Four

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve; lovers to bed; ‘tis almost fairy time – William Shakespeare

Autumn was very different from the little girl she had been... and yet, in so many ways, she was exactly the same.

Her long, mousy-brown hair was cut pixie-length and was casually messed every morning, with short bangs swooping across her pale forehead. She still wore glasses, but the frames had black filigree carved into them and the lenses were square to better frame her large brown eyes. She now carried a purse instead of a backpack and had a single silver hoop through her left nostril. She’d learned how to use makeup and loved to play with eyeliner (when she woke up early enough to do so). She had grown into a woman’s body and was in her first year of University.

But bookcase still had The Last Unicorn filed away in the corner, and though her bedroom was covered in posters and had a laptop and CD player now, there were still a few stuffed animals kicking around (and she slept with a blue unicorn, named Edmund, every night). She still wore bows and headbands in her hair, and she would readily admit that, in many ways, her mental development had stopped somewhere around puberty.

Autumn had lots of friends, most of them quirky, and worked part-time as a customer service rep at a grocery store. She didn’t date much, but she believed in true love and was kind of sort of looking for it without actually looking for it. She liked shopping and going out with friends when she could, and she really loved University.

In most ways, Autumn was a normal and well-adjusted teenager (aside from being perpetually tired), just about to break through to adulthood. She could drink and drive (not in that order), but she didn’t often drink and she didn’t have a car. She still lived at home and she got along very well with her parents, who secretly disliked her nose ring She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, but, first year University was all about finding out what you wanted to do, and Autumn was ready to do just that.

Of course, there was one slight difference between Autumn and all of her friends: Autumn’s best friend. Unlike everyone else, her best friend wasn’t someone she went to school with or worked with, and it wasn’t her mom, though Carrie was a close second. Autumn’s best friend just happened to be the monster under her bed.

Her relationship with Crowley had grown gradually over time. At first he had come up with simple illusions to please her, and still did, on occasion (on her eighteenth birthday Johnny Depp had appeared in her room for about ten minutes, and Autumn had utilized most of that time by playing with his hair). But as time went on, Autumn found herself more interested in what Crowley had to say, rather than what he could do.

Crowley took longer than she had to come out of his shell. He was uncomfortable with Autumn, and would have preferred hiding behind his magic to baring his soul any day... but, as time went on, it got easier... after a while, he even liked talking with her about everything and anything. They never ran out of things to discuss, and as time went on Crowley discovered that he cherished his nights with Autumn. After spending an eternity alone... it was nice to have a friend.

It bothered him a little, though, that Autumn seemed to be growing up so very fast. He had never taken the time to pay attention to things light height and age and maturity in his previous victims, simply because he didn’t care. But with Autumn his relationship was based on being with her, not frightening her, which meant that he couldn’t help but notice that the little girl he had frightened was growing up.

At first the changes were good. Autumn became more confident and outgoing, which meant that their conversations weren’t punctuated with awkward silences. As Autumn became more intelligent, there was more to talk about, and they could go into more depth. Crowley didn’t realise that there could be a negative side to Autumn’s growing up until he encountered something he had never experienced before: puberty.

Suddenly Autumn wasn’t the same girl. Of course she was still his friend, and she still cared about him, but suddenly she was worrying about things like boys and tampons and makeup and clothes and whether or not she was attractive and everything else that became so glaringly apparent to girls after their hormones seemed to explode.

It seemed to Crowley that she had changed in one day. One night he had been talking to his one and only friend, the next he came up to find an entirely different person looking up at him. He had stared, confused, until Autumn flashed him a smile and he realised, with a pang of sorrow, that this was the same girl. She was just growing up.

Crowley had slipped back beneath the bed the moment Autumn fell asleep, staring at the darkness around him as dawn loomed in the world beyond. He obsessed over Autumn’s human condition, wondering why he had never realised this before. He didn’t know everything there was to know about humans, but he did know that they grew up and moved on. That’s what they all did, and Autumn was no different from anyone else. Eventually, she would move on. She would get a job or get married or both. She might have children or pets to take care of. She would have a mortgage or rent to worry about. Eventually her days would be taken up by other people, besides her friends and immediate family. Eventually, her nights would be taken up as well.

Crowley suddenly realised just how much Autumn’s friendship meant to him. He couldn’t imagine going back to frighten other children... but he couldn’t follow her into adulthood, either. He couldn’t ask Autumn to be his friend forever. She would have someone else to spend her life with in time, whether it was a husband or lover or something entirely different. He couldn’t ask her to spend nights with him when she should be spending them with someone else.

What could he do? Crowley had some magical ability but he couldn’t stop time, and he couldn’t control Autumn. He couldn’t force her to remain with him forever. Perhaps, if he said something... but he couldn’t. Autumn might decide to stifle her life in order to remain his friend... but he couldn’t ask that of her.

Autumn rushed to her Women’s Studies class, nearly dropping the hot chocolate that she had purchased to warm her up. After such a warm September, it seemed like October was working overtime to prove that it was finally fall.

She walked into class about twenty seconds before her prof, nearly tripping over someone else’s back pack as she made her way towards her seat. Her desk mate, Emma, a tall girl with bright pink hair that was shaved off at the sides, smiled kindly as Autumn let herself fall into her chair, quickly unzipping her purple laptop bag and pulling out her HP notebook. The opened it, plugged in the USB drive that contained her University notes, and took a grateful sip of her hot chocolate.

“So...” Emma cleared her throat, smiling. “You fell asleep on the bus, didn’t you?”

“... Why...?” Autumn asked. As the spoke she caught a glimpse of her reflection on her laptop screen. The left side of her hair was mussed to perfection, while the right side, which has spent the half hour ride pressed against the window, was flattened down. Autumn ran her hands through it, matching it to the left side. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” The pink haired girl replied.

“Okay,” the prof cleared her throat to get their attention. “I’m assuming that everyone read the assigned articles in Bitchfest, and if you didn’t you aren’t to admit it.”

Emma suppressed a laugh as she scribbled the date on the upper right corner of her notepad. She had a laptop at home, but didn’t bring it anymore because she was likely to connect to the wireless internet and then spend the rest of the day on FaceBook. Autumn, who was a little better at resisting the pull of internet networking, typed the same thing into a word document as the prof started her lecture on patriarchy in the media.

Autumn had Intro to Sociology after Women’s Studies. For some idiotic reason she had picked her classes so that she was always running across campus during the ten minute break between classes, and she usually got a seat in the absolute back of the classroom. Somehow, the person in front of her usually had an unbelievably fat head, or, if it was a girl, was addicted to backcombing, which meant that seeing anything at the front of the room was absolutely impossible.

By the time Autumn got to Sociology today, though, there was one seat left at the front of the room next to an average looking guy. “This isn’t taken, is it?” she asked breathlessly, already helping herself to the seat.

“No,” he replied.

“Thank Christ,” Autumn muttered under her breath, dropping her things to the ground while she shrugged off her coat.

She took her laptop from its bag and placed it on the precariously small desk attached to her chair, holding it with one hand as she rummaged around in her purse for her USB stick. It was an almost painful process, and Autumn was beginning to wonder if her USB might have fallen out of her purse during her mad dash to class...

“Want me to hold that?” her neighbour asked, gesturing to her laptop.

Autumn nodded gratefully as he took it. “Please. I think I just lost a month worth of...” with two hands, she was able to find her USB in a matter of seconds. “... Never mind. Thank you.”

The guy passed back her computer, smiling. “You’re welcome. I’m Chris, by the way.”

“Thanks again. I’m Autumn.” Autumn replied, plugging in her USB.

“Nice to meet you,” Chris replied.

“Same here.”

Autumn started a new word document for this class’s lecture, typing in a title and date. She glanced up at Chris and he smiled almost timidly. Autumn returned the smile and went back to work, not sure if he was just being nice or if he was flirting with her. She had never been able to tell the difference.

Luckily, the prof came in and started her lecture so that Autumn wouldn’t have to think about it too much. Autumn took her notes diligently, trying not to check to see if Chris was looking at her or not. She’d never really been the object of any male interest, which meant she had no idea how to handle it (if, she reminded herself, he was even interested in her. It was just as possible that he was just a nice guy... right?). When the class was done Autumn packed up and hurried out, mostly because she had another class to get to, but partially so that she wouldn`t have to decipher any sort of intentions on Chris`s part.

Another class and a bus ride later, Autumn was home. It had started raining and the sky was cloudy, casting a gloomy filter over her neighbourhood. Of course Autumn had never thought to bring an umbrella to school, and she didn’t have a hood on the cardigan or jacket that she was wearing, which meant that her hair was sopping wet when she finally got to her door. She rummaged around in her purse for about three minutes, just long enough for the puddle she was standing in to soak through the lining of her boots, finally grasping her keys and shoving them into the lock and turning. The door swung open and she went inside the garage, unlocking a second door to get into the house.

Maggie, her two-year-old tabby cat, had already heard her coming in and was sitting on the mat in front of the door already. There was a reproachful look in her amber eyes, and the moment that Autumn was in the door she got up and stalked away, stopping to look over her shoulder in disdain.

“Hi Maggie,” Autumn sighed, ignoring her cat’s disappointment. “I missed you, too.”

She held her hand out, offering to scratch behind the cat’s ears. Maggie held back for a second before agreeing, finally bowing her head so that Autumn could rub her icy hand along Maggie’s warm head, sighing again as the warmth inside the house made her glasses fog up. She slung her laptop bag over her shoulder, letting it fall gently to the ground, doing the same with her purse. She took off her boots and put them by the register so they could dry out, and because she knew that Maggie liked to sleep on the warm suede.

Autumn could have used a nap, but instead she dragged her crap upstairs to her room. She didn’t turn on the light, although it was dark enough that it was difficult to see. Autumn had a thing about lights, and the sun, which accounted for her pale complexion. Her parents had tried to get her outside in her youth, saying that she needed fresh air and vitamin D, but Autumn spent her time studying and reading and bought a bottle of vitamin D capsules instead. Her marks were always high and Autumn had always been healthy, so her parents dropped the issue.

Autumn plugged in her laptop so it could charge for the next day, adding her iPod so she could have something to listen to. For a second she flipped on the lights and changed quickly, letting her wet clothes fall to the floor and pulling on a pair of pink flannel pajamas with cats on them. She turned the light off again

She turned on her CD player, saw that her Beauty and the Beast soundtrack was already inside, and pressed play. Then she went to the bathroom by her room and quickly dried her hair so it wouldn’t be dripping in her eyes for the next five minutes. From there she went to the kitchen and started supper (after standing undecided in front of the open freezer long enough to get cold again). From there she went back to her room, finally allowing herself to check her FaceBook.

She played a little Vampire Wars, visited her friends cafes in Cafe World, and took a quiz before noticing that she had a new friend request. She clicked it, not really sure who to expect, and found herself staring at a picture Chris from Sociology.

“Um... okay...” her face flushed slightly as she hovered around the ignore button. Out of the hundreds, if not thousands, of students that went to her university, how in the hell did he find her this easily? She saw a message along with the request and read it with wide eyes.

“Hi. It’s Chris (from Sociology). I was just looking through my backpack and I realised that I misplaced my notes from today’s class, and I thought, in case they were gone for good, that I should probably ask you for them because you have a laptop and you seem like the sort of person that takes awesome notes. In return I would be happy to save you a seat up front for the rest of our classes. I have a spare before that class, so I always get there early. Thanks in advance!”

Autumn paused for a second. He might have found her FaceBook profile simply to ask for notes. After all, they had a test coming up, and she did take good notes. And a seat up front for the rest of the classes... that would be nice, especially since it seemed like she might end up behind people with big heads for the rest of her academic career.

Autumn clicked the accept button and then went back onto Chris’s profile page. She got Chris’s email, sent him the notes, and then left FaceBook to start printing off the day’s notes for her binder, resisting the urge to check to see if he had replied to her emails or posted anything on her wall. After all, he probably just needed notes.

Autumn hole punched her notes, arranged them in her binder, and went to check supper. After about twenty minutes of trying to keep herself busy she allowed herself to go back and check her FaceBook. She logged in, humming along to her soundtrack, and forced herself to play Vampire Wars again before going back to her profile page.

No wall posts. But there was a new message in her inbox. Autumn stared at it for a few seconds before actually clicking on it.

“Hey, thanks for sending the notes so fast! I thought that you might not remember me.” Chris wrote, “I`ll be sure to save you a seat next class.”

“No problem,” Autumn replied. “I hate losing my notes. I`m glad I could help.”

Autumn logged off then, satisfied that Chris was only being polite in class, and had only FaceBook-stalked her for her notes. She wasn`t too offended by that, especially since she was guaranteed a seat up front for the rest of the year.

Having solved her little mystery, Autumn dismissed her previous awkwardness towards Chris and went back to making supper. By the time her parents got home from work she had entirely forgotten about him.