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Mae was falling. All that she could see were grey shapes against the dark background, and it was swirling, so fast that she grew sick. She tried to hold her head in place, because she was starting to believe that it would fall off if she didn’t. The darkness enveloped her, hugged her, like the embrace of a rough and ragged carpet. When she tried to turn around, she was met with the sight of the same shapes, the same intangible colours that didn’t stand out at all.
She tried to remember, tried to get back to herself. What had she been doing? Where was she now?
This wasn’t the first time she’d been here, closed off from the world in a swirling pool of nothingness. It had happened a lot during her time at college, and then it had stopped for a brief period when she got back to Possum Springs. But now it had returned. She didn’t feel cold, didn’t feel much of anything, besides being slightly nauseous and so very tired. Tired of ending up in this place, tired of never being normal, maybe even tired of living. She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure about a lot of things nowadays.
Suddenly, she was surrounded by a hundred different voices at once, and they steadily grew louder. It was hard to hear what they were saying, but some of them she managed to make out.
“Of course you have to go to college! We worked our asses off to give you this chance!”
“Why don’t you have a job yet?”
“Do you really wake up at noon every day?”
“You used to be smart! You used to be worth talking to!”
“You’re too old to be talking to teens, you know.”
“College dropout, AKA a failure.”
“For how long will you pretend to be a child?”
“You really should get a job.”
“Grow up.”
Mae tried to scream, she tried to slam her hands over her ears, anything to stop the voices that penetrated her very being. The words danced into her ears and bounced around in her head, and she so dearly wished that the sentences were just like her surroundings; unintelligible and dark and non-threatening. Instead, she was forced to experience the emotions she’d unconsciously pushed away, forced to feel the pain that every new voice brought with it.
In the space that she was stuck in, not quite conscious but enough so that everything hurt, she hugged her knees tightly and tried to hide her face behind her arms. She wasn’t able to hide from the voices, not able to hide from the pain that was brought with them.
It hurt, so at the very least it meant something. It meant that she cared, perhaps enough to do better. But could she? Everything was so painful, every thought about the future more hurtful than the other. When did everything start to become so frightening, so ever-changing? Why did no one see her as a real adult? She wanted to scream, but no words escaped her, none of her own sounds being able to mix with the onslaught of hurtful sentences from people she cared about.
Was this hell? Had she finally come face to face with the wrongdoings in her life? Were the voices’ words true? She questioned this as she floated through the air; never bumping into anything, and never understanding what she saw. Her childhood, her teens. Why did it pass by so quickly? And why did no one else seem to share her feelings?
She was tired. So, so very tired. But the voices were loud, too loud to find any comfort in, and so she kept her eyes open, not caring that nothing she saw made any sense at all.
“Do you seriously not know how to pay a bill?”
“How could you just drop out of college? I would genuinely kill someone to be in your place.”
“We paid so much in tuition fees, and you simply threw it away.”
“You’re not a child anymore, will you ever grow up?”
“Don’t you understand that your actions have consequences?”
“Why don’t you just get a job?”
Mae clutched her head even tighter, hoping that the voices would disappear if she managed to implode her skull. Why did life come with so many expectations? Was there simply no escape? If the only people allowed not to work were children, how come no one understood her desire not to grow up?
She began to punch her head, both in an attempt to quell the voices, and in the hope that if she only got one hard enough blow, then maybe the thought of waking up at six to go to a mindless job wouldn’t make her want to throw up quite as much. Alas, no matter how much she tried, she felt no pain at all. The darkness forbade it, clenched any pain that wasn’t conjured by the shapes themselves.
The intake of a long, long breath was suddenly heard. Mae had drawn it. The voices quieted down, because they knew that they had finally received victory. When the breath was released, Mae closed her eyes. Then she began to fall.
The air hugged her sides comfortably, embracing her not like a carpet nor a chest, but something close to defeat. Was this how it felt, she wondered, to just let go? It had been so simple, like the intake of a breath. It felt like failure, but that’s what people called her anyway. She didn’t think that there would ever be a floor; she would fall for all eternity, because she didn’t even deserve the pleasure of landing and letting go. She was certain of it, the punishment she would neither survive nor succumb to. She braced herself, yet she could never prepare for what actually happened.
Something grabbed her arm, holding tightly without letting go. It added pressure, and Mae briefly wondered if the shadows had come to press the life out of her. Instead, it pulled her upwards, out of the swirling pool of nothingness. She opened her eyes, and came face to face with Bea.
“Mae?” She said, a worried crease between her eyes. “Are you okay? Can I hug you?”
Mae blinked, watching in a blur as the shapes around Bea turned into her room, slowly materialising into things that she recognized, that were familiar. Bea was also familiar, although the expression she wore was not. Mae wondered why Bea was looking at her like that; all eyebrows and downturned lips.
“Yes”, she breathed, so low that she barely heard it herself, yet it was enough for Bea to lean in close and embrace Mae who realised that she desperately needed it. She threw her own short arms around her, feeling the familiar smell of the girl as her childhood room came into focus around her. “You pulled me out”, she whispered into Bea’s neck.
“Hush”, came the response. “You’ve done the impressive work yourself, I’ve just helped you along.”
Mae pondered the words, wondering if they were true. Although the voices had grown distant now, part of the formless shapes and the darkness, they hadn’t quite left Mae’s head completely.
“I’ve never done anything right”, she mumbled. That made Bea pull back, and the expression she wore could only be described as scornful.
“Really?” She asked with a raised eyebrow. “Then how come you’ve made not only mine, but your parents and Gregg and Angus’ lives so much more bearable since you returned? And the countless people you speak to every day in town.”
Mae shrugged. “I don’t have a job”, she said, using Bea’s own argument against her. “And I don’t know how to pay bills. I’m just a burden.”
Another intake of breath was heard, although this time it was Bea’s. “Mae, listen to me”, she said, and so Mae did. “I was mean to you when you first came here. Actually, more than mean, I was quite horrible. But I was miserable, hating my life more for each passing day, and believe when I tell you that I wasn’t alone in that regard.”
Mae narrowed her eyes, because she noticed something. “You’re using past tense here.”
“Yes!” Bea exclaimed, louder than Mae thought she was capable of. “Because you changed that! You changed me.” She lifted Mae’s smaller hands in hers, drawing circles atop her palms, and it felt as if she stared into Mae’s very soul. “You make life bearable, Mae.”
Mae blinked. “Is bearable really enough?”
That made Bea throw her head back in laughter. “Yes. It’s more than anyone could hope for.” She smiled warmly. “More than I ever hoped for.”
“Oh.”
Slowly, something warm spread through Mae’s chest, and again she almost wondered if it were a shape that tried to eat her from the inside, before she understood that her entire body was blushing. Bea’s words meant a lot to her.
“Well.” She swallowed a lump of nerves that suddenly grew in her throat. “You mean a lot to me, too. And, like, thanks for getting me out of my head. And stuff.”
Bea snickered, presumably at Mae’s awkward words. Then, she leaned in slightly, and Mae’s breath hitched as she didn’t dare to hope what would happen next.
What happened was nothing, it seemed, but that was never sufficient for Mae. Thus, she grabbed fate by the neck and closed the distance between them herself. Lips met lips in a slightly awkward but oh, so wonderful kiss. When they leaned back a few moments later, Mae was grinning like a madman.
“Take that, you useless shapes! I bet none of you ever got to kiss the best person on the planet!”
Bea narrowed her eyebrows in confusion, before she shook her head and rolled her eyes. “It’s good to see that you’re yourself again”, she said. Mae smiled and nodded.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be normal, but yeah, at least I’m myself, and I think that’s all I want to be.”