His sister’s hand-me-downs hung from his small frame like… a curtain? The halls were quiet, save for a distant cough, the turn of a page, and the click clack of a keyboard. Nora dried her hands on her trousers, and re-entered the warm embrace of the library, its warm lights, and green carpeting. She sat down at her laptop and scanned the room, the hunched shoulders, the black, brown and blonde heads lowered over books.

And there on the red couch lay Chloe, eyes closed and legs outstretched, balancing her laptop like breakfast in bed.

She was probably taking a break; or maybe she had writer’s block, maybe she’d bitten off more than she could chew. Nora had heard, from a little birdie (in square glasses and a candy-striped tie), that Chloe had picked up yet another creative writing elective.

His sister’s hand-me-downs hung from his small frame like… a sheet?

Tonight, or rather this morning—Nora checked the time, it was already 5:50am—Chloe’s black bob cut was unusually wavy, and she’d traded in her typical black turtleneck for an oversized grey hoody, her red tartan mini for sweatpants, and her stockings for mustard yellow socks.

Nora flipped open her laptop. Five hours until the deadline. His sister’s hand-me-downs hung from his small frame like a parachute. It’d have to do.

She refocused on a tangled clump of dialogue, ran her fingers through her hair and tugged at the roots. Did she need to brush through all the knots in her story? or would she involve readers by presenting equations rather than answers?

She took a sip of cold coffee and scratched at the imprints on the plastic lid; she traced the triangular recycling symbol repeatedly, all the while staring through the words on the screen, the question marks metamorphosing into hooks, double ‘l’s into elevens—make a wish! —and speech marks into downcast eyes.

Nora crossed her legs—it was too soon for another bathroom break—and her vengeful fingertips returned to her scalp.

A shy whistle emanated from the vicinity of the red couch, the grey hoodie, the mustard yellow socks. Nora glanced up from her writing to find Chloe’s hair in disarray—one strand between her open, red lips—and her laptop lopsided on he—

Another snore, like the shy blow of a whistle, and the black, brown and blonde heads suddenly had faces, scowls, darting eyes.

Had Chloe already submitted, or would she miss the deadline?

Nora rose from her seat and crossed the room. On the small table beside Chloe—which might have been a stool or a pedestal—sat her phone atop a thick unit reader, the lock screen alight with missed calls from Baby (who was probably the smiling, blue-eyed ginger on her wallpaper). Nora turned away, like a guilty peeping Tom. Even looking down at Chloe, now—at her smudged lipstick, bare face and messy hair—felt voyeuristic. There was something comforting about her present mundanity and arguable ugliness, and something shameful about the schadenfreude it inspired.

Nora glanced away and coughed. “Chloe.”

Nothing.

“Chloe,” she repeated, louder.

Black, brown, blonde heads; faces, scowls, eyes.

Nora hesitated, then nudged Chloe’s shoulder with a fist (which seemed politer than an open hand).

Chloe’s eyelashes fluttered a moment and parted to reveal reddened eyes. Her laptop fell from her knees as she jolted upright, and Nora sandwiched it between her calves and the couch.

“You fell asleep,” whispered Nora, handing it over.

“Thanks,” said Chloe, sitting up, her Egyptian blue nails electric against the silver of her MacBook. There was some dry drool on her cheek, and in the corners of her smeared, red lips.

“I didn’t want you to miss the deadline.”

“What time is it?”

“Seven,” said Nora, making to leave.

“Did you want to grab a coffee?” asked Chloe, stuffing one mustard yellow foot into a white sneaker.

Chloe poked at the machine with a chipped, blue nail, her phone against her ear.

“Don’t worry, I’m awake,” she mumbled into the receiver, then gestured to Nora.

Nora scanned the small catalogue of coffee, and pressed on the ameri—

“I love you,” whispered Chloe, before pocketing her phone. “It’s on me,” she said, and nudged Nora aside.

“I can buy my ow—”

“Just accept the coffee.”

The machine hocked and spat.

“Are those your boyfriend’s socks?” asked Nora.

“What?” said Chloe, passing her a hot, brown cup. “No.”

Nora traced the triangle on the coffee lid. “Where I grew up,” she said, “there was a payphone by the bakery, and I’d always check for change. Once, I found two bucks, bought a vending machine coffee, and found a tiny cockroach in it.”

Chloe bit her newly painted lip and fastened the lid onto her cup. She led Nora back to the warm lights, green carpeting, and down an aisle between bookshelves and coloured spines.

“I’m two thousand words over,” she said, lowering herself to the floor.

Nora joined her on the carpet. “Is there anything you can omit?”

Chloe chipped absentmindedly at her blue polish, her coffee between her crossed legs.

Nora took a sip and burned her tongue; she drew circles on the roof of her mouth, and her fuzzy tastebuds began to throb.

“I’m gonna omit the whole freaking story at this point.”

Nora stared into Chloe’s mustard yellow socks, pressing her tongue against the back of her teeth; the tastebud on the very tip of her tongue was particularly uncomfortable, and stung like a sherbet lemon.

“There’s no point, anyway,” continued Chloe. “It’s not like I’ll beat you.”

“Well, I mean, you very well could.”

“Or I very well couldn’t.”

Chloe took a sip of coffee, marking the lid with a red kiss.

Nora noticed her freckles, usually concealed with foundation, for the first time; and for the first time, where she’d only ever seen a rival, she saw a girl.

“Chloe, you’re my biggest motivation.”

“I am?”

“If it weren’t for you, I’d write half as much, study half as much, learn half as much and be half as much.”

Chloe wrapped her big, grey sleeves around her waist.

“You have to submit it,” said Nora.

Chloe shrugged.

“I used to romanticise feelings of inadequacy,” said Nora. “Do you know the song Not Pretty Enough?”

“Am I not pretty enough?”

“It’s nice to have something resonate with you,” continued Nora, “but you want to avoid repeating those thoughts and strengthening those synapses.”

“Because a repeated thought is a belief,” said Chloe, her hands emerging from their cavernous sleeves in search of coffee.

“Exactly,” said Nora. “And yet we listen to those songs on repeat, and we’re strengthening the wrong synapses; we’re forming the wrong neural pathways.”

“And we revel in it,” said Chloe. “We celebrate our own misery.”

“We glorify it because of the whole tortured artist trope.”

“But don’t you think that some people are too intelligent to be happy?”

“No, it’s a dangerous misconception,” said Nora. “Intelligence, I think, is acknowledging neuroplasticity and renouncing the ego; you don’t have to identify so strongly with your emotions.”

She paused, ran her scorched tongue across her teeth and smacked her lips.

“It’s like, although I’ve psychoanalysed myself so much it hurts, and although I’ve completely lost my sense of self as a result, I recognise the pain as biological and am equipped with the knowledge to regulate this poor, primitive shell I’m inhabiting. I no longer identify with my body, with my emotions.”

“Like ego awareness?” asked Chloe.

Nora nodded.

“It’s hard not to identify with your emotions,” laughed Chloe, fidgeting with her shoelaces. “Especially when you’re triggered. Sometimes I can observe myself and detach, whereas other times I willingly yield, and then regret it.”

“And how does that apply to toni—this morning?”

“As in my story?”

Nora nodded and took a warm sip of coffee.

“I kind of romanticised the overthinking, the sleep-deprivation, and, I don’t know, the underdog trope. I’m so exhausted I want to give up, and the sob story offers me an enticing excuse.”

“It’s a win-win; you get to rest and play the sad, failed writer.”

“If I think about it, I already pictured Mark comforting me.”

“You set yourself up for failure.”

“And romanticising it helped,” said Chloe. “I mean, sadness is just so pretty.”

“There’s a fascination with—no, a morbid curiosity for—self-sabotage and destruction. It’s a symbolic death, and super gory in that it’s slow and cruel.”

“We spend a lifetime killing ourselves.”

They sat in silence an instant, Chloe picking at her aglets, Nora at her lukewarm coffee cup.

“And there’s an accompanying sense of martyrdom or victimhood,” said Nora, “as though we’re misunderstood misfits in a cruel world.”

“God,” said Chloe, “Sometimes I think I’m a sacrificial lamb.”

“And then you realise that your suffering isn’t unique.”

“I know, but a victim mentality is just so tempting; it’s handed right to us, like a present wrapped in candy-striped paper and green ribbon.”

“Did you just think of that simile?”

“No, I wrote it in a short story last week.”

“Candy-striped,” whispered Nora, scratching the coffee lid. She’d read it in Lolita, one of their prescribed texts: candy-striped boxers.

“Now you’ve got me thinking about, uh, the boiled candy, mint humbugs?”

“I can see why your writing sometimes lacks structure,” said Chloe.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, you’re all over the place, but there’s an authenticity to the stream of consciousness, and, I don’t know, the descent into chaos.”

“Entropy,” said Nora.

“Yeah, and I don’t think I’m capable of emulating it, because I need to analyse, to calculate, to imitate, and then, sometimes, intentionally subvert those rules. What you’re doing, however, isn’t formulaic.”

“Thanks,” said Nora. “Well, there’s a beauty and fluidity to your precision that I admire; and your narrators are always so reliable, unless you’ve intentionally created an unreliable one. But that’s the thing, you can act on intention, whereas my narrators are consistently and inherently unreliable, because so too is my mind, and my perspective is constantly shifting.”

“You might just be in a phase of self-discovery and transformation, and with it comes self-doubt and confusion… Do you reckon?”

Chloe had opened the floodgates.

“I am,” said Nora. “I’ve been in a state of cognitive dissonance for a year; my sense of self was completely dismantled, and I don’t know who I am anymore. And on top of that, I’m trying to renounce the ego, but now there’s nothing to hide behind when others, who are yet to do so, attack me. And then, wait, I need the ego to protect me, right? But protect me from what? Had I truly renounced the ego, then me wouldn’t get hurt, me wouldn’t need protecting, so it’s a paradox: I need the ego to protect me from the ego. And then I was thinking about the Chinese word for paradox, which is literally spear shield, and originates from an old story.”

Nora took a sip of coffee, and then continued. “So, in the story there exists both an impenetrable shield and a spear that can pierce anything, the moral of the story being that in no world can both these things exist; and then I started thinking about the nature of truth. Can’t both these things be simultaneously true? And then I started thinking about Schrödinger’s cat, that both things are true and exist in a superposition, but only one truth prevails upon measurement; but this doesn’t disqualify the second truth. And then you have the whole multiverse theory, and perhaps in a parallel universe, the second truth prevails, or even simply at a different time or under different circumstances. And then I was thinking about subjective idealism, that to exist is to be perceived, which I don’t agree with; things exist inherently, irrespective of perception. Didn’t Einstein say something like, ‘what, do you truly believe that the moon ceases to exist when we’re not looking at it?’ and Schrödinger was on the same page; the whole cat experiment was to highlight the absurdity of subjective idealism. I mean, the hubris of ma—”

“I think the moon exists when we’re not looking at it.”

“So do I.”

“Do we really think nothing exists independently of our perception?”

“Well, I’m with you.”

“And even if existence were dependent on perception,” said Chloe, “Why mightn’t it be self-perception? What if all this, the universe, is perceiving itself?”

“I hadn’t thought about that…”

“And then,” said Chloe, “the spear and shield; one’s active and one’s passive, and something’s off, but I’d have to write it down.”

“No, you’re spot on! I think both truths are inherently unequal when measured, for if the spear fails ninety-nine times to pierce the shield, but succeeds on the hundredth attempt, it is still a spear that can pierce anything.”

“Whereas,” said Chloe, “if the shield succeeds in deflecting the spear ninety-nine times, but is pierced on the hundredth attempt, it is no longer an impenetrable shield.”

“Exactly! Those aren’t fair odds, and what does that say about the active and passive roles of each truth; or, if the ego is both the spear and the shield, what does it say about the active and passive nature of the ego? that the passive nature of the ego is always at a disadvantage?”

 “I don’t know,” said Chloe.  “Maybe it says something about the measurement.”

“Neither do I, and yeah, maybe.”

“I feel like I’ve walked in during a weird chapter in your life.”

“Let’s call it transformative,” said Nora.

There was a brief instant of silence, save for a distant cough, the turn of a page and the click clack of a keyboard.

“Three hours until the deadline,” said Nora, biting at the lip of her empty cup.

“Maybe we could get another coffee after this whole grant thing,” said Chloe, rising.

Nora stood, and followed her down the aisle of bookshelves and coloured spines.

“Hey, Chloe,” she whispered, “His sister’s hand-me-downs hung from his small frame like… a curtain, a sheet, or a parachute?”

“A parachute.”