(long intro per usual, stayed up late to write this req <3)

Karma comes around in peculiar ways. The odds of being hit by a car while exiting a courthouse are slim, but never zero. Just as swiftly as the judge’s gavel had come down, Cairo’s legs shattered from the collision. 

Now stuck in plaster casts, jailed in the confines of her room, Cairo is alone. Her parents were–unsurprisingly–away on a business trip. All she’d gotten was a Hallmark card and a five-minute call when she’d gotten out of surgery. The only notifications on her phone were Winnie’s, but after the first few days, she blocked the brunette’s contact. 

She didn’t want pity. She wanted a way into an Ivy League, and without a way to attend classes anymore for the last semester of high school, it was looking bleak. Cairo had the stellar GPA, recommendations that would turn the eye of any admission officer, but something was missing. 

The first time you’d set foot into her house on Lovell Hill, the scent of smoke attacked your lungs. The principal had sent you, the new student, to give the dark-haired girl the notes and homework for your classes. Cairo had seen the email administration had sent, informing the other girl that a student would be coming to drop papers off. While she was glad it wasn’t Winnie, in no way was she friendly. 

Small nods, maybe a hum of acknowledgement when you’d walk into her room, the space filled with nicotine and silence. Gaining her trust was harder than your calculus homework, an unsolvable problem that you couldn’t help but attempt to solve, study her mannerisms.

Simple things: remembering the label of the tea always on her nightstand, fixing her a fresh cup each time you’re over. Even bringing over a tattered copy of Finnegans Wake to have a reason to linger longer, striking up easy conversation over Western literature. 

Cairo had come to expect you and your visits, dark brown eyes lifting from her laptop, cast-covered legs carefully propped on small cushions.

“You again, hm?”

Her voice was quiet, sarcastic. Cairo doesn’t fight it when your hand rests on her shoulder, adjusting the pillows to help prop her up. If you dared to mention the soft twinge in her voice, your hand would become her new ashtray.