Saturday.
Late brunch. Eggs, a pot of tea, rain leaning on the window like it had nowhere better to be.
She came in with her phone in one hand and her pen still behind her ear. Put a few folded notes and some coins beside my plate.
From my classmate. For the roll-ons.
Counted it. Then counted it again, which I'd have been embarrassed to do if she'd been watching. Exactly right. Not a dollar over, not a dollar under.
What price did you tell her?
She looked at me as if I'd asked for the capital of France. The one on the website, Mum.
That was all. At lunch on Friday she'd pulled up the Scion roll-on page, held the phone out, and her friend had read the number and said okay.
No rounding. No special price for you. No explaining.
All week I'd been rehearsing it. What to charge, how to hand it across, what to say to a seventeen-year-old's friend. Whole speeches at red lights.
And the price was already there. On a page, for anyone to read. Nothing to negotiate, nothing to defend.
Funny how much of the worry goes quiet when there's nothing to say.
She was buzzing, though she'd never admit it. Next time, she said, she'd shout her classmate a coffee — she's been holding my notes all week. Then, buttering toast she didn't really want, she told me the group chat has a plan. A few days in New Zealand, straight after the last paper. Queenstown, maybe. Someone's cousin knows a place.
Everyone's so tired, she said. We just keep saying "after HSC, after HSC."
Then, in the voice she uses for anything that actually matters: I told them about our mask nights. You and me. They asked if they could come over one afternoon. Just to try.
Of course, I said. Anytime. I'd put the kettle on.
Didn't need to think about it. She went so bright I nearly looked away.
Evening was soup, dishes, the lamp turned low. Then the bathroom, one after the other, the LumiSpa humming its two minutes. Hers first, then mine.
On the couch after, the Spa Day mask, thin like icing. Then the NaPCA mist over the top, a light spritz each.
A good few nights running now. Neither of us said what we were looking for. Just curious, I think — what a stretch of them looks like in the mirror, and whether we'd even notice.
She tilted her face to the lamp. Turned it left, then right.
Hmm, she said.
Asked her what.
Ask me Monday.