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“Moving day!” Angie squeals, nearly dropping Peggy’s suitcase out of excitement. “Just you wait, English, we’ll get you settled in before you can blink.”
Peggy smiles, almost wearily. They start to head up the stairs together, and Angie seems to be struggling with the weight of the suitcase. “You know I can carry my own things, right?” Peggy asks, but Angie brushes her off with a stream of excited chatter.
“So tea kitchen’s over there,” Angie says, pointing towards the right and continuing up another flight of stairs. She hoists the suitcase over her shoulder, trying to find a better grip. “Don’t know if you can cook, but I couldn’t make anything edible if you held a gun to my head—”
Peggy trips on the last stair but catches herself on the railing. She can feel panic settling in, nice and snug around her waist, and when Angie turns around with a worried look on her face, Peggy can barely stop herself from just bolting down the stairs.
“You alright?” Angie asks, setting the suitcase down for a second and rubbing the reddened palm of her hand. “These carpets do get a little dangerous,” she jokes, hesitantly, and Peggy tells herself she has to pull it together.
“I’m fine,” she says, straightening her skirt. “I’m not too sure of my culinary skills, actually. Wouldn’t want to burn down the building.” She smiles, quickly, convincingly, and Angie smiles back, picks the suitcase up again, and starts lugging it down the hall, where it makes a satisfying thump when Angie lets it hit the floor. Angie looks back apologetically every time it happens, but Peggy doesn’t really mind.
There are girls standing in the doorway, with their curls done up and their lips ferociously red against their faces, washed-out in the yellowish hall lights. And there’s the panic again, but Angie throws open a door, sets the suitcase down, and looks so excited that Peggy can forget it for a moment and take another step.
Angie leans against the doorframe when Peggy’s unpacking. “You have a lot of snappy hats,” she comments when Peggy opens her hatbox. Peggy nods absently, then regrets it a moment later when Angie goes, “Say, if you want, I can leave and let you unpack.”
“No, no,” Peggy protests, stacking her hats up on the bed and avoiding eye contact. She doesn’t want to push Angie away, on the contrary, in fact, but there’s the whole agent thing and the whole secrecy thing and she doesn’t even know how she’s going to worm her way out of the curfew every single night, let alone keep whatever she’s doing from her neighbor, and her head is so clouded with the risks and logistics of it all that she can’t even concentrate on what’s happening. “I enjoy your company, I really do—” and Angie brightens at this “—I’m just—well—a bit scatterbrained, that’s all.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Angie says, but she’s quiet now, and Peggy misses the sound of her voice.