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Sam is shaking, holding her knees to her chest and struggling to stifle her sobs.
Her crystal is on the bed, open to her voicemails. Most of them are from her mom, and more recently there are a few from The Maidens, most recently is one from Aelwyn. But it’s the very first one that’s open, yet to be played. One minute and 17 seconds. Sam’s vision is blurry from crying, but she reaches a hand out and presses the icon on the screen for speaker-phone.
“Sam!”
Penelope’s voice fills the room. Sam folds further in on herself, crying so hard she can feel her chest being pushed in by her knees.
“I’m outside your house quite literally right now and I’ve called you like, four times! You need to be there when I get my car, you’re going for a ride in it first. I want to show you Elmville in a whole different dimension. If you don’t come out in the next five minutes, you’re uninvited to my birthday. JK! I would never do that, I love you too much. See you in a bit, Sammy.”
The message ends and Sam is left with only the sounds of her ragged breath to fill the silence. She knows it’s bad for her to do this, this is exactly what her therapist said was ‘self-destructive.’ She knows Penelope is dead and gone and she shouldn’t still feel guilty about her death but she does and she doesn’t know what else to do. She looks up at the clock on her bedside table, neon numbers glowing stark white in the orange-tinted glow of her room from the hanging lights above her bed. It’s just past midnight, which means it’s the 13th. Penelope’s birthday. She would’ve been twenty this year.
Despite how truly awful Penelope was, Sam’s heart aches for the tragedy of her life.
She died just after her eighteenth birthday. Her death left behind a mother and father who lost their only child. The Everpetals separated before the year was over.
Sam still sees her body sometimes, broken and crumpled, on the floor of the gym. Forgotten. It’s an image that has haunted her dreams since then, along with Penelope herself. In some dreams she’s horrifying, her personality reflected in her rotting flesh and blood dripping from the shattered pieces of mirror sticking out of her forehead; her mom’s prom dress ripped and singed from the fires of Hell. In other dreams, though, she’s laying next to Sam in bed, smiling at her with a hint of mischievousness. It’s the same look she gave her when Penelope first kissed Sam in this very bed, late at night during one of their sleepovers.
Sam hasn’t drank since she was rescued from Kalvaxus’ lair. The taste of alcohol brought back the memory of Penelope’s lips on hers, hot with a hint of cinnamon, as they kissed in the basement of the Everpetal’s house in a game of spin the bottle. There were times where they kissed without anyone watching, of course. In the bathroom at a party, in Penelope’s car after school, outside Krom’s in the wee hours of the morning. But there was always that acrid taste Sam had grown to hate.
Sam hasn’t drank in almost two years, but every part of her body is screaming at her for something to make this awful feeling go away. Her chest feels hollow, the urge to do something, anything that could make the pain stop close to consuming her. She curls in on herself and squeezes her eyes shut, trying to steady her breathing. Every self-destructive impulse she has is fighting to take over, overwhelm her with anger and sorrow until she rots away.
It’s all Sam can do to sit up and hold her phone, her fingers shaking as she types out a message.
Sam: bad. penelope. can you talk?
She doesn’t know why she’s surprised when three dots appear as Aelwyn is typing. She doesn’t sleep, and her trance schedule is more irregular than anyone else Sam has ever met.
aelwyn <3: Of course, my love. Do you want me there with you?
Sam can’t help the way her stomach flips when Aelwyn calls her that. She knows Aelwyn wasn’t shown much affection in her life before she moved into Mordred Manor, and throughout their relationship she’s struggled with Sam being affectionate, but she has never once withheld any love she felt for Sam. It makes Sam blush, even after many months.
Sam: please
aelwyn <3: On my way. 1-10?
Aelwyn told her about the number system after she returned from inpatient a few months ago. She said it was helpful for her because she struggled with voicing how she felt, and it was easier for her to think about her emotions in terms of numbers. Sam liked the system too, although she’s far more comfortable with talking about her feelings than Aelwyn.
Sam: 7
aelwyn <3: Okay, I’m calling you.
Sam’s phone rings not a moment later, and she answers immediately. She’s still shaking as she holds the phone to her ear, but Aelwyn’s voice is grounding, keeping her just on the precipice of spiraling.
“Hi. Tell me what’s going on.” Aelwyn sounds like she’s in a car, the low rumble of a motor in the background of the call.
Sam tries to respond, but her voice gets choked up in her throat as another sob erupts through her chest.
“Okay,” Aelwyn says, and the sound of the engine gets louder. “Fuck stoplights. I’ll be there soon, Sam, okay? You’re going to be okay.”
Sam nods, even though she knows Aelwyn can’t see. She knows what she wants to say, what she has to say, but the thought of admitting it causes her to cry harder.
“I’m turning onto your street now. I’m right here, honey. I love you.” Sam can hear the distant sound of a car approaching her house.
“I’m pulling up now. Do you want me to come inside?”
“No,” Sam manages, her voice horse and shaking. “I’ll meet you outside.”
“Alright. I’m going to hang up now. I’ll see you in a minute.”
The call goes silent, and Sam pushes herself off her bed onto her feet. She tiptoes out of her room to the door, careful not to wake up her mom. It’s not too late, but she infrequently gets to sleep at a reasonable hour because of her job, and Sam doesn’t want to take that away from her.
She puts on her pair of slippers that sit by the front door and steps outside into the cool evening. Crickets and frogs are chirping around the neighborhood and the dim glow from the streetlight is the only thing illuminating Aelwyn as she leans up against Jawbone’s station wagon. She’s dressed hastily in a pair of shorts and oversized Fig and the Sig Figs t-shirt, her hair hanging loose just past her shoulders. She straightens up when she sees Sam and rushes to her, enveloping her in an all-consuming hug.
Sam melts into the hug, letting herself cry onto Aelwyn’s shoulder as she rubs small circles on her back. Aelwyn is whispering to her, soothing her as they hug.
Aelwyn pulls away first, although she’s still holding Sam’s arms, her eyes sharp as she stares into Sam’s. “What’s going on?”
A sob threatens to bubble up in Sam’s throat, but she pushes it down with a deep, shaking breath. She knows what she has to say and that Aelwyn will understand. That doesn’t stop it from being terrifying to admit.
“I miss her.”
Aelwyn’s expression softens and she pulls Sam in for another hug, somehow even tighter. Sam hugs her back just as hard, clinging to Aelwyn to tether herself to something.
“I understand.” Aelwyn places a gentle kiss on Sam’s forehead. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Sam nods, and Aelwyn steps away to open the trunk of the car. She sits, folding her legs up and leaning as far back into the trunk as she can. Sam slides in next to her and Aelwyn loops an arm around her shoulders, her other hand holding Sam’s. They’ve spent many hours like this; in the back of one of their cars, talking about anything and everything. On their one-month anniversary, Aelwyn drove them up to Harroway Bay for the day, where they had a picnic on the beach and then watched the sunset from the trunk.
With Aelwyn gently stroking her knuckles, Sam feels herself begin to ease.
“It’s her birthday.” She says, and Aelwyn hums in response, urging her to continue.
“She was awful, I know that. She was selfish and cold-hearted and mean. But… she was my friend. And as terrible as she was to me and to everyone around her, she didn’t deserve to die like that .”
Sam sees Penelope’s body again, in the corner of the gym while she brings lightning down onto Kalvaxus’ back, hoping her cries will be mistaken for anger instead of sorrow beyond anything she has ever felt before.
Aelwyn doesn’t say anything, but her silence encourages Sam to continue. “I just wish that sometimes other people understood she wasn’t always so horrible. She was capable of love, I think. I hope she was.
“I don’t miss her being a bitch, or her stupid fucking popularity complex. I miss when she was my friend and it didn’t matter what other people thought of her. I miss her old self. But I don’t know how genuine that was.”
Aelwyn is quiet, thinking, as she pulls Sam closer to her. Sam doesn’t mind the silence. It means Aelwyn is listening, thinking about what to say, if anything.
“If she came back,” Aelwyn says gently. “what do you think you would do?”
Sam considers that for a moment. She doesn’t know what she would do if she saw Penelope again after so long. All that she’s certain of is that it would be an emotional shitshow.
“Probably cry.” She says. “Maybe yell at her, or kill her myself. Maybe kiss her.”
Aelwyn nods. They had talked about Sam and Penelope’s ‘relationship’ before they started dating. It was important for Sam to tell Aelwyn the truth, as hard as it was to admit. That she loved Penelope, sometimes more than herself. That it had made her do some truly stupid things, but she couldn’t help herself. Penelope was everything to her, and when she died, it was like Sam had lost herself too.
“I don’t want her back,” Sam says. “But I don’t want to forget her either. I wouldn’t be who I was if it weren’t for her. I just wish it didn’t hurt as much.” She squeezes Aelwyn’s hand, and she squeezes back.
“It might always hurt,” Aelwyn says. “But it will hurt less and less as you grow beyond who you were with her.” She pauses.
“I miss my parents, sometimes. Mostly my mother, but my father too. I don’t miss how they treated me or Adaine or how they set impossible expectations; but I do miss knowing that even if they were terrible, they were there .”
“Yeah, I think that’s it.” Sam says. She looks up at Aelwyn, her face just barely visible in the darkness. She’s strikingly beautiful, just like Penelope was, but her eyes are so much kinder. Sam loved Penelope with everything she had, and she loves Aelwyn just the same. The difference is that Aelwyn loves her back exactly as she does.
“I love you.” She whispers, leaning up to meet Aelwyn’s lips. She doesn’t say it back, but her kiss says everything she can’t say.
Kissing Aelwyn is not at all like kissing Penelope. Kissing Penelope was like jumping off a cliff into the ocean dozens of feet below; terrifying, and there was always the bitter taste of alcohol to go along with it. Kissing Aelwyn is so much better, gentle, and tender, enough to make Sam dizzy with love. She could do it all day if she could. Her lips tingle from Aelwyn’s peppermint chapstick, though the feeling of her body pressed against hers warms her down to her bones.
They pull away, and Aelwyn whispers against Sam’s lips, “I love you too.”