Chapter Text
What happens next is simple. Mary-Kate’s father speaks to Bella’s parents. Bella ices her out for a few days at school until her parents reassure her that they won’t uproot her life. A punishment is handed down to Jennifer Dilber — one day of detention, if you can believe it. Mary-Kate’s life doesn’t fall out from underneath her in the way that she may have expected.
Only, it has.
Mary-Kate walks around in a fog. She gets up in the morning, she goes to school, she plays basketball with her friends, she spends time with Bella. Yet she feels herself wilt a little more each day. It would almost be less scary if it happened all at once, but there it is. She ran on fumes for so long — acting like who she thought her best friend needed her to be — and it’s taken everything out of her. She senses that her father and Carrie know something’s wrong. They try talking to her about it, but she insists that she’s fine.
Mary-Kate isn’t fine.
Her father seems to think the solution is sitting his daughters down to talk things out now that he knows the full context. Mary-Kate refuses. Not from the “I hate you, don’t talk to me ever again” standpoint. She physically cannot bring herself to sit up straight and listen to Ashley. A genuine apology would mean no more to her than a half-assed one — and they have given each other plenty over the years to know the difference.
Mary-Kate is curled up on her bed and staring through the attic’s window. She contemplates getting up to use the telescope, but she does not make any movement toward it. She should study for her history test tomorrow, but she doesn’t do that either.
There is a knock on her door.
“Come in,” Mary-Kate hears herself say.
The door creaks open and she hears footsteps. Mary-Kate closes her eyes.
It isn’t her father or Carrie.
Blandly, Mary-Kate asks, “Is dinner ready?”
“Not for another twenty minutes.” Ashley sits on the edge of her bed. “I’m scared, Mary-Kate.”
“Why?” Mary-Kate sighs. “Did Blockbuster rent out the last Titanic?”
Ashley purses her lips and stares straight ahead at the wall.
“I’ve never seen you like this.”
When Mary-Kate doesn’t respond, she feels Ashley’s eyes on her again. She huffs.
“What should I say?” Mary-Kate asks. “‘Take a photo, it’ll last longer’? I’m not exactly one for a Kodak moment.”
“That sounds a little more like you.”
Mary-Kate glares at Ashley.
“Go.” Ashley shakes her head. “Leave, Ashley.”
“You seem depressed.”
Ah-ha.
“You’re not a doctor,” Mary-Kate snaps. “I’m barely your sister, never mind your patient.”
“You are my sister.” Ashley’s voice has a new edge. “I just haven’t treated you like a sister should. I’m sorry about that. If only you’d let me show you.”
“That’s not my responsibility.” Mary-Kate sits up in bed and tries to ignore the way Ashley stares at her rat’s nest of hair. “I don’t owe you my forgiveness or my happiness or anything else.”
“I guess not,” Ashley says. Her voice trembles. “But what about what you owe yourself?”
Mary-Kate’s lip wobbles. She blinks several times and stares at her comforter.
“How’s Bella?”
Mary-Kate’s head snaps up in shock.
“How’s Bella?” Mary-Kate hisses. Ashley recoils. “Are you kidding me? Why the hell are you asking me that, Ashley? You think we’re disgusting.”
“I do not.”
“Recent history suggests otherwise.”
“I fucked up!” Ashley shouts. It’s Mary-Kate’s turn to flinch. “I treated you both like shit, and I hate myself for it.”
“Only because Dad has grounded you for the rest of the school year and is making you spend your weekends volunteering at the Illinois Federation for Human Rights.”
Mary-Kate’s eyes had nearly rolled out of her head when she heard that one.
“Yeah,” Ashley says, candidly. “I’m learning a lot and probably wouldn’t feel as bad if he didn’t make me go. I don’t dread it as much anymore. Mostly, I’m just embarrassed, because I know people know why I’m there. Why should they have to be polite to someone like me?”
Mary-Kate doesn’t expect that sort of honesty. She doesn’t know what to do with it.
“Jennifer Dilber’s always been a bitch, but what I did was worse,” Ashley exhales. “Sisters are supposed to protect one another. Not care about what other people think.”
Mary-Kate crosses her arms self-consciously across her chest.
“You treated me like I had leprosy,” Mary-Kate says. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to just move past that like it was nothing.”
“It isn’t nothing,” Ashley blurts out, shaking her head. “I know this won’t be something you can forgive overnight. Or … at all.” Ashley swallows. “But I want to be a better sister. And I hate to see you in any sort of pain. You look so sad and distant all the time.”
“I’m tired,” Mary-Kate says. “I’ve just … I’ve run out of energy playing someone I thought I was supposed to be. I couldn’t think too long or hard about that shit people said, because I needed to be the one who stood up for me and Bella. It’s not magically fixed, but it’s better. Enough so that I can breathe again. It just feels like …”
Mary-Kate trails off, but Ashley understands. Because, of course she does.
“You’ll never get enough air?” Ashley supplies. Mary-Kate stares at her. “That’s how I’ve felt since you moved up here.”
Mary-Kate stares around the attic space. It looks like how she always kept her room, but she still can’t get used to calling it her bedroom. It’s the attic.
Her home base was always beside her sister.
“There’s something I still don’t understand.”
Mary-Kate waits for Ashley to continue, but the other girl hems and haws.
“Just ask it.”
“Did you always feel this way? About girls?” Ashley clarifies.
Mary-Kate shrugs. She feels a slight prickling of discomfort, but not enough that she rejects the abrupt shift in conversation.
“I never understood the craze around boys. Even when I tried to lean into it, I prefer the person I am when I’m their friend.” Mary-Kate has never admitted that aloud. “I don’t know if it’s girls. Or if it’s both. Maybe it’s just Bella.”
“She seemed pretty cool. Before I ruined everything,” Ashley replies.
“She is,” Mary-Kate says, not touching on the last part. “She’s really cool.”
“I’d like to apologize to her. And get to know her.” Ashley pauses for a beat. “Whenever you think it would be the right time.”
Mary-Kate finds herself nodding. The two sit in a slightly less uncomfortable silence. Until:
“Not when the door’s closed.”
Ashley squawks.
“Mary-Kate!” Mary-Kate’s lip twitches.
It’s a start.