This morning, when Mr Halvorsen called out our names in assembly — ‘Marla Holloway and Julian Moss as our Head Girl and Boy for this academic year,’ she didn’t even flinch. I expected her to cry. Or laugh. Or roll her eyes at the absurdity of it, like she does at everything. Instead, she just tilted her head and smiled. I did the same, except my palms felt sweaty and I wasn’t sure if I was smiling right. I didn’t want to look like a prat, but also didn’t want to look like I was being dragged to the gallows. I thought about how proud mum would be, of, Aria nudging her Year Nine friends in the crowd, and hoped that would fix things.

But Marla had it down. She waited for me on the stage as I stumbled over the chairs, and wiped my hands on my trousers so I could shake Halvorsen’s hand. She didn’t flinch at the applause, didn’t let her gaze linger on anyone in the crowd too long. I expected her to freak out at her locker, so she didn’t waltz into Philosophy grinning about divine metaphysics, but she didn’t. She just congratulated me with a croissant and texted me at lunchtime: Costumes? My room. Half six.

Which is why I don’t know what to do with the girl currently tearing apart my bag like she’s auditioning for a burglary.

“Don’t you own anything that isn’t football-adjacent?” she mutters, tossing one of my hoodies onto the bed. “It’s Halloween, Julian. We’ve been planning for this.”

I’m sitting on the desk, trying not to laugh. “You’re one to talk. What happened to ‘dressing up is all bourgeois theatre’?”

“It’s Halloween. That’s not bourgeois. And if you weren’t late, we would’ve had time to sort something out.”

“I’m not late. You said half six. It’s half six.”

“It’s half six now. You should’ve been here at twenty past.”

I laugh, dropping my jacket over the chair. “That’s not late.”

“It is when we have a party to get to.”

“Alright, fine. I’m going to get changed.”

“Be quick.”

When I return, she’s perched on her desk, legs crossed at the ankle, unwrapping a packet of fake blood capsules with surgical precision. The costume’s already half-done — white lace dress, pearls, brown curls pinned loosely around her shoulders. There’s glitter on her collarbones, shimmer catching the lamplight.

“You’re late,” she says, without looking up. “Again.”

“I was only five minutes.”

“A man who dares to waste an hour of time has not yet discovered the value of life, Jules.” She holds up a capsule. “Blood?”

I shake my head. “I’ll stick to eyeliner.”

“Coward.” She bites down, lips staining red like a wound. “See? Easy.”

“Yeah. I bet it tastes like shit.”

“You’ll thank me when people take your costume seriously.”

I glance down at my reflection in her mirror. My own costume looks like an afterthought — a velvet waistcoat I found in the costume box, school shirt, a smudge of kohl around my eyes. I look like I got lost on the way to a GCSE production of Jekyll and Hyde.

“You know,” I say, “we don’t have to go. We could just stay in. Watch a bad horrors. I’ve got snacks in my room.”

Her reflection meets mine in the mirror. One eyebrow arches, perfectly sculpted. “You’re Head Boy now, Jules. People will notice if you’re not there.”

“I didn’t even want—” I stop. That’s not true. I did want it. “I completely fudged that interview. How bad was everyone else?”

“Have some faith, Jules. I’ve seen you in debate club. You’re convincing.”

“Convincing implies I’m compensating for something.”

“You don’t have to,” she says lightly, rummaging through a drawer. “You just have to smile. Leave the scheming to me.”

“Comforting,” I mumble. “You didn’t even seem surprised.”

“Surprised about what?”

“Head Girl. It was like you’d already rehearsed it.”

“Maybe I had.” She leans closer to the mirror, applying grey lipstick with steady hands. “If you act like you expect things, people usually give them to you.”

“That’s… bleak.”

“It’s true.” She caps the lipstick. “Besides, we’re a team now. Head Girl, Head Boy. Julian and Marla - it has a ring to it.”

“Like a…dynamic duo?”

She grins. “Sherlock and Watson.”

“That’s boring,” I say, laying back on the bed across from hers. “Every dynamic duo thinks they’re Sherlock and Watson.”

She tosses me a pair of gloves, old lace things that look like they belong in a museum. “Wear these. Trust me.”

I pull them on, mostly to shut her up. They’re too tight, stretching over my fingers like someone else’s skin. “Where’d you get these?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.”

I sit up, staring at her. “Marla.”

“They’re Alice’s. She said I could borrow them. Which is why I’d get off her bed if I were you. You’re going to mess up her whole set-up.”

I sit up, rearrange the cushions behind me. “I feel like a surgeon.”

Her laugh is quiet. “A pretty surgeon.”

“I heard that.”

“It’s Halloween, Jules. I’m playing dress-up. That’s all.”

When we finally head out, the air is sharp, biting against the glitter-sweet perfume clinging to her. She loops her arm through mine, and for a moment it all feels normal — two kids sneaking out after curfew, whispering about pranks. Except now everyone’s watching us.

“Ready?” she asks, as the music from the common room throbs closer.

“For what?”

She squeezes my arm, her nails digging slightly through the velveteen and corduroy. “For people to see us.”