Rosario had less than two weeks before the new semester started, which meant she had less than two weeks to get ahead on the course material. She needed that head start, especially now she was sacrificing an afternoon a week to prophecy classes with Merlin and who knew what other curveballs Apollo was gonna throw at her?
She should have been spending the last couple days reading, taking notes, writing summaries, making flash cards. That was what she'd planned to do. But in two days, so far all Rosario had managed to do was painstakingly organise her class binders, a task she ought to have been able to knock off in her sleep.
She still wasn't really sleeping. She was too keyed up. Her first lesson with Merlin wasn't till Friday and he'd left her without any pointers on how to get stuff under control in the meantime. He'd made an offhand comment about meditating, so Rosario had tried that, but the voice actors on the free app she'd downloaded grated to hell and back (stop fucking telling me to relax, bro!), and trying without a guided meditation track was even worse. She'd lie there, eyes closed, breathing slowed, silently simmering in irritation— at the pointlessness of the task and at herself for being unable to master it, at the thoughts that kept intruding on her never-actually-empty mind and at the time she was wasting trying to empty it.
Friday seemed like a goddamn eternity away. And before Friday – before today was up – she needed to tell Lyra the whole story, the omen she'd convinced herself she'd imagined in the forest, the bombshell Apollo had dropped on her, the dreams (that were probably just dreams, but how could you tell?), the whirl of images that'd hit her when Merlin had touched her temple.
She hadn't meant to let it drag out this long. She'd planned to tell Lyra on at least three separate occasions before New Year, but every time after she'd worked up the nerve and the words, something bigger would swallow the moment up (a crisis, a celebration, a cross-state vacation) and now it was January and Rosario felt like she was carrying this crazy, big-ass guilty secret around that she couldn't even begin to figure out how to explain. If it was anyone but Lyra, she didn't know that she could explain it.
When Rosario pushed open the door to the roof, she had exactly enough time to exclaim, "Holy shit, your coat—!!" before Lyra crashed into her like a fluffy turquoise cannonball.
God, she needed that hug. Rosario squeezed her best friend back, boggling silently as her arms sank into the enormous fluffy coat. Obviously they both had a few things to get caught up on. "Hell yes. Happy new year, sis. God, I got so much I need to tell you."