WHEN WE MET

They’re going to be late and it’s all Priscilla’s fault.

When Mama had asked if she wanted to observe her hunting a cluster of ghouls which had leaked through from the Hollow, Priscilla had jumped at the opportunity and instantly forgotten everything she’d had planned for the afternoon, including the concert. Watching her mother expertly slaying the monsters, all she could think about was how, one day, she wanted to be just like that. Like her mother. An efficient, powerful monster hunter.

If only she could be. Watching the hunt, with hands jammed in her pockets and the constant ache of her imperfections sitting in her throat, she also knew as much as she wanted it… it wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t have an amazing superpower like her mother’s. Not even close.

Mouse tried to say something during the hunt – whiskers tickling Priscilla’s neck, a murmur in her mind about remember that you are – but Priscilla had shushed her little familiar. She didn’t feel like hearing any more encouragement from Mouse. And besides, this was important. She had to focus on what Mama was doing. That was why she’d come. Maybe she could learn something. Something that meant she wouldn’t be quite so hopeless, despite her own feeble power.

Except with her thoughts spiralling around each other, she’d ended up with nothing more than a heavy heart and ghoul jelly smeared all over her, after helping load the monster carcasses for incineration later.

And then they got back to base and she saw Wilfred pacing around the command centre, his blue hair swept back and wearing his favourite t-shirt, and she remembered. She and Wilfred had tickets for the Tender Thunder Trio gig. And the doors were already close to opening. And she was a hot mess, covered in stinky jelly, with a prim little rodent sitting on her shoulder coughing about how she’d tried to tell you.

Now, as she and Wilfred and their familiars zoom across the twilight sky towards the city centre, Wilfred is fretting. He’s a fretter. It was one of the first things she learned about him when he arrived as a new trainee at home base, in his first placement, and he got into a dither about a hundred tiny things on his very first day. Later, when she learned he also liked cooking, the same pop bands from the Divided Kingdom as her, and watching vintage Hollow Warrior training videos, she adopted him as her friend. It’s good to have a friend on base again, since it’s been months since any of her older sisters have been home.

Priscilla yanks the lever to drop the floater out of the busy flightstream and guides it down towards the parking building next to the theatre.

‘We’ll be fine! Plenty of time!’ she says.

‘I wanted to see the support act too!’ he frets. His familiar – a meerkat – presses his damp little nose to the floater window as they descend, ears twitching in an anxious echo of his warrior’s nervous energy. ‘They’re supposed to do this amazing song with a hundred digital drums set up all over the stage, you have to dance to it because you feel the beat in your bones.’

‘We’re not that late,’ she says. Unless they don’t find a parking space right away – but there! There’s one right in front of her. It’s a sign from the universe: she hasn’t screwed this afternoon up entirely. They won’t miss the support act.

They hurry to the elevator to take them down to the ground floor where the entrance to the theatre is. The foyer is humming with people, already moving through the doors into the theatre.

Priscilla hesitates. She was in such a rush to clean up the ghoul jelly and get dressed, she didn’t even stop to go to the toilet – a need that has now become pressing.

‘Wilfred! I’m busting, I’ll just be – I’ll be real quick – I promise – I have to go!’

‘Are you kidding me?’ he yells after her as she runs towards the bathroom.

#

Onyeka’s going to miss the start of the support act, and she really wanted to see the support act – a hundred digital drums! – but she’s not about to run out of the bathroom without drying her hands first. Onyeka frantically waves her hands around beneath the dryer, willing the water to evaporate faster, before she dashes towards the exit.

The girl comes flying around the corner into the bathroom. Flying around the corner in the opposite direction, Onyeka doesn’t even have time to react. She catches a glimpse of jet black hair hanging over surprised brown eyes before they collide, like dancers jumping into each other’s arms. The girl laugh-shrieks, clutching the leather of Onyeka’s jacket as Onyeka grabs at the girl’s sweater in turn. They spin around each other, body pressed to body. A clean whisper of shampoo and perfume hits her, a brush of soft hair against her cheek, and Onyeka laughs too.

‘Ah, I’m so sorry!’ the girl cries.

‘No, I was running –’

‘I’m in such a rush –’

And they haven’t let go of each other yet.

There’s a moment, then. A breathless moment suspended out of time, when they’re looking at each other beneath the greenish bulb of the bathroom corridor, still holding onto each other, and they see each other.

Oh, she’s pretty. A couple of years younger than her, pink-cheeked, with a stubborn tilt to her chin. There’s something bright and honest in her expression. Like she’s the kind of person who wears her heart on her sleeve. Lips parting as she looks back at Onyeka, something unfurling across her face, and –

The moment pops.

Onyeka takes her hands back first. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine. Are you okay?’ A little grey mouse suddenly peeps out from under the edge of her hair, and Onyeka startles.

‘There’s a mouse!’

But the girl isn’t concerned. She touches a fingertip – chipped lavender nail polish – to the little creature. ‘Oh, this is my Mouse. She’s my familiar.’

Ah, she understands now. The girl is a Hollow Warrior – a monster hunter, with a superpower and an animal familiar. Protectors of our world. Onyeka feels her focus deepen, the rest of the world blurring away. She’s never met a Hollow Warrior in person before. The girl must be in training. She looks too young to be a full warrior yet.

Onyeka wonders what her superpower is. ‘She’s a cute little beastie.’

‘She is.’ The girl tilts her head, as if listening to the mouse, then mutters, ‘Can you not, right now?’

‘What?’

‘Mouse is being presumptuous.’ The girl rolls her eyes, as if her familiar is a regular aggravation. ‘She thinks she’s always right and now I’m ignoring her, because she’s just being rude.’

Onyeka laughs, again. ‘Are you here to see the Tender Thunder Trio?’

‘Yes, with my friend, although he really wants to see the support act too, something about –’

‘Drums!’

‘Yes!’

‘You’re supposed to feel them in your bones,’ Onyeka says.

‘So he says.’

The question flits through her mind: friend or boyfriend? And she blinks at herself, because why is she wondering that about a girl she doesn’t even know?

‘So I have to rush, I have to go, or he’ll be beside himself.’ The girl points behind her, to the bathroom stalls.

‘You don’t want to miss the drums.’ But Onyeka doesn’t want her to go. And the girl lingers, too. The thread of the moment still connects them, even though they are no longer stumble-dancing together.

The girl tucks a strand of hair behind one ear. ‘Are you here with anyone? I mean, you could join us – if you’re here with someone, we could all go in together –’

‘I’m by myself, so… that’d be great.’

She beams at Onyeka, and there it is all unfurled: pure delight. ‘Oh, great! I’ll see you out here! I’m Priscilla, by the way.’

‘I’m Onyeka.’ She smiles right back. ‘I’ll wait right here for you.’

#

Priscilla is acutely conscious of Onyeka walking beside her as they cross the lurid-coloured carpet of the foyer to where Wilfred is practically vibrating with nerves.

‘This is my friend, Wilfred. Wilfred, this is Onyeka,’ she says when they’re close. ‘We bumped into each other in the bathroom. She’s going to see the Tender Thunder Trio too and I said she should come in with us.’

‘Okay,’ Wilfred says, not even really looking. He’s edging towards the doors like he’s being pulled on a string, not seeming to care about Priscilla bringing stray people along with them.

She laughs. ‘Fine. We better go in.’

‘Yes, can we please go in already?’ he says.

‘We don’t want to miss the drums,’ Onyeka says. ‘Nice to meet you, Wilfred.’

‘Uh-huh!’ he calls back over his shoulder.

They trail behind him, joining the queue for the doors. A building hum of voices comes from inside the theatre, where lights dance over the gathering crowd. It smells of dry ice and cold aircon and warm bodies. Priscilla glances at Onyeka only to find her glancing back at the same time, and their eyes meet.

Her cheeks heat up instantly, and she glances away again, trying not to let her eyes drag themselves back. It’s hard. Because woah. Onyeka is gorgeous. Priscilla feels like half of her is still living in the moment they collided. Brown skin, blue braided hair slipping over leather-clad shoulders, the peal of Onyeka’s laughter. Hands on her arms. A heartbeat of accidental dancing with a stranger, all the sensations of that moment still threaded through her like echoes. She’s never been so glad to be so clumsy. Imagine if she’d gone to the toilet before they’d left home base. That moment would never have happened.

And the way she’s looking back at her now… Priscilla’s not imagining the interest in Onyeka’s gaze, right? Even though Onyeka is probably older than her. Even though she has to be way too cool to find Priscilla interesting.

She sneaks another glance. Meets those copper-bright eyes again. They both smile, caught in the act, and follow Wilfred into the crush through the doors, where the crowd thins out into the cavernous space of the theatre.

Ah. So that’s what a hundred digital drums looks like. Tall black mushrooms are sprouted all over the stage beneath the roving spotlights.

‘They look like mushrooms!’ Onyeka cries.

Priscilla starts laughing, and Onyeka looks at her.

‘What? They do!’

‘No! I know! I was thinking the same thing.’

The huge screens behind the stage flicker on, blooming into a graphic display of static and scrolling text. The lights stop roving to focus on the sea of drums. The crowd gets even more eager, cheering noisily. Anticipation simmers around them.

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ Priscilla finds herself blurting into the clamour. What? Why did she say that?

‘Oh.’ Onyeka looks sideways at Wilfred, who is squealing and jumping up and down. But then she looks back at Priscilla, and there’s a smile starting in her eyes first before her lips join in. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay,’ Priscilla says on a puff of breath. ‘Okay.’ It’s like she’s completely run out of normal person words. There’s a smile bursting out of her face too, though. She couldn’t contain it even if she wanted to.

‘Here they come,’ Onyeka says, as the support band files out onto the stage.

No. She’s not imagining it. Onyeka’s stepped closer to her now, close enough their shoulders are brushing, even when there’s enough space in the theatre that she doesn’t have to stand so close.

Told you she likes you, Mouse murmurs primly.

Warmth spreads along her arm from where Onyeka is pressed against her, through her chest and the rest of her body. Her heart flutters, the sensation suddenly amplified by the first drumbeats thudding through the theatre. In her bones. In her lungs. In her belly.

She glances at Onyeka again, and again their eyes meet. Lights wash over the curve of Onyeka’s cheeks, of her grin. The drums surge through them both.

Mouse was right. She’s always right.

Priscilla crashed into someone special.

And this feels like the start of something.

Something extraordinary.