After the disastrous Creative Writing seminar, Esther knew she had to make this one count. Rather than blunder in and get it all wrong, she was adopting the Susan Ptolemy approved method of observing her target. The list in her notebook was coming along nicely.

Don’t sit too close

No compliments

Don’t rush out

Don’t stay too long

Stay away from any lecture talk

No eye contact

Ed Gemmell reached across and scribbled in the margin of her notebook: No bright light, no water, don’t feed after midnight???

After reading it through twice, Esther was still none the wiser and gave Ed a helpless shrug.

“You’ve never seen Gremlins?” he whispered. “It’s a classic . . . in a so bad, it’s good kind of way. There’s these, er, gremlins . . .” His eyebrows knitted together, and he trailed off with a sigh. “Never mind.”

“No! I love how you have faith that one day I’ll understand one of your nerdy references.” The lecturer was wrapping up. “Keep trying. One day we’ll find some common ground other than Endings, Closure, and Narrative Ambiguity in the 1920s.”

While Ed Gemmell packed away his things and hurried down to the front of the lecture hall to talk to the professor who’d given the lecture, Esther waved hello to Noor as she passed by, then twanged the elastic band around her notebook and buried her plans in the bottom of her bag. If there was one thing she could do now to ensure Vectra never spoke to her again, it would be to expose just how hard she was trying to impress her.

There was a message on her phone from Daisy saying she was waiting down in reception, and Esther smiled at the picture she’d sent with it: a hand reaching for one of the little wooden models of faculty buildings on display with the caption Giant Daisy!

“All right?” A husky rustle of syllables, like bats emerging from a catacomb.

Startled, Esther did her best to arrange her face into something suitably cool and distant as she looked up to where Vectra had fallen into step next to her and nodded, biting back her inclination to ask where Vectra’s boots came from or what online tutorial she’d used to get that perfect ripple effect going on her eyeshadow.

Six steps of silence, and it was Vectra who broke it.

“So. Your friend. Glasses too small, hair too big, tries too hard.”

“Ed Gemmell?”

“Yeah. He’s doing Introduction to Cinema, right?“

“I—er—maybe.” With a guilty flush, Esther realized she had no idea which optional modules Ed Gemmell took—she only knew they weren’t the same as hers.

“Yeah. So. Could you ask him for his notes from the last couple of seminars? I’m still trying to catch up after my throat infection, and that one’s always scribbling away.”