Charlie sighs as they sink back into their chair, the glow of the lamp doing naught to continue illuminating their side of the room, bulb stuttering over their half finished essay like a death knell. Annika stirs in the bed on the far side of the room, her hair catching the weak light and turning her raven hair chocolate. Charlie holds their breath. She doesn't wake, only turns over, facing the window on the far wall and muttering something about giant sea monsters.

Charlie turns on their phone, ignoring the ache in the bottom of their stomach. They know they shouldn't have gone to that Halloween thing, with all that sugar around, all the calories and the carb-heavy beer -- they had one shot of vodka and a cupcake, because Isla had forced them to, designating the cupcakes as chasers, and that was already over their 500cal limit for the day. They check their teeth in the black mirror of their turned off phone screen, teeth still stained Frankenstein green from the icing. They text Alice, ignoring the blinking time at the top of the screen, 2.13am, like a condemnation of their compounding bad social decisions and procrastination that means this stupid English essay is due tomorrow with no extension in sight.

Charlie: hey?

Charlie: u awake?

Alice's pink cursor blinks to life lazily after a few minutes, the 'typing' bubble bouncing up and down for what seems like an age.

Alice: yeah. u good?

Charlie: essay killing me. i think im fucked.

Alice: :( you wanna come over?

Charlie: is marla asleep?

Alice: fuck knows. she disappeared after the party

Charlie: probs w/ julian ;)

Alice: ew.

Alice: come over.

Charlie does, slipping the essay and their pencil case beneath their arm, venturing out into the cold corridor as the door shuts behind them. They pray they haven't woken Annika. She's not a snitch, but she also doesn't play about her beauty rest. The dorm numbers crawl past them, until they reach number 18 and raise their fist to knock before sense gets the better of them. They shoot Alice a text, and almost immediately the door swings open and Alice's face greets them. Her frizzy hair is tamed into a ponytail, and her nightgown is long and floral. She looks sort of like a Victorian ghost, illuminated only by the pale blue light of the laptop next to her.

"Hey," she whisper shouts, raising her arms to hug her guest. The small thin scars that run the length of her forearms are faded now, relics of her fourteenth year when she was stupid and sad.

"Hey," Charlie smiles, flopping down on the bed next to her. "Help me out, Lis. 500 words. Ambition in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein."

Alice smirks, face appearing directly in front of Charlie's. "Oh, shit, Charlie. You didn't think I actually had a clue on how to help you, right?"

Charlie sighs. "I guess I did."

Alice goes to switch on the main light, making Charlie cringe. "Well, I--" she pauses, taking in Charlie's face, their sunken eyes ringed in dark purple. "Do you want a makeup wipe for that?"

"For what?"

"For the..." Alice motions to her own eyes. "Your costume makeup. The eyeshadow."

"I wasn't wearing any eyeshadow," Charlie stutters.

Alice lunged for the bed, taking in their shrunken frame, grasping their wrist. Her fingers cover their entire forearm easily. "Shit, Charlie. Are you okay?"

Charlie thinks if their Halloween costume, half of a group ensemble. Alice had gone as Death, and they had gone as Famine. They could only smile at that.

Sam got the letter from his dad on a Tuesday. It came accompanied with an automated email from reception: 'Samuel Butler, post has arrived for you, please sign with Mrs Riley at the front desk by Friday', to which he obliged on Thursday morning, trudging downstairs after fifth period Economics, his heart hammering in this throat because he had bunked off that class to meet Edie behind the sports shed again, and Mrs Riley was a formidable woman with even more formidable control over the hourly registers. But the exchange went over smoothly, his head bowed as he signed his shitty signature with the shitty biro, and slid the letter into his pocket, the Queen's likeness staring back at him in the form of the two red first-class stamps on the envelope.

Almost like a drug deal.

Almost.

He didn't open it until Saturday, when Mikey was off in town with his mates, and even then only halfway, peeling back the lip of the envelope enough to see the handwriting, the same clipped capitals as always. He didn't need to read the rest. It was always the same, three lines about effort and one line, right at the end, that almost sounded like love if you squinted. Something about how he was lucky not to get sent to military school, or some other bullshit about good old 1970s discipline. He tipped the rest of the contents out though, even if the letter was plucked out and tossed, the heavy rectangular weight that had warranted the two stamps fell into his palm in the shape of a £20 Happy Birthday! gift card to the pub down the road, and a small chocolate bar. It was the fancy Swiss stuff, affixed with a Post-It that read 'Happy 18th my lovely Samuel! Love, Mum xx' in her cheery cursive, bright pink ink gone orange against the yellow post-it.

He sat with it for a while, alone in his room, chocolate softening slowly through the paper. He thought about ringing his mum. He didn't.

By that evening it had curdled into something else, that particular restlessness that settled behind his ribs like silt and needed the current of adrenaline to get moving again. He told himself he was just being friendly when he drifted toward the girl sitting alone by the common room window, a fifth former, small and swallowed by an oversized jumper, clearly hoping nobody would notice her. International, if he had to guess, by her slick new headphones and the way her skirt was pressed and pleated in a shade of brown that screamed rich, trendy Japanese brat.

"You're new," he said, dropping into the sofa beside her, legs spread wide enough that if she moved a hairs breadth, they would be touching. "Sam." He reached over, feigning fiddling with the blinds behind her, bumping into her lightly enough to knock one side of her headphones off of her ear. "What are you listening to? Something sad, I bet. You look sad."

She went rigid, the way small animals do. "I--"

"Sam." Isla was already crossing the room, arms folded. "Leave her alone."

"We're just talking."

"You're not." Isla didn't blink. "Go."

For a second something hit him deep in his ribcage, like being caught out mid-thought, like he'd surfaced from underwater and hadn't realised how far down he'd gone. He almost said something, removing his hand from where it rested on the back of the sofa behind the thin, pale neck of the girl next to him.

Then the old grin slid back into place, and his voice returned to him with a well-oiled ease. "Relax," he said, standing, hands up like he was trying to calm a nervous dog. "God."

He left. Isla sat down where he'd been, comforting the girl. Jinlian.

Chinese, then, he thought, as he crept back to his dorm.