first part of some large test. Like she knew of my ignorance, and had specifically chosen to play off it. A test to my character - to my resolve.
So you want to hang out with us, the location implied. Wren has opened the door. The rest is now up to you.
The directions came a minute later, just as it started snowing. I didn't hesitate. I went to my room, and pulled on my boots.
