Archive of Our Own ^beta

Adaine’s first summer falls in between the warm, meandering stretch between freshman and sophomore year.

Obviously, she’s lived through summers before. Thirteen of them, in fact, even if that number includes a handful she doesn’t remember (and more than a handful she wishes she didn’t). She’s lived through—or, has made it through—thirteen years of strained mornings blending into strained afternoons, a different kind of terror sitting low and unfetted in her throat as the hum of the air conditioning tumbled in time with the rattling of her chest, prolonged attempts at breathing. The sad symphony of her room. Tailbone incorporating into the hardwood, petrified; listening for omens in the unending inhale of the house below; eyes unmoving from the handle of the door. 

(Sometimes, she thought about sawing herself free from the floor and getting behind her dresser and pushing it across the floor until it blocked her bedroom door. She thought about moving carefully, slowly, so that no one could possibly hear it moving across the floor. It would be easy enough—there was no chance of anything falling off it and alerting anyone in the house, because she wasn’t allowed to keep things on the dresser in the first place. It was an old family heirloom, passed down by relatives she’s never met, that her parents never spoke of. 

She thought about pushing out the screen of her window and tumbling to the perfectly kept grass beneath it—or, in her more desperate, indistinct fantasies, the ones that worried her—maybe into the rose bushes, also perfectly kept, thorns grabbing hold of her skin and tearing it clean open. She thought about never looking back as she ran anywhere her legs would take her, blood cool on her shins as it soaked into her socks, puddled in her shoes. She thought about running and running and running and—

The dresser was too heavy, and she was too weak to push it.)

It was mostly fine as long as she was mostly quiet, but Adaine wanted more. Wanted to feel the sun on her skin (Your complexion couldn’t handle it, her mother said, you look sickly), wanted to swim, to play, to go out (Are you saying what we provide for you here isn’t good enough? her father said), and she wanted to know what it was like to have her clothes stick to her with sweat from being out in the world, free (And be more unseemly than you already are? her sister said).

She was about eight years old when she finally learned it was better not to want. But now she’s fourteen and they’re all gone, and her house is nothing more than a damp patch of earth where nature refuses to grow (she doesn’t blame it). Now, Adaine is a full-time resident of the Strongtower Luxury Apartments and instead of a mother and a father and a sister she has a guidance counselor, a high school dropout, a best friend, and a working set of lungs.

It’s all a little bit miraculous, she thinks.

Kristen lives with Jawbone too, now, which is a whole thing because Tracker is also there. Jawbone apologies, profusely and at least twice a week, that they don’t have another bedroom in the apartment for them to share. Tracker offers up her room to Adaine and Kristen—which, normally, would seem like an empty offer (Adaine’s received a lot of empty offers), but something about Tracker—something about everything, here, that seems genuine. 

It’s all a little bit miraculous, and all a little bit terrifying.

Kristen refuses before Adaine has to be anxious about refusing, which she is grateful for. She catches Jawbone catching her relief, overhears him later that night softly talking to Tracker about making sure they don’t overwhelm “our new girls”, as he put it. Something about that sentence made Adaine have to walk out onto the balcony to let out this strained little sound of an exhale, something much too big for her chest or the apartment to contain. Which is where she looked up and saw Fig smoking on her dad’s balcony, which is how she and Kristen ended up back on her pull-out couch for the night (same generic model as the one they shared at Jawbone’s, with the notable difference of scratch marks instead of burn marks), sandwiched in like sardines as Kristen waxed poetic (if waxing means neurotically spewing and poetic means groan-yell-infused spoken word) about Tracker. 

(Adaine did cry, the first time she asked Jawbone if they could go for a sleepover at Fig’s. 

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, kiddo.”

“No, it’s not—I want to.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I—I feel bad.”

“About what?”

“I don’t… I don’t know. I just feel bad. You—” A cold voice in her head, familiar words placed underneath her tongue. “I don’t want to be ungrateful for all you’re doing for us. Kristen and me.”

Eyebrows raising, a softening. “Aw, Adaine. You think—” Careful words, blame decidedly ungiven. “I want you to be able to have fun with your friends. It would make me real happy if you and the girls had a fun night together over at Fig’s.”)

The start of the summer begins with couches and meticulously folded blankets, more out of habit than anything else. A quiet hope in practice rather than theory; a buzzing anticipation for the months ahead that, actually, was not entirely unwelcome. 

The rest of it happens as she always dreamed it would happen: quickly, entirely, and without all that much effort on her part. 

“This is cute,” Fig says, propping her chin up on Adaine’s shoulder, looking over it to peer at the shirt she’s landed on. 

She hums in acknowledgment as she glances down at the price tag. Eighty gold pieces. “It’s sort of expensive,” she mumbles, clenching her teeth down on the last syllable to will away the voice of her mother. Stop muttering, Adaine. 

Fabian levels her with a look, bitter timbre in her head fading to nothing. “You and I—” he stops, spares a pitiful, sort of withering glance at Fig, who steps back to cross her arms and purse her lips. “You and I both know that eighty gold pieces is not expensive,” he finishes indignantly, which is—annoyingly, predictably, fondly—exactly along the lines of what she thought he’d say. 

“I don’t have parents,” she counters, sighing, “or a job.”

Fig scoffs, not unkindly. “You have a magical jacket you can pull literal gold pieces out of!”

“That I’m not wearing right now because it’s way too hot, hence.” She gestures around them roughly. This is the reason they’re even here in the first place—after her house burned down, Adaine only had the clothes she was wearing and one (1) sweater she’d accidentally left at Fig’s the week prior. She’s been borrowing clothes from pretty much all of the bad kids—and Jawbone, and Tracker, whose cutoff muscle tee for some band she had never heard of had elicited a scandalized Ah- daine! from Fabian the day before when she walked into Seacaster Manor.

“You look so cool!” Fig had squealed, only making Adaine’s face redder. At least it was only them there at that point.

“Thanks.” It was weak, and they both knew it. “It doesn’t feel very me,” she admitted a beat later, feeling a bit silly even as she was saying it. As if she had cast a spell—as if tugging anxiously at the raw edge of a shirt collar suddenly counted as a somatic component—they both straightened, provocative mirth evaporating into the crown moulding.

“Well that’s no good,” Fabian said.

Fig nodded. “You wanna feel like you.”

And now they’re here at the Elmville Mall, crowded around a display of shirts in the first store Adaine wandered into, Fabian and Fig happy to follow. Fabian and Fig in all their hard-earned confidence, looking exactly like themselves, looking for Adaine in overflowing racks of cotton and daringly high hopes. 

“Who cares about your magical money jacket, you literally have me,” Fabian says, picking the shirt off the rack and shoving it into Adaine’s hands as he rolls his eyes. “Your big wizard brain remembers that I’m rich, right?”

Fig gasps. “You? Really?”

“Yes, Fig.”

“No…”

“I’m rich!”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“You couldn’t—what do you mean you couldn’t tell, my maid literally served you breakfast in bed this—in the bed of one of my many, very opulent guest rooms—”

Adaine lets them bicker on, turns the hanger over in her hands. It’s nothing remarkable—nothing cool and edgy like Fig wears, or cool and weird like Kristen. It’s just a t-shirt, blue with a deep yellow trim on the edges of the sleeves and collar. It’s so simple she almost feels silly for picking it up in the first place, almost puts it back—

And then it’s being taken away, Fabian throwing it back onto the rack and thrusting another identical hanger into her hands in the span of a couple confused blinks. “I gave you the wrong size,” he explains, all but waving off the sudden, incredibly urgent burst of chest-splitting affection Adaine is sure shows all too transparently on her face, “and you’re at least trying it on.”

She ends up going home with the shirt, plus a tank top and three pairs of the same shorts in different colours. They’re somewhere between the length of what Fig wears—all tattered and ripped with strings of fabric hanging down over her bare thighs—and what Kristen is sporting—just an inch above her perpetually bruised kneecaps, faded to a pale blue from years of camp days spent in the sun. Adaine’s shorts are mid length, sitting up high on her waist as she turns and twists in the mirror of Jawbone’s bathroom, waiting for something to be wrong with them, with her, her in them. Her mother always told her that peach just made her skin look even more piqued, just drew attention to it. But all she can think of here, now, is Kristen’s ruddy cheeks, stretched over a smile because she can’t stop laughing about the sunburn she got napping out at Fabian’s pool. It’s a good colour. It’s a good fit. There’s room in the legs, a decent stretch, space to grow. A good range of motion. 

You have to test the range of motion, Fig had yelled from behind the changing room door, It’s summer, and we’re going on adventures, so. 

Like extra credit adventures? For school?

No, like best friend adventures. Summer adventures. 

Best friend adventures, summer adventures, including but not limited to the following: holing up one of three fast food restaurants until close, until the sun has long since gone down, until Adaine’s a little lightheaded from sipping at the bottom of her drink, just ice and air, sharp and sweet and almost a little earthy in that way fast food ice can only really be. Debating on whether it’s the ice or the cups or the syrup in the drinks, and then continuing that same debate out in the empty parking lot (empty save for the steady, reliable beacon of Gorgug’s van, a battered lighthouse in a sea of uneven pavement)  because the restaurant closed and one of the people working there is Gorgug’s girlfriend’s friend, and she has no problem telling them all to fuck off.

Loitering in the parking lot because that’s really the only place to be—at this hour, in this town—but it’s not a bad place to be, not at all, and also they’re just not done yet. Not done with the night, with each other, with the dreamlike haze—or maybe that’s just the humidity, or maybe that’s just the golden thread of summer weaving them through the minutes as they drip by, syrupy sweet and slow. Piling into designated spots and falling asleep against the cool press of the van window, safe breaths fogging the surface. 

Waking up to smiley faces and hearts drawn by careful fingers, never disturbing. Waking up to limbs piled on top of hers, a numbness born out of actual love, for once. Climbing trees, getting stuck in trees, being rescued and performing rescue missions for those stuck in trees. Watching Riz wail on Fig’s guitar and trying to even pick up Gorgug’s axe, Fabian willing himself to know how mage hand works. Tears, sometimes. Laughter, a lot of the time. Rolling down hills, and finding out that rolling down hills in a bathing suit is a really good way to ensure an even distribution of bug bites over an entire body. Rolling down hills anyway and thinking, it wasn’t that bad last time, right? Remembering that it was, actually, remembering that the time passed at the same rate anyway, rolling along, relentless in the tandem pursuits of mundanity and extraordinary, each moment blending and folding into the next as if hand stitched—perfect, meticulous, bespoke. Adaine, wonderfully, feels no compulsion to tug at the thread and unravel it. She tugs instead at hair, unraveling braids and reassembling them again just because she can, because she has the time and because Gorgug wants her to—

He’s getting pretty good at it, too, hands in Kristen’s hair as Fabian erupts into laughter on his porch, the six of them gathered outside as not to keep the Thistlesprings up. Gathered into each other, basking in the glow of the porch light throwing strands of gold into the path of Gorgug’s fingers, over and over and over again. Quiet walks home where the sadness worms its way back in, and yelling traipses along the highway where it gets exorcized again, at least for a bit. Crimes committed, technically, if one considers it being an accomplice to be looking at rocks with Riz while Fig sits on Gorgug’s shoulder to vandalize an exit ramp sign, or while Fabian and Kristen pick up those rocks and chuck them at the freshly painted dicks adorning it. Eyes sore from headlights, throats sore from singing too loud, too long. Knuckles sore from knocking down doors, a different rhyme for every one. Running down train tracks, running down carpet so not to be the last one in the elevator, ceremoniously shoved out and forced to wait until it comes back down. 

One million little motions, molding muscle memory into the new shape of their friendship, automatic. Every breath a data point, a never-tiring realization of oh. This is what it’s supposed to be like. This is what it’s supposed to be like. 

A thought she still hasn’t dared to speak, just in case: This is what it’s like. 

She’s at Fabian’s once—just her, actually, slept over after watching Desperate Housewizards too late and cajoled into waiting around for him in the morning to finish his sunrise fencing lesson so they could finish the season—when Cathilda learns she’s never been to the beach. 

(The path of the conversation could have been easily tracked and predicted, perhaps, by anyone else her age, but for reasons that will shortly become obvious, Adaine did not anticipate its trajectory and therefore could not adequately deflect in time to avoid the outcome.) 

“Cathilda, darling, could you please popcorn a watermelon for Fabian to eat when he’s done his lesson? He always looks so parched, and you know I worry.”

“Of course, dear.” Cathilda caught Adaine’s confused look with a wink as she answered Hallariel, pulling out a cutting board from the cabinet without another word. Adaine was nearly finished with her yogurt—raisins, nuts, and a healthy sprinkle of herbs as per elven tradition, presented without her even asking—when Hallariel sighed herself into the adjacent barstool, grimacing into her, as Adaine understood it, newly unaccompanied orange juice.

“You know, he used to eat the green part when he was little,” she says, giving Adaine a lopsided smirk.

Adaine laughs politely, mostly into her bowl. She can see it quite easily, actually, the image of him biting into the rind, pretending he liked it as he laughed about being dared to do it, even though no one did such thing. She can see him doing that now, can see Kristen snorting orange soda out of her nose as Fig films it on her phone, Riz jumping in as not to miss out on the fun. Gorgug off in the corner, already eating the rind, not sure what the commotion is about. 

Hallariel smiles again, clearly pleased at Adaine’s amusement, clearly thinking it’s her own doing. “I always say it’s the perfect summer food. Don’t I always say that, Cathilda?”

Cathilda looks up from where she’s working, soothing thunk of the knife on the wooden cutting board going quiet for just a moment as she says, “Yes, you always do.” 

“Hah! I always do.”

Thunk. She’s cutting it into thick slices, bright pink triangles just like it is in commercials and whatnot. Adaine doesn’t mention that she’s never actually had it, let alone that way—never allowed to have it, only watch as it was served in stuffy summer salads at dinner parties she was forced to make an appearance at (and then forced to hide away from). She’s been grateful, this year, to be exposed to parents that aren’t terrible, but that comfort was often double-edged in the way that things often became Things. The heavy looks, the pointed offers—it was deeply kind, obviously, but sometimes it could be… a little much. But the Things that prickled at her the most often started as the most innocuous, little comments she didn’t even think twice about making. 

She doesn’t mention the fact that she’s never really had watermelon. 

“I don’t think we’ve ever been to that beach without watermelon, have we Cathilda?”

Adaine sort of tunes out at this, lets the adults have their conversation without intruding. She’s well past the age where it’s cute for her to cut in, and not yet the age where she’ll have anything of value to add, so. She thinks about Fabian’s fencing lesson—visible in brief lunges out the window set into the back door, distorted into fractals of rainbow light, like some sort of kaleidoscope. Thinks about books and foils and things that are expected and things that are provided, facilitated. Thinks about holes in the earth and yogurt and all of the one thousand miniscule fractures in her chest, like some sort of kaleidoscope. 

“Adaine, darling,” someone says, pulling her back into the here and now, “please tell Cathilda that beach towels do need to be replaced after every use.” Hallariel is looking at her expectantly, somehow waiting for something interesting to come out of her teenage mouth.

Adaine blinks, caught off guard by both the question and the fact that Hallariel seems to actually want to hear what she has to say. She looks down at the counter and wishes she was equipped to have a better answer, or one at all. “Oh, I don’t know, I’ve never been,” she says, not thinking. 

Which is exactly how she ends up in the back of Jawbone’s van, sandwiched between Kristen and Riz with Tracker in the front seat and Fig spread out over the entirety of the back row—a seating arrangement decided upon with a battle royale bracket fight of rock paper scissors that Adaine doesn’t entirely understand or remember. Which is fine, actually, because Fig and Tracker are harmonizing over Jawbone’s grainy cassette tapes and Kristen is threatening Riz with SPF 110 and they’re going to the beach. 

Cathilda, Hallariel, Fabian, and Gorgug are meeting them there. Adaine is getting live text updates from Gorgug—not even in the group chat, just the two of them, which is both thrilling and silly for feeling thrilling, at this point, which then works its way all the way back around to thrilling on account of the fact that Adaine even can feel silly and roll her eyes about feeling thrilled, and so on and so forth into perpetuity—about the traditional sea shanties that Fabian and Cathilda are emphatically screaming, smacking the door and steering wheel, respectively, in time. At one point he sends her a video on snapchat (because she has snapchat now) of Fabian yelling into camera, words barely discernible in the Bill-esque accent he’s taken on, with Hallariel in the background of the frame, swaying slowly in the front seat, eyes closed, moving as if there is another song entirely playing, just inside her head. Or maybe that’s just how you’re supposed to dance to sea shanties. Adaine wouldn’t know. She doesn’t ask, either, mostly because Gorgug also probably wouldn’t know, so instead she just sends a video of Fig playing air guitar and writes same. 

The beach isn’t as busy as Adaine expected (feared), probably because it’s early. The ten of them carve out a perfect spot not too far from some rocks that Fabian and Riz immediately run off to go climb. Jawbone plants a massive umbrella into the sand and deposits himself onto a towel. Hallariel does the same, promptly falling into trance under the sound of the softly crashing waves, rhythmic. Adaine herself is caught up in the sound of it for a second, an unbelievable sort of calm washing over her, quiet film of another world, another time pulled over her eyes; the soft, cool embrace of an oracular vision washing over her skin and her own voice gently whispering over her shoulder, Hey, just a minute, you should know—

And then it’s gone, sucked back into the undertow. She blinks thickly into the sun, wondering when the fog cleared up. 

“Adaine?”

“Hm?”

It’s Fig that spoke, but all of the group that’s left is looking at her, of course save for Hallariel, who is asleep. Adaine blinks again.

“I said do you want some?” She’s holding up a half eaten rind of watermelon, upside down like a too-wide smile, bite marks so perfect it might as well be in a commercial for the concept of summer. Gorgug nods encouragingly and Cathilda gestures to the tupperware full of cut-up watermelon, a pile of finished rinds abandoned in the lid. 

Oh, I must have been out longer than I realized, Adaine thinks.

“Adaine’s never had watermelon before, you have to show her how,” Hallariel drawls then, apparently awake under her designer sunglasses. Adaine is halfway through hoping her generous application of sunscreen helps to obscure at least some of the red in her cheeks when Jawbone, Cathilda, Fig, and Gorgug, all grab a piece of watermelon and take a bite in tandem, effectively showing her how, and then they’re all bursting into laughter and the red on anyone’s cheeks is no one’s concern at all. 

She sits down with the rest of them, gently removes a piece from the bin and takes a bite. It mostly tastes like water, which is reasonable, but it’s also sweet, and messy, and Adaine doesn’t even find she minds that much when some of the juice drips onto her skin. “It’s good,” she announces to uproarious applause. 

Cathilda offers her another piece, and she takes it.

Fabian and Riz are dueling with driftwood over in some tide pools by the rocks, Kristen and Tracker are nowhere to be found, Hallariel is asleep again (maybe), and Cathilda and Jawbone have pulled out their books for the club they have with Sklonda and the Thistlesprings. Adaine looks back out to the ocean, yearns. Other people—strangers—are swimming. Wading around in the shallows, yelling and laughing, jumping into the froth of breaking waves. Clearly it’s okay to go in the water; no one’s going to get mad at her. But what if none of the other bad kids want to go swimming? What if she goes out alone and drowns or something? Or worse, what if one of them goes out into the water with her out of pity and they don’t even have a good time? Everyone else is wearing their bathing suits, but what if beach trips weren’t really for swimming, just laying in the sun? What if she goes in the water and it’s fine but then they have to leave before she can dry off and she makes Jawbone’s car all wet? What if—

Fig nudges her out of her trance with her foot, lightly tapping against her shin. “Me and Gorgug are gonna go body slam some waves, wanna come?”

They both have a hand out to help her up from the sand. Fig is sort of bouncing in place, as if the second Adaine gives an answer she’ll be bolting out into the water, anyway. Gorgug is making a little puppydog face, nodding his head out to the waves, as if it would take any amount of convincing for Adaine to grab hold of both of them and answer, “Yes.”

The majority of the day surges forward with a pleasant dissonance, splitting itself up between a breathless, relentless onslaught of pure fun, and the dizzy press of floating exhaustion nestled in the interim. It’s equal parts relief and dread waiting on a cool breeze, the cold run up the sand as it sticks itself to every inch of skin. It’s the uneven keel of having rocks underfoot, undeniably real in every nerve. It’s salt plastered to shins, dry and tight under the spray of sunscreen, again and again and again; wet hair flying and sticking to cheeks; the taste of the ocean crawling onto lips. 

It’s perfect, in a word. Everything Adaine’s ever wanted, in several. 

Later, they get a game of volleyball going. Adaine opts to sit out so the teams are even numbers and wanders up the beach to Jawbone, tired limbs melting into the sand under the low, grizzled timbre of the good-natured laugh he gives as she flops onto her back on her towel. 

“How’re you doin’, kiddo?” Jawbone gives her a smile, leans back onto his elbows. Adaine hums.

How is she doing? It’s been a while since she asked herself that question and actually had time to think (dwell) about it. The past couple weeks—months, almost—have gone by in a whirlwind, dragging her along. Not unwillingly—she is a more than willing participant, it’s just that sometimes it knocks her off her feet a little bit. The summer is going by fast, just over halfway done, now. Adaine finds herself torn between desperately wanting to run backwards in time and relive the moments she’s already tucked away into the safe pocket of her memories, and reaching out to the next moment, and the next, and the next, all waiting in perfect succession. Right now she feels tethered between the two desires, a rare but perfect equilibrium suspended by that shimmering thread of time in the present, also very good, moment.

She wants to wrap it around herself, twist it around her fingers like the knots Kristen and Fabian spent an entire day teaching her. Wants to tether herself in the moment for just a little bit longer, stretch it out over the shimmering horizon in front of them. Right now, the sun is beginning to lower in the sky, casting long shadows at her friends’ feet as they shuffle back and forth over the makeshift court. It almost looks like dancing, if she takes her glasses off and just looks at the shapes. But then Riz laughs, bright and clear and absolutely uninhibited over the length of the beach, and she wants to see the way he throws his head back, so she puts them back on. 

The scene comes into focus in slow motion. Riz, when her eyes find him, is flat on his back, shaking with laughter. His knees come up, curling him into a defensive ball as Kristen falls too, half landing on him in her own laughter. It’s not loud, but if Adaine focuses she can hear it over the sound of the waves. Gorgug’s standing over them, hands covering his face but shoulders shivering as well, silent. Cathilda’s run off the grab the ball which is just now landing a long way off (a trajectory that Adaine and Jawbone will later learn—in a broken retelling—began with a ruthless strike from Hallariel that ricocheted off a mid-jump Kristen’s collarbone, sending her directly into Gorgug, who unfortunately got headbutted in the process). On the other side of the court, Hallariel is doing a traditional elven victory dance. Adaine hasn’t seen it in a long time, not since she and her sister used to play cards together on the playground at school, crouched over the painted line dividing the primary and junior yards, recess guards keeping a watchful eye to make sure neither of them crossed over to the other side. It launches a ribbon of sadness through her, a hard to swallow thing that plants itself mostly as guilt, after everything else has gone. 

But then Tracker is jumping onto Fabian’s back and hurling smack talk about how that point totally counts and that they’re totally fucking demolishing them, and Fig is crawling under the net to pile herself on top of Kristen and Riz, and Adaine feels the unrest dissipate. It’s still inside her—it probably always will be—but that’s okay. She looks over at Jawbone, an instinct now, looking for some sort of approval she knows he would just tell her she doesn’t need—

—and he’s already looking right back. She doesn’t find approval on his face, or even a knowing look like she’s caught so many times before. What she does find is something startlingly familiar, and soft, and wonderful. It’s the flare of nostrils pushing out a chest-deep exhale, disbelieving, with eyebrows drawn low and smile just a bit wobbly. It’s shiny eyes that can only hold her gaze for a moment before they have to look away, mouth opening and closing and opening again around words that could never do any of it justice. It’s newness quietly shedding its own novelty and becoming stunningly, achingly regular.

It can be this easy. It should be this easy.

In short, it’s someone that is just about as new to this as she is, and needs it all the same.

Adaine swallows back the sob that’s suddenly threatening to bubble out of her chest, big and now and all-encompassing. “I’m good,” she answers honestly, finally, reaching over to put her hand on top of his, “I’m really good.”

She’s really good, but sometimes it still finds her.

A hot shower is a luxury here, both in the sense that there are four people sharing a 1 bedroom plus den apartment, and in the sense that it’s a choice she gets to make. Adaine likes showers. Likes the feeling of water in motion, somehow in time with the writhing crawl of her skin, the two sensations becoming one calm, repetitive pulse as the frequencies began to resonate. She likes standing still. The cool press of tile, the rush of steam in her throat, the thick white noise of the water running over her ears, a safe barrier between her and her thoughts. The cool flush of air on skin as the curtain crinkled open, metallic rip of the hooks over the rod.

As a kid, she mostly took baths. 

Adaine and her sister weren’t allowed locks on their bedroom doors, and they weren’t allowed in their parents’ room, so there was just the bathroom. Mornings were no good, as there was always somewhere Aelwyn had to get ready to go to, but nights let her slip away under the harsh light, alone. But there always had to be a pretense, and a good one, because what if someone knocked? So she took baths. Hygiene was required, and that was an acceptable pretense, even if Aelwyn said it made her childish to still be taking baths instead of showers.

She didn’t like them. Didn’t like the way the water felt stale, stagnant against the buzz of her skin like an itch she couldn’t scratch, no matter how deep she dug her nails. Didn’t like the way she could see the film of dirt clinging to the bubbles, the way it all just laid there like her. The violent, unpredictable gurgle of the drain, the tight feeling of her skin under half-dried sweat, the cling of her hair to her chin. The way her body felt like a bloated corpse, bobbing against the walls of the tub like some sad thing hitting the rotted walls of a waterlogged dock, begging for someone to find her. 

She hated baths, but they took longer than showers, and the bathroom door had a lock. 

She didn’t always know what it was protecting her from, just that it was. She didn’t feel safe, but she felt saf er, even if she was sort of scared she might drown somehow. Even if scared wasn’t entirely the word for it, maybe. 

Adaine’s still a kid, now, and she’s found herself sitting at the bottom of the tub again. Stalling, or waiting for something bad to happen, or both. She’s not sure when she turned off the water, or when she sat down, or what order she did those things, but she’s here now, in it. 

She wants to just stay there, bail on their plans for the day. Knows that no one would get mad at her if she did—and that’s the thing that makes her not, in the end. Makes her pull herself out of the tub, body out of a memory, and wrap the ratty towel around her shoulders, slipping down as she reaches up to draw a smiley face on the mirror. In between the drops of condensation, she smiles back.

Today they’re at school, which feels a little weird, but not bad. Adaine thinks it fits how she feels, in general, today. The occasion is a very serious race between Fabian and Fig, born of them finding out they were both on their middle school track and field teams, and both their respective school’s top 100m sprinters. Adaine knows it’s serious because Fig is wearing honest to god running shoes, and Fabian is no longer talking smack. 

The two of them are crouched at the starting line of the school’s track, a massive gravel oval a ways off from the bloodrush field. Riz is off to the side, holding up his pocket watch in anticipation. Kristen is standing ahead of Fig and Fabian, Fig’s checker print sweater in her hands, ready to throw into the air. Adaine and Gorgug are in the middle of the oval, best seat in the house, idly pulling up grass and piling it together.

They likely could have picked a better day to do this, but both of them (and Riz) liked the alliteration of The Tuesday Trial of the Twin Track Tyrants, so. The air shimmers and bends with the force of the heat, casting Fig and Fabian in a dreamy sort of tableau not unlike an oil painting. Adaine doesn’t mind it, but Gorgug looks nauseous in his sweater, eyes trained on the ground, hands curled into the dirt like a hand in hair, not ungentle. 

The sweater goes up, politely struggles against gravity, then plummets to the ground.

Fig and Fabian are off, shooting down the track and kicking up clouds of dust behind them. Adaine doesn’t really have any frame of reference for how fast is fast, but they look pretty  damn speedy to her. It’s neck and neck until the very end, which is when they realize that they didn’t have anyone by the finish line to mark the exact end of the race and—more importantly—who won. 

“I totally won,” Fig is yelling, “My foot was definitely in front of yours.”

Fabian scoffs, crossing his arms. “More of my body was over the line.”

“That doesn’t count for shit, Fabes!”

“It definitely does, what rag-tag bullshit made up races were you running at Oakshield?” 

“Uh, ones that I won, with regulation fucking rules, and supervisors to make the correct calls, like me winning?” 

They turn to the rest of the group. Kristen is winded from her jog up to the finish, Fig’s dusty sweater around her waist. Riz is frowning at his pocket watch, a little ways back from Kristen, dawning on the same error that Fig and Fabian have realized. Adaine and Gorgug have not moved from their spot in the grass.

“Guys,” Fabian scolds. 

Riz has the good sense to look ashamed about it. “Yeah, we maybe should have thought that through a little better.” 

They declare the first race a warm-up and everyone posts themselves at their initial positions, with the notable exception of Riz at the finish line, now. Adaine and Gorgug pick themselves up and head over to join him, unofficial second and third judges. Kristen throws the sweater and they begin again, eleven seconds of terse silence, only interrupted by the sound of their feet hitting the ground. 

And, of course, Fabian’s cheering when he wins. 

It’s not by much, but Adaine would think Fig had been miles behind by the way he jeers at her, relentless. Relentless but loving, ending up with them both laughing more than anything else.

Then it’s a free for all, all of them matching up against each other to sprint down the track, kicking up dust into the rising heat. Adaine chose to wear flip flops so she mostly just calls the races, cross-legged at the finish line, leant forward with her chin propped up on her hands and elbows planted into the grass. She watches nearly every possible combination of her friends face off, predictable victories and upsets abound as they slowly tire themselves out in the heat. 

A while after Adaine figures out how Riz’s watch works, Fig comes over and collapses in the grass beside her, a great big groan on her lips as she announces she’s done for the day. 

“You go,” she says, kicking off her sneakers, “Show ‘em hell.” Adaine looks at the shoes, then at Fig, then back at the shoes. She doesn’t even pretend to protest. She wants to run—

So she does, lacing her bare feet into Fig’s shoes, rough on her heels. Her legs are a little wobbly from spending half an hour in the same position, but her friends start cheering as she steps up to the starting line anyway, heart beating uneven in her chest. Her skin is warm under the midday sun, thin layer of sweat and stale sunscreen mixing together, matting down the fine hair on her arms. 

The sweater is thrown into the air one last time. Adaine begins to run. 

(It’s not at all like what she had imagined.)

She’s not racing against anyone, but she’s pretty sure there’s no one she couldn’t beat in this moment. The movement of her body has created its own sort of wind, shielding her from the unrelenting reach of the sun, but she feels a different kind of burn all the same, one she can’t outrun—one she wouldn’t want to outrun. It spreads through every fibre of her body, setting her alight and reverberating through her shins with every step she lands, crackling inside her bones, so intense she’s afraid they might shatter beneath her, completely pulverized by this thing she can’t name aching to get outside of her, body too small and fragile to contain it. It’s like nothing she’s ever felt before, electric and painful and perfect and she never wants it to stop, even though it’s sort of feels like dying.

It feels like dying and it feels like maybe she’s never lived until right now and it feels like this might be worth everything she’s never done and it feels like she might start laughing and never stop, or start crying and never stop. It feels like those wouldn’t be such different things from each other, couldn’t happen on their own. It feels like one blistering, perfect moment bracketed by one hundred other blistering, perfect moments that honestly, truly, might just be her life, now.

And then her ankle twists to the side and she hits the ground. 

A dizzy succession of events take place, melding together between the fuzzy spots in her vision. She feels feels the pain of the rocks scraping through her skin before she even registers the searing in her ankle, hot and pulsing and new and wrong, very wrong. It’s so much that she starts rolling over the ground without realizing it, trying to get away from the horrible way it throbs, as if her heart has migrated, fallen down into her foot with the effort of the impact. She tries clutching at it, which just makes it worse, but then letting go is even more terrible than that, so really she’s stuck here, hurting, until something else happens. 

A string of sorry s fall out of her mouth before anyone has even reached her. 

It goes dark for a moment before Fig is there, knees landing hard in the gravel. Kristen is there next, hands immediately on Adaine as she heals, shaky, as much as she can. She can see, vaguely, that it looks bad, and then Kristen starts to pull off Fig’s sneaker from her foot and Adaine can’t see anything at all, head hitting back against something—not the ground, but, she realizes belatedly, Fabian’s hands cradled beneath her. She blinks up at his worried face and watches it get more worried and then Kristen grabs her hand and says, through another heal, “They’re not gonna be mad at you.”

Adaine is confused, until she hears Gorgug mumble, “Her parents aren’t even—” and then Fig lowers her eyebrows, shaking her head at him. Adaine swallows hard, trying to catch a glimpse at her ankle—swollen, very swollen, but not purple or deformed like she’d feared—before she registers Gorgug’s words and collapses back against Fabian again, pain subsiding only if because it’s momentarily overpowered by the embarrassment ripping through her for what she can only assume slipped out of her mouth in the fervor of pain. 

Fabian puts a steadying hand on her shoulder as Riz’s voice joins the mix. “Should I—should I call 911?” 

“Why the fuck would you call 911, the ball?”

“Um, I don’t know, because Adaine is hurt?” 

“Yeah, she’s hurt, she’s not dying.”

“Okay well Penny always called 911 just to be safe, and I don’t think it hurts to be safe.”

“Oh, well if your babysitter—”

“Guys.” Adaine just barely catches the annoyed look on Gorgug’s face as he silences them. 

“It’s fine, I have—I can’t fix it all the way, but I have enough,” Kristen says, dismissive, the words only partly reaching Adaine’s ears as Fig slips off her other shoe, distinctly less painful than the first one. “That’s—that should be better,” she says finally, huffing an exhausted sigh, sitting back on her heels. She looks to Adaine, drained, hoping. “Is that any better?”

Adaine sits up on her elbows, terrified to move any further. There are tears plastered to her face, hot and uncomfortable, slowly dislodging themselves from her cheeks as she dares to breathe. “Um,” she tries, waiting for her heartbeat to come back, waiting to see where. It’s a long, fraught moment before she puts a hand over her weakly thrumming chest and decides, “Yeah, I think so.” 

Gorgug piggybacks her all the way to Strongtower, and tells her about all the songs he and Fig have been working on so she can’t hear Kristen on the phone with Jawbone. It doesn’t really matter that she knows that’s what he’s doing as long as it’s working, and it is, all the way until they get into the apartment and she’s forgotten that she’s scared for Jawbone to see her and what she did. 

“Hey kiddo,” he says, and then Adaine bursts into tears, still on Gorgug’s back. 

There’s an Ohhhh, and a Sorry— maybe a couple Sorry s—and she is placed gingerly on the couch, a princess amount of pillows beneath her ankle. Jawbone wipes her tears before he puts another one under her knee, just for good measure or maybe so that her knee doesn’t hyperextend from the elevation and get hurt, too. That thought only makes her cry more, and then she’s following the sound of Gorgug’s sympathetic exhale to where he’s hovering awkwardly in the kitchen to see that there is a pair of crutches leant against the counter, little towels bundled up over the arm rests in a painfully DIY way. Jawbone follows her gaze, now stuck, and he chuckles as he explains. 

“This is far from the first injury to happen in this household,” he says, “I’ve learned that crutch chafe is almost worse than the injury itself, so I set you up with a certified chafe buster.” He looks proud of himself, smiling as he unwraps the gel-filled ice pack and positions it on her ankle, a layer of paper towel between her skin and the cold. “We’ll have to get you set up with the right height and all, but we should be good to go otherwise. And I’m pretty sure this is just a sprain but if you’re feeling up for it tomorrow morning we can get you down to the clinic to xray just to make sure. You know—when I was your age, and now this was before—shortly before, but before all the lycanthropy stuff, I actually broke my foot doing almost exactly the same—hey, are you alright? Is it too cold?”

Adaine doesn’t realize that she’s trembling until Jawbone takes the ice pack off. Before she can answer, he’s getting up and ripping off a couple more sheets of paper towel in the kitchen. Adaine remembers, starkly, being nine years old and coming into the kitchen to show her mother a papercut she’d gotten reading her book for school. She’d glanced down at the blood on Adaine’s finger, sighed heavily, and pulled a sheet off the roll, ripping it in half before shoving it at her, tsk ing wetly before she went back to whatever it was she was doing. The scar has long since faded—it was just a papercut, after all—but Adaine could probably still trace exactly where it had been, even now. 

She doesn’t need any visions to tell her that in five years time, she won’t even remember which ankle she hurt today. 

She quickly learns that it takes more than one couchbound friend to derail the bad kids from having fun. They pile into Jawbone’s apartment near daily, crowding the pull-out with various indoor activities. It ends up raining most of the week anyway, which makes this arrangement very convenient for four out of six of them—and Adaine finds she doesn’t feel as bad as she thought she would. It’s not for a lack of trying, but it’s hard to feel bad when she has Fabian forcing them to watch all the Pirates of the Celestine Sea movies and insisting they’re based off his dad. 

(Later that night, when the non-Strongtower residents have gone home, Riz tells Adaine that he looked it up, and they’re totally not about Bill. Adaine laughs, at first—a quiet Of course, a hand reaching for her phone, group chat victories in mind—then Riz goes Uhh, and the rest of his words come rushing out in a nervous pile on the couch cushions: But you know, I figured with. With everything with his dad, it was only— he stops himself, frustrated. Adaine doesn’t know where he’s going with it all until he takes off his hat, fingers tracing gently over the tag on the inside, faded ink of a P.G. barely visible. I think we should just let him have it.)

Adaine doesn’t say anything. When Riz goes back to his apartment she just sits there quietly, phone turned over on her pillow, untouched as she considers, stupidly for the first time, that she might not be the only one that needs all of this, too. It might actually not be a burden to be made to ride the Hangman all the way out to Basrar’s just to bring a sundae to Adaine’s couchside/bedside, and it might not be annoying to have to come to Strongtower every single day to see the rest of his friends. It might be Adaine reading too much into things, hoping too much into things, but it also might be the same brilliant thread stitching itself into his memory, sewing up his bleeding heart—the same overwhelming reprieve pushing every breath out of his lungs and into a world that just might be livable, despite the big everything of it all. 

She doesn’t say anything, but she does, when it’s just the two of them, ask him if he could come over and tell her more stories about him, sometime. He smiles, lovely, and quietly tells her of long days at sea, an entire crew of weathered heroes making their way around their new world, theirs. Warm light belowdecks, meals shared and dishes done, laughter swaying with the rock of the ship, storm raging on outside. A lot of waiting, actually, more than you’d think. The familiarity of the start and end of things, reliable creak of the ship’s bones. 

Adaine doesn’t thinks it sounds all that unlike what they’re doing now, tucked into this little pocket of the summer, harboured inside the safety of their own ship, call sign flickering up high. It’s an odd, quiet moment in which time slips and slides, but Adaine doesn’t mind it.Knees pressing into each other as they throw cards into the middle of the couch, attempts at cooking dinner gone, all told, not too catastrophically. Crutch races down the hallway, Adaine always the winner. Six bodies squeezed onto the balcony, watching lightning stutter across the clouds and waiting for the sky to heal itself. A lot of waiting. More than Adaine would think.

It’s not unwelcome. 

Two weeks after her fall, she’s cleared to start carefully walking short distances. She hobbles into the bathroom and watches Fig chop off her hair using Jawbone’s kitchen scissors, claiming it will make her both more aerodynamic and less sweaty. Adaine and Tracker are perched on the side of the tub and the closed lid of the toilet, respectively, spectating the change in choppy motion. 

Tracker is sort of on her phone, looking up every now and then to say something or laugh at a comment, but mostly she keeps her eyes trained on the screen as she types furiously, almost nonstop. Adaine knows it’s Kristen she’s texting, which would normally make her very singularly invested in that and only that, but right now she can’t do anything but watch Fig with rapt attention, positively captured in the orbit of her easy recklessness. 

She didn’t ask, is the thing. There was no phone call to her mom, no quick run down the elevator to talk to Gilear. She wanted to, so she did. 

Adaine feels breathless, sort of exposed and volatile. Like if anyone touched her she might explode, entire body a fresh sprain. It’s almost uncomfortable, but not quite. The Adaine of just three or four months ago would have tried to shy away from the feeling, to flip open her spellbook and find something to excise it, remove herself from herself. But the Adaine of now decides to sit in it, revel in the changing shades of the ache in her chest, laughter coming in and gilding the edges of it when Fig reaches into the sing to hold up two pieces of hair, no longer attached to her head, and asks the room if she should grow sideburns. 

Tracker nods enthusiastically. “You totally should.”

“Yeah,” Adaine adds, “you could totally rock it.” And the thing is that she could. Adaine’s not sure if Fig knows it, really, because she turns back into the mirror and really stares at herself, stone-faced for exactly one second before she erupts into giggles again, setting off the rest of them. 

They’re laughing, and then the front door unlocks, opens and shuts. Adane shrinks back in time, feels the air leave the room before Jawbone’s gruff call of, “Hey girls, I’m home!” rings out. 

The bathroom tilts around her. Weakly, she tries to tell herself that it’s different now—it’s good, now—but the ache sheds its shine and begins to spread through her body, pit in her stomach opening up again and tethering her to the side of the tub, paralyzed. Her vision has not yet narrowed, but her eyes stutter as they lock onto Fig, smile still in full, miraculous view as she laughs at Tracker’s purposefully garbled rendition of some pop song they’d heard on the radio yesterday, the humour of it lost on Adaine in this moment. Fig only laughs harder as Tracker’s vocal run turns into a sung greeting to Jawbone, so hard she has to drop the scissors in the sink, sliding around the chunks of hair she’s already chopped off.

Adaine stares at the grout joining the tiles on the wall beside Fig’s head. She could cast invisibility, just remove herself from the equation entirely. She would still be there, just not in the line of fire. At least not knowingly. She could stop the line of fire entirely with mage hand, just slam the door closed and lock it. That would buy them time, but might worsen the outcome in the end. Maybe she could message Fig and get her to cast disguise self on herself so her hair was normal again? They might not have time for that, too many questions. Or maybe she could just cast friends on Jawbone so he wouldn’t be mad—but then the spell would end and he would know and—Adaine closes her eyes, listens to the sound of his footsteps getting closer. Wills herself to think of something. There’s no dresser to shove in front of the door—nothing in the bathroom that can be moved, actually—and even if there was, she still wouldn’t be strong enough to push it. But, further, none of any of this even matters because all these solutions have either or both verbal or somatic components and she actually can’t move or speak right now, so she can’t do anything, regardless of strength or ability or wit. She’s just—

“Well hey, are we having a party in here or what?” Jawbone is in the doorway now, leaning against the frame with a curious smile on his face. His eyes widen as he looks at Fig and the smile gets bigger, a laugh falling out of it. “Woa-hoh- hoh, look at you! Sweet look, kid!” His head swivels around to look at Tracker and Adaine, as if for validation, looking to dogpile his compliment. “Isn’t this fun?” 

Fig does a twirl to face him, moving her shoulders like a runway model as she shows off the new, half-finished look. “I was thinking of maybe shaving a bit off the side here, but I don’t wanna steal Tracker’s look.”

“I told her it was fine,” Tracker defends, raising her hands up like, Don’t look at me! “I think it would look sick.”

“It would look sick,” Jawbone concurs, nodding heftily as he leans back against the doorframe, crossing his arms. Adaine exhales, marginally, through her nose. It’s more a convulsion of her chest than anything else, not noticeable enough to draw anyone’s attention. She starts to unwind internally, finding it a little silly, finding it a little dramatic, between the folds of anxiety unraveling, that she was even worried in this first place. This is Jawbone. He’s—

“Hey, are those our kitchen scissors?”

Adaine’s insides constrict again, forcing every bit of breath out of her lungs. The room narrows, and her hands start to tingle in their still-contorted place as Fig laughs, unbothered. Oblivious. 

“Oh, yeah,” she says, “multipurpose!”

Jawbone snorts. “Well, next time let me know and we’ll get you a proper pair of scissors. You know they make ones for cutting hair, right?”

“But Jawbone, this is more punk.”

“It’s more punk,” Tracker echoes.

Adaine blinks. It’s more punk. She exhales again, just as Jawbone catches her eye. A tiny look, imperceptible to anyone else. You good? 

A nod, careful and shaky, but a nod nonetheless. She’s good.

Gorgug borrows his parents’ van, at Fabian’s insistence, so they can take a drive. Adaine does not mention the fact that he could take his own drive on his own motorcycle, but she does join in on the shouting when Gorgug—innocently and reasonably, at first, his request only escalated when Fabian shrugs and Riz pounces on the opportunity—asks where they should go.

“What do you mean you don’t know, Fabian?” Riz is incredulous, huffing and puffing at full force. “You’re the one that asked to do this!”

“Yeah, I asked to go for a drive, not to go for a drive to a specific place. Not sure how that got by your private investigation skills, but.”

Riz scoffs and Kristen stifles a giggle into Adaine’s shoulder. The bickering continues as the van idles, Gorgug’s expression oscillating between miserable and entertained as he watches. They’re yelling something about how to make hot chocolate, now, and Adaine isn’t quite sure how they got there, this quickly, but it’s around this point that the girls abandon the show in favour of air conditioning, piling into the van and leaving Riz and Fabian oblivious. 

“Adaine,” Gorgug says, turning around in his seat, cheek pressed into the headrest, to look at her. She has this sudden, insane urge to reach out and tuck his hair behind his ear, the white part falling into his eyes like it has been lately. The white part that Adaine, now used to, remembers being so bewildered by when it appeared on him that day at the arcade—remembers reaching out to touch it when the adrenaline from the fight wore off enough to actually notice it, enough to notice she was shaking. Gorgug had grabbed her hand. Not to stop her but to steady her, a brief moment of safety between the fight (and the panic attack, and the almost losing Riz, and the almost getting put in a palimpsest, and the finding out—the Aelwyn of it all) and getting arrested. 

“Adaine?” He looks a little amused, a little confused, like he’s trying to figure out where she went. Like he knows it’s good. 

She exhales, shakes her head. “Sorry. Remember when we were in jail?”

He looks taken aback, a little laugh falling from his lips like someone punched it out of him. “Yeah, that was crazy, right?”

“It was,” she murmurs, momentarily distant again. It’s hard to believe that happened this year, only mere months ago. She’s starting to think that summers—actual summers—might be pocket dimensions, or something like that. Something like that and the sun reaches out and catches her vision, so bright it turns into a thick fog, unfolding over valleys of months past, months that haven’t happened yet. They collapse around her, waiting for her heart to distract itself and crawl inside. She’s in it long enough to catch a glimpse of the terrain, terrains, all overlapping impossibly, and she realizes all this might always be tucked away for her, saved inside the hiding places of time. 

From outside, Fabian smacks the side of the van, breaking her out of the vision before the whispers can come. “Sorry, what were you—”

“Your eyes went all blue-white,” Fig informs, now also leaning back over her own seat, eyes wide. “Did you oracle again? Did you figure out where we’re supposed to go?” 

Gorgug hums. “I was gonna ask you where you wanted to go, actually,” he says, “Or—if there’s like, a, if you’re having a vision we need to go somewhere we should probably do that, but if there’s somewhere you like, want to go, elven oracle stuff aside.” He shrugs, just minutely, and reaches up to tuck his hair behind his ear. 

Adaine smiles, overcome. While she’s thinking about it, the door on Kristen’s side slides open, letting in the sound of Fabian’s groan.

“Adaine’s deciding where we’re going,” Fig announces. 

Oh, good, Adaine thinks, deadpan.

“Oh, good,” Fabian echoes, out loud. “We couldn’t figure it out.”

Riz throws his hands into the air and repeats, beleaguered, “We couldn’t figure it out!” before climbing into the van and using his entire body weight to swing the door closed. 

Then there are five pairs of eyes on her, and it doesn’t feel like she needs to look away. She doesn’t want to look away.

“I think I’d like to go to the beach again.” 

Adaine can walk almost entirely normally now, but that fact doesn’t stop Fabian from yelling, “Wait!” at the top of the beach where the grass starts to turn into sand. 

“Waiting?”

Fabian doesn’t explain, just holds out his arms, sort of like he might want a hug, but with his palms facing up. Adaine squints. 

“Um?”

“Ugh, I’m going to carry you so you don’t twist your ankle again,” he huffs, rolling his eyes. “Unless, of course, you want to make it worse.”

(Fabian has this thing about him, that should by all means make Adaine feel terrible—should make her feel like a burden, like she’s asking for too much without even asking for anything at all. She should shrivel up at the way he looks at her in these moments, poker face both incredible and indelible. It shouldn’t make her feel like her chest is bursting with pride, shouldn’t make her start to laugh. It shouldn’t work, but there is this thing about him.)

She lets herself be carried over the sand, watching their shadows reach back to the parking lot over Fabian’s shoulder. She lets herself be lowered up and down so he can prove that he can do, like, a million arm curls, no sweat, and she lets him pass her off to Fig, and Kristen, and Gorgug, and Riz—so they can all flaunt their own strength. She even lets herself enjoy it. 

The nights aren’t yet cold enough to need it, but they make a bonfire anyway. Adaine watches nearly in a trance as Kristen builds the structure, sending Riz off to get a special kind of bark to start it off. Watches as the smoke starts to build, almost desperate, before a flame catches and the bark curls in on itself, a wounded thing. 

It starts to feel like things are wrapping up. Not the night, which is young and quiet and waiting to figure out what it is, though Adaine has her ideas. It starts to feel like things are wrapping up in the way it starts to feel like other things, different things, are making their approach. Leisurely, unhurried, but not distant. Adaine, maybe for the first time in her life, isn’t scared. Tomorrow, Jawbone is taking her and Kristen to the store to get supplies for sophomore year. He’d seemed… almost nervous when he’d asked them if could, as if he thought two teenagers with no income or parents would say no to having things they need bought for them. He’d admitted he was excited, that he hasn’t gotten to do this since Tracker dropped out of school—and Adaine didn’t even realize until a day later that she’d not even given it a second thought, that is didn’t have to be a utility for him too, for her not to feel bad about him doing it. 

Watching the fire exhaust itself along imprints of constellations, Adaine decides that different things can be good things.

Somewhere, in a quiet pocket of time between burning marshmallows and running back into the ocean, Kristen confesses the thing she told Adaine last night. 

“Yeah,” she says, uncharacteristically shy— actually shy, quiet and unable to meet their eyes despite the small, beautiful smile fighting to bloom on her face—“we kissed. Last night.” The delighted gasps and scattered oh my god s are enough for her to give in, a tiny giggle escaping her as she buries her face into her hands, shoulders shaking. Adaine enjoys it just as much the second time. “I know.”

“Where?” Fig demands, just as giddy.

“In the elevator,” she almost whines, as if she still doesn’t quite believe it herself. 

“Nothing more romantic than the elevator of the Strongtower Luxury Apartments.” Fabian attempts to snark, but the pride in his voice is telling, genuine. Riz gives him a snort for good measure. 

“Well, what happened?”

“Yeah,” Gorgug urges, “Did her—did Jawbone kiss you first?”

Even the crackle of the fire goes quiet in confusion. It hangs there for a second, then Gorgug inhales.

“In my—”

“I’m sorry, what?”

He looks at Riz, exhales a breathless laugh through his nostrils. “In my experience,” he explains, “a father or father figure kisses you first, and then you get to kiss the girl.” 

It takes a couple of minutes for anyone else to be able to stop laughing long enough to get a full word out.

The rest of the night is singing and screaming and dancing, the air not yet raising bumps on their skin. For now, it’s still summer, and Adaine can do whatever she wants. 

She takes her meds. She throws handfuls of ripped up grass at her friends. She lets Jawbone bring her plates of cut up cheese and olives. She stands on picnic tables and makes up constellations. She lets Fabian use her body weight to do arm curls as he carries her over the uneven sand. She lets each day build itself around her still-standing frame, lets it figure out what love sounds like: between oven hood fans and sputtering engines, inside of laughter and knuckles on doors and couches turning into beds into couches into beds, around rotations of water bottles at the sink and car doors and cicadas throwing themselves at the windows as they wail, wanting. Adaine breathes, and the world breathes around her.

The sweat drips down her chin, and nothing has ever felt so good.