pH Balance

Part III is finally here! Read Part I and Part II here.

He remembered. It was part of the routine tour he had to give as part of his Prefect duties. Most of his tour attendees were first-years. A few days ago, the headmistress called Duckie into her office and informed him that there would be one new fifth-year this term. Due to her unusual circumstances, she would receive a private tour. Duckie realised when he first met Bex that she would be the lucky girl with whom he’d spend hours of quality time.

It wasn’t a question of whether he should make a move: there were so few opportunities to meet new girls at this school that it would be stupid not to. The rest of the age-appropriate girls at school were wise to his tricks. 

Then again, Bex seemed to catch on fast— she all but called him out on his strategy in the middle of the common room. But that rubbish was probably some sort of feminist defence mechanism Bex concocted after auditing her parents’ college classes. Or spending time around self-assured university girls. Or maybe even university boys… 

Duckie suddenly wondered if living abroad with older, foreign guys gave Bex the confidence atypical of a fifteen year old girl. FIfteen year old girls are supposed to be the most insecure people on the planet. Statistically speaking.

For a home-schooled only child, she seemed incredibly well-adjusted.

He shook his head. No girl, no matter how snobby, worldly, or confident would last very long when he’d made up his mind. 

It was no match for Duckie’s charm, wit, and persistence. 

And this was a new day, indeed—a beautiful one. He couldn’t think of a more perfect way to have a fresh start: a long, romantic walk on the academy grounds.

Duckie braced himself for abrasive comments and lots of eye-rolling. He was surprised with the relative normalcy of their interactions—which threw him off his game for a little. Bex asked typical new-student questions and seemed interested in everything Duckie had to say.

What was she playing at?

Duckie felt a shift in the energy after they reached the cricket pitch. He and Bex walked across the field and entered the gymnasium. The gym housed all of the academy’s athletic awards it accumulated since its founding, centuries ago. Duckie initially planned on guiding Bex’s attention to the cricket trophies, where his name was inscribed on various awards and plaques. But he decided against it. It didn’t seem like something she would really care about (he was right). Instead, he showed her a piece of family history.

“This is my grandfather’s old cricket team,” Duckie said. He pointed to a man with a thick head of dark hair and blue eyes. “He also lived in Phoenix House,” 

“Your mum’s dad,” she said. Not asking, but stating.

“How’d you know?”

“There are no Duckworths listed on the roster.” Bex stepped a bit closer to the photo. She seemed to be searching for something.

“Don’t tell me your grandfather’s in there too,” Duckie said jokingly.

“There haven’t been any Englishmen in my family.” A pause. “That I’m aware of.” She turned to him with a cool gaze and said, “And I plan on keeping it that way.”

Duckie snorted. “Yeah okay, maybe moving to England was a stupid idea then. And in case you forgot,” he added. “I’m an American, not a Brit.”

“It would be the last thing about you I could ever forget,” Bex said, turning back to the photo.

“Well, I’ll leave you and my grandfather alone for a bit,” Duckie replied. “Gotta pee.”

When he came back, Bex was furiously typing away on her phone. 

“Ready to head back?” he asked. She quickly stashed her phone away when they made eye contact. 

“Yeah, let’s.” He sensed a slight tone of urgency in her voice. Something was off.

On their way back to Phoenix House, Bex continued to ask questions about the school. But they seemed a little off. Unlike before, when they were asked with a casual interest, they now seemed forced and awkward. Something was definitely on her mind. What could she have seen at the cricket pitch that made her so shifty?

He stopped wondering and decided to ask her.

“Now that we’ve finished our tour, be honest with me,” Duckie said, stopping in his tracks to face Bex. She silently raised her eyebrows, but it looked like she was keeping herself from saying something.

“What are you most nervous about regarding the start of term in just two days?” 

…

“So you could tell that I was nervous?”

“Yeah. I could tell you were worried about something after we left the gym.”

“Does this mean you didn’t believe what I said about the tie?”

“I didn’t, but then I watched you try and then reconsidered. Nobody can even pretend to fuck up that badly”

That was not even one hour ago. They were in Duckie’s room. Ted—Duckie’s roommate—was suspiciously nowhere to be found. Bex and Duckie both had school-issued maroon ties around their necks. Duckie’s was knotted perfectly on his pale blue dress shirt. Bex’s rested in a sad limp knot over her sweater. She wasn’t pretending—she really did need to learn how to tie a tie before the start of term. 

Duckie’s hands brushed past her collarbone as he tried to undo the knot, explaining where she went wrong. She could barely hear him over the sound of her thumping heart, her churning stomach, like a kettle about to steam in the middle of an earthquake—

“So what happened?”

“What?”

“At the gym. What happened?”

“Oh.” She shook her head, as if that would shake the tie-tying memory from her system.

“I was looking at the picture and realised a few of the names looked familiar,” Bex explained. “After a bit, I realised that they were the same names written on the wall in my room. I looked at the photo a bit and saw that there was a second document hidden behind it. I undid the frame and found the map.”

“I must’ve looked at that photo hundreds of times and didn’t notice a thing.”

“And then, I texted Laila a photo of the map and explained that your and Kendra’s granddad was on the list of names in our room. On seeing it, she knew that Kendra’s map from your grandfather was the second half of this one. The half we found corresponds to the Academy grounds, and your half corresponds to something else beyond the school’s border. Do you have any idea what it is?”

“Honestly?” Duckie took a deep breath. “I have no idea. Kendra and I have lost our minds trying to figure it out. We didn’t even know that the top half of the map was the academy until you mentioned it just now.”

“Laila and I thought that if we got a photo of your half, we could at least find out how to navigate to this other area. We tried to plan on how to do that while reading library materials for any clues.”

“And then?”

“And then nothing. We tried to do research on the layout of the map and where it led to. But all we could tell from our half of the map was where the entrance was.”

“The boys’ bathroom”

“Yes, the boys’ bathroom,” Bex said, with a stretch, moving her torso from one side to another. Something cracked in her spine. “Now tell me—when did you suspect that I had half of the map?”

“Well, last night, I was passing by your room, and—”

“Passing by?” Bex said, with air quotes and raised eyebrows. “What were you doing on the girls’ floor?”

“Just getting a book from Kendra,” he replied, a bit too smoothly. She didn’t believe him, but in the interest of time, she decided not to push him on it. “Your door was propped open, so I peered in to see if you or Laila were home. The room was empty.”

“And then you did some snooping.”

“No, of course not. I just happened to notice that your desk was piled high with books and your laptop was open to some intense-looking diagram. I thought that was incredibly odd, considering we hadn’t started the term yet.”

“Nothing wrong with getting ahead.”

“I know. I’m top of our class.”

Bex shrugged. “Not for long,” Duckie looked like he was about to open his mouth but Bex beat him to it. “Anyways, what did you find after snooping around?”

“I wasn’t snooping, I was just curious to see what you were studying.” He turned to face her. “So imagine my surprise when I found books on the history of our school and a floor plan pulled up on your laptop. And a concerning number of doodles of the DelPhi emblem”

“I can’t believe you looked at my doodles,” Bex said with mock disappointment. Duckie laughed, and in between that and the next sentence, their eyes met and they realised how small that closet really was.

“So, uh—” Duckie cleared his throat. “I recognized those materials as the very same ones that Kendra and I were using to investigate our portion of the map. And I figured your part must be somewhere around your desk, so I was going to investigate—”

“Snoop around”

“Whatever. And then, as I was about to go into your desk, I got a call. From you.”

“From me?”

“Yeah, when you got lost on that trail run in the woods behind campus”

“Oh yeah.”

“I knew from your poor navigation skills that I had some more time to investigate before you returned.”

“So you were only helping me so you could look for the map.” Bex snorted. “Typical. But I guess you never found it, huh.”

“I heard Laila and Kendra in the hallway headed for this direction, so I slipped out of there as fast as I could”

“I wonder if Laila ever got around to stealing your half of the map,” Bex wondered aloud. “And if that’s what led her to a different spot than the one we landed in.”

“There’s no way,” Duckie said. “After I saw your research project, I asked Kendra to move our half of the map. She never told me that Laila saw it, probably because they never talked about it again and Kendra assumed that Laila forgot. We then devised a plan for stealing the map from you”

“And were you successful?”
“Signs point to no. But at least I had a good time trying,” he replied with a grin.

This Week’s Top 3

• “A Nonsense Christmas” 🧑🏾‍🎄 – Stuck in my head for the past few weeks.
• The Four-Hour Workweek 🏝 – helping me get my life together in 2024
• Golden Caramel Vertuo Nespresso Pods ☕️