Chapter Text
"Thank you all for agreeing to this meeting on such short notice."
It's all but panted out in a flurry, rapidly enough to sound like the entire sentence has congealed into one long-winded word—for good reason.
"I hesitate to ascribe to this the dictionary definition of 'meeting,'" points out Ricky, ever the intellectual.
"I did not agree," points out Misha, ever the contrarian.
Right then, one of Ricky's crutches is buffeted by a stray foot rushing against the current, and Noel's face puckers when a careless shoulder pops the bubble of his personal space. Ocean hastens in front to walk backwards and address the four of them at large.
"Look," she babbles, flicks over a shoulder for obstacles, "I understand on-the-go is not the most convenient option for a rendezvous, but it was either this, or six in the morning before lectures."
At this, Noel delivers a look that can only be described as lethal. "You're clinically insane if you think there is any circumstance on this planet under which I would have done that."
"If we're raising questions/comments/concerns, I also have one," Ricky announces, releasing a handle to raise his hand. There's no time for this, but Ocean squints when he presents his screen. It's the mobile text-chain on their cellphones. "Why did you say there would be, quote, 'SANCTIONS'—all caps—should we fail to show up?"
Misha's arms bisect the area of his chest. "Yes," he gruffs. "What the fuck is this suction?"
"And why the hell did you sign it like a Victorian woman sending a telegraph across the Atlantic?" Noel jabs a finger at the tail end of the message: Sincerely, Your Peer Ocean O'Connell Rosenberg.
Ocean's head tips. "I sent it from Connie's phone. I had to clarify."
Everyone just blinks.
"She was too fast," mutters Constance, a little too much like an apology.
"Look— can we tackle this all later?" Ocean begs. "This is urgent."
"Oh. Of course. Then, by all means." Noel sweeps a careless arm out—nearly clocks in the face an unassuming pedestrian but recovers, with a clear of his throat. "Do tell, O Supreme Leader, why it was so desperately imperative to meet in the fifteen minutes between classes."
"I had a dream," Ocean bursts.
They nearly stop straight in the middle of the sidewalk.
At a consort of disgruntled murmurs from tardy lecturegoers, everyone starts walking again.
"Oh," says Noel, concisely. "Shit."
"Shit," Misha agrees, suddenly a lot more tolerant of the whole rendezvous situation.
"A premonition?" launches Ricky.
Ocean keeps on, the words tumbling fast. "In a sense. You all know how I had dreams about you, and you had dreams about me."
Four nods.
"And, I told you. About the Guy—Thing—and, whatever. How it felt like something was just, not—complete. Well"—she takes in a breath, some amalgam of anticipation, nerves, unknowing flooding through every extremity all at once—"I saw the last person. That we need."
An avalanche of questions/comments/concerns.
"Are they familiar? Have you seen them around before?"
"This person is almost dying, too?"
"Kinda need to know what they look like, genius."
"I don't think so," Ocean addresses in succession, "almost certainly, and, I was getting there, Speedy."
The image is still as sharp, touchable, awake now as it was unconscious—achingly.
A storm of threads, angry. World of string, everywhere. Everything caught, unraveling apart, going and going and going until nothing is all that's—
Ocean's breath catches.
Head shakes it all away. Because in any case, with total certainty: "She had brown braids, and the greenest eyes."
This sinks in.
Everyone seems to let it, stepping steadily across Callwood campus with worries in their brows and frowns in their lips.
"Okay. So, we've gotta find a chick with brown hair and green eyes. Great," Noel finally deduces. "That narrows it down to a quarter of the female population at this goddamn school."
"Which is approximately six-thousand one-hundred and seventy-eight undergraduate women currently enrolled in the Callwood University student body," adds Ricky, helpfully.
Noel's face contorts. "Awesome."
"Six-thousand," Misha whistles. "This is like—like swimming pool full of girls!" he proclaims, squinting to measure, vertically, the depth of a chunk of air, for reference.
"Big swimming pool," Ricky attests.
"You know where we are finding her, then? This, lady, from dream?"
At this, Ocean deflates.
Each backward step starts to drag, as the reality slowly seeps in. "Well—no," she admits, ever so slightly small.
"Okay, okay." The gently-urging tone of Constance's voice is an effective anchor back to Earth. "No big deal. Let's start here: How did you meet all of us, after the dreams?" she asks, ever reasonable.
Nonetheless: "It just," Ocean musters, hands floundering around senselessly, "kind of…happened."
One black brow arches on Noel. "You're gonna need to get a little more specific than that."
Everyone's stepping slows, to a pensive drift, and Ocean falls in beside. The waves of classgoers push and pull, back, front.
"I'd have a dream, the night before," she musters, halting. "Then, sometime after I woke up, that day I'd, see one of you. For the first time. Well, except for"—something strikes, and she glances over, at—"Constance."
The Constance in question blinks. "Me?" she has to make sure, an illegible look on her face.
Ocean blinks back, not so sure what the look on her own might be. "The same night we met in Hansen," she affirms. "And I, um, I—yelled. I dreamt we were"—a loved shag rug, a curlicued cord, a B-F-F—"closer."
The readability of Constance doesn't change. "Oh."
But she does, then, hover, closer, on the sidewalk. The softness of her knuckles happens to briefly graze the freckles on Ocean's fingers. It's warm.
"It, it was less intentional, before," Ocean plows on. "I didn't know what we know. Now, we have to…have to finish, or"—her hands lock, unlock, trying to spark about the next words, maybe—"or complete the whole, or something." That's it. "That's how it feels."
For a minute, it's relative quiet. Just a dozen shoes on concrete, overlapping chatter, and the five of them walking, none of them answering.
There's the distinct sensation, all of a sudden, knowable without looking, of Connie's hand on a shoulder. Ocean looks anyway. "If it happened on its own before," she tries, gently, "it might happen on its own now."
Constance doesn't lie—not really. And the sentiment, out of her mouth, make some degree of logical sense.
But: "No," it comes out, before there's the chance to take a breath and reconsider. Once Ocean's lips have formed the fateful word, however: "No. Look, I, I didn't get here by sitting around and—waiting for things to happen," she insists, only a little feverish.
"I'd like to point out the disparities between undergraduate admissions and whatever the hell this is," Ricky puts in.
It doesn't matter. "Our lives could be on the line, here—how are you all just, fine with this?" Her arms flail about in their general directions, at which they create a collage of varying expressions. "Are you really okay with doing nothing and waiting around, after our first lead in weeks?"
Stiff silence. Again.
Finally, "Have you considered," Noel asks, some strange degree of gravity to his voice, "that maybe nothing, kinda, is the thing, Einstein?"
Misha shrugs, in unbothered agreement. "It work before."
"n = 3 is a contextually convincing sample size," Ricky piles on.
Constance just looks, worried.
But something itches, at the cage of Ocean's ribs like it might claw free.
"No," she insists, never surer. "No, there's got to be—something to do. There will be something—there is no way we're just, leaving this up to chance! I mean," she huffs, an almost-laugh, "you're supposed to make opportunities, not—"
"Take this!"
In one instant is the vast open sidewalk of Callwood University—in the next, immediately shoved up close enough to blot out the sun and accordingly sending both feet screeching to a halt, a flyer.
There's a bundle of oofs as faces crash into spines with the abruptness of it all, but the sprightly, paper-wielding man in his logo-stamped tee doesn't seem to notice. Ocean's eyes cross, uncross, face jumps back a distance acceptable enough to unblur the words packed on the page.
The minute they do, the guy doesn't even have to launch into his rehearsed spiel.
Her hands do, indeed, not make but take the flyer, friendly design creasing beneath the pinch of some fingers.
I'M A SURVIVOR…WHAT NEXT?
Feeling lost? Needing support? Not sure how to take the next step?
US, TOO.
Visit Cliff's Edge Near-Death Experiences Support Group
Wed 7 - 9p.m. Kennedy Rm. 202
The pieces of a sliding puzzle start to arrange into place with a satisfying series of clicks until, crystal clear, picture put together, the whole within reach, Ocean grins.
"Clear your Wednesday nights," she says. "I know where we're going."
* * *
"This is going to be shitty," announces Noel. "This is going to be so, so shitty."
Not nearly an effective deterrent, Ocean keeps on at the front of the line. "I'm not so sure crappiness-degree has any bearing on the matter," she informs over a shoulder.
He speed-walks just to catch up close enough to shoot a pair of steak knives with his eyes, arms shoved across his chest and fingers drumming along the bone of his elbow in that way they do when he's obnoxiously irritated. "Are you kidding me?" he verifies.
"You know I think kidding is lying, Noel."
"Oh, you are so full of— I did not sign up to talk about my feelings," Noel spits, crooked over so violently he looks more like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. "I'm here to look for a nondescript girl in your head to find out why I almost got hit by a car—which, is really riding the line. I'll have you know."
His mouth opens to issue what is surely another slew of irrelevant grievances, until: "Is good to talk about feeling," says Misha.
Noel freezes. His head cranks around, to the great big burly man in question. "You," he has to check, "want to speak…at a support group?"
Misha shrugs, casual. "It is strong to bare most wounded part of your fragile soul for everyone to see. You are not scared anyone can break into hundred little pieces. You keep together. You are brave."
"Deep, man," commends Ricky.
At this, Noel un-hunches, one arm unraveling to touch a stirred hand to his heart. His features soften remarkably. "So, you're really gonna open up?"
Misha pshaws. "Hell, no. These bitches do not need to know my shit."
Noel goes right back to hunching, face flat. "Huh."
"Watch your mouths," clucks Ocean, "and take some 'chill pills.' I don't think talking at this thing is going to be a necessity. We're just here to look."
"Yeah." Constance snorts, starting to bubble into impromptu giggles, "I mean, can you imagine if they had you sit in a circle, sing Kumbaya, and then went up and put a gun to your head if you didn't—"
She blanches. A cricket whistles.
"Okay. That was—yeah, that was bad." Her voice gets progressively tinier, until it ends in a peeped: "Sorry."
But Ricky's head shakes. "No, no. You've got a point. No need to worry the room will be our emotional tampon."
Three more lighthearted snickers. One wrinkled nose.
Fortunately, the time for gross imagery comes to an end.
Kennedy, in all its nondescript glory, sits unfussily at the seldom-visited western edge of Callwood campus. In the young hours of the evening, there's hardly ever a reason to stop by Kennedy Classroom Building, which is accompanied only by the neighboring Student Accounting Services and Department of Jazz Studies. Just beyond and behind, Cedar Ave hums with the odd car, similarly discreet, because if there's hardly a reason to stop by far West, there's hardly one to drive it, either.
On this fateful evening, however, Kennedy is destined to be anything but insignificant.
"You all remember? Who we're looking for?" Ocean may be babbling, as Misha brandishes open the double doors with too much force. "Just, keep your eyes peeled," she urges. "Remember: brown braids, green—"
"We know," Noel cuts in, and she rightfully comes close to whirling on him, but then the look on his face turns out to be half as infuriating as it seemed like it would. "Maybe you should take a chill pill," he says, not gratingly.
Independent of this, Ocean plows inside Kennedy Classroom Building and up the stairwell. "I will not be taking anything." The words reverberate off the walls. "I'm making this," she vows, quieter, low enough for an echo not to repeat.
She starts, however, at the top of the landing. That distinct sensation, again, just as everyone shoulders past.
Ocean twists around, already knowing: Connie's hand squeezing, slight, on a shoulder. "It'll be cool," is what she murmurs, over their chattering down the hall.
"I know," Ocean tells her. Because she'll make it be. "Thank you," she adds, anyway. It's the thought that counts.
This wrests a smile from Constance, but one that doesn't dent her dimples.
Four minutes before seven p.m.—because early is on time—the assemblage of them comes up on the propped door of Kennedy Room 202, situated at the very back of the building.
Ocean pauses, strides before it. Eyes cast furtive squints left, right, before promptly wrangling the lot of them by the sleeves and shoving into the alcove with the nearest drinking fountain. Assorted grumbles/yelps of displeasure, which are ignored as her spine thrusts up against the button.
"Listen: Be. Normal," Ocean hisses, entire spiel underscored by a steady stream of water bubbling into the bowl. "We can't get kicked out, or something. Look for her, but don't make it weird."
Noel aims an incredulous look. "You're the one giving us how-to-be-normal lessons?"
"Now is not the time, Dollarama Dracula!"
"Whoa." Ricky frowns. "Okay, maybe chill."
"I am so chill!" Ocean shrieks. Then, reiterates, cooler, "I am so chill."
So, too, for whatever unknowable reason, does everyone else frown.
"Noel has point," pipes Misha.
Ocean represses a groan, and the profound urge to rake a hand down her face. "We don't have time for jabs at my normality-rating, Misha, what could possibly be the—"
"Having loud conversation in public hallway is pretty weird."
She jumps upright, blinking. The trickle of the fountain stops. "What? This isn't—"
Pain.
Searing. Blinding. Begging, in a way where it was merely imploring all the times before, and a visceral cry might burst from her lips.
Okay, Ocean might've said, I get it, you can knock it off, if there were the remote capacity to. If it were possible to think, let alone form coherent words, past the burning, flaring pain skewering both temples through with something a little like a hacksaw lit on fire.
You can, rings the memory of unconsciousness, from every oppressive direction. We can.
Another femtosecond or hundred years of pain. Her hands might fly to her head just to keep all the splitting pieces together but it's futile, effort slipping away like sand between fingers.
Just open your—
Ocean gasps.
The noise trickles away. Fire douses. Black spots begin to shimmy and dance out of view.
"—possessed by Lucifer? Hello? Are you—okay, fuck, welcome back."
She blinks, up, at Noel. Up because, as it's now become evident, her knees—the stupid things—briefly caved.
Before there's a chance to protest the whole thing, Misha's reached beneath both arms and plunked her upright like a glorified wet cat by the scruff.
"Hey— I don't appreciate being, manhandled," Ocean squawks, only vaguely breathless. "I'm fine."
"Well, you were bewitched by a foreign agent, for a good two-point-three-six seconds," argues Ricky.
"No, no, no." She waves this away, because of course they wouldn't know. "This is a good thing!" Ocean enlightens them. "I haven't had one of those since I met all of you. We're close. She has to be in there. So, let's get—"
"Ocean."
From the way her thumbs fasten both palms to hers, flattened together, clicked into place: "Constance," Ocean says back, reflexively.
Delicately, behind her there's the rest of them slinking out of the drinking-fountain nook, backs receding to glue to the wall around the corner. Misha starts whistling.
It's just Constance.
"Are you sure about this?" she urges, voice turned down low, only for her. "You're—tense, you've never had a thing that bad before, I haven't heard you call Noel Dracula since you met him—"
"What does that all have to do with anything?" Ocean counters, frown crimping her own lips, now. "I don't understand. Tonight is supposed to fix everything. I, I thought you cared, about solving stuff."
"Of course I care about solving stuff, Ocean, but I also care about—"
Constance stops.
The grip of her fingers slackens, from where at some point they'd started squeezing. She sighs, heavy and deep.
"Just," Connie tries, small in a way that feels strange on her, "swear you'll—" She sucks in another breath, clears whatever the words were going to be with a shake of her head. "I, I mean, I'm here," she settles for, instead, "with, you. And—stuff. Okay?"
Ocean turns her hands over in hers. Cold, a little, always, until now. "Okay," she says, shrinking down to meet her where she is, small in equal measure. "Thank you."
This thought counts, too.
It's a minute past seven p.m., and so the five of them duck inside Kennedy Room 202.
It's no surprise that the interior is as unremarkable as the exterior. The only aspect betraying this is a support group and not a Contemporary Jazz Analysis lecture is the desks, all arranged in a summoning circle supposedly intended to conjure vulnerability; and some lopsided illustration on the chalkboard of a stick-man scaling a mountain, bolstered by some similarly crude figures at the top yanking him up by a dangling, undeniably precarious-looking rope.
Apparently, Cliff's Edge does not operate under the same late-is-unacceptable framework, either, because if the quiet conversation around the room is any indication, the meeting hasn't yet started. Which is, in this case, convenient, if unprofessional.
Almost in the same breath that they've set foot across the threshold: "Hi, hi. Welcome," croons a guy with sandy blond hair and a sporty snapback, voice carrying a soothing lilt to it, like aloe on some kind of almost-death burn.
It's all vaguely familiar, until it registers: It's him—the same cap-wearing upperclassman manning the booth on Central Green, what feels like aeons ago.
"So glad to have you all," he says, to their general congregation, "and so glad you've found your way."
He aims it in this direction, remembering in his eyes, and Ocean starts. The lot of their curious gazes tangibly bores into her back. "Well, I— busy, with the, you know— figured I'd finally— 'm here," she musters, articulately.
He holds two pacifying hands up. "Everyone's journey goes at their own pace. Here." Mr. Snapback steps aside to gesture about a structurally unsound folding table. "Grab a name tag and take a seat wherever's comfortable."
With a nod, Ocean pops open the cap of a tastefully blue Sharpie and bends to scrawl in the empty space.
HELLO
my name is…
OCEAN O'CONNell rosenbe
The empty space runs out.
Ricky peers, curiously, at this. "I don't have to put the full government 'Richard Potts,' do I?"
"Of course not," Ocean waves him off, presently engaged in scouting on tiptoes for five seats and one brunette. "Just—write whatever. Doesn't matter."
He appears to find this answer satisfactory, from her periphery. "Whatever you say."
Tags are stuck and seats are taken; one or two other group-goers trickle in through the cracked door, and the chatter starts to die.
"Okay," says Mr. Snapback, stepping into the center and silencing the last of the buzz completely. "Welcome back, Survivors. Wonderful to be alive. We have some new faces this week"—about a dozen heads turn to this slice of the circle, and their ragtag bunch gives a collection of awkward waves and/or incomprehensible gang signs—"so, let's start off with a productive icebreaker."
Ocean's gaze ping-pongs about the room. Brown braids, green eyes. Brown braids, green eyes.
"Let's go around, this way, and let our fellow Survivors know your name."
Dirty blonde. Brunette—no, that's blue eyes. Red. Brown, brown—green eyes, bleached hair. No, no, no.
"Oh, and, how you almost died."
Ocean freezes.
"This is an excellent way to practice radical acceptance of the experience," he goes on, "which is the first step on the journey to healing. No pressure, but please, be encouraged to try. I'll start." His throat clears. "Hi. My name is Joey, and I almost died from alcohol poisoning. Eleven months sober."
"Hi, Joey," drones the room, like a procession of particularly supportive androids.
A sunny grin spreads across his lips. "Great! Alright, now. Let's start with…" Joey spins, around and around, until his eyes brighten, then squint, heart apparently set on: "Noooo…ell? No-ell?"
Noel, ambushed, as it were, flails down to look at his tag. Then, slowly, cranes back up, like he's just aged twenty years in two seconds. He sighs.
"Hi," Noel drags himself to recite, with the same unbridled enthusiasm of a tax auditor with a major depressive disorder. "My name, is—No-ell. And, I, uh, almost died. By, a"—suddenly, his hands throw up, as if submitting to the futility of it all—"a car crash. Whatever."
He slumps backwards, swallowed by the desk with a grating crank.
"Hi, No-ell," echoes the army of automatons.
No-ell looks defeated.
Misha, next down the line, wastes no one's time. "I am Misha," he gruffs, hoodie'd arms looped across his chest, "and I almost die by nunya."
Joey's head tips, politely. "Sorry, don't think I quite caught that. Did you say, 'nunya'?"
"Yes." He sniffs. "Nunya business."
Joey, after a minute's hesitation, manages a generous thumbs-up.
"Hi, Misha," the room mumbles, disjointed.
Around the circle, more ice is broken: Elijah, stroke. Carmen, electrocution via toaster incident. Bethany, drunk driver. And, almost-death by almost-death, for the first time it's obvious that everyone here is from a constellation of walks of life: young and old, unassuming and gnarled, healthy and at-risk, the scope of Cliff's Edge stretching far beyond just Callwood campus.
And yet, none of them have brown braids and green eyes.
None of them have the magnetic pull.
To Constance, and Noel, and Misha, and Ricky, there was always the feeling: I need you. I know you, every bone-deep instinct would scream, at some time or another, no resisting the intrinsic sensation. Of a fine yet persistent length of thread, wound tight around and around the center of Ocean's gut and tugging, no matter how barely, closer and closer still, urging them to become familiar all over again.
It's not here, now.
With each name and every death, her toe tap-tap-taps the floor. Breath holds itself for the feeling, then nearly spews itself out in a sigh when it never comes. No nostalgia, no knowing—just a roomful of strangers who almost died, but she's here. She has to be here. Would it be reasonable to request everyone kindly tack on the month and date of their near-death?
Aisha, comes another. Accidental ingestion of a trombone mouthpiece.
Nothing.
Ocean nearly groans out loud.
Then: pain.
Not in the temple region, but rather, in the form of a swift kick to the shin. The almost-groan morphs into an almost-yelp, and her head swivels around. Noel, the shin-kicking criminal in question, flares his gaze, emphatically. The favor is returned.
"You're not presenting terribly normal," he informs, in a heated whisper. "Try being a little less visibly disappointed in peoples' choking hazards, would you?"
"I can't find her," Ocean hisses back, never minding this. "Do you think he'd let me ask when they died?"
"I think you need to be institutionalized."
It's at this moment their heads are pulled back around, by the wobble of Joey reading, in something of a flustered manner: "Dr—Droopy…McCool?"
Ricky puts up an arm. The scrawl of his name tag is on full display. "That's me."
Write whatever, she said. Doesn't matter, she said.
Ocean's face thunks itself in both palms.
"Hi. Name's Droopy. Droopy McCool, and I almost died via cardiac arrest secondary to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy."
A wavering pause. Then, not a little unsure: "Hi…Droopy McCool."
Joey appears all too happy to shift gears. He lingers, expectantly, with that enduring smile on his face.
"Oh. Oh!" Constance jerks up straight, fire-engine sneakers swing beneath the desk all the while, hands reaching to rearrange her boxy frames, though they weren't terribly askew in the first place. "Hello. Hi," she babbles, with a flappy wave of the hand. "My name's Constance. And I almost died, um, on a roller coaster!"
It's announced with the same commemorative cadence as an A on a paper, or passing a driver's test. Factual, content—glad.
Her energy must be infectious—as it often is—because the rest of the circle intones, with marginally more enthusiasm: "Hi, Constance."
Connie sits back with a grin, slight.
Nothing in her is sore, in the way maybe it should be. It's only this thing that happened, that didn't knock life out of place but rather into it.
None of it was ever bad. Because I was still there, wasn't I?
On Hansen's side steps, insisting so earnestly that being bed-bound for weeks and the long, jagged scar forever warping her skin, the sight of which is still singed in the memory of her, was worth it.
Necessary, in fact, in some inexplicable way.
"Ocean?"
Everything stops.
Yanked back into the present dimension, by a cautious: "O'Connell, Ro—uh, Rosen…"
"I got it." Her fingers scramble to censor the botched name tag. Then, as it happens, the whole room is watching. Unwavering, waiting, expecting.
Your name, and how you almost died.
"Hello. My name is Ocean. O'Connell Rosenberg," she takes care of that part. "Ba—bachelor of arts, in political science, on the pre-law track." Muscles seize, an inch. "And…"
Please, be encouraged to try.
"And, I, um…"
Your life, too, was on the line, far before you knew you'd be getting it back—twice over.
"Excuse me— and, and—"
And isn't that a goddamn wonderful thing?
"—I almost died," admits Ocean, loud and weak. Yesterday, and not long ago; far away, and right down the street; twice over, and a hundred times. Cliff's Edge is still watching. Still waiting. "I almost died," is all she says, quieter and weaker still, "and that—that is why I'm here."
Yesterday is still the truth.
Quiet.
Joey, too, waits, until he might realize there's not much else to be waiting for, at which point he flashes that airy grin. He has to stir them into it, with an imploring swish of the hands, but still, the circle recites, "Hi, Ocean."
It's the end of the line.
The productive icebreaker comes to an end.
Throughout the rest of Cliff's Edge Support Group for Sufferers of Near-Death Experiences, no one pulls, magnetically. There's no feeling, no knowing, no nostalgia or searing, urging pain, no matter how the five of them eye the door relentlessly for brown braids and green eyes, or strain ears for the odd mention of a September fourteenth which shifted a life irrevocably.
There's just four stilted rounds of charades and dollar store hot chocolate.
"I told you," mutters Noel, after everyone's bidded their tepid goodbyes. Everything is buzzing. Nothing is right. Why was this not right? "Shitty. This was shitty."
Traveling along the hall, now, away, away from 202. "I, I don't understand." Ocean resists the urge to trawl a hand through some hair. "This was supposed to work. It—had to."
"This doesn't mean she won't turn up," argues Constance, instantaneously. Down the stairwell, the patter of five sets of steps resounding off the walls.
"Correct." Ricky, crutches in arm, halts on the landing to type. "There's a statistically non-negligible chance one of us could see your description of this girl, say, on the way to classes this week. If five of us are looking, that multiplies our chances equivalently."
"I look while I make coffee," Misha puts in, voice just a little less rough than it tends to be.
On the first floor, now. Exit in sight. Evidently, Ocean gives in, fingers frizzing a collection of heat-damaged ends more than they already were.
"I know, but, we can't, just—wait," she might be begging—to who, for what, it's not clear. It doesn't matter. "You guys, I, don't know where else to look. I don't know how to fix this."
Around the corner.
"This has to be it. I, just, I have a feeling—"
The feeling.
The thread—weak, knot threatening to come loose around the soul of her but still holding.
Still pulling. Down, down, down the long length of hall, feelable just in the backmost recesses of each sense, if every outside twitch and tingle is suppressed, save the thud of her heart and the gasp of a breath and the tug, in the polar opposite direction.
About to snap.
Wait.
And Ocean runs.
Nobody asks—with a second's delay they, too, are running. Closer, closer, close to the faintest pull which is now an unrelenting drag, to the end of the corridor where clearer, clearer, now clear is a figure. One figure, one person—one brunette, hand to a double door.
They—she—turns around, at the thunder of their five sets of steps, the five that could be six. Two twin, brown braids dangle down her shoulders, profuse with cowlicks.
And her greenest eyes blow wide.
In an instant, she bursts open the door and, as appears to be the overarching theme of the evening, runs.
"No!" the word launches from Ocean's lips.
The five of them bolt in pursuit.
Bright Kennedy fluorescents are all at once extinguished into cold, open night air, manicured campus grass soundly crushed underfoot as everyone lunges across Callwood University's West Edge.
"We're friendly!" hollers Constance, desperate, coils slicked back by the wind as they're running, running. "I swear!"
"This may look misleading," gasps Noel, in testimony, "but we don't want to kidnap you!"
The green-eyed, brown-braided girl's rapidly receding back is already nothing but a dark blip among an unlit lawn. Ocean's chest burns, shrinking, each step shortening every breath but they're almost complete.
"HI. HI. HI. HI," spams Ricky, arms otherwise preoccupied with hobbling faster than it seemed anyone on crutches was capable of going.
Misha's great leaping legs, even, begin to falter. "How the fuck you run so fast!" he enquires, between thick gulps of air.
She's getting small, small, smaller. Zigzagging through the trees, swallowed by the nothing.
"Please," Ocean wheezes, as loud as the oxygen will make it, "this is, meant to…"
The head of brown braids and the greenest eyes are gone.
Everyone staggers to a stop, in the barren grass behind the Department of Jazz Studies. The air goes crowded with nothing but the whistle of the wind and the heave of five breaths, bent in half, hands on knees, anyone, anything else long gone. Five.
There's only five.
Nobody talks.
It takes a while, for anyone to try.
Then: "Who the hell," pants Noel, "is Droopy McCool?"
* * *
From the minute Ocean's eyes fling open in the morning, dreamless, they look.
First thing, at a Ruby Refectory breakfast. Whole wheat toast and black coffee in hand, the universal rule of watch-where-you're-going is soundly ignored as weaving between tables, Ocean scours each one. Every seat and plate, looping around the dining room at least four and a half times and in distraction colliding with one chair leg and three disgruntled upperclassmen before it's determined, no one that matters is here.
Next, in every class. Maybe, sitting right before her and just never properly seen in the hundred-fifty person Writing for the Disciplines lecture hall—by some unlikely odd, this whole time could've been, a political science major, too, simply camouflaged by the backmost seats of Democratic Origins and Development, waiting to be seen. Waiting to be noticed.
She is not.
In the library. On every floor, from basement to fifth—doesn't everyone have a paper to write, a midterm to study for, a book to annotate? From psychology to science—Ocean combs every shelf, every subject, peers at each nose buried in a copy of Organic Chemistry, all the souls in line for a midday pick-me-up at the coffee stand. Spends too much time crawling these aisles, not enough studying for next week's exams, but it's all just books.
Rows, and rows, and rows, of meaningless books.
Even off-campus, for the first time. Specifically to haunt the mildewed carpets of the antique shop on Laurel Street, slipping invisibly inside behind the rusty clank of the bell on the door and looking. More, more looking, for anything: a face of porcelain, beautiful and breakable. The brushable twirl of golden ringlets, the paint of blush on miniature ivory cheeks, those empty, empty eyes that seemed to cry though they couldn't.
There's nothing on the shelf but a Raggedy Ann heavy on the Raggedy, and a veterinarian Barbie missing a clump from her ponytail.
Somewhere, on this campus, in these halls, on these sidewalks. She's meant to be somewhere.
If it happened on its own before, it might happen on its own now.
But it hasn't. But it did, and the chance slipped away, in the dark behind the Department of Jazz Studies, taking, with those brown braids and eyes of green, the only shot at fixing this.
Ocean ends up looping Laurence Vintage Since 1929 until the sun sinks straight through the water-stained windows.
Only when it's gone completely does she leave, as faintly as she came.
Back across the street, back towards everything known. The everyday, deeply-traveled hike up the hill in the center of campus is dark, streetlit sidewalks lonely enough that those are a waste to search anyway, too. At the top, with a weak shove, one door's bell is traded for another.
Jingle, jingle.
The four heads tucked in The Bean Scene's lone corner booth turn.
Ocean slots inside it, beside them. Hi, hey, hello, they all echo.
"It's late," murmurs Constance, a little dim. "Working overtime on that paper?"
"Yes," Ocean lies. "A—a lot to think about." The truth.
Noel clocks them both, by the twitch in the very corners of his expression. But it's not the thing he says. "So," is what it is, the only thing save the scent of pressed dark roast that's heavy enough in the air to grab, "has anyone got leads?"
Quiet.
The answer was obvious before the ask, but the oppressive sound of nothing is the nail in their coffins.
"I looked all around Scientech. It's open again," says Ricky. "I thought, maybe, she might be in another department."
He doesn't have to finish, to know she was not.
Misha's aggressively orange apron is still slumped loose around his neck, from where he sprawls low in his seat. "I pick up shift tonight. So I can watch, if she order coffee," he supplies.
She did not.
"I, I snooped around," tries Constance, "where we had a C4C meeting, today. By Baylis, on the lawn. A bunch of people were out there, with frisbees, and books, and, stuff. It's a nice enough day, and everyone's out."
She wasn't.
Noel takes in a breath, deep, and bracing. "And I—like to walk the greenway, sometimes. When—when shit gets real, or, whatever. Doesn't matter." He plucks at the skin of his fingers enough that it bleeds. "It was stupid, I, I know, but, I was hoping…"
She didn't.
Ocean, too, sighs. Tries not to think of how this booth—two on one side, three on the other—isn't whole. A splintered fraction.
"I looked," is all she tells them, "and I didn't find her."
Quiet—again.
The speakers are off for the night, even—no jazz, nor Eminem. Just the errant clinking of glass, rattle of the register, and loud, loud nothing.
"Here." Abruptly, Ocean blinks up, dazed. Ricky has something primed between his hands. "Catch."
A heartbeat before imminent disaster, her fingers manage to flounderingly clasp around a mugful of espresso, flung across the length of the table with reckless abandon. The ensuing exhale of relief buffets the steam gently curling on top.
Misha notions a limp hand, to the rest of the table's cups brimming with a patchwork of caffeinated beverages. "I make drinks." A frail attempt at a consolation prize, for someone who managed to mix up a cup of café au lait with Strawberry Dream Extreme.
Appreciated, nonetheless.
Cautiously, Ocean peers inside, poised for disappointment. But the contents, swirling loosely on the surface, are a surprisingly acceptable deep-brown-but-not-black.
"I told him oat milk, not almond—just a splash." Flickering up from the correct coffee, Constance. "Four shots of espresso," she says, softly, fondly, "because two is for children, three is for exam week…"
Ocean swallows. "And, five is for the end of the world," she finishes, a little weak.
Connie grins, tiny.
It tastes like some of the most flawlessly, senselessly sweet espresso ever brewed, and it tastes like what it is to be known.
Ocean can do not much else but gape, at Constance. At the knowing in each rounded edge of her face, thinking of the thought spared to get the color and the milk and the shots just right, and it feels like a very complicated equation is solving itself in her head, very slowly, right then.
"Thanks," Ocean says, a revelation.
Connie blinks back. "Of course."
Time starts moving again.
Ricky's gaze wanders distantly, to where it's impossible to tell if he's admiring the decor or calculating the distance between planets. Misha has one bouncing leg lolling off the edge of the booth, straying into a nonexistent customer's hypothetical footpath, with a face more troubled than it once seemed like it was capable of looking. Noel draws a finger along the rim of his cup, whose varnish was chipped recently and feverishly, if the black flecks of lacquer littering the table are any clue. There's still a mound of whipped cream left, in Constance's full cup, the best part, she always says, neglected long enough to congeal and melt into the surface of her mocha, bigger things swallowing the space in her mind.
Ocean wonders.
Head craters in both palms, shoulders curl, as each thought turns, around and around and around again. Porcelain faces, and almost death.
Jangle.
Things beautiful and breakable, and what's meant to be, and the solution to it all. The right thing to do to fix—
Pain.
A throb, at the temples, only enough to hiss through some teeth but Ocean stops.
The bell of the door.
Face rips away from both hands, startles clean upright. The pull—back, back, back.
She whirls, all the way around in an instant, chest small and eyes wide and knees weak all in one because there standing in the doorframe, with the brown braids and the greenest eyes.
"Hi," she says. "My name is Penny Lamb, and I was decapitated."