Work Text:
i
you meet constance on the monkey bars on the first day of kindergarten. she comes up to you with a big grin – her teeth are spaced unevenly and angled outwards, and she looks so pretty and radiant with the sun warming her face – and asks you in her high, soft voice would you like to race me on the monkey bars?
it’s in that moment where you realise that you’ve just made your first friend.
you do end up agreeing to a race across the monkey bars (that constance wins by a landslide, but she doesn’t gloat. she seems overjoyed at you had joined her in the first place), and then you’re sitting with constance at lunch time and then you’re making friendship bracelets under the trees in the playground and then she’s holding up drawings she makes of the two of you during art. constance slots comfortably into your life as if she had always been here. soon you can’t even remember what it felt like before her.
she’s beautiful.
she makes your life feel beautiful too.
mommy and daddy smoke too much pot at home and there’s not enough food in the cupboards sometime. life drags on mercilessly; girls sneer at the desperate way the smell of patchouli clings to your school dress, anything to get the smell of home off of you. nothing can mask the smell of day old laundry and weed. it hurts to watch them move their seats from you. constance doesn’t. she hugs you every morning and braids your hair even though it’s kind of yucky because mommy doesn’t buy shampoo and only lets you wash it with coconut oil. you hate coconut oil anyway. constance is the bright, bright sun in your otherwise grey life.
it's just the two of you through primary school. constance always takes the seat closest to a window and you don’t mind because sometimes the gentle way bliss crosses her face gives you this kind of insane rush that you don’t understand. she’s your best friend. she’s soft around the edges and her eyes crinkle when she smiles and her laugh is the tinkling of bells.
it’s just the two of you through middle school. girls make fun of you and it digs painfully into your heart. constance is tiny and soft and even her meanest glare does nothing more than make you laugh, but she puts her fists on her hips and shrills words of anger to the girls like she’s your own personal guard dog.
no one’s ever wanted to stick up for you like this before. you don’t know how to handle it.
it’s almost just the two of you in high school, but father marcus says you have a lovely singing voice one day after church and tells you that he wants to start a choir. you ride the high of the recognition for days, and all you want is this choir with constance. it truly is all you want.
ii
mischa bachinski stands heads above you and ocean, and at first it can be so frightening it almost makes you want to cry. he’s quiet; it’s almost a week into his introduction to the choir before he speaks, and his voice is low and mean.
mischa bachinski is scary.
ocean ignores mischa for the most part. she used to be kind and sweet, but something about becoming the lead in the choir has changed her. you don’t know how to feel about that. but even mean, tough guy mischa looks a little unhappy when she breezes over him and acts as if he isn’t there. his face is set into a permanent frown, but his eyes are so expressive.
you sit next to him one day while ocean is busy getting the song list from the office. he’s texting furiously on his phone. well, furiously doesn’t sound right. it’s more like desperation. you peer over to him and nervously raise your voice.
may i ask what you’re doing on your phone all the time?
mischa looks surprised at your question, and then he looks suspicious. why?
no reason! you flail your arms about. it’s a fair question. ocean is passive aggressive about his phone use in practice. do you have internet friends on discord or something?
all at once he looks brighter. you don’t quite get it, why he’s so immediately elated by your simple question. he shuffles closer to you on the mezzanine’s wooden steps. i talk to talia. she is fiancée back in ukraine.
there’s a girl on the shattered iphone lockscreen. she’s pretty; thin, with dark hair and bleached tips and dark makeup and a tiny little smile you can tell is meant for mischa only. you glance up to mischa for a heartbeat and a look of pleasant bliss has crossed his features. his thick accent becomes choked. she is back in ukraine, so i talk during day before she sleeps.
you look back to the phone. she’s beautiful mischa.
mischa is quiet again, all at once. you don’t realise he’s been holding a breath in until you hear him exhale noisily. she is most beautiful women in the world.
mischa walks down the long hallways of st cassian’s all alone. it’s always been a little sad, he’s always looked as if he isn’t bothered in the slightest by it. but now you smile all warm and wave whenever you see him. he always looks lighter. it warms your heart.
uranium can be a beautiful place sometimes. you tell that to mischa after practice one day, walking with him to your café. ocean never comes on the after school café trips, but you don’t mind. mischa likes the chocolate milkshakes your mom makes. sometimes you’ll split one with him, and he smiles so wide that his cheeks turn red like he’s straining. you don’t understand why people think he’s so angry all the time, why they act as if he’s nothing by trouble, when mischa is the purest person you’ve ever met. his hands slip into yours on the way home from school. his hands are the warmest you’ve ever felt.
iii
when the choir opens and envelops another person, it ends up being ricky potts.
ocean and constance are here, even if ocean kind of sucks, and noel had joined the month before. it’s a weird mix of people. ricky feels like a natural addition. he’s a funny boy – he sits in the corner of the room and he draws these funny cat people. you don’t know how to ask him about it.
ricky potts can’t speak – ocean very clearly has ulterior motives with asking him to join the choir, even if you aren’t sure what they are yet – and even though everyone else in st cassian’s has a good grasp on signing, you don’t. you barely understand english sometimes. there’s no way you understand signing just yet.
but you sit beside ricky all the same during practice, when ocean and noel are having another incomprehensible argument. ricky is drawing some more of his cat people. you are good artist.
ricky – who has clearly been waiting for you to say something – lights up all happy and excited when you compliment his art. his hands move at a pace you can’t understand. you frown. sorry. i cannot sign.
ricky is a good sport, and he simply shrugs before taking a pen and scrawling words across another page in his sketchbook. it’s okay! thank you, i don’t get a lot of compliments on my art. these are some of my characters – cat women from zolar.
very interesting. you have big imagination!
you talk to ricky potts about his sexy cat women for the rest of choir practice, and then you talk about his zolar lore all the way to the parking lot of the school. you exchange phone numbers and then you talk about his entire fantasy all evening.
you think ricky is something of a best friend. you tell talia all about it, and she tells you він звучить як такий смішний хлопець! Я дуже радий, що ти знаходиш друзів, моя люба (〃＾▽＾〃)
and talia is never wrong. so you sit with ricky in the library at lunch and he teaches you about his vast world. in between breaks he works at teaching you to sign. your fingers are big and clumsy but ricky is patient and kind with you. his hands are small and thin and perpetually warm when he fixes your movement. you practice your signing in science when the two of you are seated on opposite sides of the classroom with a grin.
ocean is loud about how you and ricky are getting distracted in choir. ricky laughs at her shrill displeasure. his laugh is brittle and rough around its edges – it sounds more kind and genuine than anything else you’ve ever witnessed. you can’t help but laugh too. the music room feels lighter with ricky potts in it.
iv
there’s a county-wide competition coming up soon. father marcus delivers the news that there’s a minimum entrant requirement. the choir is one member away from the minimum. mischa brings penny lamb to practice. she is partner in english lit – very smart.
penny is mousy. her long pale brown hair is always in two thin braids that fall down her back. she’s quiet and timid. she doesn’t speak unless she’s spoken to. you hear ocean whisper, hushed, to constance that she’s been homeschooled all her life on some kind of weird hippie commune outside uranium, that the first day sister helen loudly proclaimed that poor penny lamb has just been separated with her brother so be kind to her please. you can’t imagine the kind of implications that has.
her voice is tiny when she sings. you have to listen really hard to hear her voice over everyone else. and it’s not like she’s a bad singer. in fact, she’s perfectly average. you just get the feeling that penny is used to being ignored by the whole. that realisation feels cold in your stomach. and then penny looks over to you, and she smiles.
it’s not a smile that looks natural. you can tell that she’s making the effort to put the smile on her face. it doesn’t matter, because you find yourself grinning anyway, and your cheeks awash with warmth.
penny sits alone at lunch. she has a sad looking sandwich that sits on the brown paper bag in front of her. you sit at the table across from her. you learnt quite quickly that penny is very adept at signing. she’s said that her commune taught it to all the kids who lived there. sometimes her signs are odd, like the people she grew up with made something up, but she’s quick to correct her mistakes.
i’m very sorry ricky, she signs with a slight frown. you always sit with me at lunchtime. i’m making you miss time with your friends.
you’re my friend, you answer easily. the admission startles her. her hands twitch with the beginnings of an answer, but she can’t find the words she wants to say. she resigns to eat her sandwich instead.
later on in choir practice, when you’re sitting near mischa who’s smiling fondly at his phone talking to his goth discord girlfriend and next to penny who’s watching ocean and noel’s yelling match looking less than impressed, you tug on the hem of her skirt. she looks over to you, and she tips her head to the side.
i made a new character – the one you suggested. do you want to see her?
penny shuffles closer to you to peer at your sketch book. the new character is a small blonde girl named savannah, with blonde ringlets and green eyes the colour of emeralds. penny’s express shifts, and she reaches out to touch the girl on the page.
savannah, with the greenest eyes, she says, low and breathless. i had a doll at – at home, who looked just like this.
she looks content in her own quiet way. she makes you smile again. you think you might love her.
v
you’ve met many interesting people in your life. your commune was full of them – they were eccentric in ways that you still find disconcerting. st cassian’s is worse – everyone looks at you weird and sometimes they laugh at things you don’t understand and tug on your braids. the choir that scoops you up sometimes makes you feel as if you’ve been put on an alien planet without any maps or directions.
noel gruber sometimes seems like the only one who gets you. you sit with ricky and mischa more than anyone else, but when noel decides to join you at lunch, it feels like something has been lifted.
you learn, on your second week of knowing the choir, that noel is autistic. a spark warms your tummy. you got an autism diagnosis through your new foster parents, and you still don’t entirely understand what’s so wrong with you. you weren’t wrong or different on the commune. constance is always reminding you to smile at people, to keep your hands still when you’re talking. you know she doesn’t mean to sound rude – she’s trying to keep the girls from laughing at you in the changing rooms – but you don’t like it. the commune never needed you to mask.
noel is himself in every way. he talks about french cinema in class without any hesitation, he rocks on the balls of his feet even when he’s talking to a teacher. noel holds your hand when you get overstimulated and passes over his little peapod keychain (the little peas that pop out with pressure look so cute and smiley, it always calms you down). noel is a breath of fresh air.
you don’t understand what he talks about half the time but he’s still one of your favourite people to hang around with.
the competition has come and gone and now the choir is by the fair. constance has her arm looped around ocean’s and they dodge the crowd and disappear into rides and haunted houses. you don’t know where mischa and ricky went. but noel has stuck to you like glue, determined to show you a great time at your first fair. he buys you fairy floss and your hands get sticky from digging around in the bag to grab fistfuls of the candy. he laughs with you on the funny chair ride that lifts you from the ground and swings you around. he strokes your hair when you get off the ride and its left you dizzy and nauseous.
you look up to noel with a shaky smile, more honest an expression than you usually give. noel’s arm is around your shoulder, firm and protective and loving. he tells you that sometimes. he gives you a ride home of an afternoon and calls out i love you penny! or he’ll smack a loud, playful kiss to your cheek and say penny lamb, i love you so! and he feels a little bit like home.
sometimes you miss home, you miss ezra. but noel presses a kiss to your head as your nausea subsides and you want to tell noel that you love him too, but the words fizzle out on your tongue. it’s okay. you’re sure he knows.
vi
ocean drives you insane.
you’ve known her for most of your life, and your earliest memory is ocean sticking her tongue out at you and pushing the swing a little too hard for your liking. you used to think that you hated her. she was loud and obnoxious and demanding. but now? now, you feel something has changed.
maybe it was the close call on the cyclone rollercoaster? a maintenance run without passengers snapped an axel and flipped onto the ground below. your group – the whole choir – had been next. it gave you nightmares for weeks.
maybe it was when ocean started crying when you had gotten a higher math grade than she did, and you finally realised how deep her issues were with her own self esteem, understanding how her behaviour masked her need for unrelenting acceptance.
either way, something had changed. ocean became evil succubus to simply ocean in your contacts. to be fair, though, the name was followed by a skull emoji.
ocean doesn’t really drive you insane, if you’re being honest.
she’s probably your closest friend, in some twisted way. when your oldest sister died, she had been the first one to sit next to you at recess, offering you one of her oreo knockoffs from her parents cupboard. they were awful and tasted that dirt. but it was the thought that counts. you had cried into her shoulder that day.
you hate her guts, but she means the world to you. you can’t handle listening to her, but her opinion is that that you hold dearest. noel and ocean, and odd mix of contradictions and a mess of conflicts. ricky jokes about it one day, that you and ocean are a lot alike. you turn your nose up at it and make snarky comments about how you’d rather be dead than be anything like her. but you catch ocean, and the teasing sparkle in her eye. she agrees, with the proud proclamation that eating shards of glass dipped in hot sauce so it burnt doubly going down is preferable. you laugh at her dramatics that night when you drive outside uranium city to get burgers at macdonalds with her.
constance notices the change once. you’ve been nicer to ocean lately. is there some kind of reason? she gasps loudly. does she have some kind of blackmail or something over you?
you shrugged. no. she’s just… not as bad as i thought.
ocean apparently overhears this, and she’s carrying the seats from the earlier assembly into the storage room when she stops. hey! i’ve never been bad! you’ve just been misogynistic. don’t make me throw a chair at your head!
the warning is met with a chorus of laughter. you look to ocean and smile. you used to think the choir was a punishment, but you can tell now that its some kind heaven.