Page 126 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

wenchness after she’d done as much work toward her degree as was possible, all

the reading and note-taking and following up on references that she could do in a
day. Queen’s was in Day’s blood, since it was her father’s college too. In his day
he’d flown thousands of miles specifically to enroll, whereas she’d come in from
Suffolk. Her college library was at its best late at night. At night the stained-
glass figures in the windows seemed to slumber, and the lamps on each desk
gently rolled orange light along the floors until it formed one great globe that
bounced along every twist and turn of the staircase to the upper levels. When she

surveyed the entire scene it seemed to be one that the stained-glass figures were
dreaming. And she was there too, living what was dreamed. She stretched,
sighed. Well, I’m a fanciful wench, but am I a homely one? Her sister Aisha was
gunning for Murray Edwards, their mother’s college.

—

DAY HADN’T SIGHED quietly enough: A few desks away Hercules Demetriou
(first-year Law) looked over at her and smiled. She looked away. She didn’t
think he was evil or anything, but he was a problem. The issue was all hers for
fancying him even though he’d already been elected to the Bettencourt Society.
The boy was tall and well built and had wavy hair, excellent teeth, and
unshakable equilibrium. Up close you saw smatterings of acne but that was no

comfort. His skin tone lent him enough ethnic ambiguity for small children
whose parents had a taste for vintage Disney to run up to him and ask: “Are you
Aladdin?” He’d flash them a dazzling smile and answer: “Nah, I’m Hercules.”
Hercules of Stockwell. So full of himself. This was not an attraction that Day
could ever confess to anybody. Hercules talked to her, though. He’d say, “See
you in the bar, yeah?” as he and his friends walked past her and her friends.

Then Mike or Dara or Jiro would turn to her and say things like, “So will you see
him in the bar? Or his bed, for that matter?” Horrible. When Hercules Demetriou
spoke to Day her heart beat loudly and her loins acted as if they didn’t know
what the rest of her knew about him. What was he after? Day didn’t actually
think she was unattractive: Her appearance was mostly passable, and sometimes
even exceeded that. Two things that were not in her favor were her spectacles,
which often led people (including herself) to incorrectly anticipate a sexy

librarian effect. You know . . . the glasses come off, the hair tumbles down, and
there she is. Nope. She had unreasonably large feet too. She’d never walk on
moonbeams. Why would the perfectly proportioned Hercules Demetriou keep