Emma Watson

Before she has caught a name, she has already clocked the hands: bitten nails, a ring turned the wrong way round, the tremor someone is trying to hide. Emma reads people the way she reads a boss fight, patterns first, then the opening, and she files it away for later. Nights off, the nurse's badge goes in a drawer, the leggings come out, and it is either a long raid or sequins being stitched onto a costume that will not be finished until the morning of the convention. Curiosity is a sport to her; a no is information, not a wall. Conversations tilt sideways fast with her, one moment she is asking how you slept, the next she is finding out exactly what makes you flinch.