Disclaimer: I don't own the Chronicles of Narnia, Jill Pole, Eustace Scrubb, Experiment House, or anything else you might recognize
Sybil Wright had been kissed.
At only thirteen and a half, she was the first of her year to do so. The girls of Beckwith Dormitory, where they stored the Year Nines, were in an uproar. Wright was in her bedroom, surrounded by her roommate Jill Pole and a few other girls- a common addition to the room, ever since that fateful moment with Derrick Meyers.
"Tell us again?" Bethany Fern asked breathlessly.
"Yes, yes, tell it!" Elaine Abernathy gave demands, not requests, but she was no less enthusiastic for it. Wright sat up tall in a way she must have thought very dignified, and tossed her curls over her shoulder. Jill, on the fringes of the group in her swiveling desk chair, wrinkled her nose at the sight.
"He just asked if he could walk me to Math class," Wright said, all nonchalance- she always started like this, before the giggles caught up with her. "He carried my books. He's such a gentleman."
"And then?" Jessica Quigley was tugging restlessly, ceaselessly, at her little blonde braid.
"We walked, and talked. Well, mostly he did. I was a little shy. Then we stopped outside my Mathematics, and he gave back my books, and he said 'So, Wright, see you later."
"And then?" Quigley prompted again. Jill thought the girl might rip her braid right off her head.
"I replied, 'Sure. Thank you for walking me, it was very nice of you.' And you know, all the while, I was rather nervous!" Here she giggled, her refined mask slipping. Soon there would be squealing. "He's so handsome and he's very smart, too, and-"
"Yes, we know, but that's certainly not the good bit!" Abernathy interrupted, rude as ever, and leaned in nearer to Wright's face. "Tell us the good bit!"
"He just came in close, really slow and hesitant, and I just knew what was going to happen! My heart went positively mad! But I leaned in a bit, too, and then…" Wright let out a magnificently huge breath, "We kissed!"
Fern and Quigley squealed, as promised, and along with Abernathy all began chattering at once; Jill's lip curled unattractively. The story, told for the fourth time that day (and the 20th-something-or-other since it happened two days ago), had lost a good amount of appeal to her.
"And after, and after!" Wright called out loudly, trying to draw the girls back to her. They instantly silenced, hanging on every word out of her been-kissed mouth, "He said in the sweetest, embarrassed way, 'I'll…I'll see you around…Sybil?' He tried out my Christianname! I've never really liked it, but when he said it, I thought it must be the best name there ever was!"
"But what was it like? The kiss. Tell me." Abernathy already knew, everybody already knew, but she always demanded it.
"Well, it didn't last long at all, but it shouldn't have, no gentleman would push a lady in such a way." Wright tossed her curls again, trying to regain her lofty attitude. "But it was…soft, you know? Gentle. And very warm. It sort of made my lips tingle."
Abernathy nodded, determined. "I'm going to get a kiss now, too."
"You can't just go make someone kiss you!" Fern, ever the lady, scolded gently. "That would be terribly inappropriate!"
"Just ask a boy to carry your books to class, or to help you with homework, and then he might kiss you, just the same as Meyers." Quigley gave her braid a yank. "I'm going to ask Tyler Dunbar to help me with my Biology." She said this every time, a dreamy glint in her eyes, but as far as Jill knew had not said a word to the boy.
"Perhaps I'll ask Simon Townsfeld to walk me to French. We have it together."
"Simon Townsfeld! Too rough for you, Fern. Try Owen Marks!"
"Ick! Hardly!" And so on, and so forth.
Jill did not participate (mainly because the first time this bit of the conversation came up, when she had still found it exciting, every girl had proclaimed- nearly in unison- that Jill should kiss Eustace Scrubb), but simply got quietly out of the desk chair and climbed into her own bed, bundling a pillow around her head to muffle the incessant giggling.
"-and she just thinks she is so grand and fabulous, because her lips touched Derrick Meyers' for a few seconds!" A day later, and the kiss continued to be the only thing her dormmates talked about. Jill could see the novelty fading amongst some of the girls, but a few seemed to think Sybil Wright suddenly held the all the secrets to men's hearts, and questioned her obsessively. Wright was more than happy to answer, and when no one was asking she was just as happy to bring up the story herself. "I was talking to Cindy Ackerman today and Wright comes over and joins us. Not ten seconds after, do you know what the topic of conversation was?"
"Wright's kiss?" Eustace Scrubb answered her dutifully, though certainly not enthusiastically.
"Yes!" Jill leaned against the outside school wall, sneering, digging the heel of her shoe roughly into the dirt. "I've always been quite fond of Wright, but really! I can only be happy for her for so long! Other things happen, you know!"
"I'm sure they do, Pole," Eustace leaned beside her, staring at the sky and trying to ward off a severe headache.
"She just goes on and on about how it's so perfect and wonderful. How she feels so mature. And do you know what she said to me just this morning?"
"I can only imagine," This was a lie, as he knew quite well what had been said this morning: she had already told him twice.
"She says -you'll never believe the nerve of her- 'Pole, it's really such an experience! Oh, don't look so down, you might get a kiss one day!' Might! Like I am so dull and dreadful and just….just….unkissable!" Jill scowled, huffed, and ground her shoe deeper into the dirt.
"It's awful," Eustace droned. "Completely beastly of her."
"And do you realize the only person she hasn't talked to death about it with is Derrick Meyers?"
"Unbelievable." Believable. She'd told him that already, too.
"Oh yes. He hasn't called her Sybil since then, either. Always 'Wright', and she has to call him Meyers, even though she is just dying, as she put it, to call him Derrick," Jill scoffed unpleasantly; Eustace thought that she should really stop making such unappealing sounds and faces. "So, you see, she has been just reciting this tale of him walking her to math class, but in the end, nothing. They are not a couple or even a sort-of-a-little-bit-perhaps a couple. They are two people who kissed, and that is the end of the story."
"So it would seem," Eustace said a little too loudly, a little bit sarcastically, but Jill was already talking again.
"But not to her, oh no. On and on and on and on," Jill waved her hands round to emphasize and ended up elbowing him in the arm, but took no notice and did not apologize. Now there was a pain in his left arm to match the pain above his right eye, and both of them were her bloody fault.
"It seems you have that in common," Eustace snapped, gripping his stinging arm, glaring at her without restraint. All this she could not help but notice, and could not help immediately fuming at what, to her, was practically betrayal.
"And just what is that supposed to mean?"
He groaned irritably. "Are you joking? What it means is that you haven't shut up about Wright not shutting up! I get it, Wright got kissed and no one will stop talking about it but if you haven't noticed that includes you."
"I have not been talking about it all the time!" Jill spat furiously, "I am just upset, and as my friend you should be there to listen when I need it, you prat!"
Eustace positively boggled. "How can you even insinuate that I haven't been there for you, or, for that matter, that you haven't been talking about it? I have listened to you ramble for days!"
"I can't believe you! I've just been having a hard time! I don't want to get into a fight with her, I have to live with her, but if I don't talk to someone I'm going to throw my schoolbooks at her head!" She bit her lip and rolled it back and forth between her teeth for a moment. When she spoke again she no longer sounded angry, but dejected. Eustace had the vaguely horrifying thought that she might cry. "I can't say a word or else she'll say I'm petty and jealous, when in reality she's just being an arrogant prig! I mean, do you know what she said to me this morning? 'Pole, it's really such an exper-"
With a sort of outraged grunt, Eustace suddenly had her by the face and pulled her to him, pressing their lips together. In retrospect, it left much to be desired- rough and unromantic, and her nose got sort of squashed- but in that instant it was fantastic. He let go as quickly as he had grabbed her, leaving Jill to blush and blink stupidly, because she had momentarily forgotten how to do anything else. Eustace looked her determinedly in the face, though his was a glorious shade of magenta, and took her by the shoulders. Jill's face and neck felt unbearably hot as she stared back at him, speechless.
"There you have it. You've been kissed. Sybil Wright can go boil her head. Can we talk about something else now, Jill?" Jill could only nod, her fingers itching, begging, to touch her lips.
Sybil what's-her-name was the last thing on her mind.