‘Oi – Emo boi!’

‘Piss off Em. Don’t you have some frogs to eviscerate? You don’t get there soon, 7b's gonna burn down your lab.’ 

Now that thought raises a smirk. First sign of life since Jayne kidnapped our cat Kipper and moved in with Jim, the careers advisor, last year. Smug wanker. Hope she shits in his slippers. Kipper, that is. Mind you, wouldn’t put it past Jayne, now I come to think. . . Of course he wears sodding slippers.

‘What Em? Cool muso dude like you, can’t remember it's Iris, after two whole terms?’ She spits “cool muso” at me, like the xenomorph in Alien spitting acid, excoriating me.

‘MDPG. Em’ Manic Dream Pixie Girl. I read a fascinating article in Mx Garrett's Grazia only last week, and recognised the description instantly. ‘With your tiny tartan mini and your little shiny nose hoop and your pastel pixie crop. Ugh. And Iris, really? What are you, a fucking flower fairy?’ 

And that raises a snort. I’m on a roll. Mind you, I may have spent quality – ahem – “personal” time recently with that shiny little nose hoop, which she absolutely doesn’t need to know.

‘Oh sod off and go play with your instrument – pretty sure there’s a teeny, tiny little piccolo with your name on it in the music room.’ She spins squeakily on the staffroom lino in her Chucks, looks back over her shoulder to check out me checking out her arse. Which fair play of course I am. Raises one sparkly pink-painted pinkie, gives it a little wiggle, then sloooowly lowers it until it droops forlornly. Eyes me challengingly, eyebrow raised, all B&W movie star vamp. Fuck, she’s magnificent.

And, oh yeah, she so knows about me and her nose.

‘Why do you have to be so mean? I get I’m pathetic, I get you despise me, so why can’t you just leave me be?!’ For thirteen humiliatingly adolescent seconds I’m certain I’m going to blub.

Then a shaft of sunlight half-blinds me, illuminating her face like a mediaeval martyr. Slam-bang, fairy bells start clamouring in my ears like roid-rage-grade tinnitus, and a million rainbow-coloured bubbles are sucking all the air out of the room, because she is smiling at me. That. Fucking. Smile. A man would go to war for that smile, or the moon. Or maybe just plain insane. Anything, absolutely any goddamned thing you could think of to keep her smiling like that at you forever. Or perhaps that’s only me.

‘Don’t you know anything? Thought everyone knew us manic flower fairies only ever pull the wings off the cute little emo elves we like best.’

And with a quick up-down and a flicky-eyelinered wink she’s off to sort out 7b, Goddess help ‘em. But not before I half-blind her with the smile she’s raised.

Pam Martin-Lawrence is a queer neurodivergent writer living on a small English island with collections of emotional support plants, ‘book boyfriends’ and a long-suffering partner. While writing novels, she writes poetry and short fiction for relaxation, almost fifty of which pieces have/will appear in publications and anthologies including Passionfruit Review, Writers’ Journal ‘Roots’ anthology, Hotch Potch Literature, Coin-Operated Zines, KissMet Quarterly, SunSpot Literature (Rigel anthology), litl journal on Instagram, Bunker Squirrel magazine, and Micromance Magazine. She is the author of ‘The Tale of a Dragon’ (Alien Buddha Press 2024). Chocolate is her kryptonite.