Archive of Our Own

For Amity Blight, the only downside of being shipped off to a boarding school twelve hundred miles away is the fact that her parents are currently insisting on driving the eighteen godforsaken hours to drop her off.

She’s been waiting for this moment for years—she picked out the school herself, as far from Blight Manor as she could possibly get without raising suspicion. For the past seven hundred and thirty-one days (2020 was, sadly, a leap year), she’s been the literal poster child of perfection. She’s gone to board meetings, aced tenth grade without a (visible) sweat, and participated without complaint in Blight Industries weapons demonstrations that should probably qualify as child endangerment under Georgia state law. 

The last of the green dye from her ill-advised sixth-grade rebellion has finally vanished from her hair, and she wonders sometimes if it’s that more than anything else that’s convinced her parents that they might actually be able to let her out of their sight for a while.

(The bottle of purple dye she’s shoved deep into the bottom of her duffel bag notwithstanding, of course.)

Amity is finally, finally ready to kick her sad excuse of a family to the curb, and there’s only one thing left standing in her way.

“Mother,” she says firmly, hefting the aforementioned duffel bag over her shoulder. “We had an agreement. I bought plane tickets with my own savings. I set my move-in day for tomorrow, and I have a roommate, too, which means she’ll be expecting me to be there.”

She doesn’t dare invoke Luz’s name in front of her parents—not yet. Not when they have the power to call the whole thing off if she missteps. Amity has lived in the Blight household for sixteen long, long years, and she knows how her parents tick. As long as she keeps the specifics of her roommate’s identity up in the air, she won’t be “real” enough for them to be jealous.

But hopefully still real enough that they would like to avoid offending her, and thus indirectly besmirching the Blight name.

“It’s all right, honey,” her father says, and Amity has to clench her jaw to keep from flinching away. “Tell you what—if you cancel the tickets, we’ll pay you back for them. Then you’ll have some spending money for your first few weeks in Hexside, won’t that be nice?”

Amity pretends to consider it. “It would be nice,” she says slowly, as if the thought has just occurred to her. “But it wouldn’t be proper of a Blight to renege on a contract, no matter how inconsequential.” She injects just enough disappointment into her tone to be believable, and avoids her father’s eyes.

“Ah, that’s my girl,” her mother coos, leaning over to ruffle Amity’s hair. “Of course we knew you’d make the right decision, dear.”

Which—fine, she should have expected this. But that knowledge does nothing to cool the boiling pit of irritation that opens in her stomach—the idea that after all of this, after all she’s done, the last offer of familial companionship she’s going to receive from these people is nothing more than a test.

Not to mention the fact that in spite of all her careful planning, she’s been outmaneuvered by her parents. Again. At least she’s lucky enough that she stumbled into the right answer.

Amity folds her hands behind her back, careful to hide them from view as she digs her nails deep into her palms. “If that’s settled,” she says, unable to keep the icy edge from her voice, “Ed and Em will take me to the airport?”

“Yes, of course, dear,” says her mother. Her father nods, but he at least has the decency to look troubled. Amity makes no reply, just turns on her heel and makes for the door. This conversation has taken too long already; her siblings are probably waiting for her outside.

“Oh, and Mittens?” her mother adds, just as her hand is about to make contact with the doorknob. Amity squeezes her eyes shut and wills herself not to scream. “We know you’ll make us proud.”

It’s not encouragement, not the way Odalia Blight says it. It’s a threat.

But Amity is done with threats, and she’s done with this stupid family. She’s meant for better things, lighter things.

“Well, who am I to argue with that?” she says, and then she’s out the door before her parents can process what exactly she means.

She dyes her hair bright lavender in the airport bathroom, ignoring Emira’s incessant complaints about the unsanitariness of it all. It’s the little victories, she tells herself, and once that plane takes off she’s about to have a whole lifetime full of them. She’s absolutely sure of it.

But of course, to win the victories, one must first fight the battles.

She meets her roommate, Luz, early the next morning—and somehow, the girl is even more intense in person than their brief email chains have suggested. Amity had hoped to arrive early, to scope out the room and calm her nerves before the inevitable introduction. And as a matter of fact, she did—but Luz, alas, is here already too.

“Oh my God, your hair!” is the first thing Amity hears her say, and, well—it’s not the worst. Luz does have a very pretty voice. “Gosh, I almost didn’t recognize you,” Luz continues, and oh right, she’s supposed to be having a conversation here. “How old were the pictures you sent me, anyway? ‘Cause, girl, this is a glow-up!”

“Oh, I, they—um.” Okay, so she hasn’t met anyone her age in what, six years? That doesn’t mean she’s forgotten how to do this entirely, right?

Amity takes a deep breath and tries again. “They’re only from about a year ago,” she says. “I’m . . . not sure I’ve changed much, honestly. Aside from, you know, the obvious.” She brushes the back of her hand against a strand of hair, as if Luz could possibly be confused by what she means.

“Well, I think it suits you,” Luz replies with a grin, just as another figure walks into the room holding a giant cardboard box. “Oh, perfect—Amity, this is my mom. Mama, this is my new roommate, Amity!”

Thank God—adults, Amity can do. “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Noceda,” she says formally, inclining her head as she reaches out for a handshake.

“Oh—my,” Luz’s mom laughs, but takes her hand after a moment’s pause. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too, dear. Luz has told me so much about you, but she insisted on arriving so early, I thought we may not get to meet!”

“Mama,” Luz complains, swatting at her mother’s arm. Amity swallows and looks away, suddenly afraid of breaking the moment.

“Anyway,” Mrs. Noceda says brightly, “mija, that’s almost the last of your boxes; there’s one more outside. Do you need help with yours, Amity?” She blinks, as if taking in Amity’s appearance for the first time. “Oh, goodness, where are your parents? Who let you carry that massive bag on your own?”

“Uh—” Red alert, red alert, says her brain, not that she needs the warning. “Uh, they’re—looking for parking, actually. Bit of a crazy deal out there, you know how it is.” It’s easy, too easy to slip back into the evasiveness and lies—but then, she wasn’t expecting a complication this early. “Here,” she says, “how about Luz and I grab that last box? If my parents show up while we’re getting it, you’ll get to meet them, too!”

“Nonsense, dears, I’m not fragile,” Mrs. Noceda scoffs. “You wait here for your parents, I’m sure they’ll turn up. Be back in a minute!”

As soon as she’s out the door, Amity crosses the room so she has a clean view through the window and settles into a lookout position. “Luz,” she says, “how much did you tell your mom about me?”

Luz glances away, blushing. “Um,” she says. “Well . . . almost everything you told me, I guess. Should I not have? Oh, God, I shouldn’t have, now I’ve gone and embarrassed you and—”

“No! No, it’s not that.” Amity shifts, crossing her arms in front of herself protectively. “I just . . . I may have lied about a few things. Big things.” 

She didn’t want to have to do this so early—ideally, she would have a backup living space and maybe a stockpile of food before coming clean, in case Luz hates her for it. But she’s all alone, surrounded by strangers in a city on the other side of the Eastern seaboard, and even a Blight has to crack under the pressure at some point. She needs Luz on her side for this, and she hopes—prays, even—that she hasn’t judged her wrong.

“Big things . . . like what things?” Luz says slowly. Good, she’s not angry yet, so Amity can use that time. She just needs to figure out some leverage, or even a tick she can use to gauge her progress, and then—

No, stop. She is not going to try to emotionally manipulate her roommate within ten minutes of meeting her. She needs to tell her the truth, and let the cards fall where they may.

If she can’t do this, she reminds herself, she’ll never be able to break the cycle. If she can’t do this, she might as well have never left at all.

Amity takes a deep breath, ready to put her life into the hands of a practical stranger, but all that comes out is a half-choked sob.

“Whoa—hey,” Luz says, reaching out as if on instinct. She stops short of Amity’s shoulder, her hands hovering awkwardly, and then she blinks and stuffs them behind her back just as quickly. “Amity, what’s wrong?”

Amity tries to respond—really, she does—but all she can do is sink to the ground and let out a strangled scream. Come on, Blight, you’re better than this, she tries to think, but her now breaths are coming too fast and she still can’t get enough air and the world in front of her is all swirly and watery and—

She squeezes her eyes shut and lets the shudders wash over her—there isn’t much else she can do, not anymore. 

By the time Amity manages to force a coherent thought through her head again, there’s a brand-new blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and Luz is sitting next to her murmuring a stream of words that Amity can’t quite track. Across the room, she can hear Mrs. Noceda speaking into a cell phone.

“What do you mean, you can’t get a hold of them?” she demands. “Their daughter is sitting in her room sobbing, it’s been twenty minutes—well, does she have one of those listed?” She pauses. “What the hell do you mean, teenagers?”

“Ugh,” Amity groans, once she’s certain she’s regained sufficient control of her faculties. Next to her, Luz jolts upright before plastering a sunny smile onto her face.

“Hey,” she says, laying a hand on Amity’s arm. “Hey, it’s all gonna be okay, all right? My mom’s trying to get through to your parents, I’m sure they’ll be here any minute. And I’ll be right here until then, I promise.”

Another sob works its way up Amity’s throat, but she turns it into a choked laugh instead. “Yeah,” she manages, “good luck with that.” Luz gives her a questioning look, so she continues, “My parents are three hours away by plane, and I doubt they’d pick up even if the contact numbers they gave weren’t burner phones.”

“Even if they weren’t . . .” Luz repeats, frowning. A shadow crosses over her face, and Amity winces. Here it comes. “But wait, I thought you said they were just looking for parking outside.”

“I lied,” Amity whispers, watching Mrs. Noceda out of the corner of her eye. The woman is still on the phone, tapping her foot irritatedly against the hardwood floor as some receptionist spews formalities at her. “Today, and in our emails—I was never sure which ones they might decide to read, and I had to get out, I swear, or else I never would have considered it.” She’s pretty sure she’s talking too fast, but she can’t quite force herself to stop. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise, I’ll—you can have my desserts for a month, or I’ll do your share of the chores, or—”

“Whoa, okay, none of that,” Luz replies carefully. “This, uh, sounds like a good reason to lie if I ever heard one—”

“No, I need to make this right,” Amity insists. Blights don’t deal in deception, Odalia whispers in her head—a statement so categorically untrue that it makes Amity want to laugh, but she suppresses the urge ruthlessly. Amity doesn’t want to deal in deceptions. She needs to even the scales before they tip even further out of her favor—

Luz, however, is having none of it. “There’s nothing to make right,” she whispers frantically. “Look, it sounds like whatever you have going on at home is, like, super sketchy, but you can trust me, okay? Me and my mom both.”

Amity sucks in a breath, her hand finding Luz’s wrist almost on instinct. “You can’t tell your mom,” she says. If there’s anything Amity knows about a secret, it’s that the more people are in on it, the more chances it has of leaking. “Please. I—if word gets back to my parents this early . . .”

Well, they would pull her out and back to Georgia so quickly, Luz might not even see her go. Under no circumstances can Amity risk that—not even the slightest chance.

Thankfully, Luz seems to understand, because she places a hand over Amity’s and nods. “Um. Should we get my mom off the phone about all this, then?”

Right, that. Hopefully Amity can smooth things over with administration and convince them that following up on her parents’ burner phones just isn’t worth the time. She’s not worried about her emergency contacts letting anything slip—Ed and Em are, if nothing else, even better at toeing the line with the Blight elders than she is.

“That would be a good idea,” she says faintly, allowing Luz to help her to her feet. “Thank you so much for understanding, Luz. I promise I’ll make sure it’s worth it.”

Luz just purses her lips and tugs her forward. “Like I said, no need. Besides, what better way to start the school year than an awesome roommate secret revelation?” She meets Amity’s eyes, and to Amity’s chagrin, she’s actually smiling. “I can already tell, we’re gonna have an awesome time!”

Amity frowns at the floor and wishes she had even a tenth of wherever that confidence is coming from. She sincerely hopes it isn’t misplaced.

Luz’s mom is, all things considered, pretty understanding.

From the way she keeps glancing suspiciously at her and Luz, Amity can tell that she knows they’re hiding something—she wishes she could figure out a way to tell her that it’s Amity’s own fault, not her daughter’s, without compromising the entire jig. 

But she hangs up the phone, nods along to Amity’s hastily-concocted story about a fender bender and a particularly ugly instance of road rage, and bids Amity farewell when she tells her that she has siblings waiting for her at a local cafe.

(Mrs. Noceda does offer to escort her there, but a conveniently-timed stumble by Luz ends with the other girl stuck headfirst in a bush and Amity slipping out through the back of a nearby alleway. 

Honestly, she isn’t entirely sure if it was intentional, but it doesn’t matter. Amity’s never been one to fail to seize an opportunity when it presents itself.)

Once she’s arrived at the coffee shop, on a well-trafficked corner boasting a faded wooden sign that reads Morton’s, Amity orders the largest jasmine tea they have on the menu and bundles herself away in a booth along the back wall. Her phone is running low on battery, so she gives it a few minutes with her portable charging brick before opening it up to assure her siblings that she has not, in fact, been murdered this morning.

Amity: Was the second set of a dozen messages truly necessary?
Amity: Also, I’m alive. Thank you for your concern.

Both of her siblings respond immediately, which is odd, considering that they really should be in class right now. They may be away at college, but Amity has both their schedules memorized anyway—force of habit, she supposes.

Emira: oh good, i was actually getting a little worried

Edric: but i mean, wouldn’t that have been a way to go
Edric: one day of freedom and she dies of shock immediately

Emira: truly a fitting end for our Mittens

Amity: Don’t you two have better things to be doing?

Emira: nope

Edric: absolutely not
Edric: hey Mittens, did you know 10 percent of boarding school deaths happen on the first day from culture shock?

Amity: No, they really don’t.

Edric: its true i swear

Emira: hes right, i just looked it up

Edric: see?? we were right to be worried
Edric: now! tell us everything thats happened since you left us
Edric: i want to hear it all
Edric: all the juicy juicy details!!!

Amity: I don’t have to deal with this right now.

Amity Blight has left the conversation.

She locks her phone and jams it back into her pocket, then takes a long, irritated pull of her tea. Ed and Em will add her back to the group chat if something important happens, or maybe even if they feel like they haven’t tormented her enough for the day.

Sure enough, she hears her phone ping less than a minute later, and doesn’t even bother to check it. Amity loves them—it’s more than she can say about her parents, at least—but sometimes, it’s hard not to hate them, too.

She buries her head in her arms instead, determined to nurse her tea for as long as Morton will let her before he kicks her out for unwarranted length of table usage.

(It turns out to be three hours, which is honestly a little better than she expected.)

The next time Amity enters her new room is mid-afternoon, when she decides that she’s thirsty enough from wandering the campus that she actually needs to retrieve her water bottle from her duffel bag before she keels over from dehydration. She pauses at the door for a good fifteen seconds and listens, hoping Luz won’t be in, and only opens it when she’s sure that all is silent inside.

Amity walks in, and Luz waves to her from where she’s sitting on the floor. Dammit.

Apparently these doors are thicker than they look.

“Luz! Hi,” Amity manages, scanning the room for her bag—where did she leave it? “Sorry, I’ll just be a minute and then I’ll be out of your hair—”

“Oh.” There’s something in Luz’s tone that makes her pause and turn toward her. “Do you have somewhere to be?”

“Yes,” Amity says, but she spots the crestfallen look that flashes across Luz’s face, no matter how well the other girl tries to hide it. “No. Look, I—I’m sorry about this morning, okay? I get it if you’re mad at me, if you need time to cool off or—”

“Amity,” Luz says gently, “I’ve already said it’s okay. So we started off a bit weirdly—who cares? We share a room, you literally can’t avoid me forever.”

Amity supposes that’s true—though if you ask her, she’s pretty good at avoiding people when she wants to. “It doesn’t have to be forever,” she points out, crossing her arms and leaning against the doorframe. “We’re roommates for the year, not life partners.”

“Yeah, well, a year is a long time.” Luz scrambles wildly to her feet, exhibiting an astonishing lack of coordination for someone who’s holding—is that a box cutter? Suddenly, Amity is very concerned. “And speaking of rooms, and mates, and years, this one is in dire need of some decor. So what do you say? You in?”

It takes a moment for Amity to process exactly what she’s asking. “You want me to . . . help decorate the room.”

Luz gives her a look. “I mean, it wouldn’t be fair if I did it all myself, right?” At Amity’s skeptical glance, she sighs. “Hey, I promise I don’t hate you, okay? I’m not even, like, mad—you’ve clearly got something going on at home, and that’s okay! I just have to befriend you, wear you down, unlock that tragic backstory—” She blinks. “I don’t think I was supposed to say that last part out loud, huh?”

Amity wants to dislike her for that, really. She’s not some puzzle to be solved, not a problem for other people to fix—she can do that on her own. But she doubts Luz meant it in that way, and more to the point, the way her new roommate is blushing is . . . annoyingly endearing.

Besides, avoiding this room for the whole year would get tedious at best.

“I don’t know about unlocking my tragic backstory,” Amity says, crossing the room to join Luz in the middle. “And I’ve never decorated a room before, so . . . I doubt I would be very helpful, anyway.”

Yeah, excellent work there, Blight, she scoffs to herself. You’ve really sold her on this whole friendship thing.

Luz, however, doesn’t look disappointed at all. “You’ve never decorated a room?” she gasps. “Okay, change of plans—I’m giving you complete creative control, starting now. First: what color do you want the walls to be?”

“Um,” Amity starts. “I’m pretty sure we’re not allowed to paint the walls.”

“Pssh, what they don’t know can’t hurt ‘em!”

“They’re walls, Luz; they do weekly room checks, of course they’re going to know!”

Luz blinks. “Right. Okay. Slight flaw in that plan. Wait, what are we allowed to do, then?”

This, at least, Amity knows—she read the housing contract front to back twice before signing it, just like her parents taught her. “No permanent applications to the walls, including paints, metal tacks, and certain brands of resin,” she recites. “No extra furniture over five hundred pounds; no open flames or water beds; any heat-producing furniture capable of temperatures over three hundred degrees have to be pre-approved by the staff.” She glances at the boxes Luz has begun to open, which are scattered all over the room. “Uh. I’m thinking the ‘metal tacks’ bit might be your major issue.”

Luz winces, hastily gathering up a handful of pushpins and dumping them into a tiny plastic box. “Well,” she says, “it’s a good thing you and your massive head-encyclopedia showed up before I started putting up posters.” She taps the side of her head and winks, like she’s some sort of eighty-year-old describing psychic superpowers, and Amity is so bewildered that she almost forgets to wonder whether or not it’s supposed to be an insult.

(She’s pretty sure it isn’t, but that won’t stop her from overanalyzing it later tonight, when she’s supposed to be sleeping.)

“You wouldn’t happen to have any of those sticky-pad things, would you?” Luz asks once she’s not-so-safely disposed of her pushpins. (They’ve disappeared into one of her many pockets, which Amity is certain is a recipe for disaster.) “I mean, you knew the rules, so I’m assuming you do?”

Amity shakes her head. “Sorry, I actually don’t,” she admits. “I . . . didn’t bring anything to put up on the walls, really. Just some clothes, and my school supplies.” And her water bottle, which her parched throat reminds her that she desperately needs right now.

“Hmm,” Luz says with a frown. Then she looks up, obviously feeling much more sly than she’s actually being. “You feel like talking about why?”

Sighing, Amity looks away. This girl is going to be the death of her—she’s known her for less than six hours, and she can already feel it. “Not really,” she says shortly, and lets the awkward silence descend over the room.

The thing is, Amity is supposed to be good at silences. Patience—the one virtue her parents never seemed to be able to master—has been her watchword, her guiding mantra in the years leading up to her departure from the Blight household. Certainly she ought to be better at it than Luz, who seems to be always in motion, with a rotating slew of questions permanently glued to the tip of her tongue.

Unfortunately, Amity’s previous stand-offs have not involved the girl across from her shifting nervously, looking increasingly certain that she’s messed something up, and dammit, Amity’s losing her touch, isn’t she?

First her parents outmaneuver her, and then she has a breakdown in front of a near-stranger’s mom, and now this. Unbelievable.

“If I promise to tell you eventually,” she grumbles, “Can you promise to stop asking?”

“Yeah! Of course,” Luz says immediately, her eyes going wide in relief. “I mean, actually, you don’t even need to promise—I’ll just stop. I, uh—I’ve been told I get a little overbearing. Sometimes.”

“And I’ve been told I have a habit of locking my feelings up at the top of an ivory tower,” Amity replies. It’s easier than she expected to admit it to Luz—though she supposes that Luz already has some idea of that tendency, anyway.

Before another awkward silence can descend, Amity finds an olive branch—a distant memory of a 24-hour Target that’s less than a half-hour walk away. “Hey, so,” she says, trying and failing miserably to avoid sounding overly casual, “Um. I think I know where we can get some putty adhesive, if you want to?”

“You do?” Luz looks up excitedly, then pretends to swoon. “Amity Blight, saving me from one room-decorating disaster after another. My hero.”

She’s joking—she has to be joking, Amity thinks—but that doesn’t stop the blush from creeping up Amity’s cheeks. “Not a hero,” she mutters, turning away from Luz to finally dig out her water bottle. “Just good at planning ahead.”

“Sounds like a hero skill to me.” Luz’s voice is muffled as she digs through one of her boxes—which is good, because the damn blush refuses to go away. “Hey, do you think we’ll be out long enough for it to get cold? I don’t know if I packed a jacket with me.”

“You didn’t—” Okay, maybe planning ahead would be kind of a superpower to someone like Luz. “Here, I have an extra,” she says, pulling a second jacket out of her duffel and passing it to her. “But we’re getting you one of your own at the Target.”

“Jacket, sticky pad things, got it. Anything else for the shopping list?”

“Not unless you suddenly remember something else you’ve forgotten,” Amity jokes, but honestly, she wouldn’t even be surprised at this point.

Luz glances down at herself and pats down her pockets, but evidently she can’t think of anything, because she just shrugs and shakes her head. “Maybe I’ll think of something when we’re there,” she says. “For now, let us depart!”

She strides out of the room, eyes gleaming with purpose, and Amity hastens to follow.

“Sooo,” Luz drawls, sidling up against Amity. It hasn’t even been five minutes since they left the dormitory, but she should have guessed that the silence wouldn’t last long. “I know I said I’d stop trying to ask about the whole backstory thing, but—can I at least get the story behind the jacket?”

She gestures at the garment she’s wearing, which Amity gets a good look at for the first time since she handed it over, and—oh. Amity squeezes her eyes shut and groans.

(She opens them again rather quickly, when she nearly takes a tumble off the sidewalk and is only saved by Luz catching her by the arm.)

“I’m just saying,” Luz continues, once the immediate danger is past, “you’re in my year, right? High school juniors. Not very common for people to get a letterman jacket in their sophomore year.”

Amity bites her tongue and grinds her teeth together. God, she hopes it’s dark enough already that Luz can’t see her blush.

“If I tell you,” she sighs, “you have to promise not to laugh.”

Luz brightens immediately. “Really? You’ll actually tell me?”

Oh, she’s so going to regret this. “Make the promise.”

“Yeah, yeah, I promise, whatever.” How Luz can rest her chin on her wrists so expectantly while they’re walking, Amity has no idea. “So what’s the story, then?”

“Well, it is mine,” Amity starts, refusing to look Luz in the eye. Ugh, why couldn’t she have grabbed literally any other jacket? This is what she gets for losing her focus.

“I’d figured that out from your name on the back, funnily enough,” Luz grins. It’s dangerously close to a laugh, but Amity lets it slide.

“God, this is so embarrassing,” she mutters. “Okay, so—my old school did this thing where they gave out letters for a bunch of weird extracurriculars. I never even wanted any! But I was a year ahead of my track on the debate team and academic decathlon, so I was technically eligible, and my siblings . . . know how to forge my signature.”

Or they knew, anyway—after that incident, Amity’s made sure to never let them see her new one.

“And you kept it,” Luz observes, but her voice is surprisingly devoid of mirth. “That’s kinda sweet, actually.”

Amity shoves her hands into her pockets and winces. “I didn’t even think I packed it,” she says, and then a thought occurs to her. “Oh, those little—”

This time, Luz does burst out laughing, and Amity can’t find it in herself to blame her. “I’m going to kill them,” she growls. “God, they’re half a country away and they’re still—ugh.”

“I—” Luz breaks into another fit of giggles, and it’s a good thirty seconds before she composes herself enough to keep talking. “No, wait, I think it’s really cool,” she says. Amity frowns. “You were a year ahead in debate and in academic decathlon?”

“My parents pretty much forced me to be,” Amity shrugs. “Edric and Emira were the same when they were my age.”

“Wow.” Luz grins appreciatively at her, and Amity resigns herself to a permanent blush for the rest of the night. “Couldn’t be me. I’m way too scatterbrained to focus on anything for that long.”

Amity frowns. “I’m sure you could find something,” she argues. Luz seems way too driven to not have a passion she’d excel in. Besides, her grades must have been good enough to get her into Hexside, so she’s been doing something right for sure.

Luz considers her words for a moment, then shrugs. “Well, I’d love to be a witch,” she says, and her voice is tinged just seriously enough that Amity is able to keep herself from laughing.

She risks a glance at Luz, who has set her jaw firmly and is staring straight ahead. It’s a facial expression that Amity is intimately familiar with.

“A witch,” she repeats slowly.

“I know, I know,” Luz sighs, “magic isn’t real, everything in the universe can be explained with science, all that jazz. I just—”

“Wait, I wasn’t going to say that,” Amity interrupts. “I mean, the evidence suggests it’s true, but . . .” She shakes her head. “I think it would be nice,” she says. “If there were something out there that we couldn’t explain.” If there were magic.

Luz is quiet for a moment. “Yeah,” she says. “I think so too.”

They walk in silence for the next few minutes, until Luz takes a deep breath and adds, “Thanks. For, uh, for not laughing.”

This is hard for her, too, Amity thinks, and honestly, she’s not sure why it feels like such a revelation. “You’re welcome,” she says—and then, after a moment, she smirks and adds, “I don’t think I can thank you for the same, though.”

That gets a cackle out of Luz. “In my defense,” she complains, “your story was actually funny.”

“It was not!” Amity tries to protest, but she figures she’s lost the argument if she’s already laughing, too.

(She’s still going to kill Ed and Em, as soon as she sees them again.)

It takes them much longer than Amity expected to get in and out of the Target—Luz spends a solid thirty minutes trying on different hoodies before settling on a design that inexplicably features a pair of bright purple cat ears, and Amity contributes her own delay by roaming the supermarket aisles until she successfully locates a particular brand of instant coffee that she knows she’ll be craving sooner or later. The end result is that they don’t make it back to the dorms until nearly eleven, and Amity is exhausted from nearly an entire day on her feet.

She’s also ninety-five percent certain they’ve broken some sort of curfew, but since no one’s actively yelling at them, she decides to count it as a win.

“Is it all right if we leave the decorating for tomorrow?” Amity asks. She wants nothing more than to collapse onto the bed and fall into a deep coma, but she hasn’t even unpacked her sheets yet. Luz, on the other hand, has no such reservations—she launches herself onto the bare mattress to the left of the room and buries her face in the uncased pillow.

“My thoughts exactly,” she says, her voice muffled. “Oh wow, this pillow is actually really comfy.”

“Luz, you have to put your sheets on the bed,” Amity sighs. “Who knows what kind of things that pillow’s been exposed to?”

“People’s heads, I bet.” Luz hasn’t yet removed her face from the offending object, so Amity turns away to dig her own sheets out of her duffel bag.

“You seriously didn’t do the sheets while your mom was here with you?”

Luz rolls over on the bed, so she’s staring up at the ceiling. “Nah, we got distracted,” she says, and promptly fails to elaborate. Amity rolls her eyes and valiantly attempts to attach her fitted sheet to the mattress.

It takes her several irritatingly complicated tries, but she manages it. Luz watches her, the bleariness apparent in her eyes, and yawns.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Amity tells her. Luz blinks, eyelids drooping, before her head jerks up and she nods.

“Yeah, all right,” she mumbles. “Hot water’s kinda weird, you gotta twist the thing—it’s like, the opposite of the cold one.” She shakes her head, but apparently that isn’t enough to clear whatever sleep-cobwebs are tangling her thoughts. “Eh. You’ll figure it out.”

(She does, eventually, though it takes her the better part of five minutes and leaves her thoroughly unamused at whatever joke the designers of this place were trying to pull. Surely no one is stupid enough to purposefully build a shower system where the cold water knob needs to be pushed and the hot water knob needs to be pulled?

For that matter, why do they need to move laterally at all??)

By the time Amity exits the bathroom, now clad in her comfiest pajamas, Luz is snoring lightly atop her empty mattress. Amity sighs, but before she turns off the light, she tugs her varsity jacket off the back of her desk chair and drapes it over Luz’s shoulder’s. It’s not a blanket, but hopefully it will at least keep her from getting cold.

The sleep that Amity gets, on her first night in a bed away from Blight Manor, is the best that she can remember having for a long, long time.

It’s good, and also very fortunate, that she’s sleeping so well, because Amity’s next few days are a stress-fueled nightmare from hell—and she’s only exaggerating a little bit.

Over the course of three days, Amity’s met a total of thirteen adults (more than she’s been introduced to in the past two years) and three students her own age (more than she’s exchanged conversation any deeper than small talk with, ever). Luz, unsurprisingly, is incredibly good at making friends—even when, as far as Amity can tell, said friends had reasonably active social lives even before she came along.

(“It’s easier than you think, Amity,” she tells her one night, talking around her toothbrush because they’re preparing for bed together and apparently that’s something they do now. Amity shakes her head and snorts. “No, really!” Luz continues, “I think deep down, you know, everyone’s always looking for more friends.”

She turns away from Amity to spit her toothpaste into the sink, but she still catches it when Luz mutters to herself, “I know I am.”

Amity makes an immediate and solemn promise to herself that she’s never going to let Luz down. Not if she can remotely help it.)

And so it’s mainly at Luz’s insistence that, even after three days of being thrown through the metaphorical wringer—they haven’t even had the time to decorate their room yet!—Amity finds herself in the cafeteria, ten minutes before dinner hour is supposed to end, grudgingly shoving a pile of mashed potatoes into her mouth. Luz and her new cohort are, as usual, bickering good-naturedly in the background, but Amity can’t seem to find it too annoying.

“I wasn’t even hungry,” she grumbles to no one in particular, but apparently Luz manages to hear her—she drops her current tirade about the quality of the writing in the most recent season of The Good Witch Azura to turn and pat Amity on the arm.

“You gotta eat something sometimes, Amity,” she says cheerily, then adds something in Spanish that’s too fast for Amity to comprehend. (Her entire experience with the language boils down to a single year of class in middle school, though, so maybe it’s not just the speed that’s the problem.) “Like my mom always says, you’re no help to anyone if you’re dead!”

Across the table, Gus frowns. “That’s kind of a morbid thing to say to a child,” he observes.

“Useful advice, though,” Luz counters, and Amity can’t help nodding in agreement. She does feel like she needs to point out, though—

“I’d start eating again before I died of starvation,” she says, only a touch grumpily, because Luz’s hand has not yet left her arm and the warmth of her skin is . . . well, nice. “Anyway, I really do need to finish copying the semester’s schedule into my planner—”

“Amity!” Luz exclaims, her grip tightening. “Come on, you haven’t even started on your corn yet!”

“Neither has Vee,” Amity frowns. She gestures at the girl sitting next to Gus, who looks up in alarm and pulls her plate closer.

“Willow’s only taken one bite of hers!”

“That’s because this is my second helping,” Willow replies primly. “And Luz is right; both of you need to eat your vegetables.”

Amity sighs. “Yes, mother.”

Luz doesn’t taker her eyes off of her until, with a pointed glare, Amity stabs a single kernel of corn with her fork, raises it to her mouth, and bites down on it. At that, Luz turns away with a snort and lightly swats Amity’s arm, before shifting her focus to reply to a question Gus has just asked about the TV show.

(Once she’s sufficiently distracted, Amity does eat the rest of her corn. And if she makes a show of preening a little too much when Luz looks back to find her plate empty, well, none of the others need to know that it’s not entirely in jest.)

Somehow, the alleged ten-minute dinner turns into nearly an hour as their group makes a slow loop of campus to drop everybody off in their respective dorms. It doesn’t help that they linger for what feels like forever in front of each of the doors, and that Luz has somehow managed to construct a friend group in which literally everyone (aside from herself and Amity) is living in a different residence hall.

It’s fine, though. It’s actually kind of relaxing, to be able to wander the grounds and not worry about what her parents might say when she inevitably slips in late through the window.

Gus and Willow, she learns, are legacies here—they’ve been attending since first grade, and have been friends since second. (Barring something around their seventh grade which they will only refer to as the Venus Flytrap Incident, which Amity desperately wants to know more about but can’t seem to unearth any details. She’s sure Luz will uncover it eventually.) 

Amity takes advantage of any and all lulls in their conversation about Azura to ask them questions about Hexisde—class difficulties, which teachers to watch out for, the usual ropes. She’s done her research, of course, but she knows, as a rule, that Googling testimonials is nothing compared to firsthand experience.

Unfortunately, Gus and Willow don’t exactly make it easy for her, because apparently they’re just as obsessed with Azura as Luz has turned out to be. (Seriously, Amity didn’t even know that the show existed until less than forty-eight hours ago, and now she knows three superfans? It’s ridiculous.) But she can tell that Vee appreciates her questions, so Amity feels a little more justified in continuing to ask them.

It goes a little something like this:

In between heated condemnations of the midseason cliffhangers of seasons two and three, Amity learns that Eda Clawthorne (her dorm overseer) is probably the most lenient Head of House on campus. 

After a long, drawn-out discussion of the worldbuilding and its ramifications on its magic system, she’s told that Eda’s sister Lilith is the exact opposite—strict with grading and assigns a terrifying amount of homework—but she’s impossible to avoid since she teaches all the advanced sciences. 

As part of a ploy to deter an all-out shipping war (Luz is pulling for a pairing she calls ‘Hecazura’, while the other two are firmly in the camp of ‘Azuringael’), Amity asks for—and receives—a ten-minute rundown of all of the campus shortcuts that either Gus or Willow is privy to. She wishes she’d brought a pen or something to write them all down.

It’s unfortunately this question that brings it all crashing down, because once Gus is finished explaining how cutting through the tennis courts can actually save upwards of fifteen seconds between the cafeteria and the science building, Luz turns to Amity and says, “Sooo?”

Amity blinks. “So what?”

“So, that sounded an awful lot like you were trying to get out of telling us which side of the war you’re on.”

“Oh.” Amity tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and shrugs in what she hopes is a casual manner. “I, uh, I’m not really on a side?”

“Come on, Amity, even Vee has a side.” She elbows the girl in question lightly, who blushes and nods reluctantly.

“I—well, I really like Hecate,” she mumbles. “So I guess Hecazura’s my favorite.”

“Ha! Yes!” Luz crows, sticking her tongue out at Willow and Gus. “In your face, losers!” She turns back to Amity. “Anyway, no pressure, but there is a right answer to this, so choose carefully.”

Which is the moment Amity has been dreading, because up until now she’s managed to skirt by on uh-huhs and vague sure, I guesses (with the occasional I don’t really think so thrown in for variety, of course). But this question feels like a capital-C Commitment, and Amity has never been good at diving into those without knowing all the facts about a situation.

“I, um,” she says lamely. Even her death glare at the nearest wall doesn’t stop the blush rising to her cheeks. “I suppose this would be a good time to mention that I haven’t actually seen the show?”

Chaos ensues.

(Like, literally, chaos—Luz freezes in place, staring wide-eyed at Amity, which causes Gus to stumble into her and topple. They pull Willow down too when she tries to reach out to steady them, and Vee trips over her own feet trying to get out of the way.

They end up in a tangled pile of limbs, all of them groaning at once—but miraculously, Amity is somehow left unscathed.)

“We’re fine!” says Luz, throwing out a halfhearted thumbs-up from where she lies on the ground. Judging by some of the noises the others are making, they don’t seem to agree with her. “What do you mean, you’ve never actually seen the show?”

“Is this really the time, Luz?” Gus complains as he extricates himself from the pile. Amity offers Vee a hand, but she pushes herself to her feet on her own. Willow and Luz remain on the ground, the former on her side and the latter sprawled out on her back like a starfish.

“Absolutely,” Luz says, sounding for all the world like she’s just carrying on a normal conversation. “We’ve been talking about Azura for hours, Amity, how are you just saying this now?”

Amity grimaces. “It . . . um, it hasn’t really come up?” she tries, but it’s an effort that’s doomed from the start.

“You said that you really enjoyed the magic system?” Luz frowns.

“I said I enjoyed your explanation of it,” Amity hedges. “And I think I would like it if I actually saw the show.” That one, she’s less sure of, but it does sound interesting.

“You agreed that the season three cliffhanger was one of the worst things that ever happened to television!”

“I agreed that end of season cliffhangers in general are the worst thing that ever happened to television.”

“Ugh!” Luz attempts to throw up her arms in exasperation, which only makes her look like she’s trying to make a snow angel in the dirt. “Okay guys, I hate to cut this short, but Amity and I need to head back to our room and binge the first half season of Azura.”

“A respectable endeavor,” Gus notes solemnly. Amity glances at Willow and Vee, hoping to find some sympathy for her plight, but Willow looks almost as enthusiastic as Luz, and Vee seems indifferent at best.

“We have school tomorrow,” Amity tries, as a last ditch effort to put this off. “Our first day of school, and I haven’t even copied my schedule into my planner yet.”

She must sound helpless enough that Luz takes pity on her, because her roommate sighs as she pulls herself to her feet. “Fine, fine,” she says. “One episode? And then I’ll make sure you get at least an hour of intense-focus quiet before bed.”

Amity eyes her warily. “How long are the episodes?”

“Usually forty-five minutes,” Luz says, a little too quickly. Amity is on the verge of remarking that forty-five minutes isn’t too bad when she adds, “But the pilot is ninety, so . . . like, seventy minutes without ad breaks?”

Seventy minutes. And it’s already past eight-thirty, Amity thinks with a sigh. “I don’t know, Luz . . .” she starts, but then she looks up, and—honestly.

Luz’s puppy-dog eyes should be considered a war crime or something, because there’s no way anyone in their right mind would be able to refuse them. Amity is pretty sure mind control is outlawed under the Geneva Conventions.

“Fine,” she says, a little annoyed at how quickly she’s caved. “Just the pilot. And you rescind your right to drag me out to the cafeteria for all of tomorrow.”

“Deal!” Luz exclaims, grabbing Amity’s hand and shaking it. They say their good-byes to the others, and then Luz is practically vibrating for their entire walk back to the Owl Hall. 

“You’re not gonna regret this, I swear!” she says—and, well, Amity supposes she doesn’t.

(If they end up watching an extra two episodes, curled up into the blissful comfort of the couch and munching on Luz’s secret candy stash, that’s a secret the two of them will have to share.)

Life at Hexside after orientation week develops quickly into a routine, which Amity appreciates. Life with Luz, on the other hand, does not, which is alternatingly amusing and stressful enough to drive her anxiety levels through the roof.

Right now, unfortunately, Amity is faced with the latter.

“Luz,” she growls under her breath, “please, I need an empty patch of wall that I can use for this.”

“Sorry, sorry!” Luz clambers atop her desk to retrieve the corner of the Good Witch Azura poster that she’s attempting to drape across the back wall—as it happens, five minutes before Amity’s weekly scheduled video call with parents. Amity’s half of the room is, of course, devoid of any wall hangings, but the natural lighting in the room is such that the camera needs to face Luz’s half for her to be visible on the screen as more than a blank silhouette.

She’s too busy alternating glances between her phone screen and her watch that she doesn’t notice Luz balancing atop a very precarious stack of loose-leaf paper until it’s too late.

“Ah, crap,” Luz mutters as she starts to lose her footing. Amity lunges forward, but it feels like she’s moving through syrup—Luz topples off the desk before she manages to take a step. The papers go flying every which way, scattering across the room, and Luz crashes first into her chair and then into the ground, taking both the chair and the nearby wastepaper basket with her. “Oh, mother—.”

“Luz!” Amity abandons her phone entirely and rushes to her friend’s side. “Are you okay?”

Stupid question, Blight, of course she’s not okay. She’s pretty sure Luz hit her head going down, actually, and while part of Amity’s brain is still rational enough to be thankful it wasn’t on the corner of the desk, the other half has already begun to list the various types of brain damage that might be occurring as they speak—

“Hey there, Amity,” Luz blinks, attempting what Amity thinks is supposed to be a cheesy grin but ends up being more of a grimace. “Yikes, these desks sure are taller than I thought, huh?”

“We need to get you to the nurse’s office,” is the only thing Amity can think to say. She’s willing to bet Luz’s eyes aren’t supposed to open this wide. “Can you walk? No, that’s a dumb question, let me get Miss Clawthorne—”

“She did tell us to call her Eda,” Luz says, hoisting herself up by the edge of the desk. Amity bites her tongue to keep herself from screaming.

“Luz!” she hisses. “Sit back down right now, we don’t know if you have a concussion!”

“Eh, I feel fine,” Luz replies, and promptly betrays her point by stumbling on the first step she takes. “It’s fine, Amity, motor control is, like, fifth down on the list of concussion symptoms. I’m fine.”

“You just used the word ‘fine’ three times in as many sentences,” Amity grumbles, “so I think not.” She lets Luz take one more step, just to give her the benefit of the doubt—but when she grimaces at the effort, Amity closes the distance between them and wraps an arm around Luz’s waist.

“You’re going to get yourself hurt,” she says firmly. Luz swallows, her eyes suddenly even wider, and Amity’s concern kicks into full overdrive. “Come on,” she says. “Nurse. Now.”

“Um. Yes, ma’am,” Luz replies. She sounds slightly dazed, which makes Amity want to rush her down to the nurse’s office even quicker—but she doesn’t know a lot about concussions, and she’s pretty sure sudden movement can accidentally make a lot of injuries worse. She pushes out the door, keeping her grip firmly around Luz, who drapes a tentative arm across Amity’s shoulders.

Atop her desk, Amity’s phone buzzes. She gives it a single glance before letting the door swing shut behind her.

“Uh, Amity,” Luz says as they start down the hall. “Your parents—”

“They can wait,” she snaps, a little sharper than she intends to. She softens her voice with difficulty before adding, “This is more important.”

There’s also the prick of guilt that’s beginning to blossom in the pit of Amity’s stomach—Luz wouldn’t have been rushing the decorating if Amity hadn’t pushed her. If Amity had just cared a little less about looking like the usual perfect schoolgirl for her parents. If Amity had deigned to watch out for her friend instead of panicking over what really ought to be routine by now.

She’s so consumed in her thoughts that she barely notices their arrival at the Nurse Wortlop’s office. She gives him a watered-down description of the incident, defaulting to the Blight business tradition of wording summaries to imply that no one is actually at fault, and paces around the room while Wortlop examines Luz atop the medical table.

Briefly, Amity wonders if patient confidentiality means she might be better off stepping outside—but Wortlop hasn’t said anything yet, she reasons. And Luz’s gaze seems to be tracking her as she paces, even as she answers the nurse’s questions, so Amity figures she might as well stay.

“Well,” Wortlop says after a few minutes, “it seems your friend was right, young lady; you are indeed concussed. Frankly, you’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

Luz blinks. “But I feel fine,” she says slowly. “Aren’t concussions supposed to, like . . . hurt?”

“Not always,” Wortlop replies sagely. “Now, you must avoid all activities that require intense focus for about forty-eight hours—I’ll write you a note that will excuse you from class. Stay in bed if possible, and keep the room dim or dark. Once the first two days have passed, you can slowly return to your usual activities. Is that clear?”

“Uh—yeah,” Luz says. “No concentration, dark room, got it.” She frowns. “What about Amity?”

Wortlop pauses, glancing between the two of them. “What about her?”

“Doesn’t she need to use . . . use the room, while I’m recovering?”

“I’ll work around it,” Amity volunteers, before Wortlop can say anything. It’s the least she can do for being responsible for this in the first place. “And I’ll make sure she gets the rest you prescribed, sir.”

“Good lass,” Wortlop says, nodding vigorously. “Now, off with you both—I spy a third-year in the waiting room who may be about to vomit.” He shoos them out the door, past a girl who does indeed look like she’s about to throw up, and Amity has to forcibly restrain herself from apologizing until they’re safely back in their dorm room.

“Hey, c’mon, you’ve nothing to be sorry for,” Luz mumbles as Amity bustles around the room, flicking off the light and before she fluffs out Luz’s pillows. She gets one under Luz’s head with minimal grumbling, but doesn’t quite succeed at retrieving the blanket from where her friend has collapsed on top of it. “This was a lot my fault, too.”

“I was the one rushing you,” Amity replies automatically. Does their minifridge get cold enough to make ice cubes? She should get a glass of water to leave on the nightstand, and she needs to remember to bring meals back from the cafeteria on time if she doesn’t want Luz sneaking out of bed to find her own food.

“I should’ve remembered your call,” Luz sighs. Amity sits down on the bed, watching as her eyes flutter shut, and suppresses the immediate spike of panic in her gut. This is normal, she reminds herself. “I was . . . I was too worried about getting you in trouble. Wasn’t paying attention.”

And now she’s paying the price for Amity’s perfectionism. “Just get some rest, Luz,” Amity says, unwilling to continue the argument while her friend is in such a state. “I’ll wake you up in a few hours.”

“Yeah, sure,” Luz mumbles. After a few moments, her breathing evens out, and Amity suddenly has to suppress the urge to reach out and lay her hand on top of hers—there’s no need to check her pulse, she tells herself firmly, and ignores the part of her brain whispering that checking Luz’s pulse was probably the furthest thing on her mind just now.

And then Luz cracks one eye open, and Amity nearly falls off the bed.

“Hey,” she says, and Amity can hear the grin in her voice. “You don’t have to sit there all . . . doting on me, y’know.”

“Right.” Suddenly, Amity is incredibly grateful for the way the darkness hides her blush. She stands up from the bed, and Luz shuts her eyes again. “Uh. Get some rest, okay? I’ll be . . . nearby.”

“Mm, you always are,” Luz replies, but it doesn’t feel like a judgment—just a statement of fact. Still, it feels uncomfortably personal for Amity’s liking.

“Well, I have to be, don’t I?” she chuckles awkwardly. “We’re roommates, after all.”

Luz doesn’t reply, but her breathing slows once again, so Amity assumes she’s fallen asleep.

She spends the next few minutes creeping around the room on her tiptoes, carefully righting the toppled furniture and gathering the papers that Luz’s fall scattered across the floor. Only after she’s gone ahead and finished hanging up Luz’s Azura poster does she remember the entire reason they’re in this mess in the first place—her parents’ call.

Amity’s gut clenches uncomfortably as she picks her phone up off her desk and watches her screen light up with four missed calls and twenty-three messages.

Might as well rip the band-aid off now, she thinks with a grimace. She opens her phone and pulls up her messages app, skimming her parents’—well, mostly her mother’s—outraged reaction to Amity’s absence.

Amity: My apologies; a situation with my roommate arose and was dealt with. 

Amity: I will be free next week at our usual time.

She chews on her fingernail and debates providing more detail, but after a moment, she figures that Odalia will ask if she wants to know more. And Amity kind of doubts she will, anyway.

The three bubbles that indicate that her mother is typing pop up almost immediately before vanishing again. Then they reappear, and disappear, and reappear again, and it’s nearly five minutes before her mother’s reply comes in.

Odalia: Good.

Amity locks her phone and throws it across the room, too irritated to care where it lands.

This is fine, she tells herself. Her parents are mad, but it’s fine. She’ll survive this.

She glances over at Luz, nothing more than a dark blot amidst the rest of the shadows in the room, and feels her heart rate slow. She can’t afford to be a wreck right now, not when someone is counting on her.

A few minutes later, she digs her flashlight out of her desk drawer and finishes her chemistry homework one-handed, careful to keep the light as low and as far away from Luz as possible. Then, as an afterthought, she copies out an extra study sheet for Luz for good measure.

This is going to be fine.

(And it is, for the most part, which is a pleasant and much-needed surprise.)

Luz is up and about less than seventy-two hours later, insisting—despite Amity’s protests—that the best way to cure an temporary ailment is to just get out and face the world. When Amity finally  manages to wrangle her back into Nurse Wortlop’s office, he cautions her sternly against that plan of action, but his efforts are ultimately fruitless—by Wednesday morning, Luz shows up five minutes late to chemistry class, clutching a heavily-annotated version of Amity’s study sheet and wheezing from her run across campus.

“You didn’t wake me up,” she hisses to Amity as she slides into her seat. Lilith, who usually has no patience at all for tardies or stragglers, continues teaching as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening at all. Amity purses her lips and sighs.

“You’re supposed to still be in bed,” she whispers back, double-underlining the definition of dipole moment as she talks. “Your note from Wortlop excuses you until the end of the week.”

“Okay, fair, but consider: lying in bed all day is boring.” Luz flips her study sheet over and begins taking notes on the other side—on further inspection, it appears she’s forgotten the rest of her notebooks. Amity isn’t even sure where she’s found a pen.

“You’re hopeless,” Amity mutters, but she tears a sheet of paper out of her spiral and passes it to Luz anyway. If she’s going to insist on being here, Amity might as well make sure she takes her notes properly.

“All right, all right, fine,” Amity concedes one evening, lying on the couch after a four-hour marathon of season three of Azura. “I can see how Hecate and Azura would be cute together.”

It’s the best night Amity’s had in a while, she realizes as Luz shouts in triumph and nearly flies off the couch. It’s only been a week since the poster incident, but her parents have cited business meetings to withdraw from today’s call, and Amity is more and more certain that she’s managed to escape the worst of their wrath. Beside her, Luz whips her phone out and starts typing immediately, a look of pure ecstasy on her face.

“Sorry not sorry,” she says, her fingers whizzing across the keyboard. “I just gotta tell everyone that you’re on my side on this one.”

Amity sits up straight. “I—hey, I never said that!” Luz freezes. “I can see how you could see it, that’s all.”

“Well,” Luz says after a moment, grinning wickedly, “it’s too late now! You said it, no take-backs!”

Narrowing her eyes, Amity lunges and snatches Luz’s phone out of her hand. Luz tries to pull away, but she’s no match for the years of reflexes Amity’s built up living in the Blight household. She scans through the text chain, keeping one eye up to glare at Luz.

“You can’t just say, ‘Amity ships Hecazura’ in all caps with no qualifiers!” She swipes into the options for the group chat and pulls up Luz’s contacts. “I won’t let you do this without defending myself.”

Luz blinks, and then her mind appears to suddenly kick into gear. “Wait!” she shouts, tackling Amity into the couch. The phone goes flying across the room. “I mean—um, I can add you! No need to do it yourself!”

Amity frowns, dazed by the loss of weight as Luz jumps off of her to retrieve her phone. “Um. All right then?”

At that, Luz turns around and winces. “Sorry,” she says, sounding genuinely contrite. “I just . . .” She falls silent for a moment, and when she resumes, Amity is pretty sure the question she asks is not the one she previously intended to. “Hey, are you sure about this?” Luz says. “I’m just asking because, y’know, you’ve been insisting for the past six weeks that group chats are the bane of your existence and that you’ll never join another one ever again?”

It’s true, Amity has been—what need does she have for a group chat when she’s spending nearly every waking moment with Luz, anyway? She gets the highlights of the group’s conversation without the incessant pinging on her phone, not to mention there’s less activity for her parents to possibly trace. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that.

“Just add me,” she grumbles, and her phone instantly lights up with a half-dozen notifications.

She’s going to regret this after tonight.

Gus: oh hey amity!!!
Gus: or wait
Gus: greetings, traitor
Gus: how could you abandon us like this in our hour of need??

Amity: I’m going on record to say that I do not in fact ship Hecazura.

Gus: HA
Gus: HAHA

Amity: However, nor do I ship Azuringale.

Gus: HAHAHA
Gus: ...wait what

Luz: AMITY BLIGHT MY BELOVED ROOMMATE HOW COULD YOU
Luz: YOU CANT JUST

uz: NOT CHOOSE A SIDE

Amity looks up from her phone to glare exasperatedly at Luz. “We’re in the same room, you know,” she says, to which Luz gestures happily at her phone.

“Clearly,” she says, “they need to see this, too. You’re betraying me in real time.”

“I am not betraying you,” Amity snorts, but she does turn her attention back to her phone—which has blown up with messages in the meantime. Amity scrolls down to the most recent few.

Willow: At least let her catch up with the show before dragging her into the shipping war
Willow: How far in have you gotten, Amity?

Amity: We finished season three about half an hour ago.

Gus: ‘we’? 👀

Luz: I’m rewatching it with her
Luz: Didn’t we tell you guys that?

Gus: um no you didn’t
Gus: not after the first night anyway
Gus: you’re having Azura watch parties without the rest of us??

Luz: Uh I mean yeah

Gus: i feel betrayed

Willow: Oh, that means you’re on the cliffhanger!
Willow: Why are you even bothering to text us right now?

Amity: ...
Amity: Luz insists that we wait at least 24 hours so I get the ‘authentic cliffhanger experience’.

Gus: oh wow that’s properly evil
Gus: I approve

Willow: Ugh, of course you do
Willow: Amity, if you need a Bittorrent link, just text me privately

Across the couch, Luz’s head whips up. “Oh, don’t you dare,” she hisses, looking as fierce as Amity’s ever seen anyone in her life, and Amity can’t help but burst out laughing.

“I wouldn’t, Luz,” she promises—though admittedly, she’s tempted. She can hold out twenty-four hours, though . . . probably. “I, um . . .” She takes a deep breath, then locks her phone and sets it aside, ignoring the notifications that light up her screen almost immediately. “I enjoy watching it like this,” she says. “With you.”

She’s never really watched a show with anyone before—most of her forays into television, at least when she could sneak it around her parents, were gritty crime dramas or other procedurals that she could pick up or drop as her parents’ oversight waxed and waned. But now there’s something intoxicating about following a single storyline for season after season, watching it all unfold in front of her.

The smile Luz gives her is almost blinding. “So do I,” she says, tossing her phone next to Amity’s on the coffee table. She opens her mouth to say something else, but before she can, an all too familiar knock echoes from outside the door.

“Shit,” Amity hisses, recoiling instinctively from the sound. Thankfully, Luz seems to catch on immediately.

“What is it?” she whispers. She casts a nervous glance at the door, like she’s afraid someone’s going to suddenly kick it in. “Are you expecting someone?”

Amity swallows. “I wasn’t.” But she would recognize Odalia Blight’s knock anywhere, even if the logistics behind its appearance are . . . improbable, at best. She casts her gaze about the room—clothes strewn about the beds, candy wrappers scattered on the floor, the bowl of popcorn still sitting next to the TV screen. “You should—you should go.”

“It’s your parents, isn’t it?” Luz says. Amity probably shouldn’t be surprised that she’s managed to work it out this quickly. Luz reaches out and squeezes her hand. “Do you really want me to leave? Or are you just saying that?”

Amity doesn’t, not really. but she won’t involve Luz in this. Her parents are her own problem, and not a burden that Luz should be forced to bear with her. “I really think you should,” she says.

“That wasn’t an answer,” Luz points out, and Amity sighs.

“I—yes. I want you to leave.”

The words hang in the air between them, poisonous, and Amity regrets it as soon as Luz’s face closes off into a grimace.

“Okay,” she says, her tone completely unreadable. She snatches her phone off the table, and then she’s gone, slipping out the window like someone who’s had way too much practice doing exactly that.

(Amity would know.)

Another knock from outside—there’s no mistaking it this time, it’s definitely Odalia’s pattern. Amity mutes her phone so the group chat doesn’t continue to blow it up, takes a deep breath, and eases open the door.

“Mother.” She keeps her tone neutral, her gaze firmly fixed on the ground—old habits die hard, it seems. “I wasn’t expecting you tonight.”

“And we weren’t expecting you to blow off the call we scheduled last week, but these things happen, don’t they?” Her mother sweeps past her into the room, and Amity is too frazzled to do anything but step aside on instinct. Odalia glances around, taking in the state of the decor, and sniffs in disdain.

“What kind of pig do you live with, anyway?” she drawls. Amity feels her jaw clench and forces herself to school her expression. “We’ll find you a new roommate next year; don’t worry.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I picked up a copy of your current grades from the registrar, by the by,” Odalia continues—Amity figures she means that she bullied the poor attendant into giving her access to the system, since official progress reports haven’t even gone out yet. “They’re . . . acceptable. Actually, the fact that they’re as high as they are is the only reason your father isn’t here right now.”

Small mercies, Amity thinks dully. She pushes down a scream and continues to stare at the floor.

“Be warned, however, that if your totals begin to slip . . .”

The threats continue, and the denigrations, and the insults directed at her ‘ghastly excuse for a roommate’, and God Amity hasn’t realized how nice it’s been to get away from this, She keeps her eyes on the ground, nods when she feels like she ought to, tries to keep herself from screaming in frustration—or worse, giving in to the temptation to give her mother a good, solid punch in the face.

Only twenty minutes later, when her mother disappears down the hall—with one final warning about the ‘company she keeps’, of course, because what kind of person would she be if she didn’t?—does Amity allow herself to sink to the floor and bury her head in her hands.

She doesn’t cry—she hasn’t cried because of her mother in years. But her breathing is out of control anyway, impossible to reign in. Amity heaves, her lungs begging for air, and suddenly she can’t get any at all no matter how fast she tries to breathe in, and her vision is swimming double and there are pins and needles running up and down her arms and she needs air, dammit, why can’t she just fucking breathe, and then—

Someone else is talking to her, someone calm. They have a cadence to their voice, a regular beat, and with a herculean effort, Amity latches onto the sounds. Not the words, not yet, but the shapes of the syllables and the rise and fall of the sentences. She matches her breathing to the rhythm, lets her body come slowly out of its panic.

“. . . and there was this one time I nearly got sent off to a boot camp, you know, because I brought in a snake for a school project and it bit one of my classmates, but luckily the principal was super cool about it and managed to talk the guy’s parents out of sueing. And, um—oh! Did I ever tell you about the project I did back in third grade where we had to collect a bunch of rocks and sort them into those rock categories that we were learning for some reason?”

“No, you didn’t,” Amity mumbles, still mostly on autopilot. “Luz?”

“Well, as it turns out—wait, you said something!”

“Uh, yeah.” She tries to laugh, but it comes out as more of a cough. “How long . . . how long have you been there?”

“Just a couple minutes,” Luz says. She’s kneeling on the carpet next to Amity, her hands tucked underneath her shins. “You, um—you weren’t replying to anything I said, but I didn’t want to touch you in case that was bad, so I just . . . kept talking.” She extracts one of her hands from where it’s trapped to scratch at the back of her neck. “Kinda hoping you don’t remember all of it, if I’m being honest.”

Amity shakes her head. “I don’t remember any of it, really,” she says. “But thank you. You, um, didn’t have to do that.”

“Yeah, well,” Luz chuckles awkwardly. “Here I am?”

“I didn’t even text you,” Amity realizes with a start. “God, Luz, I’m sorry, I’m such a mess tonight—”

“Hey, no, Amity,” Luz says, reaching out with her free hand. “You don’t need to apologize for the stuff your mom does to you. Please.”

“But I’m the one who told you to go, and then you were mad at me, and then—and then you’re here, and I—”

She does start crying this time, her shoulders heaving as the tears start to pool in her eyes, and despite her best efforts her breathing spirals out of control again.

“Amity,” Luz whispers, and it sounds kind of like her heart is breaking.

It’s that, more than anything, that Amity clings to as she regulates her breathing—Luz is here; Luz isn’t mad at her but she is sad, and Amity needs to claw her way back to coherence if only so she can tell her just how sorry she is. In, out, she tells herself, over and over again, in, out, and she’s not sure exactly how much time passes before she can feel the carpet under her hands again.

“I’m fine,” she mutters to Luz, raising her sleeve to wipe the tears from her eyes. “And I’m sor—”

“None of that,” Luz says softly. She inches into Amity’s space slowly, like she’s afraid Amity is going to push her away, and wraps a tentative arm around her shoulders. “We’re just gonna sit here, okay? We’ll be quiet together until you feel better.”

“Okay,” Amity replies, because she really doesn’t have the strength to argue, and . . . silence sounds nice right now. In, out. She’s a better person than her mother, and just because this is happening doesn’t make her weak. In, out. She has friends who care about her. In, out.

She has Luz.

Amity leans her head to the side, nuzzling into Luz’s collarbone, and doesn’t even notice when she falls asleep.

“I mean, I did hear some of it,” Luz admits the next day over breakfast. They’re both sore from falling asleep on the ground, but Luz looks to have gotten the worst of it. She can barely turn her head without grimacing—or maybe it has more to do with the topic of their conversation. “I was pacing around outside for a bit, and um, you mom is kind of a loud talker.” She gives Amity a pleading look. “I left once I realized I could still hear, though; I promise!”

“It’s okay, Luz,” Amity sighs. “So you heard, um . . . some of the things she said about you.”

Luz’s expression falters for a moment. “Yeah, well,” she says, “she’s also a bit of a terrible person, no offense, so I’m trying not to let it get to me that much.”

“Yeah, no argument there,” Amity snorts. “I’m sorry you had to hear it, though.”

“I’m sorry you had to deal with her for the first sixteen years of your life.” Luz takes an overly aggressive bite of her toast (which was already slathered in so much butter that Amity doesn’t know how she hasn’t had a heart attack) and nearly chokes on it. “We’re gonna be ready next time, okay?”

“No, Luz, I can’t ask you to—”

“Sucks,” she replies, in a tone that Amity knows is hopeless to argue against. “Even if you won’t let me be there, I’m gonna prep you up so hard—she’ll never know what hit her!”

Honestly, Amity doesn’t even know if that’s possible—not that Luz would ever let that stop her, she thinks fondly. She stirs her yogurt with her spoon and sighs. “I’ll . . . owe you one, then,” she says after a moment.

“Nah, this is just what friends do,” Luz says happily. She considers her next bite of toast carefully before taking it. “Although . . . if you really insist, wanna hear my price?”

Amity narrows her eyes. “I don’t know, do I?” she asks.

“Tell me something embarrassing about yourself,” Luz says, sporting an oddly self-assured grin. Amity sputters.

“Something—something embarrassing? Why would I willingly tell you that?”

“Well, you did ask,” Luz replies sagely. “Plus, like, I kinda spilled my guts out to you last night and told you way too many of my super embarrassing secrets, so I was hoping to maybe even the scales?”

“I don’t even remember any of your secrets,” Amity complains. “There was . . . something about a boot camp. And a snake? Or was it a lizard?”

Luz considers this for a moment. “Okay,” she says, “let’s take turns, then. You first, since I’ve gone already.”

Frowning, Amity abandons her yogurt to cross her arms in concern. “And what about your ‘price’?” she asks. Luz lets out a long breath, and when she finally speaks, her voice is smaller than Amity expects.

“Is it that hard to believe that I want to get to know you a little better?” she asks—but if anything, Amity’s even more confused.

“I thought—I thought we knew each other pretty well,” she says. They know each other’s breakfast orders, and their favorite candies during TV nights. Amity knows how many sugars Luz likes to take in her coffee (five, six if she’s awake before eight in the morning); Luz knows that Amity gets anxious if their communal chocolate shelf starts to run low and restocks it accordingly. It’s a bunch of little things, picked up in the two months they’ve lived side by side, and honestly, it’s probably more than Amity’s known about anyone before.

“Well, yeah,” Luz allows, and Amity breathes a sigh of relief. “But those are, like, friend things—which are awesome, don’t get me wrong! I guess some of them are roommate things too, which is a little different. But hear me out: embarrassing secrets are for best friends, and for—” She stops, her eyes going wide. “And for . . . people that’ll stay in your life for a long time.” Luz takes a deep breath. “And I’d—I mean, y’know, I’d like for you to be one of them.”

Amity is not going to cry again.

“Yeah,” she manages, hating the way her throat seems to close around the word. I’d like that too, she wants to say, and it’s true; she wants it almost more than anything else she’s ever wanted, and maybe that’s why she can’t say it, because it’s just a little too much.

“I played soccer in a little league when I was nine,” she says instead, “and an opposing team once scored a goal by bouncing the ball off my face.”

The look of wonder that Luz gives her is worth every square inch of the red that she knows must be suffusing her face, even if it only lasts for a moment.

“That—oh my God, Amity,” Luz wheezes. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing, I—” She attempts to hide a fit of giggles by cramming the rest of her toast into her mouth, which only kind of works. Amity breathes out, lets herself crack a smile.

“It was a little bit funny,” she admits. Edric and Emira had teased her for weeks about it, which at the time she did not appreciate. But it’s different with Luz, somehow.

“I burned my eyebrows off trying to light the candles on a birthday cake once,” Luz says, and now it’s Amity’s turn to choke back a laugh.

“The first time I tried to dye my hair, I screwed up the bleach so badly that Emira had to pay a hair salon to redo it for me.”

“I hung up a flyer on my middle school’s bulletin board advertising one of my Good Witch Azura fanfictions.”

Amity snorts, clamping her mouth shut on her next response, because there’s no way she can let that one go without comment. “You—that’s incredible,” she chortles. “I didn’t know you wrote fanfic!”

“Yeah, well, some of us had to deal with the season three cliffhanger while it was actually airing,” Luz grumbles, but she doesn’t sound too affronted. “And what can I say? It was a pretty good fanfic, for a middle schooler.”

It really shouldn’t surprise Amity that Luz writes, given her absurdly in-depth critiques of the Azura scripts and the startling efficiency at which she churns out English essays when they’re assigned. She opens her mouth to ask another question—she’s not entirely sure what; would it be too forward to ask if she can read some of it? But she’s saved the awkwardness of stumbling over her words by the school bell, giving its customary shrill scream to remind them that they have five minutes to get to class.

Amity spoons one last bite of yogurt into her mouth and resigns herself to abandoning the rest. Luz brushes the crumbs of her toast off her cat hoodie.

“Hey,” Luz says after a moment. “I know it probably goes without saying, but these things stay between us, right?”

“My lips are sealed,” Amity replies with a nod. “I have physics today, but I’ll see you this afternoon?”

“Yep! Yeah, of course!” Luz rocks back and forth on her feet awkwardly. “I’ll definitely see you.”

Neither of them makes a move to leave.

“. . . anyway,” Luz says, just as Amity opens her mouth to say all right, well—. “I should be—I mean, we both should be . . . going. Yeah. To class.”

“Yes,” Amity agrees, and there’s a split second where she’s not entirely sure she’s going to be able to force her legs to move—but thankfully, she does, and she turns to give Luz a small wave once she’s deemed herself well enough in motion. Her friend is still standing in the same spot, running her hand through her hair, but Amity’s wave makes her jump and turn to go.

(Not without first waving back, of course—complete with a bright smile and entirely too much enthusiasm, which Amity finds that she doesn’t really mind at all.)

“Okay!” Luz announces a week later, after an exhausting six-hour run of the most plot-thick episodes of television that Amity has ever seen. “Operation Devastate Amity’s Mom is officially in the planning stage! Where do we want to start?”

Amity blinks. “Where in the world did you get a corkboard that big?”

“Oh, this?” Luz shrugs. “Borrowed it from outside the band room the other day. It was empty, so I figured they must not be using it—”

“Yeah, somehow I doubt that,” Amity says with a sigh. At least Eda never actually follows through with the alleged weekly room checks. 

She puts down her phone, where the group chat is arguing over their coordinated costumes for Halloween next Sunday, and turns her attention to Luz’s board.

(Honestly, she’s kind of excited for the whole Halloween thing—she’s never been allowed to go out in a costume before, and even if there’s no real trick-or-treating on campus, she’s still excited to try it—maybe she could pull off a convincing vampire. Or an elf. She’ll think of something.)

“Luz,” she says, careful to avoid sounding like she’s criticizing the plan, “to be honest, I’m . . . not really sure my mom is someone you can anticipate.” Amity’s certainly never been able to.

“Hey now, we’re not giving up that easily.” Luz scribbles Hard to predict! on a yellow sticky note and slaps it onto the board, way over in the upper left corner. She rummages through her pockets for a moment, then pulls out a single pushpin and sticks it through the center of the paper. “This is how we brainstorm! Start small, and before you know it, we’ll have an entire web of ideas!”

As enthusiastic as Luz is, however, this isn’t exactly a conversation Amity wants to have right now. (The fact that she’ll never actually want to have it is entirely beside the point, she tells herself firmly.) She opens her mouth to tell Luz that, but her roommate has already stuck two more sticky notes to the board—one labeled Need lots of options! and the other Luz: Moral support - maybe more?. Luz herself is currently absorbed in tying a length of red string around two of the pushpins, a task with which she appears to have met her match—the knot keeps slipping off the pin just as she tries to pull it tight.

Amity watches her, tongue out in concentration and eyes nearly crossed, and the first thought that pops into her head is, Cute.

Then she blinks, and buries the impulse beneath a dozen layers of Blight-tempered mental steel.

“Are—are you sure you wouldn’t rather talk about our Halloween costumes?” Amity says, picking up her phone again. She has forty-three missed notifications already. “Gus just suggested that Willow should go as a tree, and I think she might be about to murder him.”

Luz sighs and dives for her own phone. “No murdering!” she yells into the speaker, and a moment later, Amity sees a voice message appear in the group chat. Almost as an afterthought, she adds, “And I have dibs on Azura!”

Of course Luz would have a plan already, Amity thinks with a snort.

Predictably, the chat comes back with a chorus of I mean, yeahs and obviouslys—and it’s apparently enough to derail Willow and Gus’s argument, too, because the conversation moves on to a discussion of which season’s Azura has the best character design. (“I’ve been working through all of her costumes since seventh grade,” Luz confides in Amity, “and I liked her season two design best so far, but four-B might take the cake this year.”)

She does not, however, mention that tidbit to the group chat, so Amity doesn’t either. Luz flips her phone over and leaves it on the coffee table, returning immediately—Amity purses her lips and sighs—to the corkboard. “So, Amity,” she says. “Thoughts? Ideas? Fun haikus?”

“I’m pretty sure the plural is still haiku,” Amity mutters on instinct, but Luz just glares at her. “And seriously, Luz, I really don’t. This isn’t worth your time.”

“But we’ve gotta have a plan!” Luz complains, returning to the couch and flopping down next to Amity. “We’re best friends now, right? That means you have to let me help you with this.”

Amity takes a deep breath. “I know how much you want to help,” she says softly. “But let’s be honest—any plan you might be able to come up with, it would fall apart the moment she walked through the door. Trust me, Luz; I’ve tried outmaneuvering her before. It’s never worked, not once.” She sighs. “Sometimes I wonder if I even succeeded at getting out, or if they just let me leave because . . . because they knew I’d be back eventually.”

“Do you want to go back?” Luz props herself up on one arm, her brown eyes boring directly into Amity’s soul. She forces herself to look away.

“What? No, of course not,” she scoffs. “I just . . . what if I can’t avoid it?”

“There’s always another way,” Luz replies, with all the confidence of someone who would probably say the same thing if they were facing the literal end of the world. “Hey,” she says, pulling herself into a sitting position. “So you said that the moment your mom walks in the door, the plan falls apart?”

“Yeah.” Odalia Blight has an aptitude for that—it’s not just Amity’s plans that unravel whenever she steps into a room. She’s seen her mother work her dark sorcery on store clerks, principals, even bank tellers. No one is safe from her.

“Right, okay.” Luz nods. “So . . . we start with this: we don’t let your mom through the door.”

Amity opens her mouth, a bitter condemnation ready on the tip of her tongue—something like that’s ridiculous, or Luz, please, I’ve tried everything already; it’s impossible—but her friend is just trying to help. “It’s metaphorical, Luz,” she sighs, shaking her head. “She doesn’t have to actually step through the door.”

“Really? Dang.” Luz sighs as she flops back into the cushions. “I guess that did sound too good to be true.”

That draws a small chuckle out of Amity. “Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice,” she mutters. “And, um. While I really, really appreciate all of this, I—” She swallows. “I don’t think this is a conversation I’m ready for yet.”

“Oh.” Luz blinks. “Wait, why didn’t you just say that in the first place?”

Because you seemed so eager. Because I didn’t want to make it look like I was pushing you away. Because I was so enamored with the positive attention.

“I just . . . I couldn’t bring myself to,” she says lamely.

But to her surprise, Luz just nods. “Okay,” she says. “Yeah, okay, I get that. Boundaries are healthy.” She nods again, like she’s just trying to reconfirm that fact with herself, but her voice is entirely genuine when she says. “I’ll be here whenever you are ready, though. Or if ‘whenever’ is actually ‘never at all’ . . . that’s okay, too.”

Amity lets out a breath she didn’t even realize she was holding. Luz isn’t offended, and she isn’t going to push.

They’re okay.

Of course they’re okay, she thinks with a frown. How did she manage to convince herself that they might not be?

“You know if I’m ever making you uncomfortable, please just say something,” Luz says, breaking the silence. “My mama says I have the personality of a steamroller, sometimes.”

“That’s not a bad thing!” Amity protests immediately, but Luz doesn’t reply. “I’ll tell you, though. I promise.”

“Good.” Another silence falls over them, broken only by the synchronized buzzing of their phones—Amity doesn’t bother reaching for hers; it’s probably not important—and then abruptly, Luz sits up and says, “Hey, wanna help me measure fabric for my Azura cloak? We can brainstorm costume ideas for you, too!”

“Sure,” Amity replies, smiling softly. I’d love to, she thinks, but all she says aloud is, “Guess we have to use the corkboard for something, right?”

Amity tugs nervously at the hem of her suit jacket, biting her lip and cursing Luz’s apparently ever-growing flair for the dramatic. She raises a single hand to the cafeteria doorknob, then grimaces and lets it fall away. God, why did she agree to come out here alone?

(She knows the answer, of course, which is one syllable long and ends with a Z, but that doesn’t mean she can’t complain about it. Honestly, the nerve—

Wait wait wait, Luz’s voice echoes in her head, less than thirty minutes old, you’re absolutely not allowed to see it before we walk into the party. The lighting here’s all wrong! I need the witchy half-light, and the strobes, and the cheesy fake cobwebs—

And that was that, apparently, because not even Amity’s reminder that she’d helped Luz cut the cloak literally last week was enough to make her reconsider.)

It’s a small pleasure, she supposes, that Luz doesn’t know what she’s wearing, either—they’d decided on a generic Tolkien-esque elf costume during their cloak-making session, but Amity made it less than halfway down the aisle at the local Goodwill before changing her mind.

The lavender in her hair would probably have spoiled the look, anyway.

She takes another deep breath and raises her hand again, this time connecting with the doorknob. Amity breathes out, preparing to give it a turn, when—

“Hey, look who it is!” says a voice behind her, and then Gus pops into her field of vision. He’s dressed as Headmaster Bump, except he’s also wearing what Amity is pretty sure is a devil mask, and she wonders briefly if he actually intends to walk in looking like that. “Wait a minute,” Gus says, glancing around in confusion. “Where’s Luz?”

“She insisted that the lighting in our dorm would spoil her costume reveal,” Amity grumbles, removing her hand from the doorknob and turning around. “Hey, Willow. Vee.”

“Hi, Amity!” The two of them wave in almost perfect sync, befitting of their coordinated (and impressively detailed) Team Rocket costumes—Willow is even holding one of her succulents, which she’s wrapped in a miniature Meowth hoodie that Amity’s pretty sure is meant for actual babies.

Of the three of them, only Vee looks like she isn’t incredibly psyched up to be here—which, honestly, Amity can relate. She joins Vee at the back of the group as Gus yanks the door open with obvious glee. “Party town, here I come!” he cries, then dashes inside, his devil mask nearly whipping off his face.

Willow, Amity, and Vee step through the door like normal people.

“Wow,” Amity mutters, taking in the scene. Luz was right about the strobe lights—there have to be at least three of them, lighting up the room at intervals in various hideous colors. A light mist fills the cafeteria, just thick enough that Amity wonders if it’s really safe to breathe, and there are fake cobwebs and skeletons hanging every which way from the ceiling.

Peering through the mist, she can make out several of the activities that were advertised during the week—apple bobbing, various carnival games, a stage for the costume contest, and of course, free candy. 

Vee beelines for the chocolates, clearly intent on speaking to as few people as possible all night. Amity can respect that, so she follows. She can always use free sugar, anyway.

Maneuvering through the crowd in her cape takes a little getting used to, but thankfully, she makes it to the table without getting it snagged on anything. The last five feet or so, Amity can only charitably describe as a warzone—apparently, dropping a table of candy bowls into a room full of high schoolers is a recipe for chaos. Who knew?

She grabs a handful of Twix, as well as a giant Snickers bar for Luz, before beating a quick retreat through the mob. Vee latches onto her side, nibbling at a Twizzler even as they fight their way out.

“Thanks,” says Vee as soon as they’re clear of the throng. They’ve ended up next to the apple bobbing, but Amity’s lost track of both Willow and Gus. “I don’t know how you’re so good at dodging people.”

“They tend to get out of my way,” Amity chuckles. She can be very intimidating when she wants to be, and the suit-jacket-and-combat-boots combination probably helps.

Vee purses her lips. “Wish I had that effect on people,” she mutters, though Amity barely catches it over the shouts of the crowd. “I, um—I like your costume, by the way.”

Amity restrains herself from preening. “Thank you,” she says, picking at the fabric of her cloak. “I saw the jacket in the store, and it was too perfect to pass up.”

“Yeah?” Vee grins. “Well, Luz is gonna love it. If it doesn’t break her, that is.”

“If it doesn’t—” Amity frowns. “Why would it break her?”

The expression on Vee’s face cycles through several different modes of concern before settling on aggressively neutral, which is somehow even more confusing. “Um—no reason in particular,” she says quickly. “I mean, you’re dressed as a character from her favorite show? And it’s a very accurate rendition, especially in this light, so I just think she might freak out a little. In a good way, of course.”

Amity has literally never heard Vee string together this many words at once before. She wonders if there’s something in the Twizzlers, or if it’s just that she’s finally warming up to her.

The latter option would be nice, she supposes.

“I like your costume, too,” Amity says as she unwraps a Twix. “The stitching is impressive—you must have spent a lot of time working on it.”

“Oh! Thank you.” Vee blushes. “Actually, this was mostly Willow’s idea—she heard I wasn’t planning on coming, and then . . .” she gestures to herself. “. . . this. I think Gus counts himself lucky that he weaseled out of it.”

While the idea of Gus dressed as James is actually kind of a hilarious prospect, Amity is more concerned by the first part. “Wait, Willow didn’t force you to come, did she?”

“No, no, of course not.” Vee says, shaking her head rapidly. “She just gave me a good reason to.”

“Good.” Amity feels her shoulders relax—she knows all too well how it feels to be dragged along to parties you didn’t want to attend, and then immediately being abandoned by the draggers. Though now that she thinks about it, she and Vee are the ones responsible for the abandoning tonight. “Where did we leave Willow, anyway?”

“She said earlier that she really liked the ring toss,” Vee suggests. “I don’t think I want to walk through the crowd again, though.”

Amity scans the room, looking for an alternate path. She tucks the rest of her candy into one of her cloak pockets to keep it safe. “We could go around the dance floor,” she says. “Unless you’re okay staying here. It’s not like we have to go find her.”

“No, let’s find at least one of them.” Vee finishes off her candy, then realizes her costume doesn’t actually have pockets and palms the wrapper. “I, um—I don’t want to be alone, but I should leave you free to search for Luz.”

“Luz is perfectly capable of finding me on her own,” Amity points out, but she does wonder if that’s true. Luz’s coordination is questionable at the best of times. “Actually, I think she’d want to see the rest of you, too. Shouldn’t she have been here when we walked in?” She left the dorm nearly half an hour before Amity, in fact—the realization that they haven’t spotted her yet is a little worrying.

“Hmm, you’re probably right,” Vee says after a moment. “The Good Witch Azura ought to be fairly simple to spot, huh?”

“You’re telling me,” Amity says with a frown. Especially given Luz’s flair for the dramatic—Amity is willing to bet that her costume has at least ten percent more glitter than is strictly necessary for accuracy. “You sure you don’t want to help me look?”

“Look for who?” says a voice behind her. Amity whirls, and nearly screams when she comes face-to-face with a devil head shrouded in fog.

“For God’s sake, Gus,” she groans, batting away the hands he’s holding in front of himself like a zombie. “I was just about to go looking for Luz, that’s all.”

“Oh!” Gus bobs his head, which causes the devil mask to shift along his face in a mildly terrifying manner. “Yeah, sorry, can’t help with that—actually, I need to steal Vee for a minute, too. Willow wants to enter the couples’ costume contest, and they need pictures of all the contestants.”

Vee goes completely pink. “The—couples’ contest?”

“Pretty sure that’s just what they’re calling it,” Gus says with a shrug, and Amity nods in support. “They’re accepting entries for any number of people, anyway—I saw a whole friend group up there dressed as the Avengers earlier.”

Mollified, Vee lets Gus lead her away, and Amity is once again left to her own devices. She scans the crowd again for Luz, but her roommate is still nowhere to be seen. The fake mist and the strobe lights certainly aren’t helping, though, so Amity starts a slow circuit of the cafeteria, keeping her eyes peeled as she goes.

She crosses through the dance floor once, then twice, and then on the third pass, the sheer intensity of the noise and bass reverberating through her bones finally overcomes her frantic desire to find her friend. Amity slips out the door, taking a deep gulp of cold October air and leaning against the wall to clear her head.

When she opens her eyes, she spots a figure pacing around the bushes on the side of the building. They’re nestled so deep into the shadows that Amity can’t even make out the costume they’re wearing. She frowns, abandoning her post at the door to inch closer.

“C’mon, Luz, you can do this,” the figure mutters, apparently oblivious to Amity’s approach. “Everyone’s in costume, nobody’s gonna make fun of you this time. They probably won’t even notice you at all!” Luz slows to a stop, then spins on her heel and resumes pacing. “But what if they do? What if everyone thinks it’s lame? What if Amity thinks it’s lame—oh, crap, Amity! I’ve left her all alone inside!”

She spins again, her oversized witch hat nearly flying off her head, and sprints for the door. Amity doesn’t even have time to consider moving before Luz slams into her with a yelp, carrying them both off their feet into the bushes.

“Sorry, random stranger!” Luz yells, shoving herself to her feet. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I—”

“Luz!” Amity groans. She’s never been so glad to have a staff that she can use to support her weight. “Luz, it’s me.”

“Amity?” Luz spins around again. “Wait, what are you doing out—whoa.”

Luz stumbles backward, her staff clattering to the ground, and Amity turns to see what she’s looking at. There’s nothing behind her but the wall, however, so she looks back at Luz with a frown. “Is something wrong?”

No response. Luz just stares at her, completely transfixed, and—okay, this is kind of weirding Amity out.

“Hey!” Amity steps forward, snapping her fingers under her friend’s nose. “Earth to Luz?”

“Wh—Amity!” Luz exclaims, blinking rapidly. “Of course you’re Amity, I already said that. Right. Um. Fancy meeting you here!” She pauses. “And by fancy I mean really fancy, because, like—wow.” she gestures at Amity’s costume as Amity tugs at her sleeves nervously.

“I’m—uh, I’m glad you think so,” she says, feeling the color rise in her cheeks. She turns away. “I was a little afraid you wouldn’t like it, actually.”

For a moment, Luz doesn’t seem to process what she’s said. “You were—seriously?” she demands. “Amity, if they ever cast a live-action Hecate, this would be it!” She waves vaguely in all directions, appearing more and more panicked by the second—Amity is starting to get a little worried. “This is—you’re like—you’re like a literally cotton-candy haired goddess in that!”

And, well, Amity’s been called a lot of things before, but goddess has never been one of them. “I—thanks,” she mutters faintly—if she wasn’t blushing furiously before, she certainly is now. But so is Luz, it seems, so they might be even.

She finally takes the opportunity to look at the rest of Luz’s costume, with the intent to return the compliment, and—oh. Oh, wow.

She sags against the wall, unable to tear her gaze away from Luz’s getup. She’s wearing—if Amity wanted to put it in terms that would absolutely not do it justice—a simply-cut floor-length dress, except it’s been painstakingly adorned with white and purple crystals that catch the lamplight in constantly shifting patterns. Around her shoulders is a wool cloak, which Amity recognizes as the one they made together, except she’s embroidered the hood with some sort of gold thread that actually looks like it’s giving off light of its own. Her gloves are handcrafted leather—when did she have time to make gloves?—and although Amity has no idea where her staff went after she dropped it, she’s almost certain the orb-and-flame on the top will be carved in painstaking detail.

“Amity?” Luz says, snapping her out of her reverie. “Crap, did I break you? Was that too much? Please don’t hate me, I was just super overwhelmed and wow you’re so pretty in the suit and—”

Amity can practically feel her brain do a hard reboot before she regains the ability to speak. “No, no, I’m fine,” she mutters—how is her voice already so scratchy? “You’re just—um. Gorgeous. Wow.” She blinks, feels the remainder of her self-control come back online. “I mean! Your costume is super impressive; honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it—not that you’re not also gorgeous, I just—am going to stop talking now.”

God, she thinks. If the animated Azura looks half this good, she needs to drag Luz away to start season four-B immediately. Luz was afraid of getting made fun of for this?

“I guess we can agree that we both look great, then,” her friend says diplomatically. “I, uh, wasn’t really expecting anyone else to come out all garbed up with Azura stuff.”

“Yeah, well,” Amity chuckles dryly. “I thought I’d surprise you?”

“Consider me surprised,” Luz says. “Excited and surprised, and also a little bit—uh, never mind.” She pauses. “We should probably go inside at some point, huh?”

“Right, yeah, that.” Honestly, now that she’s seen Luz, walking back inside is basically the furthest thing on her mind. Which reminds her—Amity retrieves the giant Snickers bar from her pocket and hands it to her friend. “I grabbed this for you while I was in there the first time.”

Luz’s eyes go almost comically wide. “Oh my God, I think I’m in love with you,” she says, snatching the candy bar out of Amity’s grip. “Amity Blight, I swear you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I’m sure that’s just the chocolate craving talking,” Amity replies, once again ignoring the blush that suffuses her cheeks. “Come on, let’s go find the others. I bet they’ll love your costume.”

“Amity, wait!” Luz catches her wrist as Amity tries to lead her through the doors. “Could we—I don’t know, um—do you think we could dance for a bit first? Just you and me?”

Amity stumbles over air. “I—sure?” she says, slamming her staff into the ground to catch herself. She sways precariously for a moment before stabilizing. “I mean, my mother never misses a chance to tell me I have two left feet, but if you’re all right with that . . .”

She also wasn’t exactly planning on dancing tonight—it’s a Halloween party, after all—but if Luz wants to, she knows she won’t be able to say no. Besides, how bad could it possibly be?

“However uncoordinated you think you are, I’m even worse,” Luz replies, and then she grins like she’s proud of it. “Also, your mom sucks, and we’re gonna prove her wrong on this very dance floor.” She offers her arm to Amity, who takes it on instinct, and the two of them approach the cafeteria doors together.

Actually opening the doors takes a little bit of finagling—they’re both carrying their staffs in their free hands, and Amity doesn’t particularly feel like letting go—but eventually, they slip inside to find the Halloween party still in full swing. Not that Amity would have expected anything else, really.

“C’mon, Amity, dance with me,” Luz says, pulling her in the vague direction of the dance floor. She puts her hands on Amity’s shoulders and tugs her closer, which in all honesty is equal parts adorable and utterly panic-inducing, because Amity doesn’t think she’s ever been so close to someone before—hugs don’t count, she thinks, because when you’re hugging someone you’re not staring at their face from three inches away and being struck by exactly how pretty they look in the low light—

Also, she realizes as she tears herself away from Luz’s eyes, there’s another problem.

“We are not slow-dancing to the Monster Mash,” Amity grumbles. As much as she hates to do it, she eases herself out of Luz’s grasp, blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear her head. Snap out of it, Blight. She’s your friend. Don’t ruin this for yourself.

Luz, however, doesn’t let her go so easily. “Counterargument,” she laughs, “you have to dance, because it’s a graveyard smash.” She snatches Amity’s free hand, lifting it above her head to spin her.

“If the next words out of your mouth are—”

But it’s too late to stop her. “I’m sure you’ll catch on in a flash!” Luz crows, completing the spin. Amity groans and plants her staff on the floor, pulling herself to a stop.

“Luz,” she chortles, side-eyeing the crowd that’s begun to gather around them, “oh, please, you’re not even in time with the song—”

And of course, because the universe (or maybe just the DJ) apparently hates her guts, it’s at that exact moment that the music changes.

“Hey,” Luz says, over the opening strains of ‘I Put a Spell on You’, “you’d say this is slower than the last one, right?”

Honestly, Amity isn’t sure she can survive a whole four minutes of close contact with Luz at this point—but the look she gives her is just too earnest to refuse. “Slow enough, I suppose,” she says, making a show of haughtiness that she knows Luz will immediately see through.

“Good,” Luz grins. “In that case—may I have this one and only dance, my lady?”

Amity can’t help it—even as she reaches out to grab Luz’s hand, she throws her head back and laughs. “Luz Noceda, you did not just ask me to dance by quoting Azura at me.”

“I had an opportunity!” Luz protests, but she’s laughing, too. “And I’m even Azura, and you’re Hecate, I couldn’t not take it.”

“Fine, fine,” Amity chuckles. She knows what she has to do, what she has to say next—she only wishes she could be saying it for real. “You can have this dance,” she intones, arching an eyebrow like she’s seen Hecate do onscreen so many times, “but I make no promises of ‘one’ or ‘only’.”

The look of utter joy on Luz’s face is worth every inch of the blush creeping up her neck. “Well, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she says, and then she pulls Amity in close, and Amity thinks she’s going to remember this moment—Luz staring up at her, eyes nearly hidden under her slipping cowl, but still looking the most radiant she’s ever seen her—she thinks she’ll remember this moment until the day she dies.

(It’s a good thing, too, because she barely remembers a lick of anything that happens after that.)

It seems like Halloween has barely passed before Thanksgiving is suddenly upon them, and Luz is frantically throwing clothes into a suitcase while the theme song from Azura plays in the background and Amity looks on in amusement. “You’re going to be gone for a week, Luz,” she points out with a chuckle. “I’m pretty sure you don’t need four separate jackets for that.”

“But I like all of these,” Luz grumbles mournfully, but she does remove one of them—the cat-eared hoodie she bought at the beginning of the year—and toss it haphazardly in the direction of her closet. It misses spectacularly, landing on top of Amity’s desk instead, but Luz doesn’t seem to notice. “Besides,” she says, “At least I’m actually packing in advance. School ends tomorrow, you know.”

“Oh,” Amity blinks. “Did I not—I’m staying here for the break,” she says, shrugging. “Don’t need to pack if I’m not going anywhere.”

“What!” Luz looks up from her sock drawer, a look of utter betrayal written across her face. “Amity, why didn’t you tell me? We could’ve gotten a bigger cabin this year, or—I don’t know, a cot or something? Wait, it’s not too late, if I—”

“Luz, really, it’s fine.” Amity reaches over to pluck Luz’s phone out of her hand before she can actually send a text. “It’s a miracle my parents aren’t dragging me back home to celebrate with them—me going with you would just make them angry.”

There is, of course, one other reason Amity’s been careful not to mention her lack of plans. Spending time away from Luz will be good for her, she tells herself—at the very least, she needs to get a handle on . . . whatever these new feelings are that she’s been steadfastly ignoring for the past month and a half.

“Ugh, I guess,” Luz concedes, oblivious to Amity’s internal state of disaster. She makes a grabby hand at her phone, and Amity hands it back grudgingly. “Is it going better, at least? Your mom hasn’t shown up in our room again, has she?”

She hasn’t, thank God, but that doesn’t mean she won’t. Honestly, Amity is a little concerned that she’ll wake up on Saturday after Luz is gone to find Odalia standing at her doorstep with a pair of plane tickets in her hand. But her latest report from Ed and Em suggests that the Blight elders might be spending their Thanksgiving abroad this year, so Amity doesn't think it’s too likely.

“I’ve kept my grades up,” she replies to Luz. “Haven’t missed a call since October. She has no reason to show up here.” It’s been exhausting, for sure, but worth it—if all goes well, she won’t have to breathe the same air as her parents again until Hexside closes for the winter holidays.

Luz doesn’t seem too happy with that answer, but really, there’s nothing either of them can do about it. If Odalia wants to show up, she will, no matter how diligently Amity might try to prevent it.

“Well,” Luz says, “if she does show up while I’m gone, kick her in the shins or something for me.”

“You know very well that I can’t.” Amity rolls her eyes. “And to be honest, I doubt you could, either. She’s surprisingly quick for her age.”

“A girl can dream,” Luz sighs, and Amity feels like she should not find such a fervent desire for violence so endearing. Even (especially?) if it’s against her own mother.

Still, it does feel good to know that Luz, at least, will always have her back.

“I . . . appreciate the sentiment,” Amity says, which draws a laugh out of Luz. Her friend has finally managed to close the zipper on her suitcase, and is now sitting atop it with her legs crossed. Amity fears for its structural integrity.

“It’ll be more than sentiment one day, just you wait.” As quickly as she sat down, Luz hops up off her perch to fish the TV remote out from under a couch cushion. “That reminds me,” she says, “you are absolutely not allowed to watch any Azura without me, so we have to finish season five tonight. You ready?”

Amity considers the three finals she has tomorrow, weighs them against the adorable bright-eyed look Luz is giving her, and somehow finds that the tests come up lacking. “Absolutely,” she says, “but if this one ends on a cliffhanger and I have to wait a week before season six, you and I are going to have words.”

“Oh, just wait until you’re caught up like the rest of us,” Luz mutters. “Then you’ll know true suffering.” (It’s not a denial, Amity notes with distaste. Considering how well she knows the show’s writing style by now, she really shouldn’t be surprised.)

Luz flops onto the couch and switches the TV on, patting the cushion next to her as an invitation. But it’s a trap, as it turns out—as soon as Amity sits down, Luz takes the opportunity to prop both legs up on her lap. When Amity glares at her, she just shrugs and smiles serenely.

“Admit it, you’re gonna miss this,” she says, reaching for the bowl of chocolates.

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” Amity huffs, but they both know which of those is true. (Amity is, in fact, painfully aware of it.) “Hey, Luz?” she says after a moment’s consideration.

Luz pauses on the Netflix home screen. “Yeah?”

“We’ll talk, right? While you’re gone?”

“What? Yeah, of course we will,” she replies easily, and Amity feels herself relax a little. (It’s not about her crush, she tells herself, it’s about their friendship. That’s the entire reason she’s asking.) “Can’t get rid of me that easily,” Luz adds, tossing a Twix bar at Amity’s face.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Amity mumbles, but she’s not sure if Luz hears—they have more important things to pay attention to, anyway. Azura is onscreen, along with half a dozen members of an elite troll army, and Amity is pretty sure she knows how this is going to end, but she’ll be damned if she isn’t going to watch the entire episode anyway.

(The season does end on a cliffhanger, and Amity is so visibly incensed that Luz makes her swear on her chemistry notes that she won’t sneak any peeks ahead while she’s gone.

Amity does, of course, but only grudgingly—though really, it’s not as if she was ever going to do anything else.)

Hexside life without Luz is . . . unsurprisingly enough, kind of boring.

Of the members of their little friend group, Amity is the only one who’s stayed—Gus and Willow have both returned home to their parents, and even Vee is taking the opportunity to stay with one of her aunts about an hour out of town. The streams of conversation in the group chat fizzle out as everyone busies themselves with family and turkeys and fall decor. Amity doesn’t mind, not really. It’s nice to have a break from the constant buzzing, and she’s needed this alone time since . . . well, honestly, she’s not exactly sure.

The first thing she does once she’s sure Luz is truly gone (which means two hours after she pops back in to grab a pair of boots that she’s forgotten) is wheel the corkboard out of their closet and fish the box of pushpins out from the pocket of Luz’s cat hoodie. She’s going to work this out, even if it kills her.

(Twenty-four hours later, she has one sticky note pinned to the board that reads Feelings???? What are those????, and she decides that maybe writing this down where anyone can see it isn’t the brightest idea she’s ever had.)

She dusts off her old journal instead, which she hasn’t written in since her flight from Blight Manor, and luckily, the words come much easier to her once she knows no one will ever see them.

These are the facts, as far as Amity can make them out:

Number one: she has a crush on Luz. 

That much, at least, can’t be avoided—there’s no other way to explain the fact that she’s thinking about her constantly, or the way that her eyes always seem to settle on Luz whenever they’re in the same room, or the entire freaking Halloween dance when Amity was reduced to a stuttering, blushing idiot for three (not so) straight hours—

So, yeah. Self-acceptance and all that. She has a crush, and it’s only a little bit terrifying.

Which brings her to number two: she has absolutely no idea how long it’s been there.

This is the scarier bit, if Amity’s being honest. She genuinely can’t pinpoint an event that caused her feelings to shift, which is incredibly concerning. How can she reign in her emotions if she doesn’t even understand them? If only she knew what ill-advised twist of fate had managed to turn these feelings on, she’d be able to switch them off again. Or at least, the job would be significantly easier, which Amity would kind of appreciate because of:

Number three (which she only arrives at after several hours of careful thinking): Luz doesn’t know.

Amity likes to think that she knows Luz pretty well at this point. They’ve seen each other at highs and lows, at their silliest and at their most serious, and Amity is dead certain that if Luz knew, things would be much more awkward between them than they are right now.

Not through any fault of Luz’s, obviously—Amity knows, or at least hopes, that her friend wouldn’t try to ice her out or anything drastic like that—but Luz definitely has a gift for awkwardness, and this is one situation where a pair of finger guns and a dramatic slide out the door wouldn’t save her.

Plus, Luz is practically incapable of not talking at length about everything that’s currently going on in her life (not that Amity minds! It’s adorable!), and Amity hopes that her best friend having a crush on her would rank fairly high in that category.

So, number four—which is more of a mission statement than a fact, really: Luz can’t know.

Amity will not risk their friendship over something so volatile and (presumably) transient. She’s looked up the statistics, so she jots down a secondary list of facts just to underscore her point.

Letter A: The average high school relationship lasts less than one year.

Letter B: Only fourteen percent of all long-term couples met in high school.

Letter C: High school relationships comprise only two percent of new marriages.

Amity stares at the last one, narrows her eyes, and scribbles it out in the darkest color of ink she can find. She doesn’t want to marry Luz! This is just a crush. A crush that she has perfectly reasonable control over, or she will once she’s finished writing out these lists, and hmm, maybe she ought to burn this journal when she’s done just to make sure no one ever gets their hands on it.

Okay, Blight, she thinks firmly. Plan of attack. Or . . . plan of defense, or whatever. She needs an outline, a concrete list of ways she can smother these feelings under whatever mental rugs people usually use for this purpose.

She flips to a new page, marks down a careful Roman numeral I, and promptly shoves everything on her desk to the floor when her phone buzzes and the screen lights up with a picture of Luz.

(Setting Luz’s contact photo to the Halloween photo-booth Polaroid was always a questionable decision, but Amity has never regretted it more than this moment.)

She picks up the phone without a second thought, and the static image of Luz gives way to her friend’s actual face. “Amity!” Luz says excitedly, pulling one hand away from the camera to wave at her. “Sorry I haven’t called you until now! The cell signal here is kinda shit—”

“Luz!” scolds a voice that can only be Mrs. Noceda. Onscreen, Luz winces and turns away.

“Sorry, mama,” she says, then adds something a little more long-winded in Spanish. Amity catches the words school, age, and . . . witch? That’s probably not right. Whatever; it’s not like she understands a lick of the rest anyway.

“Sorry about that,” Luz tells her a few minutes later, once she’s done conversing with her mother. “She’s heard me say worse pretty often, I dunno why she’s so concerned this time.”

Amity frowns, offended. “You’ve never cursed around me.”

Luz stops, her cheeks tinged pink. “Yeah, well, I—you’re—you’re just so calm and fancy and put together and everything, you know? And I didn’t want to scare you off, but then once I got to know you I couldn’t just start cursing, right? And now I don’t do it as often anymore, really, but this one just sort of slipped out—anyway! How’s, uh, having the room all to yourself?”

“It’s . . . nice,” Amity says faintly, spinning her chair to the right so the empty cork board slowly drifts out of frame. “Quieter, I guess.” She needs to change the subject again. “How’s camping?”

“Oh it’s great!” Luz grins, and proceeds to flip her camera around to give Amity a guided tour of the cabin she’s staying at for the week. It looks cozy, if a little cramped, but Luz assures her that she’s spending plenty of time outside—there’s snow on the ground, Amity points out, but apparently Luz hasn’t been letting that stop her.

“You know you left your snow jacket here, right?” Amity eyes Luz’s open closet, then has a moment of panic—she’s not supposed to know what’s in there, is she? It’s only open at all because Amity needed to drag the cork board out yesterday.

Luz, however, doesn’t seem remotely concerned. “Oh,” she says, glancing away from the camera and frowning. “Well, I’ve got plenty of layers here, so I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me!”

She finger-guns the camera with her free hand, and Amity has to suppress a fond smile. “Just don’t freeze to death out there,” she grumbles. It’s lonely here without you. “I’d prefer it if you came back in one piece.”

“That eager for the next season of Azura, huh?” Luz says with a grin. Amity opens her mouth to protest, but luckily, Luz barrels on before she can say something irreparably dumb. “Well, if I do die out here,” she says, “I give you my blessing to watch it without me. As heartbroken as my ghost would be, I think it’s for the best.”

Amity drums her fingers on the desk. “I doubt your ghost would know if I did,” she says, “seeing as you’d be stuck all the way in Vermont.”

“Nah, I’d know,” Luz says serenely. “My ghost would find a way back to you.”

“Are you saying you’d haunt me?”

“Well, sure.” Luz cocks her head, considering it like it’s truly a genuine question. “I mean, I gotta haunt someone, right? Might as well be someone who knows me.”

“Or you could pass into the next life peacefully,” Amity points out. “Not bother with the whole ghost thing at all.”

“But that would be no fun,” Luz replies immediately. “Trust me, Amity, I’ve got this all planned out. If I get killed, you are absolutely getting haunted.”

Amity knows by now how useless it is to argue with Luz about these kinds of things, so she changes the subject to the state of the cafeteria food now that most of the staff is on vacation. (Spoiler alert: it’s kind of awful.) They talk for a few more minutes, but eventually Luz gets called away by her mother and Amity hangs up the call, too wired up to do anything but stand and pace around the room.

She misses Luz. Not just for the obvious reasons, either—the room simply feels too big without her here. This is a home that they’ve made together, and it doesn’t feel right when one of them can only be here as part of a four-inch screen and tinny speaker that sits on Amity’s desk.

Not for the first time, Amity finds herself standing behind her chair, idly ruffling the fabric of Luz’s hoodie where she’s draped it across the back. With a deep sigh, she tosses her own jacket in the vague direction of her bed, then shrugs on Luz’s. If Luz wasn’t okay with her wearing it, she reasons, she wouldn’t have left it in a pile atop Amity’s stack of notebooks.

It even smells like her, she notes with a groan. Amity’s decided she’s just going to die—that’s probably the easiest way out of this situation, anyway.

She shuts her journal and reties the ribbon around the cover, fully aware that she’s not going to get anything else written down for the foreseeable future. She needs out of this room, so she grabs her keys from the bookshelf next to the door and steps out into the cold November air.

The wind slashes straight through Luz’s hoodie and chills her to the bone, but Amity isn’t about to give this up. She spends fifteen bitterly cold minutes stumbling through the fading light before she arrives at Morton’s Coffee, where she pushes the door open with fingers she can barely feel and orders the hottest drink they have before collapsing into a booth.

Thirty minutes later, with the power of sugar and caffeine surging through her veins, Amity makes what is possibly the worst mistake of her entire life—which is to say, she voluntarily texts her siblings.

Amity: You know how dad does that thing sometimes where he just turns off his feelings and becomes an emotionless zombie who doesn’t care about anything?
Amity: Do you think we could learn to do that?

She stares at the messages, regretting them almost immediately even though she spent the better part of ten minutes composing them in her head before sending them.

The twins reply within thirty seconds.

Edric: should i be worried
Edric: i think i should be worried

Emira: look Mittens theres only one person in the world whos a worse role model than dad, and i think we all know who that is

Edric: ooh ooh i know this one!
Edric: hitler

Emira: ...

Edric: kim jong un

Emira: edric please

Edric: that grandpa guy from willy wonka whos guilty of disability fraud or whatever

Emira: edric im trying to make a point here

Edric: yeah so am i??
Edric: guy spends years in bed claiming he can’t do any work
Edric: living off the goodwill of his family
Edric: and then one day he gets up and dances just cause charlie wins a lifetime of free chocolate?
Edric: somethings not right with that man

Amity spends a good fifteen seconds banging her head against the window, flags one of the baristas down to ask for another hot chocolate espresso, and finally responds to Edric when it becomes clear that Emira isn’t going to.

Amity: You both are completely useless. 
Amity: Though I’ll admit, Edric, I’m surprised you’ve read a book recently enough to remember actual details about the plot.

Edric: oh no ive never read it
Edric: just saw a twitter thread about him the other day
Edric: really made me question my life choices yknow

Amity: ...

Emira: ANYWAY
Emira: enough about grandpa Joe
Emira: tell us whats wrong Mittens

Amity: Who said anything’s wrong?

Edric: of course youd know what his name is
Edric: also,,, Mittens
Edric: one does not message the two of us
Edric: brilliant dispensators of knowledge as we are
Edric: just to ask how to be more like dad of all people

Emira: yeah what ed said
Emira: aside from dispensators not really being a word
Emira: so yeah spill!

Amity: Again, you’re both worthless, and I don’t need to tell either of you a thing.

Edric: dont make us road trip up to new york just so we can drag this out of you
Edric: we get three days off for thanksgiving and we are merciless

Emira: hmm ed lets assemble the evidence here
Emira: little Mittens wants to turn off her feelings for some reason
Emira: she waited until most of the school is gone to talk to us
Emira: but shes still embarrassed to tell us why
Emira: any guesses dear brother?

Amity: It’s not what you think it is.

Edric: oh really? then what is it
Edric: because im picking up what em is putting down
Edric: and im thinking what shes thinking
Edric: could our precious

Emira: little

Edric: Mittens

Emira: be

Edric: *gasp*

Amity Blight has left the conversation.

So, yeah. They’re pretty much useless.

Really, she doesn’t know what she was expecting.

Amity puts her phone on silent, preempting the inevitable barrage of texts she’s about to get from both of them, and drops it facedown on the table unceremoniously. She downs her hot chocolate espresso in three gulps and gets up to order another. The look that Morton gives her is equal parts impressed and concerned, so Amity counts that as a win.

When she returns to her table, newly-acquired drink in hand, Amity turns over her options in her head. Texting anyone from school is out—Gus can’t keep a secret to save his life, Willow would be far too understanding and Amity would probably just start sobbing, and she doesn’t think she’s close enough with Vee to justify unloading all of her trauma onto the poor girl.

(There are, of course, extremely obvious problems with texting Luz, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t consider it for a moment.)

In the end, Amity finishes her third drink without texting anyone. She pulls Luz’s cat-ear hood over her head and braves the cold so she can be back in her dorm before early curfew hits—even though she still hasn’t seen Eda actually follow through on a single room check, Amity would prefer not to tempt fate. 

She collapses on the couch, kicks her books off somewhere to the side, and mindlessly scrolls through Netflix for half an hour before shutting off the TV in a fit of pique. There’s only one thing she wants to watch these days, anyway.

She just wants Luz to be back. She wants Luz back and these feelings gone, and then they can sit on platonically opposite ends of the couch with their communal bowl of chocolate and get way too invested in the next season of The Good Witch Azura, and everything will be okay again.

When she finally picks herself up an hour later and attempts to go to bed, she’s suddenly struck with how idiotic of a decision it was to have three whole shots of espresso after six P.M.

Fantastic job, Blight, she thinks, eyes wide open, staring angrily at the off-white stucco ceiling above her. This is, truly, the day of the best decisions you’ve ever made.

Well, if she can’t sleep, and she can’t start the next season of Azura before Luz comes back, she might as well try the next best thing.

Amity fishes her phone off her nightstand, navigates to a website she hasn’t accessed in years to enter a username and password that she created during the height of her middle school angst, and pulls up the full list of fanfictions for The Good Witch Azura.

Honestly, there are fewer than she thought there’d be.

She starts from the bottom, mostly because she wants to avoid spoilers and this is the best way she’s found to do it, and immediately loses herself amidst the thousands and thousands of words.

By the time she surfaces to put her phone down and sleep, the clock on her nightstand reads 4:33, and she can barely keep her eyes open long enough to plug her phone into the charger.

That pretty much becomes her routine for the week: wake up late, stare at her journal and fail to write, ignore Ed and Em’s incessant texts, coffee at Morton’s, and fanfiction. Sometimes Luz calls her, but not often—the cell reception at the Noceda’s cabin is indeed as awful as Luz described it, and besides, she’s supposed to be spending time with her mom anyway.

Amity works through page after page of fanfics, occasionally devouring an author’s entire list of works if she enjoys the first one she stumbles across. She revisits the same scenarios countless times, watches Azura make new friends and fall in love over and over again as her phone battery slowly drains toward zero. (And if Hecazura is not-so-slowly becoming her favorite ship . . . well, she blames it on the superior quality of the fic writers, and definitely not on the fact that she’s clearly projecting.)

It’s Wednesday night (technically Thursday morning, but who’s keeping track, really?) when she finally finishes a long but well-written fic that picks up after the infamous season three cliffhanger—there are a lot of those, which isn’t really surprising—and she finds herself intrigued enough that she taps on the author’s handle to pull up the rest of their works. The page loads, bringing with it their full profile, and . . .

Wait. Amity recognizes that profile picture.

And, now that she thinks about it, the username.

She might actually be going crazy, she reasons—it’s two-fifty in the morning at this point, so she wouldn’t exactly be surprised—so Amity closes out of her web browser and opens up Instagram, just to double-check. Luz is at the top of her DMs, as usual, but she ignores the long string of memes her friend has flooded their conversation history with and taps into her profile instead.

Huh, she thinks, staring at the badly-cropped Chibi art of Azura that constitutes Luz’s profile pic. Next to it are the words AzuraFanatic2006, which admittedly isn’t the most specific identifier in the world—but it is a direct match for the profile open in her web browser, down to the capitalization. 

Would Luz want her reading the stuff she’s written? Amity wonders. Sure, she’s mentioned writing fanfic in the past, but she’s never gone so far as to give Amity a link to it. Should Amity ask before she continues? There’s also a chance that she’s wrong about this being Luz at all, and boy would it be embarrassing if she is. Maybe she ought to do some deeper digging before bringing it up?

Amity sighs and swipes to close Instagram, switching back to her browser. She’s here for entertainment (and also, maybe, just a little bit of distraction). Whether or not this anonymous author is Luz shouldn’t matter to her at all—whoever they are, their writing is good, and Amity wants to read more of it. 

(It’s almost definitely Luz, the rational part of her brain tells her, to which the 3 A.M. zombie portion of her brain replies, Shut up. Read words.

Since it is, after all, 3 A.M., she decides to let the zombie portion win this one.)

The author doesn’t have many stories, and most of them are shorter than the first, so it isn’t long before Amity is staring at the last fic on their list—the most recent one, since she’s been moving backwards. It’s titled The Stars in Our Eyes, and it’s actually incomplete, which is so unlike Luz that Amity starts to doubt her hypothesis for a moment, but then she realizes that the most recent update was only two days ago.

Luz hasn’t written fanfic for Azura, Amity realizes with a start. She’s still writing it.

Before she can convince herself that she really, really ought to tap away, Amity opens up the fic and starts on Chapter One. And as luck would have it, she’s pulled in immediately—the quality of writing since the last fic has improved rather dramatically, and it was already impressive to begin with. Plus, it’s from Hecate’s viewpoint, which Amity has already established that she loves, and . . . 

Well, the point is that she keeps reading, and she only feels a little bit bad about it.

The chapter is short, and there’s an author’s note at the bottom, which isn’t unusual—but this one is more than a couple words long, which kind of is. Amity scrolls down to read it.

Notes: Hii everyone, I’m back!! I know it’s been a few years and y’all have probably moved on by now, but I dunno, I guess I’m just inspired. I’m starting at a new school tomorrow and I’m hoping to make a good impression on one of my classmates because they sound super super cool, so I kinda sorta stress-wrote this whole chapter in like three hours and didn’t proofread it at all or anything. Anyway. We’ll see where this goes?

Interesting. Amity wonders who the classmate was—Luz has never mentioned trying to impress anyone here, so maybe it didn’t go as well as she’d hoped. Amity frowns at the thought, and hopes whoever it was will someday realize just how much they missed out on. 

There are over a dozen comments on this chapter alone, so Amity scrolls down to look at them out of curiosity. Most of them are plot predictions or people just gushing about the work (and honestly, Amity can relate—she’s half-tempted to leave a comment of her own, except that sounds like truly dangerous territory), but there are a couple welcoming Luz back and wishing her luck with the anonymous classmate. Apparently her previous work has gathered her a bit of a following.

Amity hits the button for the next chapter, noting with some trepidation that there are only eight chapters written so far. She should ration them, she thinks; keep herself from devouring them all at once and give herself something to look forward to in the evenings. But as soon as the page loads, the first sentence of the chapter catches her eye, and before she knows it she’s three quarters of the way through with no intention of stopping.

It’s fine, she tells herself. She’ll get more sleep . . . tomorrow. Or something.

Notes: Wow I never would’ve expected so much love on the last chapter!!! Y’all are so incredible, it’s amazing. 

Also for everyone asking about my school situation, it’s not a bad thing! Just needed a change of scenery, I guess. Anonymous Classmate is even cooler than I thought they’d be and honestly I don’t know how I’m doing, but I’ll keep y’all updated.

She really ought to be avoiding these author’s notes, Amity tells herself with a frown. It feels weirdly akin to spying, even though they’re technically posted on the internet for everyone to see. One more chapter, she thinks as she taps the button, and then she’ll go to bed . . .

Except this one ends on a cliffhanger. Because of course it does.

Notes: Mwahaha! Would it really capture the spirit of Azura if the third installment didn’t make you want to tear your brain out because of how pointless the cliffhanger is?

Amity likes to think of herself as at least a semi-functional human being. She likes to think she has a healthy amount of self-control, and an average amount of common sense for someone her age.

It feels like proving herself wrong to open Chapter Four and start reading, but if that’s the only way she’s going to see the results of Hecate’s decision to disrupt her parents’ ritual and leap out of their castle tower to near-certain doom, then so be it.

(She’s not projecting she’s not projecting she’s not projecting. Especially not onto something written by Luz, her friend, who is writing about these characters and absolutely not about anyone she knows in real life. She’s not, she swears.)

She reaches the end of the fourth chapter, which features Hecate battling her way through a monster-infested valley while she searches for Azura, and she figures—well, she’s already halfway through, right? So she might as well go ahead and read the rest of them.

Notes: Yeah yeah I get it, I promised to keep y’all updated on Anonymous Classmate and then didn’t. Well, consider that part of the usual season 3 cliffhanger! Ha!

In all seriousness though, things are fine. They’re a person, I’m a person. We’re cool people. Aren’t most people, when you think about it?

EDIT: I was definitely on a sugar high or something when I wrote this, but my point still stands. People are cool.

Amity snorts as she rolls over in bed, in a futile attempt to give her aching shoulder a break. It would probably be easier to track the amount of time that Luz isn’t on a sugar high, or a caffeine high, or just a usual my-friends-are-awesome-and-I’m-going-to-literally-scream-about-it high. (The last one is kind of adorable, even if Amity would never admit it aloud.)

She does have to agree with her, though—even if Amity still can’t tell who exactly the mystery classmate is, she’s revised her hypothesis: she’s now fairly certain that it’s someone in their friend group. And their friend group is, indeed—as Luz puts it—cool.

After a good thirty seconds of internal debate (which is mostly just blinking the sleep fog out of her eyes, if she’s being honest), Amity gives in to her zombie brain and taps on the button that will take her to Chapter Five.

The fact that she falls asleep halfway through Hecate’s infiltration of Azura’s palace is probably a sign that listening to her zombie brain is never a good idea. Or something, anyway.

She’s awoken four hours later by her alarm, which she hasn’t bothered to disable but really should, and six hours after after that by a knock on her door. Amity drags herself out of bed and throws on the first jacket she can find, makes sure her hair looks at least semi-presentable, and throws open the door to find Eda Clawthorne standing behind it.

“Woah,” she says, arching an eyebrow. “Kid, you look like death.”

“Sorry,” Amity mumbles, making an effort to stand a little straighter. She smooths the wrinkles out of Luz’s cat hoodie. “Rough couple of nights, I guess.”

“Hey, no judgement from me,” Eda says, then winks at her. Amity frowns, confused, but she doesn’t get a chance to ask. “Anyway, you’re new here, so I figured you might not know—Headmaster Bump likes to put on a little Thanksgiving dinner for all the students who stay here over the break. Though now that I think about it, it’s in the cafeteria, so you really can’t miss it if you were planning on eating at all tonight.”

In all honesty, Amity’s meals have been hit or miss for most of the week. The fact that today is Thanksgiving is . . . probably a third-level priority, at best. At least she’ll be prepared if she decides to walk into the cafeteria tonight.

“Uh, thanks,” she says, not quite sure if she ought to say anything else. “That’s . . . good to know.”

“No problem, kiddo.” Eda turns to go, spinning her cane in one hand—does she even need the thing at all?—but then she stops and turns around. “By the way,” she says, “if you do show up, don’t skip dessert. That pumpkin pie is to die for.”

And then she’s gone for real, sauntering off down the hall. Amity blinks the last of the sleep from her eyes, shuts the door, and stumbles into her bathroom so she can maybe look a little less like—well, death—when she inevitably has to leave her room today.

She plugs her phone in on the way, pushing down the urge to open up Luz’s fanfic and continue reading. If she was smart, she tells herself, she’d forget about it entirely. There are other fics out there—a hundred ninety-four pages of them, in fact. But somehow she knows exactly where she’ll be tonight, anyway.

Amity spends far longer than she ought to in the bathroom touching up the dark circles under her eyes. When she finally steps out, her phone is buzzing incessantly, but not from a call. She unlocks it and opens up the group chat.

Luz: I dunno if this is going to send or not, but happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!
Luz: This year I’m thankful for all of you and your wonderful presences in my life

Willow: And we’re all thankful for you!
Willow: (The rest of you are amazing, too)

Vee: Yes, I’m very thankful to have known you all. :)

Gus: awww stop it y’all are gonna make me cry
Gus: i can’t cry this early it isn’t even noon yet

Luz: It’s never too early in the morning to cry!!

Gus: ...
Gus: hey luz you ok?

Luz: What yeah of course
Luz: OH wait I see
Luz: Yeah I’m fine
Luz: Just like in general yknow? Let the sadness flow and all that

Willow: You’re not really helping your case here, Luz

Luz: Ugh it’s fine I’m fine I swear!!

Several people are typing . . .

Amity rolls her eyes and swipes out of the chat. She also has messages from the twins, which she ignores, and none from her parents, which isn’t exactly surprising. She sets her phone back down and makes her way to her desk, where her journal is still sitting atop a sheaf of papers. She hasn’t managed to add to any of her lists since the Saturday that Luz left, and she doubts she’s going to be able to start today.

She tries anyway, if only to occupy herself for a few hours—the pen in her hand feels heavy and alien, and while she does doodle a cute lineart of Hecate in the margin, no words get written before Amity shuts the journal with a sigh and ties the ribbon back up. She checks her phone again, clears the notifications from the group chat, and flops onto her bed, letting her eyes drift shut for just a moment.

She’s just so bored.

It’s not even that she’s lonely without her friends around (though she is, a little bit, and she’ll even admit it). It’s just that she’s gotten so used to having them around, so used to casually meeting up for homework or theorizing about Azura on the quad or even just making small talk over lunch, that she doesn’t know what to do with herself now that they’re gone.

Sure, she thinks, they’re all in the group chat—they’re talking in the group chat right now, even. But it isn’t the same as being able to see them.

This is what you wanted, isn’t it? says a voice in the back of her head. Friends. A life away from Mother and Father. A place to belong.

Well, yeah, she reasons, but now that she’s here, it all feels a little . . . underwhelming. She’ll still have to return to Blight Manor for Christmas, and then for the summer. And then in senior year—who knows? If Luz isn’t her roommate again (which is possible, if—Amity hopes—maybe not probable) maybe they won’t be friends anymore at all.

That’s ridiculous, she tells herself immediately. Of course they’d still be friends—of course Amity wouldn’t give them up that easily. And she knows they wouldn’t give her up, either, but it seems like today is going to be one of those days where she can’t seem to convince herself of that.

Friends are temporary, says the part of her brain that sounds irritatingly similar to Odalia. Friends are temporary, but family is forever.

“Just shut up,” she growls at it, pulling herself to her feet. Odalia is wrong. Amity doesn’t know how she can prove it, but she is. There’s more for her in this world than the suffocating weight of expectation and the burden of the Blight family name.

This Thanksgiving, she decides, she’s thankful to have seen even a glimpse of what’s out there. It doesn’t solve her problems, it doesn’t beat back the demons in her head—it certainly doesn’t solve her ongoing Luz crisis or whatever’s slowly bubbling away in the background with her mother. But for today, it will have to be enough. Baby steps, even if the baby step for the day is just pulling herself out of her self-induced pit of doubt and lethargy.

Amity: Not to interrupt this fascinating discussion on the psychological merit of the salt content in tears, but I just wanted to say that I appreciate you all, too.

(The pumpkin pie is indeed as good as Eda claimed it to be.)

By the time she slips under the covers for the night, Amity expects—or maybe just hopes—that she’s eaten enough, and stayed far enough away from coffee, that she’ll be able to fall asleep at a decent hour for once this week. But all too soon, she finds herself reaching for her phone again, and opening up the fanfiction that she still hasn’t bookmarked, as if that’s somehow going to convince her that it isn’t worth going back to.

The story is good—excellent, even; Luz is an incredibly talented writer—but Amity keeps finding herself drawn, for reasons she would really prefer not to think about, to the author’s notes. There’s only ever one per chapter, always at the end, but she can never quite bring herself to tap the Next Chapter button before reading through them.

Notes: Some people have mentioned that Hecate seems out of character here and there. I’ll admit I’ve been writing her a little differently this time (I use real people for inspiration and this one might be sneaking in a little too much, heh), but also consider this: maybe the show’s Hecate is out of character instead.

Notes: Ugh, I can’t go one chapter without updating y’all on Anonymous Classmate? There are no updates, nothing at all. We’re just fine.

Notes: OKAY FINE I LIED Y’ALL.

Anonymous Classmate is gonna kill me. No I will not elaborate.

Amity is almost concerned enough that she skips Chapter Eight to read the author’s note immediately, but she manages to wrest the temptation back this time. Luz is probably just being dramatic—if it were serious enough, she would have told Amity, right?

Yes. Surely she would have.

Notes: I appreciate everyone who’s been flooding my inbox since the last chapter, but unfortunately I can’t respond to everyone. I will answer some questions though, because it’s fun!

#1: Anonymous Classmate is a she. No harm in telling y’all that, I guess.

#2: No, she’s not trying to assassinate me or anything. I looked it up and I think it wouldn’t be assassination, actually, just regular old murder, but I would still be dead so I guess I wouldn’t care much. Anyway. Not trying to kill me, so don’t worry. I’ll be updating as usual.

#3: Please stop asking me for her name, I’m not doxxing her on a fanfiction site of all places.

So, Amity thinks, the anonymous classmate is a she. That narrows it down to . . . well, anyone in their friend group except Gus, but it’s good to have some sort of criteria. This is the last chapter Luz has posted, so there’s no next chapter for Amity to move on to—she spends some time scrolling through the comments instead, only a fraction of which (she notes with a frown) are actually talking about the story. The rest of them are wholesale invested in the drama of Luz and the anonymous classmate, and, honestly? It’s kind of funny to read.

Comment (NoWickedForTheRest): Wow what I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall in whatever school they go to.

Comment (hecateisalwaysright): Twenty bucks says the author’s in love with A.C.

Comment (fear_the_cliffhanger): Yeah no, I’m not taking that bet.

Amity actually snorts aloud at that, which feels a little mean—these people have no way of knowing how wrong they are, after all. Aside from being her best friend, Luz Noceda is quite possibly the least subtle person Amity has ever met. If she were in love, Amity would know. Hell, the entire school would probably know at this point.

There are other theories, of course (Amity’s personal favorite is an in-depth speculation on an academic rival, complete with fanciful depictions of shadowy classroom intrigue), but none of them have gained quite as large a following as the romance idea. Luz, as usual, doesn’t reply to any comments regarding her author’s notes—she makes a point of answering everyone who talks about her story, though.

Amity is almost tempted to make a comment of her own, just to see if Luz will notice, but she decides against it after a few moments of thought. Eventually, she tells herself, she’ll come clean, if only to ask Luz who exactly the anonymous classmate is. For now, though, she’ll follow the story with everyone else—just another unknown face in the crowd. What else can she do? She’s invested.

She just really, really hopes Luz won’t mind.

Two things happen on the Saturday following Thanksgiving, after Amity has woken up at noon after yet another night of binging Good Witch Azura fanfic. (She’s moved on from Luz’s profile, having exhausted her friend’s list of works, but she still checks the ongoing story for updates every night.) The first happens mere minutes after she drags herself out of bed, and the sequence of events goes a little like this:

Amity goes through the motions of getting dressed, still blinking the sleep haze out of her eyes. At this point, she’s pretty much wearing Luz’s cat hoodie permanently, and she’s kind of not looking forward to Luz’s inevitable reclamation of it upon her return. But that’s a problem for tomorrow, she thinks as she opens her phone and idly swipes through Instagram.

Which is where she encounters Thing One, still half-asleep and definitely not prepared for it in any way: Luz has made an Instagram post of her family’s Thanksgiving vacation.

That alone, of course, wouldn’t be an issue at all—the issue is that Luz, in the middle of the wide group shot that features her, her mother, and several disparate groups of cousins, is wearing Amity’s letterman jacket that’s supposed to be buried deep in the darkness of her closet.

She’s tried so hard to push the thing out of her mind, she didn’t even notice it was missing.

Amity spends a solid ten minutes trying to make sure she isn’t going crazy—first, she double-checks her closet to confirm that the jacket actually isn’t there, and then she zooms in on the picture as best as she can, searching for the stitching details that have been burned into her memory and cursing herself for not paying close attention to the rest of it. 

It’s clear that Luz has done this on purpose—she’s angled herself so that none of the jacket’s Bonesborough High regalia is visible to the camera, and of course neither is Amity’s name, which is stitched across the back. But Amity recognizes the fraying in the left sleeve, a feature common to all of her jackets, and more to the point, she would know those colors anywhere. She hasn’t made a mistake.

Amity tosses her phone into her bedsheets and lets out a silent scream, then dives into the covers to retrieve it and pulls up her text messages with Luz.

She spends a further fifteen minutes typing and deleting, trying to come up with a way to ask Um, hey, what the fuck without actually using those words.

She wants to know why, is the thing. Needs to know why, in fact—needs it desperately, somewhere in the pit of her soul, and she knows her heart won’t stop beating out an unhealthy triple-accelerated sprint until she at least gets an answer back. People don’t just wear other people’s varsity jackets . . . right? That’s a personal thing. In literally every high school romance novel that Amity has ever read—which isn’t a small number, either—it’s the sort of thing that means something.

But maybe, Amity thinks, dropping her phone onto the nightstand and getting up to pace the room, maybe Luz doesn’t know that. Maybe she just thinks it’s comfortable.

(She’s a fanfiction writer, you idiot, of course she knows what it means.)

Then maybe she just thinks they’re close enough friends that it doesn’t matter. And yes, all right, Amity would have let her take the jacket if Luz had asked—so maybe they are. Maybe that’s it, and she’s spiralling into a near-crisis for no reason at all. Maybe . . .

She needs to get over herself and text Luz. It’s the only way she’s going to get any answers.

Amity: Hey, um, weird question.
Amity: Is that my varsity jacket in your Instagram post?

It’s quite possibly the most awkward way Amity has started a conversation in her life, which is no easy bar to clear. She stares at her phone, heart pounding, as the three little dots that tell her Luz is typing appear, then disappear, then reappear again.

It’s a solid five minutes before Amity gets a response, and to be perfectly honest, she’s about ready to throw her phone into the sun and start a new life as a hermit in the mountains somewhere.

Luz: Oh hmm so it is
Luz: I grabbed it by accident when I was packing but it’s just really warm
Luz: I can take the picture down if it bothers you?

Amity wants to scream.

“It’s really warm,” she scoffs to herself, flopping back-first onto the bed and nearly knocking the contents of her nightstand onto the floor. “God. Of course it is.” Of course there’s no ulterior motive; of course Amity is stuck in this endless rabbit hole of ascribing far too deep of meanings to actions that are ultimately meaningless.

It’s just a jacket, after all. No different than the one of Luz’s that she’s wearing now. Absolutely no need to have a crisis about it.

Amity: No, it’s fine! Don’t worry about it!

She locks her phone and buries it under the covers for good this time. It’s fine, she tells herself; everything’s fine. This shouldn’t be—it isn’t—as big of a deal as she’s making it. She and Luz are friends; best friends, in fact, and one of the things best friends do is—

Her train of thought is interrupted by a knock on the door.

(Maybe, she thinks later, maybe if she wasn’t already so distraught, she would have recognized it. Maybe if she hadn’t grown so complacent in the weeks since Halloween, if her thoughts hadn’t been occupied more and more by Luz and less and less by the survival routines that have kept her alive for so long. Maybe . . .)

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter. Maybes are useless in the face of imminent doom, even if you don’t know you’re facing it—which Amity doesn’t, obviously, until she opens the door and comes face to face with Odalia Blight.

Also known as Thing Two, at least in the context of this horrible, horrible day.

“Amity,” her mother sniffs, inspecting the mess of a room that Amity hasn’t cleaned in at least two weeks. Her bed isn’t even made today—technically it was, earlier, but all of her movement on top of it has managed to dislodge the covers. “What the hell are you wearing?”

“It’s—” Amity falters, glancing down at herself. “It’s a jacket,” she says, slipping on the expressionless mask that her mother knows so well.”

“It’s hideous,” Odalia practically spits. “Even the lowest of Blights has a better fashion sense than that. And for God’s sake, Amity, what has happened to your room?” Amity opens her mouth to respond, but her mother keeps going. “Bed unmade, books out on your desk, open food on the table—I thought I would stop in to wish you a happy Thanksgiving, but clearly, you’re in need of a different sort of well-wishing.”

“Yes, Mother,” she says meekly, keeping her gaze fixed on the floor. Rage churns at the bottom of her gut, but Amity smothers it before it can take hold. Getting angry at Odalia won’t help her here—nothing will.

Odalia shoulders her way into the room, dislodging Amity from the doorway. She stalks around the perimeter like a cat sniffing out prey. Amity watches helplessly as she opens her mouth and pushes down the urge to cry.

God, she wishes she’d let Luz finish outlining Operation Devastate Amity’s Mom. She wishes they’d come up with even one godforsaken idea.

She’s not strong enough to do this on her own.

“All right, Amity,” her mother says at last. “Since you and the Noceda girl are clearly incapable of maintaining a living space on your own, this is what we’re going to do . . .”

Surprisingly enough, Odalia Blight does not get her way—though of course, it’s no thanks to Amity that someone manages to stop her. Apparently there’s no amount of parental complaining that will convince Eda Clawthorne to alter the room assignments in the middle of the school year, even if the matter is directed all the way up to Headmaster Bump.

Odalia storms off the Hexside campus in a fit of pique, threatening wrath and ruin upon the school, but from the look Bump and Eda share, Amity doubts the threats will stick. She remains in the corner, soaking in the quiet relief, and excuses herself to leave as soon as she’s sure her mother isn’t coming back.

She has no doubt she’ll get another earful next Saturday, during their regularly scheduled call time, but she pushes the thought to the back of her head for now.

At least Luz will be back tomorrow, Amity thinks morosely. She has no plan, not even a remote idea of how she’s going to deal with this crush—if anything, the events of this morning have just made her even more confused—but it will be nice to see her friend.

God knows she needs one right about now.

“Amity, Amity, look!” is the only warning she gets before Luz comes crashing through the open doorway, her foot catching in the giant bisexual pride flag that she’s wearing around her shoulders like a cape. She goes sprawling to the carpet with a low, “Ow.”

Amity drops her phone and scrambles off of her bed. “Luz! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Luz rolls over so she’s on her back, the flag tangled haphazardly around her abdomen. “Um. I got a pride flag!”

“I can see that,” Amity chuckles. She reaches out to help Luz untangle it, then stops when she realizes exactly how close she’d have to get in order to do that. “Do you—uh, do you need help getting it off you?”

Please say no, please say no, please say no— “I mean, that’d be nice.” Ugh.

Amity grabs the corner of the flag and tugs, hoping her blush isn’t as visible as it feels like it is. From within the impromptu cocoon, Luz wriggles violently, somehow managing to extract herself from the fabric as Amity pulls it loose.

“Thanks for that,” Luz grins, getting to her feet. Amity passes her the flag, which she takes happily. “Somehow that wasn’t really the entrance I was hoping for.”

Amity rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe you danced for three hours in a full cloak on Halloween, but you take three steps in that thing and you’re immediately on the ground.”

“It was more than three steps!” Luz protests. “I walked all the way from the car in it!” She chuckles wryly. “My mom did kinda warn me not to run, though. Guess I got a little excited to see you.”

“Well. Um.” Amity drops her hands to her sides uselessly—what does she normally do with them during conversations? She can’t remember for the life of her. “I’m excited to see you, too.”

“Excited for Azura, I’m sure,” Luz replies breezily. “Anyway, what’s new around Hexside? Get into any trouble while I was gone?”

Amity sighs. She doesn’t want to burst Luz’s bubble, but she did ask, and Amity really needs to get this off her chest. Eda Clawthorne is a great Head of House, but definitely not someone who’s good for talking to. 

“Nothing new, strictly speaking,” she says with a shrug. “My mother visited again, though.”

“Oh.” The grin slides off Luz’s face, and she tosses her new flag aside to wrap Amity in a tight hug. “Oh, man, I’m so sorry. How long ago?”

“It’s—she was here yesterday.” Luz is very warm, her brain tells her unhelpfully, and she still has no idea what to do with her hands. Seriously, it’s a crisis. “She . . . yelled at me about the room again. And, um, about you.”

Luz mumbles something into her shoulder, then loosens her grip. With her new found freedom, Amity slowly reaches up to return the hug. “What was that?”

“I asked if you wanted to talk about it.” Luz lifts her head so she can speak clearly, looking her in the eyes. Amity stares back, then has to mentally rewind the last ten seconds because she’s completely missed the question.

Pull it together, Blight. You’re better than this. “I, uh—maybe a little,” she says quietly. “But maybe not standing up like this?”

“Right, yeah, of course.” Luz unwraps herself from around Amity’s shoulders, and Amity has to bite her lip to keep from complaining about the loss. “Couch or bed? This feels like a bed kind of conversation to me.”

Amity has no idea what the difference between a couch conversation and a bed conversation is, so she follows Luz’s lead. They end up on Luz’s bed, since Amity’s is still a mess from when she woke up late this morning (another long night of fanfiction behind her), and Amity explains the rough details of her mother’s visit.

“Well,” Luz says once she’s done talking. “Even if she had managed to split our room apart, I would have visited you every day. She can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“Yeah, you’re persistent like that.” Amity gives her a tentative smile. “I just wish . . . I wish I’d been able to say something. Anything to stand up to her, without Eda and Bump having to do it for me.” Seeing her mother angry . . . without fail, it’s like she’s in second grade again, every time. Never older, never with the strength to resist.

Luz is quiet for a moment. “I don’t really know what to say to that,” she admits. “Like, I can promise you you’ll be there someday, but . . . I know how hard it can be when someday isn’t now. And that just—well, it kinda just sucks.”

“Yeah.” Amity takes a deep breath, trying to settle her racing heart. It’s a little easier now that Luz isn’t wrapped around her, which she feels vaguely guilty about—hugs from friends should be comforting, not panic-inducing. “It does,” she says. “It’s um—it’s a little better now that you’re back, though.”

“I’ve been told I’m quite the effective ray of sunshine,” Luz beams. “Well, the exact words they used were ‘hopeless optimist’, but that’s basically the same thing, right?”

Amity chuckles. “Not quite, but I may just let you have this one.”

“You’d better.” Luz shifts on the bed, then casts a look at the pride flag lying bundled on her desk. “Hey, are your parents . . .” she starts, then pauses and shakes her head. “I was planning on hanging that up on my side of the wall, but if it’s too much of a risk . . . ?”

And well, Amity has never had a conversation with her parents on the topic (despite, somehow, all three of this generation of Blights being some flavor of queer), but she’s nearly certain they wouldn’t approve.

Unfortunately for them, she thinks as a sudden wave of anger twists its way through her gut, she’s not about to let that stop Luz.

“Put it up anyway,” she says, and Luz looks up in surprise. Her mother hates this room already; how much more damage could one more decoration do? “Don’t let the threat of my parents keep you from being you, Luz.”

Luz opens her mouth to reply, then shuts it again and reaches out to take Amity’s hand. “You either, okay?” she says. “You’re so much—you’re worth so much more than them, and I’m so sorry they’ve never seen that.”

“They’ll never see anyone else as worth more than them,” Amity mutters dryly. “But—I’m glad you think so.”

“Of course I do,” Luz says, and there’s a faraway look in her eyes that seems almost . . . sad. But it’s gone almost as soon as it appears, and Amity doesn’t know if she ought to ask.

“Do you want help putting up the flag?” she says instead, and Luz bounds to her feet in excitement.

“Yeah!” she grins. “Oh, shoot, I don’t know where I put the pack of sticky things after I finished hanging up all the posters—it’s gotta be around here somewhere, though.”

“It was in the pocket of your cat hoodie,” Amity offers as she rises from the bed. “I moved it to your desk drawer while you were gone.”

“Right, yeah, of course.” Luz tugs the drawer open a little too violently and raises the package in triumph. The various objects stacked precariously atop her desk wobble ominously.  “You’d better watch out, wall, because you’re about to have even more things stuck to you!”

Amity rolls her eyes fondly, and catches the sheaf of papers that’s about to hit the floor.

It’s weirdly easy to continue her fanfiction habit even after Luz returns—her roommate sleeps like a brick, and honestly, Amity isn’t sure if there’s a situation below a full-scale calamity that would be capable of waking her. She does have to tone it down a little now that she has classes in the morning again, but if she misses a couple extra hours of sleep now and then, it’s not like her grades are going to suffer.

True to Luz’s word, they also start season six of the actual Good Witch Azura, but Amity has to agree with the unfortunate critique that she’s been hearing all year: the writing is beginning to go downhill. Gus and Vee seem to think it has its moments, but the two of them are predictably cagey about what they think those moments actually are.

(“At least we can all agree that season seven is an improvement,” Gus says at one point, which earns him agreement from most of the table but a look of scathing betrayal from Luz.

“Season seven is the most damage the writers have done to Hecazura as a ship since the midseason finale in two!” she fumes. “And it’s not even for any good reason!”

“I mean, I think they did have some reasons,” Gus hedges, and Amity has to physically lay her arm across Luz’s lap to prevent her from leaping over the table and throttling him.)

The Stars in Our Eyes updates later that night, and Luz fumes in the author’s note about the betrayal she experienced at lunch and her subsequent six-hour spite-fueled writing spree.

I’m going to take the high road and not call him out in public, she writes, but if he keeps on trying my patience I might have to reconsider.

And before y’all ask, because I know you will, I think Anonymous Classmate agrees with me. So (thankfully) no worries there.

Which is enough for Amity to rule out Vee, since she wasn’t the strongest contender to begin with. She’s beginning to suspect that Anonymous Classmate is Willow—she’s certainly intimidating, at least if you don’t know her, and Luz did make a point to seek out her and Gus on the first day of orientation. The more Amity thinks about it, the more sense it makes, and she’s so busy drawing logical conclusions in her head and wondering if she ought to bring it up with Luz at some point that she’s completely blindsided by the very next update.

It happens literally two days later, because apparently Luz is a speed demon when it comes to homework—or maybe she’s just neglecting her classes to write. It’s a week out from Christmas break at this point; Amity wouldn’t blame her.

In this chapter (which is eleven of twelve; Amity’s getting a little concerned about how Luz is going to wrap up all of her plot threads in another couple thousand words), Hecate and Azura finally cross paths again for the first time since separating in chapter three. The scene has it all: an emotional reunion, not one but two tearful apologies, the immediate and total defeat of Hecate’s scheming parents when they attempt to crash the conversation. There may or may not be a defenestration involved.

(It’s what their similar reunion in season seven could have been, Amity thinks ruefully, which is no doubt the exact feeling Luz is trying to evoke. She wonders whether Gus would agree.)

She’s still digesting the events as she scrolls down to the author’s note, expecting another routine update or maybe a second denunciation of the season seven writing. What she finds, however, is neither.

Notes: This chapter is dedicated to my real-life Hecate (y’all know her as Anonymous Classmate), who has honestly been way more of an inspiration for this character than I ever realized she would be. She’s gone through so much, and still does, and she wouldn’t agree with me but it’s truly a privilege to know her.

I wish I could beat her parents up in real life, too, but apparently there’s a thing called “laws” or whatever.

Anyway I’m still not giving out her name because it’s kind of unique (and keeping y’all in suspense forever is kinda fun), but I do want to say for posterity that loving her—even if it’s painful sometimes—is so, so worth it. Even when she doesn’t think she’s doing anything special. She’s wonderful and I always feel like I can be myself around her and she always makes me feel safe. If y’all could see the way she gets up every morning and just keeps on facing the world . . . well, I think you’d understand.

She makes me want to be brave.

...

So yeah, uh. *John Mulaney voice* I never talked to my dad her about that, but I figured I’d tell all of you.

Amity shuts off her phone and stares at the wall for a long, long time.

When she finally feels up to the task of thinking again, she reaches three important conclusions. 

One: Anonymous Classmate is, in fact, her. Willow has a fantastic relationship with her dads, and she was the last one left, which means it has to be Amity by process of elimination. That’s . . . a whole lot she needs to unpack at some point, preferably not at three in the morning while Luz is snoring lightly across the room from her.

(Luz was intimidated by her? Really? Amity knows she can be imposing, but if she had to pick the person who was more nervous on the day they met . . . well, Amity was the one who had a nervous breakdown. She pretty much wins that one by default.)

Two: The paragraph that Luz has written in the author’s notes is the nicest thing anyone has said about her, ever, and she honestly kind of regrets reading it because there’s absolutely no way her still-spiraling crush is going to be able to deal with this. Though admittedly, the fact that Luz values her so much is just more weight for the column in her mental ledger that says, in bright red ink, Luz cannot know—Amity just isn’t sure if that will be enough.

Three: She is not, under any circumstances, going to read the comments.

(This one is less of a conclusion and more of a directive.)

Amity rolls over and tries to sleep—really, she does!—but by the time her alarm is ringing and Luz is bounding out of bed with limitless energy for the day, she’s pretty sure she hasn’t even been able to close her eyes.

She’d like to say that she tries to talk to Luz about it, but in all honesty—she kind of just doesn’t.

At first, she tells herself it’s because she needs time to process, which is mostly true. She reads the note a good dozen times over the course of the next twenty-four hours, and with each pass her traitorous heart starts to beat that much faster. 

It doesn’t mean anything, Amity thinks when she gets a mouthful of Luz’s hair because her friend is leaning in just a bit too close as she tries to shake Amity awake. (Curse her inability to fall asleep at decent hours—or maybe not, considering.) It doesn’t mean anything, she tells herself when she catches Luz’s eye at lunch and feels her own face break into a soft smile that Luz returns immediately. It doesn’t mean anything, she insists when she falls asleep on the couch watching Azura and wakes up under the covers of her own bed.

Nothing, nothing, it all means nothing. Luz isn’t doing anything a good friend wouldn’t. Amity rereads the author’s note for the thirteenth time, in the early-morning hours of a Tuesday before Luz awakes, and bites down hard on her tongue when something in the back of her mind dares to suggest that it kind of, sort of, reads a little bit like a love confession.

Of course she loves you, she reminds herself as the shock of pain fills her mouth. She’s your best friend.

So Amity puts her phone away, and closes all of her fanfiction tabs for Azura, and throws herself headlong into the rush of pre-Christmas projects and exams.

“Hey, um, are you all right?” Vee asks her the next day. Amity looks up from her history notebook and blinks several times before she really takes in what’s happening.

“Yeah, sure,” she says, in what she’s certain is the least convincing lie she’s ever had the misfortune of telling. Then— “Wait, how’d you’d even find me up here?” Not even Luz knows about this little library nook that she’s taken to frequenting, which Amity feels a little bad about, but she’s only human. She needs her alone time.

“Uh, I asked Luz?” Vee says, frowning, and Amity lets out a heavy sigh. Not as secret as she thought, then.

“Of course she knows,” Amity grumbles, but with far less heat than she wishes she could muster. Vee is still standing in front of her, chemistry textbook in hand. “Um. Did you need something?”

“Oh yeah, sorry!” Vee flips her textbook around to show Amity a picture of the worst plum pudding she’s ever seen, along with a paragraph of text that contains no less than three molecular chemistry puns. “I’ll make it quick—Luz says you like to come up here if you want to be alone, but I just don’t understand what’s going on with this model, and Gus . . . isn’t being very helpful.”

“Gus probably left the ‘helpful’ zone fifteen or so coffees ago,” Amity notes. If there’s anyone in their friend group who handles exam season worse than she does, it’s definitely him. There’s not even any real contest. “Would it help if I told you that Thomson was British, so the ‘pudding’ he’s describing isn’t actually a liquid?”

(It does help, at least a little bit—and if it takes a further five minutes for Vee to actually wrap her head around the whole plum pudding concept, at least it’s five minutes that Amity is able to distract herself from those incessant thoughts of Luz.)

By the time Vee leaves, Amity’s concentration is shot anyway, so she throws her history notes into her bag and follows her down the stairs. She has to eat dinner at some point, she thinks, or Luz will give her that wounded puppy dog look again and Amity will feel guilty about it for days. Plus it’s, like, good for her. Or something like that.

Luz, Willow, and Gus have already claimed a table when they arrive. Luz is the first to spot them and the only one to wave them over excitedly—Willow is busy staring into her soup and looking completely dead to the world, while Gus appears to be spending all of his focus on practically vibrating out of his seat. 

Amity makes a mental note to cut off his caffeine consumption.

“How are you even alive right now?” is the first thing she groans as she slumps onto the bench next to Luz. Two blank faces turn toward her; Luz cocks her head questioningly. “I was asking about Luz’s seemingly endless energy, but I guess it kind of applies to all of you.”

“I’m just soaking it all up before we actually have to take these exams next week,” Luz says with a shrug. “No point in stressing more than we need to, right?”

“Kill me now,” Willow mutters, “and I’ll never have to stress again.”

“You cannot kill me,” Gus intones, so quietly that Amity has to strain to hear him. “I can see beyond the future, beyond infinity. I am unstoppable.”

Amity casts a concerned glance at him. Vee winces, and Luz shakes her head. “We cut him off hours ago, but either he’s found some way of sneaking coffees that we haven’t noticed, or he’s just gonna be like this for a while.”

“That can’t be healthy,” Amity mutters, but she isn’t about to push the point further. She leaves her backpack on the floor and rises again so she can pick up some food from the cafeteria windows.

Before she can, however, Luz slides a plate over to her. It’s immaculately arranged, just like how Amity normally organizes her food—a stark contrast to the plate in front of Luz, atop which every single one of tonight’s dishes has been mashed together to form some sort of unholy analogue to shepherd’s pie. She pushes a third plate across the table at Vee.

“I wasn’t sure when you would be getting back,” she says, either oblivious to or willfully ignoring both of their obvious confusion. “They wouldn’t let me take three desserts, but I did swipe Gus’s cookie, and I doubt he’s gonna miss it anyway.” She holds up the cookie for proof, then breaks it in half and passes one portion to Amity and the other to Vee.

“You . . . I didn’t even tell you I was getting back,” Amity points out. Luz just shrugs.

“I figured you would be,” she says. “And hey, I was right! If I wasn’t, I would have saved it for you anyway.”

Amity swallows, pushing back the pesky feather-light feeling that’s bubbling up through her chest. “Um—thanks,” she says, staring down at the food.

“No problem!” Luz chirps, and goes back into downing her own plate with gusto. She freezes with a spoonful of mashed potatoes halfway to her mouth, glancing between Amity and her plate. “Wait, shoot, I forgot to get you a fork, didn’t I?”

“It’s all right, Luz, I can do it.” Amity rises from her seat, holding out her arm to keep Luz from following. “I appreciate the food, though; really.”

Luz shifts along the bench, grumbling incomprehensibly, but she doesn’t pull away from her food. Amity returns with two forks and a stack of napkins, the latter of which she drops in front of Luz’s plate. (She receives an incredibly offended look for her troubles.)

“So,” Luz says, before Amity has the chance to get more than three bites into her Luz-prescribed vegetable medley of the day. “Anyone got fun plans for Christmas break?”

“You asked that in the group chat yesterday, you know,” Amity points out.

Luz shrugs. “Yeah, but no one replied except you, and all you said was—and I quote—‘no’.”

“I didn’t think any further explanation was needed.” It’s a discussion they’ve had many times in the weeks since Thanksgiving—Luz insists that she ought to join the Nocedas for Christmas this year; Amity imagines the look on her mother’s face and declines. She would love to go, really, it’s just . . . she’s on thin enough ice with Odalia as it is. She doesn’t need to add more fuel to the fire.

Thankfully, Willow interrupts them before Luz can press further. “I think I’m going to go into a coma,” she says thoughtfully. “Like trees do in the winter, you know?”

“I’m gonna study next term’s material so hard, I’ll know it all by the first day,” says Gus. Luz sighs and turns expectantly to Vee. Save me, her eyes seem to say, but unfortunately Vee doesn't get the memo.

“Sorry,” she says with a shrug. “I’m not really doing anything exciting. I’ll probably be sitting in my room by myself a lot.”

“Same,” Amity mutters, which earns her a sympathetic look from Luz.

“Well, if either of you want to talk, my phone is always open.” She gives Amity a meaningful glance. “And so is my home, actually, if you need someone to break you out of your house Harry Potter style and everything.”

Vee snickers. “I doubt that will be necessary,” she says. Amity wishes she could say the same.

She starts on her mashed potatoes instead, and wishes she had the courage to do . . . well, any one of the things on her long to-do list that she’s still just too scared to try.

Finals suck, but at least tests are something Amity is good at. The exam material isn’t about to emotionally manipulate her into compliance, nor is she going to come out of her fifth-period physics class with a painfully sharp crush on Marie Curie. (Though she is quite the interesting woman . . . Amity digresses.)

Anyway, the point is—finals suck, but they’re also kind of fine. And they pass, in Amity’s estimation, far too quickly for it to only have been a week since they started.

Amity: When are you leaving tomorrow, again?

(She knows the answer, of course, because Luz told her in passing three weeks ago that her mom is coming at ten A.M sharp the Saturday after exams are over, but she feels like she isn’t supposed to remember. It’d be a little creepy if she did, and all that.)

Luz: Around ten-ish

Luz: So I’ll be here to see you off

Amity: Right.

Luz: Hey wait I have an idea!

Luz: Before you go

Luz: Wanna watch the direct to TV Azura movie tonight?

Amity: I really shouldn’t be surprised that you have access to that somehow.

Amity: ...that’s a yes, by the way.

Luz: :))))))!!!!

The Azura movie is . . . all right, Amity supposes. It’s definitely not as good as the show (there’s a reason it was relegated to a direct-to-TV release, even in the opinion of her eternally rosy-eyed roommate), but they’re not about to start season eight if they’re both leaving tomorrow.

Amity spends most of the first half of the movie agonizing over that very fact instead of paying attention to any of the dialogue. And then, when Luz curls her knees up to her chest and leans sideways onto Amity’s shoulder, she’s not paying attention for a completely different reason.

You should tell her, says the voice in the back of her mind. Absolutely not, Amity replies.

She tears her gaze away from the top of Luz’s head and forces herself to watch the screen, where Azura is busy trying to steal her staff back from the evil Bat Queen. The movie writers have really done a disservice to the Bat Queen’s character, she thinks with a frown, and then she wonders why Azura is bothering to knock on the door of a literal cave before she realizes that the knocking isn’t coming from the movie at all.

It takes a further few seconds for the rest of the panic to kick in, because shit, that’s her mother’s knock.

Again.

Amity leaps off the couch and slams her hand down on the remote, shutting off the TV. Behind her, Luz groans blearily. The apology sticks in Amity’s throat and she glances down at her clothes to make sure she’s presentable—the knocks are getting more insistent—and throws open the door before she can think better of it.

It’s amazing, some distant part of her mind thinks, how the sight of her own mother can cause literal bile to start rising in her throat.

“Amity,” Odalia Blight says by way of greeting. She doesn’t even deign to take in the rest of the room, just focuses on Amity like some hubris-powered laser beam. “Are you ready to leave?”

“I—” Amity’s mind whirls. She has a plane ticket booked for tomorrow, doesn’t she? What has she missed? She hasn’t seen her mother in person since Thanksgiving, and she wasn’t expecting to for at least another twelve hours. She’s not prepared for this, goddammit. “I didn’t know you were coming,” she says faintly.

“Well, someone had to remind Edalyn Clawthorne of her impending lawsuit,” Odalia says with a shrug. Amity feels herself stiffen. “I thought I would pick you up while I was at it.”

And you didn’t even think to warn me. “I’m not packed,” Amity lies, shifting to the right to block her mother’s view of her suitcase. “Could you come back tomorrow, please?”

“Don’t you ‘please’ me, young lady,” her mother snaps. “A Blight never makes requests of her superiors.”

Something ugly twists in her gut, but Amity forces it back down. “I’m not packed,” she repeats, keeping her voice carefully monotone. “I won’t be ready to leave until tomorrow.”

Odalia raises a single perfectly-manicured eyebrow. “Hmm,” she says simply, and doesn’t move from the door. “Disappointing. I’ll wait, then.”

Amity presses her nails into the flesh of her palm. She’s done with this, she thinks suddenly—done with the tiptoeing, the falling in line, the being afraid. Odalia may be her mother, but this little Hexside dorm is Amity’s, and she’ll be damned before she lets her mother get the better of her here. Not for a third time.

She doesn’t know what’s changed, not exactly, but she does know that she’s taking this chance. Amity hears Luz shift on the couch behind her, presumably still half-asleep, and warmth blossoms in her chest.

“No,” she tells Odalia, squaring her shoulders and drawing herself up to her full height. “You won’t wait.”

Her mother’s eyes narrow dangerously, but Amity is way past being afraid. “Excuse me?” she spits, but it sounds less venomous and more just pitiful.

“I’m not a disappointment,” Amity says firmly. “I know that now. No matter how many times you insist otherwise, no matter how many empty threats you make, you can’t take that away from me.”

“Amity Blight—”

“I’m not a Blight. Not the way you are.” She’s intelligent, yes, and fierce, and driven to succeed. But she’d rather die than turn into a tenth of the snake that Odalia is.

Her mother’s expression freezes. “That’s a dangerous thing to say,” she says icily. “Who will have your back if not us, Amity?”

Amity takes a deep breath. “My friends,” she says, hating how unsure she sounds, hating the way her voice quavers, hating the laugh that immediately bubbles up her mother’s throat. “I have friends here who love me, who I love in return. Not whatever pitiful excuse for emotion that you and Father have—I don’t know what that is, but it isn’t this.”

“You’re a child,” Odalia sneers. “Barely seventeen. What do you know of . . . “ She gives Amity a scornful smile. “. . . love?”

It’s not a genuine question, not really. Her mother doesn’t expect an answer—she just wants Amity to be cowed. But, well, Amity has a lifetime of disappointing her parents to live up to, and she isn’t about to stop now.

“I know that love—true love—is selfless,” she says, setting her jaw and looking her mother straight in the eye. “I know that you can’t choose who you love, and you can’t choose who loves you, but you can choose what to do with the love you find yourself with.” (She’s only vaguely aware that she’s quoting Azura, but hey, her mother has never seen the show.) 

“I know—” Amity swallows, forces herself not to blink, forces herself not to turn around to cast a glance at the couch for strength. This isn’t part of the quote, but she needs to say it anyway. And as much as she wants to see Luz before she says it, to know that she’ll be there for her when this is all over—isn’t that just another thing love is?

Love is trust, and Amity trusts without looking that Luz will be behind her.

She makes me want to be brave.

“I know that loving someone can be the most painful thing I’ve ever done,” Amity says, feeling the weight somehow settle onto and lift off of her shoulders at the same time. “But if I had a choice? I’d do it all again.” 

She takes another breath.

“And you,” she says, injecting the word with seventeen years’ worth of pure venom, “well, I suppose you’ll never get to know what that means.”

Odalia’s face has gone completely ashen. Amity braces herself for the response.

And then her mother starts laughing.

It’s so uncanny, so completely unexpected, that Amity nearly loses it herself. Only years of experience at stoicism let her keep her mask of calm while her mother cackles against the doorframe.

“Oh, you poor child,” Odalia wheezes. “You have—where will you go, Amity? You think you don’t need us, but you do. Do you want to live in the streets? In the cold? Because we could arrange that for you.” Her mother draws herself up and steps into the room, and for a split second Amity is still too shocked to respond. “You’re nothing without us! Without us, you have nowhere to go!”

For a moment—a brief, terrifying moment—Amity gets a close-up look of the whites of her mother’s eyes, and just like that, and she feels her courage waver in her stomach. She stumbles backward, blinks back tears of terror, tries in vain to control her breathing—and then a hand, firm and warm, slips into hers.

“She might be nothing to you,” Luz says calmly, “but that’s your loss, because she’s everything to me.”

(That’s not an Azura quote, either, but she shouldn’t be surprised that Luz has a gift for dramatic pronouncements anyway.)

Amity takes a deep breath, finds her feet again. You don’t have to do this alone. “I told you,” she says. The fire is gone from her chest, and now she’s just tired—tired, and sorry for the poor woman in front of her. “You’ll never know what it means.”

Then she reaches out an arm and shoves her mother backward into the hallway, and she and Luz throw their full weight against the heavy oaken door to slam it in her face.

She thinks she ought to experience remorse, or at least the slightest bit of conflictedness, but really, the only thing it feels is fucking good.

It doesn’t end there, of course, but it might as well.

Odalia is escorted off of the Hexisde campus by a private security detail, which Eda takes great delight in claiming credit for. Amity has to sit in Headmaster Bump’s office for half an hour or so while he files the necessary paperwork—“Just to make sure you don’t run off,” he says, but she can hear the concern in his voice and see it on his face. 

She stays longer than she needs to, organizing stacks of papers for Bump while he talks quietly on the phone in the background, but eventually, he decides she’s okay and shoos her out the door with a promise to check in tomorrow.

It’s nearly midnight by the time Amity returns to her room, but she’s not surprised to find Luz awake on the couch. “Hey,” Luz says as she pushes the door open, offering up a bowl of mini-Twix bars. “I know it’s not real food, but—”

“God, I love you,” Amity mutters, seizing the bowl from Luz and collapsing on the couch next to her. There’s so much she wants to say—so much she needs to say—but none of the words feel right at the moment. She’s not sure they ever will. “I . . .” she starts, but she can’t get any further.

“Take your time,” Luz says quietly, as she swipes a candy bar from the bowl. “Hey—I’m proud of you, you know that?”

She can’t think of anything to say to that, either, so after too long of a silence, she settles on a soft, “Thanks.” But she can’t just leave it at that, not with someone who matters so much to her, so eventually she forces herself to say, “I guess I owe you an explanation—”

“Nope,” Luz says, not forcefully, but firmly enough to interrupt. “Not unless you really want to do it right now. I’m—I can be patient. I’m working on it.”

Amity lets out a long, slow breath. “Okay,” she says, leaning back into the couch. “What are we . . . what do we do tonight, then?”

“We eat this bowl of candy,” Luz says, already reaching over to take another. “We stay up as long as you need to, and then we go to bed, and tomorrow morning my mom picks us up and you come home with us for Christmas.” She slides the Twix out of the wrapper and takes a bite. “I’ve already called to ask if it’s okay.”

“All right.” Amity nibbles at her own candy bar, fiddling with the wrapper with her other hand. “I . . . thank you.”

Luz just shrugs. “It was the least I could do.”

You’ve already done so much more than that, Amity thinks, but it’s too big of a statement for tonight, so all she says is, “I feel like the least you could have done was just the candy.”

“Eh, okay, you got me.” Luz flashes her a grin. “The second-least thing I could do, then. Wait, second least? Is that even—”

“I don’t think that’s actually a thing,” Amity says, more out of habit than anything else. She frowns. “Where did you get so much chocolate at this hour, anyway?” She’s fairly certain that last time she checked, they were out of it.

Luz flushes a shade of pink that Amity doesn’t think she’s ever seen before. “Well, I—um. I may have fed the vending machine in the Science building, like, thirty dollars worth of ones.” Amity stares at her, aghast, but she just grin again. “It’s okay! It was totally worth it, and I had the cash to spare anyway.”

“You really are something else,” Amity laughs, and Luz lights up like it’s the best thing anyone’s ever said about her. Amity fishes a handful of Twix from the bowl and drops them in her friend’s lap. “Here, you can’t possibly expect me to eat all of these.”

“I think I could, actually,” Luz replies, leaning back against the couch and closing her eyes. “But if you insist, I guess I’ll have a few.”

“I do insist,” Amity says, and Luz opens her eyes just to roll them at her. Amity laughs again, settles back into the couch, and lets herself breathe.

Tomorrow, she tells herself. Tomorrow, everything will be okay.

(As she drifts off to sleep, it slowly occurs to her that a lot of it already is.)

As it turns out, “tomorrow” doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for judging whether or not things are, indeed, okay. Amity wakes up (in her bed again, no less—she’ll have to thank Luz when she can) at seven o’clock in the morning to find Headmaster Bump and Eda knocking on the door.

“You’re welcome to stay here over the break, of course,” Bump tells her, once the formalities have been dealt with and she’s reassured him that she’s all right for now. “We don’t usually allow it, but considering the circumstances, Eda and I are completely willing to make an exception.”

“That’s . . . very kind of you,” Amity says, shifting awkwardly in the doorway. “But I think I’m going home with Luz for the break, if that’s all right?”

She doesn’t miss the satisfied smile that crosses Eda’s face, but she doesn’t have time to question it. “Of course it’s all right,” Bump nods firmly. “Not to impugn the reputation of our very fine dormitories, but they can get quite lonely. I’m glad you have somewhere to go.”

“Yeah,” Amity agrees. She thinks of Luz, still asleep in the room behind her. “I’m glad, too.”

“When you’re back for the spring semester,” Eda interjects, “I’ll warn campus security about your mom and dad, and they’ll make sure they never set foot in this building. I drew up that contract they signed myself—it’s airtight, which means they can’t pull you out before June without facing ten different kinds of legal retribution. After the school year ends, though . . .” she trails off with a grimace, and Bump sighs.

“I’ll figure something out,” she tells them, and to her surprise, she believes it. Summer break isn’t all that long anyway, and once she finishes her senior year—whether it’s here or somewhere else, somewhere her parents can’t find her—she’ll be eighteen and hopefully off to college. She’ll never have to see her parents again, if she plays her cards right.

“We will, of course, be in touch,” Bump assures her, and Amity nods. “If Hexside can do anything at all for you, don’t hesitate to reach out and ask.”

“I won’t,” Amity promises, and then the two of them are gone and Amity is frantically packing the last of her bags (she meant to do it last night, before her mother’s interruption)—and then Luz is awake and frantically packing the last of hers, and then the two of them are jamming their luggage into the back of Mrs. Noceda’s station wagon and pulling out of the parking lot, bound on a two-hour journey back to Vermont. 

Luz sits in the back with Amity, but she’s leaning forward and chatting excitedly with her mom in Spanish, so Amity alternates between scrolling through her phone and staring out the window at the road that whips by.

“Mija,” Mrs. Noceda says as they merge onto the interstate, “you know I want to hear everything, but don’t neglect your friend, either, okay?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” Amity replies automatically, flicking her phone screen off as Luz turns to look at her. “Don’t let me interrupt your reunion,” she says to Luz, who scoffs and rolls her eyes.

“You could never,” she replies, and suddenly her eyes light up with that signature Luz glow. Amity could get lost in them if she’s not careful. 

For the first time, she allows herself to consider that it maybe wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

“Hey!” Luz grins. “You know what I just realized?”

Amity pulls herself out of her reverie. “What?”

“Now that we’re gonna be together for the whole break, we can catch you all the way up on Azura!” Luz claps her hands together excitedly, and Amity is so enamoured with the expression on her face that she honest to goodness just forgets to respond. Frowning, Luz tugs at her seatbelt to lean closer. 

“I mean, if you want to, that is,” she says. “We can also do other things, I’m sure you’ve got a lot on your mind and all—hey, did you know you can get emancipated in Georgia if you’re at least sixteen? Not that I’m suggesting that or anything, I was just curious, and I figured I ought to know as much as I can so I can try and help—” She cuts off, casting a stricken glance at Amity. “I’ll stop talking now.”

Get it together, Blight. “No, I—I’d love that. All of it, I mean. Azura, and figuring things out, and whatever else you want to do?” It comes out as more of a question than she intends, but luckily Luz doesn’t seem to notice.

“Perfect,” Luz says, leaning back in her seat. “It’s gonna be amazing, don’t you worry.”

Amity smiles, and her heart aches in her chest, and she knows that sooner or later, she’s going to have to say something. “I never doubted it,” she says, and Luz sends her an ear-to-ear grin in return.

In the end, it’s only a week before Amity cracks. It’s been one of the best weeks of her life, to be fair—she gets a room to herself here, even if it’s basically just a glorified closet (both Luz and Mrs. Noceda apologize profusely, and Luz even offers up a cot in her own room, but Amity has been having none of it), and honestly, just being in a house without having to look over her shoulder every thirty seconds is the most free Amity has ever felt.

She’s contacted her siblings again, and filled them in on the broad strokes of what happened—from the sound of things, they’ll be staying at their college this Christmas. Amity is a little disappointed that she won’t see them this year, but also incredibly relieved that they won’t be around to unleash themselves on the poor Nocedas. Luz and her mom don’t deserve such a fate.

The first week passes by in a blur of snowball fights and hot chocolate and (of course) marathons of Azura—season eight is, by far, the worst season Amity has seen so far, but by now she’s too invested to stop. It’s also apparently the most recent one, a fact which Luz neglected to tell her until she’s blindsided by the cliffhanger at the end of the season finale.

“They just keep doing it!” Amity groans, gesturing at the television in what she hopes is a vaguely angry manner. “And you’re telling me we have to wait another year for this?”

“Welcome to the fandom, Amity,” Luz cackles from the other side of the bed. “You’re one of us now! You can’t escape.”

“I should hate you for this,” she grumbles, sinking back into the pillows. “Don’t know why I don’t, really.”

“You love me too much,” Luz grins, and drapes herself over the edge of the bed to grab her phone off the nightstand. “Wanna tell the group chat you’re caught up? Oh man, they’re gonna be super excited! And,” she adds with a sly grin, “you can finally tell them you’re on my side about Hecazura, too!”

God, she never should have let that slip to Luz.

“Maybe in the morning,” Amity replies. She glances at her own phone—it’s nearly two A.M., and while she knows all of their friends are most likely still awake (other than Willow; Willow’s sleep schedule is usually fairly responsible), she doesn’t really want to bother them.

Plus, she kind of wants to keep this moment between her and Luz, at least for a little bit.

“Morning’s good, yeah,” Luz mumbles through a yawn. She drops her phone onto the carpet without bothering to reach over and plug it back in. “Hey. Stay here for the night?”

“I—” Amity sucks in a breath. “Here? Like in your bed?”

“Yeah?” Luz rolls over to look at her. “I mean, you’re definitely the kind of person who would enjoy pretending to be Harry Potter, but that room is still kinda cramped to live in for longer than a couple days.”

Amity has a sneaking suspicion that Luz once tried exactly that. “It’s not that bad, really,” she says. “Besides, I figured you’d enjoy having a room to yourself for a bit.”

“Eh, I guess,” Luz shrugs, her tone uncharacteristically quiet. “It’s just . . . a bit lonely sometimes.”

The faraway look in Luz’s eyes should not be nearly as endearing as Amity finds it. She’s one hundred percent certain of that fact, and also one hundred percent certain that, no matter how non-endearing she thinks it ought to be, the fact of the matter remains that she is totally, completely lost.

So she flops down next to Luz and drapes an arm across her shoulders, and agrees.

“Fine, I’ll stay,” she says. “But I’d better not wake up with your morning breath in my face, or I’ll—”

“Amity!” Luz sits up just to draw her hand to her chest in mock offense. “You wound me. I do not have morning breath!”

“You do,” Amity retorts, because it’s hard to share a room with a person and not know that about them. Luz’s isn’t even bad, really, but that doesn’t mean Amity can’t needle her about it. “It’s a good thing, really. Reminds me that you’re actually human sometimes.”

Luz raises an eyebrow. “Amity Blight occasionally thinks I’m superhuman?” she says, grinning widely. “Tell me more.”

“I said no such thing,” Amity says, but Luz looks so adorable leaning up against the headboard, and suddenly the voice in the back of her mind is screaming, I love you, I love you, I love you, and Amity decides that screw it, tonight’s the night.

If it doesn’t work out, she can always retreat to her Harry Potter closet.

“Hey,” she says quietly. Luz sits up straighter immediately, her face sobering. “Can we . . . talk about something important?”

“Yeah of course, always,” she says. Amity swallows, chewing at her lip, and she feels the words swirling around in her chest but can’t bring herself to say any of them. Luz pokes at her gently. “Hey. Talk to me, Blight.”

Amity lets out a long breath. Here goes nothing. “How . . . how much of my argument with my mom did you hear?” she asks. She can feel Luz’s gaze on her, but she can’t bring herself to meet it.

“Uh, pretty much all of it,” Luz admits. When Amity doesn’t reply immediately, she continues, “I mean, I was kinda pretending to be asleep for the first part? Because I knew you probably didn’t want me interfering, but then it kept going and she started yelling and I couldn’t stop myself, and . . . yeah. Was it . . . was it too much?”

Amity blinks. “What? No, of course not. I’m . . .” She swallows. “I’m glad you stepped in when you did.”

“Oh. Um, that’s . . . good.”

When it becomes obvious that Luz isn’t going to magically pull her next question out of her brain, Amity forces herself to ask it. “So you heard the bit about—the bit about love, then,” she says. “The one where I said it’s painful sometimes?”

“I—yeah.” Luz reaches up to scratch at the back of her neck. “It’s funny, really, I was sorta thinking the same thing a couple weeks ago—”

“I know,” Amity says, glancing away.

“—for entirely, um, unrelated reasons, actually, but—” She stops. “Wait, you know?”

Well, she’s in too deep to back out now. “I found your fanfiction account, Luz,” she says dully, staring down at the bedsheets. “I’ve been reading The Stars in Our Eyes, and your author’s notes, and I swear I was going to tell you eventually, but . . .” She sighs. “I guess I don’t really have any excuse, do I?”

There’s a single, long moment of silence, in which Amity is reasonably certain she’s about to die.

“Oh my God,” Luz mutters, horrified. “Oh my God, you—”

“Luz, I swear, I’m sorry, I’ve never been sorrier in my entire life—”

“That’s so embarrassing, what the fuck, I’ve been—”

“I wasn’t trying to stalk you or anything, I promise—”

“Fuck,” Luz groans, flopping face-down onto the bed. Amity would be crowing over the fact that she’s finally heard Luz curse if she wasn’t as red as a tomato herself. “I just—God.” Luz takes a deep breath. “Give me a minute?”

“Um—sure,” Amity says, because at this point, there’s not much else she can do.

(It’s considerably less than a minute before Luz rolls over again—maybe twenty seconds, though to Amity, it feels more like an eternity and a half.)

“All right,” Luz says, staring up at the ceiling. “Ignoring how utterly embarrassing it is to pour out my heart and soul into the anonymity of the Internet and having my best friend just happen to stumble across it . . .”

“Ignoring that,” Amity replies faintly.

“. . . is the fic any good?”

Amity nearly bursts out laughing.

“Seriously?” she says, too shocked for a moment to formulate a proper response. “You just found out I’ve been spying on your anonymous Internet diary without your permission, and you’re asking me if the writing’s good?”

Luz narrows her eyes. “That wasn’t an answer.”

“Oh my God,” Amity groans, burning her head in her hands. She’s impossible, Luz is, but Amity kind of loves that about her. “Luz, do you—you read your comments sections, right?”

She thinks Luz makes a shrugging motion, but it’s hard to tell from the way she’s lying on the bed. “I mean, yeah, usually.”

“You know how there are always at least three comments going off about how good your writing is?”

“They . . . could be lying?” Luz says after a moment. “You know, just being encouraging, that sort of thing? People do that all the time.”

“Luz, what—look at me,” she says. Luz continues to stare at the ceiling, so Amity forces herself to clamber across the bed and place herself next to her friend. “Luz, your writing is incredible, okay? I didn’t even know it was you before I decided that.” She looks Luz in the eye, because it’s suddenly vitally important that she communicates the sheer conviction of what she’s saying. “Really, I don’t know how you could ever think otherwise.”

“Huh,” Luz says, and then she finally meets Amity’s gaze. “You . . . really think that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.” Amity leaves it at that and leans back into the pillows. Luz tracks her movement, rolling onto her side to keep from dropping her gaze.

Unfortunately, Amity’s idiotic brain refuses to let the silence last long.

“So . . . about the whole ‘love’ thing,’ she says, and Luz groans and buries her head in the sheets again.

“Are you really gonna make me say it out loud?” she sighs, her voice muffled.

“I—say what out loud?” Amity frowns. Luz doesn’t reply immediately, so she says, “I was talking about when I said it. To my mom.”

“Oh. Right.” Luz lifts her head to look at her. “I knew that?”

And, well, now Amity would very much like to know what Luz was talking about, but she feels like she ought to explain first. It’s only fair, after all.

Still, it takes her several tries before she actually manages to open her mouth and say, “I was—when I was talking to my mom, I mean, I was . . . referring to you.”

Now, Amity knows that Luz Noceda is an intelligent person. One of the smartest people she’s ever met, actually—and if her Azura critiques and her skill at writing are any indication, she’s a master of subtext, too. All that to say, Amity’s expecting several reactions from Luz at this confession—shock, maybe, or pity. If she’s incredibly unlucky, maybe even disgust.

The one thing she’s not expecting (which is, of course, the one thing she gets) is confusion.

“You mean you were . . . quoting me?” Luz says slowly. “When you said that loving people can be painful?”

“No, I mean—” Amity wants to bang her head against the headboard until she doesn’t have to participate in this conversation anymore. She wants to scream. “I mean I was talking about you,” she says. “Because, you know, I . . .”

She can’t say it, she thinks with a sigh. She gestures between them awkwardly for several long, agonizing seconds before deciding on a lame, “You know.”

The look Luz gives her is completely indecipherable, and even more scream-inducing than the last. “I mean,” she says, “I love you too, Amity. I admit, I was kinda hoping that was obvious, but I—”

“Not that, either,” Amity groans, and this time she does bang her forehead on the wall. God. She can’t say it, but if she doesn’t, she’s going to be stuck in this weird purgatory of obliviousness forever. “Luz,” she says, taking a deep breath and steeling her nerves. “I—I’m in love with you.”

Huh. That was . . . easier than she expected.

It’s what comes after that’s the real hard part, she supposes.

There’s a long, terrible moment of silence, and then Luz lets out a breath that’s so quiet that Amity almost doesn’t hear it. “Oh? That’s . . . um, that’s good.”

Amity curls her hands into fists and forces herself not to flee. “Good?”

“I mean, because I’m in love with you too?” Luz says, almost like it’s a question, and Amity blinks.

“Wait, what?”

Luz actually laughs at that. “Amity,” she says, “you realize that I’ve been flirting with you since, like, the day we met, right?”

“Wait, what!?”

Pushing herself into a sitting position, Luz stares at her. “Uh. Yeah,” she says. “That first night, in the Target? The fact that I’m basically the sole owner of your varsity jacket by now?” Her eyes widen, and her voice goes a little bit frantic. “All of Halloween?”

Which, yeah, okay, fine, Luz has a point. “I had no idea,” Amity says faintly.

“I thought you were reciprocating!” Luz groans, burying her head in her hands. “You were—you knew I was going as Azura, you were—” She makes an incomprehensible gesture that kind of looks like she’s just flailing. “Hecate!”

“I didn’t think—” Amity starts, and then she cuts herself off, because honestly, how did she not think of that? Their friends gave her weird looks all night, but she assumed that was just because they’d never seen her dressed up before, except maybe . . .

But Luz is on a roll now. “I asked you to slow dance,” she continues, “at a Halloween party, and you! You said yes!”

“But then—why didn’t you bring it up afterwards?” Amity says, latching on to the first question that might reasonably help stave off her bewilderment. It all felt so normal at the time; Amity would never have thought—

“I thought—I thought maybe you were scared,” Luz says in a small voice. “Because you never said anything before, or even after, so I figured—well, maybe you regretted the whole dancing thing, or just didn’t think it meant anything, or . . .”

It’s Amity’s turn to bury her head in the blankets and groan.

“So I think,” she says, just before the silence gets long enough to be awkward, “I might be a little bit of a complete idiot.” She feels a hand on her shoulder and nearly jumps a mile into the air, but it’s just Luz.

“There’s a lot of it about, I guess,” Luz admits sheepishly.

“So it would seem.” Amity drags herself into a sitting position and forces herself to look Luz in the eyes. “Do we . . . maybe want to talk about what this means?” she says. “Like, officially talk about it. In the interest of, um, transparency.”

“Official talks are my jam,” Luz replies a little too enthusiastically, shooting a pair of finger guns at her. “I mean, not really, but I guess I can make an exception for you?”

Amity raises an eyebrow. “Don’t go getting all sappy on me, Noceda, or I’m calling this whole thing off.”

“You can’t call it off if we haven’t even defined it yet!” Luz says with a grin. “Besides, Blight, when have I ever not been sappy?”

“Never, I suppose.” she grumbles. Luz cackles with delight, and Amity grins, and suddenly the fourteen percent that she scribbled in her journal so many weeks ago don’t sound like such terrible odds after all.

(It’s just endorphins, she tells herself firmly—but even when the rest of her brain doesn’t listen, Amity can’t exactly find it in herself to care.)

The Stars in Our Eyes updates for the last time on the Saturday before Amity and Luz return to Hexside. This time, Amity gets the notification in her email, but she doesn’t open up her browser to read the chapter—she’s seen it already, when she helped Luz proofread the final draft earlier this week.

She does, however, tap the link that will take her directly to the author’s notes, because of course Luz wouldn’t let her see those.

(“You know I’m subscribed to the fic, right?” Amity asks as soon as Luz snatches the phone with the chapter draft out of her hands. “I’m going to see whatever you write in there.”

“And you will!” Luz replies, tapping furiously at her screen with her thumbs. “When I post it, and not before. You get that sweet, sweet real-time reveal experience!”

Amity rolls her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Love you too!”)

It takes what feels like an eternity for the page to load, and when it does, the note isn’t even that long. Amity wonders where Luz is—she has to be somewhere in the house, right?—and whether or not she’d like to be around to see Amity’s reaction when she starts reading. 

But no, she decides, if Luz wanted to watch her reaction, she should have let her read it earlier. Or at least planned her release timing a little better. All’s fair in love and war, and all that.

Amity scrolls down.

Notes: Thanks for reading, y’all! It’s been a huge honor to see so many people enjoying this little fic (even if most of your comments aren’t actually about the fic at all . . . :P But I digress). I know y’all will be upset if I don’t give you one last update on Anonymous Classmate / Real-Life Hecate, but there’s really only one thing I can say that I haven’t already—so anyway, here goes:

I . . .

*deep breath, prolonged freeze frame*

*cut to black*

*roll end of season credits*

For a full ten minutes, Amity physically can’t stop cackling.

Comment (blight_of_your_life): You absolute dork. I love you too.

Fin.