Dear Diary,

I can call you that now that I've graduated and Professor Sulak isn't shaming me for being juvenile and quaint while keeping records and field notes. The thing is, it feels weird to just write without acknowledgment. But I don't have to explain myself now. I've graduated and, for better or worse, I no longer have anyone to hold me accountable but myself.

That's the thing, isn't it?

I won't lie...thing's aren't particularly great.

I completely bombed my interview with Crane Renovations. There are other necromantic firms in New England but none that are close. Crane has essentially monopolized the area and I had to go and blow it with my inability to shut my mouth.

Thing is, the guy interviewing me, his name was fucking Pickle! What kind of necromancer has a name like that? Yea, I get it, it's a surname but I'd be changing it. Well he kept calling me Mizz Vitally even though I corrected him a few times that it's just Vee-tal-eh and asked him to just call me Bernadette or Bernie. Well, he wouldn't.

He seemed impressed by my transcript and Frater O.F.'s recommendation letter. I think I even saw his eyebrows go up when we went over my resurrection of Lady Delia Arnault. But then we discussed the prospect of archival work and I said I wasn't a fan. He was surprised and, like an idiot, I asked if he liked the idea of mouldering away in a basement rather than working in the field. He was pissed. Turns out he's head of archives. Of course he is. Well I got nervous and when I get nervous I get stupid and I said I was sure he was a big dill...

Anyways. I didn't get the job.

I went to Lyre to get shit faced and perhaps come up with an epiphany at the bottom of a bottle.

Worst idea ever. Stewart was there with Nico and Lark all bragging about getting in at Crane. Stewart Dwight got in! How the hell did that idiot get in but not me? I bet he works in archives. I bet he doesn't make stupid pickle jokes in interviews. Still...the dude is rumored to crack open a cold one at the morgue...well I won't write more on that or I'll throw up and I've done enough of that with this morning's hangover.

I also ran into Kate...

I haven't spoken to Kate Beghana since Level 4 Grave History. I hate her. How can someone that pretty and rich also be smart? Not just pretty. The prettiest girl in Latimer University. And on the Dean's List! She makes everything look easy. And there she was, at Lyre with her hair up like a ballerina's and somehow able to make the school t-shirt with its dopey black goat mascot look chic as hell.

"Hey Gloomy!" She always calls me Gloomy and for some reason, in the moment, I can't think well enough to be properly mad about it. I just ordered my root beer highball and hoped she'd go party with the other super popular wizard majors.

Instead she asked me why I wasn't toasting and boasting with the other necromancers. I would rather toast them with a Molotov cocktail.

I don't know why but I told her about the interview. She laughed at the dill joke, damn her. It sounded like a genuine laugh too.

"So what are you going to do?"

Hell if I know. What am I going to do?

Kate's friends called her over and I thought the conversation was done. I was half way into my fourth highball when Kate came over, breathless and breathtaking.

"You should freelance!" She said it so loud, half the bar looked at us. She laughed it off and repeated herself. She launched into some story about a cousin that started freelancing transfiguration work and is doing well. They got started by putting an ad online.

I didn't know what to say so I just nodded. She smiled and wrapped me in a hug. "You're brilliant. Go for it!"

And she was gone. Damn her. And damn this hangover. I probably didn't even hear her right in the noisy bar and even if I did I am probably remembering it wrong. But my shirt from last night still smells like her - Nag champa incense and lilacs.

I'll forever associate that smell with pity and interview failure.