Work Text:
Pieces of newsprint lifted with pincers, shuffled into place: history that no longer matters as soon as it's set in stone.
You need to make something of yourself.
One of the harsher remarks you’ve made to Jonathan; one of the more encouraging you’ve made to yourself.
Pieces of newsprint, black-and-white years. Pincers of reason, emotion. History of matters of the heart, still being written.
Whenever you can, you choose rage over fear, cruelty over grief. This does not make you a good person, and you’ve accepted that. The secret to survival is, often enough, being a bitch.
Not that anyone has even noticed. Bitterly, you feel you’re less than memorable, though you’ve been the school slut (briefly) and the mouthy intern (infamously).
You are probably known by those who don’t know you for sweet manners, for occasional flashes of warmth. Some of those people probably think you’re loyal. Some people who’ve forgotten your particular history might not know that all the anger in the world, all the vicious edges you sharpen on yourself can’t take away your guilt.
You want to blame Jonathan for things going halfway-cold since October, but this is your second failed high-school relationship, and you are the common denominator that matters. You are aware of this. You are honest in your self-assessment this time.
You are doomed to be alone. Alone and icy-hearted.
This is the kind of shit you’ve been writing in your diary.
Yes, you still keep a diary.
Senior year isn’t supposed to be so lonely, but if you flip that coin on its head, you’re not really allowed to complain about loneliness anymore. Think about everyone you’ve hitched your fate to: Barb, Steve, Jonathan. They’re all gone from your life in one way or another, for one fault of yours or another.
Now, to be good—in deed if not in character—you have to make it on your own. Craft your own purpose with pincers and ink. You have to manage your staff, stop worrying about friends. You have to carve out time for your mom despite how much you hate watching her careen through her mid-life crisis, even in slow motion.
Especially in slow motion.
“So you’re not even coming to California?” Mike demands, with a fair approximation of the sneer you taught him.
(Being a Wheeler means going for the jugular.)
“No,” you answer. (You snap.) “No, Jonathan was supposed to come here.”
Mike shrugs. “Your loss, I guess,” he says, and he doesn’t bring it up again.
“I thought you’d be, uh, in California,” Steve says, not looking at you, during one of the momentary lulls that do occur even in the middle of chaos. “Spring break.”
You look at him a little too long: at the eyelashes that curl like a girl’s, at the square jaw and broad brow. Even when he’s not looking at you, you can tell what he’s thinking.
You say,
“Guess it’s a good thing I’m not.”
History’s no longer set in stone.