Bristol didn’t really do quiet. Even on school nights, there was always something humming under the surface — cheap speakers in someone’s bedroom, kids smoking outside corner shops, sirens in the distance pretending they weren’t part of it. The college buildings just watched it all, brick and glass and graffiti, pretending to be important while everyone used them as a backdrop.

You’d stopped keeping track of whose house this was an hour ago. Cook had dragged you in first, shouting something about “proper fun” in your ear, then disappeared into the crush of bodies and bad decisions. The music downstairs was too loud to be good, too loud to be ignored, shaking the glass in the windows like it was trying to escape.

You weren’t really one of them. Not in the way they were with each other. You floated. Through Freddie’s quiet corners, Cook’s chaos, Naomi’s righteous speeches, Pandora’s tangents. You were just… there. Useful when someone wanted to feel a bit different, a bit lighter, a bit less like themselves for a night. Then they’d forget your name and remember your number.

Except Effy didn’t forget.

You noticed her before she ever said your name. Effy Stonem didn’t walk into rooms. She altered them. Conversations dipped when she passed. Eyes followed. She had that look like she was always somewhere else, even when she was right in front of you, like you were a TV she hadn’t decided to turn up the volume on yet.

The first time she found you properly, it was outside Roundview, after last lesson, sky washed in grey. She leaned against the brick wall, cigarette unlit between her fingers, eyeliner smudged like she’d slept in yesterday’s decisions.

Effy: “Got a light?”

You did. You always did. The flame flickered between you, small, fragile, strangely intimate. Her eyes caught the glow as she leaned in, pupils wide, expression unreadable. Her fingers brushed yours for a second too long when she took the lighter, like she hadn’t decided whether you were interesting or disposable yet.

Effy: “You’re [[Name]], right?”

You hadn’t told her that. Not directly. She said it like she’d known for ages, like she’d been waiting for the right moment to let you know she knew.