The ball wasn't half bad, Galinda had to admit it. The choice of decor left something to be desired - it was exactly as half-baked as her quick idea regarding Elphie's hair, even though these planners had had considerably more time. The whole venue was decorated with flowers, leaves, foliage of all kind hanging in bunches from the ceiling. The only thing that stopped it from looking like a wedding was the fact that everything was also doused in a healthy amount of glitter.
Still, it kind of worked. A stage on one end of the hall was hosting a live band, with a small army of disco balls lighting up a section up directly in front. People were already milling around and dancing. The rest of the hall was devoted to rows of impeccably set dining tables, crowded to almost full capacity. Galinda idly wondered if she should check her phone - could they really be that late?
She was distinctly under the impression that it was the opposite - surely, they had been rushing, getting ready? She certainly felt rushed.
She absorbed her surroundings as she scanned the place for her friends, Elphie at her heels. Sure, she might not have gone so far with the glitter, but she was also blissfully not in charge of those things.
All she was in charge of was her enjoyment. Well. Maybe Elphie's too. She felt like she might have already dampened that a little, with how many pictures she had insisted on taking before they even reached the place.
Galinda caught the sparkle of Fiona's bracelet as it reached up high over the crowd and waved her over. When she craned her neck to forge a path towards the table, she saw that the usual group seemed to have expanded to include significant others as well as many regular others. Everyone in the whole year seemed to have gathered together tonight, for perhaps the last party before everyone became bogged down in exams and essays.
Galinda pushed through the crowd, acutely aware of how she wasn't leading a slightly flustered Elphie by the hand, like she normally would.
She was already distracted, from doing Elphie's make-up that evening, and more she tried not to focus on that, the more it clouded her mind.
But she was here to have fun. No need to dig herself deeper right now. And she was hungry. Cornering yourself in a room full of nothing but awkward feelings for your best friend, it turned out, took a lot of energy.
As soon as they reached the group, more chairs were procured. It looked like most people had already eaten. Galinda decided to dig right in, ignoring Elphie's curious glance.
The food was decent - little party snacks, but enough of it to make a whole meal out of. She tuned in here and there to the conversations taking place around her: catch-ups, gossip, several instances of people gushing over Elphaba's attire (her handiwork); her roommate's dutiful squirming in return. She listened more than she talked. All her friends were glowing, chatty, clearly already well into the rhythm of the night. Galinda wanted to join them.
But something in her mind was still back in the room, refusing to catch up with her current surroundings.
It was stupid.
She politely smiled her way out of a conversation with someone's friend's boyfriend (about, of all things, the Shiz badminton team which he was on and she had never heard of) and looked around. Next to her, Elphie was caught up by an explanation of some TV show, by someone she hadn't met yet.
She didn't look uncomfortable, Galinda decided. Surely, she wouldn't mind if Galinda left her among these people for a moment? She had no idea why she had the building urge to be far away from her roommate, just for a moment. Fiona could be a reliable distraction.
"Fi," She reached across to gently poke her friend's silk-blue knee in the chair across from her.
Fiona perked up, and Galinda gestured at the compact mirror in her hand.
"Oh, sure," Fiona said. She finished pinning an unruly lock of her hair and handed it over the table, putting her chin in her hands to watch Galinda. "So what's the verdict, boss?"
"Huh?" Galinda said, taking her lipstick out of her purse.
"The ball?"
Galinda tilted the mirror, trying to get enough light on her face to see what she was doing. She swiped the lipstick across carefully.
"The ball that we're at right now?"
The lighting wasn't great in here. Galinda shifted this way and that in her seat to get a better look.
"...Galinda?"
"Oh -!" she said suddenly. "Sorry…" She gave Fiona a quick glance and checked her lips in the mirror again. It all suddenly looked like too sparse a layer from this angle. Wow, she really had eaten ferociously.
"Galinda!"
She lifted the lipstick off her mouth to say, "What?"
"Are you okay? You seem so distracted." Fiona looked serious, brows straight.
Galinda clipped the mirror shut and put it down. Freshly painted smile. "I'm fine."
Fiona looked unconvinced, or maybe it was a trick of the low light. But she had no reason to be doubtful, did she? No one did.
Galinda blinked and tried to focus on her surroundings. She remembered her primary reason for getting Fiona's attention. "Oh! Let's go dance!"
A moment later, they were right in the thick of the party. And dance they did. Up close, the band was very loud. Galinda could almost pretend they were on a night out at the Ozdust Ballroom - the songs were thankfully still upbeat at this point in the night. Dancing with Fiona, she was in her element, and for a while she could almost forget about the nagging dread in the back of her head - the part of her that urged to leave, the part that wanted to go home.
Really home, in her own room back in the Uplands - not back to the tiny room she shared with Elphie or the library or the cafe - and just curl up in bed, away from the glitter and the lights and her friends and her best friend.
She sighed. Did Elphie ever notice? What would she think?
How could she not notice? It had been weeks since they came back from winter break - no, months.
Galinda dared to let herself think of it.
Elphie wouldn't- she wouldn't be mean. No, not ever. Even if she didn't feel the same way. Which was a crazy long shot, because even if they were so close, they were still so different, in taste and personality and so many other tiny things, and probably nothing about her drew Elphie like that, and there was Fiyero, and -
It came down to this: Galinda couldn't impose. She couldn't dump her feelings on a girl who was still the most remarkably awkward person she knew. It wasn't fair. If the fallout was was bad, she would just be humiliating herself, leaving a mess for someone smarter than her to clean up.
She didn't realise that she had stopped her movements, just barely swaying. It seemed to suit Fiona just fine, who pointed to the bar behind her to show that she was going to take a break to get a drink.
Galinda found herself a drink too, some kind of bright orange cocktail in a tapered glass, and wandered back to the table. Elphaba was apparently done with her conversations, currently swirling the drink in her glass and observing the dance floor with the same kind of scrutiny like she was trying to understand a paper she was reading for class.
"Elphie?" Galinda came to her side.
"Mm?" She turned her head up quickly, and Galinda, who had forgotten, was momentarily struck by her face. Under the light, every angle of it was carefully enhanced, by someone who clearly loved the process and the subject.
Galinda was turning out to be the reason for her own undoing. She tried not to grimace.
"That cocktail is terrible," Elphie remarked with a raised eyebrow. "I had one earlier."
A little bit of the dread and self-pity fighting inside Galinda deflated. She laughed and pulled out the chair adjacent to Elphie to sit in. While she was in her own head, Elphaba was sitting glammed up at a party, complaining about the alcohol, seemingly just finished with the boring conversations of her surrounding peers. It was a peculiar (pretty funny) sight, one that brought her back to reality a little.
"Something interesting?" she asked.
"Oh, no. Just people watching."
Right. Galinda followed her eyes. She saw many recognisable faces - this was probably the last big event before graduation, after all. Fiyero was there, with a group of friends that she had never seen him with before. She nudged Elphie's elbow.
"I saw," Elphaba said, not turning.
"Do you know who he's with?"
"Yeah!" She squinted and peered closely and Galinda had to resist the urge to boop her nose at the expression. "They're all people I know from societies. Mostly humanities dept. You know, activists," Elphaba said.
So he really was serious about all that stuff.
Good for him, she guessed. She glanced at Elphaba sidelong. "What, aren't you going to go say hi to your society friends?"
Elphaba smiled wryly before she had even finished. She held up a finger, "First, friend is a very strong word. And second, you go talk to him first."
Galinda harrumphed and poured herself some water from the jug in the middle of the table. Elphie was right about the drink. "I thought you guys were fine now."
"We are," Elphaba said pointedly. "But I don't want to go interrupt their group now, do I?"
Some weird part of Galinda was glad. Experience told her Elphaba and Fiyero was not a good combination in her head, or in front of her eyes. Especially not when Elphie looked like this. And she couldn't guarantee that the piteous, precarious dam in her chest tonight wouldn't burst faced with the first person who had ever really caused it.
She decided to have a little fun. "So have you ever danced at a ball before?"
Long seconds passed as Galinda watched the options flicker in Elphaba's eyes. Say yes - which she must have known that Galinda would know to be a lie - or say no, and be faced with the prospect of being dragged to the dancefloor. Galinda smiled at the fact that Elphie let her read all of this off her pointed silence.
"No," she said finally.
Galinda felt a slow smile crawl over her face, just as she watched Elphie's eyes widen in fear.
"Wanna dance, Elphie?" she asked sweetly.
Elphaba released her breath so slowly that the eventual sigh that came out seemed like an afterthought. "Okay. Show me."
Galinda sprang up from her seat and dragged Elphie by the hand to the dancefloor. It was beginning to clear out. The band had presumably gone home, replaced by a slightly more sombre playlist. Galinda hoped this indie stuff wasn't going to be the tracklist to her demise, but the miserably lovelorn lyrics that began to whine out of the speakers weren't encouraging. At least there was no howling. Yet.
She stepped into place and manoeuvred Elphie to do the same. Elphaba smelled like her own perfume, which smelled like their room. Her cool hands enveloped Galinda's bare shoulders. Galinda put her arms around her waist.
She couldn't get away with torturing Elphie, without torturing herself too.
"This song is pretty… lousy," Elphie decided, looking at her toes.
"Yes," Galinda said, rolling her eyes with relish. "It's like they want all the plants to die."
"They're plastic," Elphie deadpanned.
"Right!" Galinda said. "Obviously." She felt her face heat for no reason.
Elphie, it turned out, was decidedly not a natural. She could trip over her own toes with little input from Galinda in a structured dance like this. However, after two more songs, they managed to settle into an uneasy rhythm. Galinda found that if she focused on keeping Elphie straight, she didn't end up thinking about other things.
"Are you having fun?" she asked, when her brain had decided to overtake regardless.
"Of course," Elphie said softly, startled out of the rhythm.
"You're... complaining a lot," Galinda observed.
"You usually know what my complaining means," Elphie retorted, a small smile on her lips. She kept looking down, away, and Galinda didn't have the brainpower to wonder why, watching the downward cast of her thick lashes each time.
"Yeah… I don't know. I guess I'm distracted."
"Why?"
"Don't know. Just nervous about things." She felt like a broken record.
Elphie's eyes narrowed before she closed them to think. The golden strokes along each eyelid became symmetrical in Galinda's vision.
"I know you are," Elphie said finally, quietly. "but it's OK. I've seen your applications and all that kind of stuff. And I've proofread every single thing you've turned in since October."
Galinda decided to go with it. "You're right."
Elphie gave her a worried glance out of the corner of her eye, and saw this moment fit to draw Galinda in closer, until they were practically hugging. Head to toe. Galinda tried not to feel guilty for playing along with her assumption. She was being selfish, again.
Elphie's long body shifted in her arms. "You're so amazing, really," she said into her hair, voice almost hazy with meaning.
Galinda blinked back something in her eyes.
No. This wouldn't do. She extracted herself and smiled. She said the clumsiest thing she could say, without betraying what she really wanted to say. "I'm so glad you're my friend."
"You think you're glad," Elphie said, her eyes fixed on her shoes again. "I've never even really had friends before. Not like -"
"Fiyero is your friend," Galinda said, before she could stop herself. Idiot.
Elphaba burst out laughing. But when she came down from it, her face was shadowed with the loss of her train of thought. "But - you're cuter," she said innocently.
Galinda tripped on her feet this time. "Glad to know the criteria you pick your friends by, Elphie," she coughed. "And here I thought you cared about my charming personality."
When the current track segued into yet another similar song, it became clear to Galinda that they were both suddenly too perked up to really continue with the funeral march. Galinda was kind of relieved.
A while later, she found herself with a (much nicer) drink in her hand, ushered to a chair in a corner close to the stage, where a group of her friends were preparing an announcement. She leaned on Fiona's shoulder and watched as the student representative of their batch, a deceptively soft-voiced guy from the economics department, introduced the two organizers of the event to the stage. Galinda was so exhausted at this point in the night that it went in a blur: a few toasts, a lot of laughs and clapping, more music.
Her eyes were on her roommate, out into the tables below.
Elphaba sat surprisingly loose in her chair, one leg crossed over the other under the thin black material of her skirt. Galinda tried a smile, and she smiled back. As languid as the dance. The conversations.
Galinda checked her phone. It had been more than a couple of hours.
"Do you want to go back?" she asked Elphie, once she had said goodbye to her friends.
"You're done?"
Galinda shrugged. On a regular day, she probably would have liked to stay a little longer.
Elphaba pressed for a reaction from underneath her gold-lined eyes. Next time, Galinda suddenly thought, she would do that differently - not so thick in the corners, and maybe a little more mascara.
Galinda nodded and cupped her own hair, pulling it over one shoulder. "I'm tired. I need to get up early to study tomorrow, anyway. Final paper on Monday," she found herself yawning.
She felt like she could sleep for a hundred years, give or take. It was Elphie who took her hand and led her out.
...
The next day Galinda felt more energised, if no less strange. The sun shone high in the sky when she went out to the campus cafe in the morning, prepared to devote the day to studying her class notes. Not an ideal way to spend a Saturday ever, but it had to be done, with exams coming up and an overall fun party night behind her. She would catch a break in the evening, because Elphie had asked her on their way home last night to go into town with her to get a new pair of shoes. Wearing the same pair of boots every single day tended to wear them out pretty quickly, as Galinda had expected.
But when she returned to the room, almost past sunset, Elphaba was nowhere to be seen.
She hadn't answered Galinda's messages earlier, which wasn't too strange, but Galinda was definitely expecting to find her indoors.
The library was her second port of call - and she was correct. Galinda found her friend in a corner in the crowded ground floor (apparently everyone had the same idea as her today). Elphie was leaning forward in her chair, but her spine remained stiff. Her books and a coffee cup were laying beside her computer, forgotten. Galinda could immediately tell that something was wrong, just by the hard glare in Elphie's eyes as she scanned her laptop screen in front of her.
"Is something wrong?" Galinda asked when she arrived at her desk.
Elphaba rolled her eyes and motioned for her to sit. Galinda sat down opposite her, expecting the start of a rant.
"You know those books I love, right? That I'm going to a signing for?"
Galinda narrowed her eyes in confusion. What could that have to do with her mood? Even Galinda knew that book signings by your favourite author were supposed to be fun. "Next month, right? Yeah - the Wizard guy."
Elphaba was nodding and typing fast, clearly searching for something on her computer.
Galinda went on, puzzled. "The one whose work you're obsessed with. All the important stuff he wrote, right? About different people like you," she frowned.
Elphaba nodded stiffly, seized the side of her laptop and turned the screen viciously towards Galinda. She took a sharp sip out of her cup.
Galinda read the news page and gasped. Her eyes flitted up towards her friend's weary face.
"Oh, Elphie."
The headline on the screen read:
AUTHOR, PROFESSOR, FRAUD? BELOVED 'WIZARD' FOUND GUILTY OF PLAGIARISING ACCLAIMED ACADEMIC WORK AND MUCH MORE.
Galinda read on. A former PhD student and two former colleagues of the renowned thinker and activist Dr. Oscar Zoroaster Diggs have come forward with a compelling case, and the shocking emails to prove it. They have argued to the Board that the Emerald City College professor may have passed off their key ideas as his own in his seminal works that revolutionised the discourse around rare colourful humans. Diggs, colloquially known as 'the Wizard' for his series of bestselling fantasy fiction aimed at...
She didn't need to know any more. Elphaba was frowning hard, almost unconsciously, in the chair across from her.
"I read the emails, and I've read everything he's ever written," she said blankly.
Galinda could tell how upset Elphie was. It was plain enough how important this was to her. Galinda remembered the way her eyes had lit up talking about the books. They were everything to Elphie. Judging by what she had said, they had made her - just like Galinda's magazines and princess movies and pop idols had done for her.
But it wasn't just that. Elphie's face was hard.
Galinda asked quietly, "What do the emails say?"
Elphie shook her head, looking a thousand times more tired with the motion. "It's not what they say," she muttered, "though it's disgusting. Everything that he wrote about- about making us normal-"
She took a deep breath, her shoulders drooping like the fight had gone from her. Galinda instinctively grabbed her hand across the table.
"Well - he doesn't seem to care about anything except getting praise from it. He stole all his material from his colleagues - that blue woman, especially," she pointed at the photo on a screen.
Galinda gasped again. Talk about adding insult to the injury.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the books are plagiarised, either," Elphie grumbled.
She looked absolutely dejected, her body seemed small and tired across the vast library desk. Her childhood - literally - was being crushed in real time in front of Galinda. Galinda felt her own frustration rise. This was everything that had made the younger, sadder Elphie - the young and sad parts of her still - feel okay when the world around her rejected her on sight.
Galinda wanted to leap across and hug her so tight that she wouldn't have the space to think about it for a second longer. She made a decision.
"You know what, fuck him."
Her choice of language caught Elphie's attention (which was the point), and Elphie's morose expression became curious.
"Huh?"
"It doesn't make any of those things that he published less true or important. You just put the wrong face to it."
Elphaba made a grumble of discontent. "It makes me so mad." Her voice was rough and thick, and Galinda knew its breaking point. "Those books -"
"I know, sweetie," Galinda said. Except that she couldn't hope to know - and Elphaba surely knew that, but she didn't say anything. Galinda understood that that was her way of accepting her sympathy. Nothing about Elphie's demeanour came off as irate as she was trying to seem right now, her sadness bursting through her hard edges.
It pained Galinda, the thing that she could read off her friend's face with so little effort: if the thing that had always made her feel normal was a lie - then was her normalness also -?
No way. Elphie didn't deserve to feel like this. Galinda squeezed the hand she was holding. She said fiercely, "we should - we should do something to take your mind off it,"
Elphaba sniffed sadly. "You don't have to do anything."
"I'm going to make you feel better," Galinda said. Elphie barked a laugh through her misery - of course, she knew there was nothing to stop Galinda once she was set on a fanciful idea.
Galinda wracked her brain until the best idea presented itself to her. She leaned all the way across the desk, eyes bright.
"Tomorrow. I'm going to take you to Emerald City."