The man who gets out matches his car. Pristine. I feel more like the doe at my feet. Caught unaware. He strides towards me and I debate running deeper into the woods but decide that’s a stupid plan.

“Victoria?” Charlie asks in his slightly British accent. I’m not sure if it’s real or just another thing to make him look more rich or posh or attractive. Most likely all three. “What are you doing here in this neck of the woods?” That could be a joke but the way he says it is frost coated. Then, I become aware of how suspicious I look, next to a carcass, in the middle of the night with no apparent means of getting anywhere. I don’t answer because I don’t have one in me. “Would you like a lift?” I want to say yes but I don’t want to be in a car with those memories let alone him.

“No,” I say. “Thank you.”

“No no no. I insist,” he says, ushering toward the car. You insisted on something else and I let you get your way, I think. I’m not making that mistake again. I shake my head again. Perhaps a little too forcefully. He lets up and slides back inside his car but he doesn’t look happy about it. Something there tells me that he doesn’t like me being here or maybe me not being in there. I sigh with relief after he drives away.

“Goodbye,” I say to the deer and something in her black eyes tells me that she’s grateful.

It doesn’t take very long until the trees are replaced with houses and then flats and then shops. I know where I am. It must be late. Too late for him to still be waiting here but I still walk with caution. I must, I think, be close to Valerie’s. I look past the lights of clubs and restaurants and try to find the sign reading Paraíso. I find it. The doors are closed but I open them anyway. Valerie’s my friend and it’s not as if they’re locked or anything.

The lobby smells of cheap perfume and something cooking that I can’t put my finger on. The food is really the only good thing about this entire three story building and even then, it’s only good on tapas night. But beggars can’t be choosers and I don’t want to walk to my house in the rain. The man at the desk looks, like everything else in this hotel, tired. The pleather on the couches are worn and what must have once been a vibrant pink has faded to a bleached dusk. Even Valerie’s mom seems tired all the time. In fact, Valerie may be the only living thing in the hotel aside from her house plant collection.

“Hi,” I say. “Could I get a room, just for one night?” He nods and types something onto a computer.

“Name?” he asks like he doesn’t even have the energy to ask the full question.

“Victoria Vickers. I’m a friend of Valerie.” He nods again but I don’t think he even knows who I’m talking about. After paying, I take my keys and enter my room. Sleep tugs at my eyelids, dragging them down like a dropped guillotine.

“It’s breakfast,” Valerie says, prodding me repeatedly. One of her braids swings down to brush my face. “And I’m always hungry so this is one of the three highlights of my day. Don’t ruin it for me by taking forever to wake up.” I roll my almost awake eyes and half get out, half fall out of bed. Valerie leads me downstairs to an array of food. I was planning on going home for breakfast but with her whisking me downstairs, I suppose it’s too late. Why did I decide it was a good idea to mention that I’m a friend of hers? With all of the different components of a full English, you would expect the room to be drowning in different smells. But the only thing entering my nostril is burnt toast which I take a piece of before painting a thin layer of apricot jam onto it. The jam is made in a factory and you can’t go wrong with toast, even if it does look like it survived its house being burned down. I watch as Valerie piles her plate with a meat-free bacon sandwich, a blueberry muffin, two mini croissants, another sandwich lined with the contents of a nutella sachet and two hash browns. It’s amazing how much food can fit into a moderately skinny girl. My back starts to ache as I walk to our booth, made from the same hibiscus pink pleather as the sofas in the lobby and possibly my bed which I blame for my cramps.

“You will not believe what happened last night,” Valerie says as she sits down. “I was reading my plant encyclopedia and watching nature programs when Bob fell. He looked really bruised up and I don’t know if he’ll survive or not. I was wondering if it’d make sense to rename Bob Jr, Bob if the real Bob doesn’t make it.” It takes me a second to realize that she’s talking about her succulents on her windowsill. “I just don’t know how this could’ve happened, like, I love them all so much and you just don’t expect it, do you? I’m sorry.” She wipes her eyes with her sleeve. How could anyone get so attached to a plant? Valerie’s face crumples up like a piece of paper.

“How’s Luna?” I ask. Luna is Valerie’s favorite thing in the world, even more than Bob and Bob Jr. I’ve never liked Luna or understood why someone would want that in their bedroom but sometimes people do things that don’t make sense to others but might be justified in their heads.

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“Luna,” she says. No more tears are falling now. “Is fine. But I need to buy more crickets. She’s a hungry girl, just like her mama.” I notice that she’s already motored through most of her breakfast. How? “Oh hi Mama!” I turn around to see Valerie’s mom spraying and wiping the table across from us. She barely looks up but I can still see the murky shadows beneath her eyes, the same color as her ash gray eyes. She moves onto the next table but as I look closer, I see that she’s missed a small spillage of orange juice. “She’s ok.” Valerie says, in a way that makes me think she has to say this a lot. “She’s just busy. Anyway. Tell me about what’s going on with you.” I could tell her that I’m being stalked, or that my old best friend ran over a deer with me in the car or that I saw Charlie again. But obviously I tell her the thing that she’ll find most interesting.

“The other day, I was in town and I saw these shoes. Snakeskin print heels, in your size,” I say. Valerie gasps.

“Where? Which shop? We’re going, now. You know what, tell me on the way.” She picks up her empty plate of food and puts it in the dishwasher. The boy flipping the pancakes, flips his hair for her as she walks out of the hotel kitchen.

Living on the high street must be cool, I think. It’s only a short walk to FSHN4U.

“In here,” I say. We walk to the back of the store where they have the shoes. Valerie practically lunges at the heels when she spots them before stroking them.

“It’s like wearing Luna on my feet,” she says, shaking my arm vigorously. That’s a good thing apparently. “I’m buying them.”

“You haven’t tried them on yet,” I say. She gives me a look. “I’ll keep them as an ornament if they don’t fit. Besides, they’re giving me the right energy.” She closes her eyes and strokes them again. She stands up, her necklaces rattling around her neck and we queue for the till.

“Oh my god,” I say as the shop doors open. Standing there in the opening is him.

“What?” Val asks, her leaf green eyes flitting to the door. She sees him but not what I see. I shrug, in an attempt at nonchalant but turn my head away from the door so he doesn’t recognise me. We reach the front of the queue and Val pays for the shoes.

“Would you like a bag with that?” the cashier says. It looks like she might struggle to blink with fake lashes that long.

“Are they made of paper?” Val asks. The cashier points her foot long nails at the selection of plastic bags hung up on the wall behind her. “You should really start giving a paper option. It’s better for the environment.”

“Girl. I’m a cashier, not a Go Jetter. You’re holding up the queue.” He’s not here anymore, I think, relief flooding my heart. We walk out the shop and Val starts towards a market stall selling jewelry. The man running it has a plaited beard and smells like cigarettes. Valerie seems unfazed and gushes at the tiny gold chain with sleeping on it in a swirly font before making ‘aw’ noises at a cat pendant. “Both please,” she says, holding them up for the man to see. He nods slowly.

“40 bucks,” he says, revealing a row of crooked and missing teeth. Valerie roots around in her purse and gives him the money.

“Vicki, I’m going to buy you something. What about this one?” Valerie holds up a rose gold bracelet with little charms on it. A key, a feather, a bird, a snake, a crown and a silver 13. “You know what? I’m going to get it anyway and if you don’t want it then I’ll give it to Lucy because she loves jewelry.” I do want it. I just don’t want to feel like charity. She pays for that as well and we check out a few more stalls. Valerie finds a T-shirt with pov: ur a ♉ printed on in big black letters and she’s buys us both boba which we sip on a bench.

“You can tell me you know,” she says. “Something’s troubling you. I can feel the negative energy.” I wonder what she means. Nowadays, it feels like there are too many things on my mind, blood reds and deep blues swirling together to make a thick black paint to color my thoughts with but I assume she means the paying for bracelet thing.

“I don’t know. It’s just school’s over and I want to act, well, you already know that, but it doesn’t feel like I’m getting there so I’m just stuck living with my parents and never going out unless someone else pays,” I say. Valerie sucks loudly through her straw in the now empty bottle. I give her a gentle shove. “Hey. Stop making that noise.” She holds the bottle close to my face and sucks in as much as she can. I laugh and take the bottle to put in the bin. When I look back, I see that she’s now sipping mine. She hands it back when I sit back down but I let her have it. I’m used to it at this point.

“Look at the ducks!” she says, pointing to some mallards pecking the street. The glossy green looks out alien compared to the pigeons that are normally here. She gets out her phone to take a photo of them.

“New phone case?” I ask, looking at the cartoon cupcakes with uwu faces. It’s a change from the vivid hyper realistic dragon that flew across it last week. She nods.

“Is it too early to have lunch?” she asks.

“What time is it?”

“12:00,” she says.

“No it’s not.”

“Ok fine. It’s 10:53.”

“It’s too early,” I say. Valerie slumps against the bench and hands me her/my empty boba cup.

“You can put it in the bin,” she says.

“Thanks.”