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Isabel has everything.
She has perfect, glossy hair. She has a petite, sinewy frame and a boyfriend who plays with her hair when she wants him to, tucks his nose against it and admires the way it smells; whose arms are strong enough to carry her around the entire school without tiring.
(Who’s cheated on her. Not once, not twice, not even three, but four times. Who doesn’t know what flavor milkshake she likes best. Who doesn’t know all that much about her at all, not really.)
She has everything, except for the soft, real things that girls like her never seem to have the right to. A way out of the careful mold that makes up who she is, the kind of person she’s meant to be.
Things like a warm sweatshirt, fuzzy and too big and wrapped around her until her shape disappears into the folds. Like chipped nail polish and dense candy bars and a messy, unkept room. A room with little pieces of her littering the floor; Pictures on the dresser, shoes on the floor, posters on the wall.
Isabel likes it, the way Josie dresses, though she wouldn’t be caught dead in any of those clunky silhouettes. She thinks she’d like to be her friend, but she isn’t sure she’s the kind of company someone like Josie would keep, clearly doesn’t even know how to get through a conversation with her.
She kind of likes the way the other girl stutters around her, tripping over words and gesturing with her hands and fiddling with the pocket of her jacket. Isabel likes the way she offered her a ride at the fair, no questions asked, no demands or payments expected in return.
She wants, sometimes. Wants to wear a sweatshirt or eat an ice cream messy and unrefined until it drips down to her wrists. To throw a punch, feel someone's nose crack under her fist, if only to know that she has the power and will to break it.
It’s what draws her into the fight club in the first place, though she’ll never admit it.
She wants.
˚ ＊✿❀༓❀✿＊ ˚
When Isabel was five years old, she painted a picture with cheap watercolors at school. The colors smudged together and blended into indistinguishable shapes, four uneven blobs to represent her family, a yellow circle surrounded by triangular spikes shining down on them at the top.
Her fingers got messy with it, sticky and bright and wet as she pressed her forefinger to her thumb, but she was proud of it nonetheless, reveled in the little bit that made its way into her baby hairs.
Her mom didn’t think it was as fun; watercolors are too messy, and charcoal gets her fingers all black and stains her clothes. It isn’t worth the mess, that’s what she tells her.
Isabel forgets to draw for a long, long time after that. Forgets she ever even wanted to.
˚ ＊✿❀༓❀✿＊ ˚
The light in the nurse’s office is too bright, unwelcome with the headache making itself known right behind her eyes. But she keeps them open anyway, trained on Josie as the other girl hesitantly steps in between her legs, fitting herself into the space bracketed by her knees.
“I’m sorry about how intense it got, no one’s really meant to get hurt.” They’re only in here because it’s after school hours; Josie somehow knows the nurse because Josie knows the names of every staff worker, it seems like. Is friendly with them all in the way she isn’t with anyone besides PJ, enough that she has the key. She’s got a bruise forming on her cheekbone, scratches bloodying her knuckles. Isabel will clean her up in return after this, she decides.
“No, it’s okay.” Isabel says, “It was actually really fun.”
“Really… fun?” Josie asks doubtfully, fumbling with the first aid kit.
Isabel laughs, shrugging lightly, “Yeah, really fun. I’ve never done anything like that.”
“Oh.” She breathes. Sometimes Josie looks like something straight out of an animated film, the way her eyes go wide and her face betrays everything she’s feeling. Isabel suddenly feels an old urge stir up in her chest. She wants to draw her, in all her bright colors and lively movements, messy and inexpert and beautiful. She hopes she never stops wearing her heart on the outside of her body, hopes she never has to see pain flit across her face, that she’s never the cause of it.
Josie clears her throat, lifting up a damp cotton ball in silent question. Once Isabel nods, she raises it gently to her brow, where a shallow cut has been bleeding its unhurried way down the side of her face. The touch, though not directly skin to skin, is warm, and Isabel blinks slowly, forgetting to wince at the contact.
Would she start with her eyes, if she were to give in to the urge? She lets her own flit between the other’s, green fixed on brown as she studies them. Notes how expressive they are, how intent her gaze is on her work. Maybe she’d start with her hair, dark and thick and pretty. Maybe, she thinks as her eyes drop to watch Josie’s lips, she’d start there. Right at the bow of them, making her way down. Her jaw, the curving slope of her neck.
“I could- I could give you some of my lip balm, if you wanted.”
Josie pauses, hand stilling. “What?”
“What.” Isabel echoes, and then realizes it was her who spoke, her who broke the stretching silence with a resounding snap. “I just mean, if you ever wanted any, you could borrow mine.”
She’s met with a blank, stunned look, and her breath hitches with nerves. It must be contagious, standing this close. “Your lips are chapped.”
“My lips are chapped.”
“Your lips are chapped.” She repeats with a nod, “So, you could borrow mine.”
“ Oh. ” Josie whispers, as repetitive as their entire conversation seems to be. “Uh- Thank you.”
Isabel nods again, jerky. It’s starting to make her head spin; the too-fast movement of her head, the sharp smell of antiseptic, the proximity.
“So did you learn all this in juvie too?” Isabel changes the subject, “First aid and all.”
Something passes over Josie's face, a second of confusion and then another of something more withdrawn, brows furrowing. She shakes her head minutely, “Just the beating up girls part.”
“I think it’s really brave, going through all that and then still making it out. Doing all this to help us learn too.” And what she means is the fighting, sure, but also starting the club in the first place, the way she stood up to Jeff, the earnestness she carries herself with. The way she walks out of this place everyday, bullied and demeaned as she is, and never stops coming back.
You’re the bravest person I know , she thinks of saying, but then huffs out a laugh instead, feeling lame and inadequate. “It's cool.”
Josie brushes her off, wrapping her knuckles gently with cheap gauze.
After, Isabel bandages Josie’s hands less carefully than she means to, tying the end into a graceless knot. She brushes her fingers over a butterfly bandage on the bridge of Josie’s nose, thinks of pressing her lips there as if to ease the pain.
She doesn’t, is careful not to. But she does smile at her, smaller and yet more genuine than any other she’s given away at this school, lets herself say thank you, lets herself wrap her fingers around the others, contrasting skin tones fitting seamlessly together, and squeeze. Once, twice, and then another just because.
˚ ＊✿❀༓❀✿＊ ˚
The first time her boyfriend ever cheated on her, Isabel wanted to wreck his stupid car and tear into his even stupider football Jersey, the one he never seems to take off. She wanted to cut his ridiculous robe into shreds and slap him in the face or wrap her hands around his neck until he spluttered and coughed underneath her palm. She didn’t do any of those things.
Her mom held her as she cried instead. Loud, ugly sobs fell from her mouth and mascara stained her undereyes black as she roughly rubbed at them with her fist.
It wasn’t that she was surprised or particularly hurt, it wasn’t even anything to do with him as much as it was to do with her. She was angry, and she was sad, and she felt a little less perfect, a lot more flawed.
Her mom held her chin in her hand, rubbed her back quietly, let her tire herself out until she was sleepy enough to calm down.
She said, “It’s no use crying over it, not worth ruining your makeup over.”
She said, “Maybe he’ll take you back.”
And he did. He apologized, in that flippant insincere way of his, boisterous and loud in front of the whole school. Isabel once told Jeff that he acted like a caricature more than he does a real person. He didn’t know what that meant. He brought her flowers, wilting red carnations that made her nose itch with dirt still lingering at the stem, as if they’d been gripped by the base and pulled right out of the damp earth. Not her favorite, because he didn’t know what her favorite was, he never cared to learn.
And Isabel took him back. Inexplicably, painfully predictably, and to the delight of all the other cheerleaders -everyone but Brittany, at least-, to the quiet pride of her parents.
She took him back.
She would continue to take him back, year after year, breakup after breakup, just as soon as he smiled and offered up his arms to jump into.
Until she doesn’t anymore.
˚ ＊✿❀༓❀✿＊ ˚
Josie tells her she thinks she deserves better. Better than Jeff, who people idolize like they would a greek god. Better than being mistreated. She tells her like she matters, with that expression on her face that she has sometimes when she’s finally found her voice, big doe eyes and a scrunched nose. The only sound besides the muffled commotion outside of the car is their breathing, just the two of them in the front.
And Isabel-
Isabel has been told she’s pretty. She’s been told she’s hot, and sexy, and amazing. She’s been told she’s great. Talented, interesting, perfect even. She isn’t short on compliments, not on the surface level.
But she’s never once been told she deserves better . She’s never been told she deserves anything good. She knows she does, of course, and maybe it isn’t that significant -maybe it shouldn’t be-, but hearing it from right beside her, hearing it from Josie , it matters. it creeps its way into her chest and crawls underneath her ribcage, settling down with a sigh.
And as they get closer, as her eyes cross trying to see her face in the dark,
She thinks she really might deserve better.
She thinks she might want better.
Better, she knows, could be Josie. It could be a girl with oversized clothes in muted colors. A girl with a mean right hook and a toothy grin to match. A girl who used her flavored chapstick exactly once before capping it and handing it back with a hand rubbing her neck like there’s anything to be embarrassed about. Who nearly ran her ex boyfriend over for her, who she’s been on top of and pinned beneath on a mat in the old school gymnasium, Who listens to her. Who likes her. Who she likes back.
Josie tucks a periwinkle into her hair and takes note of the fact that they’re Isabel's favorite because of the name. Has noticed that her favorite color is pink, has noticed things about her that Isabel never thought anyone would take the time to.
And she’s noticed too, is the thing. Josie’s tells: how to get her to calm down enough to have a conversation with. How pretty she is, how compassionate. The way she’s smart, actually smart, and she’s good at English lit and history and a total film geek. The way she tucks her face down whenever Isabel helps her understand a math problem, shy and more than a little awkward.
˚ ＊✿❀༓❀✿＊ ˚
When Isabel was seven years old, she and Brittany talked about boys for the first time. She had her write the list down in glittery pink cursive on wax paper in class. What they’d want in a boyfriend: he has to be taller, he has to have enough lunch money to get them the best snacks in the school, he has to be popular.
“I want one with blonde hair.” Brittany said.
“I want one who doesn’t smell.” Isabel countered.
It wasn’t until they were older that they matured enough to understand what it actually meant to date. It was almost comical though; how little was changed in the list.
When Isabel was fifteen years old and heartbroken for the very first time, she crossed out the word boyfriend with a huff, replacing it with girlfriend instead. She looked at it for a second, tilted her head to the side and crossed it out again, replacing it for the final time with a question mark.
She added one requirement to the list.
Has to make me happy.
˚ ＊✿❀༓❀✿＊ ˚
They kiss for the first time on an otherwise unassuming Friday night.
Isabel has wanted for things her entire life.
Not necessarily material things, though those as well: a sweatshirt, a hoodie, candy bar wrappers and pastel paints and a cat. Less material: a sweatshirt that smells like cinnamon and a little like a pumpkin latte even in the summer, the fraying green hoodie Josie wears at least twice a week, candy bar wrappers discarded in her room, charcoal to draw a face, heart shaped and sweet. Something borrowed. Something shared.
And maybe it’s silly of her to think of the kiss as inevitable, as maybe something that’s been set up from the very first time they met. But she doesn’t mind feeling silly when she feels the thrill of being right alongside it.
Everything fizzes and pops and narrows until her awareness is sharpened into this very moment. Her hand around Josie’s neck, guiding her into it. Josie’s fingers unbuttoning her shirt. The comforter against her back as she leans down, Josie following her.
Josie, Josie, Josie .
“You know,” She murmurs after, sitting up in the bed, “I’ve been wanting to draw you.”
Josie blinks, “Really? I didn’t even know you could draw.”
“Well I can’t, not really.” She bites at her lip, grins wider at the soreness that meets her there. “I just- you know.”
“Here.” She reaches over until she grabs a notebook and pen from the dresser, drawing a circle with miniature circles inside for eyes, a wide triangle for a mouth. Spirals for curls. Sketches herself right next to her, a little shorter with straighter hair, links their hands in a jagged cross.
Josie laughs when she shows her, bright and unfiltered but still kind. Always kind. Taps it with her knuckle and promises, “um- thank you. I’m gonna cherish this forever.”
And then she sees her tuck it right into the side of the mirror right before walking Isabel out, just above the picture she has of her and PJ, like her silly doodle is just as important, like it’s a piece of her that deserves a place in her space.
Isabel feels heat creeping up her cheeks, warming her ears and the back of her neck.
Josie, she thinks, and something slots gently into place.