Rita may have left, but what she left behind was the intoxicating scent of her body and her perfume, which Vic was concentrating on instead of his homework. After lunch, just as its presence began to dissipate, Marek showed up to their room.

“Hey, you busy?” Marek said, popping his head in.

“Just studying.”

“So that’s a ‘no’ then?” Marek said with a wide smile, opening the door fully. Unsurprising to Vic, he had a girl with him, a short blonde by the name of Caroline.

“Didn’t you just have a girl in here last night? She was looking for you this morning,” Vic asked in the hopes that this might break up their date. But this was Dampgate, so Caroline seemed unperturbed.

“Oh, Rita? Yeah, she was great. Amazing knockers.” The great thing about Marek was that if you had one conversation with him, you basically had them all.

“I’ve noticed. So … I’m just going to get out of your hair now.”

“Oh no, no rush, you can stay if Caroline is cool with it?” Marek looked down on the blonde and she just pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows in a sign of acquiescence. “Fine by me. Maybe even join in?” Caroline suggested.

“Oooh, yeah, a classic spit roast or maybe some DP? What do you say, Vic?”

“I … think I’m good, thanks. Just gonna study at the library.”

“Good call, I don’t think you’re gonna get any work done here – this one’s a screamer.”

“I really am,” Caroline nodded enthusiastically, but before Vic could find out, he headed for the library.

It was a busier day at the Dampgate Academy library than it had been when Kit and Laine ambushed him there – something that happened only a week earlier but now seemed like a whole forever ago. Perhaps this meant that it would be a safer space for him this time around.

Vic, however, was a slow learner, both academically and when it came to life, and with every passing hour there he let his guard down more and more, until he raised his eyes from his Math textbook and found that Marcia had found him and was standing beside his table. There did for a moment pass an urge through him that almost had him running out of the library and leaving all his books behind, but even his brain was capable of telling him that it wasn’t the best idea.

Marcia instead sat on the table he was working at and crossed her arms.

“Are you going to be weird again?” she said, not a hint of anger or anything of the sort in her voice.

“Again? I don’t think I was … ever weird.”

“Mmmhmm, sure. Me cleaning your cum out of my bellybutton would suggest otherwise.”

Or perhaps it wasn’t too late to run after all.

“See, there you are being weird again,” Marcia said after a prolonged silence from Vic.

“It’s weird that I find this a bit awkward?”

“It’s weird that you find weird what doesn’t need to be weird.” As Vic puzzled through that one with probably visible consternation on his face, Marcia continued, “Look, I want us to be friends, but I’m not sure how that’s going to work out if you can’t deal with how friendships work at Dampgate. Like, what were you even doing there, to begin with?”

“I was just … I just needed to talk to you.”

“Right. And then you saw me and what … got distracted?” Marcia asked, appearing genuinely curious.

“I guess you could put it that way.”

She didn’t answer anything to that, just continued sitting there, in her sweatpants and T-shirt, regarding him with a somewhat stern expression.

“Can we still be friends? Or are you going to make that too hard?” she asked finally. Vic wasn’t even fully sure what the request was. Did that mean dropping any hope of them being together? And as everyone told him, what did “being together” even mean here at Dampgate? So did this mean no kind of physical interaction at all? For once, he thought it may be better to actually ask instead of just guessing.

“I do want to still be friends. Just tell me how I can make it … not hard?”

Marcia sighed, possibly expecting that he would have actually come to it on his own.

“I don’t know,” she looked around, “Just be a proper Dampgate student or something.”

“I can do that,” Vic said earnestly.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, making his heart sink.

“I’m serious. From now on, I’ll be good.”

“Prove it then,” Marcia said with a twinkle in her eye.

“What?”

“Prove it,” and then, after chewing on her lip in thought, she added, “Seems like I interrupted you in the library last week. So go finish your unfinished business.”

Vic’s mind was racing at this point.”

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, I’m dead serious,” Marcia said