The Compound

by Aisling Rawle

that I was one of the most beautiful, and one of the least interesting.

Intelligence can be artificial, but charm is always real, and Susie had that in spades.

I had already known the answer: it was the same every year. I only asked out of my old habit of prompting people to explain things to me even when I knew the answer. When I was a child, I found that it would make people more likely to want to help me, and it served me just as well as an adult.

The girls murmured around me. Goodnight, we said, our voices soft. Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.