I used to think liking someone was supposed to feel simple.

You see them. Your stomach flips. You tell your friends. They squeal. There’s a corridor moment, maybe a dance, maybe a hand brushed under a table.

No one tells you what it’s like when it feels like standing on a shoreline and realising the tide is coming in from two different directions.

I noticed Emily before I ever understood that I was noticing her.

Not because she was the prettiest girl in the room — she isn’t, not in the obvious way St Anne’s tends to reward. She doesn’t float down corridors. She doesn’t perform serenity. She slouches. She chews the inside of her cheek when she’s thinking. Her hair frizzes in the damp and she never quite tames it. When she reads in chapel, her voice sometimes catches on the long words and she clears her throat, annoyed at herself. But she means everything she says.

That’s the difference.

At St Anne’s, meaning things is rare. Most of us are curating ourselves. Even our sincerity is rehearsed.

Emily doesn’t rehearse.

The first time she spoke to me properly, I had just embarrassed myself in Theology by arguing too hard about predestination. My voice went sharp. Defensive. I could feel the scholarship kid in me bristling. After class, I was stuffing books into my bag too quickly when she said, “You don’t have to sound clever all the time.”

I froze.

She wasn’t mocking me. She wasn’t superior. She just looked… certain.

“You are clever,” she added. “It’s different.”

No one had ever said that to me like that. Without envy. Without agenda.

I didn’t know what to do with the gentleness of it.

Emily doesn’t belong to places the way some girls do. She doesn’t glide through them. She questions them. She forgets responses in Mass and rolls her eyes at herself. She stays behind after chapel not because she has to, but because she wants to sit in the quiet and see if it’s real.

She once told me, “If I’m going to believe something, I need it to survive scrutiny.”

I think that’s when it shifted.

Because I recognised myself in that.

And then there’s Marla.

Marla doesn’t belong to places. Places bend to fit her in.

The first time I noticed her, she was late to chapel and didn’t apologise. She slipped into the pew like it was reserved for her. Her blazer wasn’t regulation, it was a beat up leather jacket with a collar that just about passed of a teacher didn't look too closely.

Marla looks like she’s constantly resisting something invisible.

She sat next to me one afternoon when Emily had prefect duties. She leaned back, stretched her legs too far into the aisle, and whispered, “Do you think God prefers Latin because it so bording? I'd submit to any religion of it droned on at me like this every day.”

I choked trying not to laugh.

She grinned at me like we’d already decided to be co-conspirators.

That’s the thing about Marla: she makes everything feel like a shared rebellion. Even silence.

With her, I feel electric. Slightly reckless. She’ll brush against my arm and it feels intentional, even if it isn’t. She’ll look at me during a hymn and raise one eyebrow like she’s daring me to admit we both think something is absurd.

Emily once told a teacher she disagreed with him. Not cleverly. Not theatrically. Just plainly. “I don’t think that’s true,” she said, and then explained why. Afterwards, I asked if she was scared.

“Of being wrong?” she said. “Always. Of saying what I think? Less and less.”

Marla would have handled it differently. She would have turned it into spectacle. A raised eyebrow. A cutting aside. She’d win the room, even if she lost the point.

I admire both of them.

That’s the problem.

Emily steadies me.

Marla does the opposite.

And I don’t know what that says about me that I need both.

Sometimes I try to be sensible about it.

I tell myself this is just admiration. That St Anne’s is intense, and intensity turns ordinary feelings into dramatic ones. I tell myself I’m projecting.

But then there are moments.

There was a day in October when the three of us were in the courtyard. Emily was explaining something about metaphors. Marla was pretending not to listen. I was standing between them, aware in a way that felt almost physical that I wanted them both looking at me at once.

It’s not that I want to choose.

It’s that I don’t understand what the choice even is.

Emily feels like becoming.

Marla feels like burning.

And here is the part I don’t say out loud: sometimes I think they see each other more clearly than they see me.

There are looks that pass between them. Not romantic — at least I don’t think so. Something sharper. Competitive. Curious. As if they’re both aware of the same fault line and waiting to see who slips first.

I don’t know if I am the fault line.

At home, none of this has language. At home, I am the responsible one. The example. The girl who prays properly and studies properly and will make it all worth it. In the chapel at school, the incense hangs thick and deliberate. At the centre near home, worship is louder, looser, imperfect. In both places, I kneel and try to work out whether what I’m feeling is temptation or simply clarity.

There is no vocabulary there for the way my chest tightens when Emily looks at me like I’ve said something true. Or the way Marla’s smile can undo an entire day.

I don’t feel wicked.

I feel exposed.

Because if Emily ever knew, she would want honesty.

And if Marla ever knew, she would want heat.

I’m not sure I can survive either demand.

There are moments when I imagine telling Emily first. She would go quiet. She would ask questions. She would make sure she understood before she reacted.

I imagine telling Marla and her laughing softly, stepping closer, saying, “I wondered how long it would take you.”

One of those futures feels grounding.

The other feels like falling.

And I am fifteen, and ambitious, and trying very hard to be good.

But when Emily challenges me, I feel stronger.

And when Marla chooses me, I feel incandescent.

I don’t know yet whether that makes me divided — or simply honest enough to admit I want both.

Year Twelve feels different in ways no one explains.

The corridors are the same stone, the chapel still smells of incense and polish, the bells still divide the day into obedient pieces — but the air has shifted. We are closer to something. Exams. Adulthood. Judgment.

Or maybe just exposure.

I walk into chapel now without looking lost. I know the rhythm of the place. When to stand. When to kneel. When to lower my eyes so it looks like contemplation instead of calculation. That’s the thing about staying somewhere long enough: you learn the choreography. I catch my reflection in the darkened window before Mass begins. Blazer neat. Tie straight. Expression composed. If someone took a photograph, it would read as confidence. Inside, I am still arguing. Emily slides into the pew beside me. She doesn’t whisper hello anymore; she just nudges her knee against mine, brief and grounding. She smells faintly of laundry powder and something citrus. Her hair is longer this year, less controlled. She’s stopped pretending to care if it curls too much.

“You look tired,” she murmurs.

“I’m not,” I say automatically.

She gives me that look — the one that waits.

I exhale. “I revised until one.”

“You don’t have to win everything,” she says softly.

“I’m not trying to win.”

She raises an eyebrow.

We both know that’s a lie.

In Year Twelve, the competition is less obvious but more vicious. University predictions. Leadership roles. Who will be Head Girl. Who will get Oxbridge interviews. The air hums with it.

I want to be excellent. Not for applause — I tell myself that — but because excellence feels like safety. Like proof that I deserve the space I take up here.

Emily wants to be true.

That’s the difference.

She still challenges teachers when she thinks they’re wrong. She still refuses to laugh at jokes that aren’t funny. She hasn’t softened herself for approval.

Last week in Theology, she said, “Faith shouldn’t be about fear,” and the room went very quiet.

Afterwards, I asked if she worried about consequences.

“For what?” she said. “Thinking?”

I envy that.

Marla arrives late to Mass again.

She slips into the row behind us, the movement deliberate, disruptive in the smallest possible way. I don’t turn around immediately. I don’t have to. I can feel her there. That awareness hasn’t faded with time. If anything, it’s sharpened. When we stand for the Gospel, I catch her reflection in the brass of the candle stand. She’s watching the altar with an expression I can’t read. Not mocking. Not reverent.Studying. Marla in Year Twelve is more contained than she used to be. The edges are still there, but they’re hidden better. She’s learned how to speak in a tone teachers approve of. How to argue without looking insolent. It’s almost more dangerous.

After Mass, she falls into step beside me as if it’s inevitable.

“You look holy this morning,” she says lightly.

Emily snorts before I can respond. “She looks exhausted.”

“Exhaustion is very martyr-chic,” Marla replies.

I roll my eyes, but my pulse has already shifted.

The three of us walk across the courtyard. Leaves stick to the damp stone. Sixth Formers cluster in careful groups, conversations about personal statements drifting on the cold air.

“You’ve sent yours off?” Marla asks me.

“Draft,” I say.

“Of course it is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” she says, smiling faintly, “you’ve been planning your life since Year Nine.”

She’s not wrong.

At home, my mother asks about universities like she’s discussing a pilgrimage. Which ones are prestigious. Which ones are safe. Which ones are too far.

At school, the list is unspoken but obvious.

Emily hasn’t finalised hers either. She’s considering courses no one expects — philosophy, maybe theology. Something impractical. Something that requires belief in a different kind of future.

“You’re allowed to choose something you love,” she told me once.

“I do love it,” I said, too quickly.

She watched me carefully. “Do you?”

I changed the subject.

There are moments now when the tension between us feels almost visible.

In English last week, we were discussing desire in a novel. No one wanted to be the first to say anything honest. Marla broke the silence.

“Desire is rarely symmetrical,” she said. “That’s why it’s interesting.”

Her eyes flicked to mine for half a second too long.

Emily responded before I could breathe. “Or dangerous.”

The teacher smiled like this was intellectual sparring.

It wasn’t.

After class, Emily walked with me in silence until we reached the stairs.

“You don’t have to let her turn everything into theatre,” she said finally.

“I’m not,” I replied.

“Hannah.” Not accusing. Just steady.

“She’s not always performing,” I said, more sharply than I meant to.

Emily’s expression didn’t change. “I didn’t say she was.”

The worst part is that she’s right sometimes.

Marla performs. She calibrates rooms. She knows how to hold attention like it’s currency. But she’s also the one who stayed with me on the chapel steps last month when I got my first predicted grade back lower than I’d hoped. She didn’t joke. She didn’t dramatise it.

She just said, “You’re not a letter.”

And for once, I believed her.

Year Twelve is about narrowing.

Subjects narrow. Futures narrow. Friendships, too. People pair off in ways that feel strategic as much as emotional. Study partners. Application allies. Couples. I am aware of how it looks — the three of us, always orbiting each other. Whispers have started. Not loud. Just enough. I should step back. Create distance. Make it simpler. Instead, I find myself pulled tighter into the triangle. Emily and I spend late evenings in the library, notes spread out, arguing about arguments. Our knees brush under the table and neither of us moves. Marla texts me at midnight with something outrageous she’s read, or a single line: Are you awake?

I always am.

At home over half term, my mother said, “You seem older.”

“I am older,” I replied.

“That’s not what I mean.”

I didn’t ask what she did mean.

Because I think I know.

I am less certain. Less contained. The lines I used to draw around myself — good daughter, good student, good girl — are blurring at the edges.

And in their place is something more complicated.

I want achievement. I want authenticity. I want intensity.

Emily offers the second.

Marla offers the third.

And I am trying to build a life sturdy enough to contain all three without collapsing.

Tonight, I sit at my desk in the Sixth Form common room, personal statement open in front of me.

I am passionate about—

I stop.

The word looks different now.

Across the room, Emily is frowning at a book, pen tucked behind her ear. She catches my eye and smiles — small, unperformed. On the sofa by the window, Marla is mid-story, everyone leaning in. Two different gravitational pulls. I don’t know yet which one will shape me more. But I know this: whatever I choose — it won’t be accidental anymore.

Year Twelve doesn’t allow for accidents.

It demands intention.

And for the first time, I am beginning to understand that the most terrifying choice might not be between Emily and Marla.

It might be deciding which version of myself I am brave enough to become.