The Stephanie Glitch - Part 3
In which Stephanie is finally introduced.
If you missed part 2, click here
Today’s part finally introduces Stephanie. It’s been hard to balance character against the slow reveal that all is not right in the cosmos, but I think it is working. In isolation this is mildly entertaining, but with the rest of the book considered it has a lot more impact.
Anyway.
THE STEPHANIE GLITCH
PART THREE
Stephanie’s thumb traced a black cartoon skeleton on the side of the glass, pushing cold moisture around its textured bones. Cheap disco lights were beaming greens and pinks and blues across the table. The music wasn’t great. She watched Emma at the bar, ordering another round of drinks. Stephanie thought that Emma stood out like a sparkling unicorn in a dystopian sci-fi, a rainbow-clad creature in a sea of black leather and spiky hair. If Stephanie’s mother could see them both like this, especially how Stephanie had dress (black on black on more black), she would lose her mind. This thought made Stephanie smile.
She turned her attention back to the table, bringing a small notebook and pen out of her bag. She observed the strangers orbiting and chatting, bumping shoulders, and making friends. Even though her clothing wasn’t much different from everyone else’s, Stephanie was worried people would notice her, notice she was a fake. They might infer from some signal in her body language that she didn’t like all the songs playing, that she didn’t even know half of them. The strangers milling around her table should have been her people, antigravity hair and gigantic boots, but Stephanie felt like an alien here. She began writing.
liquid confidence in confidence
lyrical itch of cider syrup
a conference. I can’t dance
so don’t ask me to dance
but I’d like to blend in like furniture
just belong somewhere once
“Vodka coke for the alien staring at that tall boy’s head,” Emma said. Stephanie returned to reality, realising now that she had spent the last minute lost in a purple mohawk across the bar.
“Yeah, sorry. How long have you been here?” Stephanie asked.
“On this planet? Nineteen years in June. At this table, watching you astral project? About three minutes.”
“Shit, really? Do you think he noticed?”
“I don’t think he’d notice if you told him to,” Emma quipped. She tilted her head to the boy, redirecting Stephanie’s attention back to him. He was currently fascinated with an overhead blacklight, which had illuminated his friend’s nail polish and face paint, leaving only floating specks of neon green as she passed into the shadows and became invisible. It became clear that he was very drunk.
“Right,” Stephanie said.
“Were you daydreaming?” Emma asked.
“No, more like, remembering actual dreams.”
“How are they now? You still having those space nightmares?”
“No, but it’s weird. I keep dreaming of tunnels.”
Emma set the drinks down. “Like the subway?”
“No, like the one at the train station, but weirder than that. Like space wrapped up into a tube.”
“Outer space?”
“Yeah.”
“Typical. You would dream about space.”
“Yeah.” Stephanie wasn’t listening. She adjusted a loose strand of black hair. Emma finally sat down at the table.
“So, uni.”
“Seriously?” Stephanie took a swig of the drink, absorbing its flavour. Finally, she was present.
Emma was relentless, and uncharacteristically serious. “Yeah seriously. You going?”
“If they take me. It’s a conditional and I’m doing okay so far.”
“Wow. I’d say we should go out to celebrate but, here we are.” Emma gestured widely at the bar. Something coarse played through aging speakers, a few people moshed, other swayed side to side.
“I’d prefer Bowie,” Stephanie raised her voice over a guitar riff.
“So would Jay. Where is he anyway?” Emma asked. “He’s not texted me.”
“Band practice I think.”
“Ah, radio silence.”
“Is that his new band name?” Stephanie asked.
“No, I think their name is Frozen Aisle for now.”
“Frozen Aisle For Now?”
“Just Frozen Aisle.”
“Ah. Well, you never know with them.”
“Yeah, not their best rebrand, but I’m sure he’ll have another soon,” Emma said.
“I was a fan of Grannie’s Yarn Monster,” Stephanie said.
“Me too. It really captured their eclectic vibe. Was a bit too friendly though.”
“Or Evil Sauce,” Stephanie added.
“Frederik’s spaceship fingers,” Emma said. Stephanie grunted through her straw as she drank.
“Yes. That once was fantastic!”
At this point the man beneath the purple mohawk stumbled past with a few of his friends, hiccupping and waving at Emma, saying brief hellos before moving to the bar.
“You know everyone don’t you?” Stephanie asked. She curled her nose at the pinkish smell of smoke machine smoke emanating from the dance floor.
“Not everyone, just enough people to get by.” Emma brushed a curling lock of ginger hair away from her drink and finished it. “You’re going to have to get social by September you know Stephie. I can’t be there to hold your hand in September.”
“I thought you wanted to crash my fresher’s week?”
“Only because I’m not going myself,” Emma explained. “I only want the socials, not the academia. I’ll leave once the party stops. I am allergic to academia, remember?”
“That’s fair,” Stephanie took another sip of her drink, and was briefly distracted by the cartoon skeleton on this new glass. This glass was lime green. She placed it next to the old one, and felt a distant tingling noise at the back of her mind, as if a wind chime was hidden behind her eyes. Her brain felt cold.
“Migraine?” Emma asked.
“What? No.”
“You zoned out.”
“I’m fine. So, academia,” Stephanie nudged the conversation back onto its rails. Emma drank some of her own drink, scrunched up her face, then began again, “I mean what would I study anyway? Minimalism, sketch, cubism, surrealism? What’s the point?”
Stephanie got the impression that this question was not aimed at her, but rather the whole universe.
“Virtualism?” Stephanie suggested.
“I don’t know that one.”
“I made it up.”
“Oh. Sounds cool.” Emma’s previous question lingered in the smoky air. This was one of the rare moments in which she looked confused, overwhelmed by choice. Usually, she was quite happy to do everything at once, but university loomed in the timeline of her life like a fork in the road. She couldn’t go left and right simultaneously. Or could she?
“You see, I could find stuff to paint or write about outside. You know, like when we went to the caves that time or the river with Jay.”
Stephanie nodded, “You’re still doing the art exam though yeah?”
“Of course!” Emma replied with fake glee. “I love doing exams that distil creative endeavours into a stream of meaningless numbers.”
“Sorry,” Stephanie said.
“What for?” Emma began, “Even if I don’t use my grades to go to uni, I still want them. It’s like an art prize, but I don’t have to pay anyone to enter and there’s slightly less wankers.”
“That makes sense,” Stephanie said. “I want to learn more about the universe, and I can’t do that here. You can make art anywhere.”
“Getting into physics but hates maths,” Emma quipped. Stephanie finished her drink.
“Yeah but, maths is poetry too. I just don’t know how to read it yet. It’s codified.”
“I like that, codified. Mind if I steal it?”
“Sure. It’s not my word.”
Emma scrunched up her face. “It sounds like your kind of word.”
“Thanks,” Stephanie said. A cluster of people bobbed and chatted beside their table, carrying what looked like one of every drink that was being served. Emma nodded approvingly at them and one of them smiled back.
“I guess I could paint a student union bar, or a canteen,” Emma said.
“It’s not too late to apply,” Stephanie replied.
“Do a mural somewhere. Paint equipment onto the walls. A Bunsen burner? Never see any good surrealist, or ‘Virtualist’ depictions of Bunsen burners.”
“Why would an art class have a Bunsen burner?”
“To burn the bad art. I don’t know.”
“How about a collage of your student ID, made with chopped up textbooks?”
“That’s actually cool,” Emma said. “I’m tempted now.”
“Don’t think you need a degree to make a collage though,” Stephanie said.
“No, probably not. Don’t need college for collage.”
“But you might need a degree to sell it to someone.”
“Yeah. If only five-year-olds could get degrees. Fridge art is a fucking goldmine.”
Stephanie snorted. Her drink almost came out through her nose. She laughed with Emma until they were both weeping, until a song Stephanie recognised started blurting out of the speakers. Emma composed herself, nodded, and said “You know this one.”
“I do.” Stephanie sighed inwardly, still batting away the last of the laughter.
“Dance?”
“For what reason?”
“Because that’s what humans do.”
“No thanks,” Stephanie protested half-heartedly.
I’ll hopefully be doing a little text-based interview here later this week with Comedic Sci-Fi author Kerrie A Noor. The book we’ll be talking about, Rebel Without a Clue, is free right now.