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“Your Popper 43 is off.”
There is only this. There is Alice’s scent, her laundry detergent and a whiff of ozone when she’s upset. She’s there, she’s next to you, and her battle magic doesn’t work either.
There is the memory of her shining hair, splayed across the floor. Her body is so still, lying in the sunlight, mere feet from the bodies of your friends. It smells like blood, and some nameless animal fear. You watch the rune spin in front of you and beg it for one more chance to hear Alice laugh.
There are her eyes when she asks you about Julia, and your heart is in your throat and if you didn’t know the taste of sadness so well you’d think it was fear. You want so badly for it to be fear.
“You could.”
And then there is this. This moment on the rooftop, naked. It’s summer, it’s balmy, and you can smell the sweat of your own body, the sweat of hers. The hemp of the ropes that bind you. The alkaline, stinging smell of the bone paste smeared across your cheeks.
You do not want to be alone. You want to reach out and touch her, all over, you want to edge close enough to catch some of the gleam of her success.
You don’t know what to say when she tells you how she tries to hide. There is no comfort you know how to give—all your life you have followed the women you love, watched as they brushed past you in a blaze of glory. You’ve tried so hard that you can’t imagine hiding success.
You tell her that, or something like it. You fly. You hope she forgets; you know she will not.
“Remember that spring? At the foot of the mountains in Fillory?”
A new piece—Eliot’s eyes are full of pain. And now there is this. You don’t remember the last time he was not drunk. You remember his brilliant eyes, laughing as you tried to shoot a fish with an arrow, you remember the language he and Margo shared in all those secret glances.
His eyes are always full of tears now, and you wonder if the salt water of them is eighty proof, like the vodka in his flask, or if they still taste like the sea. You wonder if he'll ever let them fall.
Eliot, sprawled across the banister of the great stone steps. Walking across the great lawn towards him, unsure. But he might be the only one who can tell you why you’re here. You see him snuff out that cigarette and you wonder, in a moment, what his brand of magic tastes like.
“On that note, we’re out of wine.”
Margo is there to scoop him up. She’s always there, somehow. You wonder how she knows, if she’s slipped a charm into his pocket. Probably not, you think, struggling to stand. Some magic happens without charms; some magic runs deeper than Popper could ever explain.
Eliot is slim and lanky and surprisingly heavy when he can’t support his own weight. His head lolls, and he mumbles something about wine, and for a moment you hate him, and you hate Margo, and you hate all of them. The bottle is still in your pocket, and you wonder how long you could go without taking your feelings back at all.
She doesn’t make any motion to charm him lighter, to float him up the stairs like you want, and your heart feels bruised already. You’re not sure you could do the charm on your own, and you get the sense that it’s forbidden here, now, in this moment. So you stumble up the stairs together, Eliot’s arms thrown around both of your shoulders, and watch him drop onto the bed.
“We’re gonna do whatever we can. I promise.”
There are Margo’s lips on yours, and they are wet with her tears. You wonder how long she’s been crying without letting you see. There are your hands on her hips, and you feel like you’re drowning, after pouring all those feelings into the charm and then drinking them back in.
Eliot is there, his hands on your shoulders, his fingers struggling to undo your pants. You know that he was drunk when he passed out, and maybe you're still drunk too, but his face looks open, and desperate, and you can’t push him away. You don't want to.
Margo’s hair doesn’t smell like Alice. It smells sleek, like your mother’s coconut hand lotion, and you can’t name the perfume she wears but you can taste it on your tongue when you kiss her throat. It’s hard to remember, after, details beyond that. It’s hard to remember the why.
“I love you so much. Like, so much.”
There is only this. Your hand on your naked chest, and his hand thrown over your naked hips, and her hand thrown over his. And there is the memory of something you don’t recognize, and the weight in your chest like checking yourself into the hospital one thousand times over, and the dry, sandpaper feeling of your tongue in your mouth.
You can feel the sun on your face, and the sheets thrown carelessly across your hips. Eliot’s legs tangled with yours, Margo’s smooth ones tucked over one of your knees. You feel wrung out, empty, dried up.
And the only thing you can see, in this moment, is her face. Alice is watching without a word, expressionless. And you know that if you open your mouth, you’ll break, but you can see from her face that she has already broken.
You don’t realize how much it will hurt when she turns her back on you. You don’t realize how much it hurts when she does. It is only later, when she has stood and walked out, back to you, and you sit up and untangle yourself from your bed mates, that the hollow feeling expands. And then there is nothing else, and it consumes you, but it’s too late.
The scent of coconut follows you all the way to your room, and it lingers long after you've shut the door.