Chapter 114: A Plan of Her Own

Roxanne woke to pale Saturday light and an empty bed across the room. The blankets had been folded with unusual neatness, which was how Isla made a bed when she wanted nobody to notice she had left it.

A note sat on the pillow in her looping handwriting. *Gone to the library. Back later. Don’t wait for me. I.*

Roxanne read it twice. She remembered the whisper in the dark, the dripping towel, the way Isla had leaned against her shoulder. She wanted to go straight to the library and sit down across from her. She also remembered the corridor, and the sharp words about accounting for every hour. She folded the note and set it on the desk.

At breakfast, Tessa looked at the empty seat beside Roxanne and then at Roxanne herself. "Where’s Isla?"

"Probably studying."

"On a Saturday?"

"It happens."

"It has never once happened," said Tessa, but she let it drop, and Roxanne was grateful. She buttered her toast and decided that following someone around was not the same as caring about them. If Isla wanted space, she could have it.

---

The academic adviser’s office on the library’s upper floor was narrow and smelled of lemon polish. Isla sat very straight in the chair opposite the desk, her notebook on her knee and her hands gripping its edge.

The adviser, a brisk woman named Mrs. Harcourt, listened to the whole explanation without interrupting. When Isla finished, she folded her hands.

"I’m not asking for special treatment," Isla said. "I just want to know whether there’s a way for me to finish the year."

"Then let’s start with what you can apply for," Mrs. Harcourt replied. "I can’t promise an outcome. But we can establish what is possible."

She laid it out plainly. There was a hardship fund, which required a full statement of the family’s finances. There were work positions on campus, in the kitchens, the library, the stables, which could offset part of the fees. There was a review committee that met at the end of the month. None of it was guaranteed. All of it needed documents, signatures, and a conversation with her parents.

Isla’s stomach sank lower with every sentence. It was more complicated than she had hoped, and slower, and the end of the month was frighteningly close. She did not want sympathy. She had braced for it and was relieved not to receive any. What she wanted was a real option, even a difficult one.

"Could I have the forms?" she asked.

"Of course." Mrs. Harcourt slid a thin stack across the desk. "Take your time reading them."

Isla tucked the papers inside her notebook, thanked her, and walked out with her chin up and her heart pounding.

---

Roxanne crossed the courtyard late that morning on her way to the practice hall, where Perpetua had called an informal meeting about the next production. The air was cold and bright, and students sat in clusters on the benches, enjoying the weekend.

She was halfway across when a glass bottle shattered somewhere around the corner of the east wing.

It did not sound like breaking glass. It sounded like a blade drawn across the inside of her skull. Roxanne flinched and stopped walking, one hand flying to her temple. Around her the other students hadn’t even looked up.

She turned in time to see a boy at the cafeteria entrance fumble a loaded tray. It hit the stone with a clang and a spray of cutlery, and the noise stabbed through her ears again, sharper than it had any right to be, every clatter distinct and separate.

She pressed her fingers against her head and breathed.

Then, just as suddenly, it stopped. The courtyard returned to its ordinary murmur. Somebody laughed at the boy with the tray. A bird hopped along the wall.

Roxanne lowered her hand and stood very still, testing the world with her ears. Everything sounded normal. She frowned. She had barely slept, she reasoned. There had been the performance, and the tension with Isla, and last night’s whispering. Tired people heard things strangely. She shook it off and went on to the practice hall.

---

When she returned to the dorm that afternoon, Isla was sitting at her desk with papers spread across it. At the sound of the door, she swept them into a pile and slid her notebook over the top.

"Hello," Isla said, too brightly.

"Hello." Roxanne set her bag down slowly. She looked at the notebook, at the corner of a form sticking out beneath it. "Are you looking into ways to stay at school?"

Isla stared at her. "How did you know?"

"It seemed like what I would do."

Isla let out a breath that was half a laugh. "I’m trying to find out my options before I talk to my parents again. There’s a hardship fund. And some campus jobs. Nothing is certain."

"I can help you look through the forms," Roxanne offered.

"I know."

"That’s not a yes."

"Because I haven’t decided what I need yet." Isla exhaled and pressed her palms against her eyes. "Please let me figure that out before everyone starts worrying about me. I want to understand the choices myself first."

Roxanne wanted to argue. She wanted to pull up a chair and read every line. Instead she nodded. "All right. But you don’t have to hide the fact that you’re trying."

"I wasn’t hiding it."

"There’s a notebook sitting on it."

Isla looked at the notebook, then at Roxanne, and the corner of her mouth twitched. "Slightly hiding it."

"You don’t have to handle everything alone."

"I know," Isla said, more quietly, and this time she sounded like she meant it.

---

The tension began to ease almost without their noticing.

It was Isla who started it, pushing her chair back and asking, in a voice that was almost her own, "Tell me about the play. Properly. I only saw it from the front, and I was too busy dying of laughter to follow the details."

So Roxanne told her. She described the broken staff and the actor frozen in the wings with a piece in each hand. She described Liam turning to her and stealing her line without warning, and how her own mouth had answered before she had decided what to say. She did Liam’s collar, and his chin, and the voice he used when he said *loudness is a form of leadership.*

Isla laughed so hard she knocked her pen pot off the desk. Pencils scattered across the floor, and she slid down to help gather them, still wheezing. "He said that? Out loud? In front of everyone?"

"He believed it."

"Of course he did."

For a little while, they sounded like themselves again. It was nothing dramatic, no apology, no speech. They were two friends in a small room, picking up pencils and laughing over a prince with a paper crown.

Later, as they got ready for bed, Isla spoke without looking up from her pillow. "I haven’t decided whether to tell Tessa yet."

"You don’t have to."

"I just don’t know how to say it more than once."

"I won’t tell her," Roxanne said. "Not unless you want me to. It’s yours to share."

Isla nodded, and something in her face relaxed.

---

They had just settled under their blankets when the phone rang.

It buzzed against the desk, rattling the pencils, and the screen lit the ceiling with a pale glow. Isla sat up. Roxanne saw the word on the display from where she lay. *Mum.*

Isla stared at it. Her fingers curled tight around the edge of her blanket, as though the phone were a thing that might bite. It rang again.

Roxanne did not tell her to answer. She did not tell her what to say. She lay still and kept her eyes on the ceiling, giving her the room to decide.

On the fourth ring, Isla got up. She picked up the phone and carried it to the window, pressing it to her ear.

"Hello, Mum." A pause. Her voice dropped, then rose again, determined. "I’m trying to find a way to stay, Mum. Please don’t make the decision before I’ve had a chance."

After that she lowered her voice to a murmur, and Roxanne turned on her side to face the wall. She pulled the blanket up and gave her friend what privacy a small room could offer.

It was several minutes before the call ended. Roxanne heard the soft click of the phone being set down, and then the creak of Isla’s bed. When she turned over, Isla was sitting with the papers in her lap, the forms rumpled where her fingers had gripped them.

"They’ve already started planning for me to come home," Isla said. "They think it’s settled."

Roxanne looked at the forms. Isla had collected every one of them by herself, on a Saturday, without telling anyone.

"Then they need to hear what you want," she said, "before they decide your future."

Isla looked at her, frightened, with the paper trembling slightly in her hands. But she was no longer entirely alone.