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Victoria’s about three pages into her reading for her literature class when her face-down phone rhythmically buzzes on her bed. That dull, repeated buzz makes her realize she hasn’t quite read anything and immediately after that thought that she’s still shaken like a little kid; sure, her eyes were moving, but she was stuck reeling because she’s decided she’s the real victim of a maybe-almost overdose. If anyone tries to get her to talk during their class discussion tomorrow, she’ll probably start crying. Poor fucking baby.
She scoots her chair over and reaches, turning over her phone to crumple her face at the full breadth of Kris’s illuminated, sunny smile, and she could just about die. Jesus Christ. Hey, Kris! Sorry about your brother. He’ll be okay, as long as he doesn’t kill himself first. My classes are fine, thanks! So much homework! Her contact photo was from a few summers ago right after she graduated Forest Ridge (not Blackwell, Kristine had said with a knowing smirk, not quite a fuck you to her dad, but rebellion enough) when things were okay. Those days were at the very least better than they are now. Victoria loved that photo of her, transferred it onto her laptop the moment she got back to the hotel room suite she shared with her parents like she made a real commitment. Whenever she got tired of the dreary autumn days she’d become accustomed to, she’d close her eyes and see the faint outline of Kristine’s dumb, stoned, grin, and the strings of her blouse undone, her black bikini halter tied in a little bow tight at the back of her neck, all that remained of her former school-assigned student math-tutor’s militancy.
Victoria’s next photo from that day was of Nathan, his head not quite turned, standing at the shoreline. She caught him in motion; immediately aware she was looking at him through her lens before her camera clicked. He always had a sixth sense for knowing when someone was watching him; snapped his neck around fast before a teacher could remind him of something he’d left in their classroom, or turning around to stare pointedly at someone coming towards them during a party. Has, he has a sixth sense, Victoria repeats to herself like a mantra.
That year, which Victoria remembers in sunburnt, over exposed flashes like burst mode on her camera, Kristine and Nathan’s father was busy with the Prescott Foundation’s breaking of the land just north of Newport - not Pan Estates, his current fixation and Nathan’s reason for why he couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him anymore - which meant Sean spent less time at home and Kristine, her brother, and Victoria could swim languidly in the Prescott’s backyard, drink plastic bottles filled with gin and soda water, and, to celebrate Kris’ graduation, share a blunt between the three of them. She’d have her actual graduation party with her real friends later that month, but first an impromptu one because we’re all together! with her baby brother and an underclassman she happened to get somewhat close to at her school by the lottery of the least painful graduation necessary volunteer hours, who, coincidentally happened to be in town while her parents surgically carved out Blackwell and the local high school for their PNW Young Artists in Motion photography series. Victoria’s submitted photos were rejected within the hour of her handing over a monogramed folder to her mother; Kris cackled, and said she’s much better than those Blackwell phonies, that her parents were giving her a hard time to make her tougher. She would know, at least. Although Victoria beamed at her and nodded in agreement, she could picture the exact location and unsightly crumpled shape of the Blackwell brochure in her backpack, folded into neat thirds for her anxiousness.
She'd spent her two-hour campus tour with her parents to her left side only thinking of Nathan’s definite acceptance and defeated look in his eyes when she asked him if he’d apply anywhere else. It was a real chance to keep him close in her life while Kristine’s fleeing to college loomed above their heads; a chance to make a name for herself among the Pacific Northwest’s future art school graduates from rich families; and, most selfish of all, a chance to get a 4.0 with photography as her field of study from a school she knew her parents recognized as prestigious and show them she could work hard for something and succeed with flying colors. The current four hour distance between her and Nathan hurt, too; Blackwell meant she could keep him close enough to touch, make actual, quick, visual confirmation he wasn’t hurting himself or worse.
Despite their father’s absence during most of the week, the sound of Sean’s sedan rolling up to the manor sent Nathan into a paranoid frenzy to fix his clothes and dispose of all evidence that he had done anything but greet Victoria at the door and lead her up into his room, tucked away, not to be heard or seen. Kristine would laugh at him like she didn’t know why he’d act with such a frevor, but she also was the first to leave. Nathan wouldn’t let her forget.
Kris should know Nathan better than anyone, but Victoria’s still left to articulate what he can’t to her like a bad game. Nathan seemed to believe Kris was playing dumb, but the chasm between them seemed to immediately widen during her absence. When Nathan was a few years younger and Kris was still a regular at the Prescott Estate, he’d get angry with her and make it out to seem like she was purposefully neglectful of what their dad did to him to save face. Victoria always wanted to point out that she’s his sister, not a second mom or third, better guardian, and wasn’t a stranger to their father smacking her on the back of the head to drive home her impertinence, nor was she unfamiliar with their mother’s endless quips about hunger or boredom, and their collective constant monotonous chorus that no one in the house is trying hard enough to deserve the life they worked so hard for, but trying to rationalize with an unmedicated, apoplectic Nathan only led to ugly frustrated tears.
Victoria nibbles at her thumb when she finally answers Kris’s call. “Hey, Kris”, standing and deciding to abandon what lays crumpled and unread at her desk. This might require some pacing, downstairs dorms be damned.
Was that solemn enough? “Victoria!” Is she already over it? Maybe really, really relieved he’s alive? “Oh my god, how are you? It’s been forever!” Great! Did you see the video, or did your mom whisper it in full color through the vintage rotary phone fitted to the kitchen’s wall, finger coiled around the wire? Both?
Victoria catches herself in the mirror opposite her bed, sees her furrowed brow, and relaxes her face to not inform her vocal tone. Her mother says she never learns, but she’s studied her parents' propensity of going from angry or sad to impassive, looking nearly annoyed at the inconvenience of talking and emoting and being somewhere, and she learned how to do it in record time. Nobody’s ever congratulated her miming, though. “It really has,” she’s fine, checking her nails, not thinking about anything, really, “I’m fine. Busy, but I think I have to be. You know me.” She tries a smile. She is doing sooo great, so dedicated despite it all. She is the Victoria Kris knows with an academic drive to knock out the rest of her classmates with a pointed, refined, glare. A well dressed academic weapon; sharp like smart, sharp like a chef’s knife. “What about you? How’s Brazil?” She almost wants to self-deprecate, but holds her tongue. There are more pressing matters that she won’t be the first to bring up.
“Good, yeah.” A pause. Kris exhales, and there’s a swoosh like she’s switching ears. “I’m gonna be really honest, okay?” Victoria nods like Kristine can see her. She wishes she could prove that she’s really listening, she really wishes she could see Kristine’s face; her blushed skin, her dark eyes. “Every time I post or tell people about what I’m doing, I make it out to seem like it’s some big thing, but, honestly,” humility will kill us both, “I wish you could see how easy it is. Nathan too,” and a real, genuine smile bleeds in Kris’s voice that makes the lump in Victoria’s throat turn soft and hot. If she audibly cries during a phone call with her best friend’s sister, she might actually kill herself; no note, room left untidy. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s silly.” Images of a humid jungle flash to the front of Victoria’s mind with small, scurrying animals like the photos from midcentury National Geographic that Victoria’s mother has framed in her office, and tanned women wearing saturated clothes with their long legs bare. “I’m really happy here. I don’t know. You just have to live it,” like she’s inviting her to sleep in a little tent out in the rainforest, sharing a sleeping bag and tangling their limbs together. She’s probably tired of someone who loves her shoving a camera in her face, but Victoria would do it anyway. Kristine deep in the jungle with a worn smile on her face; Kris on her side in their green canvas tent, her water-repellent jacket gone and eyes crinkled mid laughter; her legs drawn up sitting on hot concrete, looking up past the camera and at Victoria with that soft smile she always wants. Kris sighs, and Victoria can imagine her running a hand through her cropped brown hair, darker than Nathan’s ever was, and leaning on one leg like she always does when she’s listening, scratching at a bug bite.
“I’m okay, though. I think I could probably sleep better. I miss pancakes.” At that, Victoria tries to picture Kristine at a sticky Two Whales booth or her up early in the misty morning sitting in the manor’s carved out breakfast nook where Victoria sits while Nathan does whatever he does in the kitchen late at night after Vortex parties, the fridge’s bright lights hurting her eyes and alcohol carving her stomach out, but her mind blanks on any fuzzy memories with Kris. Really, all she can think of is Nathan or her there; Sean is, thankfully, out of the house or tucked somewhere away from his son whenever she stays the night. Would Kristine laugh or hate her if she called her father Sean?
She really doesn’t want to bring up Nathan, but the thought of assuming Kris called her just to chat makes her want to pinch the soft skin of her inner arm hard. “Um,” smiling, so good, so great, he’s fine, breathing, probably not even in the hospital anymore, he doesn’t like to text her or talk to her until things have blown over or something but I’m very sure you have experience in that ha-ha “do you know when you’re coming back?” she blurts out, leaving you might not have that much time left until Nathan’s gone, too unsaid. That’s the wrong thing to say. It’s not like there aren’t women she respects who committed suicide. “You don’t have to right now, but you know,” no, she doesn’t, “my birthday” Jesus Christ, “and Nathan’s,” her voice trembles. Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath are legends to her. Her copy of The Bell Jar is above the desk in her room that Nathan likes to work at sometimes. Her lip wobbles in the mirror.
Kris hasn’t tried to interject like she does when Nathan’s freaking out, and Victoria’s suddenly falling because she’s supposed to be Nathan’s good company, not an oversharer who can’t keep a conversation light. She’s Kristine’s younger but still as mature peer, not just Nathan’s classmate. “It’s not that big a deal, really. Maybe Christmas? Or graduation?” Her face is so fucking hot, and red, too, she notes with the steeliness of checking something off a list when she makes eye contact with herself in the mirror. Victoria goes to fidget with her skirt, and finds her hands too shaky to do anything other than uselessly finger its hem like an overactive child. Or? Or? Aren’t you going to ask me if Nathan is gonna last until graduation? “I miss you. Nathan too. We do.” There’s tears in her eyes and a stupid smile on her face and Kristine still hasn’t said anything. When she gets too overzealous in class, Victoria pictures her mom sitting in the corner to keep her unflinching and smartly sardonic. If she was here now, she’d hit Victoria on the side of the head, hard.
She hasn’t fallen apart like this in front of someone in a very long time. Even when Hayden spent the entire duration of Victoria driving them back to campus after Nathan’s incident bouncing his knee, she was steady and sobered with her back straight, the radio kept low for what remained from their tipsiness but not off. Hayden didn’t cry, but she couldn’t think of any other time where he was shaken in front of her. It’s not the first time Nathan’s scared us, she offered with a sad, knowing smile, her knees drawn up to her chin, folded tight onto herself in her car seat like a child. Maybe she’ll drink with him tonight and finish her homework and laugh at his jokes. She’s an adult in these situations until she isn’t. She’s an adult until someone who knows what Nathan is willing to do to himself seems to not know what to do at all. “Are you…” she can picture her eyebrows drawn together, wide eyes scanning her face. She wishes she could draw Kris close and press her lips onto her temple. She wishes Nathan wasn’t what made her talk to her and that she liked her on her own like Victoria did. Don’t say it. Kristine sighs. “Hold on, I’m gonna go somewhere else,” and there’s the sound of wood creaking and a door shutting and Kris’ labored breaths. Victoria almost takes a break from her little panic attack to ask her if she lives in a building or if she sleeps in a tent all the time. “What’s going on? I miss you too, but,” it was an afterthought, no she doesn’t, don’t fucking pretend. “Are you, um, okay?” Is Nathan?, she omits.
Victoria’s mouth is open but no sound comes out. She opens and closes like an old, broken toy; a useless thing that should’ve been rid of a few years ago. Nobody’s sure why she’s kept around. Her fingers lock hard onto the bed spread below, nails drawing towards the center. Why are you pretending? “Um,” she tries, whimpering. “I’m just a little worried,” because it isn’t her who needs Kristine like that. She’ll be fine on her own. The room buzzes.
“Oh,” like it was all for nothing; as if the mention of her brother’s instability wears her out. “I know,” weary, guilty but more annoyed. Nathan called her when Kristine announced her post-graduate plans to their family, angry but without the sadness she expected. She thought she was going to console him through ugly sobbing pressed into her little iPhone, but his rage pooled through the tinny speaker instead. She comforted him regardless. Kris already told Victoria about her flight earlier that week and would continue to text her and send her photos even when Nathan ignored her for the rest of the year. It made her feel like a horrible person whenever she received Kris sent her the food she was eating or a mirror selfie, while Nathan sat a foot away from her on 45 unread messages and 23 missed calls, seemingly unfeeling.
That doesn’t matter, anyways. Nathan needs Kristine more than she ever will. She sighs into her phone, but still sounds enervated, like her little brother and Victoria’s best friend is that exhausting. Like him nearly dying is just her typical baby brother seeking attention in any way he can receive it. A screaming toddler for 18 years of misery. For an angry, overwhelmed moment, she can see what Nathan meant. “But why? Did something happen?” and Kris sounds a little bit less irritated, more fearful. Again, Victoria opens her mouth and nearly croaks. Something in Victoria’s mind hits a wall, then. She’s left with blue birds flying in a ring above her head, so completely paralyzed by the realization that Kris has absolutely zero fucking clue.
If she wasn’t a liar, she’d look Sean Prescott in the face and be callous as he deserves, instead of so fucking saccarine. She balks at that, searching for the part of her that felt so emboldened for a moment to be cold to the man she's come to fear as she is to her peers so she can say something of actual substance to Kristine. Be treated like an adult instead of a pompous, ugly failed ballerina. Instead, she breathes in a smile. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing,” so fake, just gossip, “He's been a little off lately, but nothing bad. I think he misses you. It’s hard for him to be nice when he, um,” tears prick her eyes like a hot knife, “misses you.” Fucking asshole. She shouldn’t have to think about Nathan half-dead in an ambulance more than she already does. She got out of that house, a voice rings in her head, don’t give her a reason to double back. Under his jacket, he wore a short sleeve shirt. There were dark bruises blotted soft on the underside of his pale upper arm. “It’s all hard. I bet that’s how you felt leaving Oregon,” and leaving Nathan. Kristine hums into the phone like honey melting into tea. It could almost soothe her; it used to when she sat next to her in their school's library with her cardigan slumped over her chair and top two buttons on her uniform shirt undone, watching her do her work and smiling when she understood something she was stuck on.
“Yeah, well,” if she closes her eyes, she can see Kristine looking away, her pinched eyes, her soft smile. “He needs to not give you any trouble for that. I can deal with it, but I grew up with it.” Kristine limply chuckles, and Victoria does too. Old friends with a rotting corpse in the center of the room. She doesn’t need to know. “Just, um. If it’s possible,” smiling again, Victoria’s got a hot lump in her throat, “just tell him to call me soon. He won’t pick up my calls again. I wasn’t sure if he was angry at me again or something.” Victoria wants to tell her that Nathan could never be angry at her the way he gets angry at anyone else; even the way he gets agitated at Victoria for her prying seems so different than the way he behaved that first month of his sister's absence, barely functioning while head heavy with the sneaking, painful suspicion that she'd be gone forever. For as long as Victoria knew him, he always seemed to hold onto something horrible to simmer under the surface, but Kristine being gone seemed to take out any bite from whatever he'd been hiding from everyone. He wasn't present in class, which wasn't atypical, but was still gone at their parties; when he invited Victoria to do a line with him, she complied, because she knew he'd do something to make people look at him. After that party, laying in Victoria's dorm bed, he told her he was a lost cause. Victoria just wishes Kristine knew how much he cares, but knows he’ll never prove it to her in a way that matters.
“Yeah, okay,” Victoria sighs out and tries not to blurt out what lies dormant in the back of her throat. It’s sort of a lie, she realizes, and maybe it feels like she’s getting away with something. This is just gossip. He’s still alive, anyways. There’s no use in making a show. “Um, I gotta finish my work, but…” I wish you were here right now. I wish I could make a big confession and you would fly back and we’d sit on the concrete of your backyard patio and you’d say the same thing to me. Even when Kris was a bedroom over while Nathan and Victoria watched movies, she would listen for Kristine through Nathan's bedroom door before leaving his room to make sure she wasn’t bothering her. It’s not like she’s a creep, or anything. “I’ll call you later. I promise.”
She’s going to sleep after this, then take Hayden up on hot-boxing her car even if she can’t stand the smell. Courtney will fill in the sidelines where she should be annotating. If anything, she’ll fake strep and email her professors and expect condolences. Nathan should be feeling better soon, anyways. They’ll have a date and go pick at food and roll up in his truck and take photos between shaky hands. There will be no big fight, even if she wants to brace for one anyways. Give him the confrontation he really deserves. Avoid eye contact and move on. “That's okay. But I’m still deciding when I’m coming back, but you’ll be the first to know. I just don’t want to deal with my mom yet.” Sure.
“I get it.” Silence stretches across her room. She just feels so exhausted. “Bye, Kris. Be safe.”
“Thanks, Victoria. I'll see you soon.” She smiles at the lie. Victoria hangs up and lays down and closes her eyes. She imagines that summer again; the sand between her fingers, the cloudy-sunny-cloudy sky, Kris’ dark hair in the wind, the smell of her gourmand body spray over worn clothing. Maybe if she bothers Nathan enough, he’ll finally text her back. She just wants to sleep now.