“I don’t want to go.” I insisted, crossing my arms in front of my chest.
“Too bad.”
Remind me why I’m friends with these people? Lily is a sadistic, cruel monster. She’s making me attend the final Quidditch match of the year.
“Lily! I’m not friends with either one of the Scamanders anymore. I’m not friends with Helene. All I’ve got is Hugo, and I don’t think he’d be distraught if I didn’t show up.” Why did she think it was a good idea for me to go? There was no good reason for me to go. There wasn’t even an almost decent reason. Not unless she was trying to kill me.
She glared at me. “Dom and I want you to go. You’ve gone to every single match at this school in our six years here. I’m not going to let your boy troubles get in the way of that.”
“Lily, the only reason I went to all of those matches was because of a boy.” Why doesn’t Dom understand this? At least she’s normal. She has experience with romance and heartbreak, unlike her cold-hearted cousin.
Lily let out a heavy sigh. “And that’s why you’re going to go today. Evs… Anders talked to me.”
What? Why hadn’t she said that to begin with? Why was that slimy git talking to her and not to me? “Oh. That’s nice.” I murmured, trying my best to sound indifferent. It hadn’t affected me at all. At all.
She smacked me on the arm. “Have you always been this daft? Anders specifically told me to make sure you were at the match. I told him you might try and kill me, but he insisted.”
He had? That… That was a good sign, wasn’t it? Although, Anders wasn’t exactly well-known for being the most kind hearted of people lately. I wasn’t going to go into this with my defenses completely down. “And why should I do anything for him?”
“What have you got to lose?” Lily said simply. “I don’t think your relationship could possibly get worse.”
“I hate it when you’re right.”
She patted me on the shoulder. “I know you do, love. I’ve been right enough to prove that.”
*~*~*
“Are you going to the match?” I glanced up at the sound of Lorcan’s voice. This was the first time he had spoken to me since our breakup in my bedroom almost two weeks ago.
I was waiting for Lily in the common room before the big event. “Why is everyone so concerned with whether I go or not?”
Lorcan shrugged. “Who else is concerned? I’m just making small talk. This weather, huh?”
“I miss you.” I murmured.
He paused for a moment, staring down at me. “I miss you too.” Lorcan sank down next to me. “You are going though, aren’t you?”
I groaned. “You’re all obsessed. I am. Are you?” Sitting here, I really missed his touch. We had been constantly touching for weeks now before this. Knees bumping, arm around my waist, kissing. Lorcan had almost always been in some sort of physical contact with me lately. It just felt wrong for him to be so close to me, and yet so far.
He shook his head. “Of course not. I’ll be doing homework.” I gave him a pointed stare. “You know me too well. Fine, I don’t know what I’m going to be up to. I just know that I don’t want to go to the match.”
“I don’t want to either.” I muttered. I hate Quidditch. Stupidest sport in existence.
Lorcan chuckled softly. “You’ll change your mind eventually.”
“You’re plotting something, aren’t you? There’s some big secret master plan going on.” I wasn’t an idiot. “You’re up to something with Lily. Is Anders in on it too? What’s going to happen?”
He smirked. “Evs, I’m always plotting something. When have I ever let you in on one of my secret evil plans? What makes you think this will be any different?”
“Evil plans. Evil plans? Lor!” I groaned. “I’m going to go into cardiac arrest out on the pitch, and it will all be your fault.”
“Well, then I’ll just have to give you mout-” He fell silent before he could finish the sentence, having remembered the fact that we were no longer together.
I lightly rested a hand on his leg. “I wouldn’t say no to that.”
Lorcan abruptly jumped up. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got… I don’t know what things to do, but there are things out there that I need to start doing, and… Hi Lily! Bye Evs. Have fun at the match. Nice talking to you.” He babbled before practically sprinting away. He was just speed-walking, but to someone with legs that weren’t freakishly long like his it would be running.
I looked at Lily pitifully. “I hope you know I’m already having a miserable day. You’re making me attend a Quidditch match for no good reason, and you just let Lorcan run away from me. We were actually talking! It was like old times.”
Lily rubbed her forehead. “I’m ready for your life to stop being so dramatic. I can’t handle all this for much longer. This affects me too, you know. I’m your best friend now and… Ugh.”
“Thanks for being disgusted by the thought of being my best friend.” That was really comforting. Was she going to run away too? What had I ever done to deserve all of this? I thought I was a good person. I had always been a good friend.
“I’m not disgusted by it. You know I love you, Evs. You just… You have a lot of baggage.”
“Do you think I’d make an okay lesbian?” I asked. I was seriously starting to complicate it. Maybe I’d never be a real lesbian, since I was still very attracted to men, but I could at least live the life of a lesbian.
Lily shook her head. “No woman would want to put up with all your drama.”
“I’m going to be a nun.” I declared. “I am apparently the new Dominique.”
“Hey!” Dominique yelped, having joined us with Tobias beside her. “I take offense to that.”
“Well, you’re lucky in love now, so all your bad luck had to rub off somewhere. Apparently it had to be me.”
*~*~*
I’ll have you know that for my first five years at this school I was incredibly good at paying attention to matches. I even knew a lot of statistics thanks to stupid Anders. Those years make up for my terrible attention span this year. It’s not my fault. There’s way too much other stuff going on right now. Quidditch is the last of my concerns. This time, it’s Lily’s fault. She had to go and start gossiping.
“He knows, you know.”
I glared at her. Like I wasn’t confused enough by whatever Lily and Lorcan were up to, now Lily had to start talking in code as well? “I don’t know. Who are we talking about?”
“Anders.”
“What?” I shrieked, getting to my feet. The people around me shot dirty looks in my direction.
“No one scored, you idiot.” Some third year called to me. I gave them a death glare before sitting back down.
Lily sighed impatiently. “Way to not draw attention to yourself.” She ran a hand through her long, wavy red hair. “Anders knows about your feelings for him.”
“I don’t have feelings for Anders.”
“Are we seriously still doing this?” She rubbed her forehead. “Eva, we all know that you like Anders. You’re not exactly a subtle jealous person. Anyways, I’m not going to argue about this with you. I’m going to move on, and you’re just going to have to accept the fact that we all know about your feelings. Anders knows about your feelings for him.” Lily repeated.
“If I hypothetically did have feelings for Anders, hypothetically, how would he know about these hypothetical feelings?” I demanded, narrowing my eyes.
She flipped her hair behind a shoulder. “Oh, Lorcan told him.”
“He did what?”
“I’m going to assume that was rhetorical. I’m getting kind of tired of constantly repeating myself to you. I know you can hear perfectly well. I guess Lor had a chat with Anders in class the other day.” Lily said, completely nonchalantly. As if this wasn’t mind-blowing-I’m-flipping-a-shit news.
Anders knows. Anders knows. Anders knows. Something is going to happen today. Something has to be happening today. Why else would Lily and Lorcan force me to come to this stupid match where stupid Anders is playing if there wasn’t something happening? They weren’t wasting my time. They were joining forces to plot in order to… I had no idea. Lorcan wasn’t entirely pleased with me right now, but Lily wouldn’t go out and try to destroy me. Not that anything Anders could do would destroy me. I mean, he’s already kind of done that.
What the hell is going on? I need to know right now. I am freaking out. I placed a hand to my chest, which was absolutely pounding as my heart is beating faster and faster.
Anders knows.
“What is he going to do about this?” I asked hopefully.
Lily shrugged. I hadn’t expected an answer. I wasn’t that lucky. “I don’t know. All I know is that he knows.”
“Does Helene know?”
“What do I look like, a Seer? Eva, I know barely anything more than you do, and that’s saying a lot since you don’t know anything.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I love you.” She grinned.
“No, you don’t.”
Lily held her coat closer to her body. “I’m trying to distract you, in case you haven’t noticed. It seems to be working pretty well so far.”
“I’m ignoring you. I’m actually going to pay attention to the match that we came here to watch.” Although apparently that hadn’t been the plan at all. Something was going to happen. I shook my head, trying to get into the match. Helene had just passed the Quaffle to Anders, who suddenly made a sharp right hook past the goals, chucking the Quaffle effortlessly into the center goal.
He made it look so easy. He had always made it look so easy. The hook move was one of his favourites. It had a name. What it was, I don’t remember. Anders would go out wide, and then suddenly turn sharply so he went zooming past the goals. The other teams knew he loved that move, but no one could ever predict exactly when he was going to pull it. Being on a broom was being home for Anders. He had been in love with flying for so long, since he was just a couple years old.
I was jealous of him. First of all, because he knew what he loved and what he wanted. There was no question that Anders was going to play professionally after we graduated. It had been his dream for years, and he was a brilliant player. I knew that he had been writing to scouts since third year. Everyone knew that Anders was going to become a legend. I didn’t have that kind of certainty in my life. I didn’t really have a clue what I wanted to do. I loved photography, so I had always considered working at the Daily Prophet, or the Quibbler, but I could never really settle on the idea. It sounded nice, but… I’m only a teenager. How am I supposed to know what I want out of my life?
I thought of my mom, and how she was so sure that that Cedric boy had been the love of her life. She had been only 15 when he had died, younger than I was now. She had known what she wanted out of a partner, or at least she had thought so. What did I want? Someone who could make me smile, certainly. Someone who could make me feel safe. That was necessary. Lorcan had been right. I did want a perfect family, the one with the white picket fence around the house. I wanted to be loved, I wanted to feel safe. I wanted to feel like I had a real family.
“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?” Lily asked. “You’ve got this far off dreamy look in your eyes.”
I shook my head. “Anders? No. I’m not thinking about him. I’m thinking about my future and… Soul mates, I guess. What I want out of the love of my life.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You believe in that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know if I do or not. I’d like to though. Or at least something close to it.”
“And what do you want from this hypothetical soul mate?”
“I want him to make me feel safe.”
I expected Lily to laugh at that. She didn’t care at all about boys who made her feel safe. She hated to feel safe. Lily lived her life on the brink. Always had, and she always will. Her actual reaction surprised me. “That sounds nice.”
“What?”
She smiled at me. “Evs, I’m thinking about you, not about me. Just because I don’t believe in something doesn’t mean I’m going to… I don’t know, prevent you from having it? Safety doesn’t work for me, but it works for you. You need to feel safe. You deserve a happier relationship than your mum and dad’s.”
I rested my cheek on her shoulder. “Thank you, Lily.”
“Does Anders make you feel safe?”
“He used to. He used to feel like home. I think he still could.” I said finally, after some thinking. “I want him to.”
Lily muttered something under her breath that sounded like something along the lines of “he better wrap up this match”.
“And Weasley has spotted the Snitch!” The announcer called out. We all automatically leaned forward in our seats excitedly.
I was ready to the match to be over too. I needed to talk with Anders. Avoiding him didn’t seem to be doing either one of us any good. I had come to a conclusion about our relationship and what I wanted. It was about time that I told him all this, wasn’t it? If he didn’t feel the same way, that was fine. Maybe not fine, but I wouldn’t be devastated. At least I would finally have an answer, finally know where I stood with Anders. I could move on with my life finally.
If Anders didn’t want me, then there was always Lorcan. He didn’t make me feel nearly as safe as Anders did, but I still missed him. He had been my rock lately.
I felt like I was lunging forward just as far as Hugo was on his broom. Let this thing be over with already so I can talk with Anders. Come on, Hugo. You can do it, kid. You’re almost, almost-
“GRYFFINDOR WINS!” The announcer bellowed, and we all jumped to our feet screaming. The Cup was ours again. It was finally over. I was caught in a sea of red and gold, as everyone in my house jumped up and down cheering as if their lives depended upon it. I pushed my way through the crowd, hoping to get to the ledge where I could get a view of Anders. I would flag him down, and let him know that I wanted to talk. He would meet me after he took a shower (I was being logical in my fantasy. He wasn’t very sexy when he smelled like old socks.) and we would go somewhere private to talk. Maybe down to the lake. I would confess my feelings for him, he would tell me that he knew. Anders would tell me that he had broken up with Helene, because he knew that I was the one for him, and then he would pull me into his arms and snog me until the sun went down.
Too bad Helene had already stolen my kiss.
Anders knew, but that hadn’t meant anything to him. He was still with Helene.
I had lied. He didn’t feel the same way, and I was devastated.
Author's Note: And, with that, we are almost to the end of the first half of White Blank Page! Let me know what you guys think! I want to hear your predictions! I've also been working on a companion story to WBP recently, which will probably make an appearance soon. It's about James and Cecilia, and I'm pretty excited about it. It's my first time writing a story focused on James like this, and if you like Eva, I think you'll like Cecilia as well. Anyways, you know the drill! Review, review, review, please and thank you!
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