Sensus Supra: The New Girl - C.2

***Part 2 of 14. Alicia makes her first college acquaintances. Not all nice.***

Alicia’s room was bigger than she’d imagined, which was one bonus. It had a vintage charm, with exposed stone walls and a grand arched window, the glass in iron diamonds. There were two big wardrobes and a free-standing ceramic sink, and a fluffy rug separated two single beds. Alicia’s suitcases had been left at the foot of one of them.

The aggressive girl was sitting on one the other.

Her roommate was white with blonde hair tied in a ponytail, a slim but muscular physique, and a face that would’ve been beautiful if she wasn’t scowling. Smooth skin, big eyes, a sharp nose, but shadows under those eyes from the way she glared. She was wearing grey gym shorts and a pink and yellow striped top that showed off her solid upper arms (this girl worked out!) and had one knee tucked up on the bed, her other foot, bare, dangling above the floor. She had a book open but Alicia suspected she wasn’t reading it. She had been waiting to pounce.

Indeed, the girl had threatened to eat her.

“Um,” Alicia said, trying to sound friendly, hoping it was just a dark joke. “My name’s Alicia, pleased to meet you.” She shuffled closer and held up a hand to shake. The girl looked at it with disgust. “I just flew up from Bristol. What’s your name?”

The girl shook her head slowly as if she couldn’t believe Alicia’s audacity, then looked back to her book. Alicia dropped her hand and scanned about; there was a mess of notepaper on the floor around the girl’s bed, and discarded clothes beyond it, her side of the room generally untidy. A name headed some of the notes: Bayley.

“You know people actually die out here, don’t you?” the girl, Bayley, said without looking up. “The things people are scared of back home, they’re true. The girl who was here before you, who slept in that bed? She disappeared only last week. She didn’t have her button on her when she changed size, see, so her Buddy was never alerted. But a lot of the time, girls’ Buddies show up to an alert and can’t find the girl anyway. It can take ten or twenty minutes to cross the school. A lot can happy to a tiny person in that time.”

Bayley looked up darkly, suggesting this was a warning.

Alicia bit her lip. She knew that if you let things start badly, that’s how they were likely to continue, and she couldn’t let her roommate intimidate her. She said, “Well, good thing I’m not tiny. When I got the Hiccups last week, I grew 12ft tall.”

“Good for you,” Bayley sneered. “Past changes don’t mean anything, and when you get really nervous, and homesick and scared, you’re more likely to shrink, you know?” Bayley looked her up and down. “A waif like you, I reckon you’ll barely last a week. Probably drop right down to an inch or two. Snack size.”

“What’s your problem?” Alicia demanded, steeling up. Her hands had formed fists, which Bayley looked at and smiled. She was trying to get a rise. Alicia took a deep breath. “You want to provoke me into changing size? Why?”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Bayley said. “I just want it clear who’s in charge.”

“In charge of what?” Alicia cried back. “This is our room, we’re supposed to –”

“My room,” Bayley corrected, standing. She was the same height as Alicia, coming eye-to-eye with her, and had a big chest. Her figure overall, damn her, was perfect, athletic, enviable. “This is my room and you’re intruding.”

“I didn’t ask to be put here,” Alicia replied, teeth gritted. “But we’re adults, aren’t we? You don’t even know me.”

Bayley cocked an eyebrow, then nodded to Alicia’s battered suitcases. “I see you brought half your house with you, most of which will not fit in here. And you came in here boasting about reaching 12ft tall, big whoop. I don’t want to know you, new girl. That’s the point.”

She shoved a shoulder into Alicia as she barged past to leave the room, and was gone before Alicia could muster a response. The whole exchange had been so quick and irrational, she was momentarily speechless, while at the same time brimming with outrage. It was so unfair!

But she squeezed her eyes closed. She couldn’t let the emotion overcome her, because even if everything else Bayley said was mad, the part about people changing size when they were upset was true. They didn’t know much about Xm-96 and the Hiccups, but they did know it was affected by emotions. Alicia exhaled, and heard her own breath was ragged and strained, the encounter leaving her even more stressed than she’d realised. She bit back tears: she was thousands of miles from home, with no one to turn to and no way back, and she had been thrown into a room with a crazy girl.

No, she told herself, it was too soon to despair. Maybe it was a mistake and Bayley would calm down, once she’d got over the initial surprise. Or at worst, she could go to Principal Muir and request a different room. In the meantime, she had to focus on the school’s good qualities. She was living in a fantastic castle and she didn’t have to worry about work or food or anything. Topper had even said something about a swimming pool. Swallowing her worries, Alicia gathered herself and left the room to explore.

She quickly got lost.

There were a lot of corridors in St Fiacre’s that all looked similar: dark, stony and dotted with doors and off-shoots. The stairs went up and down all over the place, and the only signs were labels on the doors. For a while, Alicia passed numbered rooms and toilets, until she took a narrow spiral staircase down and heard voices down the corridor. She hurried towards the sound and entered a large common room. There were chairs lined along one wall, with a TV, and table tennis and snooker tables on the other side. About a dozen young women were scattered through the room in small groups, some playing games, others just talking.

Thankfully, Alicia saw no sign of Bayley, but there was no sign of Topper, either, the only other person she knew. A few girls saw her but when she tried to catch their eye they looked away. The closest group were closed off, having gathered their chairs in a tight circle, and the next one on, halfway across the room, had their heads down, uninviting. Alicia scratched one arm with the other as she stood uncertainly, feeling like the last girl picked for a sports team.

“Watcha!” a voice said behind her and Alicia quickly stepped aside, realising she was blocking the door. Two girls came in, continuing a conversation that had them laughing, one a shorter girl in a denim jacket and jeans with messy, straw-like hair, and the other a girl with a full figure, brown shoulder-length hair and a loose dotted dress.

“– saying I don’t see how calculating the length of triangles is gonna be any use,” the denim girl was saying, “when I’m just waiting to Hiccup.”

“That’s because you’re too dense to calculate the length of triangles,” the plump girl replied.

“You’re calling me dense, Lottie? You?” The denim girl laughed and her friend, Lottie, smiled. It seemed harsh, on both accounts, but they were just teasing, so Alicia smiled too. The pair were stood only a few metres from Alicia, and the denim one caught her staring. “Oi. Who’s the new girl?”

Alicia straightened herself up and put on a hopeful smile. “Um. Alicia. I just got here –”

“And figured you’d start out by eavesdropping on a private conversation?”

Alicia wiped off the smile, stiffening for a dreadful moment as both girls glared at her. Then the denim girl’s face broke into a big, jagged-toothed grin.

“Oh, your face!” she laughed. “Lighten up, Alicia. Welcome to St Fiacre’s.”

She pushed Lottie’s shoulder and the pair turned to continue into the room, leaving her behind. Alicia rushed after them – they’d acknowledged her, that was a start. She said, “I don’t know anyone here.”

The pair stopped and both frowned at her.

“Yeah,” Lottie said. “You just got here. We heard that.”

“I mean,” Alicia continued hesitantly. “Could I – would it be alright if –”

“Bloody hell if you’re not the meekest thing,” Lottie replied. “You want to sit with us? Come on over. I’m Lottie, this is Cian. We got room for one more.”

Alicia grinned with deep relief, and happily followed as they continued to some empty seats. Some of the other girls had noticed her now, she realised; getting curious now they realised she was capable of making friends.

“It’s your funeral, of course,” the denim girl, Cian, said. “Not many people like us, and now they won’t like you either.”

“If they’re like my roommate,” Alicia replied, “they won’t like me anyway.”

Cian raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Who’ve they put you in with?”

“Someone called Bayley. I didn’t catch her last name.”

“Bayley Lynch?” Cian blew out an impressed whistle. “They didn’t give you a chance. She is a Grade A Bitch, her and her whole gang of athletes. Think because they’re pretty and can run down a hall without breaking a sweat they’re better than the rest of us.”

“We call them the Track Girls,” Lottie volunteered, pulling out a chair and sitting.

“You’ll wanna get in early with her,” Cian warned, sitting down too, and inviting Alicia to do the same. “Like, smother her with a pillow tonight or push her down some stairs. At the very least, punch her. Show her you can’t be pushed around, or they’ll be on your case every time they see you.”

“Why?” Alicia said. “What’s wrong with them?”

“We’re stuck in a strange school with nothing to do,” Lottie said. “People amuse themselves by picking on each other. Same as it is everywhere. You’ve been to school before, right?”

Alicia frowned. “Of course.”

“Way of the world,” Cian sighed. “And only made worse by the Hiccups. We’re all told that once you change size, you’re going to lose at least a bit of your mind, so a lot of girls just get in there early. Self-fulfilling prophecy; half the girls that grow and get angry were already massive bitches.”

“Grow and get angry?” Alicia said. “Is it bad here? Dangerous?”

“Hell yes,” Cian said, but laughed as she did. Because it was so obvious, or because part of her enjoyed this truth? “It’s bad enough you have girls messing with each other by pissing in your shampoo or sneaking spiders in your bed, but when one of the girls is suddenly twenty times bigger than the other.” Cian shook her head. “There’s more than a few people in here I’d step on given the chance, I can tell you that.”

Alicia smiled, hardly taking Cian’s tone seriously, but she saw Lottie’s expression. “What, really?”

“Sometimes,” Lottie said, with a graver voice, “it’s survival of the biggest in here. And it’s not just girls with feuds. Size-changing brings funny urges. Little Bess Barker, her best friend shrank and you know what she did?”

“No . . .”

“Ate her, of course,” Cian put in, with the delight of recounting a fun ghost story. She mimicked the motions as she explained: “Snatched her up, stared at her all hungrily them, nom!” Cian thrust her hand to her mouth. “Gobbled her down. And she’s not the only one. This bloody spore hasn’t just got us flipping sizes all over the place, it’s made us funny in the head. Gives you a weird appetite, and if it’s not eating it’s other things.”

“The Track Girls kept hold of one girl who shrank for a month before they got found out,” Lottie said. “They were sharing her around, playing with her like a . . .well, you can imagine. Couple of hundred horny young women in this building, very few ways to release your frustration.”

“No,” Alicia said again with disbelief. “You’re not serious.”

“Wait and see,” Cian smirked, so cheeky it was hard to be sure if she was serious. Either it was a joke, or the girl found the whole horrible situation wildly entertaining.

Alicia had to protest: “The school wouldn’t let that sort of thing keep happening, surely. And the rumours of disappearances –”

“Not rumours, all true.” Cian nodded quickly. “The school is as big a problem as the likes of the Track Girls. Half the time they turn a blind eye; like they want us to fight. And if you go over to the giant side, they’re not well taken care of there. That’s why you want to show Bayley you’re not going to take her shit, not for a second. You put her in her place as soon as possible, because no one else is gonna help you. This evening, I’d say. You’ve got an advantage that most haven’t, because you’ll get her alone. They run around like a damn pack, otherwise.”

Alicia nodded obediently, though not sure what she could do; Bayley looked a lot stronger than her. Was Cian only encouraging towards an arse-kicking? Surely she’d do better to talk to someone in charge; the college couldn’t be that irresponsible, could they?

“You into girls or guys?” Lottie asked, changing the subject. Alicia gave her a questioning look. “Or both? Makes life easier if you’re into girls. There’s four male teachers here and only two of them you’d want to go anywhere near. Then there’s about a dozen guys in the closest town.”

“Which is thirty miles away, if you’re wondering,” Cian added.

“Girls here get frustrated,” Lottie continued. “Most of us don’t have anyone waiting back home, so we don’t even have long-distance flings going for us. Did you leave a boyfriend behind?”

Alicia shook her head, and slowly they moved into more ordinary conversation, as the topics of size-changing horrors fell away. Her new friends joked about who they’d left behind: a pathetic nerd, in Cian’s case, and an admittedly boring girl in Lottie’s. Both their families had disowned them, and Alicia wondered if hers had too, even if they hadn’t come out and said it. They continued to talk about where other notable girls in the college were from: one had allegedly been training to be an astronaut; one of Bayley’s friends was an Olympic running hopeful; and there was an actress from France. That took them onto talking about different school subjects, and Cian spoke of Mr Havish, the humanities teacher, who she would definitely use as a sex toy.

Before Alicia knew it, hours had passed and they were mustered to the dinner hall, for trays of sloppy chilli, and there she saw Bayley again, glowering at her, whispering to exactly the sort of pack of girls Alicia had imagined. Beautiful, sporty, angry young woman unified in irrational hatred for Alicia.

Cian whispered, on seeing their dirty looks, “You see. Get her alone, put her in her place, before it goes any further.”

Alicia merely nodded, hairs tingling at the thought that there was conflict in her immediate future. But they brushed over it and continued the meal in relative peace. Towards the end of it, Alicia spotted Topper with another girl and gave her a wave. Topper smirked back, nodding with satisfaction to see that Alicia had company. As though that satisfied her well enough, she didn’t come over and say hi, but went across to a different table. Alicia hung her head, guessing that meant her Buddy didn’t see much call to do any more Buddying now.

Never mind, she had a good meal with Cian and Lottie before heading to a different recreation room, this one with a piano. One of the girls played while they kept chatting. Cian and Lottie promised to show Alicia around the next day, saying Fiacre’s was a maze that took some learning, but for the time being they had work to do, assignments due soon, and Alicia was tired anyway. They took her back up to her corridor and hugged goodbyes, then left her to rest. But Alicia reached her door with mounting dread. It had turned out to be a good afternoon, in the end, and she could actually see herself being happy here, with these quick friends. Yet a big problem waited in the form of Bayley.

She’d try talking to her like an adult, she decided. Discuss their differences, find some common ground, something. And, failing that, well, she had encountered bullies before and knew how to stand up for herself.

But when she opened the door, she found the one advantage Cian promised was gone. Bayley was sitting in the room with three other girls, and they all glared wickedly Alicia’s way.