Reaction time, p.1
Reaction Time, page 1
Table Of Contents
Other Books by Emily O’Beirne
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Other Books from Ylva Publishing
About Emily O’Beirne
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Other Books by Emily O’Beirne
A Story of Now series:
A Story of Now
The Sum of These Things
The Complete A Story of Now Series (box set)
Future Leaders:
Future Leaders of Nowhere
All the Ways to Here
Standalone:
Here’s the Thing
Points of Departure
Chapter 1
Luce drops her bag and does a slow circle of the tiny dorm room. The barren half of her side is shouted down by the pink and purple hues of her absent roommate’s. A fuzzy purple blanket sprawls across the duvet, and a hot pink fake fur…thing hangs on the wall above the bed. On the wall, silver and gold jewellery dangles from a hook, and a glittery disco ball lamp rests on the bedside table. She’s not exactly sure what décor choice her new roommate was going for, but going off the Bible on the bedside table, retired stripper chic wasn’t it. Something clearly went wrong at the execution phase.
A pink neon sign beams the words Live, Love from the wall. Luce sits on her bare mattress opposite. This is what mothers and daughters do, she supposes. They go shopping together, buy neon purple bedspreads and desktop organisers and portable make-up dressers. They consult lists they’ve made, filling trolleys with little packs of shampoos and shower caddies and everything else they’ll ever need.
Luce had waited until she’d gotten to the airport to text her mother.
Earlier, in some fuzzy grey hour before dawn, she’d hovered at Flavia’s bedroom door, wondering if she should at least say goodbye. But instead, she’d stood there and breathed in that cloying scent of perfume and booze until the Uber came and she didn’t have to decide. Then, in the scramble of boarding, Luce let her thumb hover over the keypad for a small forever before finally typing: I’ve decided to go to uni interstate. I’ve left Harry a note. I’ll call soon.
Now, she sits on the edge of the bed in the middle of some tiny university town in another state, paralysed by the magnitude of leaving. She has to find a way to convince her brain she’s actually here. She also has to figure out where to buy sheets. And maybe she’ll get herself a blindfold to block out that pink neon crime scene opposite too.
Later, she crosses the tree-scattered lawn, breathing in the taut, cold smell of early winter dusk, clutching two shopping bags full of bedding. Kids cross the damp paths, free hands tucked deep into pockets, rushing between buildings. This is her favourite time, especially when the darkness begins to whisk in around her. She loves the smell of cold, clean air, and seeing the lights and movements through windows as people prepare dinner and turn on TVs. It always makes her feel alone but not lonely.
Here in this tiny town, the air is stripped back to leaf and dirt and green things close by. The sky is huge and filled with stars she can actually see. She’s never felt so unanchored in her life. She’s also never felt so possible. Maybe she’ll be able to become a whole person here. Maybe she’ll find some real friends, not just the company of people she selected because they were too interested in themselves and the next party to bother noticing she gave them nothing.
Freedom.
Then she yanks in a breath because, just as quick, guilt rushes in, curdling the feeling. She left Harry behind. Does Luce really think she deserves any of this?
Back in the room, a short blonde girl gives her a look that hovers somewhere between dubious and suspicious before she covers it with a bright smile. “Hi. I’m Steffi. I’m studying business.”
“Luce.” She starts pushing her new pillows into the new dark blue cases.
“Shouldn’t you wash those first?”
“Probably.”
Steffi continues to watch as she struggles with the cases. “Um, and you?”
“Luce. Sorry, thought we covered that.”
“No,” Steffi says. “What are you studying?”
“Oh. Health sciences. Nursing.”
“Why nursing?”
Luce shrugs. How does she explain that the times they’d had to take Flavia to hospital, it was the nurses who’d always eased their panic? That it was nurses who, for the first time ever, made Luce feel like the burden of her mother had been lifted for a moment. They were so earthed and calm, but also funny and stern when they needed to be. Luce wants to feel like they seemed to feel. Like she can handle anything. But that doesn’t seem like a first-meeting kind of explanation.
Steffi takes in the equally dark doona cover that Luce yanks out of the bag and purses her lips. “So, where are you from?”
“Sydney.”
“And you came here to study?”
“I like being out of the city.” The truth is, Luce doesn’t know what she likes.
“Why didn’t you start at the beginning of the year?”
She shrugs again. Because Steffi doesn’t need to hear about the Lost Semester, either. That brief stint in an arts/law degree in Sydney because that’s what her friends were doing. All that half-year achieved was to fuel Luce’s overwhelming sense of purposelessness. It was a whole messy, depressing time. So when she wasn’t putting out the usual fires at home, she’d partied to fill the void. Until she remembered those nurses and a thought seeded and eventually bloomed. But Steffi doesn’t need to know that this is Luce starting over. Or why.
* * *
Later, Luce lies in her bed, inhaling the factory aroma of her new sheets. Though there’s an ache of tiredness, she can’t sleep. It doesn’t help that the last thing she ate was a sandwich at the airport this morning. But by the time she’d sloughed off the longest day in history in the cold bathroom at the end of the hall, she hadn’t been able to face the hunt for food, so she’d just crawled under the covers and turned to the wall.
At some point, Steffi’s light flicks off too. Luce lies on her side, an arm over her face blocking the loud neon glow of the Live, Love sign, and hopes that her mother found her text message before she started drinking. At least Harry will know by now. How did she react to Luce’s letter? Anger? Tears? Nothing at all?
She slides her phone out from under her pillow. I’m sorry, she writes. Are you okay?
There’s no answer.
Luce wills herself not to think of home. But what else is there to think about? Finally, she sits up, sighing. Steffi’s flat on her front, face buried in her pillows, oblivious to the bright pink light. Luce shoves the duvet back, creeps across the room, and yanks the plug out of the wall.
Live, Love fades to black.
* * *
The only person Luce meets in her first week is Dan. Diabolically polite and extremely literal, he’s more of an elderly gentleman encased in a barely post-teen boy body. He also happens to be sitting next to her the day the lab tutor tells them to find partners for their presentation on critical healthcare.
He turns to her—not just his head, but his full body—and says, “Would you perhaps be interested in working with me?”
“Sure, why not?” Then she narrows her eyes at him. “You’re not a weirdo or anything, are you? I mean, I enjoy weird, but just not like scary weird.”
“No.” He blinks for a second, rubs his hand through his white-blond hair, and says, “I should tell you that my house mates say that social skills aren’t my forte, but I’ll do my best.”
“Okay, I can deal with that.” She smiles at him. “So, anything you want to vet with me before we enter into this scholarly matrimony?”
He takes her invitation seriously. “Do you do your work? Like, you’re here to study, not party?”
“Here to study.” Back in high school, the fact that Luce was a good student was a well-kept secret between her and her teachers. She didn’t talk in class, or answer questions unless she was called on, but she always studied for tests and handed her work in on time. Letting her closet geek-dom slip would have destroyed the slim social life she’d managed to build with the party kids. She’d needed those nights out to obliterate the rest of her life for a minute, so she’d kept the straight As on the down-low. Now, there’s no need. “And here for the grades if I can get them,” she tells him.
“Good.”
* * *
One of the first things Luce does is find
The job is in one of the cafés that pepper the small town, full of students and academics frowning at laptops and making a single coffee last hours into the night. She was hired after two questions, the answers to both requiring total and utter lies. The owner, a buzzy, middle-aged woman, is never there. It’s mostly just Luce and Ray. He’s twenty-five and a local, with the kinds of tatts and haircut that might scare off the customers if he wasn’t always cracking jokes and making the best coffee in town. On Luce’s first night, he watched her fumble, carting a couple of dishes from table to sink, and smirked.
“So how much of that application was real?”
“Not a word,” she said cheerfully, dumping the dishes onto the draining board.
He laughed, a short, sharp bullet of a thing. “I appreciate your honesty. No wonder you suck.”
“And I appreciate your honesty. No wonder you’re in charge.”
They grinned at each other, and an alliance was born. He showed her how to carry more than two coffees at a time, how to write orders so he could understand them, and how to keep the bad customers on the right side of “I want to talk the manager.”
* * *
It’s Tuesday and thirty-five minutes to the end of a shift. Outside, the occasional person trudges past, head down against in the cold wind. Luce wishes it would pick up. When she’s busy, her thoughts can’t stray. Outside the café, two men stop and chat and then keep walking. A group of elderly women march past, rugged up in scarves, each led by a dog on a leash.
“This is like one of those TV small towns,” Luce says to Ray. “Everyone knows each other.”
“Basically, if it wasn’t for the uni, this place would be about the size of an intimate gathering,” Ray says. “You a city girl?”
“Sydney.”
“Wow. You must hate it here. All this nature.”
“I might like nature. I don’t know yet.”
“Me and my girlfriend, Jenelle, will take you on one of our hiking trips. Brutal climbs, but the view at the end is worth it.”
“Hmm, there’s nature, and then there are hills.”
“So why did you come here? Half the kids I went to school with would give a kidney to go study in the Big Smoke.”
“No one there calls it that, you know.”
“Like I care.” And the beautiful thing is, he doesn’t.
For once, she doesn’t feel like evading. “I needed to get as far as humanly possible from my mother without having to use my passport.”
“Fair enough.”
The café door opens, letting cold night air rush in. Dan enters, carrying a shopping bag. “Good evening, Luce. I was going to message you tonight, but then I saw you through the window.”
“You sound just like my grandpa.” She grins. “Top of the evening to you, Dan.”
“Do you want to work on the presentation tomorrow?” he asks.
“I’ve got work until eight, but I can meet you after that?”
He frowns. “That’s late.”
“Come on, Dan, study on the wild side,” she teases. “I promise you’ll be back in your bed before you turn into a pumpkin.”
“I suppose I could.”
A guy with wild black curls jammed under a beanie pushes open the door. “You coming, Dan?” He looks between Luce and Dan. His eyes go wide. “Could this be a social exchange you’re having?”
Dan starts to say something, but a slender girl with the bottom half of her face buried in a bright blue scarf joins them. Dark bangs cover her forehead, but her brown eyes are bright and alive.
She shivers and pulls the scarf down, revealing cheeks pink with cold. “I will never get used to it being winter in July. Never.” She has an accent. Something lilting.
“I keep telling you,” the boy with the curls says. “Welcome to Australia, my friend. Everything is ass-backwards.”
“This is Luce,” Dan tells them. He turns to her. “These are my house mates.”
“Raf,” the boy says. He jerks his thumb at the girl. “Eva.”
“And it’s Eh-va, not Ee-va,” Dan says.
“Thanks for the pre-correction,” Luce tells him. “Hi Raf and Eva.”
Raf appraises Luce. “Well, if it isn’t Ponytail Girl.” He turns to Eva. “Recognise the hair?”
“I do,” she says, giving Luce an amused smile.
“Her name is Luce,” Dan says. “I just told you that.”
“Relax.” Raf pats Dan’s shoulder and says to Luce, “You’re in Film Appreciation, right?”
“Uh huh.” Luce had figured watching movies for an elective credit wouldn’t be so bad.
“Well, nice to meet you, Luce, aka Ponytail Girl,” Raf says.
“Why are you calling her that?” Dan asks.
“Because she’s always got this jaunty yet serious ponytail,” Raf says. “It kind of bounces as she takes notes. That’s how we remember her.”
“She always tightens it before she answers a question too,” Eva adds. “Her ponytail means business.”
“The real question here,” Luce says as casually as she can, “is why are you even talking about me, anyway? I’ve never met you in my life.”
“We talk about everyone,” Raf says cheerfully.
“Not, like, gossip,” Eva says. “We just wonder about them.”
“Yeah, like Hot Pink Backpack,” Raf says. “You know her? Sits in the front row.”
Luce scrolls through lecture hall memories until she sees her, the tiny red-haired girl with the backpack half the size of her body, and nods.
“We’ve decided she’s some sort of child genius auteur or something,” Eva says.
“She’s gonna win an Oscar by eighteen, for sure,” Raf adds.
Eva plucks at Dan’s coat sleeve. “So, are you coming home for dinner? Raf is burning something for us all, remember?”
“Shut up,” Raf says.
“You do kind of have a habit of lightly blackening most foods,” she tells him.
“Goodbye, Luce,” Dan says, giving her a small wave. “I’m sorry they called you ponytail.”
“She doesn’t seem that offended,” Raf says.
“No, I enjoy being named after my most inspiring features,” Luce drawls. “Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.”
Eva laughs. “Just ignore us.”
Luce does exactly that and turns to Dan. “See you tomorrow?”
He nods, eyes wide, like he’s certain there’s some tension but can’t figure out what to do about it.
She gives him a reassuring smile. “Bye.”
Chapter 2
Luce hates herself for even contemplating it, but she runs a brush through her curly brown hair and stares into the tiny mirror, pushing it this way and that. It looks kind of okay, she thinks, squinting at her slightly warped reflection. But what if Dan’s friends think she’s wearing it out because of them? Every time she thinks about those two and their ponytail teasing, she gets irrationally irritated.
“Morning.” Steffi skips in, carrying her shower bag, reeking of floral body spray. “Your hair looks really good out.”
“Oh, uh, thanks.” Luce picks up her backpack and dashes for the lecture hall, containing her curls behind her head with a hair tie as she walks. Businesslike it is, then. Still, she’s hyperaware of how it bounces behind her as she walks. Jaunty too, apparently.
The lecturer is late. Luce opens her anatomy book, figuring she can cram in some study while she waits. Someone sits down next to her in a bustle of bags and coats. Luce thought she had cultivated the kind of force field that keeps people at bay, but apparently not. Eventually, curiosity gets the better of her. Might as well know who’s going to be next to her, heavy breathing or yawning or fidgeting all through this morning’s Film Worth Appreciating.
