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School is hell. That’s what it’s meant to be, Marco’s always been told.
The glances aren’t any easier, though, with this realisation trickling down her back like the sweat she wishes would dissipate. Once overs that might as well be plain on stares for how awful they make her feel.
Things are easily made into nothing, she learns all too soon, unless they’re things you want gone, cause then they stick around like bad smells and (literal) rain clouds that follow you where you go.
Star arriving doesn’t make things easier in that regard.
What follows her now is curses and rain clouds and bad luck, and so she is reasonably unsettled by this, because along with it comes the magnified attention she tries so hard to avoid.
Because she’s now the best friend of the not-so-exchange student and everyone thinks they’re gonna end up together because duh, best friends, a girl and a boy (her mind tells her they’re seeing the things she tries to hide but lie unsightly plain for the eye to capture) everyone’s eyes are on them: Star and Marco, the hot goss of the school.
But for once, there’s a way to get her anger out, mainly in the form of pummelling monsters into the ground and batting trolls and the kind of strange things that wouldn’t have been more than fables were Star not there to literally prove them real.
And she guesses she should thank Star for that. Maybe this interdimensional exchange student thing won’t be as awful as she’d thought originally.
There’s skirting around it, because that’s what you have to do when you’ve got an unruly teenage girl who’s impossibly nosy leaking into every part of who you are, and Marco is smack bang in the middle of puberty and she finds herself taking shortcuts, without even noticing, because she feels like if she doesn’t she won’t make it through the week.
She begins wearing a towel around her chest rather than just around her waist when she brushes her teeth and dries her hair before sleeping. She wraps one around her head, too, as if her hair were long enough to require this.
She steals Star’s hair bands sometimes and wears them as bracelets beneath her hoodie, and very rarely, if she’s feeling brave, swipes a layer or two of balm over her lips she’d bought from a drugstore she took a bus two towns over just to buy.
It’s just pretending, which feels like something she does more often than not these days, but it’s the kind of pretending where she’s the one who’s gaining something rather than drowning herself further into the kind of abyss she knows she can’t escape on her own.
It’s a normal Tuesday night. Or, as normal as Tuesday nights get when you’ve got an alien princess wreaking havoc on whatever normal you’d held before that’s now obviously been shattered, and Marco steps into the bathroom once Star’s finished washing up.
Her eyes are drawn to it immediately, like a moth to the flame. The blade glimmers under the washed out bathroom lights, and she considers something she’d never let herself consider before.
She eyes the razer. It feels forbidden, in a way, like this isn’t what she’s supposed to be thinking of doing. Like shaving herself bare and leaving nothing but smooth skin isn’t something she should want.
A mirthless laugh falls from her lips before she can help it. She’s known for a while now none of this is what a normal pubescent boy is supposed to be feeling. It’s like there’s a malfunction in her mind, and she supposes there might as well be, or perhaps she was a malfunction to begin with, and all of this — all of her — was a mistake.
She almost considers telling her mind to shut up for the night and letting these twisted thoughts simmer and die as sleep takes over her, but then her body acts without command from her mind, sliding the shower door open and twisting the shower handle on and reaching up for the little plastic stick.
She wonders if she were really a girl, if her mom might’ve taught her how to do this. The thought washes over her in waves, and similar ones appear, sending her queasy and almost tumbling to the floor.
Her hand digs into the tiles on the floor, dropping the razer with a wince once she realises she’s cut herself. It stings under the water, but it’s a sort of grounding stinging that lets everything that’d been leaving doubts like muddy footprints in the snow fade away little by little.
Marco takes a breath. She can do this.
She washes the final few stray hairs off and the remaining coconut scented hair conditioner (her mom had mentioned offhandedly at the grocery store one time this was better for shaving than shaving cream, to which Marco had been thoroughly disgusted with, but now found it useful, because she was right) and steps out of the shower.
Instinctively wrapping the towel around her chest, she takes a shuddered breath and lifts her hand to the fogged mirror.
There’s a moment where she hesitates, where she wonders really if it’s all going to be there, still, as if — despite the fact it’s literally impossible — reality would be obstructed and she’d still be...
The idea of it almost has her legs turning to jelly, but this time she’s prepared, and her hands grip the cool surface of the bench. She can do this, she — she has to, this is … well, it’s sort of permanent, and she should at least check she hadn’t cut herself on accident in case she needs to put bandaids on or ... something.
It’s this that lets her rub a tentative hand against the glass, clearing the remnants of the steam and leaving her bare with no fog to maintain the illusion.
She blinks, and then blinks again.
There’s nothing to hide Marco now, as she drops the towel down until it’s loosely wrapped around her waist, and she runs her hand across the now smooth skin of her chest, her arms... her armpits... entirely bare. She’d done an alright job, leaving a few tiny parts of hair where she missed, but largely ... well, she’s mostly shaved.
There’s still the way her hips narrow and she feels bony and gangly and all out of sorts when she spares more than a second’s glance at her form but this ... this will do for now.
“Marco!” Star greets her the next morning, grinning from ear to ear as she bounces up and down, waiting for her to finish her breakfast, “Sup? I had the craziest dream last night, but I’m gonna wait for you to finish your cereal so you can react accordingly when I tell it to you.”
“Alright,” Marco shrugs, through a mouth full of cocoa puffs.
They step out of the house once Marco is ready, and Star immediately pounces on her, rapidfire recalling some intense battle to the death with a pack of fairy squids.
“Your skin is so soft,” She remarks offhandedly, and Marco’s ears burn, the skin where Star’s hand loosely conjoins the two of them hot.
She doesn’t shake Star’s hand off the entire way to school.