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Chapter Text

For Suzie, it wouldn’t be a good day if it didn’t start with her two closest friends and a full-blown argument in front of their hallway lockers.

“You can argue as much as you want,” Kori’s saying loudly, punctuating each of her words with a clap, “you’re still going to be wrong , bitch.”

Suzie laughs, almost gleefully. “How am I wrong? They have seeds, you can literally Google it–”

“Google can be wrong,” Lydia cuts in. “Google’s wrong about a lot of stuff.”

“Google would not be wrong about this one, I guarantee.”

“You don’t know that, you’re not the one who invented Google!”

“I don’t have to be the one who invented – okay, you know what?” Suzie holds up both her hands, never one to miss out on a dramatic gesture. “You know what, fine. You can both go the rest of your lives believing something completely wrong–”

“Not wrong,” Kori says.

“–and it will simply not be my fault when people laugh at you and call you dumb,” Suzie finishes gracefully. “And rightfully so, because you dumbasses are about to graduate high school at eighteen years old, and you somehow do not know that a tomato is a fruit .”

(Yes, it’s 8 a.m. and they’re standing around arguing about tomatoes. No, Suzie doesn’t know how they’d arrived at this topic, nor can she recall when or how the conversation had gotten quite so heated. Yes, she continues to call these incredibly adamant idiots her best friends and no, she doesn’t know what she’d do without them.)

Kori leans on her locker, utterly unfazed. “I still think there’s no way. You don’t eat a tomato and think ‘fruit,’ you just don’t.”

From her place half-tucked into Kori’s side, Lydia snickers. “You eat entire tomatoes? Like, whole?”

Kori bumps Lydia’s hip with her own, prompting another burst of giggling. “No,” she says,  slow and overly enunciated, though her smile never falters. “You know what I meant.”

“I eat entire tomatoes,” Lydia informs them both, covering the hand Kori has around her waist with her own. “I bite them. Like apples.”

Delighted, Suzie turns on her with raised brows, pointing an accusatory finger. “Oh, I’m sorry, what was that? Like apples? You mean, like fruits because tomatoes are fruits like I’ve been saying this whole time?”

Lydia just blinks, taking a second to process her own words. Then her face splits with a grin and she sticks out her tongue. “Whatever,” she says. “They’re not fruits, weirdo. Kori’s right.”

“You’re just taking her side because she’s your girlfriend,” Suzie says.

Kori cackles, wrapping her other arm around Lydia to pull her in from behind. “Damn right she is.”

Suzie rolls her eyes as hard as she physically can. “I hate couples.”

Kori’s only reaction is to laugh again, louder and more obnoxiously, and Lydia leans her head back to rest on Kori’s shoulder with that impish little smirk of hers and yep, that’s Suzie’s cue to turn and bang her head against the nearest locker door.

She’s about to say something nastier so maybe they’ll take pity on her and stop (it’s too early in the morning for this, she’d argue) when a familiar head of blonde curls catches her attention from across the hallway. She cranes her neck just to make sure she’s got the right person– yeah, there’s no mistaking those boots. Cowboy boots, like she’s going to a rodeo instead of attending a day of high school. 

“Hang on,” Suzie mutters, slinging her backpack off her shoulder to dig through it. “Acacia’s right there, I have to give her an essay.”

“Ooh, businesswoman time,” Lydia says, clapping her hands together.

“Exactly.”

Narrowing her eyes, Kori points her French tip in Suzie’s direction. “You have rehearsal today? I forget.”

“Yeah.” Suzie pulls Acacia’s essay from her folder, smoothing out the corner with her fingertips. “Just until five, though.”

“Oh, perfect,” Kori says. “I have soccer until around that time too, Lydia and I were thinking we could all watch a movie tonight or something.”

Suzie brightens, her attention instantly caught. “Ooh, yes. Whose house and when?”

Kori waves a dismissive hand in the air. “We’ll figure it out tonight.”

“We’ll text you,” Lydia chimes in. “Probably my house, though. And sometime around eight or eight thirty.”

“Sounds good.” Suzie turns quickly, makes sure she hasn’t lost Acacia in the crowd. “Okay, I should go catch Acacia before she leaves to class, but–”

Kori just shoos her away. “Yeah, yeah, get that bag, girl.”

“See you at lunch.”

“Bye!” And with that, she’s off to make herself a crisp twenty American dollars.

Suzie would like to think she’s earned the right to be proud of the little business that she’s built for herself. The transaction is clean and simple: students pay her money to write their papers, book reports, whatever they want. She charges extra for research papers, since that takes her extra time, and she flat out refuses to do lab reports because ew , and everything else is fair game. 

It’s been her “hustle,” so to speak, since halfway through her freshman year when she’d realized just how much people were willing to pay for a decent grade on a paper they didn’t have to write. Sure, not the most academically honest thing in the world, but it’s a reliable way to make a little cash doing something she’s already good at.

Though she has a handful of regular customers, repeat offenders, Acacia actually isn’t one of them. Her excuse for needing this paper written had been something Suzie’s heard a hundred times before, something vague about too much going on this week and too little time, so just this once, Suzie, please? And true to her character, she’d informed Acacia that ‘please’ wasn’t necessary as long as she was willing to pay the twenty bucks, and that she’d be more than welcome to make it not just this once, wink wink nudge nudge.

“Acacia!”

Her friend glances around briefly before she spots Suzie making her way through the crowded hallway, essay in hand.

“Oh,” Acacia says, “you’re an actual godsend, thank you so much.”

”Yeah, no problem.” Suzie hands over the papers, crisp and neatly stapled. “It wasn’t bad at all, I had fun with it.”

Tucking the essay away into her bag and fishing out her wallet, Acacia shakes her head good naturedly. “You would think that, wouldn’t you. I’m not even surprised.”

“Hey,” Suzie says, mock-offended. As if those kinds of comments have ever bothered her. “No, seriously though. I’m kinda jealous we aren’t covering this book in our class, the SparkNotes sounded really interesting.”

Acacia hands over a twenty dollar bill that Suzie gratefully accepts. “You’re not reading this one? Who do you have for English?”

“Visage.”

“Ooh.” Acacia winces.

Suzie just shrugs. “She’s not that bad. She’s a harsh grader, but I feel like we’re gonna be more prepared for writing in college, y’know?”

“Mm. That’s good, I guess,” Acacia says. “Yeah, I don’t know. Arrietty’s always saying her English assignments are a nightmare ‘cause they take forever. She has Visage too, I think.”

Suzie purses her lips. That might be a matter of personal skill , she thinks of saying. She refrains, of course, she knows Arrietty is one of Acacia’s closest friends. For reasons beyond her understanding.

It’s a good thing she holds her tongue, too, because in the very next second Suzie catches a whiff of an all-too-familiar perfume scent, hears the telltale footsteps from one specific pair of high heeled boots that means Suzie’s patience is about to be tested for all it’s worth.

Speak of the devil and he doth appear, they say.

Rather, she doth appear.

“Hi, Suzie,” Arrietty says, feline grin on full display. Somehow managing to make even the way she pronounces Suzie’s name sound like an insult. Suzie would expect nothing less.

She decides to smile right back. “Hi.” She watches as Arrietty’s eyes blatantly flit down from her face to her outfit, and it takes all the self-restraint she has not to audibly groan in anticipation of what she knows is coming.

Within seconds, Arrietty’s found her target of the day. “Love the jacket,” she drawls, and she’s using that catty mean girl voice that Suzie hates, the one that practically screams this is a joke at your expense . “It’s so… vintage.” 

Well, maybe it’s a good thing Arrietty had picked the jacket, of all things. It’s this adorable aviator jacket she’d found for a shockingly reasonable price while thrifting downtown, and she’d sewn her own patches onto the front and shoulders. It’s probably one of the coolest items of clothing she owns, and there’s an approximately zero percent chance she’s going to let Arrietty get under her skin about this jacket in particular.

They do this a lot, this little back and forth game. There isn’t genuine malice behind any of what they’re saying to each other, not really, or at least Suzie’s pretty sure there isn’t. Frankly, it’s hard to tell what Arrietty means and what she doesn’t. 

Still, it’s safe to say they’re not each other’s biggest fans. If Suzie remembers correctly, they’d met in middle school, both freshly teenagers and perhaps a little too quick to unavoidable, faultless teenage anger. They’d had to work together on a science project, something small and meaningless, and Suzie had known their personalities would clash from the moment Arrietty had flashed her that evil smirk and declared, “I’m gonna call you Carrot Top.”

(She‘d stayed true to her word for about four months after that, before Suzie had begun shortening her name to Yeti in retaliation and agreed to stop only under the condition that Carrot Top would be no more.)

Anyway. That’s all there is to it, at the end of the day. Clashing personalities. Clashing senses of fashion and humor and so many other things, too many to count. For the record, Suzie usually isn’t even the one who starts it. That’s always been Arrietty, with her snide remarks and backhanded “compliments” whenever she sees Suzie in the hallways or in class– “Love the jacket,” case in fucking point— and what is Suzie supposed to do? Not give it right back? No, she doesn’t think so. 

…That being said, there is a subtle art to this. 

She still has yet to respond, in their present standoff. Countering immediately would mean acknowledging Arrietty’s dumb quip as being worthy of a counterattack in the first place, which it had not been.

“Thanks,” she says instead, pointedly maintaining eye contact. “It’s thrifted.”

Arrietty sniffs and uses one long nail to swipe a few strands of hair out of her face, seemingly already bored with the conversation. Suzie allows herself the smallest rush of satisfaction at not giving her the response she’d been looking for. “Love that for you,” Arrietty says offhandedly, pulling out her phone. “Acacia, is Jewels here? I haven’t seen her yet, I swear to god if this bitch makes us late to class one more time–”

Acacia frowns. “She said she was on her way.”

“I’m right here,” a voice pipes up from over Suzie’s shoulder, making her jump slightly. “And that was literally one time last year, calm down.”

Suzie recognizes her from her voice alone, doesn’t have to bother turning her head to look, but she finds herself doing so anyway.

Jewels Sparkles is… somewhat of an anomaly, in Suzie’s opinion.

At first impressions, she’s nothing special. She’s a conventionally beautiful girl at the only high school in a small town and a varsity dance captain, no less. Of course she’s well-liked. Of course everyone’s either her friend or wants to be. 

Suzie would rather drink nail polish remover than concern herself with the utterly inconsequential nuances of high school social hierarchy, but Jewels being popular is like the sky being blue or grass being green. There’s no why or how, it’s just the way it is.

But none of that is too far out of the ordinary, obviously. The anomaly isn’t that she’s pretty and popular, it’s that she’s so much more .

It’s the way Jewels has a beaming smile or a genuine compliment for every student she crosses paths with, regardless of who they are. It’s the long hours of amphitheater dance practice that Suzie so often finds herself catching the tail end of as she leaves musical rehearsals, the practices that Jewels not only runs but stays afterward, repping and drilling and choreographing in the hazy orange of sunset. 

It’s strange. Suzie doesn’t really know Jewels, they’ve probably exchanged a grand total of thirty words or less in the past three and a half years of high school, but she feels this tiny, invisible connection to her on this one level, if nothing else. Performer to performer, just sheer appreciation for another individual who devotes herself to her artistic expression the same way Suzie does. 

(Jewels is a stunning dancer, as a side note. Not that Suzie makes it a point to watch her, it’s just that the dance team performs at almost every school event and Jewels is normally at the front of their formations and Suzie’s not blind.)

“There you are,” Arrietty says. “It was at least twice, Acacia, tell me you remember.”

Acacia shrugs. “I can only remember that one time. We were late and Mr. Kressley didn’t even notice because someone almost lit a whole poster on fire with their Bunsen burner.”

Jewels plants her impeccably manicured hands on her hips. “See? One time,” she sing-songs. “You can’t gaslight me, baby.”

Her years of improv classes weren’t for nothing; Suzie knows how to seize an opportunity when she sees one. “I don’t think she’s trying to gaslight you, Jewels, I think the chemical fumes from her perfume have just seeped into her brain.”

There’s a very petty part of her that wants to give her full and undivided attention to Arrietty for her reaction, to take pride in the way her brows arch dangerously high on her forehead, but what’s a little surprising is that Jewels actually laughs. Hard.

“Oh my god,” Jewels exclaims, covering her mouth with her hand. “Sorry, that just– that was a good one. I think she ate you up with that one, Arri.”

Something passes over Arrietty’s expression, in that heartbeat. Something like the shadow of a passing airplane, there one blink and gone the next. 

Arrietty is nothing if not quick to recover, or at least do a good job of pretending to. “Whatever,” she says, popping her gum and adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder. She doesn’t look at Jewels when she speaks. “We’re going to class now.” Her tone is bored but clearly leaves no room for argument, and Acacia trails after her with a quiet chuckle of her own as Arrietty stalks away down the hallway, boots clodding against the scuffed tile. 

If this isn’t what winning feels like, Suzie doesn’t know what is.

Still smiling, now a real smile instead of the dry one she’d plastered on in front of Arrietty, Suzie turns to Jewels as she’s still catching her breath after her fit of laughter. 

“Do people ever tell you you’re too nice to be friends with someone like her?”

It’s meant lightheartedly, and it brings Suzie no small amount of private relief that Jewels seems to take it as such. “Oh,” she says easily, “all the time.” She flips her hair over her shoulder, winding a curl around her finger. “But I think she’d be even worse without me around to rein her in once in a while, so. Y’know. It’s for the best, trust me.”

She talks with her hands, Suzie notices. All these wiggles of her fingers and fluttering and flapping and gesturing at nothing in particular. 

Suzie nods. “I’ll take your word for it,” she tells Jewels solemnly, and right as she’s saying it the shrill tone of the first bell rings out into the hallway, prompting the pods of other students around them to begin to disperse.

“Okay, I should probably go,” Jewels giggles, taking a few ambling steps back. “If I’m late Arri’s gonna make fun of me for the next, like, month.”

Suzie doesn’t doubt it. “Speedwalk and you might make it,” she says.

Jewels leaves her with a wave and a flash of her signature pearly smile, and Suzie goes off to her own class and mentally adds ‘decent conversationalist’ to her unofficial profile of Jewels. Suzie will be the first to admit it, she’d maybe written Jewels off as being a little ditzy, albeit sweet. Ditzy people make for tough conversation, in Suzie’s experience. 

Briefly, as she takes her seat in her first period, she wonders if Jewels even knows who she is.

It’s a dumb thing to wonder. Of course she doesn’t. Jewels is a friendly person who will talk to anyone, Suzie reminds herself, that’s her whole gig. That’s why everyone likes her.

Not that Suzie cares too much either way, actually. In fact, she doesn’t even know why she’s still thinking about it.

She pulls out her notebook and rests her chin on the heel of her palm, elbow propped on her desk. Hey, she remembers with a half-smirk to herself, she’d gotten in a jab at Arrietty clever enough that the taller girl had literally walked away. That’s what she should really be focusing on here.

The rest of the day is about as eventful as most school days are, which is to say not very. Biology is whatever, math is gross but unavoidable, her free period is spent in the library pretending to study for an upcoming test but really just eavesdropping on the gossip being discussed in great detail at the next table over. 

Everyone had talked about how slow and torturous the second semester of senior year would feel, all their transcripts and applications already sent to colleges and out of their hands, just chugging along to a finish line barely out of reach. Suzie will admit, it’s hard to find the motivation to give her schoolwork the same amount of effort when her final grades won’t even matter so long as she doesn’t fail anything, but otherwise… She thinks it’s kind of nice, actually. Cruising steadily towards graduation without much care for the smaller details, not having to do more than the bare minimum. 

Well, alright. There’s one class where she doesn’t just do the bare minimum. 

Suzie’s always been keenly aware of the difference between enjoying something and being good at it. It’s an important distinction; you don’t have to excel at a sport or a hobby to say you find it fun. Plenty of people like to do things they aren’t particularly great at, and a smaller but not insignificant number of people are good at things they don’t particularly like doing. 

Luckily for her with English, as it’s turned out— it just so happens that both are true.

It’s somewhat of a well known fact, for better or for worse. Between the number of times per class she raises her hand, and the literal business she’s constructed off her ability to whip up a convincing essay on a topic she knows little to nothing about, Suzie’s earned herself a bit of a reputation. Not necessarily a great one. 

Even if they don’t say it aloud, she knows she can rub some people the wrong way. Teacher’s pet , their bored faces will say when she’s answering a question. She’s trying too hard .

Truth be told, hand over heart, Suzie couldn’t give less of a damn. They can think whatever they want, she means that genuinely. Her grade in Ms. Visage’s gradebook will only ever continue to go up, and regardless of what the kids in her class might whisper about her when she’s not around, it’s still their money that ends up in her bank account.

Plus, whoever said she didn’t enjoy a healthy dose of attention?

English is her last class of the day, so before the late bell has even rung Suzie’s thoughts have moved on from school. She’s texting a group chat she has with Lydia and Kori, stealing glances at the clock to make sure she can pocket her phone in time and avoid getting it taken away. Ms. Visage may have obvious favorites that may or may not include herself, but she’s a fucking stickler about her no cell phones rule and Suzie isn’t willing to risk it.

Suzie: i can get snacks for tonight tell me what you guys want

Kori: Can you get dr pepper

Kori: Or sprite

Kori: Any soda

Suzie sighs aloud, leaning over her desk to type with both thumbs.

Suzie: i know you’re illiterate but i said snacks not drinks

Suzie: popcorn okay?

Lydia: meat ball

Suzie: meatballs???? lydia why

Kori: SODA

Kori: Any soda or youre a fake friend

The bell rings as Suzie drops her head into her hands, and she rattles off one last text before shoving her phone into her backpack:

Suzie: i’m bringing popcorn and candy. i hate you both

She shakes her head, closing her eyes momentarily. God, sometimes they drive her up the wall. It’s like they’re aliens who don’t even bother trying to pass as humans. 

At the front of the room, Ms. Visage gets up from her desk and walks to her podium, high heels clicking out a sharp rhythm on the floor. “Attendance,” she announces bluntly. “Look around. Any neighbors missing?”

No one answers. Ms. Visage lets the clipboard in her hand clatter onto the podium. “Great. I’m sure I’ll find out later who was absent when they email me asking for an extension on the next assignment.”

Suzie resists the urge to grin. Yep, an extension that I’ll be taking advantage of because I’ll probably be writing their shit for them again.

She doesn’t have explicit confirmation, but she’s pretty sure Ms. Visage is fully aware of her students turning in assignments that aren’t their own work. Suzie never hands over the essays to people in her classroom, or anywhere near it— she’s bold, not reckless, thank you very much. Still, Suzie wouldn’t be surprised if their teacher somehow knew anyway. 

If Ms. Visage does know, Suzie figures, she’d say she doesn’t get paid enough to care who writes the papers she grades as long as she doesn’t have to read garbage. So it doesn’t really matter either way. 

Ms. Visage starts class as usual, by going over reading assignments and homework. “Deadline for your Hamlet analysis essays has not changed,” she says, tapping a long red nail against the whiteboard. “If you don’t know what that deadline is, I’ve already said it four times this week alone. Ask a friend. We’re learning to problem-solve, people. Next: Catcher in the Rye . I’ve made the reading a little shorter this week, you’re welcome , since we have a quiz on Friday. The quiz will cover the first eight chapters…”

She continues to talk, and Suzie’s only vaguely listening, nodding along and trying to remember the important details. From her seat, she has a perfect view of the window next to Ms. Visage’s desk, the clear blue sky and trees framed by golden sunlight. It’s a nice day, she muses. Maybe she’ll walk home instead of taking the bus?

“...grab one of these worksheets,” Ms. Visage says, cutting back into Suzie’s train of thought. “You may work with a partner. You’ll have most of the class period, unless I decide otherwise.”

‘Work with a partner’ is all Suzie needs to hear. Unhurried, she digs in her backpack for her pencil case, then turns over her shoulder to find the one person in this entire class who she knows she can work with and not go insane.

“Sam,” she calls, and the blonde raises her head with a start, blue eyes wide. “Wanna–?”

“Oh! Yeah, of course,” Sam says. She gathers up her things and scans the classroom, pointing to two empty seats near the front. “Go save those, I’ll get the worksheets.”

Suzie doesn’t have to be told twice. Humming softly to herself, she makes her way towards the desks and hangs her jacket over the back of the closer chair. There is a backpack here, she notes, but people usually don’t mind shifting around when they’re all told to work in small groups. Not unless they’re, like, a raging asshole or something. Which the vast majority of people here aren’t, so–

“Hey, sorry–”

Suzie spins in place, startled by the sudden voice so close behind her.

“–can you get your Raggedy Ann jacket off of my chair, please?”

For fuck’s sake. 

Arrietty stands in front of her, condescending sneer and all. Suzie always forgets they share this class, or maybe she just tries not to remember for her own mental health. 

“Sorry, didn’t realize this was your desk,” Suzie says. She’s definitely not sorry, and she doesn’t go to the trouble of pretending she is. “Can I sit here for now?”

Arrietty’s lips curl, her nose scrunching up in a mockery of a smile. “I’m sure you can find somewhere else,” she purrs. 

Suzie takes a breath, and tells herself getting expelled for physical violence three months before the end of senior year is not the way to go. “Arrietty–”

“Hey,” Sam interrupts pointedly, appearing at Suzie’s side. “Crystal and Lana aren’t using their desks, let’s just go sit there instead.” She must catch the last exasperated look that Suzie gives Arrietty, because she moves closer to pat Suzie on the shoulder with a cluck of her tongue. “We’ll have to be understanding, Suzie, some people just never learned to share in kindergarten.”

There’s something incredibly satisfying about the way Sam delivers it, like an arrow flying straight and true, all honeyed up by her sweet accent. It would be hard to miss the disbelieving scoff Arrietty lets out as they walk away, and by the time they’re on the opposite side of the room Suzie bursts into laughter. “Sam,” she says, collapsing into a chair, “you are too funny.”

Sam lifts her shoulders and bats her lashes. “Am I wrong? Someone needs to let that girl have it one of these days, I swear to god.”

“Tell me about it.” Suzie sighs. “Okay, let’s see what this worksheet is. I’m hoping it’s not homework if we don’t finish…”

Suzie likes Sam. Actually, she would go so far as to say she respects Sam, not only as a person but as an academic. 

At her very core, Sam is the human personification of professionalism. And it’s no mystery where she gets it from, either. Funnily enough, all the way from elementary school to their last years of middle school, Sam had been most known for being a pageant girl– precisely, for being a winning pageant girl. Suzie has hazy memories of it, Sam showing up in the local newspaper every other week in some frilly pink dress and sash, with a tiny tiara perched on her head. 

Suzie’s personal hypothesis is that all the hairspray from the pageants had entered her bloodstream and turned her into some Spider-Man mutant genius– but the more realistic (disappointing) version is simply that Sam is a perfectionist because she’d been raised as one. Suzie’s never known Sam to get anything less than a ninety percent on any test or project, including those awful trigonometry quizzes they’d all had to sit through with about twenty problems too many and far too little time.

It’s not that Suzie really cares what kind of grades someone gets, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have at least one person she can rely on in English to not screw her over or expect her to do all the work.

That, and the fact that they apparently both want to see Arrietty knocked down a peg or two. Several pegs, mayhaps. That doesn’t hurt either.

Sam’s easy to work with. The worksheet is on citing evidence for characterization, and Sam hunts down quotes while Suzie writes them down so they can make up the analysis together. No surprise, they finish far ahead of anyone else and end up making small talk until Ms. Visage holds up her hands and calls back everyone’s attention.

“Okay,” she says loudly, waiting for the chatter to die down. “Hopefully you’re all done or almost done with that worksheet. You can leave them in the basket by the door as you leave today.”

Someone raises their hand. “What if we didn’t finish?”

Ms. Visage considers the question with a fist propped on her hip. “If you didn’t finish, I want it handed in first thing tomorrow at the start of class,” she says. “You will not have time to work on it tomorrow, hear me? I better not hear any last minute excuses.”

Suzie skims over their work one last time. They could take the extra time, she supposes, but what they already have is fine. She’s about to tell Sam as much, but before she can:

“Oh, and one last thing– I’ll be handing back your poems that were collected yesterday,” Ms. Visage says. “As I said before, extra credit will be offered for reading your poem aloud for your classmates. I’ll give you a minute to decide whether or not you want to do that now.”

Suzie feels a nudge to her elbow. She turns her head and Sam is looking at her, grinning expectantly. 

Oh, hell no.

“No thanks,” she whispers, playing along. “Why don’t you go up and read yours?”

Sam leans back in her seat, chin raised ever so slightly. “Not unless you read yours first.”

Sure, Samantha. “You’re not slick, I know you’re just gonna let me read mine and then not raise your hand.”

Sam stifles a laugh with her hand. “No, I will! Scout’s honor.” She holds up three fingers, clearly trying to look innocent.

“You were never a Girl Scout, bitch,” Suzie says under her breath. “I’ll do it if and only if you do it first. Pinky swear.”

Sam raises her eyebrows. Suzie holds her stare, and extends a hand with her pinky stuck out for good measure.

Finally, Sam links their pinkies together. “Deal,” she whispers, just as Ms. Visage starts shuffling a stack of papers at her podium.

“Alright,” Ms. Visage begins, “any takers on that extra credit?” And before the words are even fully out of her mouth, Sam’s delicate hand is shooting up in the air. Suzie covers her snicker with a fake cough, accepting with grace the lighthearted glare Sam sends her way as she walks to the front of the class. 

The poem is a little different from the usual English assignment, a little out of Suzie’s personal comfort zone. It’s creative writing, which is nothing new, but they hadn’t really gotten much in terms of concrete guidelines. “It has to be from the point of view of a character from something we’ve read together this year,” Ms. Visage had told them. “ Hamlet , Catcher in the Rye , any of the shorter stories. All fair game. Try to create something original. Put your whole heart into it, imagine you are the character and their feelings are your feelings.”

Suzie doesn’t typically make a regular habit of putting her whole heart into most of what she writes, but instructions are instructions, right? 

Still, it had taken actual effort instead of just an hour or two with her laptop and a movie playing in the background. Suzie wonders if maybe this is how everyone else feels when they write for school, except all the time. 

Up near the whiteboard, Sam’s been handed her poem by Ms. Visage. She clears her throat. “I chose Catcher in the Rye ,” she says in her public-speaking voice, “and my poem is from Holden’s perspective.”

Makes plenty of sense. Holden is a protagonist with a distinct voice, and everyone knows Ms. Visage prefers Catcher in the Rye over any of the other novels they’re supposed to read. 

Sam starts reading aloud. Her poem is exactly what Suzie would expect from someone like Sam, basically a short first-person character study with references to the story thrown in here and there. It’s very cut and dry, a decent but unremarkable poem guaranteed to land her a solid A at the lowest, and all Suzie can think is what have I gotten myself into . 

When Sam’s done, everyone gives her a half-hearted smattering of applause as she sits down again. “Your turn,” she says to Suzie in a stage whisper.

Suzie raises her hand to go next with a sigh. It’s probably best to get this over with quickly.

Ms Visage beckons her up, utterly unsurprised. Suzie accepts her graded poem, barely sparing a second thought for the 20/20 scrawled in red ink at the top.

She turns to face her classmates. “My poem,” she says matter-of-factly, “is based on Hamlet . I wrote as Hamlet about his feelings for Ophelia.” 

She has about twenty pairs of eyes staring blankly back at her now, so she soldiers on, ignoring how stupid this already feels.

“ Fair Ophelia,

As a lamb yearns for a hatchet 

So too do you claim that love lives here 

So too does a lark yearn for a spitting musket,

The ebb and flow of hunting season

Daughter drenched in flowers,

Why do you desire my winter? My frost? 

Why do you smile for a nose upturned, 

Whose eyes shall spare nary a glance downward?

I look upon your face and see two windows to a soul driven mad by my own hand

And yet, the candle of your love burns brighter, warmer still.

Fair Ophelia,

The world will never know another tragic fool so lovesick,

A fragile innocence as pure,

A blind heartbeat more true.”

She forces herself to stand tall, shoulders back throughout the entire thing. Number one rule of selling anything in front of an audience, you have to be convinced yourself before you can even think of convincing anyone else.  

Sam is the first to start clapping, she notices with amusement. Other students follow suit as she slides back into her seat. “Happy?” she mutters lightly, and Sam holds up her hand for a high five.

“You actually took it seriously,” Sam says. “I didn’t know you were a poet like that, girl.”

Suzie snorts quietly. “You’re hilarious. That was probably the most contrived bullshit I’ve ever turned in for a grade.”

From her desk, Ms. Visage surveys her students the same way a judge might look over a courtroom, gaze piercing and precise. “Would anyone else like to read their poem?” she asks. “Going once, going twice?”

Silence.

Ms. Visage pushes her glasses up to sit atop the gray streak in her hair. “Lovely. Suzie, Sam, you’ll both receive five points of extra credit, whenever I decide to enter grades.”

The bell rings at the perfect time. People are immediately up out of their seats, talking and laughing and clamoring over one another, shuffling towards the door. Suzie lets herself fall in with the group; she has about half an hour before rehearsal starts, so she’s in no hurry. There’s a decent convenience store only a block from school, she could go pick up the snacks to take to Lydia’s tonight and be back with time to spare. She just has to go to her locker first, grab a few things–

“Hey.”

–does she even need her history textbook today? Probably not, the only homework is to work on a project that’s not even due until next week—

“Suzie!”

She starts to turn around, but before she can even look behind her there’s someone grabbing her wrist and tugging firmly, making her stumble backward. On instinct, she whirls around and tries to jerk away, until she glares up into her maybe-assailant’s face and just freezes.

“Arrietty,” she says, as unfriendly as she can possibly manage. “What are you doing? Let– go of me, what–”

Arrietty, who hasn’t let go of Suzie’s arm and is still actively pulling her towards the nearest classroom. Arrietty, who is also not looking at her or explaining why they need to suddenly be inside a random empty classroom together. Arrietty, who is very strong, wow–

It’s only once they’re both inside that Arrietty releases her, and the taller girl shuts the door behind them. 

“Ow,” Suzie says loudly, rubbing circles on her wrist with her thumb. 

Arrietty rolls her eyes. “Sorry,” she mutters. “Not my fault you can’t respond to your own name, apparently.”

On a different day, Suzie might protest that by pointing out Arrietty had only said her name one time and then immediately gone for physically grabbing her, but on this day she’s just shocked the word ‘sorry’ is in Arrietty’s vocabulary. And maybe a little curious as to what they’re doing here.

Suzie crosses her arms. “If you only dragged me in here to be an asshole, you could have just done that out in the hallway.”

Suzie doesn’t receive the narrow eyed scowl she expects. Arrietty barely seems to have heard her, in fact, which is when Suzie first starts to get an inkling that possibly this is different from their usual exchanges. “No, I…”

Suzie stares at her expectantly. 

Arrietty’s lips are parted, breath drawn in like she’s right on the cusp of speaking, but nothing’s coming out. “I wanted to talk to you,” she says after an unnatural pause, sounding vaguely pissed off.

Suzie doesn’t bother hiding her disbelief. “Congratulations, you’re doing that now.” 

It’s a deliberately stupid response, made better by the fact that Arrietty had practically walked into it, but it doesn’t quite ease the tension in the room. As much as she’d hate to admit it, Suzie’s intrigued. She’s intrigued by the absurdity of this whole thing, of this unspoken thing Arrietty isn’t saying that’s making her hesitate and fumble for the right words. 

Suzie’s already here. May as well stick around to find out why, right?

Arrietty’s gaze snaps up from the floor so they’re looking each other dead in the eyes, and finally she speaks.

Chapter Text

“How do you write so well if you’re such an awkward loser?”

It’s a fair question! Arrietty stands, hand on her hip, in front of Suzie, hoping she’ll choose this one moment to break their streak of arguments dating back to eighth grade. She only brought her here for one thing, so she’d really appreciate it if Suzie could play nice for once . 

Suzie takes a second to respond, before squeezing her eyes closed in thought. “Did you seriously just mysteriously pull me into a dark, empty classroom just to call me an awkward loser?”  

Ugh, it was worth a try. “No!”

“No, but…?” Suzie leaves the end of the sentence blank, presumably so she can fill it in. Does she always have to be so infuriating?

“You heard me. How do you write so well if you can't talk well? Or– fuck!” Arrietty can feel herself fucking up this whole conversation. This is getting rough but she just has to power through it, now. “I mean– you can talk well, you’re just–”

“I talk well because I write well and vice-versa,” Suzie interrupts her, and Arri can see her patience dwindling before her eyes. “Why does that matter?”

She brings herself back to the original reason she pulled Suzie aside in the first place. “I heard your poem in class earlier and didn't completely hate it.” 

Suzie raises her hands in a ‘so?’ gesture, but she lets her continue.

Here she goes. 

“And I was thinking that I could pay you to help me write something like that for someone else.”

And there it is. She had said it. Out loud. Arrietty feels the blood rush to her head before she can remind herself that this is Suzie she’s talking to, and that feeling embarrassed is in and of itself embarrassing. But still, she’s never said that out loud before. That there is a person on this planet who she wants to send a letter to. Suzie, on the other hand, is just starting to comprehend what she just said. 

“You want me to write you a poem–”

“Help me write. And it doesn’t have to be a poem.”

“Okay, help you write a non-poem for… another human being?” Suzie looks both confused and highly amused.

Arrietty rolls her eyes. “Yes, doofus, that’s what I just said.”

“Like, not a fellow spawn of Satan? A real human with a beating heart and empathy?”

“Don’t be a cunt, I said I’ll pay you. Double,” she retorts. If Suzie doesn’t want to be civil, then neither does she. “Y’know, money . Stuff you give people for makeup that isn’t ugly and clothes that don’t look like they’re from a hundred years ago.”

“Wow, I’m surprised you know that the nineteen-twenties were a hundred years ago,” Suzie says, a grin making its way onto her face. “Okay, wait, if we’re really doing this, I have to know some things.”

“Like?” Don’t say something dumb, she wills.

“Like, anything at all?” Suzie says, pulling up a chair and taking her place at one of the desks. She takes a notebook and pen out of her backpack and looks at Arri expectantly. 

“That’s dumb.” Arri sits on the top of a nearby desk, swinging her feet in annoyance. 

Suzie sets the pen down and leans back in her chair. “I can’t write about this guy if I’ve never met him, Arrietty.”

And oh, shit. Arri opens her mouth to say something rude in order to distract from the extreme panic she’s feeling, but nothing comes out. Oh, shit, she simply thinks. 

Suzie thinks it’s for a guy. 

How does she navigate this? To be honest, she should’ve expected this to happen. She’s never dated another girl in public, she’s never dated anyone in public. Does Suzie hate her enough to use this secret against her? If Suzie did tell anyone, would they believe her? 

Arrietty hates how small she must sound when she sighs, “It’s not for a guy.” 

As soon as the words leave her mouth, Suzie’s eyes go wide. 

“Oh,” Suzie says, voice just breathy enough to seem understanding. But Arri doesn’t care if she understands, that’s not why she’s here. Fuck, she doesn’t need Suzie’s pity or understanding or whatever it is people expect during moments like this.

“That’s why I’m not– I can’t tell you who it is.” 

They sit in silence for a moment. Their years of arguing and teasing and borderline bullying had built up to this . An admission too vulnerable, too scary to be had in a place like this, between two girls who were content with keeping their relationship to a professional level of hatred. 

The ball is in Suzie’s court now, and Arri hates that. Like, really hates that. 

“You don’t have to tell me who she is,” Suzie starts, talking like she knows she has to tread extremely carefully, “but I still need to know… some things. I just can’t write something like that if I’m completely in the dark. Tell me something about her.”

Arri’s hands form into fists; she needs this, but she also needs to keep some things a secret from Suzie. If she finds out who she’s going to be writing about– nope, Arri doesn’t let herself get carried away. 

“Um.” How do I describe this girl in a way that reveals nothing about who she really is? How do I describe someone that even the biggest losers could probably recognize in an instant? Arri racks her brain for something, anything to describe this girl who means everything to her. This girl who she can’t even think the name of. “She’s… shiny.” 

Suzie blinks rapidly, shaking her head briefly in confusion. Fuck, she thinks, why did I say that?

“ Shiny ?” Suzie says, and Arrietty can hear the sarcasm starting to drip from her words. “What, like she’s metallic?”

Arri scoffs. “Fuck you, why do you think I want your help in the first place?” 

“Sorry, you’re right,” Suzie apologizes with a smile. “You need my help writing to your shiny robot crush.”

“Unbelievable,” Arrietty scoffs, standing up from her spot on the desk. “You can write a long-ass paper for Acacia without giving her a hard time, but you can’t even hear me out?”

“I’m hearing you out right now, you’re the one who’s refusing to tell me anything about this girl you apparently like.” Suzie grabs her notebook and stands up as well, letting Arrietty know subtly that she can walk away too. 

This bitch. “Okay, I’m sorry I don’t want to tell all my secrets to a girl whose favorite movie is the Wizard of Oz!” 

“Oh, you’re one to talk, you look like you’d melt if I threw water on you!” Suzie shakes her head, making her way towards the door.

“I don’t know what that means!” Arri responds, feeling this opportunity slip out of her hands. So what if Suzie was too obtuse to understand her situation? She tells herself she can always find someone else, and she almost believes it. 

“It means,” Suzie steps out the door of the classroom and yells from the hallway, “you’re a bitch, Arrietty!”

The door hits the wall with a bang, and Suzie is gone. Arrietty stands in the same spot, staring at the floor and feeling like a fucking idiot. Of course she’d never agree, she thinks, who the fuck would? She takes a few deep breaths, but she doesn’t feel any better.

With a groan, Arrietty reaches up and runs her hands through her hair. While she’s taking a second to calm herself down, her eyes find the analog clock on the classroom wall. Because Suzie had chosen to be impossibly difficult, Arrietty is now five minutes late to soccer practice. She isn’t even there and she’s ruining things for her. Typical. 

So, she swipes up her bag and makes her way to her locker, where her soccer bag is waiting like it always is. As much as she tries to hurry, she can’t be bothered to care that much about anything at the moment. If the field wasn’t next to the school, maybe she’d walk faster, but it is, so she doesn’t waste her energy. After picking up her bag, it's only a few minutes before she’s changing in the fieldhouse and jogging out to join the rest of her teammates in stretching. 

Silently, she’s relieved that they haven’t started the actual practice yet. 

At first, she’s convinced that no one notices her being late. But that delusion is quickly tossed when she looks around at her peers, and realizes that most of them are looking at her. Shit. 

“Arri, get over here,” her coach shouts, already sounding annoyed. 

She jogs over, eager to put her lateness behind her and just focus on getting better. Landing at her side, Arrietty bounces on her heels, trying to look ready. “Yeah?” 

Her coach rubs at her temple. “I know you're not the closest with Kori but I'm gonna get the two of you to focus on footwork to the side.” 

To be honest, it takes everything in her to not let out a groan of protest. This is a punishment and she knows it, shit, by the looks on the other girls’ faces, even they know it. Not only is she known to hate doing repetitive, boring drills for who knows how long, but she’s also growing to hate that smug grin on Kori’s face that appears when she approaches her.

Still, Arrietty stays silent, not wanting to get into any more trouble. With a nod, she picks up a ball and jogs with Kori to the side of the field that their coach pointed out. She can make it work– at least they’re in the shade, next to the bleachers. The bleachers, which– oh, fuck. 

“Go team, woo!” 

Right next to where they’re supposed to practice, perched on a seat like the annoying little gothic princess she is, sits Lydia Kollins. Arrietty immediately turns to Kori, who seems to be enjoying the little show. 

“Kori, please don't tell me she's gonna be here the whole time,” she groans. 

“You didn't have a problem with her last practice,” Kori says, eyes not leaving Lydia for a moment. Ugh. 

Arri rolls her eyes. “That's because your little girlfriend here wasn't heckling me last practice, was she?” 

“Rude!” Lydia screeches. “I can hear you, y’know!”

“ Rude ,” Kori laughs, then she shouts, “hey, maybe calm down with the cheering! We're trying to do some work here!”

Her words actually seem to get the other girl to relent; Lydia raises her hand to give Kori a two-finger salute, before turning her attention elsewhere. Maybe she brought a book or something else nerdy in her backpack. 

“Happy, bitch?” Kori asks, clearly ready to get started. 

“Very.” 

On this very sunny, very irritating day, the two of them begin working some very boring drills. When it comes to sports, Kori isn’t completely incompetent, which is good, but Arri can feel herself getting wound up. 

Every little thing comes close to setting her off, or worse, just adds fuel to the flame building within her chest. Things would be going smooth, until Kori would send her a pass that’s slightly harder, meaning she takes more steps to receive it, meaning everything is fucked always and she would never love her. 

She would never love her, especially if she couldn't even ask her and find out. Arrietty stops to take a breath. You’re cool. You’re fine.

“Need a second?” Kori asks, but Arri can’t tell if she’s making a joke or asking out of concern. 

It doesn’t matter. She waves her off, getting back into their passing and dribbling. That is, until their coach blows the whistle and calls them over. 

Finally, she’s made it through the hard part, now she can actually join the rest of their team. They’re told that, for the last half of practice, they need to split into groups and play a scrimmage match.

Arrietty finds herself on the side she considers to be better, which does an alright job at easing her growing frustration. However, that’s where the ‘easing her frustration’ stops.

The game is fucking terrible. No one passes to her, she can feel their hesitation even passing near her. With every goal kick and whistle and corner taken, she can feel her play getting sloppier. On top of that, they let in a goal and go down one-nil, and time is going fast. Well, shit, if no one passes to her, she can’t score, so it’s their loss. 

Except, it turns out to be her loss, too. Arrietty kicks at the grass below her– she needs to do something , but she knows she’s too pissed off to do it well. Fuck it, time’s running out. 

Kori, who, coincidentally is on the other team, blazes past her, dribbling with the ball around her own net. And, because she’s doing really well and her judgement is not at all clouded, Arri slides forward to tackle her and grab the ball for herself. 

What ends up happening does not leave her with the ball, actually, no one gets the ball. 

Because no one cares about the ball. 

At that moment, it’s forgotten about, rolling off the field and out of sight. 

“What the fuck?” yells Lydia from the bleachers. 

When Kori hits the ground, she clutches her ankle and contorts her face in a way that tells everyone on the field that something is wrong . Arrietty freezes, letting her teammates swarm around the two of them and find out what happened. Shit. 

“Kori, what happened?” 

“Are you okay?”

“Why the fuck would you tackle her that hard?”

Quickly growing tired of their questions, Arrietty pushes past her teammates to get to Kori. It was an accident, but she still feels terrible about it, and she doesn’t want to feel worse than she already is because of a dumb game.

When she arrives at her side, Kori is still holding her ankle, but it seems the shock of the accident has worn off. 

“You alright?” Arri asks, crouching down next to her.

“I’ll be fine, I can still move it,” Kori sighs. “Anything you want to say?”

She could be earnest and sincere, or

“Sorry you can’t take a tackle,” she tries to joke. 

Kori cracks a smile. Immediately after, Arri feels someone tug her jersey back and stand her up. 

“You could’ve seriously fucking hurt her, bitch!” growls some freshman whose name she can’t recall at the moment.

Fuck it, she’s already mad and Kori looks like she’s over it. “And I can seriously fucking hurt you right now, too!”

Before anything can really happen, she’s pulled back by her jersey again. This time, when she turns around, it’s her coach. Arrietty opens her mouth to defend herself, but she is cut off very quickly. 

“Go home, cool down, and come back next practice with a better attitude.” 

Arri clenches her jaw at her coach’s words. The older woman doesn’t sound mad, just tired of her shit, so she listens to her. So, Arri gets up and walks away from the group, trying not to actually physically stomp back to the locker room. 

Truthfully, she just wants to go home, so she doesn’t bother to do anything besides throw a hoodie on, change her shoes, and grab her duffel. She probably looks pissed as she leaves the field and begins the walk home in her soccer shorts, but she doesn’t care. 

Just get home , she thinks, just get home and you’ll figure out what to do about everything once you’re there. 

It’s a nice day, but that's all that's nice about her situation. The sun is shining; it should’ve been a good practice, but it hadn’t been. Arri knows that school’s gonna be even worse tomorrow, but she can skip her first period class if it gets really bad. 

She also knows she needs to do something about how she feels, she can't just ignore her and miss first period for the rest of the year.

Suddenly, a buzz comes from her phone, and she briefly wonders who could be texting her. Once she opens her phone and sees the name attached to the message, she breathes out a cynical laugh. Who else? Arri doesn’t have the energy to respond right away, so she just tucks her phone back into her pocket. 

The walk home is peaceful when she isn’t, and she can take a moment to appreciate that. But, there is one tiny, miniscule thing that disturbs her peace once she crosses the street. That tiny thing is Suzie Toot, bopping down the road with wired earbuds hanging from her knitted toque. 

This has to be a sign , she thinks. 

And, because her peace is already disturbed, she decides to disturb it even more and run to catch up with the girl. When she catches up to her in a few short seconds, Arri can’t decide how to get Suzie’s attention without scaring the shit out of her. 

“Um,” she reaches out to tap her on the shoulder before thinking the better of it, “...Suzie!”

Her volume must be set to super low, because Suzie jumps and flicks her head around to find out who said her name. Once she realizes that Arrietty is actually standing in front of her, she rips out her headphones.

Suzie blinks at her. “Did you follow me home from school?”

“No!” Arri immediately shrieks. “I just– I saw you walking down the same road as me! Why the fuck would I follow you home?”

“I don’t know!” Suzie responds, turning to face her properly. “So, okay, you didn’t follow me, but what is this? Why is this happening?”

She frowns, trying to think of something to say other than I need you to help me so badly that I’ll probably die if you don’t. Suzie doesn’t need that ego boost. 

“I thought I’d give you a chance to reconsider my offer,” she says, acting as though the shorter girl is the one who needs her help.

Suzie raises an eyebrow, and Arri realizes that acting above it all isn’t going to work. It’s just the two of them on the sidewalk, so she breaks almost immediately.

“Come on, Suzie, I really need this!” Arrietty whines. “I told you, I can pay you double what you normally charge and it’s not some boring school project!”

“And I told you that I can’t write a love letter to some girl I’ve never met, who you won’t even vaguely describe to me!” Suzie scoffs, starting to walk again. 

Arrietty’s jaw drops, offended, and she marches after her. 

“Okay, fine, how much do I have to tell you?” She’s practically shouting, this is the weirdest argument she’s ever had.

“Preferably her name–”

“Not in a thousand, million years.”

“–but some other defining characteristics would also help!”

She sighs. Giving away coveted information about this very important person is not ideal, what if Suzie uses her nerd brain and figures out who it is? “I just don’t understand why I need to tell you these things! Can’t you write some generic, Shakespeare shit?”

“ChatGPT can write that for you, actually!” Suzie laughs, picking up her pace. “I think I was under the impression that you wanted a real, genuine letter for this girl, but I guess not.”

Why can’t Suzie just listen to her? It’s not that hard to understand! 

“I do!” Arrietty says defensively. “I want a real, genuine, love letter and you are the only person who can help me with this or else I would’ve never ever considered even speaking to your ass!”

“I don’t think you do want a love letter, I actually find it really hard to believe that you’re in love with this girl when I’m having to put in this much effort just to get you to say one thing–”

Unbelievable. Here’s Suzie, going on and on about how Arrietty’s feelings can’t be real all because she doesn’t want to tell her mortal enemy everything about it. It’s dismissive, it’s rude, and it’s completely not true! Arri can’t ignore that frustration growing in her chest anymore, especially since it’s grown from a small flame to a roaring bonfire. 

“Fucking– fine!” she spits out, like the words are burning her tongue. “It’s Jewels!”

Suzie stops in her tracks. 

I shouldn’t have said that, is the first thought in her head, followed closely by, I could probably beat her in a fight if it comes to that.

It's Jewels. Holy shit, I just told her it's Jewels.

“Suzie, if you tell anyone I will actually, genuinely kill you,” Arri says when Suzie is still silent after ten seconds. Because Suzie has stopped walking, Arrietty jumps to block her way and hopefully gauge her reaction to this information. “And they won't even look for your body because finally, the pretentious ginger from theatre company has taken her darkness elsewhere.” 

After a moment of just staring, Suzie brings a hand up to cover her mouth in contemplation. 

“You like Jewels ,” Suzie simply states. “Like, your best friend, high school golden girl, future prom queen… Jewels.”

Arrietty takes a breath, feeling the fight slowly leave her body. “Are you done?”

The street is completely silent, not even the seasonal birds bother to attempt to lighten the mood. This could turn out really, truly, astronomically bad for both of them, and they know it. The highest stakes of high school relationship drama are always reserved for liking your best friend. 

“So?” Arrietty says, because she just wants Suzie to say something. The shorter girl is probably thinking about all the ways she could use this information in the future to make her life hell. She pledges, mentally, to take it easy on her in the future, even though the thought makes her sick. “I can– I’ll make it triple.”

Suzie looks as though she’s mulling it over, but other than that, her expression is unreadable. 

“Um,” Suzie swallows, tossing around Arri’s heart in her hands, “I’m gonna have to pass… on that.”

A beat passes. 

“I would never, like, tell anyone, though,” Suzie adds, and then she turns and continues walking home. 

Arri just stands there. The concrete of the sidewalk is starting to sting, she didn’t bother stretching after practice and she’s suffering for it. But, she just stands there, because she can’t make herself do anything else. God, she’s screwed, isn’t she? It's almost comedic how screwed she is. Suzie is long gone now, somewhere down the street, headphones back in, and she’s still there on the side of the road. 

The sky is cloudier than it was before, because of course it is. Arrietty should get going before it starts raining and things get even worse, though she doesn’t even think that's possible at this point. 

Let’s recap: Suzie thinks she’s insane and knows her two biggest secrets on Earth, her coach is probably going to bench her next game because of how crazy she was acting in practice, and she just admitted, out loud, to another person, that she’s in love with her best friend. And she can’t even talk to anyone about it, because the person she talks to about this kind of thing is sitting in her room somewhere, completely unaware that Arrietty would do anything for her. 

Jewels is completely unaware that, as far as Arri is concerned, she’s the only person in their entire high school that matters. She’s the only one Arri looks forward to seeing, the reason she styles her hair the way she does, the reason she wears the high-heeled boots she does (“I love that you’re taller than everyone we know, Arri, it’s badass.”). 

The clouds creep closer and closer, threatening the sun in an inevitable way. She thinks back to Suzie’s words from earlier in the day. I have to know some things; tell me something about her.

Jewels Sparkles is… home. They grew up together, sure, but that alone doesn’t explain how safe and warm Jewels makes her feel. 

She’s the tether that keeps Arri on the ground when she swears she’s going to fly away. She’s kind to everyone, not just the people that Arrietty deems worthy of kindness. She’s genuine, and she’s serious about it when she stops a stranger in the hallway to compliment their shirt or their hair. And she notices those things, when a nameless girl in their first period class dares to blend her makeup in a different way, she notices that. 

The clouds have completely covered the sun now, so Arri decides she should start walking home again.

Whenever Arri makes a terrible joke, Jewels will crack a smile and roll her eyes. Even if she swears up and down that it isn’t funny, Arri will repeat it and find a way to get a real laugh out of her. She doesn’t consider herself a funny person, unless she’s around Jewels and someone is wearing a really ugly hat. But, honestly, only the first part of that is true. Arrietty is only funny when she wants to make Jewels smile, and that desire is growing by the day. She always wants to make Jewels happy, because Jewels deserves that– and who is Arri if not the person to give it to her?

Then, when she’s about a block from her house, it starts to rain. Hard. Arrietty starts running, not too excited to get caught in the rain after all that wallowing. She runs despite the ache in her feet, and though she’s pretty fast, she’s not faster than the clouds. By the time she gets home, she’s completely soaked. Even if she had been wearing a jacket, it wouldn’t have helped much. 

She unlocks her door and steps inside. Before she can even take her shoes off, she feels a buzzing sound coming from her pocket. The gods are especially cruel today, because it’s Jewels again. Calling, this time. 

And, well, she can’t ignore her twice in a row. 

“What’s up?” Arri says when she answers, standing on her welcome mat in her soaking wet shoes. 

“Do you have a second? Like, are you busy right now?” Jewels asks immediately. “Hi, by the way.”

Arri smiles to herself. “Hi. I have a sec, did you want to talk about something?”

“Okay, so–” I’m in love with you, “–I saw this really gorgeous fabric at school, sort of a pink, satiny moment, and when I asked my substitute if she knew what it was, she said she did but she didn’t want to tell me!” I’m in love with you, “Can you believe her? I mean, what have I ever done to warrant that? And it’s not like it’s in limited supply, I’ll just order it online if she wants all the fabric that's at the store!”

She wants to say I’m in love with you , but what comes out is a little different:

“Yeah, what the fuck?” she agrees. “Want me to put a thumbtack on her chair tomorrow?”

Jewels laughs. “You always know just what to say.” I wish that were true, Arri thinks. “But, no, I was hoping you could help me find a good substitute online, I can’t tell if these other ones are ugly or not.”

Arrietty leans against the door, ignoring the squelching sound her shoes make. “And I’m really good at deciding if things are ugly, right?”

“Right!” Jewels says. “Anyway, do you wanna video call or should I just send the photos?”

“Uhh.” Arri looks down at her soaking wet clothing, deciding she should probably get changed soon if she doesn't want to get sick. “Give me five minutes and I’ll turn my camera on, I may have gotten caught in the rain on the way home.”

“Bitch?” Jewels exclaims. “So you’ve been sitting there in wet clothes this whole time?”

“ Maybe,” she drawls, trying to take off her shoes with one hand, the other is preoccupied with holding her phone. 

“Okay, call me when you have dry clothes on, I’m not gonna be the reason you catch a cold and die,” Jewels says with an air of finality. “And…”

“And?” She finally gets her left shoe off.

“And, I missed you today!” Jewels whines, and it’s so cute that Arrietty can’t help but feel even more endeared. “Usually we text before you go to practice. Don’t do that anymore!”

“I won’t, ‘m sorry,” she smiles into her phone. After a second of shimmying, she pops her other shoe off. Victory! “Ah! I got my shoes off!”

“ Arri! Go get changed and don’t die, okay? Bye!” Jewels hangs up right after they exchange goodbyes, even though they’re going to call again in a few minutes. 

Not one to deny Jewels anything, Arrietty gets out of her wet clothes and into some warm, dry ones. She also brushes out her hair and makes herself look presentable; maybe this will be the kind of call where they show their faces, she doesn’t know. Not hearing Jewels’ voice for a few minutes brings her back to reality, and she remembers why she ran home in the pouring rain in the first place. 

She stares at her reflection in the mirror, hair still wet, makeup smudged, and tries to see herself as someone Jewels could love. This girl, the one Jewels could love, doesn't look any different than herself. The only thing better about her is her mind, the things she says. This girl is someone who tells Jewels everything she thinks, and what she thinks is beautiful and eloquent and put together and not shiny. Maybe Suzie decided to help this girl, maybe she didn’t get kicked out of soccer practice, and maybe things will work out for her in the end. 

After she finishes getting ready, when she looks that effortless kind of pretty that only Jewels herself can tell is fabricated, she hops into her bed and opens up her phone. When she looks at the ‘call’ button, she hesitates. 

Jewels is on the other side of the phone waiting for her, probably laying in bed with her hair up, and Arri has so many things to say but she doesn’t know what they are. They’re less words and more feelings, less I’m in love with you and more you make me feel seen and heard and known. 

Chapter Text

“Fucking– fine! It’s Jewels!” 

Of all the things Suzie’s heard from Arrietty’s mouth, this might have been the one time she’d ever been left truly speechless. 

Arrietty says something else after that, some death threat paired with an on-brand insult that she isn’t really listening to because… Jewels.

Huh.

It takes a long few moments to completely sink in.

“You like Jewels. Like, your best friend, high school golden girl, future prom queen… Jewels.” 

“Are you done?”

Suzie’s not saying much. She’s still processing this new piece of information, one that most definitely changes her opinion on the whole letter writing thing Arrietty is proposing, and also just speechless for a few different reasons. Like Arrietty apparently being willing to pay triple her normal rate, which just strikes Suzie as somewhat absurd. Sixty bucks for a letter– no, not just any letter, a love letter written by a seventeen year old who doesn’t even have their high school diploma yet?

She turns Arrietty down, in the end. 

Suzie would be lying if she said she hadn’t been very seriously, earnestly considering it. Yes, it’s a dumb idea, the sort of thing that only works in rom-coms or perfect little coming of age stories where the main character completely changes themself to appease a crush they’ve put on an unrealistic pedestal. So what? She’s got the writing chops for it and it had sounded like an easy way to make some cash, at least until finding out who exactly she’d be writing to.

That’s the thing. It’s not that simple, because she wouldn’t just be writing to someone like a hallway crush, or some random semi-popular dude Arrietty shares a class with. That’s Arrietty’s best friend, and what Suzie does not need in her life is to get caught up in a nightmare of a best friendship turned secret crush, letter writing, heart-crushing scandal.

Her parting words: “I’d never, like, tell anyone, though.” 

It’s one hundred percent the truth. Arrietty is a catty mean girl who makes Suzie’s life that much more hellish on a daily basis, and Suzie wouldn’t call them friends by any means, but she’s not fucking heartless. 

(There’s a tiny, cruel voice in her head that asks her if Arrietty would afford her the same kindness, if she’d keep Suzie’s secret the same way.)

She ignores it and keeps walking.

Her house is only a fifteen minute walk from school. It’s convenient in general but especially today, because she gets home right as the sunlight is starting to fade and inky grey storm clouds are painting themselves over the horizon, a telltale sign that soon she’ll be very glad to be inside. 

Suzie’s parents work late, so she lets herself into an empty house as usual. She opens the living room curtains to watch the drizzle that rapidly turns into a shower, admiring the ripples sent scattering across the surface of puddles, reflecting the gloomy sky above. 

As peaceful as the rain is now, she’s sort of hoping it eases up by tonight. She hates driving at night and she hates driving in the rain, so there’s a good chance she’ll absolutely despise having to do both at the same time, but oh well. Spending time with her friends is important, or whatever. 

Asking Kori and Lydia to come to her house instead is an option, too, but that means having them cuddle disgustingly on her couch instead of Lydia’s, which would give her that much more of a reason to throw pillows at them and yell at them to get a room. So, Lydia’s house it is, for the good of everyone involved.

Suzie has dinner with her parents at seven p.m., the same time they have dinner every night, and they have the same conversation they’ve been having for the past twelve years of her life.

“How was school?” her mom asks.

“Fine.” She spears a piece of pasta on her fork. 

Her dad nods. “Your classes are going okay?”

Suzie tries not to sigh audibly. “Mmhmm.”

The table falls quiet after her response, or her lack thereof. She decides to throw them a bone.

“I got an A on that biology test I was telling you about last week.”

It’s almost comical how predictable her parents’ reactions are, as both their faces light up and they stop eating to turn their full attention on her. “Hey, good for you,” her dad says warmly as her mom reaches over to offer her a fist bump.

A fist bump. Yes, really. 

“I knew you’d do well,” her mom gushes. “I mean, you said it was a hard class, but science was always your favorite, wasn’t it?”

“Um,” Suzie says. “I like science.”

For the record, science hasn’t been her favorite subject since the third grade, but she doesn’t tell them that. It’s fine. It’s not like it matters what her parents think her favorite subject is, or whether they know that she’s helping probably half her class cheat on English essays, or if they’re even aware she’s good at English and planning to pursue a degree in it. 

They’re not bad parents. Not even absent parents. They show up to all her performances at school, they’re in the front row at every musical or play. They celebrate when she gets good grades. All three of them go for hikes sometimes, on Saturdays, after her mom finishes selling her handmade jewelry at the farmer’s market. 

It’s just– 

They do things like that, sometimes. Thinking that her favorite subject is science when it’s not. Hearing her talk about moving to the city, about maybe going out of state for college, and exchanging looks with each other like they don’t understand. Like their quaint little town has all they could ever need, and they couldn’t imagine wanting anything more.

Suzie would never blame them for it. Her parents don’t get it, and that’s not their fault.

It doesn’t make meals any less boring, though. She nods and smiles and ‘uh-huh’s her way through a polite, agonizingly bland conversation and stands up the second her plate is empty.

“Thanks for dinner.” She announces it casually as she’s carrying dishes to the sink: “I’m going to Lydia’s tonight, I’ll be home before twelve.”

Her mom hums agreeably. “Are you driving yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Drive safely,” her dad calls from the other room. “Last I checked, it was still raining. The roads will be more dangerous, you know, and it’s dark, too– should I just drive you?”

“No, Dad,” she says, very firmly. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

Thankfully, that’s the end of that conversation.

She leaves her house early to stop by 7-11. It’s a quick stop, she only grabs microwave popcorn and Sour Patch Kids— and after an internal debate, a bottle of Dr. Pepper. Let no one ever claim she’s not a true friend.

(They do not have meatballs, regrettably. Hopefully Lydia understands.)

When she pulls up to the curb in front of Lydia’s house, it’s raining hard again. She shoves everything inside her jacket and pulls her hood over her head and runs for the blessed cover of Lydia’s front porch, knocking maybe a little harder than strictly necessary.

“Please,” she yells to the closed door, “shelter. I am but a weary traveler, an old crone passing through in this terrible weather– oh, hi, Lydia.”

Lydia’s smiling as she lets Suzie in, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Hey,” she says. “Kori’s in the living room, we haven’t picked a movie yet.”

“Perfect,” Suzie tells her. “Arguing about which movie we watch is my Olympic sport.”

Lydia snorts. “Believe me, we know.” 

Again, it doesn’t escape Suzie’s attention that her voice is a little flat. It’s like she’s mad or something. Suzie stays silent as they walk down the hallway together, and she’s about to open her mouth and ask if something’s wrong when she catches sight of Kori and the eyesore of neon pink sports wrap on her ankle.

“Oh, god,” Suzie says. “Let me guess. Season ending injury?”

Kori laughs, free and uncaring as ever, and Suzie’s going to take that as a solid no. If there’s one thing Kori takes anywhere near seriously, it’s soccer. Even she wouldn’t be laughing over an injury that would legitimately cut her senior season short. 

“Yeah, how’d you know? Doc says I may never walk again.”

Suzie nods gravely, then drops the bit. “No, seriously, though. Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” Kori says. “Literally fine. I mean, it hurts when I move it a certain way, but I can still walk and everything.”

“That’s always a good sign.” Suzie unzips her jacket, bringing out the popcorn and the candy and the soda, which Kori points at and outright cackles, triumphant. “Yes, I got your stupid soda. Almost like I knew you’d be wounded when I got here.”

Kori takes it from her immediately, kicking her non-wrapped foot back and forth. “You must be psychic,” she grins. “This will heal me instantly when I drink it, watch.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will.”

Suzie goes into Lydia’s kitchen to make the popcorn– she’s been here enough times, she knows loosely where everything is by now. While it’s popping, she returns to the living room and sits down next to Kori on the couch, Lydia on her other side.

“So,” she begins, gesturing to Kori’s ankle, “what happened?”

 Kori sighs heavily, leaning back and shaking her head. “Girl. When I tell you– it was crazy. I was at soccer practice, we were doing a scrimmage and I was there just minding my own business, and out of literally nowhere Arrietty – our favorite person on the planet, right?”

Arrietty?  

Suzie raises her brows, prompting Kori to continue.

“Yeah. Arrietty pushed me and I rolled my ankle,” Kori says dryly. “Which–”

“Tackled,” Lydia cuts in, low and sharp. It’s the first time she’s spoken since greeting Suzie, and the realization is no less jarring than the way her tone practically grounds itself into the floor. “She fucking tackled her, Suzie. I was there and I saw the whole thing.”

Kori turns to her as she’s talking, then back to Suzie. “-yeah. Lydia saw it happen.” She cracks a smirk, tilting her head to one side. “Shame she didn’t get a video, then maybe we could get that bitch expelled or something.”

Suzie thinks it’s a funny joke, for what it’s worth. 

On Kori’s other side, Lydia’s shoulders are slightly hunched. “I still can’t believe she did that,” she mutters, and Kori’s face visibly softens, pulling her closer with an arm around her waist.

“I already told you I’m fine,” she says, not so much an argument as it is a reassurance. “I fully give you permission to kill her with your witch voodoo, though.”

At the obvious attempt to make her feel better, Lydia finally smiles, the corners of her lips quirking upward. “Thanks,” she says. Gently, she untangles herself from Kori and stands. “It just pisses me off, y’know? Like, sorry you have a ton of pent up rage inside you all the time for some reason, can you maybe not take it out on my girlfriend who did nothing wrong?” She huffs out a sigh. “Anyway. I heard the microwave timer go off, I’ll be right back. Thanks for the snacks, by the way, we owe you.”

Suzie waves her off. “You’re hosting,” she says. “Sorry I couldn’t get your meatball, singular.”

Lydia turns back to mime wiping away a tear as she leaves the room. “Next time!”

She comes back not long after with the popcorn in a bowl. They crowd together in the center of the couch, Lydia turns on Netflix, and the battle begins.

“Oh my god,” Kori says as soon as Netflix’s opening menu pops up. “We should watch the Eras Tour movie.”

“Kori,” Suzie says, laughing in disbelief, as Lydia scoffs, “That’s not a real movie.”

Kori turns to them both, looking comically affronted. “Babes, it was played in movie theaters.”

“Yeah, don’t care.” Lydia’s eyes are fixed on the TV, one thumb using the remote to scroll. “Ooh, wait, what about Carrie? ”

Kori shakes her head. “Absolutely not.”

“Ugh, you’re not fun.” Lydia tabs over to the Carrie preview anyway, pointing excitedly. “Look, doesn’t that look so fun? Don’t you wanna find out how she gets that blood all over her?”

As much as Suzie loves Lydia, the answer is still no. “I don’t want to watch a horror movie,” she says, pulling her feet up to sit cross-legged.

Lydia pouts, but Suzie can tell she doesn’t mean it. “Okay, that’s fine.” She moves on, skimming through titles with all three of them calling out any they recognize. Eventually they reach a point where they’re not being serious anymore, they’re just naming movies they know they won’t end up watching for the fun of it.

“Hear me out,” Lydia says. “The Kissing Booth.”

“No, no,” Suzie says, snickering. “The Godfather.”

“Pride and Prejudice.”

“The Garfield Movie.”

"Despicable Me 4.”

There’s a pause as Kori considers it. “I’d actually be down.”

“Bitch, no,” Suzie says. Suddenly, she sits up straighter as she sees a familiar title. “Oh! What about Carol?” 

It’s an earnest suggestion, the first in a while, and of course Kori immediately shoots it down. “No. Vibe killer.”

“What ? It’s not a vibe killer, it’s a classic and if you don’t like it you’re homophobic–”

“Oh, I’m homophobic? You’re the one who didn’t want to watch the Eras Tour movie, bitch!”

Suzie makes a vaguely flabbergasted sound, but she’s laughing purely because of how stupid this argument is. “Wha– how would that make me homophobic? Kori, Taylor Swift is not gay!”

Kori wheezes, bracing herself on Lydia’s knee. “No, but I am.”

“So am I!” Suzie gasps. “Your point is?”

They can’t go on at that point, they’re both laughing too hard to get out coherent words. Lydia seizes the opportunity. “Guys,” she says loudly, smiling. Idiots, is the translation that goes unspoken but clearly understood nonetheless. “What about Twilight?” 

Suzie clears her throat, still giggling intermittently and trying to catch her breath. “Yeah,” she says. “Why the fuck not. We can watch Twilight.”

Kori side-eyes her. “Girl, you said you didn’t want to watch a horror movie.”

Now it’s Lydia’s turn to be affronted, whipping her head around. “Please tell me you’re joking,” she says, incredulous. “In what world is Twilight a horror movie?”

Unbothered, Kori holds up both her hands in defense. “I don’t know! I’ve never seen it.”

“You’ve never – okay, that’s it,” Lydia declares, flopping back against the couch cushions and pulling up the Netflix search bar. “We’re watching this right now. I can’t be with someone who’s never seen Twilight, this was, like, my entire personality when I was twelve.”

Amused, Suzie rests her head on Lydia’s shoulder. “The real question,” she says, “Team Jacob or Team Edward?”

Lydia responds without missing a beat. “Team Edward at the time, but now I’d say neither. Team Alice.”

Suzie hums. “Good answer.”

So, yeah. They watch Twilight, the original one . Since she and Lydia have both already seen it, most of her attention is given to Kori’s ridiculous, over-the-top reactions, her laughter at moments that almost certainly aren’t intended to be funny. They talk over each other and also about eighty percent of the movie, a never ending stream of commentary.

It’s corny, disgustingly so, but these are the moments Suzie will miss the most after they graduate. Just… the three of them. Being stupid together and laughing for no reason. 

She imagines herself bottling the sound of their laughter in a little glass vial, and putting the vial on a string around her neck where it can hang close to her heart. 

“That was wild,” Kori says as the credits of the movie start to roll, exactly how she’s been saying it for the past hour and a half.

Lydia’s propped herself up in Kori’s arms with her legs on Suzie’s lap. “Hope you enjoyed, babe,” she says, stretching out like a cat. “Consider yourself educated.”

“Enlightened, even.” Suzie finds her phone between the cushions of Lydia’s couch, checking the time. “Oh, it’s almost midnight. I should probably get going soon.”

Dutifully, Lydia swings her legs off so Suzie can get up. She brings up a hand to cover her yawn.  “Thanks for coming.”

“Thanks for having me.” Suzie slips on her jacket, pulling it tight around her. “God, I don’t even want to think about how cold it’s gonna be when I get in my car.”

Eyes half-lidded, Lydia makes an effort to sit up, a task undoubtedly made harder by the fact that Kori’s arms are still slung around her shoulders. “Hang on. I’ll walk you out.”

“You don’t have to,” Suzie tells her, lips quirking up. “You’re basically already asleep.”

It does nothing to deter Lydia. She manages to get up, wrapping herself in a blanket.

“Bye, Suzie,” Kori says. 

Suzie blinks. “Are you not leaving?”

Kori shrugs. “I’ll leave… at some point.”

Suzie doesn't question her beyond that. It's Kori, so driving home at two or three in the morning just to spend a few more hours at Lydia’s house would hardly be out of the ordinary for her.

They say their goodbyes, promising to do this again sometime soon, the usual procedure. Suzie puts on her beat-up Converse at the door and Lydia puts on flip flops with her socks still on and together they brave the outside for the short walk to Suzie’s car. 

“Drive safely,” Lydia says, sweet and sleepy. She goes in for a hug.

Suzie rests her cheek on Lydia’s shoulder. “I’m gonna see you tomorrow.”

“I know.”

There’s no explanation offered. Suzie thinks she gets it anyway. She gives Lydia one last squeeze and wraps the other girl's blanket more tightly around her before getting in her car.

“Bye,” Lydia yells from outside, slightly muffled.

Suzie rolls down her window. “Go inside, freak. It’s cold.”

It’s on the drive back to her house that she has the thought, pretty much out of nowhere:

Am I… the only one who knows Arrietty likes Jewels?

It’s so out of left field that it makes her actually pause for a second, waiting at a red light. She doesn’t know why she’s thinking about that of all things, there’s nothing that could have reminded her of it.

Is she, though?

Well, based on how insistent Arrietty had been that Suzie never tell another soul under threat of mysterious death, she might just be. Suzie can’t imagine Arrietty would tell any of her actual friends. None of them seem close enough for that, and the closest one by far… That’s Jewels. So yeah, Suzie may actually be the only one in the world besides Arrietty herself to know about it.

She’s not sure how that makes her feel. 

Sometime between getting home and brushing her teeth before bed, Suzie decides that this is exactly why she’d said no to getting involved with this whole ordeal. This is, after all, what crushes and feelings and all that trite nonsense inevitably lead to. Overthinking. Dwelling too long on things best forgotten.

Maybe there’s an alternate timeline out there where Suzie had agreed to writing the letters, and maybe it ends well or maybe it ends horribly. She’ll never know.

Suzie climbs into bed with every intention to wake up tomorrow and move on with her life.

(If it takes her a long time to fall asleep because of a certain person and her stupid secrets that are becoming stupidly hard to forget about, that’s nobody’s business but hers.)

As it turns out, though, it’s slightly difficult to move on with her life when the universe seems to be hellbent on making sure she does the exact opposite of that.

For one, Arrietty is suddenly everywhere. In English, duh, because they actually share that class, but it doesn’t end there. At lunch, Suzie walks past a table where Arrietty just happens to be sitting. They pass each other in the hallway, each pretending the other girl doesn’t exist. Even walking home from school has become a game of stubborn avoidance, now that Suzie knows they walk down the same street.

It’s only been a few days since Arrietty’s approached her, and already Suzie’s had to skirt around acknowledging her about fifteen times. It’s getting old.

At the very least, it’s easier to avoid Arrietty when she’s with her friends. Kori’s ankle is well and truly fine, thank god, and she’s not one to hold a grudge, but Lydia is a different story. Suzie loses count of the pointed looks Lydia sends Arrietty, the unfaltering stares, always watching her with an obvious distrust. It’s not like they’d been friends before, exactly, but now Arrietty steers clear of Lydia like a metaphorical and literal plague.

Suzie doesn’t comment on it, and instead wonders what Lydia might think if she knew about Suzie keeping a secret for Arrietty that could potentially upend her entire life.

Four days later, two school days and one weekend, is when it happens.

It happens in the cafeteria, of all places. Suzie’s sitting alone at their usual table, waiting for Kori and Lydia.

She doesn’t see Arrietty take a seat at a table nearby. She does, however, take notice when Jewels shows up. One, because she’s in pastel pink from head to toe and she stands out like a donut in a box of bagels. Two, because she’s for some reason running and she weaves her way through multiple lines of people, not stopping until she reaches the table where Arrietty’s sitting and practically slams her bag down on the bench, eyes huge:

“I got in.”

Arrietty looks every bit as confused as Suzie feels. “Got in?”

“Yes . I think I got in, bitch.” Jewels fumbles for her phone, tapping away at the screen before shoving it at Arrietty. “Look, see? Otis College of Art and Design–”

“Oh my god, wait, are you fucking serious–”

“-early decision, next academic school year, you’re accepted,” Jewels nearly shrieks, dropping the phone on the table with a loud thud.

Arrietty’s jaw is dropped, her stare blank. She looks from Jewels to the screen, back to Jewels again– and then they both start screaming. Laughing, clapping, jumping up and down. Everyone in a forty foot radius has turned their head at the commotion, and neither of them seem to care at all.

“I knew you would,” Arrietty says, pulling Jewels into a quick hug and shaking her by the shoulders. “I told you. I’ve been telling you this whole time.”

Jewels laughs, a giddy sound that pierces through the buzz of other students’ conversations. “You did tell me that,” she admits. “You always believe in me.”

She swoops in and plants a chaste kiss on Arrietty’s cheek before pulling away just as swiftly, beaming with her hands clasped.

 “I’m gonna go get food,” Jewels says, “I’m starving. I just had to come and tell you that first.” She delivers it all in the same bubbly, unbothered manner. Casual as anything, but genuine. Impossibly so. 

If Suzie had a camera, she could capture the exact moment Arrietty’s smile gets brittle around the edges, the moment Jewels turns completely away and Arrietty exhales like she’s been punched.

For a fleeting second, they exist just as they are. Jewels walking away, Arrietty left behind. Suzie, still staring at the place where she’d just watched the whole thing unfold. She has no defensible reason to still be looking, anyone else would have surely lost interest by now, but… She feels like she’s watching a movie. It’s happening right in front of her and she’s a spectator on the outside, powerless to do anything.

Not exactly powerless, she’s reminded, with a sour taste in the back of her throat. One thing I could do.

With impressive intuition and even more impressively bad timing, as if she’d somehow sensed Suzie’s presence, Arrietty looks up and directly into Suzie’s eyes.

Suzie freezes. 

To her surprise, Arrietty doesn’t immediately glare daggers. She breaks their staring match first to reach for her water bottle. Her expression is a careful blank slate, aside from the near-imperceptible pinch between her flawless brows.

It’s a small relief when Lydia and Kori finally show up, blocking her line of sight to Arrietty and right off the bat launching into a conversation. Suzie lets herself be blissfully distracted, and she manages to forget about Arrietty and Jewels until lunch is over and they’re all about to go their separate ways to class.

Instinctively, out of the corner of her eye, she checks the table where the pair had been sitting.

There’s no one there, of course. The cafeteria is nearly empty.

“Suzie, you coming?” Lydia asks, waiting for her a few paces away.

She blinks a few times. “Yeah. Sorry.”

Suzie goes to class and tries not to think about it. It’s literally none of her business, after all. The fact that she’d been around to see it had been pure coincidence and nothing more.

And it’s not like she doesn’t have more relevant things to focus on. She has a presentation today in French, for a project on France’s most famous historical sites– a group presentation, not a solo one, though she’d be perfectly fine either way. And in English, a timed essay that she’d really like to do well on, since it’s a significant chunk of their final grade. 

Still. When other groups are doing their presentations and she’s supposed to be listening, or when she finishes her essay early and spends the rest of her time just proofreading it over and over again, she can’t help herself. All she sees when she closes her eyes is Jewels’ kiss. The fleeting brush of her nose against her best friend’s cheek, so quick it could be missed in a blink. 

Best friend.

The words start blurring together on the paper and in her head, and Suzie puts down her pencil in frustration. 

She watches the clock relentlessly until the bell rings. As soon as it does, she’s out of her seat with her backpack slung over one shoulder, making a beeline for the basket on Ms. Visage’s desk.

She’s the first one out of the classroom. Outside, students are starting to pour into the hall from every which way. Suzie stays out of their way, hanging back near some lockers. Trying not to be obvious about the fact that she’s keeping an eye out for someone, a particular face in a crowd of unimportant others.

Finally, craning her neck upward to see better, she spots who she’s looking for and moves in with a purpose.

Tugging Arrietty by the arm into the same classroom she herself had been forcibly brought into (the irony of the situation is not lost on her) isn’t hard, probably because Arrietty is too caught off guard to resist at all. Suzie pulls the door shut behind them and turns on her heel. She’s not here to waste time.

“One letter,” she says in place of any sort of hello. “Forty dollars. Take it or leave it.”

Suzie wishes she was in a more humorous mood, because the expression on Arrietty’s face would probably be a hell of a lot funnier. It’s somewhere between surprise and disbelief, hints of suspicion, almost like she thinks this is some kind of joke.

“...What?” 

Suzie huffs, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. “One letter, forty–”

“No, I heard you the first time,” Arrietty interrupts, eyes narrowing. “I just– I thought you said you wouldn’t do it.”

Suzie lifts one shoulder, a half-commitment to a shrug. “Changed my mind,” she says simply. She digs through her backpack and pulls out a post it note, handing it over. “Here’s my number. I take payment through cash or Venmo. We can meet up sometime this week to write the letter. I’m not free right after school on Tuesdays or Thursdays but any other time…” She draws in a breath, sighing it out with her last words. “Should be fine.”

Arrietty doesn’t respond right away. She’s looking down at the slip of paper, lips parted slightly, eyes dark and unreadable. 

“Got that?” Suzie asks after a beat, slightly exasperated. Her hand is already on the door handle.

Arrietty meets her eyes again and in true Arrietty fashion, completely ignores her. 

“Why’d you change your mind?”

Suzie purses her lips.

Being in theatre and acting for so many years, she’s a decent enough liar. She doesn’t have to tell the truth. She doesn’t have to tell Arrietty how close she’d been to saying yes the first time, or that this is all she’s been able to think about for her last couple of classes, if not for the better part of a week now. 

She doesn’t have to say that she’d seen how Jewels had acted earlier in the cafeteria, looking at Arrietty with those big eyes and smiling at her and leaning in to leave a lipstick print on her cheek without a second thought. Running in to tell her the good news before anyone else, like Arrietty’s the only person whose reaction even matters.

(It’s not like she wants to help Arrietty. But to see all that with her own eyes and still not budge on her answer- to deny Arrietty just that much more of a chance with this impossible, once-in-a-lifetime girl?

Suzie just thinks it would be wrong, on some instinctual gut-feeling level. A leap of faith left untaken.)

“Because,” she says, “maybe then you’ll stop making uncomfortable eye contact with me in the hallway.”

Arrietty splutters. “I am not the one who–”

“Yeah, yeah,” Suzie cuts her off. She’s already pushing open the door. “Text me when you’re free. No Tuesday or Thursday afternoons.”

It’s the second time she has the satisfaction of leaving Arrietty standing there in the classroom and getting in the last word. Suzie has a feeling this might become a pattern for them.

The rest of the day goes by uneventfully, and she’s reading in bed by the dim yellow glow of her desk lamp when she gets the first text. Well, texts. Plural.

Unknown Number: Friday 

Unknown Number: After school

Unknown Number: Library

The temptation to block the number just to see what would happen is strong, but Suzie resists.

Suzie: school library?

She waits barely even thirty seconds before her phone buzzes with a new text.

Unknown Number: Girl no?? Public duh

Suzie: ok geez

Suzie: could have just said that 

Annoyingly, she doesn’t get a reply. She types out a new message:

Suzie: works for me. kind of shocked you know what a library is

After a few minutes with no sign of the three dots in the speech bubble, Suzie decides maybe she has better things to do than sit around waiting for a text from someone she doesn’t even particularly want to hear from. She picks up her book again.

It’s only when she checks her phone again, right before going to sleep, that she finally sees a new text.

Unknown Number: It’s the only place no one who’s opinion I actually care about would ever see us

It’s not an entirely terrible insult, Suzie will give her that. Points for creativity. 

Of course, she’ll also have to take points away, because Arrietty’s saved her the trouble of even having to come up with a good retort.

Suzie: whose*

It’s the last thing she sends before turning off her phone and promptly turning over to close her eyes, a smirk on her face. 

She’s committed herself to this ordeal, now. She might as well have fun with it while she still can.

Chapter Text

The library is even more boring than she expected it to be. Its tall ceilings, monotonous book shelves, and inability to captivate her attention is starting to get old. School had ended almost fifteen minutes ago, she’s been sitting here since five minutes ago, and Suzie is nowhere to be found. Fucking theatre kids. 

Arrietty clutches her bag close to her chest. Not that she has anything incriminating in any notebooks—well, nothing that can be traced back to Jewels, anyway, but it’s always good to be safe. She’s sitting at the table closest to the entrance, so Suzie would have to be a fucking idiot to not see her. 

Suzie , Arri thinks, where the hell is she? Someone could see her! Arrietty is in a public setting waiting for one of the biggest losers in the whole school to write a love letter with her, this is not the time to be late! 

Just as she’s starting to really freak out, the large double doors of the library open to reveal someone who is most definitely late. Suzie’s eyes find her immediately, and she quickly walks over to her table. However, before she can sit down, Arri stands and grabs her bag. 

“I’m not doing this in front of everyone, we need to find a table that’s, like, hidden,” she explains in a hushed voice. 

Suzie nods, shrugging her bag back over her shoulder. “I know a good spot. It’s where some of the theatre nerds go to make out, follow me.”

With a vaguely disgusted expression, Arri follows her into the depths of the library. It's a pretty impressive building and honestly, she's surprised she’s never explored it during her time at the school before. Though it is boring, old, and full of people she hates, it's huge. There could be anything in there, case in point being her and Suzie writing love letters in the back corner.

Her and Suzie. Love letters. Ugh.

Once they get to where they’re going (a small study table in a section of the book club that probably hasn’t seen sunlight in a hundred years), it takes them a few minutes to set up. Suzie has about a million different notebooks in her huge bookbag, meaning she has to sift through them to find whatever one she’s going to use. Arri just sits there, not wanting to pull her phone out due to the extreme judgement she is able to pass onto Suzie. Math, science, French, drama… who needs three notebooks and a binder for fucking drama ? What do they even do in drama? Sit around and talk about plays from a thousand years ago?

“I can hear you being a cunt in your head,” Suzie says, finally pulling out the two notebooks she was looking for. 

Arri frowns. “No you can’t. Shut up.”  

“With you looking at me like that,” Suzie flips open one of her notebooks, “I absolutely can.” 

“So,” Arri starts, leaning back onto her chair and trying not to look as insanely nervous as she feels, “what now? I’m assuming you’ve done this before.”

“Yeah, for English projects and research papers, not this,” Suzie says. But because she is apparently the leading authority in everything, she continues. “I dunno, I think maybe you should just spitball some ideas, fun facts, things you like about her, and I’ll write them down and get started.”

“Things I like about Jewels?” She repeats, suddenly feeling very out of place. “Like, specific things?”

Suzie sighs. “We’ve already had this conversation, I need something, anything, to base this letter on or it’s gonna be generic and–”

“I know!” Arri says. “I know, I just feel so uncomfy talking to you about this. My brain just shuts off.”

It’s not her fault that Suzie is the most judgemental, pretentious, wannabe Nobel Prize winner on the planet! And it’s not like Arri is the most open person ever. Up until talking to Suzie, she never mentioned anything like this to anyone. As far as her classmates know, she can’t even feel human emotion, and she likes it that way.

“Okay, what has to happen in order for you to be comfortable telling me this stuff?” Suzie asks, dropping her pencil in frustration. 

“It’s just– looking at you, I can’t do it,” Arri sighs. “Like, I’ll think all these things about her, and then I’ll look at you and… no.”

Instead of replying with something rude and intellectual, Suzie places a hand on her chin in thought. It’s so cliche, Arri almost wants to make fun of her for it. 

“Just don’t look at me, then,” Suzie says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Put your head on the table, or–” she grabs a folder and holds it in front of her face– “look. No me! Tell the folder all your secrets!”

Arri rolls her eyes. “This is so stupid.”

Suzie puts the folder down, picks up her pencil, draws a smiley face on it, and then holds it back up. 

“Is this better?” She asks. 

And because Arri just wants this all to be over and the letter to be written, she resigns to her fate. The problem is, she actually has to say things now. About Jewels. Things she’s never said out loud before. 

“Okay,” she stalls, “alright, um…”

“How about,” Suzie says from behind the folder, “tell me what you meant before… the shiny thing.”

“Don’t be an asshole.” You’re not getting out of this, she thinks. “Okay, fuck, I meant that, like, she just… glows. Like, whatever happens to her, whatever she wears, it’s just amplified because it’s her. Like, anyone could go to this school, anyone could wear a pink bow in their hair and look beautiful in it, but—because it’s her, it’s different. Whatever she touches just glows.”

Suzie’s quiet for a second, and Arrietty feels completely embarrassed and stupid, but that feeling ends when Suzie actually speaks. It’s not teasing or sarcastic, it’s different. “So, you’re saying that she reflects things? That’s why she’s shiny, she makes things beautiful just by being around them.”

“Fuck,” Arri groans, covering her face with her hands and leaning back in her chair. 

“C’mon,” Suzie urges. She’s holding up the folder with one hand and scribbling down notes with the other. “This is good stuff! What else do you like about Jewels?”

She lowers her hands and she’s met with the smiley face on the folder. What isn’t to like about Jewels? 

“She’s the best person I know.” Arri really tries not to smile, but the drawing and the mere thought of Jewels coaxes it out of her. “It’s not even a contest. There’s this thing she does, I can see it happening in her head, when she meets someone new and she, like, remembers them and the little things, too. She knows people and she loves people and if something bad happens she’s there for them even if they just met five minutes ago.”

Suzie’s still writing, so she’s quiet. Arri keeps going. 

“And, shit, she’s so beautiful , Suzie.” She takes a breath; the words are just pouring out of her at this point. “When we’re going to a party, and she asks me what she looks good in, I don’t know what to say– it’s everything . She looks good in everything. And, like, when we have a test during first period, she says she looks tired because she was up all night studying, and her hair is a little messy, and she rests her head on my shoulder– she’s perfect like that, even when she isn’t supposed to be.”

Arrietty sighs, and Suzie places the folder on the table. They share a look.

“And I love her,” she says, because what else is there to say? “And I’m fucked.”

Suzie looks confused for the most part. “And you can’t just tell her this?”

“What?” Arri shakes her head. “No, no, this is why you’re here. None of that is good enough for her. You’re the one who's good at words, not me, that’s why I’m paying you.”

There’s a brief, hesitant pause before the other girl speaks again.

“Alright, whatever you think we should do,” Suzie says, looking down at her notes, “but this could be gold. I have all the freedom to say whatever I need?”

“All of it– just make sure it sounds genuine, and there’s no way she can tell it’s from me,” Arri says with a nod. “Or us, I guess.”

Because Suzie’s a nerd, she says, “On it, boss,” and flips to an open page in her other notebook. Surprisingly, the Shakespeare Shit doesn’t happen instantaneously, and Arri is sitting there for a minute or so before she realizes that she’s going to have to keep herself busy while Suzie writes. 

The library is nauseatingly quiet. Arrietty sighs. Suzie looks up from her notebook, apparently able to hear the boredom dripping off of Arri, and she rolls her eyes. 

“You can’t just scroll through Instagram while I write?” Suzie wonders aloud.

“No,” Arri huffs, “this is too important. What if you have a question, or something, and I’m distracted?”

“ So true, uh, hold on.” The tone of her voice tells Arri that Suzie does not think what she’s saying is “so true” at all. But because she is nothing if not a pretentious, problem solving asshole, Suzie tears a page out of her notebook and lays it in front of her along with one of her pencils. “Draw something, express yourself, go nuts.”

And that’s that. Suzie continues writing while Arri stares at the page in front of her, frustrated but in no particular direction. So, she takes it out on the paper. Suzie wants to taunt her? In that outfit? Fine. Arri scratches down a rough drawing of what Suzie is wearing and exactly how she’d fix it. Her shirt, her pants, her jacket—everything is fine on its own, but styled together it’s completely wrong. Okay, don’t tell anyone, but Arri doesn’t think Suzie is completely ugly, actually she’s the opposite, but she dresses like someone from Disney Channel had a baby with Charlie Chaplin. 

Glancing up at her, Arri grins. Would Suzie ever consider straightening her hair? She’d look really nice if she even just–

“So,” Suzie interrupts her budding thoughts, “how did you and Jewels meet?”

Suzie’s whole focus is still on writing, but it seems like the silence has gotten just a tad too unbearable. Because the question is just slightly out of the blue, Arri snorts and doesn't take it seriously. 

“Well, let’s see, it was January sixth, we had just gotten back from the NRA meeting –”

Suzie shakes her head, stopping her immediately. “I’m trying to make small talk here, since this might take a while. Y’know, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and all that.”

“Comparing your writing to Rome, wow, egotistical much?” Arri says with a scoff. 

“I’m just saying!” Suzie glances up from her notebook. “If we’re gonna be doing this for who knows how long, we might as well be civil towards each other.”

Arrietty sighs. “We met in fourth grade. It was that year she moved here, we sat next to each other during class, and one thing led to another… now we’re here.”

“You guys have been this close for that long?” Suzie asks, working away. 

“Yeah, no one else has really come close,” Arri says. “Well, maybe Acacia, but not really. She’s a good friend of mine, but she’s got nothing on Jewels.”

Suzie smiles down at her paper. “And, y’know, how long have you felt… like this? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I do mind you asking,” she says. We’re not friends. “But, it’s only been, like, a few months since I’ve come to terms with it.”

With a nod, Suzie continues writing, leaving a very uncomfortable silence hanging between them. Arri taps her foot in impatience.

“But, it’s been longer,” she adds. “I just didn’t, like, realize it until now. It’s not like this is just some dumb crush.” 

“You don’t need to convince me,” Suzie says, taking her attention away from the letter. “I can see how you’re feeling, y’know, it’s your first serious thing for a girl, you’re not even out yet, I get it–”

“Wait.” Arri pauses to take this new information in. “You’re gay?”

Suzie tilts her head in confusion, blinking rapidly. “I’m– yeah? Like, obviously? I have a lesbian pin on my backpack?” 

“Oh,” Arrietty exhales, mouth hanging open in realization. Then, she actually processes what she’s hearing. Suzie, nerd Suzie, nerd Suzie from theatre, is gay. Is gay… is into other girls… is now very easy to make fun of; she breathes out a sharp laugh. “You’re gay .”

“Yeah?” Suzie says with a shrug. “So are you?” 

“What? No, I’m not!” Arri gasps, a scowl making its way onto her face. 

“Okay, you can’t deny being gay while you’re paying me to write love letters to your best friend who just so happens to be another girl,” Suzie says. “That’s, like, the gayest shit I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”

Arri’s head is rushing, because Suzie’s getting it all wrong. She’s not gay, she doesn’t like girls, she just likes Jewels. Jewels is different, she’s special, if it weren’t for her, Arri wouldn’t like anyone. Just because Suzie’s gay, that doesn’t mean Arri is. They’re completely different, she’s nothing like Suzie. 

“I’m not— listen, just because I like Jewels, that doesn’t mean I like other girls,” Arrietty struggles to explain herself. “I just like Jewels.”

Instead of arguing, Suzie just sighs, and that’s almost worse. Then, Suzie looks down at her paper and continues writing the letter, like they’re not in the middle of this absolutely insane conversation about her love life. 

Arri feels the need to keep talking even though Suzie is clearly done. “It’s true! I’m not! I’m just not and that’s how it is and it won’t be changing anytime soon.”

Suzie doesn’t respond, which pisses her off endlessly, but Arri just shuts up after that. It’s clear that Suzie is stuck in her ways, and she definitely doesn’t fully understand her situation. She’s not like Suzie, she just likes Jewels. That’s it.

They’re quiet for a moment, and it’s really awkward and gross and uncomfortable, before Suzie clears her throat to get her attention.

“I’m gonna compare her to the sun in this, is that okay?” Suzie asks. “Shiny, warm, beautiful… what do you think?”

This time, it’s Arrietty who doesn’t respond right away. She just takes a shaky breath, nods, and that’s that. Jewels is the sun, and if Jewels is the sun, well, then Arri is—

“I was also thinking, like, are we going to sign this?” Suzie continues. “Should we have a pen name or something romantic like that? Or is it just gonna be completely secretive?” 

“Uhh.” Arri takes a minute to think. “You think a pen name would be romantic? Is that what they do in, like, books and stuff?”

Suzie nods. “Sometimes. I also just think it would be fun. More exciting than just not signing it at all. Is there anything that you would like to sign it as? We could brainstorm something.”

Well, if Jewels is the sun… 

“How about, like, the moon or something?” Arri blurts out. 

“Mmmm,” Suzie hums in a way that tells Arri she likes the idea. “Yeah, it would make sense with the sun thing. Should we just have moon, or maybe we could have it in, like, a different language or slang?”

“La luna is Spanish,” Arri adds, “that could work.”

“I think that might be a little obvious,” Suzie says. “What's the moon in other languages? I like this idea. You said you wanted Shakespeare shit, right?”

Arri bites her lip, consumed by thought. “You take French, right? What’s the word for ‘moon’ in French?”

“Oh, it’s ‘lune’ in French,” Suzie supplies. “You think that could work?”

“I think so,” she nods, “maybe she’ll be thrown off and think it’s someone who takes French, which I don’t, so…”

“Lune it is, then.” Suzie goes back to writing, and Arri is left to fend for herself once more.

The rest of their meeting follows that same format. Suzie asks a question, Arri says something hateful before answering it, and soon the sun begins to set and the library is closing. Suzie promises to finish the letter at home and send her a photo, but all Arri is thinking about is how this is actually happening .

She’s actually getting Suzie to write this letter, which is actually going to be sent, and Jewels is actually going to read it. Arrietty is at home, getting ready for bed, when she gets the text from Suzie. It’s a picture of the letter. 

Dear Jewels,

You remind me of the sun.

It sounds dramatic, but it’s true. 

The moment you enter a room, you light it up. It would be hard not to notice you, even if there were a hundred other people there. In a sky full of stars, would the sun not still be the most radiant? The most generous with its warmth, the most breathtaking in its arrival?

You took my breath away the day we first crossed paths, and I don’t think I’ve been able to catch it since.

Everyone who knows you would agree that you’re beautiful, but I don’t know if the word beautiful could do you justice. Beautiful is a flower, a lovely dress, or a pink sunset. Jewels, you’re a smile given to someone having an awful day, a cheer for the very last person to finish a race. You’re a helping hand, a hug, a shoulder to cry on, a kiss to blow for no one in particular to catch. 

Your beauty is what you do and who you are, so much more than just the way you look– though I’d be the first to say you’re the most gorgeous person in our school, if not the whole town.

I don’t want you to know who I am just yet, so I will sign this letter using a pen name. I hope you’ll forgive me. If you write back, leave your response in the space underneath the statue by the north exit.

Yours,

Lune

She wants to text back, “holy shit, Suzie, take the forty bucks,” but, honestly, the other girl does not need that ego boost, so she just says “nice” and leaves it at that. In her head, she actually voices her own opinion, which is that the letter is fucking perfect. It’s like Suzie was able to filter out all the imperfections and actually leave with something discernible, romantic, and real. The letter is amazing, and it’s exactly what Jewels deserves. 

But, of course, Arri would never tell Suzie that. 

So she goes to bed, which is difficult, because all she can think about is Jewels’ potential reaction. Would she smile at the compliments? Try to guess her identity? Oh, ew, would she picture Arri as a guy? Such questions plague her, pick at her, bother her until she wakes up the next morning. 

The walk to school on Monday is brisk, it’s a little cold out, a little cloudy, but it’s over soon, so she doesn’t get hung up on it. Once she gets to her first class and settles into her seat, she finally starts to ignore her thoughts and relax. 

Well, until she gets a poke on the shoulder from someone she never talks to: Crystal. She’s in a friend group adjacent to Arri’s, but the two of them never spare each other second glances. Arri grimaces at the sight of her— what was she wearing? 

“Don’t ask me for a pencil if you’re going to wear a fugly skirt like that in public.”

After gaping at her in shock for a moment, the other girl gets to the point. 

“I wasn’t asking for a pencil, fuck,” Crystal huffs with a roll of her eyes. “It’s just– I don’t want to sit in my usual seat, I’m in a fight with my friend. Can I sit up here?”

“You want to sit in my seat?” Arri asks, turning to face her. This situation is very amusing, especially because she’s not even considering it. “And, what, I’ll sit back there where you usually sit?”

Crystal sighs. She’s smart, she knows where this is going. “ Yeah .”

Before she can deal the killing blow, Arrietty’s eyes flock to the doorway of the classroom. It’s like something in her chest knows when Jewels is about to enter a room, the whole world seems to stop and stare. When Jewels walks in and scans the small crowd of students for her, well, that’s when she stops and stares herself. 

She’s wearing darker colours than usual, but Jewels can pull anything off, from a paper bag to a Galliano gown, everyone knows that. From her shoes to how she accessorizes her hair, everything is intentional. Arri knows her, so she knows she spent the whole morning wondering what message a pair of black Uggs would send. It’s such a profoundly un-interesting question, and that’s exactly what makes it so interesting . Jewels finds meaning and beauty in everything, so Arrietty finds everything she does meaningful and beautiful in the same way. 

Back to the present, Jewels is walking towards her, and for some reason all she can fucking think of is Suzie’s face. More specifically, Suzie’s face saying something about being nicer and doing favors for people so Jewels will know she has the capacity to feel human emotion. Rude.

Wait– shit. Be nice. Do favors. Human emotion!

“Okay, let's switch seats!” She blurts out. 

Out of the two of them, she can’t tell who’s more confused by her answer, her or Crystal. The other looks shocked, and then skeptical. A beat passed until Crystal responded. “Wait, you’re serious?”

“Yeah, whatever, there’s another empty seat beside you, right?” Arrietty stands up and grabs her bag, feeling very, very weird about it. She’s… doing something nice. For someone who isn’t Jewels. Weird. 

“Yeah, yes, yeah, of course,” Crystal moves out of her way, “for the record, I owe you one, anything you need, you got it. You’re a lifesaver, Arri.”

“No problem,” she says, casually, like this is a normal interaction between them and not a breach of the natural order. After that, she forgets about Crystal entirely. Jewels is waiting at the back of the classroom for her, clearly wondering what was happening.

Arri tries to act as nonchalant as possible as she tells her what happened. 

“And you said yes?” Jewels asks, already moving to sit in the empty seat. “Not that I’m, like, upset at sitting back here, I just– you did Crystal a solid?”

“Yep.” Anyone else would probably be offended that their best friend was this confused after they did something kind for another person. Arri wears it like a very fashionable badge of honour.

“In that skirt?”

“Mhm,” she hummed, taking her place next to Jewels. Be cool. 

Wordlessly, they get out their textbooks, notebooks, and anything else they’d need for the upcoming class. Despite the fact that chemistry is one of her least favourite subjects, she quite enjoys the class. In the corner of her eye, she spots it: a small notepad on Jewels’ desk. It’s not that she likes the note taking, that would be stupid— no, the highlight of the class is passing notes back and forth saying who knows what. 

Jewels always starts, since she provides the notepad, and Arri always finds a way to sneakily dispose of the (often incriminating) notes. They fit like that, sort of like puzzle pieces if they knew how to talk shit. 

Anyway, before their game begins, school has to come first. The blank page she has open on her desk is daunting. It almost whispers to her this lesson is going to huuuuurt. Arri shrugs it off, what the fuck does a piece of paper know about school? Nothing. Besides, their teacher walks in right afterwards and– oh my god, she thinks. 

Their teacher, a man known for taking frankly outrageous fashion risks at eight o’clock in the morning, has taken his biggest risk yet . Strutting into the classroom, he’s clad in a clearly oversized grey suit, complete with a huge red bowtie and red and white glasses. Arri purses her lips, trying not to react too loudly. Normally, she wouldn’t spare someone her reaction to their clothing, but this man is in control of her grades and, therefore, her future.

Still, he looks fucking hilarious. Arrietty turns to Jewels, but she’s already scratching something down into the notepad with her pretty pink mechanical pencil. When she gets the note, she’s gonna write back about how he looks like that one comedian from the nineties, though she can’t remember his name. 

Discreetly, she reaches down between their desks and waits for the note, which hits her hand in mere moments. Mr. Kressley begins to teach, and Arri ignores him to unfold the small paper and gaze upon the divinity of Jewels’ words. 

“OMG peewee herman!!!!”

Arrietty can’t hold back her laugh this time, bringing her hand to her mouth in an effort to not look like she was passing mean notes to her friend. Luckily, because she had made the choice to move to the back of the class, Mr. Kressley doesn’t see the note and just assumes that she’s laughing at nothing. Which is almost worse, but at least she isn’t in trouble.

She writes back, “i was just going to say that! his glasses are really hurting my eyes rn. ”

This goes on for a few minutes, before the door behind them opens in a quick motion of panic. A girl shuffles inside and takes the last empty seat next to Jewels, letting Arri know that this is the girl that Crystal is apparently fighting with. Her name is… Laura? Lina? Arri takes note of the outfit she’s wearing; this girl is the best dressed in the entire class, besides her and Jewels, anyway.

Class continues, and Jewels passes her a blank note, save for a smiley face, which means she wants to talk about something else. Arrietty thinks for a moment, before writing back, “ hey, guess what?”

Mr. Kressley goes off on a tangent about chemical reactions.

“what??” The note reads. 

Something, something, protons and electrons.

Arri writes, “my super talented and gorgeous best friend is going to fashion school!!!!” and passes it back.

It takes Jewels a second to read it, and Arri isn’t even trying to pay attention now. Jewels’ face slowly breaks out into a smile, and she bites her lip and looks up from the note at nothing in particular, probably just trying to compose herself. Arri grins too, then, because Jewels just looks so happy , like she forgot about her own achievement and she was experiencing it all over again. She has the faintest little blush on her cheeks, and of course that does something to Arri’s heart that should send her to the hospital. But it doesn’t. Jewels is so cute, she doesn’t care. 

The heart palpitations don’t stop there, though, because instead of responding, Jewels nudges her from under the desk with her shoe. Arri’s stomach lurches; she nudges Jewels back. This anxiety riddled game of footsie continues until Arri is ripped from her happy place and dropped back into chemistry class. Mr. Kressley is saying something she can't understand and, oh, fuck, she’s in trouble for something.

“Um, sorry?” She says, blinking back at the older man. 

“I was wondering if you or Jewels knows the answer to the problem on the board?” Mr. Kressley crosses his arms. “We've been discussing it as a class for the last five minutes.” 

The two of them are frozen, save for the glances they throw each other and their teacher. After they obviously do not have the answer, Mr Kressley addresses them. 

“Stay focused, girls,” he says, turning back to continue teaching. 

Once Mr. Kressley’s burning beam of attention is pointed elsewhere, Arri’s eyes find Jewels right away to gauge her reaction. Her best friend is pursing her lips, attempting not to laugh, but when they make eye contact, that attempt becomes futile. They’re both laughing now, and the eye rolls and awkward looks they get from their classmates confirms to Arri that they’re not being quiet at all. 

The rest of her day is uneventful because Jewels is barely in it, that’s just the truth. There’s a few moments in English where she shares a look with Suzie, but it’s really not that different from before, aside from the lack of hatred present in her gaze. No soccer, no Jewels, no plans whatsoever; Arri walks home down her boring street, arrives at her boring house, and collapses into her boring bed. 

And everything is boring, in fact, things are so boring that she actually considers doing her schoolwork when she’s supposed to. It’s a good thing she forgets that terrible thought, though, because immediately after, something very not-boring happens. 

She’s lounging in bed when she gets her second message from Suzie in less than seventy-two hours. 

S: emergency meeting. she fucking responded.

Arri almost drops her phone, because—what? Jewels responded? This quickly? 

Arrietty: What??

Arrietty: ???????? Suzie??? 

As she waits for the response, Arri only panics a little bit. And by a little bit, she means she screams into her pillow twice instead of three times. Jewels responded. She actually sent something back and this is getting real now. Her phone buzzes.

S: should i come over so you can read this yourself? 

Arrietty: Yes

So, she gives Suzie her address and tries not to freak out more than she already has. What if Jewels hated it? What if it’s just a restraining order, signed by her pink gel pen, telling Arri to fuck off and never contact her again? Oh my god, Arri thinks, she hates me. No, no she doesn’t. She doesn’t know it’s me. Yet.  

By the time Suzie arrives, she’s in a full state of anxiety, but she doesn’t let the redhead know that. In her head, she looks cool as a cucumber, but that doesn’t stop Suzie from giving her a look that tells her she really looks like hell. 

Arri’s mom won’t be home for a few hours, so they have plenty of time to unpack Jewels’ response. Unless it’s something really crazy, which is always a possibility.

“Okay, I won’t even bother with pleasantries,” Suzie says, setting her book bag onto one of Arri’s kitchen chairs. She opens it, but pauses for what Arri can only assume is dramatic effect. “The theatre room exit is by the statue, so I walk past it every day, and today…” she pulls out the letter and slams it onto the table, “...I found this!”

Arri stares at the paper. It’s delicately folded, taped shut, and she can recognize the paper from Jewels’ journal. She didn’t just use some random sheet from her notebook, this is important. It’s so daunting, she almost doesn’t want to open it. Living in ignorant bliss, in a world where she just sent the letter, released her feelings, and that was the end of it. 

Fuck it, no. Jewels wants her to read it, she’ll read it. 

Reaching out, she gently picks up the letter from the table. 

Lune, 

When I first received your letter, I can’t lie, I was expecting something different. Some poem about how my hair falls a certain way, maybe comparing it to a model or a Greek myth or a really good football play. (Sounds ridiculous, I know, but believe it or not I’ve gotten that before.) But this feels different. I think you’re different.

I’m flattered to be compared to the sun. I think she’s stunning.

It made me think, though. The sun isn’t actually the brightest star, it’s just the one closest to Earth. Would there still be anything special about the sun, if all the other brighter, hotter, more colorful stars just weren’t so far away? I mean, when you compare them all, the sun is kind of… average. If we had a whole sky of stars to pick from, including all the ones we can’t even see, would anyone still pick our sun?

I guess if all the stars were as close to Earth as the sun, we’d have a lot more problems to worry about than just which one was the prettiest. Like being burned alive!

Jewels

Arri feels like she’s going to faint. So much so that she grabs onto a chair when she finishes reading the letter. I think you’re different. 

Jewels likes it, she said she’s flattered by it, but she also has notes, questions, thoughts—this is perfect. If their letter was just some random meaningless compliments, Jewels wouldn’t have written all of that. 

One thought in her mind stands out from all the others: I’d always pick you. Even if we could see every star in the galaxy, even if they were brighter, warmer, more colourful. Always.

“What did she say? What do you think?” Suzie asks, reminding Arri that she’s still here.

“I think,” Arri pauses to take it all in, “I think we need to respond, bitch!”

Suzie blinks at her. “What, like, write back and forth?”

“Duh!” She resists the urge to smack Suzie on the arm, they’re not that close. “We have got to respond, Suzie, read this!”

After the paper is placed in front of her, it only takes Suzie a few moments to fly through the letter in its entirety. 

“Holy shit,” Suzie exclaims. “We need to respond.”

So, they come up with a plan. Forty dollars per letter seems a little excessive, so it’s down to thirty as long as they write four or more. Even though Arri pretty much had to beg Suzie to write for her, it seems like she’s enjoying the romance of it all, but she’d never admit that. This red alert is very quickly turning into another meeting, and even though she wouldn’t call Suzie her friend, Arri supposes that from a certain angle it could look like she’s having fun. 

“Pop quiz: what do you say if someone is wearing a really ugly shirt in front of you?”  

Suzie is sitting across from her with a notebook in between them. The table separating them acts as both a mediator and a border. Arrietty has her side, and Suzie has hers. 

In response to the question, Arri almost manages to hold back the wry grin making its way onto her face as she glances down at Suzie’s shirt. She’s basically asking for it. 

“Very funny, but time’s running out…” Suzie trails off, giving her another second to answer. “Tick, tock, bitch.”

“I say…” Arri pretends to think. “Um. I say… Even though your shirt is ugly, you can always fix that? Maybe add a scarf or perhaps throw it out?”

Suzie sighs. “The correct answer is: nothing. Are you even trying anymore?”

Rude! 

“Suzieeeeee,” she whines, “it’s so late. I’m not even talking to her until tomorrow!”

“Yeah, tomorrow, y’know, first period?” Suzie points out, looking at her like she’s insane. “At the beginning of the day?”

Arri scowls, not wanting to think about that. “Get out of my house.”

“Just making sure you get what you paid for!” Suzie shrugs, grabbing her things. 

Between meeting with Suzie every other day, soccer practice, texting Jewels and screaming into her pillow every night, and school, Arri’s life looks very different than it did at the beginning of the year. Yes, she still has the same schedule (give or take a few impromptu consultations with a certain redhead in emergency situations), but everything she used to do has a different feel to it. 

Take, for instance, what she’s doing right now. Waiting for Jewels in the morning by her locker has never felt so charged, so important. And, when Jewels comes walking around the corner, everything is right in the world. She’s smiling, she’s beautiful.

“Guess what just happened to me,” Jewels says right away, leaning against the locker next to her. 

She knows. She knows. She knows. “What? Something weird?”

“That kid from our pre-cal class last year, what’s his name—the one on the football team, he just asked me out,” Jewels reveals, much to Arri’s surprise. Anyway, thank fucking god it had nothing to do with her.

“Ew, Jason?” She frowns, which in turn makes Jewels smile, and Arri tries to ignore the flutter in her chest when she does. “What did you say?”

“I said no, but I was nice about it,” Jewels sighs. “I feel kinda bad, honestly, but that was never happening.”

“Yeah, duh,” Arri says. “I mean, look at you and look at him… not in a million years, baby.”

Jewels covers her mouth, either to hide a blush or a laugh. “I don’t know about that, and he’s not that gross.”

“Compared to you?” Arri shakes her head; how dare he even talk to her. “He’s like, I don’t know, a really ugly bulldog who scares the local children, and you’re, like, the luxurious, beautiful, ragdoll cat who watches everything from the window of a castle.”

Jewels laughs, hard, at her comparison. Arri wants to drown in the sound, because she very rarely gets to hear it directed towards something she’s said. 

“Y’know, Arri, you’re the only one I know who can insult one person so terribly and then turn it into a compliment for someone else.” Jewels smiles, shaking her head. 

“Only for you, everyone else is ugly,” Arri says. She’s a little giddy at this point, but she’s hiding it well. At least, that’s what she thinks. 

Before Jewels can get too flustered, the bell cuts them off and soon they’re being ushered to their classes by an ocean of other students. A quick goodbye, a smile, and a wave is all she has to remember Jewels by once she’s on the way to her next class. 

Jewels, who had flushed the prettiest shade of pink when Arri made those comments. Jewels, who never turns down a compliment, but got shy and denied it when Arri said what they both knew to be true. And it is true, the people of their school are hideous in comparison to Jewels, she’s just pointing it out.

Class is waiting for her, but Arri’s freaking out because, holy shit, it’s working. She’s telling Jewels how she feels, and Jewels isn’t telling her to stop? Jewels is laughing and blushing and being Jewels?

This is strange, unusual, and completely unprecedented. She knows who she needs to bring this to. 

“You have got to stop kidnapping me like this, you know we can just text, right?” Suzie groans, letting herself be pushed onto one of the seats in the classroom. When Arri doesn’t respond, she grins. “What, you don’t wanna be seen with me? Is my outfit that bad?”

She just stands in front of the desk, staring the other girl down and mentally telling her that this is not the time to joke. 

“Suzie,” Arrietty places both of her hands on the table, like she’s telling her about top secret wartime plans and not what she’s about to tell her, “I think I’m ready.”

A beat passes.

Suzie snorts, which—rude, but not unexpected from her. “You think you’re ready to tell Jewels how you feel? I thought we were going to write a few more and work on your, um, people skills?”

“My people skills are fine!” Arri says, crossing her arms. “And, y’know, maybe we don’t need these next letters.”

“Okay, no offence,” Suzie starts, letting Arri know that she’s about to say something very offensive, “but your people skills are not fine . Well, from what you’ve told me, at least.”

“They are now, though! You helped me!” Arri really hates giving Suzie her due diligence, but it’s deserved! “I’ve completely changed in the few days we’ve been doing this.”

“Okay, how about this,” Suzie says, “pretend I’m Jewels–” Arri fakes a gag, “...yeah, I know I’m not, but pretend you’re talking to her.”

Arri rolls her eyes. “Might have to get the folder out again.”

With a huff, Suzie actually does get the folder out, the same one from their first meeting, and holds it in front of her face. “Pretend you’re talking to her… what would you say on your first date? She just sat down at the fancy restaurant table, go .”

Oh, fuck. Jewels. At a fancy restaurant. Looking at her, talking to her, expecting her to do something, say something–

“Uh, that’s– you’re, um, looking very pretty… today, Jewels. Not that you don’t look pretty on other days… you look pretty every day! Even when you’re not supposed to look pretty, even when you should look ugly–” Arri cuts herself off, scrunching her eyes closed. 

Suzie’s a dick about it. “See.”

“Yeah, yeah, I see. We’ll keep doing this, then.” Arrietty groans. “But, shit, Suzie, she’s torturing me! We need to at least set a date for when we’re doing this. Telling her, I mean.”

“Okay, hold on,” Suzie reaches into her bag and pulls out the lamest, nerdiest object that Arri can imagine: a daily planner. She flips through until she lands on a page with the remaining months of school. “If we’re only going to write one or two more letters, then it should be in the next two months. I’m free every Friday for the next few weeks.”

“Of course you are,” Arri’s face curls into a grin at her own nasty comment.

Suzie ignores her. “Meaning that we can both do this for the foreseeable future until either you feel ready— actually ready, or we reach a predetermined date that we can decide right now.”

“So?”

“So, do you have something going on in two months that we can use as, like, a backdrop for you confessing your undying love to your best friend?” Suzie says with a shrug. 

Arri frowns in thought. Two months? “Oh, oh, our last game is around that time. I’m on the soccer team, we’re not expected to make the playoffs, so our last game is going to be in a little under two months.”

“That’s perfect, straight out of a romcom,” Suzie says. She scribbles down some brief writing on the date Arrietty points out and then closes her planner. After this, she holds out her hand, assumingly so Arri can shake it.

She rolls her eyes, what a nerd, but she shakes Suzie’s hand. 

Chapter Text

“You’re late."

Arrietty barely spares her a glance, shrugging off her backpack and her sweater. “And?” she says. “You were late last time.”

Suzie huffs under her breath. “I– that wasn’t my fault,” she says. “I had to drop some stuff off at the theatre room, and then the drama teacher wanted me to pass along some staging notes to– okay, you’re not even listening.”

Across from her, Arrietty’s taken her usual seat and pulled out her phone. She smirks, not looking up. “Nope. You lost me at ‘theatre,’ sorry.”

Suzie doesn’t even have the energy to be annoyed. Spending time around Arrietty must be taking its toll on her already. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s just get started.”

From her bag, Suzie pulls out the folded piece of paper, carefully tucked inside one of her notebooks for safekeeping: Jewels’ letter. She lays it flat on the table, smoothing out the corners with her fingertips. She lets her eyes drift over it, but there’s really no point to that. She’s read through this about ten times, could probably recite almost all of it if she had to. When I first received your letter…

Suzie pushes a hand into her curls and leaves it there, sighing. Mostly to herself.

One letter.

That’s all she’d promised Arrietty, one singular letter and nothing more. Those had been her exact words, too. One letter, forty dollars, take it or leave it.

But here’s the thing, alright? There’s a lot happening now that was never part of the plan. Things that she hadn’t necessarily accounted for. Like, perfect example– Jewels writing back. And not only writing back, writing back within a day of Suzie leaving her the original letter, slipping it into her locker in the morning before school. (“Of course I know her locker number,” Arrietty had scoffed at her, “what kind of friend do you think I am?”)

It’s not even the fact that Jewels had responded so quickly, though, so much as it is the response itself. Suzie is sorely tempted to open it as soon as she pulls it from the foot of the old statue, but something in her gut tells her not to. She delivers it to Arrietty like the faithful messenger she’s somehow found herself playing the role of, and when Arrietty hands it back to her with something wide-eyed and unreadable shifting on her face, Suzie thinks she knows what to expect. Some bubbly, mindless iteration of thanks, thanks, and more thanks– exactly the kind of chirpy reply Suzie’s known Jewels to have, when people throw her compliments in the hallways or at a school dance. Maybe an ‘XOXO’ at the end, a written version of her habit of blowing kisses at every chance she gets.

Turns out, Suzie is very wrong.

The way Jewels writes is not the way she talks. There are little bits and pieces that make it unmistakably Jewels, like the loopy cursive-hybrid letters and the exclamation at the end that Suzie can practically hear in Jewels’ voice, but there are other parts that are… unexpected. She’s taken the letter so seriously, for one thing. And she doesn’t even dwell long on the fact that her mystery admirer has filled an entire page waxing poetic about her, barely even acknowledges it. 

Would there still be anything special about the sun, if all the other brighter, hotter, more colorful stars just weren’t so far away?

It’s the furthest thing from taking the compliments at face value. It’s almost like a challenge of sorts. God knows Suzie’s never one to turn down a challenge.

That’s the only reason why she’s here, in the most deserted back corner of their local library on a perfectly good Friday afternoon. With the girl who’s been not-so-subtly picking on her since the eighth grade. Staring at Jewels’ impossibly perfect handwriting, and trying to figure out where they go from here.

“Are you trying to levitate it with your mind?” Arrietty asks, smirking, and Suzie’s train of thought pops like a balloon. “Is this some kind of Matilda shit?”

Suzie snorts. “If I’m Matilda, does that make you Miss Trunchbull?”

“You say that like I’m supposed to know who that is,” Arrietty drawls.

Suzie shakes her head. “This is hopeless,” she sighs. “You’re not even cultured enough to get my insults.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Arrietty reaches over and slides Jewels’ letter closer to her. “So,” she continues slowly, lowering her voice. It’s not really clear whether she’s talking to Suzie, or to herself, or both. “Our turn now.”

“Our turn indeed,” Suzie says, unzipping her bag again. Out come her dutiful tools, her notebook and pencil. She opens to a blank page and drums her nails against it. “Did you have any ideas of what you wanted to say back to her?”

She can guess by the fact that Arrietty’s eyes stop moving back and forth that she’s probably finished scanning the letter again, and the short-lived silence is broken by Arrietty’s little groan. “Not really,” she mutters. “This is so…” She trails off. “I don’t know. We just don’t ever talk to each other like this, I guess.”

Suzie chews on her lower lip. “Honestly, yeah. I was kind of surprised, I didn’t think she’d take it in this direction.”

“Well, no, I’m not surprised ,” Arrietty says. “Jewels is good at writing. She’s really smart, actually. I feel like people don’t ever realize it because she’s popular and she’s a dance team captain and whatever, and it just doesn’t give huge nerd energy– no offense,” she adds, completely unnecessarily, with a devious glance in Suzie’s direction. 

Suzie pointedly ignores her. There’s no point in rising to the bait, they have a job to do. “Okay,” she says. “Jewels is smart, that’s better for us anyway. We can do more with that.”

Arrietty narrows her eyes. “More?”

Suzie nods. “More. Like, actual deep conversations and stuff instead of just sticking to, y’know, mindless flattery and nonsense the entire time. Here, let me see that again?” 

She takes back the letter, scanning it one more time for good measure. “Yeah, this is what I mean– we said she’s beautiful and warm and bright like the sun, blah blah blah, and she–” She cuts herself off with a quiet huff of laughter, tinged with disbelief. “She called the sun average .”

Across the table, Arrietty’s listening with a cool stare and crossed arms. “And you’re saying that’s good? It’s good that she thinks we compared her to something average ? ”

“No,” Suzie says, picking up her pencil again, “I’m saying we can work with this.”

For some reason, writing the second letter feels a lot easier than the first. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s constructing a reply to something rather than writing something completely original, or maybe it’s the fact that they fall into a comfortable silence with Arrietty working on something that looks like homework. (Suzie can hardly believe her eyes. Arrietty? Homework? Who is this hardworking student and what have they done with her classmate?)

Whatever the case, she finds that the right words come to her naturally. In only about half an hour, she thinks she has a decent first draft, something she can tweak and refine into a polished product.

“Okay,” Suzie says, “let me know how this sounds.” She clears her throat.

"Dear Jewels,

You’re completely right. 

The sun isn’t the hottest star, or anywhere near the brightest. It’s not particularly big, and it’s neither remarkably young nor remarkably old, relatively speaking. It’s just one star, one out of billions and trillions in the universe, and as far as stars go it doesn’t have anything outrageously extraordinary about it.

That’s the thing. It doesn’t need to. 

The sun is special because our world and our lives would never be the same without it. We write songs and poems about it, we take pictures of it when it’s arriving in the morning or departing for the evening, we’ve dedicated entire deities and cultures of worship to it. 

Even if there was other life out there somewhere in the universe and they had a star of their own, it still wouldn’t be our sun. The sun isn’t ours because it’s special, it’s special because it’s ours.

Of course, you still make a good point. I can always appreciate a solid argumentative take. Almost enough to overlook the fact that you took a letter about admiration and turned it into a conversation about the sun. Here I thought you’d be the romantic type…”

When Suzie reads this part aloud, Arrietty almost laughs. “She is so the romantic type.”

Suzie grins. “Perfect,” she says. “Can’t wait to see what she says about that in her next reply, then.”

“It doesn’t surprise me to know you have people trying to win you over with poems and comparing you to a model. I have to admit, though, I’m incredibly curious about whatever declaration of love you might have received that found any resemblance between you and a “really good football play.” What a way to win a girl’s heart. If I knew what stiff competition I was up against, I’d have chosen something better to compare you to. A flawless layup? Or a perfect pitch in baseball?

Tell me what you’d like to be compared to, if you had the choice. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

(Personally, I think you’re more spring than summer, but that’s beside the point.)

You know what to do with your reply should you choose to write one. I’m hoping you do.”

Suzie looks up. “That’s all I’ve got so far.”

“Mm.” Arrietty holds out her hand in a grabby motion, shiny black acrylics clicking toward Suzie in an unspoken request, because of course a simple 'can I see?' would be too much effort. Still, Suzie hands over her notebook readily.

It’s a few moments before Arrietty gives it back. “Okay,” she says. “Yeah. This is… fine.”

Fine. It may as well be gushing praise, coming from her. Suzie takes it as a win. “Great. When I get home I can rewrite it on a nicer paper, like I did last time. And should I sign it the same way? ‘Yours, Lune?’”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” Suzie’s already closing the notebook, slipping her pencil back into her pencil case. “Well, you know the drill. I’ll leave it in her locker Monday.”

“Make sure you get there early,” Arrietty says. “I swear to god, if she sees you–”

“She’s not gonna see me. I get to school, like, twenty minutes before everyone else.”

“Of course you do,” Arrietty says breezily. Then she pauses. “You’re done with the other letter, right? The one from Jewels?”

Suzie nods.

Arrietty raises her chin just a hair, almost a twitch, so miniscule Suzie couldn’t have caught it had she not been looking right at her. “Can I keep it?”

Oh.

It’s all she can do not to grin like a lunatic as she reaches back into her bag. “Yeah,” she says. “Of course.”

She must still look a little too obviously amused, because Arrietty’s expression darkens immediately. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Wasn’t gonna say anything,” Suzie tells her sweetly, holding out the folded paper between two fingers.

The next few weeks of Suzie’s life are, for lack of a better term, weird. 

Checking the base of the statue every time she passes by it is weird. Meeting up with Arrietty every Friday and helping her compose romantic letters to impress the girl she likes is weird . Seeing Arrietty in the hallway and not getting the instinctual urge to walk the other way… maybe the weirdest of all. 

Admittedly, Suzie had imagined it would be a lot worse than this. Agreeing to write a minimum total of four letters together– on paper, not a very appealing idea at all. Three more letters means three more weeks, after all. She’s always enjoyed having Friday afternoons free of any rehearsals or club meetings. Not to do schoolwork, just to have some time for herself, for whatever she wants to do. Perhaps for putting herself through the ordeal of third wheeling her least favorite obnoxious couple, or in other words her best friends.

But she’s a woman of her word, and she is being paid to do this, so she dutifully drags her ass to the library every Friday after school and waits at their usual table. Arrietty arrives after her (in hindsight, Suzie’s not sure why she wasn’t more shocked that Arrietty had beat her there the very first time) and they get to work. Sometimes Suzie talks while Arrietty half-pays attention, sometimes she makes Arrietty talk about Jewels, and sometimes it’s just Suzie poring over Jewels’ most recent letter until her eyes start to burn. 

Then she has the whole weekend to finish off the letters. It’s become an unspoken thing that she’ll send Arrietty a picture of the letter before the end of the day on Sunday. Somehow, it feels like the right thing to do, even if they both know that the chances Arrietty could suggest an editing choice that Suzie wouldn’t immediately reject are close to zero.

Mondays are for sliding their letters, freshly written and crisply folded, through the vents in Jewels’ locker. Tuesdays and sometimes Wednesdays are for watching for any hint of white paper peeking out from the statue that’s become a part of her autopilot route to class, at this point. She meets up with Arrietty somewhere so they can both read Jewels’ new response, the rest of the week passes uneventfully, and then it starts all over again.

To say that she kind of hates the ironic way this stupid letter writing thing has become the routine around which her entire week revolves, is an understatement. But the routine itself… It’s not as bad as she’d imagined. Maybe she’d go so far as to say it isn’t that bad at all. 

“...Diamonds.”

“Huh?”

They’re sitting at Arrietty’s kitchen table again. Arrietty holds out the letter she’s reading with a little flip of her wrist, and Suzie takes it. Seconds later, she’s bursting out in laughter, because of course .

“Of course,” she says, more to herself than to Arrietty. “Of course Jewels Sparkles would compare herself to diamonds.”

“Kind of obvious,” Arrietty says. “Why didn’t you think of that?”

Her tone is light, she’s obviously joking, but Suzie still can’t help letting the corner of her mouth creep upward, amused. “Why didn’t you? You’re supposed to be the one who’s, like, deeply in love with her.”

The dirty look Arrietty sends her is brief, so brief that by the time Arrietty’s taken back Jewels’ newest response, it’s already morphed into something else, something not directed at Suzie at all. “I’d say I’m like a diamond ,” she reads aloud, haltingly, her brows drawing together. “I like to be eye-catching. I love to sparkle. And as far as most people are concerned, I’m expensive and pretty and that’s about all the value I have. ”

Suzie’s jaw goes slack.

Jewels’ words, even read in someone else’s voice, sink into the silence hanging between them like a rock into quicksand. 

“That’s…” Suzie clears her throat. “That’s really sad, actually.”

Arrietty shrugs, but the unaffected set of her sharp features isn’t entirely convincing. “It’s been like that all of high school, pretty much,” she says. “People thinking she’s just a pretty face. She doesn’t, like, talk about it too often. But I know she’s felt that way for a long time.”

Suzie nods slowly. “I guess that makes sense. I just didn’t expect that to go in such a depressing direction, holy shit.”

“That’s Jewels for you.” Arrietty taps a long nail on the back of the paper. “Full of surprises.”

“No kidding,” Suzie replies absentmindedly. Mentally, the cogs and gears are already turning, her mind racing ahead of the conversation. Diamonds . Sparkly, yes, beautiful, of course– what else? 

“Rare,” she blurts. “Diamonds, I mean. They’re incredibly rare. They’re tougher than anyone thinks they are, too, I– I think they can only be scratched by another diamond, or something like that. And they’re the kind of beautiful that can only come out of high temperatures and pressure, something so suffocating and difficult to withstand that whatever was inside had no choice but to become… well, a literal gem .”

It’s not until the last word is out of her mouth that she realizes vaguely how long she’s been talking for, which is also when she looks over and finds Arrietty staring at her, blank-faced.

She presses her lips together. Too much. Reel it in.

Arrietty doesn’t make fun of her, though.

“How do you do that?”

Suzie blinks. “Do what?”

Arrietty gestures vaguely at the air. “You, like– that came out of nowhere,” she says, her voice oddly tight. “I mean, not nowhere, it was somewhere, but you didn’t have to, like– it was all just–”

She cuts herself off with a frustrated sigh, and Suzie thinks this might be exactly what she means.

“It was kinda out of nowhere, yeah,” she says. She’s very, very careful to keep her tone neutral. She feels a little like she’s walking around an animal in a cage, and one wrong move could ruin everything. This is uncharted territory for them, something unlike any conversations they’ve had in the past. 

It’s beyond strange, and she’s also the tiniest bit excited, for some reason?

Arrietty hasn’t moved a muscle or said anything, so Suzie thinks she can continue. “I don’t really know where it comes from, to be honest,” she says. “I’ve done theatre since I was really young, so I’ve done a lot of, y’know. Monologuing. Improv. And I really like to write– obviously,” she adds, throwing in a self-aware chuckle for good measure. “So… I think with enough practice, I can just sort of write stuff in my head now, and I’ve gotten fast enough that I can do it as I’m talking. Does that, um… make sense?”

Arrietty’s regarding her not unlike a wild tiger might face down a human, torn between distrust and curiosity. “Yeah,” she says. “Makes sense.”

That’s the end of that conversation, for the most part. There’s an awkward but thankfully short silence that follows, a quiet in the aftermath of a moment unexpectedly raw. A resetting period of sorts. Arrietty reads the rest of Jewels’ letter, hands it off to Suzie so she can read it too, and they start brainstorming what to say back. Arrietty is her perfectly normal, snippy, confident self; it’s like nothing had ever happened.

(“Make sure you write down whatever you said about diamonds, earlier,” Arrietty says offhandedly, as Suzie’s getting ready to leave. “If you can even remember, with all the other flowery shit you said after.”

It’s such an Arrietty way of saying what she wants to say while wrapping it up in a meaningless insult. Suzie tries not to smile. “I’ll do my best to recall,” she says, and leaves it at that.) 

The thing about letting people pay her to write essays for them is that it’s usually really boring.

Suzie does love to write. That’s the reason she does this in the first place. But when she’s writing a paper that’s supposed to be passed off as someone else’s writing, especially someone who’s willing to buy their way out of having to do an English assignment, she can’t exactly pull out all the stops and take as many creative liberties as she’d like. Not unless she wants her customers’ teachers to get suspicious and accuse them of plagiarism, which would be a lot more of a hassle for her than just dulling down her writing a bit.

Writing the letters with Arrietty is different. She can take all the creative liberties she wants. There’s no dulling down of anything, not when the whole point is to be impressive and eloquent and… romantic .

It’s funny. She’s sure that little ninth-grader Suzie, the one who’d wrinkled her nose at couples holding hands in the hallway and gone on long-winded tirades about the rampant unnecessary romance in popular media would be appalled to see her now. 

In her defense, it’s not like she’s had a sudden change of heart or anything. She’s getting paid to do this.

Then again, just because she’s being paid doesn’t mean she can’t get invested. It can only help her write more convincingly, she reasons with herself– it’s like getting into character. Slipping into someone else’s thoughts and feelings, wearing them like a costume of sorts, imagining how she’d respond to something Jewels said if she was truly a secret admirer trying to win her heart.

I would actually say summer over spring, Jewels writes in her second letter, but maybe that’s just because it’s my favorite season. I like how long the days get in summer, it feels like the world slows down a little. And no school, obviously, which means I get to spend more time with my family.

It’s interesting that you think I’m more of a spring girl. I’d love to know why, if you care to share.

Arrietty turns to her. “I’m guessing you have some complicated, flattering reason for that, too.”

Who would she be if she didn’t? “Well, yeah,” Suzie says. “Spring is a cheerful season. I associate it with, like, pastel colors, flowers, spring showers, things like that. And it’s when all the plants and greenery and stuff comes back, so it’s all lively and vibrant for the first time in a while. That’s Jewels in a nutshell, isn’t it?”

Arrietty nods slowly. “Yeah. I guess so,” she says. “Summer fits too, though, she’s kind of right.”

“She is, she is, but this way we have more of an excuse to keep complimenting her.”

“Touche.”

Yeah, her freshman year self would absolutely hate this. Call it character growth, right?

It’s practically becoming a game to her. She’s always looking for openings to ask questions, to bring up interesting topics, anything to keep the conversational ball rolling. But they also have to be careful with what questions they ask, because they don’t want Jewels to start asking too many personal questions back.

“Ask her what she does for fun,” Arrietty tells her in one of their drafting sessions.

Suzie chews on her lip. “Then she’ll probably ask the same question back,” she points out. “What are we supposed to say? If we tell her what you actually do for fun, even if we’re really vague she might still catch on.”

Arrietty groans. “Right, fuck.”

“Plus, it’s not like we actually need to ask that. You already know her hobbies, don’t you?” Suzie asks.

Arrietty runs her tongue over her front teeth. “Yeah,” she says offhandedly. “Dancing, mostly. Journaling. Making her own clothes, when she has the time.”

“See, there you go.” 

Suzie thinks about mentioning that she also keeps a journal, or commenting on how undeniably cool it is to be able to say you make your own fashion, but she doesn’t do either. It would be getting too far off topic, probably. They’re here to accomplish a task together, not because they’re… friends, or anything. 

Anyways.

Three weeks turns out to be barely any time at all. It feels like Suzie blinks and the time goes by in a muddled blur, a whoosh of ink stains and notebook paper and impromptu late-night meetings, and before she knows it they’re at the library to write the fourth and final letter.

Suzie gets to the table first. Arrietty shows up a few minutes later, and they slip smoothly into the groove of working together. 

“She said she believes in life after death… I don’t even know how that came up, but sure.”

“Protective, sexy, discerning with my time – is that an Ariana Grande lyric? I swear that’s an Ariana lyric, look that up right now.”

“I like that, but we should try to write it near the end. I think it’s a good closer.”

“Therefore? Sorry, are we in fucking– ancient medieval times? Who says therefore?”

And on, and on. 

Minus all the bickering, which Suzie’s come to accept will always be a part of the writing process, they don’t waste much time. Within half an hour, they’ve pretty much done. 

“Okay,” Suzie says, skimming the page in her notebook one last time. “I think this will be fine. There’s a few more sections I want to tweak, but I can do that on my own.”

Arrietty’s toying with Suzie’s pencil, which she’s somehow gotten ahold of without Suzie even realizing, twirling it between her fingers. “Mhmm.”

Suzie watches her with a wry smile. “Sorry to spoil your fun, could I possibly get my pencil back?”

Arrietty sighs, feigning annoyance, but she lets the pencil fall onto the table with a soft clatter.

”Thank you ever so much.” Suzie takes it back and puts it away. “Okay, we’ll give her this last letter and get one more back, right? Maybe I should add something to the end of the letter saying, like… don’t expect any more after this.” She looks up at Arrietty, double-checking for her reaction. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

Arrietty shakes her head. “I still want this to be the last one,” she says firmly.

“Figured. Then yeah, I’ll just throw that in there at the end so she’s not thinking we ghosted her.” Suzie zips up her bag, adding, “Getting ghosted through letters, that would be really sad.” 

“Hm. Yeah.” Arrietty pulls out her phone. “Before I forget, how much do I owe you? I can’t remember if I paid you already for the third letter or not.”

“Oh.” Suzie pauses, letting her gaze drift as she tries to jog her memory. “Um… let’s just say you did.”

Arrietty frowns. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t,” she says. 

Suzie just blinks at her. “Okay,” she says, “you can Venmo me sixty, then. Or, wait, just check your payment history, isn’t that a thing you can do?”

But true to form, Arrietty isn’t paying her much attention. She taps away at her phone before pocketing it, standing up. “Just sent sixty.”

“Wha– did you even check?”

Arrietty pushes her chair in with her hip, grabbing her sweater. “Nope. Too lazy.”

“But–”

“It’s whatever,” Arrietty insists. “Take the money, you can… buy an outfit that doesn’t look like it’s from last century, I don’t know. Just take it.”

Even this, the same dig at her fashion taste that Suzie’s been putting up with for weeks now, seems half-hearted. “Uh. Okay.”

It’s a good thing they’re apparently in agreement now, because Arrietty’s walking away before she can fully process what’s happening. “See you later.”

“See you later,” Suzie echoes to the back of Arrietty’s head, slightly bemused.

Weird.

Monday morning. It’s the start of a new week, another round of classes and homework. 

Suzie gets to school while the sky is still pale and cream-colored, the sun still hiding out behind a haze of clouds and tree foliage. There’s no one around. It’s kind of eerie, being there all alone with the only sounds being her own footsteps, but it’s also nice. Peaceful, in a way.

She goes straight to Jewels’ locker and carefully pushes their letter through the thin slit in the door. It’s the last time she’ll ever do so, she realizes as she hears the soft noise of the paper settling inside.

Which is not a bad thing, to be clear. It’ll be great to not have to wake up twenty minutes earlier on Mondays anymore. 

(She’s not sure why there’s a vague hollowness in her chest, like a place where something had expanded and then quietly, subtly vanished. Must be the cold weather or something.) 

Suzie waits by her own locker, pulling out her phone and scrolling mindlessly through her Instagram feed. It’s not long before other students start to trickle in, slowly at first, then in groups and waves. She perks up when she sees a pair of familiar faces making their way toward her, one admittedly a lot more visible than the other on account of literally being head and shoulders above the rest.

“Love how I can always find you in a crowd,” she says to Kori in place of a greeting.

“Hello to you too, bitch,” Kori says. “Sorry, not all of us are the size of a breadstick from Olive Garden.”

Suzie holds a hand to her chest, faking a gasp. “What? That’s so not fair, I’m two breadsticks tall at least.”

“No, I think just one.” Lydia takes off her hood, running a hand through her dyed black hair. “Maybe even half of one.”

They talk right up until the bell cuts them short and they have to part ways to their classes, or more accurately until Suzie has to part ways with Lydia and Kori. Of course the class schedule gods would smile down on them and let them be their disgustingly cute selves together in their first period of the day. Fuckin’ gay people, honestly. 

She’s on her way to biology, earbuds in and hands shoved in her jacket pockets to keep them warm. Minding her own business. Not suspecting a thing. In other words, practically asking for something to pop out of nowhere and disrupt her peace, something like this:

“ Suzanne ,” a voice sing-songs from behind her, and Suzie stops walking with a little sigh. There’s literally only one person who sounds like that. 

Sure enough, she turns around and it’s Arrietty stalking towards her. Her long hair is curled, hanging in perfect ringlets around her face, eyeliner impeccable and piercings on full display. No different than usual.

Well. No different than usual, except she’s talking to Suzie in the hallway where anyone could see them, and apparently doesn’t think this is extremely weird.

“Arrietty,” she says, trying not to sound surprised. “Hi?”

Arrietty pushes her sunglasses up to rest at the crown of her head, and it pulls her hair back just so in the most effortless way. (Of course.) She’s grinning, which is deeply worrying. “Suzie-Q. Whatcha doin’ Friday night?”

Suzie lets her gaze wander, pretending to think. “Uh.” She has no real reason to be on the defensive, at least not yet, but this whole thing feels like a trap. Still– not like she’s going to lie. What if it’s about the letters? 

“Nothing, probably. Why?”

Arrietty’s tongue pokes out from between pearly white teeth. “There’s gonna be a party at some rich girl’s house,” she says, clearly enticed by the idea. “Her parents are going out of town. It’s gonna be super fun. And you should come.”

She might as well be speaking another language, the way Suzie can’t do anything but just gape at her.

“What?”

“Party,” Arrietty enunciates for her, sounding it out like she’s talking to a toddler. That impish grin of hers has yet to falter even slightly. “Come. With. Us.”

Okay. Okay, so either Arrietty’s  hit her head and suffered some kind of brain injury that’s given her a completely new identity, or this is all just an elaborate joke that Suzie isn’t fluent enough in high-school-mean-girl to understand, because there’s no way this is actually happening right now.

“You,” Suzie says, slightly incredulous, “don’t even want to be seen with me in the library .”

And Arrietty has the nerve to laugh. Not her evil little titter that follows a particularly vicious joke she’s made, not even the shrieking laugh that’s normally only saved for people whose first name is Jewels and last name is Sparkles. It’s just an ordinary laugh, and a genuine sounding one at that.

“This is different,” Arrietty says flippantly. “This is a party, not a library, and also my chance to see how funny you are when you’re drunk off your ass.”

Yep. There it is.

She should have seen that one coming, probably.

“Wow, yeah, totally,” she deadpans. “Sounds like so much fun.” She’s already pushing past Arrietty as she says it. The words leave a slight bitterness in her mouth that tastes an awful lot like disappointment, which is even more irritating than the situation itself. 

“Wait, Suzie–”

“No thanks,” she interrupts. “Think I’ll pass.”

Suzie doesn’t look back, even though Arrietty calls after her a second time and maybe a third. She has some dignity, thank you very much. She may be an easy target, but she’s not stupid. 

The universe must have some kind of vendetta against her today, though. 

There’s no other explanation for how it is that, out of all the people who could have been in front of her in the cafeteria lunch line, the person she does end up behind is exactly the one person she really, really isn’t in the mood to talk to. 

The realization begins to dawn on her when she recognizes the girl’s familiar hair and clothes, but only fully sets in when she steals a desperate glance down at the shoes, hoping to be wrong.

Unfortunately, there’s no mistaking those platform boots. 

As if that isn’t bad enough. There’s truly no explanation for why on earth the student standing right behind her just happens to get into a tussle with his friend, who shoves him backwards into Suzie’s shoulder, which then sends her stumbling forward directly into–

“Hey,” Arrietty snaps, turning on the spot. “Watch it.”

Their eyes meet. Kill me. Kill me now.  

 Lunch is overrated, actually. Who even needs to eat? Suzie moves to duck out of the line.

“No! Suzie–” Arrietty reaches out, stops her with a hand on her arm. “Don’t be weird. Come on.”

Suzie stares her down, unimpressed.

Arrietty drops her hand to her side. She exhales, like she hadn’t expected to get this far. “I… I was being serious earlier,” she says, and Suzie nearly scoffs, because it’s so obvious where this is going. “You should come to the party.”

Suzie opens her mouth. Sure , she’s planning to say. I’m sure you’d love to have me there, so you can get me wasted and then laugh at me and ditch me with people I don’t know. 

But she never gets the chance, because–

“Arri! There you are, I thought I lost you.”

Jewels.

The girl flounces into view and immediately attaches herself to Arrietty, links their arms together like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and in that moment something in the air just… shifts.

Suzie sees it. The flick of Arrietty’s eyes down to Jewels’ arm, hooked through her own. The waver in her otherwise confident expression. And finally, the way she seems to catch herself and look at Suzie, look right into her eyes and hold her gaze. 

She feels it, too. The unspoken weight of the moment, tiny and insignificant as it is. A weight that she and Arrietty are bearing together, now, because Suzie’s been let into this whole other side of Arrietty that nobody else knows about. Because anyone else would look at the scene in front of her and see two best friends sharing a casual physical touch, and Suzie is the only one who knows better.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jewels chirps, making them both turn to her. “Carry on. Unless you’re bullying people in the lunch line again, how many times do I have to tell you you can’t do that?”

Arrietty snorts. “It’s not bullying if what I’m saying is just my opinion,” she says. She looks back at Suzie, giving Jewels one last squeeze to her arm before untangling herself. “I’m gonna grab a table before they all fill up. Get me something not disgusting, please? Oh, and– help me convince this one to go with us on Friday, will you? She needs to get out more.” 

There’s no warning. Suzie has no time to brace herself.

Jewels’ face lights up as she gasps aloud. “Oh my god!” she says, delighted. No questioning why, no hesitation about Suzie being a random student who Arrietty hasn’t even bothered to introduce before walking away. “You totally should, it’s gonna be the best time ever.”

It makes no sense, because she already knows the right answer, already knows what she’s going to say if she has any idea what’s good for her, but the twinkling enthusiasm Jewels hits her with isn’t… completely ineffective. Having Jewels’ full and undivided attention on her is kind of a lot to handle, actually. Suzie blames those big brown eyes. “Um,” she says eloquently. “I don’t think it’s really my thing, sorry.”

And that should be the end of it. It’s not her thing, so she’s not going to go. She’s not going to say yes.

Jewels tilts her head to one side, a slight smile lifting the corners of her pouty pink lips. “Are you sure?” she asks. “I mean, not to pressure you or anything, I totally get if it’s really not your thing! But I don’t think it’s gonna be too crazy, if that’s what you’re worried about. I know the girl who’s hosting, her name’s Crystal and I’ve been to her parties before. They never get, like, unsafe or anything, it’s just drunk high schoolers being stupid.” 

Suzie blinks. It’s like her brain is playing catch-up with what her ears are hearing, a delay in processing that’s making it hard to focus on what Jewels is saying. “Oh. That’s… cool?”

Jewels nods. “Yeah.” One of her hands comes up to absentmindedly twirl through the very end of her long ponytail. “So. It’s gonna be chill, and me and Arri are gonna be there and if you go, which you don’t have to– if you go, I have a feeling you’d have fun,” she says. 

She seems like she’s being earnest. Her face, her voice, her body language, they all match up. If there’s any kind of ingenuity to her words, she’s scarily good at masking it. 

And it’s strange, because as far as Suzie is concerned, Jewels has really no reason to care whether or not Suzie goes to this party. They’re not friends. They’re barely even acquaintances, this is one of the longest conversations they’ve ever had.

Except it’s also not, because she’s been helping to secretly write love letters to this girl for basically a month straight, and talking to her face to face is proving to be one hell of a cognitively dissonant experience.

“Okay,” Suzie hears herself say, and immediately wants to kick herself, because she means it as, ‘okay, I’m going to agree to what you’re saying so you’ll leave me alone.’ Not ‘okay, you’ve convinced me, Jewels, I’ll go to this party with you and your best friend.’

But it’s obvious from the way Jewels beams at her that Suzie has been sorely misunderstood.

“Okay!” Jewels repeats, triumphant, bouncing on the spot a few times. “There we go. Now we’re talking.”

They’ve been steadily inching forward in the line for the entire exchange, and they’re close enough to the front that the plastic lunch trays are in reach. Jewels grabs two, handing one to Suzie like it’s second nature for her. 

“I’m gonna get in the line for burritos, I don’t know if I like the sound of a meatloaf sandwich,” she giggles, pointing up at the menu of the day. “Wanna come?” 

A meatloaf sandwich doesn’t sound particularly appetizing, but right now all Suzie wants is to get away from Jewels before she ends up agreeing to something even worse than some rich kid’s get-together. “Um. I’m good, I think.”

“‘Kay,” Jewels says easily. “Bye, see you around– actually, see you at Crystal’s!” 

A wiggle of her fingers and a toss of her ponytail, and she’s gone.

It’s a miracle Suzie doesn’t bump into anyone, getting her lunch and finding her way to the table where Kori and Lydia are sitting as usual. She’s running on autopilot, even as she sets down the tray and takes her own seat.

“Hi, Suze,” Lydia says. “We’re talking about how we need to go shopping together sometime soon. I need to get more mascara, and Kori wants to get these ridiculous rhinestone strips –”

“They’re not ridiculous, you take that back,” Kori talks right over her. “You don’t even understand, I saw this girl in a video bedazzling her coffee thermos, it was the cuntiest thing I’ve ever seen. I need it. It needs to be mine.”

Lydia just shakes her head, snickering. “Okay, babe. Whatever you say.”

These idiots. “I’m down for shopping,” Suzie says. “When are we going?”

“Hm. Not Thursday night, I have late soccer practice, and not Wednesday ‘cause I know Lydia’s gonna be writing that essay she’s been procrastinating for a week.”

“Hey,” Lydia protests as Suzie lets out a cackle. “True, but we don’t have to expose me like that.” She takes a bite of her pasta, covering her mouth with her hand to talk through a mouthful of noodles. “What about Friday night? Kori, do you still need to drive your mom to your grandma’s house?”

“Nope,” Kori says. “My aunt’s driving her.”

“Perfect,” Lydia says. But in the next moment, her face falls slightly and she groans. “Oh, no, wait. The party.”

“Huh?”

“The party, remember? Crystal’s?”

Suzie pauses with her food halfway to her mouth.

“Oh, you’re right,” Kori sighs. “I forgot about that. We just heard about it from someone in first period who was going around telling everyone to come, it’s probably not even gonna be that fun.” 

And Suzie can tell this is mostly directed at her, because it’s assumed she hasn’t been invited. Why would she have been, right? And even if someone had invited her, she’d have said no– right? Instead of saying “okay” like an absolute dumbass, and essentially dooming herself to a night of terrible spiked punch and EDM beat drops and awkward screaming to be heard over music? Right?

“Okay, I guess we should pick a different day.” Lydia rubs her knuckle along her bottom lip, contemplative. “Unless… I guess we don’t have to go to the party, right?”

“Yeah, no, we totally don’t,” Kori agrees. “Okay, wait– are you free on Friday, Suzie?”

And suddenly Suzie has two expectant pairs of eyes on her, waiting innocently for her answer. Fuck, they’re going to lose their minds on her, aren’t they?

“Oh,” she says, deliberately slow. Puts her sandwich down. “Funny story. About that.”

Chapter Text

“Please, please, please , do not do anything stupid at this little party, Arri.”

Arrietty glances up from her feet to look at her mom. In the process, she loses control of the soccer ball she’s juggling and it bounces somewhere under the kitchen table. “Of course, yeah, you know me.”

Her mother raises an eyebrow. “I do know you, that’s the problem.”

It’s Friday, around five o’clock, and her parents are getting ready to leave town for a few days on account of it being their anniversary. If she weren’t already going to a party, she would’ve hosted one herself. But, she doesn’t like torturing her parents that much, and a free weekend can also be occupied by other things. More important things. With a buzz, a notification pops up on her phone. 

Jewels: still down to crash at urs after???

Arri: duh get over here i'm bored 

With a snap of her fingers, her mom rips her attention away from Jewels (which is, admittedly, a pretty difficult task, so Arri gives her props for that). 

“I’m serious, make good choices or I’ll find out,” her mom warns. “Who are you going with? Is Jewels going to be there?”

“Mom, you’re acting like I’m going to a rave— yes , I’ll be smart, I won’t take anything from anyone.” Arri waves her off. “And, yeah, me and Jewels are going together. Why does it feel like you trust her more than me?”

“ Because ,” her mom pauses to swipe up her car keys, “one of you volunteers at the SPCA every summer… and the other crashed her brother’s mountain bike into a ditch at four in the morning after homecoming last year.” 

Arri pouts. “You hate me. I’m your daughter and you hate me. That was one time!”

“It was one time, but I still haven’t forgotten. And I don’t hate you, quite the opposite, actually, that’s why I’m lecturing you right now,” her mom says, slipping on her shoes. “I love you, my daughter, and I’m pretty much begging you: don’t be stupid .”

With a reluctant nod, she concedes. Even though she isn't planning on being stupid, she makes a mental note to tone it down. Or, who knows, maybe she'll even have an early night. 

Her phone buzzes, again. It's Jewels, again . She smiles. 

Jewels: u better get fucked up for me!!!!!

Jewels: or don’t if u dont want to!!!

After reading that message, Arri remembers that Jewels is her DD, and sadly it looks like her mom is right once again. Ouch. Well, there’s no way she’s having an early night, now. 

“Arri, I’m going now,” her mom says, pulling her attention from her phone once more. “Any last words?”

“I won’t be stupid…” Arri drags the last few syllables out for dramatic effect. “And, I love you, goodbye.”

“Love you, see you in a few days.”

It’s only moments after her mom leaves before Arri is spamming Jewels’ texts again. In all honesty, the other girl is probably driving, and Arri knows that, meaning she also knows that her texts are useless. It’s still fun to send them. 

Arri: hurry uppppp

Arri: im dyinggggg

Arri: jewelsssssssssssss

Arri: ugggggggggggggggggghhhhhh

She doesn’t get a response, because of course she doesn’t. Either Jewels hasn’t seen them or she has decided not to glorify them with a response. Arri takes a seat on her couch with a huff, staring at the window and willing Jewels’ car to appear. She only lasts a few minutes before she gets terribly bored. 

Arri pulls out her phone, opens up her texts, and sighs. No parents, no Jewels, no one to annoy… well. Her thumb hovers over a certain name. 

Inviting Suzie to the party was a little out of left field for her. It’s not like her and Suzie were friends, not yet at least, but, okay, Arri can’t lie: she wants a chance to show off. She wants Suzie to see her in her element and, similarly, she wants to see Suzie out of hers. 

And, y’know, maybe, possibly , she misses their little get togethers after finishing the last letter. 

But it’s mostly the first part. Arri clicks on Suzie’s contact, typing out a message, before deleting it and starting again. She doesn’t even know what she’d say to Suzie. Maybe something funny or something open ended, not just a ‘yes or no’ question. What she decides to send is perfectly light, funny, and kind. 

Arri: what r u wearing to the party susan

Arri: pls dont say something hideous 

Surprisingly, Suzie responds quickly. Maybe she’s bored before this party too, though that doesn’t really sound like her. She’s probably getting all her homework done early, or writing a paper for some dumb football player who’s definitely overpaying her. 

Suzie: Just something casual. Why? 

She frowns. 

Arri: hideous. where something cunt

Suzie: *wear

Arri: *fuck *off

With the beep of a horn, Arri throws her phone down and looks back to the window. Jewels has finally, finally arrived, and she’s already out of the car and bounding towards Arri’s front door. 

Like before every party, they exchange pleasantries, hug, and Arri tries not to get lost in Jewel’s eyes. She’s wearing pink sweats and a tanktop, and she also has a huge duffel bag with her. You’d think that Jewels would only need a simple change of clothes for just one night sleeping over, but you’d be wrong. Arri assumes she also has her party clothes, pajamas, and at least three pairs of shoes. 

“What can I say,” Jewels had once said, “I like to be prepared!” 

Fast forward to now: they’re both in Arri’s bathroom, and this tradition is one of their longest running pre-party activities. Whoever’s house is deemed the one they meet at, that’s where the two of them do their makeup. It’s not just an excuse to hang out, it has practical purposes too. Like, say, if Arri’s bought a new shade of lipgloss and she wants to know how it looks. Or, if Jewels is trying a new way of doing her eyeshadow. They coach each other through these things, that way neither one of them will never not look the part. 

Jewels is using a small handheld mirror instead of the huge one in front of them, silently bringing out the wings of her eyeliner in a way she’s perfected over the years. In contrast, Arri is touching up her blush, she didn’t like the way it looked before. 

“So,” Jewels says, voice slow because of how focused she is, “why’d you invite Suzie? I mean, not like I don’t want her to come, she actually seems really cool, I’m just wondering why you invited her.”

“Um. I dunno, yeah, she’s fun.” Don’t blow your cover! She adds, picking up another blush palette, “We’ve been talking in, like, English class.” 

“Oh, is she helping you get on Ms. Visage’s good side?” Arri can hear the smile in Jewels’ voice, teasing her. 

“Something like that, yeah,” she answers, and then they go back to their makeup in silence. 

Silence with Jewels is different from silence with other people. It’s peaceful, she doesn’t have the urge to fill it with meaningless conversation. And, it actually lets her finish her makeup relatively quickly, so they won’t be too late for the party.

Once they’ve put their new faces on and bickered over clothing, it’s starting to get dark, meaning they have to get into Jewels’ car right now if they don’t want to be presumed dead or not attending. So they do, and they blast whatever Nicki Minaj song will get them the most hyped before this thing. 

(“Oooh, ooh, Roman Holiday!” Jewels shrieks from the driver’s seat.

“Oh my god, that one sucks,” Arri groans.

Jewels pouts. “Please?” 

“Fine.”)

Jewels manages to find a spot on the side of the road that isn’t a mile from Crystal’s house, which is good news, and will be even better news when they leave and she doesn’t have to drunkenly trek down the road for an hour in these heels. 

The party is already raging when they get there. Crystal, ever the hostess with the mostest, greets them at the door and shoves red solo cups into their hands. Jewels greets the blonde with a hug, while Arri offers her a polite smile. It’s a peace offering of sorts. 

Crystal’s house is huge from the outside, but it’s absolutely gargantuan as they walk inside and actually see every contour of it. The high ceilings, the sheer amount of people that can fit in the living room alone… it’s the perfect place for a party like this one. Her and Jewels only get halfway into the entrance room before they just have to linger there in order to take it all in. 

They say hi to everyone, dance a bit, but Arri mainly just focuses on finishing her first drink (and Jewels’). Usually, for her and Jewels, the beginning of the night is dedicated to recon. So, it's only a matter of time before Jewels spots one of the millions of people who adore her who she simply must grace with her presence. 

“Oh, I’ll be right back, I need to go say hi to one of the girls on the dance team,” Jewels says, eyes glued to someone Arri can’t see. “Be right back!” 

Arri gives her a quick hug before she’s gone, and she only has a moment to dwell on it before her eyes flicker to the entrance.

Suzie, Kori, and Lydia walk through the door, and the couple immediately adjust to the atmosphere while Suzie looks like she’s just taking it all in. Arri watches her, in her decidedly not hideous outfit (though it is a little boring and not cunt at all), and wonders, briefly, if Suzie’s ever been to a party like this one. It’s not like she’s unpopular, it just doesn’t really seem like her thing. 

After a minute of hanging by the entrance, the trio breaks up. It looks like Kori and Lydia see someone they know, or maybe they just want to sneak away and make out– Arri doesn’t care. What she does care about is how alone Suzie is right now, and how they make eye contact almost immediately.

Arri’s jaw drops animatedly when Suzie makes her way over. “I can’t believe you actually came, holy shit?” 

“We were texting, like, five minutes ago? I showed you my outfit?” Suzie responds, tilting her head in confusion. “You didn’t think I’d come after that?” 

“I dunno, I thought you were gonna bail,” Arri shrugs. Then, she shakes her head and brushes it off. “Ah, well, you’re here! Isn’t it fucking lit?”

“I feel like I’m in some dumb high school movie where every actor is actually thirty-five,” Suzie admits, looking around. It’s clear she’s at least a little uncomfortable.

“Kinda surprised you’ve seen a high school movie, y’know, one made after the year nineteen-twenty-seven, ” Arri says. Then, she swings her head around, looking for the cup she was just holding. When she finds it, she offers it to Suzie. “But that's what makes this fun! Act like you’re thirty-five in the worst high school movie you’ve ever seen.”

Suzie just rolls her eyes, looking a bit hesitant before she takes it. “Don’t think I’m getting shitfaced, though. I’m still in fight or flight mode.”

“Not for long!” Arri dares to pat the other girl’s shoulder, and she’s pleasantly surprised when Suzie doesn’t make a big deal out of it. “Suzie, you’re gonna have such a good time! C’mon, I’m gonna teach you all the cool, popular kid things, y’know, introduce you to society .”

She extends a hand; Suzie looks from her face to her hand, probably guessing at a million different possible outcomes to this situation. 

“If ‘society’ includes throwing up and doing keg stands– yeah, just count me out, thanks.”

But Suzie takes her hand, and turns out society is indeed a mix of keg stands and throwing up, but it’s also the most fun she’s had in a while. Even though parties are supposed to be Arri’s “thing,” that doesn’t mean they’re all going to be fun. Mostly they’re just an excuse to get drunk and cling to Jewels like a lifeline.

Speaking of Jewels, she’s taking a selfie with Crystal by the entrance when they find her, and she rushes over right away. 

“You came!” She’s got the biggest smile on her face, which Arri doesn’t want to focus on, but it’s hard not to. 

“Oh, hi, Jewels,” Suzie says, holding her cup up in something like a wave. 

“Hi, Suzie,” Jewels returns the gesture, with her phone instead of her cup, “please tell me this one hasn’t been torturing you since you got here?”

“Rude!” Arri gasps. 

“She’s actually threatened to kill me twice, so I can’t outright deny that,” Suzie says. 

“Okay, well,” she rushes to her own defense, eyes fluttering rapidly from Jewels to Suzie and Suzie to Jewels, “at least I’m showing you around! Y’know, unlike Kori and her little girlfriend, who left you to go make out!” 

“Oooh, burn!” Jewels nudges Suzie. 

“Yes, and that’s the only reason I’m going with you, Arri,” Suzie says, taking a sip of her drink. “I just don’t wanna get ‘Michael in the bathroom’d’.”

From beside her, Jewels immediately breaks out into laughter. “Yes, we would never leave you for some gay little computer chip!” 

“You know Be More Chill?” Suzie asks right away, clearly getting excited, which then prompts Jewels to answer even more excitedly, and soon they’re speaking a language Arri doesn’t understand in the slightest.

It’s clear she doesn’t get the joke, which– ugh . That means it’s probably some old movie or some niche musical. Theatre kids, they always find each other, don’t they? She looks between them with a pout. 

“Why the fuck does Michael B. Chill go in a bathroom for a computer– what ?” Arri says, scrunching her face up in confusion. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, this is so fun, we can talk in code!” Jewels shrieks, grabbing Suzie by the shoulders and shaking her gently. 

“No! Please, I’m supportive of your nerd shit, just as long as you make it accessible,” Arri pouts some more, grabbing onto Jewels herself. 

“Yeah,” Suzie shakes her head, still grinning, “don’t worry, we won’t ‘Michael in the bathroom’ you, Arri.”

They all purse their lips, trying not to laugh. Jewels is the first to break, letting out a fit of giggles into Arri’s shoulder and apologizing profusely for it. The brief dip in her heart at the other girl’s closeness is pushed to the back of her mind. Arri just snorts, chewing on her cheek, while Suzie smiles into her drink. Stupid . 

While Jewels is still laughing, Suzie saves her and changes the subject. “So, is there anyone here I shouldn’t talk to? Besides, y’know, you .”

“Pfft.” Suzie actually manages to get a brief laugh out of her before she takes a second to think the question over. “Uhh, I dunno, I’m beefing with this girl Onya, maybe her–”

“ No , she’s so nice, what?” Jewels finally leaves her hiding place to scold her, even though scolding isn’t usually done with an amused smile and an eye roll. “Don’t taint Suzie just because you got a mean streak a month ago and decided to make it someone else’s problem!”

“But causing problems is so fun!” Arri whines.

“I’m actually friends with Onya, so–” Suzie cuts herself off, grimacing exaggeratedly.

“How was I supposed to know that!” Arri says with a gasp. She gives up. “Okay, fine. Clearly I’m not the one to ask. Jewels, any enemies here?”

“Asking the Disney Princess who she hates,” Suzie says under her breath. 

Jewels shoots the redhead a look before scanning the crowd. Arri watches her look, she doesn’t even bother trying to search the crowd herself. 

“I don’t hate anyone, but– oh my god! Last year at homecoming, that girl did so much ketamine, people were betting on her at the Kentucky derby!” Jewels is jumping up and down, pointing animatedly at some girl across the room.

Arri knows exactly who Jewels is talking about, so she laughs right away. 

On the other hand, Suzie chokes on her drink. “Ketamine ? At a high school party? Are we in Euphoria?”

“I know that reference!” Arri gasps. 

“OMG! Where’s Zendaya?” Jewels jokes, then her attention is stolen again by one of their peers. “Oh, oh,” she points out another girl, “she called me a cunt bitch in tenth grade!” 

“Oh my god, that bitch, I remember her,” Arri says with a scowl.

Turns out, you can find a lot of entertainment in just pointing people out and stating ‘fun facts’ about them. After Jewels, Suzie goes, gesturing to the few theatre kids in attendance, and even revealing which of the jocks actually used to do ballet.

Across the room, Arri discovers that she’s getting stared down by a tiny goth with piercing blue eyes. “Why is Lydia Kollins looking at me like I ran over her cat?” 

Suzie snorts. “More like her girlfriend.”

“Ugh,” Arri rolls her eyes, recalling that practice, “that was nothing, Kori’s fine.”

“Kori could be the healthiest girl in the world, Lydia still loves her enough to give you the most deadly stink-eye known to man,” Suzie says, smiling fondly. 

“Her loss.” Arri shrugs.

“You tell ‘em– wait, you ran over Kori?” Jewels chimes in, shaking her head in confusion.

Okay, seriously, if Lydia is going around telling people I attacked Kori– “It was an accident!”

“Somehow,” Jewels starts, taking a sip, “I do not believe that.”

Frowning, Arri sticks her tongue out. 

“Okay, y’know, speaking of Lydia,” Suzie says. “I did say I would spend some time with my other friends before the night ends–”

Jewels takes on a valley girl voice: “You’re just so popular, Suzie!”

With another light-hearted eye roll, Suzie takes a few steps into the crowd. “I’ll be back in a bit, see you guys! See you, Jewels!”

After she leaves, Arri realizes what was just said.

“Wait,” she gasps. “I don’t get a ‘see you’? Bitch!”

Laughing at her the whole time, Jewels wordlessly leads the two of them to the middle of the DIY dancefloor. It’s only a little while of dancing before Jewels stops in her tracks, causing Arri to halt too.

“Who the fuck keeps playing this Eurovision ass music?” Jewels wonders aloud. “I’m gonna lose it, I need to find the aux or the speaker or the DJ or something!” 

“Yes, oh my god ,” Arri groans, “tell them to play some Doja Cat!”

“I will, I will!” Jewels says as she leaves, and maybe Arri didn’t quite think that interaction through. She should’ve offered to go with her. Idiot, now you’re all alone, she thinks. 

Jewels didn’t even say when she’d come back, or whether she wanted Arri to meet her there or grab her a drink. Actually, another drink sounds really fucking good right about now. The thought motivates Arri to pick up her feet and make her way to the fridge (or, wherever Crystal keeps her alcohol in this huge ass house). Maybe Crystal would have fancy beer. Or tequila. Mmmm.

She makes it to the kitchen, since that’s probably a good place to start. As she’s prying open the fridge and fishing out a beer, Arri takes notice of some fucking lunatic dancing up a storm on the kitchen table. It’s like a scene straight out of ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ except it's real and not some teen movie with stunt doubles. 

Danger aside, this girl seems to be really feeling the music. Arri can admire that, even if she looks more like she’s being possessed by the devil rather than being possessed by the music. 

Arri has a few beers as she leans on the counter and people watches. She tries and fails not to think about Jewels, and then she decides to pick up another bottle. The music throbs around her. 

The blonde dancing like a maniac on the table turns around and… oh, it’s Sam. Jewels’ cousin, her English classmate, and local pageant girl, Sam. She looks rough. Her eye makeup is smudged, her hair is messy, and her shirt looks like it’s covered in something spilt. It’s strange seeing Sam like this, she’s usually put together from what Arri’s seen. 

It’s not like they’re friends; in fact, they’re far from it. Sam stays out of her way, and vice-versa, but when they do interact, it’s not always the nicest. We’ll have to be understanding, Suzie, some people just never learned to share in kindergarten. You get the gist. 

They’re not friends, but Arri knows, subconsciously, that something is wrong with this girl. It’s like someone cut her out of her perfect, pink, pageant world and discarded her onto this table at this party. She doesn’t belong here, there’s something she’s running from. 

She has the urge to reach for Sam, pull her down and tell her to go get a glass of water, but she doesn’t do that. Instead, she just watches, like one would watch a car accident. It’s like her feet are made of lead. 

Maybe it’s because she’s running from something too, but Arri snaps out of it. Sam doesn’t have anyone here, it looks like. Well , Arri thinks, has someone now . Her voice goes hoarse. “Sam!”

The blonde stops, breath ragged, and turns around to find the source of the voice. “What?” She scowls. 

“Get down from there before you eat shit, dummy!” Arri shouts, trying to muster up her best ‘I’m being mean to you and not helping you ’ look. 

Like she’s just been hit in the face with cold water, Sam looks around her, probably realizing who and where she is. Then, she looks back at Arri, and takes a step down onto a chair. Or, that’s what she tries to do, but unfortunately, Sam seems to be extremely, impossibly, heavily intoxicated at that moment. So, she completely misses the chair and falls forward.

Luckily, Sam doesn’t fall into open air, she falls onto Arri. 

It’s not wholly unexpected, this sort of thing happens all the time at parties and Arri likes to think she’s pretty strong. Still, it takes everything in her to not collapse with Sam’s full weight and downward motion. After the initial shock of being fallen on wears off, Arri stands the girl up and off of her. 

“If you drooled on me even a little bit, Sam–”

“I’m gay,” Sam blurts out, and when she says it, something’s released.

And something’s found. 

And, oh shit, that’s what Arri’s running from, too.  

That’s what she’s been running from since, what? Elementary school? Since she used to hold hands with that brunette boy in first grade, because she was told people expected her to. Since she started dating one of the nicest boys in school last year, all because he asked her and she didn’t know what to say other than yes. Since she broke up with that boy after he complained that she didn’t want to kiss him or touch him or look him in the eye. Since she went to bed on New Years, shaking, touching her mouth, wondering if that night had been a dream, wondering if she had actually kissed–

She cringes, if only internally, and shoves that memory back where it came from. Arri doesn’t know why she’s thinking about all of this, it’s just Sam.

“Oh, okay,” she just says. She doesn’t offer anything, she’s not trying to be comforting or accepting, she doesn’t even reach a hand out to pat her back in support. The normal people around them don’t turn their heads, even though this is the furthest thing from normal. 

Sam doesn’t say anything for a second, she just stands there in her smudged makeup and her ruined shirt and her secret that she’s just told to the meanest, most infamous girl in their school. 

“I just had to tell someone,” Sam says, finally, and Arri thinks she understands, even though she barely talks to this girl. What do I say to this?

She can’t come up with an answer; some jock throws up in the sink a few feet from them, the party continues. Arri can’t answer with words, so she just nods. This is probably the longest conversation she’s had with Sam without saying something rude or comparing her to Dolly Parton on ‘roids. 

After she nods, Sam takes a breath. “You don’t care?”

“Why would I?” Arri frowns, but she knows why. 

She doesn’t have some change of heart, some urge to find herself and be kinder to people, but she does feel something in her chest, something different. If this were anyone other than Sam, if she were confessing anything other than what she just confessed, this would be a very different situation. 

Arri thinks about Jewels, then. Honestly, when isn’t she thinking about Jewels? 

“I thought… never mind,” Sam says. “I need to go home. Thanks for catching me, Arrietty.”

All she can do is nod again, and then Sam is gone. She disappears into the crowd, muttering something about ‘finding Crystal.’ The party is still raging, nothing’s changed besides the song currently playing, and maybe her own mind. 

Sam is gay. Something about that hits her hard, makes her feel sick but giddy. Her thoughts give her away, and she realizes she’s jealous. Jealous of seeing someone else admit it, push through the fear and just say it. Just say it.

Her hands are clammy; she needs to find Jewels. 

Just say it. 

Arri searches the small crowd of the kitchen. Where did Jewels say she was going? To find who was controlling the music? That’s probably in the ‘living room,’ or whatever you’d call Crystal’s insanely huge room with a couch and a TV among other luxuries. All she cares about is finding Jewels, at that moment. 

Find Jewels. Just say it. 

Her heart’s beating out of her chest. It’s like she’s on the field, running a mile a minute, but in reality she’s in some rich girl's house, and she’s realizing she doesn’t want to run anymore. If fucking straight as a line, pageant girl, little-miss-perfect Sam can do it… 

A face catches her eye across the crowd of people dancing. Jewels is dancing, breathless in the middle of the floor, to some club remix of the macarena. She looks like she’s having fun– she looks free. Arri almost doesn’t want to disturb her. 

Actually, she really does. She needs to do this right now or she might die. Arri shoves her way through the people, until she’s in the dead centre, and Jewels is right in front of her. When her friend catches sight of her, she bursts into a grin. 

“Finally! What took you so long?” Jewels asks, pulling her into a spin. 

Arri lets herself be swept away, but she doesn’t answer the question, too caught up in her own thoughts. With a laugh, Jewels keeps dancing, until she realises that Arri isn’t . 

“What?” Jewels asks, voice barely lifting over the music. 

Arri feels shaky as she stares back, willing herself to speak but unable to form any words. Her mind, racing and reeling, can only think of one way to describe what she’s feeling. And that description reminds her, oddly, of a certain nerd who could rival Shakespeare. 

I want you so bad it gives me a headache. I want your eyes on me all the time. I want you smiling and warm, bathed in sunlight. I want you late at night, when it’s just us, and we’re watching some dumb musical from fifty years ago. I want you early in the morning, face soft with sleep, complaining about bed-head and asking what’s for breakfast. 

I want you in the hallways at school, in public, in front of our friends. I don’t care who knows anymore. I want them to know I want you. I want you, I want you, I want you.

“You look really hot,” is all that comes out. Arri shakes her head, brushing it off with a huff of laughter. Because she does care who knows, even though she knows she shouldn’t. She hates that she cares, but that doesn’t stop her. 

Arri can’t say it. Not yet. But, she can think it. She can think it when Jewels smiles, when she whacks her on the arm, playfully, and confesses that she’s wearing Arri’s top that she stole a few weeks ago and didn’t want to give back. 

So, they dance. They jump up and down, flailing their arms to some Dutch rapper (turns out that Jewels was unsuccessful in locating the source of the music, so no Doja Cat tonight), and Arri tries to forget that very important word at the forefront of her mind every time Jewels shoots her a grin. That doesn’t happen, but she does get rewarded for her effort: Jewels pulls her in for a hug after a few songs, but stays close after she pulls away. 

“Your mascara is so fucked right now, oh,” she laughs, examining Arri’s face. Her breath is hot, but so is the whole room. That doesn’t mean Arri isn’t dizzy at the feeling of it. That doesn’t mean anything. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about anymore. All she knows is that the way Jewels is looking at her right now is addicting. “C’mon, I’ll fix it, let’s go.” 

Arri lets herself be dragged to the bathroom. Jewels could drag her anywhere, she thinks, she’d follow her to hell and back and do it again, and again, until she was satisfied. 

Before she knows it, they’re in the hallway outside of the bathroom, and a familiar face is in the doorway, holding the door open. It’s Kori, and she doesn’t look like she’s been run over. 

“Lydia, get the fuck–”

“Move, this is a makeup emergency!” Jewels pushes past the taller girl, pulling Arri into the bathroom and somehow managing to close the door. 

Another ‘somehow’ has Arri actually able to hoist herself onto the counter. She kicks her feet in boredom as Jewels roots through her purse and plucks out a package of makeup wipes and a tube of mascara. The world is quiet as she takes Arri’s face into her hands and gets to work. 

Jewels is so close, and Arri has so many things she wants to say but can’t for the life of her. Or, she can’t say them all at once, so she decides on this: 

“I think you’re the only person who really knows me.”

Jewels smiles, glancing into her eyes, before going back to the mascara.

“I think you’re drunk,” she responds after a moment. 

“No, ‘m not,” Arri huffs.

“You are, but it’s okay,” Jewels says, and Arri wishes the other girl would just acknowledge her feelings, she doesn’t want this to be a joke. “I feel the same way. Or, maybe you and one other person.”

That’s something, but the ending doesn’t sit right with her. Arri pouts. “I’m cooler though, right?”

You love me more, though, right?

“Totally, just don’t throw up on me before I finish your mascara.”

I do, even though you are the way you are. 

“You’re so nice to me, Jewelsie,” Arri says, because she can’t cry. If she cries, then Jewels will have to start all over again with her makeup. 

“And you’re so mean to other people for me, Arri,” Jewels says, and Arri thinks she might wear that like a badge of honour.

“You’re my best friend.” Arri’s just talking at this point, just saying words, saying whatever she feels without thinking about it. It’s the alcohol, or it’s the way Sam was looking at her, earlier, free as a bird.

Jewels bites her lip, still focusing on the makeup. “You’re mine.” I am. I’m yours. I’m yours. I’m yours.

Arri hesitates, not sure how to articulate this without giving herself away. Still, she needs Jewels to know at least some of it. “No one comes close to you.”

Jewels finishes up her mascara and takes a step back. Arri doesn’t know whether she’s looking into her eyes or at her makeup job; she doesn’t know which she wants it to be. 

“I think it’s time for us to go back to your place, okay?” Jewels asks, voice gentle, eyes warm, heart just out of reach. 

“Okay, Jewelsie.”

They leave the bathroom and make for the front door. It’s like the rest of the party is drowned out, nothing matters when Jewels takes her hand and holds her steady against the rush of people. Before they can make their escape, though, they run into a very tipsy, very stressed out, Suzie Toot. Phone up to her ear, Arri can imagine the conversation she’s having. Or, rather, the conversation she wants to be having. It doesn’t look like anyone’s picking up.

“Fuck, c’mon Kori,” Suzie groans into her phone. Then, she notices Jewels and herself. “Oh, okay, perfect.” She clicks something on her phone and shoves it into her pocket. “So… by any chance are you guys leaving right now?”

Jewels nods rapidly. “Yeah, need a ride?”

“Oh my god, yes, please, I can’t find Kori or Lydia and neither of them are answering and I’m kind of super fucking drunk–”

“We gotchu, Susan!” Arri grins, keeping Jewels’ hand in her own, but reaching to take Suzie’s in her other. “Let’s go, let’s go, before I throw up for real this time!”

With a roll of her eyes, Suzie follows them, and their little chain somehow makes it all the way to Jewels’ car without breaking. Suzie calls shotgun, because, duh, it’s Suzie, but that doesn’t upset Arri too much. She’s so fucking tired and shitfaced, all she wants is to lie down.

Flopping into the backseat feels like rolling down a long, bumpy hill. Like the one outside Jewels’ house when they were kids. Arri can smell the grass, hear her parents screaming at her, telling her she’s going to ruin her good jeans. She looks back to the top of the hill, and Jewels is there, looking at her like she’s invented fire. Maybe they’re twelve, maybe Jewels is still not allowed to play rough, maybe subconsciously, Arri gets hurt for her. Scrapes her knee more often, dares to climb a tree when Jewels wonders out loud what the view must be like, even though she’s scared of heights.

But those are just memories; the car starts with a shudder, and Arri resists the instinctive urge to click her seatbelt on in favour of staying horizontal. This must be the part of the night where the alcohol really starts to get to her, since she’s daydreaming of her and Jewels at twelve and forgoing her own safety for a few more minutes of rest.

She’s somewhere between awake and asleep, but she hears her name from the two girls in the front. It sounds like Suzie talking, that can’t be the voice she’s memorized for the last eight years of her life. It’s not bubbly enough.

“Arri, what’s the fastest way to my house?” Suzie’s voice is drowsy, and the way she stumbles would be funny if Arri weren’t in the same boat. 

She sits up to hear better. Wait. What was the question? “Um– yes . Why’re you guys, like, talking so much? It’s so dark, just go to sleep.”

From the driver’s seat, Jewels chances a glance back, shooting Arri a smile. It makes her want to collapse back into the seat again. 

“Thanks for the advice, yeah, I’ll just fall asleep at the wheel,” Jewels says. It sounds like a joke, but so does everything at that point. 

Suzie snorts, and clearly she’s more sober than Arri is because she can’t help but wheeze. It’s not even that funny but– wait, yeah, actually it’s so funny. In her fit of laughter, Arri gently whacks Suzie and Jewels on their shoulders, trying not to fall backwards in the process. 

“Better get me home soon, she sounds hysterical,” Suzie says and, hey – rude!

Arri scowls. “Don’t be mean to me, Suzanne. I’m so nice to you.”

“You’re–?” Suzie cuts herself off, turning around in her seat to look Arri in the eye. “You’re nice to me?”

“Yes.”

Jewels, who’s not even giving her two cents, just listening, lets out a breathy laugh at the two of them. Arri sticks her face in between them, looking around the front seat at nothing. The car feels like its own little universe, and the pitch-black sky does nothing to combat this. 

Suzie keeps going. “ You are nice to me ?”

“Mhm.” Arri nods, turning to face Suzie fully. 

The other girl scoffs, because of course she does. It’s Suzie. “Prove it.”

Arri quirks an eyebrow. Prove it. So, she does, jerking her head forward to press a heavy kiss to Suzie’s cheek. It only lasts a second, but that’s enough to do the damage. Arri falls back into her seat with another laugh, and she watches Suzie propel herself back, put some distance between them, and look frantically between herself and Jewels. 

After a second of what looks like rebooting, she finally speaks. 

“What– what was that?” It’s fun to watch Suzie completely freak out. She even looks a little (a lot) red, but maybe that’s just the reflection of the traffic lights. 

Arri laughs even harder at her reaction. “See! I’m nice to you! If I wasn’t nice to you that would’ve been completely unexpected!”

While Suzie is busy trying to form real sentences, probably chock full of objections, Jewels finally joins in on this shit show. 

“Oh? So this is why you guys are suddenly best friends, hm?” Jewels’ tone is teasing, but the thought of her confusing Arri and Suzie for, gag, a couple ? That’s a scary one. 

“ No !” They both shout at the same time. 

Arri starts first, steamrolling the conversation. Jewels needs to know how not a thing this is. “No! Ew, fuck Suzie, hate Suzie, fuck that bitch, no. Never. Blegh.”

“ This is you being nice to me?” Suzie doesn’t sound too mad, maybe jokingly offended. If Suzie were really mad, she’d probably be going quiet, muttering some intellectual insult under her breath. “Wow. And, y’know, for the record, it’s also a ‘no’ for me. You’re not my type, Arri.”

Arri frowns. “The fuck does that mean–?”

“What’s your type, then?” Jewels blurts out, interrupting her. Even though it’s something she clearly didn’t mean to say, at least like that, Jewels has a way of making everything seem light. 

“Umm.” Suzie swallows, probably buying herself some time. 

Because this is the perfect chance to tease the other girl, Arri stays quiet, not daring to change the subject. C’mon, Suzie, she thinks, say something specific so I can connect it to a teacher or someone else embarrassing. 

Suzie’s buckling under the silence of the car and whatever alcohol is making its way through her system. She sighs. “I dunno, um… dancers. Or, people who are actually nice to me, which isn’t you , Arri. ”

She and Jewels both burst into laughter at that. It’s not that they’re making fun of her, it’s just so surprising. Not the second part, the dancer part. Suzie likes dancers. She likes lean, feminine, poised, dancers. 

“No, no, no, what was that first one, Suzanne?” Arri says with a devilish grin. “You like dancers? Like, the leg-warmer wearing, ballet girls from the local studio? Like, that one blonde bitch… What's her name?”

“Bitch! Suzie wants to fuck Brooke Hytes!” Jewels shrieks.  

Suzie laughs at the two of them, waving her hands. “No! No, I don’t want to fuck Brooke Hytes, no . Weird. That’s not what I meant. It’s not like I want some prodigy with a thing for slick-back buns. And not even really those ballet dancers. Not them at all, actually. It’s more like– I just admire the dedication. And I think it’s cool, it’s like theatre, especially the school’s team.”

“Oh, it’s some nerdy theatre thing… lame,” Arri huffs with a frown. “I’m not your type? You’d rather date some Shirley Temple-ass bitch?”

“I’m actually surprised you know who Shirley Temple is, wow,” Suzie jokes, looking back at her from the passenger seat. “Why’re you so hung up on this?”

“I’m everyone’s type,” she says, like it’s obvious. And maybe she’s more than a little drunk, because this conversation is quickly growing frustrating. 

“Not Suzie’s,” Jewels chimes in, voice light with even more unreleased laughter. 

Her frown grows. “Hmph. Fuck you guys, I’m going to bed.” Arri flings herself back against the seat, and she’s horizontal again, which is probably completely unsafe, but Jewels is a good driver. She trusts her. 

“You’re such a baby, oh my god,” she hears Jewels say, and it sounds more endearing than teasing, but it’s muffled and far away. 

The seat is firm against her face, but it’s oddly comfortable. Maybe it’s just the fact that she doesn’t have to hold herself up anymore, or keep her eyes open, but the exhaustion of the night is finally starting to kick in. The hum of the road beneath them lulls her into a stupor, she could be in her bed right now. 

Wrapped in blankets, Jewels would be there, too. Jewels would always be there, in every daydream, every ideal scenario. She’s there. She’s here, too, making sure Arri gets in the door safely. Making sure her mom isn’t too harsh on her. In a sudden blur, she’s home. 

Home isn’t a place, at this point , she thinks as she stumbles into her bed. It’s a person. Home is sitting me up in bed, wiping the makeup off my face, helping me into pajamas, wrapping her arms around me as we both drift off to sleep. Home is Jewels. 

Chapter Text

Suzie’s drunk.

Not a lot drunk. Just, like, a little tipsy. Maybe more than a little, maybe sorta-kinda. Like, thirty five percent drunk, seventy five percent not drunk? 

Her math doesn’t add up, she realizes as she pushes her seat belt into place with a satisfying click, but whatever. She’s not the best at math even when she’s sober, what do you expect from her?

The number of times Suzie’s gotten into the passenger seat of Kori’s car only to immediately have to remind her best friend to wear her fucking seatbelt, please, don’t be an idiot has left its mark on her. The muscle memory clicks in, albeit a bit delayed by the warm haze clouding her thoughts and dulling all her senses. She turns to her left with her lips already parted, the words ready on the tip of her tongue before she remembers: she is not, in fact, in Kori’s car.

She’s in Jewels Sparkles’ car.

More specifically, she’s in Jewels’ car so Jewels can drive her home. Actually, she’s not sure how she’d managed to forget where she was, even for a split second. The inside of this car is decked out with things that just scream Jewels, the fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror and the pink steering wheel cover and the black cherry lip gloss in the cup holder. 

And Arrietty– right, yes, Arrietty’s here too– is clambering into the backseat, flopping down on the leather with a huff and an arm thrown over her eyes. Suzie smirks without really meaning to, gazing over her shoulder at the dark-haired girl’s dress strap slipping down her shoulder– she may be drunk, but Arrietty is definitely drunker. Drunker… is that even a word? Suzie’s pretty sure it is. 

A glance back to the driver’s seat reveals a decidedly un-drunk Jewels, also looking back at Arrietty. She’s smiling too, but her expression is softer, lingers a little longer even after she’s turned to face forward again and placed both hands on the wheel. Oh, yeah– Suzie actually has to get home from here now.

“Arri, what’s the fastest way to my house?”

And maybe it’s an indication of how much alcohol has made its way through her system already that she calls Arrietty ‘Arri’ without even thinking about it. She only realizes belatedly, after Arrietty is already slurring her way through an entirely unhelpful answer to her question, by which point she figures it doesn’t matter.

It had probably just slipped out because Suzie had spent so much time around the two of them tonight. Listening to Jewels use the nickname almost constantly, hearing it seemingly every other minute she was with them– “Arri, is that the girl you told me almost reported you for bullying?” “Arri, come dance with me!” Arri, Arri, Arri.

The party is somewhat of a blur for her. They’d left Crystal’s house not even five minutes ago, Suzie being dragged along by the hand in classic Arrietty fashion, and already her memories of the night are all starting to bleed into one another. She can remember getting there with Kori and Lydia, who’d promptly disappeared into a different room with vague promises of coming back soon. She remembers searching the crowd of faces and spotting Arrietty, in all her tight leather, pouty lipped, smoky-eyed glory. Feeling something akin to relief, of all things, at the sight of her. Which would be just about the most foreign thing she’s ever experienced if not for… well, everything that had happened after that.

Everything that had happened after that, also known as Suzie’s first real party. (Sure, she’s been to cast parties for the various theater productions she’s done, she’s attended plenty of birthday parties, whatever. But she’s not naive enough to try and pretend those had been anything like the one they’re currently leaving.)

As for what else she remembers, there’s not much to write home about. People she never talks to, faces she hadn’t recognized. Lots of drinking games, too many to count. Music played at truly inadvisable volumes, with bass that reverberated right into the pit of her stomach and felt like it could turn her inside out if she wasn’t careful.

Honestly?

She remembers feeling safe. 

Overwhelmed, occasionally, and supremely out of her comfort zone more often than not, but always safe at the core of it all. 

Suzie had spent virtually the whole night bouncing back and forth between Kori and Lydia, and Jewels and Arri. There had always been someone to stick to, someone to turn to when groups split off into smaller veins of conversation, or– hell, just someone’s arm to hold onto for dear life, helpless laughter drowned out in music and noise, trying not to get swept away by the tide in a constantly shifting sea of warm bodies.

They were always keeping an eye on her in one way or another. She’d noticed, every time. Even drunk-ish, even in all the chaos happening around them, she would always notice. Lydia, dancing or talking with other people yet still looking back at her every few minutes with a clumsy, delightfully stupid wink. Kori, leading Lydia off to who-knows-where by the hand and yelling over her shoulder, “Stay right there, bitch, don’t go getting lost.”

Even Arrietty had done her part, perhaps feeling somewhat responsible for Suzie on account of being the one to invite her in the first place, or maybe just loosened up by the alcohol. Whatever the case, she makes an effort in her own prickly, not-like-I-care way. (“Stay away from that game,” she mutters into Suzie’s ear, gesturing clumsily with her cup to a group of people clearly having far too much fun at a nearby table. “You’re a fucking lightweight, you’ll be wasted before you even learn their names.” 

“Roger that,” she says back, taking a sip from her own cup and trying not to make a face.)

Then there’s Jewels, who might be the textbook definition of a social butterfly. Suzie would estimate the party had been at least a hundred people, and Jewels seemed to know them all, with a hi or hello or simply a dazzling starburst of laughter for every familiar face she passed.

But Jewels is also the one who’d found a chance to include Suzie in every conversation, who could still remember to tug Suzie along by her wrist when they were moving to a different room. Who, for whatever reason, seemed determined to talk to her all night. To listen to her, too, asking her to repeat herself with an apologetic laugh when the thumping music threatened to drown out both their voices. To understand her references, even when Suzie’s almost certain she won’t– what kind of supposedly popular kid knows ‘Be More Chill,’ for god’s sake?

Fast forward an hour or two. They’re in Jewels’ car, they’re somehow going to get Suzie home so she can stumble into bed and pass out. Until then, Arri is proving to be neither a sappy drunk nor a mean drunk, but something in the middle of the two that Suzie can really only describe as… interesting. 

Between pouting at Suzie, mercilessly teasing her after getting her to confess that dancers are kind of, sort of, maybe her type (unfortunately true); insisting vehemently that she’s nice to her (couldn’t be further from the truth), and pressing a sticky, lipgloss-laden kiss to Suzie’s cheek to prove her point (Suzie’s not even going to try to find an explanation for this one), Arri manages to eventually tire herself out. It’s unclear whether she’s fully asleep, the car is too dark for Suzie to see if her eyes are closed, but either way she’s good as dead to the world.

That leaves Suzie and Jewels. They keep their voices hushed so they don’t disturb Arri. Suzie’s discovering that being drunk, at least for her, means that she’s a lot less inclined to care about what she says. She’s always a talkative person, thank you self awareness, but normally everything that comes out of her mouth has been through at least three filters first, several lightning-quick mental checks to make sure she’s communicating exactly what she wants to get across. 

Tonight, though, it doesn’t matter so much. The only lights are the streetlights and the neon signs of storefronts, Suzie has the cover and comfort of darkness on her side, and every silence feels gaping. Not in an uncomfortable way, just in the way that urges to be filled with something. A question, or a mindless remark. “Do you think it would be possible to become nocturnal? Like, for a person?”

Jewels considers it. “Yeah, totally. I mean, some people have to be, right? For their jobs?”

Sluggishly, Suzie nods. “That would be kinda sad, though,” she murmurs. “You couldn’t ever see your friends who are, um. What do you call it? Day-ternal?”

“Maybe you wouldn’t even have those anymore, maybe you’d only want to be friends with other nocturnal people,” Jewels suggests.

“Oh my god, you’re so right. All-nocturnal friend groups. That would be wild.”

Long story short, Suzie doesn’t end up regretting one bit that she’d gone home with Jewels and Arri rather than her original plan of leaving with Kori and Lydia. Which, she guesses, means she doesn’t regret going to the party, either. Not even when she wakes up with a killer headache the next day, or when she opens her phone to about fifty messages from her extremely concerned friends.

Kori: Suzie 

Kori: Where are you

Kori: Check your phoneeee

Lydia: we saw you go with jewels and the mean one

Lydia: are you gonna be okay??????

Kori: Suzie check your phone girl

Lydia: are you getting a ride home from them

Kori: Suzie do you need a ride home yes or no

Lydia: we're leaving now

Kori: Speak now or forever hold your piece

Lydia: (you don’t have to correct her when you see this i just told her it’s peace not piece)

Kori: Bitch r u dead

Lydia: PLEASE TEXT US WHEN YOU GET HOME

Kori: Babe it’s over she’s dead

Lydia: suzieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :(((((((

The texts go on like that for a while longer before her friends had appeared to have the brilliant idea of actually checking her location, which Suzie isn’t sure why they hadn’t done in the first place. She closes her eyes tightly, trying to chase away the pounding in her head from looking at the small text on her phone screen, but she can’t help being endeared. They’re so dumb, and they love her so very much. 

Suzie: sorry sorry fell asleep without checking my phone

Suzie: thank you guys

Suzie: i’m alive promise

Suzie: never drinking again though.

Ding-dong.

“Coming!” she yells, fumbling a bit with the loose makeshift bun she’s wrangled her curls into, hair still damp from the shower. It does nothing to prevent the three more times the doorbell sounds off in the twenty seconds it takes her to get to her front door, and by the time she pulls it open she’s already rolling her eyes at the person standing on the other side.

“Would it kill you to wait patiently for a few seconds,” she says in place of a greeting.

Arrietty flashes her pristine white canines. “Just making sure you knew I was here.”

Suzie steps to the side to let her in. “Oh, believe me,” she says, “I would sense your evil presence from a hundred miles away.”

Closing the door behind Arrietty, she takes a second to actually process what the taller girl is wearing. She’s ditched the signature black; her dress is a deep, rich red that nearly touches the floor with its rippling hem. It’s sleeveless with a diamond-shaped cutout in the center of her chest that reveals smooth, tanned skin. Her makeup is as crisp as ever, if a little more subtle than usual, and her hair is half pulled up into what looks like a complicated crown of braids while the rest falls softly over her shoulders in lush curls.

She looks fucking incredible, actually.

“You look… expensive.”

Arrietty does a little twirl in place, her skirt fanning out elegantly around her ankles. “Thank you,” she says, clearly delighted. “That was the goal.”

“Of course it was.”

Suzie’s always considered herself a natural host, taking pride in being the one in her friend groups to volunteer to host the dinner, the get-together, the movie night, whatever. So she’s used to having people in her space, inviting friends and classmates into her little bubble and showing them around. Making them feel at home, to the best of her abilities.

It’s just that those people aren’t Arrietty, usually.

She’s being well-behaved so far, Suzie thinks as she waits for Arrietty to wrestle with the straps on her heels at the door. She hasn’t said anything unkind about the furniture, and she hasn’t cut her eyes at any of the decorations her parents have so lovingly curated for their living room shelves. She didn’t even complain when Suzie asked her to take off her shoes.

“So,” Suzie begins, leading the way upstairs, “not too cool for the soccer banquet this time, huh? Kori told me you weren’t even there last year.”

Arrietty hums. “Yeah. Banquet is kinda the most boring part of the whole season, it’s just, like, awards for the kids who kiss up to the coaches and lame speeches from the sports booster presidents and whatever. I could have fallen asleep, I swear to God.”

Suzie wrinkles her nose. “Wow, you’re getting me so excited for this.”

They’re nearing the top of the stairs now. “Yeah, no, you’ll have so much fun,” Arrietty deadpans. “But yeah. I’m going this year, since, you know–” Suzie turns in time to see her gesture vaguely, wave a flippant hand in the air. “Senior season, last banquet and all that. Sending all the seniors off to their new depressing lives, whoop-de-doo.”

Suzie can’t help but laugh at that. “You and Kori talk about soccer so differently, oh my god,” she says. “The way Kori described it, this is basically the reason people stick it out all four years. The banquet’s like, the whole point, is it not?”

Unimpressed, Arrietty scoffs. “Uh, maybe for people like Kori. Definitely not for me.” She flicks a finger to brush away a stray hair from her face, looking around. “‘Kay, which one’s your room? I’m gonna need the full room tour in order to maximize the amount I can make fun of you today.”

Suzie feels her smile almost slide off her face, and fights to keep it there.

“Ha, ha.” It’s a second too late, a touch too gravelly. “I’d expect nothing less,” she adds, an attempt at recovery. It sort of works.

She takes Arrietty down the hallway and hates that her gut reaction at seeing the cheesy family photos mounted on the walls is to be slightly self-conscious, to wish her parents had hung anything else in their place. She hates the twinge in her gut as every step brings her closer to her room, her personal haven, the physical coalescence of all her interests and prized possessions compiled into one eleven-by-twelve-foot space. 

She’s supposed to be proud of this room. She is proud of it, most of the time.

Okay, get a hold of yourself. Jesus.

Just like pre-show jitters or the feeling of the waiting room at the dentist’s, she brushes the feeling firmly away. This is stupid, and it’s her own damn bedroom and Arrietty is just a girl. A girl who’s been making fun of her for years, in fact, so she’s just about heard it all at this point. 

Suzie pushes open her door with her shoulder and walks inside like it’s not a big deal, because it’s not a big deal. 

(She doesn’t stop and turn around for Arrietty’s reaction, though. She can be brave, she’s not sure if she can be quite that fearless.)

“Oh, wow,” Arrietty says from somewhere behind her. 

Suzie makes it to her desk, all the way across the room from the door. She opens a drawer. Closes it again, then opens a different one. Maybe she’s looking for something, maybe she’s just stalling so she doesn’t have to turn around and face the reason why it’s a little hard to swallow right now. 

Then:

“You have a lot of posters.” 

It takes a good few seconds of just standing there and blinking at the wall to process that this is, in fact, a relatively neutral statement.

“I do,” Suzie replies, lining up her makeup brushes. It helps to have something to do with her hands. “Good work, Einstein.”

When she steals a glance over her shoulder, Arrietty is standing between her Playbill collection and the strings of lights adorned with Polaroids, clothespins holding up years’ worth of friends and fond memories. She’s leaning in to look at something, but Suzie can’t tell what.

“Is this Lydia?”

Suzie turns around. A long, scarlet-painted fingernail is pressed to a Polaroid near the bottom of the wall, and Suzie squints to make it out. It is one of Lydia, from what must be seventh or eighth grade– Suzie can tell because her hair is still long and wispy blonde, missing her signature black dye job. She’s wearing a truly ungodly amount of black eyeliner, lipstick crudely smeared around her lips, posing dramatically for the camera with both hands framing her face.

“Oh,” she says, taking a few steps towards the picture. “Yeah, it is. I’m– kind of impressed you could tell that’s her.”

Arrietty clucks her tongue. “No, this is very Lydia,” she says, not looking away from the picture. “Except the hair. I never would have guessed she was a natural blonde, she doesn’t give blonde vibes at all.”

And there might be an insult buried somewhere in there, or there might not. Suzie chooses to believe there isn’t one. “Yeah, no one ever knows.”

Slowly, Arrietty nods. “Speaking of her,” she says, tearing her gaze from the wall. “You said you’re Kori’s plus one? She’s not bringing Lydia?”

Suzie shakes her head. “She really wanted to, but Lydia had to get her wisdom teeth out yesterday,” she explains, moving back towards her desk again. “That’s where Kori is right now. I think if the banquet wasn’t so important to her she’d probably just ditch to stay with Lydia and take care of her.”

“Wisdom teeth, huh?” Arrietty fixes Suzie with a pointed look, dark eyes glittering. “Please tell me someone had the sense to get a video–”

“–of her higher than a kite on the anesthesia, of course we did,” Suzie finishes, grinning. “Or, we made sure her mom did, at least. I haven’t seen it yet, but Kori has and she told me there’s a part where they’re driving home, and Lydia sees some random bird in a tree and starts trying to sing the DuckTales theme song in a really horrible country accent, but she can’t remember the words and gives up and starts singing U Can’t Touch This by MC Hammer instead.”

Arrietty’s resounding cackle is pure mischief. “Not fucking Hammer Time, oh my god,” she snickers. “I’d pay such good money for that video. Holy shit.”

The moment is short lived, but it gives way to a more comfortable silence than before, something a little easier to sit with. It’s like a stone’s been thrown into a still pond, plunging right through the surface tension and creating ripples of something akin to relief. It’s common ground, something they can both laugh at.

She’s got Lydia to thank for that, indirectly. She makes a mental note to remember that later, when she and Kori will surely be losing their minds at Lydia’s comically adorable chipmunk cheeks and less than sunny disposition.

“I can’t believe you only give yourself an hour to do your hair and makeup,” Arrietty says, breaking the silence. She’s apparently had enough of snooping around the room, because she’s settled herself on the edge of Suzie’s bed.

Suzie doesn’t bother looking away from her mirror. “What can I say, some of us don’t need five business days to get ready.”

Arrietty huffs. “Yeah, well,” she says, “maybe you’d benefit from a little more time. I’ve seen that eyeliner up close, Suzanne, it’s… really something.”

“Hey!” Suzie gasps, leaning in close to inspect her foundation. “I’ll have you know my fucked up eyeliner has nothing to do with a lack of time.”

The thing about getting ready with Arrietty right there is that it’s a lot more pressure than Suzie had foreseen, somehow. 

Admittedly, it’s partly Suzie’s fault. She is, after all, the one who’d forgotten that Arrietty happens to be the most vocally judgmental person on the planet, and the one who’s voluntarily invited her here with full knowledge of how she is and the things she has a tendency to say. 

Still. It feels like she can’t do anything without Arrietty watching her every move, which wouldn’t even be a problem if she wasn’t making it her personal mission to give her two cents on quite literally every step in Suzie’s makeup routine.

“Is that the contour you always use?” Arrietty asks.

Suzie pauses, taking a moment to inspect the shade herself. “Uh. Yeah?”

“Mmm.”

A minute or two goes by, and Arrietty pipes up again: “I’ve never seen anyone line their lips like that.”

Suzie’s lips are pursed for easier tracing, and she makes sure not to smudge her careful, clean lines by frowning at Arrietty’s comment. “Now you have,” she says. Maybe a little more tersely than absolutely called for. “Congratulations.”

It goes on like that the entire time. Nothing, it seems, can escape Arrietty’s watchful eagle eyes. Suzie’s blush? Too red. Clashes with her hair. Suzie’s eyeshadow? Makes her look like a movie star from a hundred years ago, and not in a good way, Arrietty’s sure to let her know.

Suzie wasn’t born yesterday. She knows Arrietty is messing with her, she can tell from the smirk and the way Arrietty’s gaze lingers on her to see her reaction to each pointed question. She finds it funny, clearly. 

The breaking point, if she’ll even be so dramatic as to call it that, looks like this:

Suzie’s finishing up her makeup, putting the last touches on her eyes and the corners of her mouth. She’s satisfied with the end product of her handiwork, if she does say so herself. She does roughly the same thing every time she has a fancy event to go to, an occasion where she wants to do a little something extra instead of what she does every day for school, and it’s not the most polished or the most seamless but it gets the job done. Makes her feel like she’s dolling herself up for the night, you know?

She inspects her reflection just a moment longer, then stands up to move to the bathroom. All she really has to do now is style her hair, which shouldn’t take long, then she can—

“Oh,” Arrietty says from across the room, and Suzie can already feel her throat tighten preemptively with frustration because she recognizes that tone. It’s the same one she’s been using. “That’s it? You’re done?”

And—

God. She shouldn’t get angry. It’s not worth getting angry over, it’s just a continuation of this running joke that she’s been pretending to be in on this entire time, this dumb joke that she’s getting really, really tired of and trying her hardest not to show it. 

But it’s kind of too late for that. She’s already pissed off, and what makes it worse is the fact that Arrietty’s looking at her like she expects Suzie to… what, to laugh? 

“Okay,” she says, too sharply, “I think I get it now, alright? I can't do makeup like you and it’s really funny, ha ha ha.” Her tone aims for sardonic and falls short somewhere around just plain harsh.

Arrietty’s impish grin falters, and Suzie can’t even allow herself to take vindication in it.

“Oh,” Arrietty says slowly. Like she’s processing Suzie’s words, but it’s taking some time. “Okay, wait–”

Suzie waits, unimpressed.

“—I didn’t mean that to be, like, rude or anything,” Arrietty says. She’s sitting up straight, her expression is unassuming and honest and there’s not a trace of sarcasm anywhere to be found. “I was just asking. But I see how you might have thought it was– yeah. I didn’t mean it that way, I’m sorry.”

Oh. 

Maybe a little impressed, on second thought?

“It’s fine,” Suzie says, after a moment of buffering. Just for good measure, she throws in an apology of her own, lowering her voice. “Sorry. That was— I got the wrong idea.”

“No, you’re good.” Arrietty doesn’t look away. “Um…”

Suzie watches her closely, tries to track where her stare is drifting. “What?”

Arrietty narrows her eyes in thought. “You’re allowed to say no to this,” she starts plainly, “but can I make a suggestion? For your brows?”

The fucking nerve of this girl.

It’s a conscious effort on Suzie’s part to not assume the worst, to force her guard to stay down. She takes a measured breath in and lets it out in a tiny sigh. “Sure.”

Still looking intently at the brows in question, Arrietty brings a hand to her chin and catches one of her long nails absentmindedly between her teeth. Suzie thinks this might be what it feels like to be some kind of abstract art piece, or a lab sample in a petri dish.

“I think you could fill them out more,” Arrietty announces, her final verdict. “Just, like, the inner parts. The ends look good.”

Suzie blinks. “Fill them out,” she repeats warily. Not defensive. Not defensive. It’s just advice. “Okay.”

“Yeah. I mean, they look fine right now.” Arrietty’s getting up off the bed, walking towards her, and Suzie stands her ground despite the instinctual urge to back away. “Just, like. If you took a brow pencil and filled in that part right before the arch, it might look. Good. You know?”

No, she doesn’t know. But Arrietty’s clearly taking her best shot at some friendly, non-insulting advice, and she’s succeeding on some level— Suzie can probably take some credit for that, what with all the hours she’s spent coaching Arrietty into a friendlier, less insulting person. So she figures… okay? Why the hell not.

“Alright,” she says, the slightest quirk at the corner of her mouth. “Anything else?”

She means it half as a joke, but Arrietty appears to take it completely seriously. She gets closer still, tipping her head to one side and leaning in so Suzie finds herself with her very own high quality view of Arrietty’s makeup, down to the individual hairs of her mascara-coated lashes and the shimmery pearl in her inner corners. It’s kind of annoying, actually, how she can’t seem to find any flaws even up close and personal.

“Smoke out the eyeshadow.” Arrietty moves her finger along her own eyelid, tracing an invisible shape. “Maybe darker, if you feel like it. That way you could blend it into the liner.” 

Suzie follows the motion of her finger, squinting. “I think the last time I did a smokey eye was in tenth grade, for the spring musical.”

Arrietty drops her chin to her collarbones, closing her eyes in disbelief. “You’re fucking with me.”

Suzie smirks. “Nope. We did The Addams Family, I was Ancestor 2 and no one could tell me anything –”

“Okay, yeah,” Arrietty interrupts, striding past her to her desk. “That’s not happening. We are not giving Ancestor 2 at the end of season soccer banquet, Jesus Christ.” She picks up an eyeshadow palette, examining it closely. “Ugh. This will do. Get your ass over here, Suzanne.”

Um. Suzie raises both eyebrows. “Sorry, what?”

Arrietty grabs a brush and dangles it impatiently in her direction. “You heard me! Get over here, we don’t have much time and I need to work my magic.”

What is happening. “You want to… do my makeup?”

Arrietty drops her arm back to her side, brush still in hand, heaving a sigh of epic proportions. “Well, that’s what I want to do,” she says, childishly exaggerating each word. She’s not smiling, but her eyes are. “Are you going to let me?”

Good question. Is she?

Suzie eyes the brush like it’s a weapon. “I guess you can if you want,” she says haltingly. “As long as you promise not to go full Princess Diaries on me, I’d rather not look insane when you’re done.”

Arrietty smiles, and maybe it’s a trick of the light but Suzie swears there’s a hungry glint flashing off her incisors. “No promises,” she coos sweetly. “Get in this chair before I drag you over here and tie you to it.”

Not really the kind of instruction she can disobey, is it? She sits her ass down, somewhat helpless, equal parts amused and apprehensive and bewildered. 

To say Arrietty knows her way around makeup is an understatement. She moves with precision and purpose, adding a little here, swiping something away there, bottom lip pinched between her teeth in concentration. Suzie has only a hazy remembrance of what Arrietty had suggested– something about brows, smoke… blending. Hell if Suzie knows. All she can do is sit and stay as still as possible and hope that whatever’s staring back at her in the mirror at the end will be something she doesn’t entirely hate.

“Don’t bite my head off when I say this,” Arrietty says, leaning back thoughtfully. “Would you consider wiping off this lipstick and putting on something, like… darker?”

Suzie’s already reaching for a makeup wipe. “You are going full Princess Diaries on me,” she complains, but it’s half hearted at best.

She takes off whatever she’d applied earlier, a suede reddish-pink shade she’s worn down to a stub from how often she uses it. Arrietty picks through a few different tubes before settling on something more sheer, a deeper shade of gloss that reminds Suzie of red velvet cake. 

“This one,” Arri says, pure conviction.

“Okay.” Suzie reaches for it, but Arri yanks it out of reach.

“Nope.” She’s already leaning in again, unscrewing the top and holding out the applicator wand. “I’ll do it. Go like this,” she says, pulling her lips smooth over her teeth.

The laugh Suzie lets out is more out of confusion than anything. “What? You can’t seriously think I don’t know how to put on lip gloss , how useless do you think I am?”

“Very.” Arri makes a smacking sound with her mouth. “Trust me, you’d somehow find a way to mess up all my hard work. Now come on, we don’t have all day!”

Suzie complies. Incredulously, but she complies. She parts her lips and pulls them back like she’s been shown, sitting back in the chair with a disgruntled huff– not that she’d even needed to be shown what to do, thank you very much. Arri tilts her head up with the slightest touch under her chin, getting a better angle, and Suzie very nearly laughs again at how ridiculous it is. Between drunkenly kissing her on the cheek last week, and now this… She wonders when exactly the concept of personal space had gone out the window for them, and wonders in turn where along the way she’d somehow become okay with that.

She wants to say it aloud, “this is ridiculous,” but her lips are a little occupied, so she has to settle for sighing loudly when Arri finally finishes and caps the lip gloss again. “Can I see myself now, O Great and All-Knowing Beauty Guru?”

Arri hands her the mirror, which has been deliberately pushed to a far corner of the desk, out of sight. “Whaddya think?” she asks, playful. “Do you hate it?”

Suzie doesn’t answer right away.

She’s just… looking. At her own face.

Damn.

It’s still her, that’s for sure. Just a different her. Arri’s left most of the base, the foundation and concealer and blush, largely untouched. Suzie thinks she might have added a little highlighter, if anything, judging by the way her cheekbones catch the light when she tilts her head just so. That’s new.

The main difference, aside from the lips, is her eyes. They’ve been painted with liquid liner and accentuated with a dark shadow, this alluring black that fades into something iridescent and peach-tinted at the middle of her eyelids to give an added illusion of dimension. 

And that’s all any of this is, of course– an illusion. A deception of sorts. Suzie’s very aware of that.

She’s just never seen this particular illusion on herself before.

“Okay, wow, that bad?” Arri’s voice cuts into her thoughts, and the spell is broken. Suzie tears her gaze away from her reflection.

“No, no,” she says. “It’s…” She flounders for a second. Then she just groans, giving up, shoulders dropping in defeat. “I really hate it when you’re right, you know that?”

Smugly, Arri flips her hair over her shoulder. “I’m always right,” she preens. She looks incredibly pleased with herself. “Okay. Important question. What were you planning on doing with your hair?”

Suzie reaches up to touch her bun, runs her finger along the band of the hair elastic. “What I always do with it, pretty much.”

This is the wrong answer, clearly. Arri plants her hands on her hips. “Have you ever straightened your hair?”

“I do sometimes. It just takes a long time, so it’s not really, like, the most convenient–”

“How much time do we have?” Arri turns on her heel, swipes her phone from the bed and checks it. “Oh, twenty minutes– easy. Piece of fucking cake. Give me your flat iron.”

It’s not until about twenty minutes later, riding shotgun in Arri’s car on the way to the restaurant where the banquet’s being held, that it occurs to her:

This is probably the Arrietty that Jewels gets to see all the time.

This Arri, who shows up at Suzie’s house, not to work on a letter or to discuss their game plan. Just for fun. This Arri, who decides she’s going to do Suzie’s makeup for her and straighten her hair, because apparently that’s the kind of thing she does willingly now. Who doesn’t seem to be on a never-ending mission to make fun of everything Suzie does, says, wears, enjoys.

Who waits for Suzie to get into the car, looking at her with an innocuous little smile that Suzie catches instantly— Arri, smiling at no one else’s expense? Suspicious.

“What?” Suzie asks, closing the door.

Arri places a hand on the wheel, the other on the center console. “People are gonna stare at you so much tonight,” she says cryptically.

“Oh,” Suzie says. “Yay?”

Arri giggles, dropping the pretense. “Yeah, in a good way.” She turns over her shoulder to pull out of the driveway, so Suzie has a full view of her face, utterly relaxed. “You look hot, people stare. Trust me, I’d know.”

Yeah, that. That’s what she means. This Arri will just say things like that, say things like you look hot like it’s not a big deal, when not even two full months ago Suzie would be lucky to get through one of their conversations without wanting to tear her own hair out.

It’s so unfamiliar for Suzie; it’s like the person in the driver’s seat beside her is someone she doesn’t even know. But for Jewels, it’s the opposite. This is Jewels’ version of Arri, the one she spends time with and calls her best friend. The one she knows like the back of her hand.

And sure, it’s not like Suzie hasn’t seen it before. Like in the cafeteria all those weeks ago, when Jewels had told Arri and just about the entire cafeteria about her acceptance to her dream school. And last Friday, too. The party, and the drive home that had followed. It’s not like this is some kind of secret, Suzie’s pretty sure it’s a known fact among kids at their school. Just like Jewels being popular.

The sky is blue. The grass is green. Jewels Sparkles is nice to everybody, and Arrietty is only nice to Jewels.

That’s how it’s always been.

But maybe Suzie’s going to wake up tomorrow and the sky will be orange, or maybe she’ll go outside a week from now and her front lawn will be a lovely shade of lavender. Because now Arrietty is being nice to her, real nice, not fake-nice or half-nice or backhandedly, manipulatively nice. And her name is definitely not Jewels Sparkles.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Arri says. “I’m gonna pick up Jewels too, her house is on the way.”

Suzie nods without tearing her eyes from the expanse of road ahead. Jewels is Arri’s plus one, naturally. She’d have assumed that anyway.

Jewels’ house is exactly the house Suzie would have imagined her to live in. It’s no mansion by any means, but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in general appearance. The exterior is a cheerful blue-grey with white trim and a classic shingled roof, neat white railing along the porch and vibrant flowers nestled between house and lawn. It’s clearly a house that requires meticulous upkeep to maintain, and it looks the part every bit– in other words, it’s the kind of house that would belong to someone named Jewels Sparkles. Suzie pictures a younger Jewels growing up here, running up and down that driveway with backpack in tow, maybe helping tend to the flowerbeds with dirt on her hands and knees. 

“Are you gonna text her to come out, or–”

Arri slams the heel of her palm on the horn, blaring out an obnoxious sound that makes Suzie flinch in her seat. “Nah, this always works fine.”

Sure enough, Jewels emerges within seconds wearing an exasperated smile, clutch purse in hand. Her dress is a pale blue, almost a periwinkle. It’s sleeveless, just like Arri’s, and it’s made of something satiny that clings elegantly to her curves, delicate beading sewn into the collar and around the waist.

Belatedly, Suzie realizes she’s staring, and decides to look at her nails instead. 

Not that Jewels isn’t a sight worth staring at, but that’s exactly it. Suzie’s sure half their school drools over Jewels on the daily, she doesn’t need to fall in with their crowd just because Jewels wears something nice and looks like she’s stepped off the cover of a department store catalogue. She’s perfectly capable of appreciating the way her… classmate? Friend by proxy? Oh, whatever– the way Jewels dresses in a friendly and respectful way.

Jewels scampers down to the curb, heels clicking on the concrete. She catches Suzie’s eye and gives her a wide-eyed, open mouthed smile, clearly surprised by her presence.

“Suzie!” she cheers as she climbs into the back. “I didn’t know you were coming with us! Oh my god, you look–” She plants a hand on the back of the driver’s seat, leaning in close . Something about her smile changes. She lowers her voice, eyes wide and so very brown. “Suzie, you look good . I’ve never seen your makeup like that before.”

Suzie feels her face get hot, and prays her foundation is thick enough to cover the worst of it. “Oh,” she says. “Thank you. I didn’t— Arri did those parts for me.”

“Yeah, I’m here too,” Arri adds dryly. “Thanks so much for noticing.”

Jewels giggles, reaching over to give her best friend’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “I guess you look okay too,” she teases. “Kidding. You look as gorgeous as always, you already know that. I don’t even have to tell you.”

Jewels likely can’t see from the backseat, but Suzie would have to be blind to miss it: Arrietty’s tiny smile, aimed down at her hands on the steering wheel; soft and fleeting, speaking louder than words ever could. I like when you tell me anyways .

The car is a lot more lively with Jewels there, chattering excitedly with Arri about school and friends and gossip and everything in between. She’s got this uncanny way of filling a conversation, Suzie’s noticed. Not that she’s overpowering, or too much to handle, she’s just… not afraid to take up space. It’s her words, her energy, her body language.

And like the party, like the last time the three of them were in a car together, she is constantly including Suzie. Making sure she’s in on the joke. Laughing at the things she says just as hard as she laughs for Arri, if not harder.

Finally, they pull into the parking lot of the restaurant. When she steps out of Arri’s car, the rush of cool evening air on her exposed skin makes her glad for the blazer she’d grabbed just before leaving her house. She brings a hand to her face, surprised by how warm it is to the touch. Maybe she’s been having too much fun, or maybe it’s just hot in Arrietty’s car. Possibly a little of both. 

They all walk into the restaurant together, Jewels leading the way with Arri right behind her and Suzie trailing behind. She makes it not even five steps towards the tables Jewels points to, a cluster of people all in similarly dressy attire, some of whom Suzie recognizes from the soccer team, before a voice like a fucking foghorn pierces through the room.

“Suzie? ”

She nearly jumps out of her skin, whipping her head around– oh, of course. 

Kori sits with a few of her teammates at a table near the wall, her shock of honey-blonde curls a stark contrast to the dark wallpaper, staring directly at Suzie with her jaw hanging wide open. 

“That is not Suzie,” Kori declares loudly as she approaches. “Who the hell are you and what did you do with my friend, bitch?”

Suzie tries her best to avoid the stares people are throwing her way as she takes her seat. “ Shush , oh my god, Kori,” she pleads, half exasperated and half flustered. “We don’t need the whole entire restaurant to hear–”

“Disagree.” Kori leans in to take a closer look, presumably at her face. “Girl, I almost didn’t recognize you! Who the fuck am I looking at right now?”

Suzie fights the urge to cover her face with both hands. “You’re so dramatic,” she says, smiling despite herself. “It’s eyeshadow and some brow pencil, dumbass. Made the mistake of getting ready in front of Arrietty, this is what I have to show for it.”

Kori lets out a cackle. “Should have known better. That bitch has more unsolicited makeup tips than those scary ladies at Macy's that attack you with lipstick when you walk by.” She sits back in her chair and drums her fingers on the tablecloth. “You look good, though,” she adds, an afterthought. “Seriously. You’re gonna look so puss in all the pictures we take tonight.”

“Thank you.” Suzie thinks her ears might be starting to return to their normal color now. She fans herself in an attempt to accelerate the process. “So, how’s Lydia doing?”

It’s an effective way to change the subject, thankfully. Kori launches into one of her long-winded spiels– Lydia’s fine, apparently, just moderately in pain and very sleepy. 

Suzie’s nodding her way through an exaggerated description of the very specific YouTube rabbit hole that a delirious, post-op Lydia had insisted on going down (something about David Lynch and transcendental meditation, it’s complicated) when her attention starts to wander and falls on two familiar figures in deep red and pale blue.

Jewels and Arri are on the opposite side of the room from them, evidently saying hi to some friends. Well, Jewels is saying hi to friends, talking animatedly and gesturing so big Suzie can see it even from where she sits about twenty feet away. Arri looks like she’s been mentally checked out from the conversation for about its entire duration, but she continues to stand there, one finger twirling through her long hair. Fashionably bored, in that way only Arri can pull off.

Either Arri has some secret sixth sense that alerts her to when she’s being watched, or she just keeps getting coincidentally lucky. She looks aimlessly around the room, and her eyes find Suzie’s almost immediately. Predictably, she makes a face and wiggles her fingers in Suzie’s direction.

Suzie should know better than to laugh, but she does, quietly. It catches Kori’s attention, prompting her to try and follow Suzie’s gaze. “Who are you waving at?”

For some reason, it’s like being caught red-handed. Suzie hesitates. “Um, just–” She considers whether to lie, and decides against it. Kori knows she went home with Arri and Jewels after the party, it’s not like it’s exactly a secret that they’re on friendly terms now. “Arrietty. Over there, with Jewels.”

Kori snorts. “Oh, you mean your new best friends? Your new BFFs for life?”

Suzie gives her a look. “First of all,” she says, “BFF means best friend forever, so saying BFFs for life is basically saying best friends forever for life, which is redundant–”

“Okay, nerd.”

“–and we are not best friends. I’m not even sure how we’re friends, period.” Suzie reaches for her glass of water. “It’s, like, a really weird glitch in the matrix. Like, they’re only supposed to stay over there in Popular Kids Land and I’m supposed to stay here in Actually Normal People Town, but somehow the system messed up and now we’re randomly hanging out.”

“Okay, well, don’t look now, but they’re walking over here,” Kori says nonchalantly. “So pretend we weren’t just talking about them.”

Suzie raises her head in surprise. Sure enough, the pair of them are making their way past other tables, Jewels leading Arri by the hand and giving Suzie a conspiratorial wink.

Oh. That’s something.

“Are we gonna let them sit here?” Suzie hisses under her breath. “Specifically Arri? I know you guys are cool now, but Lydia…”

Kori shakes her head. “I think she’s over it,” she whispers back, not doing a very good job of being quiet. “She’s not even here, she’s passed out on her couch with that weird David guy’s face still on her laptop. She’ll be fine.”

“Hi,” Jewels sing-songs when she reaches them. “Mind if we sit here? Arri promises to be nice!”

“Didn’t promise that,” Arri says, raising her pitch to mimic Jewels and getting herself a light elbow to the ribs. 

Helpless, Suzie looks to Kori. 

“Go ahead,” Kori tells them, the picture of unbothered. “You have to be real ones and clap for me when I give my speech, though, or I’m gonna tell Lydia to put an evil curse on you and you’ll turn into frogs.”

Jewels laughs as she pulls out a chair, the sound like bells and chimes. “I’ll clap, I promise! I still think about that speech you made in sophomore year. I’m really surprised your coach didn’t retire after that, she looked like she wanted to hand in her two weeks’ notice right then and there in the restaurant.”

As much as Suzie would loathe for Arri to be right multiple times in the same day, it’s hard to deny it. The banquet itself is pretty boring. Most of it is ‘honoring team and individual achievements,’ which is a fancy way of saying the coach will read out a pre-written blurb about a particular person before announcing their name; they’ll go up to the podium and everyone will clap for them, and they’ll walk back to their seat with a piece of paper touting their name on it. Rinse and repeat.

 There’s also a lot of speeches, a lot of thanking people and family and friends, similar sentiments that are just slightly rearranged each time. Not to say there aren’t any fun speeches, of course. Kori goes up to the podium for her turn strutting like she owns the place, which she might as well for how hard she has everyone cheering and applauding for her. 

“I know you’ve all been waiting for this,” she says loudly into the microphone, making everyone in the room laugh and their coach pinch the bridge of her nose. Suzie just shakes her head and makes sure the video she’s taking on her phone is in focus– she’d promised Lydia to film Kori’s speech, since the former couldn’t be there to see it and scream her lungs out in person.

Eventually, it’s Arri’s turn. She stands up and adjusts her dress. “Mandatory speech,” she mutters to the table, or maybe only to Suzie. “I would never choose to put myself through this.”

Suzie watches her go. It hadn’t occurred to her that every senior was required to go say their piece, everyone so far had looked happy enough to be up there. It will be interesting to hear what Arri’s going to say, that’s for sure. Time to see if those lessons I gave her on interacting with others like a human being carried over to her public speaking.

Suddenly, there’s a presence at her side, a warm shoulder pressing into her own. “I bet you her speech is the shortest one of the whole night,” a voice whispers in her ear, deceptively innocent.

Jewels.

Suzie keeps a straight face. “Not betting against that,” she whispers back. “It’s gonna be thirty seconds long, max.”

There’s an odd noise as Jewels tries, somewhat successfully, to mute her giggle. “Thirty?” she asks. “I was thinking twenty.”

They both fall silent as Arrietty opens her mouth, and Suzie does her best to listen. She gets most of it, to her credit. It’s very generic. I joined soccer in freshman year, I didn’t expect to end up sticking with it all four years, I want to thank my teammates for a great senior season. All the typical stuff. She doesn’t get emotional, she delivers the whole thing in her faintly amused monotone, and she leaves the podium with a deliberate toss of her dark curls. In other words, it’s about as classic Arrietty as she could have been.

Even as she’s listening to Arri, though, there’s a part of her attention that stays on Jewels. In her peripherals, Jewels has her elbows on the table and hands tucked under her chin while Arri’s speaking. As soon as she finishes, Jewels is the first to cheer and the loudest in the room, and she even leans over to give Arri a quick hug upon her return to the table.

It becomes a bit of a pattern.

Suzie knows why she’s here. She’s here for Kori, and she doesn’t let herself forget that. When Kori gets her superlative, ‘Most Likely to be Quoted All Season Long,’ Suzie is sure to drown everyone else out with her over-the-top hollering. Making Lydia proud, truly. And she basically turns into Kori’s personal photographer, taking pictures of her and various combinations of her teammates without complaint. Suzie’s a good friend, no one could ever deny that and she knows it in her heart of hearts.

But at the same time—

It’s hard not to notice Jewels. It’s hard not to notice when she’s just so bubbly, so bright and effervescent even amongst all these other exuberant faces. The superlative Arri has the absolute honor of receiving is ‘Most Likely to Get a Yellow Card,’ which is fucking hysterical and has the whole room murmuring their agreement, but it’s not even Arri whose reaction Suzie sees. Her eye’s been caught by Jewels, grinning madly with both hands steepled in front of her mouth like a prayer, leaning away from Arri as if she’s an explosive primed to go off at any moment. She’s not screaming, not like Kori is, she’s not making a scene, and yet Suzie can’t seem to find it in herself to look away. 

The end of the banquet arrives, and with it comes a flurry of final congratulations, a few tears, lots and lots of hugs. Their corner of the restaurant is abuzz with overlapping noise, everyone talking at the same time. Suzie makes sure Kori gets the tightest bear hug she can possibly muster, a murmured “I’m so proud of you” in the taller girl’s ear that earns her a gentle shove to the shoulder. 

People begin trickling out, mainly sticking to their groups and clinging onto friends, arms linked and mascara only slightly ruined. Kori’s already agreed to drive her home, so Suzie keeps an eye out for her as Kori goes around saying goodbye to friends. She’s standing off to the side, content to let Kori live in this moment for as long as she wants, and it catches her completely off guard when a hand settles lightly on her arm–

She looks up, and it’s Jewels. Again. The golden glow of the overhead chandeliers paint her half in light and half in shadow, she stands a few inches taller than usual with the help of her heels, and– oh, her lips are moving.

Suzie leans closer, turning her head to the side. “Sorry, what?”

“Do you have a ride home?” Jewels asks, louder this time, kindly as ever.

“Oh! Yes. Yeah, I do.” Suzie has to speak loudly too, in order to be heard. “You’re, um, going with Arrietty, right?”

Kind of a stupid thing to say, in hindsight. How else would Jewels get home? She opens her mouth to acknowledge this, but Jewels doesn’t hesitate to answer.

“Mm-hmm. Though I might have to be the one actually behind the wheel,” Jewels adds. “She was telling me earlier her contacts were bothering her, so she might just take them out, and we definitely don’t want her driving without them. Which is fine– I can be trusted to drive at night, you would know that.”

She punctuates the end of her sentence with a wink, comical in its cartoonishness, and a little ding! sound effect. It’s as stupid as it sounds. Suzie can’t help but be endeared, just the tiniest, slightest bit.

“I do know that,” she says, playing along. “No one I’d trust more. Best in the business.”

“Exactly. Five star ratings, every time.”

It’s the perfect time for the joke to wear itself out, because she’s just caught a glimpse of Kori waving in her direction and beckoning her over. “I’d expect nothing less,” Suzie says, pushing herself off the wall. “I’m gonna go meet Kori over there, I think she wants to leave. Do you know if Arri– if Arrietty’s ready to go now?”

Blissfully, Jewels doesn’t seem to catch the nickname slipping out, her nickname that she’s somehow got Suzie using now too. “Oh! Probably, yeah,” she says. “I should go find her, you’re right. Oh , but one last thing–”

And just like that, she has Suzie’s undivided attention again.

Jewels’ smile is sweeter than any dessert on the restaurant’s menu. “I just wanted to tell you again how good you look tonight,” she says, earnest. “But also– don’t tell Arri I said this…”

Dramatically, she turns her head to the left and right, then brings a hand up to shield her mouth from view. “The way you do your own hair and makeup is just as pretty,” she stage-whispers. “I don’t think you needed to change a thing.” 

Suzie’s notebook is taunting her.

She’s not looking at it, but she’s also not not looking at it. Just like how she’s not, absolutely not, not even for a second, entertaining this idea.

And she’s also not not entertaining the idea.

Sighing in frustration, she takes the damn notebook and shoves it back into her backpack. She’s not even sure why she’d taken it out in the first place. It’s not like she can actually do this. Not in good consciousness. She can’t claim to be a rational individual if she’s going to be having ideas like this, or worse, following through on them.

The idea in question is not something she’s willing to think about for more than the few milliseconds she’d given it, when the thought had first occurred to her. It would be a terrible lapse of judgement on her part, for one, and it’s also just… dangerous. Risky , to put it more aptly. Not in the exciting, fun way, more like the don’t-even-think-about-this-because-it’s-so-not-worth-the-potential-consequences way.

And yet.

Suzie picks up a pencil, then puts it back down. 

She picks up another one. That one gets discarded too, not long after.

There’s this question in the back of her mind, a question she can’t seem to forget about no matter how hard she tries. It’s been there for several days, try as she might to pretend that it hasn’t. What had started off as a curious inkling last week, after the party and the car ride that followed, has been snowballing into something a lot harder to ignore. Slowly, steadily, treacherously. And tonight, now that she’s home and the events of the evening are fresh in her mind, it’s just about the only thing she can think about.

What would happen if she wrote just one more letter?

Without telling Arri, that is.

No, no, no. She knows. She doesn’t have to hear from anyone how awful of an idea it is, it wouldn’t be anything she hasn’t already told herself a million times over.

And yet.

It all comes back to Jewels, without failure. 

Jewels, and the moments of private laughter they’d shared at Crystal’s party, references for them to get and no one else. The silly ramblings in a dimly lit car, reduced to silhouettes, outlined by the glare of traffic lights. The banquet, exchanging little expressions and quips that meant nothing at all and everything at the same time.

And of course, the letters. Suzie hasn’t forgotten, how could she? 

Would there still be anything special about the sun, if all the other brighter, hotter, more colorful stars just weren’t so far away?

I’d say I’m like a diamond.

There was a time not so long ago when Suzie had seen Jewels as a walking high school cliche, not much beneath her shiny, polished surface. Now she knows, implicitly, intimately, how very wrong that had been.

Jewels Sparkles, the girl with the pink and the glitter and the kind of presence that makes people clamor for even a moment of her attention, is all of that and so much more. She’s like the beautiful woman captured in a famous painting at a museum, with so many eyes on her every single day and none of them really seeing her, none of them caring to know her story. What makes her feel, what makes her angry and what makes her scared and what makes her cry until she can’t breathe, suffocated by the weight of her tears. 

Jewels is that woman in the painting, with the most fascinating story to tell if anyone would just think to ask. Jewels is that woman, begging to be known. 

Suzie could do that.

Lune could do that.

Her fingers tremble ever-so-slightly as she pulls the notebook out again, opening to a blank page like they have a mind of their own. She’s not the one in control anymore; she’s been possessed by some kind of magic, some spell that’s rendered her powerless in its thrall.

She doesn’t know how long it will last, she doesn’t know when this had happened or how she hadn’t noticed. She’s sort of terrified by the uncertainty of not knowing . All she knows is Jewels, a portrait encased by glass, unblemished and untouched. A story that she’s barely scratched the surface of, waiting patiently to be fully unraveled.

The pencil settles into the groove of her pointer and her thumb like it was made to sit there. 

Suzie adjusts her grip, and starts to write.

Chapter Text

Exhaustion grips onto Arri’s shoulders, gaining more power over her with each additional second spent in the sun. Despite all of this and the sweat beginning to soak through her practice jersey, it’s not the mean kind of exhaustion. Anyone who’s played soccer like this knows the difference. Actually, it would be worse if she weren’t exhausted at that moment, because she knows she’s worked hard for this.

It’s been a week since the banquet, so practices like this are only in preparation for one thing: the Big One. The game that always seems to be at the end of those shitty teen movies, the championship, the do-or-die moment of truth. 

The game that just so happens to be on the same night she’s going to tell Jewels how she feels. 

“Alright!” her coach shouts from down the field. “I’ll give you guys a break, since everyone seems to be dead right now. Practice is over.” 

Soft cheers bounce around the field, but Arri stays quiet, just observing. This practice hasn’t been hard, per se, but it is one of the hottest days of the year so far. Did she get a good practice in? Or is it too hot to tell? Ugh. 

From up ahead of her, the only girl to not join the others in their journey to the locker room is Kori, which is actually really surprising. She merely walks to the side of the field, takes a few long gulps of water, and starts– wait, running ? 

As different as they are, Kori must have had the same thought Arri did: this practice wasn’t harsh, it’s just hot as fuck out. 

And, goddamn, is Arri pissed that this is a good idea. So, she does what any woman scorned would do: she joins Kori in her sprints. They start off running down the field, then back up the same way. Arri doesn’t ask how many times they’re going, because she doesn’t really care. It’s highly unlikely Kori would pick some insane number, so she’ll be fine. 

Arri’s doing it because practice was unsatisfactory, but also because the sprints are a tad more bearable with someone else there. She knows that’s true for herself, and it’s probably true on Kori’s end as well. They don’t talk to each other, they barely even look at each other, but the solidarity is nice. 

A few of the girls are still lingering, chatting, as Arri finally makes her way back to the changeroom. Usually, getting held back to help one of her teammates would be reason enough for her to give everyone the cold shoulder, but it was her own fault this time. She chose to finish those sprints with Kori, so she chose to be a few minutes late to meeting Jewels for coffee. 

Jewels will understand, hell, she’ll probably encourage it next time. Arri? Being nice to someone at practice? Not beating herself up for being late? Look up at the sky, do you see pigs flying right now? 

The thought makes her laugh briefly as she rushes through untying her cleats. Just because she isn’t upset about staying late doesn’t mean she’s okay with being any later. Muscle memory gets her through getting changed, the rest of her brain is rather occupied at the moment. 

Arri gets to see Jewels soon. She doesn’t have to wait until tomorrow or later tonight when, chances are, one of them will call the other to compare incomprehensible chem notes. She gets to see Jewels soon . 

“Why’re you all smiley?” Kori asks from across the floor. “Find another soul to steal?” 

It’s light hearted, and Kori is no longer someone on her bad side for no apparent reason, so Arri shoots her a grin. “ Yeah , actually, I just harnessed the essence of this annoying little orphan!”

“I honestly do not doubt that in the slightest,” Kori snorts. “Also, how the fuck do some of these girls do sprints after every practice– and every game! Girl, I almost died.”

“Right? I was just telling myself ‘you have to beat Kori, you have to beat Kori’,” Arri cackles as she slips into a pair of loose shorts and a hoodie. 

Their light conversation continues, but fizzles out as they both make it clear they’re just as eager to leave as the other. To make matters worse if you’re Arri’s head (or better, if you’re Arri’s heart), she gets a text from Jewels saying, ‘hurry up!!!! I’m to the left of the field i got sick of waiting in the parking lot!!!!!’

Arri rushes in saying goodbye to Kori and the rest of the girls still there, snatches her duffel up, and practically runs out of the locker room. In signature ‘madly in love’ fashion, Arri’s only a few feet out the door when she spots her. 

The days are growing hotter and longer. The sun seems like a constant, at this point, she can never seem to escape it. It’s blazing hot, and in ample position to light this movie scene perfectly. The sun is shining, and Jewels is leaning against her cherry-red Mercedes like a pin-up girl. 

The pink sunglasses she’s using to hold her hair up match her converse; it’s all sickeningly dreamy, Arri can barely stand it. Her whole outfit is coordinated, actually, and it's slightly different from what she was wearing earlier at school. She’s added the sunglasses and swapped her denim skirt for a pair of ripped, baggy, acid washed jeans, which go perfect with the pale white band tee she’s kept from before. Jewels can make an outfit out of anything, it’s one of Arri’s favourite things about her.

Jewels can take the ugliest, most unloved piece of clothing and turn it into something chic, something worth wearing. She sees the potential in everything, she sees what it can become, not just what it is. 

Arri doesn’t want to look too deep into exactly why that last part is so important to her. It doesn’t matter, she has Jewels all to herself right now and she’s going to fucking savor it. 

When Jewels asks to ‘get coffee’ what she means is that Arri will get coffee, and maybe something sweet on the side, and Jewels herself will buy some tall, sugary-sweet concoction that would probably kill a Victorian era child. It's usually chock full of whipped cream and syrup, the sugar free, chemical-tasting kind, and her signature oat milk. Their usual place by the school, a tiny building that's only a few years old, practically knows what Jewels wants before she orders. 

It's cute, the way she steps into the shop and immediately waves to whoever's working. It's not the busiest place on earth, which means Jewels and Arri can chat up the cashier as much as they want without consequence. Within reason, of course. 

Arri leans onto the counter, shooting the cashier a smile as Jewels starts talking her ear off about dance. She recognizes the worker from one of her classes last year, so Arri assumes the girl is around a year older than her. She’s even shorter than Jewels, and blonde, and Arri would probably find her pretty if she weren’t right next to the girl she’s in love with. 

“–and this girl did a five-forty, ” Jewels says, nodding when the cashier’s eyes go wide. “I know, right? Like, okay, Jan , I guess the rest of us should just go home!”

“Honestly,” the cashier says with a chuckle, “if that happened to me, I’d probably up and quit, so you’re definitely stronger than I am.”

“Girl, I was so tempted,” Jewels laughs. “You should see the girls Arri has to play soccer against, I don’t know how many times I’ve told her getting killed out there isn’t worth the trauma.”

“Oh, it so is, have you seen their faces when they lose?” Arri raises an eyebrow, shooting Jewels a playful glance from where she’s leaning on the counter. “I’d sprain my ankle a million times just to score on any of those bitches.”

“You’re on the school team?” The cashier asks, turning her attention onto Arri with a smile. 

She nods, prying her gaze away from Jewels. 

The cashier gets this… strange look in her eye, one Arri can’t quite recognize. “Are you any good?”

“Oh, I’m fucking great ,” Arri stands up from the counter, glancing at Jewels before adding, with an eye roll, “if I’m actually playing, I mean. I get a lot of red cards.”   

“Ah,” the cashier says, typing something into the register, “so, you’re a risk taker. Gonna order coffee now or…?”

“You know mine, black with a little sugar,” Arri says with a smile. “And Jewels’ whipped cream and chocolate sludge, don’t forget that.”

“Hey!” Jewels whines. “I’ll have you know my chocolate sludge has lots of nutritional value.”

“Yeah, if you’re Willy Wonka!”

The cashier shoots her a few more smiles and strange looks before taking down their order and letting them find a seat at a table nearby. Jewels immediately goes to their usual table, one by the window but still in the corner. As soon as they sit down, Jewels gives Arri a shove. 

And then, when she doesn’t acknowledge it, Jewels gives her another. 

“Ow! What?” Arri stage whispers. It’s not like Jewels doesn’t normally shove her, it’s just that, normally, it’s because she’s doing something bad, which she hasn’t. Well, I don’t remember doing anything bad. 

“The cashier!” Jewels says, like it’s obvious. When Arri still looks confused, she adds, “She was totally flirting with you!”

And that’s– that’s… oh, okay. “What?”

“Or, I don’t know if…” Jewels trails off. This conversation seems to be making both of them stupider. “But she was. Y’know, if you care.”

Okay. 

Okay, cool. If she cares. Does she care? Not that, like, she would ever, in any way, flirt back with this girl, but, like, in theory. In theory… does she care? Does she want Jewels to know if she would theoretically care? Like, if this were some parallel universe in which she wasn’t hopelessly devoted to the girl sitting opposite her… would she flirt back?

By the time Arri can even decide whether or not Jewels’ question is loaded, her silence seems to have answered for her. 

“You don’t, like, have to say anything,” Jewels says with a gentle smile. “Just thought I’d let you know. You are kinda clueless sometimes, so…”

Arri snorts, and it manages to break her out of her own brain. “Yeah? I thought she was flirting with you just like everyone else does.”

“Hmph!” Jewels flicks her hair back, playing up a schtick. “Well, she’s not my type, anyway. Too blonde.”

If Arri’s brain was malfunctioning before this, well, it’s completely nonsensical now. Jewels has a type… when it comes to girls… and that type is not blondes. Wait, fuck, what if she’s joking?

“Would…” Arri starts, not sure if she has the guts to finish, “would you care? If she was flirting with you?”

It’s completely insane of her to ask. It doesn’t make any sense, it’s invasive, it’s off topic, she shouldn’t be asking it. But something in her is begging her to. Whatever chance she has with Jewels kind of really fucking rests on the answer to this question. 

Throughout the years, between the two of them, the topic of relationships isn’t something that really comes up. Sure they watch romcoms and gossip and all that other stuff, but other than that, it’s always just been the two of them. Well, besides a few months ago, at the beginning of the school year and Arri’s “boyfriend.”

It’s really the only time Jewels has ever talked about relationships with her, and she just clowned on him the whole time. The topic was never treated with respect, because, well, why would it be? When talking about high school boys, the only question that bothered coming up was… why? Really?

He was nice, Arri supposes, but neither her nor Jewels really liked him. It was clear he took it more seriously than she did, so it didn’t last long. Not after New Years, that’s for sure. 

But with regards to Jewels, Arri isn’t even sure she’s had a boyfriend before. There could be a few different reasons for that, such as no boy being even remotely on the same level as her. It’s not even a question. Jewels deserves the best, and Arri doesn’t even think there’s a guy on the planet, much less her high school, that could give her that. 

But what if it wasn’t that. What if it wasn’t that Jewels didn’t want these boys, but that she didn’t want boys in general. As a whole. Point, blank, period. 

“Hm,” Jewels sighs, fiddling with her cuticles, taking time to think. “In some ways, yes. Maybe. I don’t know her that well, and she doesn’t know me, but maybe.”

While Arri is trying not to pass out, Jewels looks up from her nails and scrunches up her face in something between a grimace and a smile. 

“Does that make sense?” Jewels asks, suddenly a little nervous, it seems.

Arri thinks if she starts talking, she might not be able to stop. That if she does anything other than nod, she might spill her entire heart to Jewels right now, and that absolutely cannot happen. Arri wants to say that what Jewels just said makes the most sense anything has ever made in the entire universe. She wants to say that she'd do anything to be the person Jewels tells these things to. Her secrets, her thoughts, the little things she doesn't want to bug anyone with.  

Arri used to think that these things were already shared between them, but now she knows she's wrong. Jewels is her best friend, yes, and they tell each other everything they think to tell another person, but Arri wants to know about the things Jewels doesn't think to tell her. She wants to know when Jewels found out she liked girls, she wants to know what she thought about this, at first. Whether she pushed it down until she couldn't anymore, or if she laughed or cried or thought to tell Arri but stopped herself. 

If she could ever see Arrietty as the girl in the coffee shop, flirting with her. Trying to make her smile every chance she gets. Leaving a note on her receipt with her phone number.

It’s a moment before she responds, just taking the time to meet Jewels’ eye from across the table. “It does.”

And, for the first time since discovering this secret about herself, Arri feels something like hope bloom within her chest. It flowers softly, slowly, and she can feel the work she’s put into it already. All those hours of watering, making sure she didn’t rush it, but not abandoning it either. 

“Your drinks,” comes a voice from beside them.  The cashier, the short one, places Arri’s coffee and Jewels’... beverage down in front of them, but she doesn’t leave right away. Rather, she looks in between them before her expression shifts. Then, she turns to walk away, and Arri notices she’s crumpling up a slip of paper in her hand. 

Well, there goes that option. But, (not so) secretly, Arri doesn’t think she’ll ever consider someone else when Jewels is in the same room as her. 

“Y’know, lots of people underestimate the nutritional value of chocolate sludge,” Jewels smiles as she takes a sip. 

“Yeah, it only takes ten minutes off of your life, meanwhile things like hotdogs take a whole fifteen,” Arri jokes, and they're back. Serious talk is over, now it's time to act like an idiot with her best friend. 

“Really? Or–” Jewels cuts herself off. “They can really tell how much time hotdogs can take from you?” 

“Something like that,” Arri shrugs. “Suzie was yelling at me for eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich until I Googled it and told her ‘fuck you, they're good for me .’” 

“And they are good for you?” 

“They’re better for you than hotdogs.” 

After a few minutes of discussing how insane it is that Arri was right about something and Suzie (y’know, pretentious, intelligent, asshole Suzie) was somehow wrong , they decide to buy some muffins along with their drink, just to draw this time out. And that’s how the rest of the week feels: drawn out, but in a good way. Like she’s making the most out of her senior year. 

Her classes are spent actually learning (shocker), and her lunch breaks are dedicated to Jewels and sending her secret heart eyes. After that, practice becomes predictable in the best way possible. Long gone are the days of arriving late and getting chewed out or forgetting what team she’s on and pushing people around. 

No, new Arri actually has fun with her hobbies. New Arri journals and doesn’t just get pissed off and scribble everything out. New Arri is someone worth shooting a smile at in the hallway, someone who’ll finally smile back.

Speaking of hallways, it’s Monday again already and her first few classes are passed with yawns and hidden coffees and pinches to keep herself awake. Now it’s lunch, and the path to Jewels’ locker is one she could walk with her eyes closed.

The bell is still reverberating through the halls when Arri rounds a corner and sees her favourite person… standing next to another person that she doesn’t completely hate. Not anymore, at least. Jewels and Suzie are both leaning against the lockers, clearly wrapped up in some over the top conversation, most likely about musicals or Chill More Michael or whatever the fuck theatre nerds bond over.

They’re completely absorbed in each other, so it only takes Arri about five seconds to get the desire to steal Jewels’ attention back. And maybe Suzie’s too. Shit, who can blame her– theatre nerd shit is so boring. 

“What’re you two giggling over?” She doesn’t say ‘hi’, she just breaks into their little bubble of conversation, grinning when Suzie steps back, startled clearly. 

“Just the fact that, allegedly, next year’s school musical is supposed to be Mean Girls!” Jewels whines. “And we’re not gonna be here!”

“Oh, thank god, it’s something I know about,” Arrietty sighs. “Wait, they’re doing something cool, finally , and it’s next year? Lame.”

“You know about the musical Mean Girls? Not the movie, the musical?” Suzie asks, incredulous and maybe a bit teasing. 

“Yup,” Arri deadpans. And before Suzie can start with her ‘name five songs’ bullshit, Arri’s already two steps ahead. “Tell her, Jewelsie.”

“She’s telling the truth this time, I did force her to watch a recording on YouTube–”

“And the movie-musical!”

“–And the movie-musical,” Jewels finishes. “But that was only for Renee Rapp.”

Suzie seems to believe her only when Jewels is the one talking which– rude , but not wholly unexpected. Jewels doesn’t heckle Suzie at every chance, so she’s biased. Anyway, their conversation shifts from Renee Rapp to music to literally every adjacent topic they can think of, and soon they’re in the cafeteria and Arri’s stealing fries off of two plates instead of one. 

Suzie’s never eaten lunch with them before. Usually she hovers around Kori and Lydia like an electron jacked on too much Monster, switching between joking around with them and flipping through one of the millions of books she’s probably read this year. However, this time she’s munching on her sandwich at their table, joking around with them , and she doesn’t pull out her book once. Take that, Korydia, Arri thinks. We’re more interesting.

“So, doing anything interesting this weekend, Suzie?” Jewels asks through a mouthful of salad. 

“Um,” the redhead swallows, “kinda? Me and Kori and Lydia are going to see that new movie coming out on Friday. The one with Aubrey Plaza?”

“Oh! I know that one!” Arri pipes up, putting her lemonade down. “That actually looks pretty good, but I haven’t gone to see a movie in, like, a million years. Not really my scene. Too many nerds and small children and grandparents… too many people.”

“We should all go see one,” Jewels suggests, eyes moving from Arri to Suzie. “I know you hate it there, but it’ll be fine. We’ll be in and out in seconds, Arri, you won't even notice we’re there.”

Arri snorts. “Yeah? You’ll have to take me there in a crate like a feral cat.”

“Or me and Suzie will just go. You’re not invited, loser .” The way Jewels says it is deeply unnatural, and Arri wants to kiss her for it. She’d never call anyone a loser like that, Arri almost feels special for hearing it. 

Suzie laughs, surprised. The joke wasn’t that funny but maybe Suzie’s just being her usual awkward self. “Oh my god, could you imagine?” 

“Okay,” Arri says, a smile creeping onto her face, “just to make sure that doesn’t happen, I’ll brave the movie theatre with you guys. If a single baby spills popcorn on me, though, I’m straight up leaving.”

“We’ll protect you from the evil babies, don’t worry.”

And, okay, as torturous as being in love with your best friend is… this is nice. Actually, there’s times when it’s not torturous at all. When all Arri can feel is this burning ember of appreciation for even getting to share the same air as Jewels, even if the other girl can’t return it right now. 

When, even when this ember flickers too hot, she has the rest of her life to fall back onto. 

The next week or so go by like a sunset. Like a sunrise. Like a John Green novel, somehow too fast and too slow and a little confusing but altogether pleasant. Jewels is perfect, Suzie is annoying, soccer is constant, and her heart is still beating, somehow.

Arri’s heart is still beating, and she’s so used to this calm that she’s almost forgotten to expect a storm.  Well, calling a cheerleader a storm might seem a little insulting, but in her case it’s true. 

Class is finally over, which means she finally gets to go outside and hit the soccer field. Today’s been exhausting, all she wants to do is let some energy out and score some goals, when suddenly she feels a tap on her shoulder. Here comes the hurricane.

“Arrietty, hi, do you have a second?” It’s Sam, and she’s talking to Arri like one wrong move could ruin everything. It’s not a new feeling for her, Arri is used to being looked at like a bomb just rearing to go off, but this time it’s a little different. 

Oh fuck. This is about what Sam told her at the party. That thing she told Arri, that thing she definitely did not mean to tell her, in any capacity. That thing that, probably unbeknownst to Sam, seriously fucked her up that night. It’s still fucking her up!

Sam looks like she’s expecting something other than what Arri says. She shakes herself out of her own head.“Oh! Sure. Here? Or, there’s an empty classroom right there, if you want.”

It takes the blonde a second to process her words. Sam just blinks at her for a moment, probably confused that Arri isn’t laughing at her or walking away. It’s strange, Arri hasn’t had the urge to belittle someone for no reason in quite a while. 

(Not that she’d do that for no reason, but, lately, she hasn’t been able to find a reason anymore. And that thing that Sam told her, that’s the farthest thing from a reason to make fun of her she’s ever heard.)

“Um, yeah, a classroom would be great,” Sam says after a breath. 

So, they take a few steps until they’re in one of Arri’s old science classrooms. It’s shadowy and dead looking and it’s only a moment or so before she’s thinking about Suzie. Their first meeting was in a classroom just like this one, only it was down the hallway more, closer to their English room. The blinds were drawn just like this, only it was later in the day, so the sun managed to poke through. Suzie was wearing this hideous jacket and some knit toque, very different from what Sam’s wearing right now, which is probably the antithesis to every piece of clothing Suzie’s ever owned. The blonde is wearing a pleated skirt and a polo shirt, even though their school’s dress code is pretty much non-existent. It’s fashionable, but nothing like something Suzie would wear. Suzie would add some old sweater or thrifted blazer and tap shoes and somehow pull it off. 

Anyway, Sam’s looking at her like she has about a million things to say, but she doesn’t say any of them. Well, not until Arri raises an eyebrow, telling her to go ahead with her eyes.

“At the party…” Sam takes a second to gather her thoughts. “I told you something.” 

“You did,” Arri says slowly. 

“Listen–” 

And this is the part where Sam backtracks. Where, suddenly, coming out isn’t as freeing as everyone says. The part where Arri finds herself grateful, in a sick way, that she didn’t fuck everything up by telling people. Just watch, Sam is about to explain how drunk she was with a pleading smile, she’ll probably tell Arri about a fake boyfriend, anything to excuse it. It won't make it true, it won't make Sam any less gay, but it’ll give her some breathing room. 

It’s exactly what Arri would’ve done if she were in Sam’s position. And it’s exactly what Sam doesn’t do now.

“I’m sorry I dumped all that on you, making you the first person I told besides my parents– that must’ve been weird,” Sam says with a breathy, awkward laugh tacked onto the end. “I was just, well, I was really shook up over it. I just wanted to stop feeling. And then you were the first person to talk to me all night besides Crystal and Lana earlier, and I just… snapped.” 

It’s unthinkable. Especially for girls like them. This conversation should look much different, it should look familiar, but it doesn’t. Sam’s not scared, she’s not regretful, rather, she’s sheepish. She doesn’t regret telling Arri, the only thing she regrets is telling Arri like that , drunk and clumsy and covered in her own puke. 

“Oh, so–” Arri doesn’t know what to say to that. “So you’re actually…?”

This is a test, and it’s a cruel one. One to see if Sam actually means it. Something in Arri’s chest is actually hoping she backtracks, gets scared, sees the fin and the dark shadow and recognizes her for the deadly shark she is.

“I am, yeah,” Sam musters up a smile, like she knows what Arri’s thinking, even though that’s impossible. “I’m a lesbian.”

And, fuck, Arri isn’t evil , so she smiles back. Does what she’s supposed to in this situation, even though Sam and her haven’t had a proper conversation since they were paired up for a group project in fourth grade. Even though the thought of Sam not regretting coming out brings a pain to her chest, a sinking feeling to her stomach. 

The interaction is cut short after that, Sam’s phone starts ringing and she steps past Arri towards the door. Before she answers the phone, she shoots her another ‘sorry, thank you!’ and then she’s gone. Arrietty is left standing in the empty classroom, staring at the empty chalk board, and feeling pretty empty herself. 

Well. That wasn’t how that conversation was supposed to go. She was supposed to feel terrible, but relieved, before practice. Not just terrible. How is she supposed to beat Kori at sprints afterward now? How is she supposed to go about her day like her whole worldview hasn’t changed because perfect pageant girl Sam is proud of being gay? 

Something in the pit of her stomach shifts. God, she feels sick. So, what? She’s just supposed to believe that coming out will solve all her problems? Yeah, right. 

Practice starts soon, Arri’s got to start walking now if she doesn’t want to get yelled at again by her coach. And she’s in a bad mood today, considering they lost their last game and that’s definitely the team’s fault, not Coach’s. As her shoes squeak against the too-shiny floor, Arri tries not to scoff. Okay, so Sam is fine with being out, that has nothing to do with her. Nothing at all.

Sure, she wants to come out. Arri wants to tell people so badly, but that’s just not realistic right now. There’s so many variables, so many things that could go wrong, not to mention how her feelings for Jewels would come into play. Though, now that she thinks about it, this is bigger than just how Jewels makes her feel. 

She knows it sounds crazy, but it's true. Yes, Jewels is the reason she gets up in the morning, and yes, Jewels is the reason she found out she likes girls in a totally not friendly way, but that’s only the half of it. Jewels can be her everything in one way, but there’s still everything else. Arri stops herself in the hallway before she can take another step.

She’s gay. She’s gay and she likes girls, not just Jewels, and she wants to tell people this outside of the fact that she wants to confess her feelings to her best friend. Arri wants people to know that she’s gay, she wants to be someone people know is gay. 

Oh fuck, don’t throw up, crazy. You have to show off so you can start for the final!

But it’s pretty fucking hard to not throw up right now! Arri is being so brave– or, that’s how she feels as she finishes up the walk to the field. It’s not cold out, but it’s cloudy, so that means it’ll be easier on them– Arri is gay! God, what a plot twist.

As she’s warming up next to Kori, the ground feels slightly different underneath them. It doesn’t make any sense, the grass wasn’t suddenly replaced by turf in the middle of the night, but it’s still true. Are her boots somehow broken? Has her mom secretly swapped her old shoelaces for some new ones? Or is she just so shook up about this realization that she needs to attribute this feeling to some outside factor?

Actually, it’s probably the shoelaces. Arri’s making that decision for herself. She feels all wobbly and weird and it’s definitely her boots. They’re the only things on her mind (among other things) as she steadies herself after taking a shot and missing. 

“Do you need some Pepto or something?” Kori laughs from behind her. “Wait, did you go to Joella’s rager last night? I thought you never went to parties before an important practice.”

Arri scrunches up her face in a frown. “No, but that sounded fun, fuck . I’m just… feeling a little weird. Not sick or anything. Don’t rat me out.”

“Huh.” Kori definitely doesn’t believe her. “Okay, just don’t, like, die or anything. I hate all the subs for your position so you need to play this next game or I’ll rage quit.”

Arri gives the girl a salute, then grins as she notices a familiar mop of black hair in the distance, nose shoved into some copy of Frankenstein or 1984 or Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. Lydia’s making these visits a weekly occurrence, now. Maybe she’s planning on proposing or something. 

Or she just wants to gawk at her sweaty girlfriend. Either way, Arri doesn’t really care. A good practice is more important, she just hopes Lydia doesn’t–

“Hope you guys get lots of touchdowns!” And there it is. 

“Y’know, this habit is really starting to bug me, Coraline!” Arri yells back. 

Kori rolls her eyes, saying in a normal voice, “Take it easy! She looks so cute in my letterman jacket.”

“Whatever. If she makes me miss any shots, though…” 

“You can do that yourself!” 

And, by that time, practice has pretty much started. Coach has a chip on her shoulder, the rest of them have something to prove, and Arri starts to lose herself in this sport. Good. That’s all she wants to do, just distract herself from literally everything going on right now. 

What else is there to say about practice? It’s not too difficult, y’know, nor is it too easy. She works herself up a sweat, trips a few times on the grass, shows off a bit, all the usual stuff. 

Arri is grateful, actually, that she can still do this after her conversation with Sam. It’s kind of like the universe telling her that she’ll be okay. In the short term, and the long term. 

She’s going to tell Jewels how she feels, and no matter what, she’ll be okay. And she’s going to come out, and that’ll be okay, too. And, at some point, she’s going to admit that one of her closest friends right now is a nerd who thinks Little Shop Of Horrors is considered a ‘cool’ musical. And that will be okay as well! 

Kori steals the ball from underneath her feet– bitch. This scrimmage is almost over, why go this hard? Arri chases her, not really caring that she’s supposed to be in a specific formation right now. And, because she’s completely different from the girl that made an insanely illegal tackle on Kori all those practices ago, she doesn’t do that this time. 

No, this time, Arri gets all ball. It’s kind of beautiful, the kind of tackle you’d see in a compilation on YouTube, she can just feel it. 

Of course, Kori shrieks and the whistle blows and that accomplishes virtually nothing, but it’s still worth it. Arri kicks the ball up into her arms with a shit-eating grin. 

“I win!” She sticks her tongue out.

“Our team had more goals, asshole!” Kori barks back. “Five-to-three! Eat it!” 

“Doesn’t matter, you suck at soccer,” Arri laughs, tossing the ball to whatever girl is collecting them. Then, she reaches her hands over her head and stretches, feeling the burn in her legs specifically. She doesn’t have to do sprints today…

“I do not! Who's getting a scholarship out of the two of us?” Kori teases, slowly stepping backwards towards the bleachers. “Me, bitch!”

“Hey, all the ones I applied for take a while!” Arri laughs. “You just applied to all the schools in Pittsburgh because someone just so happens to be going to art school there.”

At the mention of art school, Lydia looks up from her book and glances between them, saving a soft smile for Kori and light hearted, mildly disgusted frown for Arri. It’s about as much as she expects. 

“Your point?” Lydia asks Arri as she and Kori both stop in front of the bleachers.

“Everyone knows east coast schools send their answers back first,” she says like it’s obvious. It should be! “That’s, like, the rule of timezones, dumbo. Aren’t you top of your class?”

“Yeah, because bio totally teaches us about timezones,” Lydia rolls her eyes with a mocking smile. 

Kori gives Lydia a wink and Arri a shove, groaning, “Hey! Cut it out! Don’t kill each other while I’m finishing these sprints.”

After exchanging some blown kisses with Lydia and some more shoving with Arri, Kori turns back to the field. It’s funny– back when the two of them first started doing sprints, neither of them knew how some girls did it all the time. Now look at her. 

Being friends with Kori is interesting. Being friends with Lydia is… well, she’s not even sure they’re friends, but it’s still the weirdest thing she’s ever done. Arri’s not even sure Lydia likes talking to her, but things aren't outwardly hostile anymore, so that has to count for something. 

When she thought about her friends before all this “Lune” business, it was always in a really specific way. Jewels was always the star, the rest were her backup dancers. Necessary but forgotten. That’s not something she’s proud of, but it’s the truth. Jewels was friends with everyone, and Arri was only friends with Jewels, that’s just how it was. 

But now, things are a little different. And, of course, it would be lying to act like that’s not at least partly because of Suzie. God, she’ll never tell Suzie that, can you imagine the ego boost she’d get? No chance. No way. But more about Suzie later. 

As she’s watching Kori take careful breaths to conserve energy, cleats tearing into the grass below them, she notices something. Every time she turns, her eyes flicker over to the two of them, specifically to Lydia. This ends in either a brief smile or a wink if the other girl is looking back, but it’s always there. That checking, that reaching out, even if it’s only been thirty seconds since Kori last laid eyes on her girlfriend. 

And Lydia, who follows Kori’s form with her eyes while pretending to read her book. Affection so obvious if you know how to look for it. Heart eyes doesn’t even begin to describe it, it’s like Kori’s the only thing she sees. Arri might as well not even be there, and she can’t bring herself to be mad about that. It’s probably how she looks when she’s with Jewels. 

God, Jewels. Glittery, disco ball incarnate, goofball, unfairly gorgeous, secretly-a-huge-dork Jewels. Her best friend. Her light when it’s midnight and it doesn’t seem like the sun will ever rise again. How Jewels loves is something she’s known for a while now, but it’s still important to mention. Arri knows from experience, but if Jewels loves you, you’ll see it in everything. She’ll find you in a crowd, talk your ear off, she’ll want to know everything. She’ll poke you with her foot under a dinner table or tell you jokes in a low voice, something for just the two of you. When Jewels loves you, it feels like a secret, but not the bad kind. It feels like something to be held close, wrapped in blankets, and cherished like a precious gem. It sparkles. 

Look at her, waxing poetic about Jewels like this. A few months ago, these metaphors might’ve seemed impossible. Well, a few months ago she didn’t know Suzie. 

Yeah, yeah, alert the media, Arrietty admits she’s wrong about something. It’s true. She was wrong about Suzie. Arri thought the girl was conceited, pretentious, hideously dressed, and a tried and true complete nerd. Turns out, only the last thing on that list was true. Suzie is a nerd, and she doesn’t care what people say to her about that. She never cared when Arri called her carrot top or said her jacket looked insane (in a bad way) or even when she said A Chorus Line was for wannabe Vegas showgirls (she’s seen the light since this conversation). All Suzie cared about was the truth, which was that she’s a great person and friend. She knows she’s funny, she knows she’s smart, and she knows there’s beauty in the things she likes, so who the fuck is Arri to say anything to that?

And honestly? She regrets some of the things she’s said. A lot of them, actually. She should probably tell Suzie that. 

But Suzie, well, she’s way too stubborn. If any of the things Arri said before actually did hurt her feelings, she’d never admit it. Actually, maybe she would if Arri took her to another party. But that’s beside the point. 

How does Suzie show how she feels? With her words, duh. Although, not in the way you might think. Arri assumes things are probably different with people she’s loved for a long time, but it’s obvious Suzie’s her friend. She has to be her friend. It’s past the point of asking, it’s just true. 

And Suzie shows that they’re friends by telling her she’s an idiot for not wearing a helmet when she’s on her bike, or when she wears the highest heels in her closet for eight AM classes. Suzie shows that when Arri texts her at one in the morning asking for study notes and she actually gives them to her! But, and this is the most important part, Suzie actually tries to explain them. If in her own condescending, mocking way. 

Point is: Suzie will never admit it, and Arri will never admit it out loud, but they’re friends. Arri knows exactly what it’s like to be Suzie’s friend, and she kinda loves it. 

“Too lazy to do sprints today?” Lydia asks from beside her, snapping Arri out of this sentimental ball of mush. 

“Ha ha,” Arri deadpans. “I worked hard enough during practice, not my fault Kori only puts fifty percent in when it counts.”

Something behind Lydia’s eyes flashes, then. It’s a blink and you’ll miss it kind of thing, but Arri catches it. Weird. Maybe she actually is a witch.

“Y’know,” Lydia starts, taking a breath to add suspense, “I never used to get why you were so evil, but you’re kinda relatable now.”

And… okay? “Huh?”

“I mean, like, before Kori and I got together, I must’ve been pretty mean, too,” Lydia laughs a bit, but it’s not mean. It’s confusing. What the fuck is she talking about? Getting together? With who– what?

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Arri asks, voice going a little breathy. 

There is absolutely no fucking way–

“You and Jewels, right?” Oh my god. “I mean, like, you having a crush on her.”

She could throw up, and this time it would be warranted. How– how does Lydia know about that? Did someone tell her? No, no one knows about that. 

Well. 

Suzie knows. Suzie is the only one who knows, but there’s no way she’d tell Lydia, right? It would be completely stupid and totally unreasonable and– 

“Who told you?”

Okay, there goes playing it off. Fuck. Lydia, I know I’ve been kind of a raging asshole to you, but I swear if you tell anyone what I just confirmed…

“No one had to tell me, calm down,” Lydia says, acting way too fucking casual. “Sorry, but it’s kind of obvious to someone like me. Kori was kind of my rock before we got together, and I was making my crush everyone’s problem… like you. I was, um, super shitfaced in the bathtub during Crystal’s party and I might have overheard you guys.”

It’s kind of obvious. 

Lydia keeps talking. “I know that feeling, Arrietty. I could hear it in the way you talked to her, even while you were drunk. You sounded really in love with her.”

It’s kind of obvious, Arrietty. You sounded really in love with her, Arrietty. 

You’re a fucking idiot for ever thinking you could hide it, Arrietty. 

Suddenly, she’s flopping down into the grass, knees sore from the drop. Arri doesn’t know how it happens, only that she has the tendency to collapse when shit hits the fucking fan. Lydia knows, and that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is all the other people that possibly know. The fact that it’s obvious. 

The worst part is that Jewels could know right now, or someone could tell her. Jewels could hear it from someone other than Arri and get something wrong, misinterpret it in some way. 

That cannot happen. That can’t be the way this ends, no, she was promised a grand finale. She was promised the look on Jewels’ face when she finds out that Lune is her. She was promised fucking finally, finally being able to say this out loud. For once. 

That’s it, then. She can’t wait until the game. She has to tell Jewels how she feels. Like right the fuck now. Oh my god, what can she do? How does she say it? Does she call her? Ask to meet up? What if Jewels is busy? 

Okay, first things first, she needs guidance. 

Arri: RED FUCKING ALERT WE NEED TO MEET UP RN. I KNOW UR AT REHEARSAL I DONT CARE.

Arri: MEET UP RIGHT AFTER. 

Arri: Please. Behind the school. Important. ill be waiting. 

What in the ever-loving, rom-com, She’s All That fuck is she going to do?

Chapter Text

Dear Lune,

I read something the other day that made me think of you. Actually, it seems like lately I’m always thinking of you. When I’m with friends. When I’m listening to music on the way to school. When I’m in class trying to pay attention. Thanks for ruining my GPA, by the way (kidding!).

So maybe a lot of things remind me of you, but I still think this in particular is worth mentioning. It’s artsy, it’s poetic. It’s you. Anyway, it was something about Icarus, the one from the Greek myth. It mentioned how people always ignore the other part of the story. The part where it’s just as dangerous for him to fly too close to the ground the sea, because the ocean water would soak his wings and he'd end up falling anyway. Something about not shooting your shot, I guess? 

Not that I’m trying to tell you anything… You know I don’t mind the anonymity at all. It’s just really hard not to let my mind wander and think about who you are behind all this ink and paper and poetry. About what you’re like in person. Whether you’d still have that dumb sense of humor or your quick witted comebacks, like you know what I’m going to say before I say it. It’s weird, but not in a bad way. It’s like I got to know you the way I’ve always wanted to know someone. Starting with their head, and then their heart, and then, hopefully, everything else. 

Either that or you’re a robot designed to say all the right things at all the right times. Even then I’d probably still fall for you. 

Yours, 

Jewels

Okay, so maybe “one more letter” hadn’t actually been one more letter.

Suzie has no idea what she’s doing.

Not in the sense that she’s confused, particularly, or that she’s dealing with things beyond her capabilities. Moreso in the sense that… she’s sort of running without being able to see where she’s going. Making choices, stupid choices, risky choices, some might say. Choices that would have the version of her from last year or maybe even a mere few months ago saying, what on Earth could have possibly possessed you to do this?

More in the sense that some days she’ll look in the mirror, and wonder why all her features aren’t distorting in panic, why she’s not hyperventilating into a paper bag at any given time. You know, just– given the recent state of her life.

It’s been about two weeks since the night of the soccer banquet, which means two weeks since sitting here in this very spot at her desk, and telling herself: just one more letter.

The funny thing about just one more is that sometimes, you go back on your word. Sometimes, you leave a letter in someone’s locker, and they write one back to you. So you write one back to them. And so on, and so forth… and now you’re in a predicament.

Suzie stares at the letters in her desk and sighs, quietly, to no one but the four walls of her bedroom. And the poster of Liza Minnelli hanging over her bed.

Icarus, huh? 

Yeah, she can work with Icarus.

She gets out a fresh sheet of paper, propping her chin up in her hand.

Dear Jewels,

Nice Icarus pun at the end there. And you’re right. I do find the concept interesting, immensely so. The idea of the main point associated with Icarus being that he flew too close to the sea, rather than the sun. Just think of how many people would be told to take risks instead of playing it safe. How much of the world as we know it would be different?

I suppose even writing these letters is me taking a risk like that. There was a chance you wouldn’t be receptive to them at all, and now, every time I send a new one, there’s a chance you stop responding. On top of all that, there’s also a chance…

(There’s a chance you’ll figure out who I am, and that you’ll be disappointed when you do. Suzie doesn’t include that last part, it’ll sour the mood, and she’s not even sure why the thought comes to mind. Jewels won’t be disappointed when she finds out, not if things go according to plan. Anyways.) 

On top of all that, there’s also a chance I’ll say too much, and that you’ll figure out who I am outside of the ‘ink and paper and poetry’ as you say. It’s not that I never want you to find out, not at all. It’s like you said, it means a lot to know someone like this. In a way that puts the important things first, thoughts and feelings and things like that. 

And getting to hear your thoughts, that’s the best part about this. Getting to know you, earnestly and honestly, without high school life getting in the way. That’s why I started writing to you. I want to know you, Jewels. And I think I’m getting there, slowly but surely. 

I don’t think I’ll ever get enough, though. It’s like getting to know the universe. There’s always going to be more to discover. 

Yours, 

Lune

Suzie gives her writing a last once-over before folding it up. She’ll leave it in Jewels’ locker tomorrow, and going off how it’s been for the past week, she might even have her response by the time she passes the statue after rehearsal.

Suzie isn’t really sure how Jewels manages that. She imagines Jewels in one of her classes, pink gel pen twirling between her fingers, paper half-tucked under her notebook. Trying to be discreet, succeeding to some unknown degree. The thought makes Suzie smile, for reasons beyond her understanding.

Writing to Jewels now is vastly different to her deal with Arri, when every letter they wrote had to be so carefully constructed, charming and alluring without giving away too much. Asking the right questions, without inviting the wrong ones in return. Now, it’s more casual. Almost like texting, if it took one entire day to send a text and another day to get a text in return. They’ve fallen into a comfortable back and forth, a discussion of life and art and the universe at large and everything in between. Including Greek myths, apparently, which Suzie had found surprising but not at all unwelcome. Hell yeah, she’ll talk about Greek myths if that’s what Jewels wants to talk about.

And of course, there’s the elephant in the room.

The part where she hasn’t exactly told Arri about any of this. 

There’s a hundred different ways Suzie could frame it, defending herself on a loop to the angry mob that only exists in her head. She has no intentions of interfering with Arri’s plan. Nothing she’s writing to Jewels is hurting Arri’s chances, not in the slightest. If anything, isn’t she kind of helping, in a strange way? Sealing the deal, making absolute sure that Jewels has fallen head over heels for whoever’s on the other end of these letters?

But she’s not here to kid herself. To say she’s absolved of all guilt in this situation would be untrue, and to pretend she’s doing it out of some heroic desire to help Arri get her girl would just be nauseating. 

The most important thing, Suzie’s decided, is that she stays realistic. She’ll be realistic, and she’ll remember that everything she’s doing now is on a time limit. The last soccer game of Arri’s season is a hard deadline, and this– this is just a project she’s allowed herself to have too much fun with. 

What doesn’t help is how much time she’s spending around Arri and Jewels these days. Suzie eats lunch at their table, and does it again the next day, and finds that she can fit right in. Not too surprising, at this point. She talks to them before class, bickering with Arri about inconsequential things and cracking jokes that make Jewels swat her on the shoulder while her laughter rings through the whole hallway.

Suzie has to be careful, sometimes. Sometimes she’ll be with the two of them, and Jewels will say something that’s not so silly or lighthearted, something that makes Suzie pause mid-conversation because it reminds her so intensely of the letters. Of this other side of Jewels, the one barely anyone gets to know. Or Suzie will be talking, rambling on about a topic that probably isn’t important, but Jewels will still hang onto her every word, chiming in with questions and listening attentively for the answers. 

“Do you guys think you’d ever want to get a tattoo?” Jewels asks. They’re at lunch, for the fifth or sixth time in a row.

Suzie takes a moment to think, but Arri has an answer ready. “Duh,” she smirks. “Jewels, I’ve told you this. I want one of my lucky number, seventeen, probably somewhere on my arm– and then I’d want one on my back for sure. Something big and flashy, maybe neo-tribal.”

“Oooh. I remember the seventeen, I don’t think you told me about that other one.” Jewels turns to Suzie. “You?”

Suzie pulls her lip between her teeth. “I don’t know for sure,” she says, “but when I was younger I was obsessed with the idea of getting a tattoo of Audrey II. You know, from Little Shop?” At Jewels’ enthusiastic nod, she continues: “I don’t know where I’d put it. Also, like, I would wait until I’m a little older, just in case my frontal lobe develops and all of a sudden I’m like, wow, okay, that’s a stupid idea.”

Jewels giggles. “Not the frontal lobe developing, oh my god,” she says. “But that’s not stupid at all. Or– I don’t think it’s stupid.”

Suzie could dissolve on the spot.

It’s such a tiny thing to trip her up, it’s such a dumb reason to be caught off guard and weirdly touched, but it does and she is and she thinks, I can’t do this.

All she has to do is look at Arri, and reality comes crashing back in. One look at Arri’s smile, the tilt of her head as she gazes over at Jewels, the affection that’s so painfully obvious. Arri is the one who is in love with Jewels. Arri is the one who would go to any lengths for her, who’d wanted to write her love letters and sweep her off her feet like something out of a romance novel.

It’s all Arri. She can’t be getting confused on that.

So, that’s the end of the story, and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that being around Jewels, merely existing in her orbit is enough to make Suzie feel dizzy and off-kilter in the most exhilarating way. It doesn’t matter that Jewels signs her letters “yours, Jewels” and it makes Suzie’s head hurt to think about the fact that no, Jewels isn’t hers and never will be. 

“What about you, Jewels? Do you want any tattoos?”

Thursday rolls around, and with Thursday comes rehearsal after school. They’re preparing for the annual summer musical, a student-led fundraiser usually hosted sometime in July. It’s a familiar project with lots of familiar faces, which isn’t a surprise in a small town where most of the kids landing the lead roles have been doing so since they were old enough to be enrolled in junior theatre camp. 

Of course, just because it’s familiar doesn't mean it’s not fun anymore. Suzie’s job as assistant stage manager is one she genuinely loves, and one that always keeps her busy. Tracking when cast members enter and exit the stage, keeping notes of props and cues and whatnot, and sometimes just paying close attention to what’s happening onstage. 

As it happens, that’s what she’s doing today. At the moment, she’s listening to Acacia– yes, that Acacia, cowboy boots and all– singing the same off-key melody over and over again, and trying not to look as outwardly exasperated as she feels. Judging by how the sophomore occupying the stool next to her keeps glancing over and muffling giggles behind her hand, Suzie might not be doing a very good job. Oh well. Not like Acacia can see her from the stage, anyway.

Acacia and her questionable sense of pitch aside, rehearsal is smooth sailing. Most of the two hours go by in the click of a bedazzled tap shoe, and Suzie is honestly impressed by the lack of anything going wrong. Must be her lucky day or something, right?

Or not.

It’s almost the end of rehearsal when she gets not one, not two, but three texts in quick succession. All from Arri.

Arri: RED FUCKING ALERT WE NEED TO MEET UP RN. I KNOW UR AT REHEARSAL I DONT CARE.

Arri: MEET UP RIGHT AFTER. 

Arri: Please. Behind the school. Important. ill be waiting. 

Suzie reads them and a chill goes down her spine. She’d almost wonder if this was some kind of prank, except for that first word in the third message– the Arri she knows would never say please. Something has to be very, very wrong. 

Fortunately, the cast and crew are just about wrapping things up for the day. Suzie slips away from the soundbooth, and manages to escape out the back doors without anyone stopping her to talk about props or costumes. She walks briskly toward the back parking lot.

When she gets there, Arri’s pacing a small circle on the concrete near some benches and trees. Her appearance is different somehow, in a way that throws Suzie off until she realizes; Arri’s hair is tied up, that’s all. She must not have taken out her ponytail after her soccer practice. 

Suzie finds her eyes drawn to the stray hair near Arri’s face that’s managed to escape her hair elastic. There’s nothing especially interesting about it, it’s just there and Suzie watches the wispy strands blow softly in the breeze, brushing against Arri’s neck. She doesn’t often get to see imperfections on Arri, no one does, except for probably Jewels. It’s… endearing, in an unexpected way.

Then Arri notices her standing there, and the spell is broken.

“Oh, wow. So nice of you to decide to show up.”

Suzie rolls her eyes, more out of obligation than genuine annoyance. She knows better than to believe Arri’s acting like this for the sake of pissing her off. 

“Hello to you too.” Suzie sits down on the nearest bench. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

It’s entirely possible that this would get a laugh out of Arri, on some other day, or that it would prompt her to grin and declare Suzie a nerd beyond all help, but that day just isn’t today. “You got my texts,” Arri says roughly. “Or I’m assuming you did, ‘cause you’re here.”

Suzie sits up straighter. The role of serious, empathetic friend is one she can play exceedingly well, and if that’s what Arri needs then that’s what she’s going to get. “Yeah,” she says. “What’s up?”

Arri crosses her arms over her chest and tilts her head to the ground, kicking at an invisible fault in the concrete. 

“It’s about Lydia.”

Suzie blinks, letting the new information sink in fully. “Okay,” she says, hesitant. “Go on.”

“She knows,” Arri snaps. Immediately, she seems to catch herself, closing her eyes for a second. 

The breath she releases through her nose is deliberate and barely-restrained, bursting at the seams with something indescribably tense. “Lydia knows,” she says, “that I like Jewels.”

Ah.

Well, it’s not a good thing, not by any means, but it’s not nearly as bad as what Suzie’s overactive imagination had been able to conjure up in the minutes it had taken her to walk here, and even in the brief interlude between ‘it’s about Lydia’ and ‘she knows.’

Suzie swallows. “Oh,” she says slowly, and she doesn’t have to fake the concern that laces its way through her tone. “That’s… pretty bad, yeah.” 

Arri doesn’t respond right away. She’s not looking at Suzie, she’s studying the sidewalk like it has the answers to some puzzle she’s hellbent on solving. She’s got what looks like a leaf from one of the surrounding trees in her hands, or at least what used to be a leaf before it had been methodically torn into tiny, ruthless shreds. Her whole frame thrums with an unspoken tension, shoulders taut and brow slightly furrowed.

“Did you tell her?”

Suzie’s so shocked she nearly doesn’t process the question. “Huh?”

“Did you–”

“No?” Her brain’s had a second to catch up now, a chance to alert the rest of her body to what’s going on. “Arri, what the fuck? Are you being serious right now?”

Strangely enough, Suzie raising her voice has Arri calming down slightly, some of the tension in her shoulders evaporating. “Kinda,” Arri says. “I don’t know if I can really see you doing that, but–”

“I wouldn’t,” Suzie cuts her off, incredulous. “Ever.”

Arri regards her with those intently dark eyes. “Yeah. Okay.” She runs a hand along her ponytail, sweeping it in front of her shoulder. “Just, like, thought I’d check. I know you guys are close.”

Suzie makes a conscious effort to lower her metaphorical hackles. “She’s one of my best friends,” she says. “But–”

She falters a bit under the weight of what she’d been about to say. But what?

But so are you, now.

“–I don’t go around spilling people’s secrets.” It’s not the smoothest save, but it will have to do. Suzie clears her throat. “Not even to Lydia and Kori. Swear on my life.”

Arri waves her off. “I believe you,” she says. “Like I said, just… had to check.” She sighs again, heavy with frustration. “Lydia said no one had to tell her. She said it was obvious to someone like her, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.”

The wheels on Suzie’s train of thought are whirring to life again, logic taking over as the sting of Arri’s earlier question begins to fade. “So you’re worried that Jewels is gonna catch on?”

“No.” Arri’s answer is straight to the point. “Well, I guess that could happen, but I’m more… worried,” Arri says, lip curling as if she resents even admitting to such an emotion, “about what other people might say. Around her, or to her face. You know how people can be, they’ll say anything if it will make people pay attention to their sorry asses.”

Suzie can’t argue with that. “Yeah,” she agrees reluctantly. “Yeah, they totally will. Okay. I see what you mean. And– remind me, why is it such a bad thing if she does hear it from someone?”

“Because that was never the plan.” With a flick of those pointed claws, the leaf shreds go scattering unceremoniously to the ground. “The plan was to tell her at the last game of the season. After we win the last game of the season, ideally. That’s been the plan this entire time, remember?”

She does, of course she does. “Right, but–”

“But what?” Arri interrupts. “There’s no but. She has to hear it from me, not from some attention-seeking bitch. That’s not the same thing.”

Suzie says nothing.

“I have to tell her everything. The letters, and how it’s been me this entire time, and how long I’ve felt this way about her… It’s been so long, Suzie.” Arri’s voice has taken on a different edge. Not so sharp and slicing. More rough, bordering on desperate. “Way too long for this to not end exactly how I– how we always wanted it to.”

That. Right there, that part at the end. 

It feels like a deliberate reminder, like Arri somehow knows and she’s prodding at the hollow ache that’s already sitting heavy in Suzie’s bones, gnawing at her nerves. Exactly how we wanted. Because we both wanted this, remember? You signed up for this, remember? 

Suzie’s being too quiet, or the expression on her face betrays her doubt, because there’s a shift in Arri’s demeanor. She seems to deflate, and there’s nothing performative about it. Her shoulders are rounded, her lipstick is mostly faded, and up close the eyeliner can’t do as much to make her intimidating, imposing, untouchable. It might be the smallest she’s ever looked.

“One more letter, Suzie,” she says, too quickly and nearly stumbling over her words. “You don’t need to tell me what to say. I’m just gonna, like, tell her I want to reveal who I am, and ask her to meet me somewhere people from school won’t see us. I even thought of a place to do it. Seriously, I– I’ve figured it all out. I just need it to be with the same handwriting and paper so she knows it’s the same person.” 

Arri looks down at her, with so much plaintive desire it’s actually hard to maintain eye contact. “I’ll pay you. Same as before, or… more. If you want.”

Right. Payment.

Because that’s what Suzie’s been getting out of this crazy scheme, after all. That’s Arri holding up her end of the transaction. Which is what this had all started as, of course, just a transaction. Another one of Suzie’s usual jobs, except instead of writing someone’s Macbeth analysis she’s been writing love letters, and gambling with something very different than just her academic record.

Two things, about this:

First, Suzie couldn’t care less about the money. 

She can see that Arri is serious about paying her, she can only imagine the exorbitant amounts of money she could probably bargain for right now if that was a concern of hers, but it’s not. It’s not really about the money at all, frankly, hasn’t been for a while. It’s equal parts weird and hurtful that Arri thinks that money could even be a factor in this discussion, if Suzie could ever bring herself to admit that.

Not to mention the second thing, which is a fair bit more problematic, because it’s that realization is starting to sink into her like a bitter winter chill. 

It’s a chill that seeps in stealthily, one you might not even notice before it’s too late. Arri’s asking for one more letter, one more chance to slip into this familiar disguise so she can ask Jewels to meet her somewhere face to face. (That’s Suzie’s fingers going numb.) Jewels will show up and find Arri waiting for her, ready to spill everything, a confession on the tip of her tongue. (Her lips, starting to tint blue from the cold.)

And regardless of how Jewels reacts, good or bad, whether she turns Arri down or lets herself be swept off her feet right then and there– no matter what happens, Suzie slips away unnoticed. No matter what happens, she leaves this unaffected, the only remaining hints of her presence concealed within the letters themselves. The ink from her pen, the neat script of her penmanship, all written on the sheets of paper from the bottommost drawer in her desk. 

That’s the ice creeping into her bloodstream, the frozen crystals stifling her heartbeat until it’s snuffed out completely. The level of sensation that only comes from confronting a difficult truth, made all the more devastating by the fact that you’d known it deep down the entire time. 

“Um.” Suzie clears her throat. It’s suddenly impossible to look anywhere near Arrietty’s face. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Suzie–”

“I’m not saying no,” Suzie says hastily. “I just… I want you to do what makes the most sense.” She chews on her lip distractedly, jaw working as her thoughts race ahead. “I mean, you were just talking about sticking to the plan. Don’t you think it would be better to do that? Do it after your big game, like we said?”

Arri doesn’t budge. “The game isn’t for another week.”

“You’ve waited for two whole months already,” Suzie says, just low enough to be conspiratorial, still urgent enough to be persuasive. Her voice is warping into something she barely recognizes, her heart is pumping like she’s on a rollercoaster, but she pushes on. “What’s one more week? Wouldn’t you rather–”

“Five.”

“...huh?”

“Five months,” Arri says blankly. “Not two.”

It’s not what she’s expecting to hear. Suzie’s thrown off her rhythm, jarringly pulled out of the script she’d constructed in her head (complete with various ways Arri could respond, different turns the conversation could take, all leading to the destination she’s been doing her best to steer them in). 

Confused, she takes a second to reply. “Arri, we wrote the first letter in March.”

“Yeah, I know.” Arri’s suddenly being very, very quiet. She’s never this quiet, Suzie thinks. 

Arri takes in a shaky breath like it hurts her. Maybe it does. “I never told you about New Years, did I?”

Not in the script. Not in the script. Not in the script.

“No,” Suzie says. Fingertips numb, lips blue, heartbeat frozen in time. “I don’t think you did.”

Arri looks like she might start swaying on her feet. Suzie wonders if she should be getting ready to catch her before she hits the ground.

“It was over winter break,” Arri forces out, with a fair amount of difficulty. “We were staying in this cabin in the mountains. Sam’s family owns the cabin, and every year Sam and Jewels and a bunch of Sam’s friends– you know Sam and Jewels are cousins, right?”

No, Suzie hadn’t known that, but Arri doesn’t wait before going on.

“Yeah. Every year they go up to that cabin during break, and this year Jewels invited me to this New Year’s Eve party they were throwing, and…”

“And?”

Arri closes her eyes.

“She kissed me.”

Slowly, Suzie feels her jaw fall open.

“She kissed me,” Arri says again, breathless, as if it’s even remotely possible Suzie hadn’t heard her loud and clear the first time. “On– when the countdown hit zero. We were both kind of high, I don’t even know if she remembers it, but she kissed me and neither of us have ever brought it up and… yeah. That was five months ago.”

Suzie barely registers the rest of what Arri’s saying. There’s a roaring in her ears that threatens to drown out everything else, everything except for those three little words that have seared themselves painfully into the forefront of Suzie’s memory. 

She kissed me.

She kissed you? Suzie wants to repeat, stupidly. Over and over. Until she gets a different answer, until Arrietty tells her she’s somehow misunderstood. Or that there’s an alternate way those words can string together, some important clarification that completely changes their meaning. 

It never comes. Suzie never gets a clarification, or a correction, or the jostle to her shoulder that will wake her up from this frighteningly realistic dream. There’s only her and Arrietty and the unsettled silence that follows a divulgence bigger than either of them cares to acknowledge, the kind of thing you’re really not supposed to admit standing next to the parking lot behind your high school on a Thursday afternoon.

“Suzie,” Arri mutters, “say something.”

Suzie clenches her jaw, hard.

All at once, it’s too much. She can feel the beginnings of a headache starting to press at the base of her skull and it’s too bright, there’s too much open space around them and all she knows is that she can’t be here anymore. She has to be somewhere else, preferably somewhere enclosed and absolutely somewhere very far from this conversation.

“I– yeah,” Suzie says. Clumsily. All wrong. She shakes her head and tries again: “Sorry. Um, okay? I can’t believe you never told me about this, holy shit.”

Arri picks at her nails. “Didn’t feel like it.”

And, well, okay. Okay, that might be her final straw. Suzie stands, brushing herself off. “Alright,” she blurts. “Listen, I have to go, okay? I–”

“What?” Arri demands, panicked. “Where are you going?”

“Home.” She tightens her grip on her bag. “I have a ton of stuff I need to get done by tonight. I– I just remembered.”

All the theatre and performance she’s done in her life and she still can’t deliver this line believably, not when it actually matters. Arri doesn’t look convinced. “Are you sure it can’t wait?”

Suzie’s already starting to back away. “Yeah. Like I said, it has to be done by tonight.” 

Arri takes a step after her, and for one terrifying moment Suzie thinks Arri’s going to try to grab at her arm, physically stop her from leaving. Wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Her lungs seize up at the very idea of it. 

“The letter,” Arri says quietly, and if she were to go any lower it would be a whisper. For Arri, it’s the equivalent of groveling. “The letter, will you–?”

“Yes,” Suzie hears herself say, in a voice that is not her own. Anything to get her out of here. Anything to get her home, as far away as possible from Arri and she kissed me. “Yeah. Not tonight, though, I’m–”

“Busy, yeah, yeah.” The breeze ruffles through Arri’s hair, sending those few strands rippling across her face, catching in her lashes, but she makes no move to brush them away. She’s staring at Suzie like she’s a wonder, a four leaf clover, a shooting star. It makes Suzie’s skin crawl. She hates it, fuck, she needs to get out of here. 

“Tomorrow, then?” Arri asks. The gleam in her eyes is sickening.

Suzie swallows the bile rising in her throat. “Yeah,” she croaks, turning on her heel. “Tomorrow.”

Then she’s walking briskly away, towards her car in the far corner of the parking lot, before the lump in her throat becomes too hard to continue speaking around. Before Arri can see the tears in her eyes that are turning the world blurry, the tears that spill down her cheeks the moment her face is hidden from view.

She walks all the way to her car, waits until she’s sitting in the driver’s seat with the door slammed shut before she drags her sleeve harshly across her face, letting out a single frustrated sob. 

Most of the next day is spent putting up a front, to varying degrees of success. She sits in her classes and does her best to at least pretend she’s paying attention. She takes a quiz in math, and fervently hopes her teacher won’t think she’s cheating with how often she glances around the room, jumping between the clock and the whiteboard and the backs of other students’ heads. The need for constant movement is insatiable. When looking around isn’t enough anymore, she resorts to bouncing her heel under her desk.

Lunch is torturous, to no one’s fault but her own. She’s back with Kori and Lydia, very deliberately facing away from the tables where she knows Jewels and Arri normally sit.

They’re her closest friends for a reason, they don’t ask her why she’s sitting with them again suddenly after over a week straight of eating lunch at a different table, but Suzie also can’t really keep up with a conversation right now and it’s kind of painfully obvious. She’s mostly eating her lunch in silence while half-listening to their nonsense, giving a weak laugh when she manages to catch one of them saying something funny.

“Are you sure you’re good?” Lydia asks her, in between bites of her sandwich. It’s about the third time she’s asked, each more genuinely worried than the last.

Suzie nods. “Didn’t get much sleep last night,” she says. Which is true, because she can’t lie to Lydia. Not now. Not after yesterday.

“Okay.” Lydia reaches over, gives her shoulder a squeeze. “Are we still on for movie night tomorrow? My house?”

For Lydia, only Lydia, Suzie will stomach a smile. A real one, as uncomfortable as it is. “Of course, yeah.”

“Guys,” Kori cuts in, “we should totally have a Despicable Me movie marathon, okay, hear me out–”

Lydia’s already cackling, slapping playfully at Kori’s arm. “No! Absolutely not. If we are doing any marathon it will be the entire Conjuring series. I have been talking about this for years. Years!”

“Babe, I would rather die. Hand over my heart, I would rather die.”

“Okay, well, I’m not watching those abhorrent little yellow things run around for four or five movies straight. I am anti-Minion, I’m coming out as Minion-phobic right now.”

(And it’s almost enough to make Suzie feel normal again. So close.)

Suzie takes it back. Lunch isn’t torture, because the last few minutes of her fifth period are the real definition of torture. 

It’s close enough to the end of the year that her French teacher has stopped really caring, and she’s ended the lesson early to retreat to her desk, leaving her students to talk amongst themselves until the bell rings. Suzie lets herself get lost in the ambiguous chatter, wishes it would pull her in more, distract her from the clock. Tick-tick-ticking away. Marching her ever closer to her last class, to English and Ms. Visage. 

To Arrietty, and everything she hasn’t been letting herself think about today for fear of what will happen when she does.

The bell rings. Suzie gets up with everyone else, walks out surrounded by people and finds herself in the hallway, swarmed with movement and overlapping conversation.

Her muscle memory knows the way to Ms. Visage’s classroom like the back of her hand. It’s a path she takes every school day. She just needs to start walking, to lift one foot and put it in front of the other and repeat.

It’s just that she doesn’t know if she can.

The thought of facing Arrietty right now makes her feel dizzy and unbalanced, her face too hot and her insides too cold. She’s on a precipice, weighed down by a strong sense of impending doom, set to pull her right over the edge and careening down into terrible nothingness.

Suzie’s never skipped class before.

But the weight, there’s still the weight. It’s solid and unfamiliar and it doesn’t belong there, but it’s there all the same. Getting heavier with each moment she’s still standing here, urging her into action. Do something before it’s too late.

To get to Ms. Visage’s room, she’d take this hallway to the right.

Suzie heads down the hallway to her left.

The library is nearly empty. 

Almost no one has a study hall as their sixth, and if they do, they surely aren’t spending it in the library. The only people around are the librarians, a few students likely waiting for their parents or for the bus, and the student volunteers who reshelve the books.

Suzie heads for a table in the back, where she won’t be bothered. Her time is limited; her vision is narrowed down to a singular tunnel, a laser-focused beam of intent.

She pulls her notebook from her bag and rips a sheet of paper out, not caring to make sure it tears perfectly along the perforated line. She fishes roughly around for a pencil– it doesn’t matter which one as long as it works, god, this is taking too long. 

Pencil to paper, and everything else melts away.

Dear Jewels, she writes. 

There’s so much I still want to know about you, and there’s so much I want to tell you in return, and I worry that we won’t have time for any of it and it makes me feel so trapped I can hardly breathe.

It makes me nervous to say that. Not because I don’t trust you, but because I do trust you. I don’t know if it makes any sense to trust someone you’ve only ever talked to through letters. I really can’t explain it. I think it’s something about the way you respond to the things I say, like you get what I mean even if I can’t explain it perfectly. Sometimes I think you’re the only person who’s ever really seen me.

Impulsively, she wants to cross out that last sentence. Her eraser hovers above it, conflicted. 

She keeps it in. 

I’ve also been thinking about what you said a couple letters back. About Icarus, and flying too close to the sea. It would have been just as bad as flying too close to the sun, wouldn’t it? Maybe it wouldn’t have been as terrifying, maybe he wouldn’t have had as far to fall, but he still would have drowned. The story ends the same either way.

I guess looking at it that way, you could say Icarus made the better choice. If he was always doomed to fall, in any version of the story, at least he got to fly as fast and far and high as he wanted to. At least he went out in a beautiful tragedy, blinded by happiness, rather than letting fear prevent him from enjoying the few brief moments of flight he was granted.

The first text from Arri, not even twenty minutes into sixth period, startles her so badly she almost drops her pencil.

Arri: Where are you

The fact that she’s willing to risk Ms. Visage’s wrath to send a text in class… Suzie doesn’t know what to do with that. She pushes her phone off to the side, but doesn’t turn it face down. 

She keeps writing. Through the hand cramps, through the moments where her brain draws a complete blank and she just sits there for a while, debating whether to tear the whole thing up and start over from scratch. She doesn’t even know if what she’s writing makes sense, and she can’t bring herself to read it back and check. There’s no looking back at all, there’s only forging onward as fast as she can think of the words to write. No more second guesses. She’s got one last shot and it’s this, here, now.

Her phone, sitting on the table inches away, continues to buzz with text notifications. Suzie doesn’t pick up her phone to read them properly, but she can see from split-second glances that it’s Arri, they’re all from Arri. Suzie come on, one message reads. And another: Check ur fucking phone. I know ur at school today WHERE ARE YOU.

She feels a pang of guilt at not responding, but she pushes it down. 

If everything she’s done is going to be under Arri’s name anyway, if her presence in this narrative is destined to be erased no matter what she does, then damn it all if she’s not going to take this last chance to be selfish. To spill her guts, the only way she knows how.

I remember when I first learned about Icarus’ myth, sometime around the sixth grade. I told my classmates it was one of the worst ones. It didn’t make any sense to me, because no one could ever relate to how incredibly stupid Icarus must have been, to ignore his father’s warnings like that.

Now I’m well past sixth grade, and I’m being presented with this myth once again, and all I can think about is how jealous some people must be of Icarus. Icarus, who found something he loved so much, something he couldn’t help but risk everything for. This passion, this all consuming feeling, that’s what motivated him to do what he did. 

And I can’t write about all consuming feelings without writing about you, Jewels. That desire that Icarus had to fly, to escape, to be free, even if it was just for a moment, that’s what these letters are to me. You’re They’re all I think about, they’re what motivates me. So much so that I understand why Icarus risked everything for the mere idea that maybe, just maybe, he’d get to feel the sun. 

Remember that first letter? 

Yours, 

Lune

The letter is done, and it’s not on the same kind of paper as the rest and the handwriting might be illegible in some places and she has a wall of notifications from Arri, but none of that can get in the way now. Suzie grabs her stuff and shoves it in her bag. She folds the letter into haphazard thirds and bolts for the door, ignoring the strange look she gets from a passing librarian.

She leaves the library four minutes before the scheduled bell, phone in hand and the letter tucked between two fingers, grateful the halls are blissfully empty. Half-watching where she’s going, she types out a rushed series of responses to Arri:

Suzie: sorry phone was on silent

Suzie: meet inside theatre

Suzie: be there in 5

It’s by the grace of the universe that she reaches Jewels’ locker in the nick of time. Her hands are unsteady and she’s breathing hard, her heart is pounding out the rhythm of her anxiety at being caught, of being too late.

The letter slips from her fingers into the vent of Jewels’ locker exactly as the bell rings, announcing the end of the school day. 

Done.

The exhale she lets out isn’t quite a sigh of relief, but it’s cathartic all the same. She can breathe a little easier.

Whatever happens next, whatever comes of the incredibly impulsive thing she’s just done— it’s all out of her control. What’s done is done, for better or for worse.

Catharsis is often short lived. Jewels’ locker is nowhere near the theatre building, so the walk takes a good few minutes, with a bit of extra time to account for squeezing through the people starting to pour out of classrooms. It’s time that she spends alone with her thoughts, which is something she really doesn’t particularly need or want at this moment.

All too soon, the pale, imposing brick of the Performing Arts Center looms above her. She’s facing down one of the side entrances, the ones that are usually always unlocked right after school hours. She puts a hand on her chest, trying to catch her breath.

Suzie knows what she’s supposed to do. Walk in there. Accept her fate, whatever that may be. She’ll fulfill this last promise she’s made, finish her part of the deal, and then she can move on from this entire crazy scheme and wash her hands of it altogether, if she so chooses.

She doesn’t even bother, at this point, wondering why that doesn’t make her feel anything close to happy.

Suzie pushes open the door.

It swings shut behind her, the mechanical click-thud echoing up into the high ceilings. Arrietty’s waiting for her, sitting on the edge of the stage, and when she hears Suzie come in her head shoots up immediately.

“Oh my god,” she says, loudly, too loudly– “there you are.”

Suzie gives her a humorless smile, making her way along the front row of seats. “In the flesh.” 

Arri doesn’t laugh. Suzie hadn’t expected her to. “Why weren’t you in class?”

Suzie slings her bag onto the stage and hoists herself up with both hands planted, a motion that’s usually second-nature for her. Today, it just feels clunky and unnatural. “I had to finish something,” she says. “It’s not important.”

Arri gets to her feet; Suzie follows her lead, giving herself something to do by wandering over to inspect the painted wooden set.

She’s not entirely sure what they’re doing. She’s not sure she could explain to some unknowing onlooker why they’re standing here alone on the stage, when they could be doing this anywhere else. What she does know is the guilt and the nerves and the stress have tangled with each other inside the hollow of her chest, snarled and matted beyond the point of no return.

And the fact that she’s now up on stage, her stage, where it feels almost like there’s an invisible audience watching them… isn’t helping in the slightest.

“...Are you seriously not gonna tell me?”

It’s all Suzie can do not to gawk at her in disbelief. “Um,” she says, tension bleeding out of her in waves. “No? I wasn’t aware you were my parent chaperone, or something.”

Arri frowns, but it’s more confused than anything else. “Okay, chill. I’m just asking ‘cause you never miss class, so I thought maybe, like, something happened.” 

Suzie runs her finger over a line of painted-on red bricks, the dried acrylic leaving a rusty hue on her skin. “Okay, well, it’s nothing you need to know about,” she says. She’s not proud of how impatient it comes out.  

And oh, how the tables have turned. Oh, how humiliatingly ironic how much the roles have reversed. Suzie, overly snappy and clamming up, and Arri relentless in her pursuit. 

“This is stupid,” Arri tosses out. “I don’t understand why you won’t just tell me.”

“I don’t need to tell you everything,” Suzie bites, whirling around. Then, on a streak of running her mouth, on pure impulse: “You know, kind of like how you didn’t tell me Jewels kissed you?” 

(Another rule of acting, and of performance in general. If you’ve made a mistake, you don’t let it show on your face. You don’t let the audience know.)

It stuns Arri into neutrality, for a heartbeat, but then the scowl is back and harder than before. Molten lava, hardening into stone. “There wasn’t really a reason to tell you.”

“There wasn’t– do you even hear yourself, Arri?” Suzie’s yelling now, but she doesn’t care. She’s ignoring the part of her brain telling her to stop, she’s letting her emotions take over, she’s not being rational. “She kissed you. Jewels kissed you and you didn’t think to mention that in maybe one single conversation?”

“Okay, it’s not that big of a deal,” Arri says, scathing. Her defensive walls are all the way up. “Friends kiss all the time, grow up.”

Suzie should know better, ultimately, than what she does next. 

She steps closer, and looks right into Arrietty’s face. “You,” she nearly spits, “are the one who needs to grow up.”

Arri’s expression goes slack with shock.

It’s not enough. Suzie wants to take hold of her own hair and pull, hard, until she can feel something rip and tear and break. “She likes you! She’s liked you back this entire goddamn time, and we could have saved ourselves this whole ordeal if you could just be mature enough to take a hint!” 

But now Arri’s had her moment to recover, and she’s ready. She takes her own fearless step into Suzie’s shadow, bringing them truly face to face. “I’m telling you,” she growls. “A kiss by itself means nothing. Genuinely nothing.”

Suzie’s not thinking anymore. The words are just spilling out unbidden, water from a crack in the dam that’s widening by the second. “God, you’re full of shit. That isn’t true.”

“It is true! I could kiss you right now and it wouldn’t mean anything!”

“Oh, really? Do it, then.”

She says it before she can think better of it, before she can grab the words out of the air and snatch them back and swear up and down that she hadn’t really meant them. There’s no time for any of that.

There’s also no time for much else, because Arri’s lips are connecting with her own and oh, oh, okay. Jesus.

Give a girl some warning first, will you?

Arri kisses exactly like Suzie would expect her to. One of her hands cradles Suzie’s jaw while the other buries itself in fiery curls, and for a brief and blinding second all Suzie knows is Arri. Arri’s perfume and the soft skin of her palms and the sweet, hot press of her mouth. 

Fitting, Suzie thinks, in a fleeting moment of clarity in between the fireworks exploding on the inside of her brain. The way Arri kisses like it’s a competition and she’s trying to win. Like she’s got a point to prove.

Then it’s over just as quickly. Suzie pulls away right as Arri lets her go, opening her eyes and gasping for air. 

“Told you,” Arri says under her breath, unbearably smug. “Nothing.”

There’s that telltale click-thud of the door closing, from somewhere off to the side. They turn to face it at the same time.

It’s like something out of a movie, but what plays out isn’t like the movies at all. 

There’s no dramatic lighting change, no crackle of lightning that splits the sky outside. There’s no slow motion. Time continues to tick right along at the same speed it always has, because it has no idea that for three girls in a small town on their high school campus, the world has just simply stopped.

There’s only Jewels Sparkles, and her wide brown eyes. 

Staring at them with the type of hollowness that can only be carved out by the unforgiving knife of betrayal.

Suddenly, it’s a scramble to get away from each other, to take a hasty step back. Jewels isn’t saying anything, but she’s glancing between Suzie and Arri and back to Suzie again, shoulders rising and falling with every shallow breath. Suzie’s stomach curls with dread. 

 “Jewels,” Arri says, frantic and disbelieving, “no. We’re not—“

Jewels makes an awkward sound, sort of a laugh that comes out wrong, all disfigured and more of a cough. She’s not looking at either of them anymore. “No,” she says, finally. Her forced smile is trying to tell them everything is fine, but there’s a strain, a discordance in her usually musical voice that’s very loudly telling them otherwise. “No, it makes sense.”

Suzie doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean. She steals a glance at Arri, who seems every bit as lost as she is. “What makes sense?”

No matter how many times it happens, Suzie will never get used to the feeling of having Jewels’ attention focused singularly on her. “You… hated each other.” Jewels’ gaze bores into her, and despite the nightmarish circumstances Suzie’s heart still gives a wayward flutter. God, she’s so fucked. “You didn’t get along at all, and then suddenly you did and we were taking Suzie to Crystal’s party and she was sitting with us at lunch like she had just always been there.” 

Jewels lets out another desperate laugh, this one closer to convincing but still nothing like the real thing. “And I just kept thinking, no, there has to be a reason. There has to be something I’m not seeing.” 

She shakes her head, the corners of her lips tight in a pained smile. “I get it now.” 

It’s so tremulous, so tightly-strung and fraying at the edges, just on this side of not falling to pieces completely, which makes Suzie feel downright awful but also a little secretly, guiltily hopeful. It could mean she doesn’t like the idea of them together, of Arri and Suzie. 

It could mean she wants one of them for herself. Suzie just has no way of knowing who.

“Jewels,” Suzie starts, at the same time that Arri steps forward, effectively taking the reins.

“It’s not that,” Arri says firmly. “I know what you saw, but me and Suzie aren’t–” She trails off, gesturing wildly. “Anything. We’re not anything, we’re just friends and that’s it. Promise.”

All Suzie can do is nod her assent. Yes, this is true. They’re just friends, as hard as that is for anyone to believe when Suzie’s pretty sure she has Arri’s lipstick smudged on her right now.

“But, um…” Arri falters. She turns over her shoulder, to Suzie’s helpless confusion. “There is something else I need to tell you.”

Oh my god.

Oh my god, Arri’s doing it now.

Suzie hopes that it doesn’t show on her face how rapidly her hopes are plummeting, free-falling through empty space. 

This is it. She doesn’t have the week that stands between them and the last soccer game, she doesn’t even have whatever amount of time it would have taken to write and send that last letter together. She’s not going to get a chance to let it go slowly, this twisted little charade of sorts that she’s been letting herself indulge in against all her better judgements. 

Lune. This masquerade that’s never been hers, that was always going to belong to someone else in the end, in a way that had once seemed exhilarating and is now just excruciatingly painful.

Arri takes another step towards the edge of the stage. Cautious, and cautiously hopeful, in every movement. “Jewels, those letters you were getting. For, like, a month or so? You remember, right?”

Suzie closes her eyes.

“It was me,” Arri says, her voice coming out strangely warped. “They were from me.”

And this is the part where Suzie might be a bad friend, or maybe the worst friend on the planet, because she can’t bring herself to watch Jewels for her reaction. She doesn’t want to see the wide eyes that slowly start to sparkle as Jewels’ face lights up with a radiant smile, she doesn’t want to see the shock turned confusion turned overwhelming jubilance as Jewels processes what Arrietty’s just said, what her best friend has just confessed to her. 

“...What?”

Suzie doesn’t dare to wonder. Does Jewels sound like that just because she’s surprised? Is that really distress, or is it Suzie’s imagination?

Jewels is motionless. “What– what do you mean?”

“I don’t know how else to say it,” Arri breathes. “The letters were from me. All of them.”

A pause, then, before she pulls the rug out from under Suzie’s feet yet again, for the second time this afternoon. “From us, technically.”

Suzie turns to her so fast she nearly gets whiplash. Partially in disbelief, partially to make sure she’d heard that right.

First kissing her. Now this.

Arri continues, seemingly unaware. “Suzie, um– she helped me write them, you know I’m not good with words, or whatever. That’s what we’ve been doing, that’s why we started hanging out.”

There. It’s all out in the open now, as much as it can be coming from Arri, and it’s Jewels’ move. 

The theatre is alive, it’s always been alive, but in this moment it pauses and waits for Jewels’ reaction. The curtains and the lights and the rows and rows of seats, they’re all holding their breath in torturous anticipation. Suzie would hold her breath, too, if she could just remember how to control her own lungs again.

“I don’t understand…” Jewels shakes her head. “I don’t understand why you would do this.”

And if Suzie’s heart drops, hearing that of all things out of Jewels’ mouth– she can’t even imagine what Arrietty must be feeling right now.

“Jewels,” Arri says. Pleads.

“Arri,” Jewels breathes in return. Her eyes are fixed on the ceiling somewhere above them both, a hand lodged in her dark hair. “No. You don’t even understand. Those letters, I looked forward to them every single week. Do you have any idea…”

Her voice shakes too badly to keep going, and she drops her head with a deep inhale before raising it to try again. “You know how people are. With me. You know that half the people I talk to at school don’t even want to be my friend, you know they just want everyone to see them with me and think they’re fucking— cool or popular or whatever,” she chokes out. “And I didn’t know who I was writing to, I had no idea what they looked like or whether they were a creep or a stalker, but at least I knew they weren’t like that. At least I knew they were talking to me because they actually wanted to.”

Jewels lifts a hand to her face, wipes away a tear that’s trailed its way down to her chin. “And now I’m finding out none of it was real,” she says. Her lip wobbles as she addresses Suzie and Arri, respectively: “And I trusted you, and you’re supposed to be my best friend.”

The worst of that blow isn’t even directed at Suzie, but it still feels like being punched directly below the ribs. Right where protection ends and vulnerability begins.

“Jewels,” Arri starts, moving toward her, “no, no, no. Please. That’s not what’s going on at all.”

Jewels is blinking down at the floor, long lashes casting shadows over tearstained cheeks. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“No, seriously. Please, listen, if you just let me–”

“No.” In a flurry of motion, Jewels surges forward and pushes something Suzie can’t make out into Arri’s outstretched hands, so forcefully that Arri stumbles on her feet. “Here, I don't want this. Keep it.”

Jewels is gone before Suzie fully knows what’s happening, the heels of her boots thumping on the carpeted floor. The side door shuts mercilessly behind her, the same door she’d come in through, sinking in with a cold finality. 

It takes Suzie a while to remember she’s actually present, that this isn’t just a horrific trainwreck of a scene that she’s witnessed happen to some stranger. She’s expected to do something now, to say something that makes sense. Be helpful.

Arri’s back is facing her, so it’s hard to get a read on body language. Suzie takes a few paces toward her, uncertain. The feral animal likeness is back and stronger than ever.

“Hey,” Suzie starts. She’s walking on eggshells, feather-light. “I’m sorry.”

But when Arri turns to face her, she’s not a crying mess. She doesn’t look like someone who’s just been walked out on and grossly, tragically misunderstood by the person who means more to them than possibly anyone else in the world.

She’s got a piece of paper in her hand, a piece of lined notebook paper that had clearly been folded into thirds until quite recently, judging by the all-too-familiar creases.

Thirds.

Notebook.

Familiar.

“Suzie,” Arri says, low and ragged. “What the fuck is this?”

Chapter Text

“Suzie.”

During some random free period in ninth grade, a fourteen year old Arrietty first picked up what would become her favourite book. Now, eighteen year old Arrietty will tell you she doesn’t read books, she might even say they’re boring and roll her eyes a little, but four years prior, she read this book. 

This book, which was small and unassuming, but which contained hundreds of pages of writing about Greek mythology, strangely enough. She remembers flipping through the pages, before glancing around to make sure no one saw her apparent interest. 

It was old, she discovered, almost like a fossil, and it was from the far away year of nineteen-sixty-two. The pages were brown and chalky, and the actual writing looked like someone had used a type writer. Altogether, it was so old and different and intriguing to her. 

The only story she can still recall goes like this: a titan named Atlas teaches mankind how to map the stars. He excels in things like geography and navigation, and he is named the father of all astronomy. But he is a titan. He will always be a titan. He will always be different. This is a fact he cannot change, so he leads the rest of his people in the battle against Zeus and the Olympians. 

They lose, and of course, they are punished. Atlas, who once worshipped the stars, is condemned to carry the heavens on his shoulders. He stands at the edge of the earth, far from every other living soul, and he endures. He sweats, he bleeds, and he endures.

“What the fuck is this?”

There is something to be said about endurance, about bleeding, when you are eighteen year old Arrietty, and you are holding a small piece of paper in your hands. One folded, precisely and exactly, into thirds. 

The slip of paper might as well be the heavens, that’s how weighed down she feels by it. It physically hurts to hold. All she can think to ask is why? 

Why is she holding this? Why did Jewels give it to her? Why did– why did Jewels leave? Why didn’t she believe her? Why– why didn’t this go as they planned it months ago? 

The truth is, Arri doesn’t know what she’s holding. Yes, she knows it’s paper. She knows what’s probably written on it. The last thing, something she’s absolutely certain of, is that she knows she didn’t send it. 

Suzie did. 

Arri’s never gotten the best grades, mostly because she doesn’t really care about a lot of the subjects she’s being taught, but this… she cares about this. In this way, this way that only applies to Jewels and Arri and the girl standing in front of her, she knows. It’s like she doesn’t even have to be told. 

She knows. Arri knows what happened. Fuck, she just doesn’t know why. Why Suzie sent it. What it means. What it means for their friendship. What it means for her heart, the same heart that’s been beating out of her chest since Lydia revealed what she knew. 

After a moment of just trying to breathe and think and feel human again, Arri looks up at Suzie for the first time after speaking. The other girl is frozen, eyes glued to the paper in her hand, like– fuck, like she’s been caught. 

“Suzie,” she hears herself say again. “Suzie, what is this?”

It’s somewhere between desperately, frantically wanting an explanation, and feeling herself realize actually, I don’t care about an explanation. It overtakes her brain slowly, this anger that she hasn’t felt in months. This hot, bubbling rage that hasn’t had any reason to make itself known until now. Until Suzie. Until someone who was supposed to be nice went behind her back and betrayed her like this. 

“Arri, listen–”

“No, actually, I won’t listen!” All she can hear is her own heart beating and blood rushing and lungs struggling to keep her alive but pushing through because what the fuck. “What the fuck, Suzie? Why did– why did you send another letter to Jewels without telling me? And don’t just… lie or try to talk your way out of it.”

What she doesn’t even consider revealing is that if Suzie did explain herself, if this was all an accident or a misunderstanding, she probably wouldn’t even listen to her. But, god, does she want to listen to her. She wants so badly for this to not be happening right now, but it is and now the only thing left to do is blow it up. The only thing she can do is blow things up, it’s the only thing her heart beats for besides Jewels. 

Suzie’s only going to get one chance to talk, she’s decided. One chance and then Arri never wants to hear her words ever again. 

“I didn’t–” It’s weird to see the other girl stutter. It’s like this situation has them on an even playing field, even though Arri knows that’s not the case. Suzie will always have the advantage when it comes to talking, but she’s also the one who’s done something wrong. Broken the rules. “I didn’t mean to go behind your back, writing more letters was–”

“Wait, wait, wait, fuck– letters?” Her ears must be lying to her. There must be some sort of toxic gas flowing into the room that’s causing her to hear this. There must be some explanation other than Suzie, of all people, stabbing her in the back– turns out, more than once! “How many did you write?”

“Um–”

“How many letters, Suzie?” She doesn’t know if she’s yelling, or if everything just feels loud right now. Silently, Arri begs her not to deflect or lie or run away. How many? 

“Fifteen.” 

The other girl’s words drip with guilt. 

Arri can’t think about it for longer than a second. She can’t think about Suzie writing those letters, and Jewels writing ones back. She can’t think about the smiles that most likely littered their faces, or the hearts Jewels probably left at the end of her notes. 

She just can’t wrap her head around it. 

“I don’t…” It’s hard not to punctuate her words with the frustrated groan she wants to let out. “I don’t understand. Why? Why did you keep writing to her?”

This feeling of you hurt me. You hurt me and now you won’t even own up to it. You hurt me and now I’m hurting you and you won’t even fight back. You won’t even explain yourself. It’s eating her up from the inside. 

Arri’s head hurts. It’s throbbing with pressure that will never be released. There’s no way she can yell hard enough. “Say something!” 

The shorter girl has been quiet until now. Just wanting to get yelled at, it seems. It’s unlike her, Arri knows that, but something changes. Suzie scrunches her face up, snapping just enough to cry out, “The same fucking reason you are!”

The clock on the wall stops ticking. The bottle of ink spills. Somewhere, on the football field clearly seen through the classroom window, the quarterback falls to the ground in agony. 

“What?” It doesn’t make any sense. It’s a joke, it’s a lie, it can’t be true. Suzie... no. “Are you kidding me? You expect me to believe that… you feel the same way as me?”

Suzie stays quiet, but she holds her ground, seemingly unable to continue looking down after saying what she just said. 

“You think we’re the same?” The words sting and claw at Arri’s throat, but she can’t stop. This pattern is too familiar, it’s the only thing she knows what to do at this moment. “You think you could ever feel what I feel for her?”

And that feeling in her chest is starting to burn now. It’s building up behind her eyes and her tongue and flowing into her hands. Arrietty starts to push her nails into her jeans, not even letting Suzie respond before she’s starting again. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Suzie?” 

And again. 

“You think you could ever have a chance with her? You?”

And again.

“You don’t even know her,” Arri spits, breathing now ragged and irrational. “You don’t know anything about her–”

“I don’t know her?” Suzie juts in, face contorted into something rotten and mean. “I don’t know her? At least I tried! At least I knew enough about her to come up with something on my own! At least I didn’t see her as some fucking trophy to pick up after a soccer game!” 

It feels like a knife. It feels like Suzie’s gone straight for blood, for bone. 

“If you think for a second–”

“I do think that, I think that because you don’t fucking tell anyone anything,” Suzie borderline snarls; she’s mad, now. “You don’t talk to her, or be there for her. You don’t even try, you think– you think you can just say something rude and flick your hair and be exempt from every human emotion besides this.”

“Don’t talk to me about being there for her, you–” Arri has to take a breath, there’s no way Suzie is telling her about being there for Jewels. “Do you have any idea what she went through in middle school? Any idea she had tumors on her fucking spine? How about any guesses who was there for her through all of that? Who stayed over at the hospital every night before school? I didn’t even have a way home, I had to walk so don’t– don’t fucking tell me about being there for her!” 

It’s somewhere between yelling and growling and exploding entirely, but that’s a place that Arri happens to know very well. Suzie’s the one in the dark right now. She’s the one that doesn’t know how to poke and prod and belittle someone to tears. 

The only thing Arri doesn’t know about this process is how she’s supposed to feel like a human afterwards. After it’s all over and every brick has been torn down and hurled at someone who was just becoming her friend. Her first real friend since meeting the very girl they’re fighting over all those years ago. 

“I know about her time in the hospital,” Suzie says, voice steady but rising like a flood, cool in its capability to drown her. “I know about her time in the hospital because she told me, Arrietty. She told me everything because she trusts me! She trusts someone she’s never met in person more than–” 

Arri clenches her fist again, unable to meet Suzie’s eye after that one. She doesn’t even need to hear the end of it to know what the other girl was going to say. 

But Suzie doesn’t get to take that one back. “No, say it. Say she doesn’t trust me, tell a fucking lie just to make yourself feel better about stabbing me in the back.”

“What am I supposed to say, Arrietty?” Suzie asks with a scoff. “I’m not supposed to bring up the fact that she told me a million times that she doesn’t think anyone really knows her? That she doesn’t think anyone really cares about her? You don’t think you’re included in that?”

I’m not included in that. I can’t be. Jewels is my best friend, she’d tell me. It stings. It nips at her eyes, hot and poisonous. God, if she starts crying right now–

“Do you really think you’re above everyone?” Suzie asks, but it doesn’t feel like a question. It feels like an answer. When she doesn’t respond, eyes still on the ground, Suzie adds a sort of realization: “You don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself, do you?”

It’s ironic, really, that she starts crying right now. Right at this moment, when Suzie’s at her worst and the two of them have stopped yelling. Arri feels the warmth flow down to her cheeks, dripping down onto her shirt. 

She meets the other girl’s eye, finally. “Go to hell, Suzie.” 

It’s quiet; it’s a forfeit. Arri breaks in every way she can. She can see now that Suzie’s eyes are a little wet, but it doesn’t look like anything serious. Why would it be? They were never friends.

Suzie doesn’t respond, so Arri does for her. She brings a hand up to her eyes, rubbing slightly to see just how much mascara she’s lost. It’s not much, actually, since she’s worn her waterproof stuff today. Fitting.

When she leaves, she doesn’t say goodbye. She just leaves Suzie standing there, rolling her eyes and shouldering her way out of the theatre. 

Arri’s slightly surprised she manages to grab her backpack from where it’s been hiding, slouched over by the door. It’s one swift movement, which takes about all the energy she has at the moment. Doesn’t matter, she just has to keep walking. Ignore everyone. That’s something she knows how to do. 

The hallway into the theatre turns into one that leads to an exit, so she takes it. She doesn’t entertain the idea that maybe Jewels is still there. In fact, she doesn't even think she wants Jewels to be there. She doesn’t want anyone there, she just wants the empty street to her house. She wants the trees, unchanging. Tall and looming and steady. Unaffected by Arri and her high school horror movie.

Her feet don’t let up, soon she’s seeing neighbourhoods instead of traffic lights. It’s only when she notices no one else is on the street, that she feels air rush into her lungs. It’s cold and harsh, like she’s stepped outside into a snowstorm; it’s a stark contrast from the human kindling she grew into earlier. 

And then, she stops. 

Arri’s feet freeze in place. She can’t walk another step forward, it seems. She looks down at her hands– they’re shaking. Why are they shaking? This only happens after a hard game, this only happens when she’s done well at something. Worked hard. Been rewarded. 

What's her reward this time? 

She scoffs out a laugh, and, for some unknown reason, it’s the salty kind. The kind wet with tears she didn’t know she still had. One of the only thoughts bouncing around in her head (besides, y’know, why and I hope a car hits me) is look at you. Look at you. You who worked so hard to be an enemy to everyone besides her. You who thought maybe you could be something else. Look where you ended up. Right back here. 

And the laughing continues. And the tears fall just the same. And she’s standing on the sidewalk, mere blocks away from her house, not knowing at all how she’s supposed to take the next few steps. The ground in front of her looks hollow, like if she even dares reaching forward, she’ll tumble to her death. 

In all honesty, Arri wishes she could just stand here forever. She wishes she could leave everything else behind and just focus on how the two most important people in the world to her can’t even look her in the eye anymore. She wishes she could let the darkening clouds swallow her up, spit her out like the rain, and leave her lying there in a puddle of herself.

But she can’t. She can’t, she’s got an essay she needs to start tonight. She’s got laundry to do before her mom gets home. She has tiny, obsolete little tethers to this planet that matter more than anything else right now. 

So Arri takes those few steps, takes her body to her doorstep but leaves her brain outside on the asphalt, and her heart is still somewhere in the theatre, wounded beat and all. 

The doorway to the house marks a sense of finality she doesn’t want to recognize, so she just opens up the door and ignores it. Arri ignores the door and the entrance and the shoe rack and the hallway to the dining room. And, most crucially, she ignores the way she’s still wearing her boots in the house as she pulls up a chair. 

Later. 

She’s sitting at her kitchen table, hands flat against the cold wood, body barely held up by the dining chair, and she doesn’t know whether to let her mind go or to hold it back from thinking anything at all. 

Thinking. Forming thoughts. Taking notes. Saying things out loud. Communication. How’re you so good at talking? English class. The back of the library. Rehearsal. Lipstick. Vodka soda. Kisses. Sweat. New Years. You’re the one who needs to grow up, Arrietty. 

Poetry and running away again and Suzie. Suzie, a name which now tastes sour on her tongue, a name that was on its way to being sweet. Suzie, who didn’t even ask before calling her Arri. 

When did she stop caring what Suzie calls her? 

God, how did this happen to her? How did she let this happen to her? She knows she’s done bad things– wrong things, but that divine retribution wasn’t supposed to come from Suzie. It wasn’t supposed to make Jewels cry. It wasn’t supposed to mess things up just as she was being good for once. 

She’s sitting at her kitchen table because if she goes into her room this all becomes real. If she goes into her room she’ll see a polaroid of Jewels, or a homework assignment covered in obnoxious red ink. 

If Arri goes into her room she’ll see her own notebook. One filled with attempts, with scratched out verses and miscellaneous words scribbled into margins. Words like atlas, sparkle, sun, wildflower, wanting, ambrosia, vermillion, monologue, cabaret, crimson, burning, and wound. Words she’s never shown anyone before and words no one should get to see, ever. Not after the girl who taught her those words hurt her worse than any person should ever be hurt in all the world. Not after the girl who made her believe in those words couldn’t even look at her. 

So she sits at the table, hands forming fists over and over again, and she tries to figure out what to do. What to do. What do you do when your head and your heart have gone away?

“Fuck!” She groans, covering her face with her hands. 

Miraculously, she gets about thirty seconds of grace before someone shouts back. “Why ‘fuck’?”

Arri huffs, throwing her hands down to her sides. “FUCK!”

The person who walks into the room is someone who isn’t unfamiliar, but Arri knows she shouldn’t be home this early. Usually Irene waits until at least late June to come home from university, something about how nice Seattle is during early summer. 

Her step-sister is snacking on a bag of unsweetened almonds (freak), and looking at her like she’s grown a second head. “Why?!”

“Because my life is fucking ruined forever and everyone hates me and wants me to die painfully!” She really doesn’t give a shit what Irene thinks of her and how annoying she’s being, because there’s no way her step sister is having a worse day than she is. 

“Okay, I don’t believe your life is ruined forever,” Irene says, swallowing some more disgusting almonds. “The other stuff makes sense, though.”

The sound she lets out must tell Irene not to poke the bear right now, because she changes her approach almost immediately. Her sister sits across from her at the table, reaching out to offer her some almonds. Arri scowls at the outstretched hand, but takes a couple anyway. 

“Take some almonds, child,” the older girl says, taking on a grandma-like voice. Irene is so weird. “They will heal you.”

“Fuck off.” Arri pushes the bag away, then turns the almonds over in her hands. “Not in the mood.”

Her step sister stares at her, eyes flickering over her face in an attempt to understand. Arri doesn’t think anyone could possibly understand her right now, but she knows that won’t stop Irene from trying.

“Why so rabid, baby Dubois?” 

Does she herself have the energy to stop Irene from trying? Honestly, probably not. 

“I’m not a Dubois.” She can feel herself getting mad again, so Arri puts the almonds on the table, picking at them instead of eating them. “Just ‘cause your gay ass dad married my mom doesn’t mean I’m one of you.”

You think we’re the same?

Arri’s getting mad again, and she’s not sure it’s toward Irene, even though her sister is the only other person in the room. The fire is building again. She can feel the flames licking at her hands, dancing in her throat. 

When she thinks of flames, well, she can only ever think of Suzie after all this. 

“‘Gay ass dad’ you have issues,” Irene says through a stuttery laugh. It should be funny. It’s not. “Why are you like this right now? Is it because of, like, school or something? Soccer?”

“No.”

“Did Jewels cancel on you?”

“No.” 

Irene hears the change in her tone, of course she does. She knows it’s about Jewels, she just doesn’t know what it is. Because Arrietty, who is apparently so obvious about these things, somehow still leaves people in the dark. Or maybe it’s her who’s still in the dark. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Irene says suddenly. She leaves the bag in the middle of the table. “Not to therapy speech you, but I’m gonna be around the house a lot. Might as well tell me things. If you want to.”

It’s nice of her. It’s warmer than things usually are between them, so the fire grows into something different. Something that almost seems manageable, if she really tries at this whole ‘self control’ thing. There’s ways she’s practiced, after years of getting into fights on the playground and stomping her way to time out in kindergarten. 

Ways like ignoring the flames. Throwing a blanket over it and walking away. Talking to your sister about something, even if it’s not what you really need to talk about. Breathing slowly, manually, until you forget. 

“I’m starting in the final.”

“Oh, shit, really?” Irene says, chewing and laughing at the same time. “Did all the other forwards drop dead or something?”

The breaking of the tension comes with relief. Like falling into bed after a long day. Like how that guy, Atlas, from the Greek myths will probably never get to feel, so maybe she should be grateful. 

“You are such a cunt, oh my god.” Despite her words, that actually manages to get a brief, exhale of a laugh out of Arri. God, she’s trying to be miserable here! “No, I’m playing really well. Everything in my life is going great.”

“Oh, I can tell,” Irene nods. “What, with the screaming ‘fuck’ and all that. Almost couldn’t tell you’ve been crying.”

Arri laughs once, breathily. “Yeah. I’m fine– I don’t need to talk about it.”

“Alright.” Irene looks skeptical, but she nods. 

She doesn’t want to talk about it, it’s true, but when Irene backs off, it feels sour. How many times must Arrietty get what she wants for it to finally feel like winning? It feels like a few months ago, it feels like things are getting bad again. 

It feels like all these things, but Arri herself doesn’t know how to feel. On one end, she’s filled with this anger, this boiling rage, hot from the sting of betrayal. On the other, she mourns. She mourns like she’s been robbed of something, something she wanted to cherish for the rest of her life, and she’s not just talking about Jewels. Nor is she talking about Suzie, no matter how much losing her hurt.

No, Arri mourns who she was just starting to become. The girl who was going to emerge on the other side of all this, alive and well. And she doesn’t blame Suzie for killing her, but she wants to, so bad. The truth is, blaming Suzie would be easy. She could even blame Jewels, but both of those ideas, no matter how convenient, just wouldn’t feel right. It’s like she can’t let herself feel that way, not even after what just happened. 

It’s so different, this sense of self control. It’s something that only emerges in the aftermath, once emotions have cooled down. But Arri is old enough to remember a time when this wasn’t the case. When she could explode and retreat back into old habits, not caring what casualties or ruins remain behind her.

But she cares now. She cares and she cares and she doesn’t know how to stop. How has all of this love entered her body without her even knowing? What happened to the girl she was? This longing is almost nostalgic, even though she knows how terrible things were before–

Before Suzie. 

There’s a certain set of scars you get when you grow up the way she did. When you hide yourself, and you put up a front that deters anyone from even attempting to try to find you. It’s not the most nourishing environment, but she got her warmth somehow. She found her sun. In the cold, dark castle of her own making, she found her sun. 

This analogy, she supposes, would liken her to a princess. Someone to be saved, even against her own will. She doesn’t even want to think about who would be the brave knight. Arri’s always hated those medieval stories, and they always end badly, don’t they?

So she’s ahead of the curve. This was never going to end well, she should just accept that now and get it over with.

At least she has the weekend to figure out what to do.

The days pass like a particularly difficult game of soccer. Arri forces her joints to move despite the exhaustion racking her body. She runs when she has to, shouts when she absolutely must, and falls to her knees when it’s over. Except it’s never over. This is her life now. 

Her life without Jewels. Her life without Suzie. Without her heart. 

It’s only been two days, if that, and she can already tell school is going to be hell. Why go there if Jewels isn’t going to talk to her? If Suzie and her little gang of misfits are just going to shoot her dirty looks? 

Of course, there’s also the possibility that Suzie’s told everyone her big secret. Even though she said she wouldn’t– ever. Arri doesn’t know what to believe anymore, she doesn’t know who Suzie is other than someone whose greatest strength is communicating. Suzie, who hid fifteen letters from her and made it look easy. Effortless. Like loving Jewels is something simple. 

Arri forms fists with her hands. It seems like that wound is still sore. 

Before she can stew too much in her own brain, something snaps her out of it: “Hey, we need milk, go get some.” 

It’s her mom from the kitchen, and maybe this is her second or third time asking, because she sounds impatient. She can definitely tell Arri’s acting weird, but she doesn’t complain when her daughter nods and grabs her wallet from her purse. “Thank you!”

The street outside their house is winding down for the day. It’s getting warm, as it always does during those dying months of spring. You can tell, there’s four separate families barbecuing on her street alone. 

Actually, the walk turns out to be nice. Who would’ve guessed that fresh air would matter so much to an athlete? Arri starts to get grateful that the corner store isn’t the closest to their house, that means she can stay out longer. Procrastinate existing in her own skin. She’s part of nature out here, she’s the wind and the leaves and the moon just starting to make itself known. 

She takes a breath in before she enters the small store. It’s filled with whatever a neighborhood like hers would need when driving to the grocery store feels like too much. On the walls by the till, there’s a small board of faces– thieves. People who got caught stealing. Arri briefly glances at the board before taking out her wallet to pay for the milk. 

The walk home feels like it goes by quicker. Something about having the path fresh in your mind speeds things up, Arri thinks she read that somewhere. Or maybe someone told her. She doesn’t have to guess who it was, now that she thinks about it.

By the time she gets to her front steps again, something on the porch catches her eye. 

It’s a small bundle– wait, it looks like envelopes.

Is this what she thinks it is? Arri steps forward, tentatively, and reaches for the bundle. However, before she can pick it up, she notices a small note, separate from the envelopes. It’s folded once, in half, and sealed with a small piece of tape. 

Arri knows, instinctively, that this isn’t from Suzie. So there’s only one person it could be, and she doesn’t know what on earth this note could say if that’s true. 

If it’s from Jewels, this note could save her life or tear it to shreds. It could say she never wants to see Arri again, or that she feels betrayed in the truest sense of the word. It could say that she always knew about her little crush, and that she ignored it because of how much it hurt her. It could say something along the lines of you hurt me worse than anyone ever has, and I don’t know if I can forgive you for that. I don’t know if I can forgive you for loving me. 

There’s a quiet, whispering, treacherous voice that adds: You loved me, but you loved me in the wrong way. You loved me selfishly. You loved me knowing how much it would hurt me, but you couldn’t stop because of how good it felt to finally feel something. To finally admit something. 

Coward. 

There’s something rotten in the way she hears Jewels’ voice in her head now. She knows her friend would never say these things to her. Jewels isn’t like that. Jewels has never been like that, in fact, it sounds like something Arri would say. They’re similar, but not that much. 

Is this mess important enough to put these hurtful words into the mouth of a girl who would never, ever say them? The answer lies in the folded paper in front of her. 

Slowly, Arri picks it up, and gently removes the piece of colourful washi tape. It must’ve been the only thing Jewels had laying around, she always liked using it in her journal. This specific tape is yellow, and it’s got angel wings spackled all over it, from what Arri can see. Anyway, no more hesitation, she opens the note and lets her eyes finally flicker along the delicate lines of ink.

These are yours, I figured you’d want them back. 

I’ll be at the game. Maybe we can talk after? 

- Jewels 

The slip of paper is so small, and Jewels’ handwriting is so rushed and imperfect, but Arri holds it like the sun. She holds it like it’s something meant to be treasured, because it is. Jewels went to her house. Jewels wants to talk about it.

Jewels gave the letters back to her. That must mean, on some level, she credits Arri more than Suzie, doesn’t it? She’s not wholly forgotten in this mess? Jewels is still her best friend? She still cares about her more than she cares about Lune? Whoever that actually is? Whether it’s Arri or Suzie or some blend of the two of them or someone who doesn’t exist anymore. 

(Someone who died, bloody and screaming in that theatre. Someone who was born when Arri did Suzie’s makeup and whenever Suzie took one of her ideas to heart. When Arri said la luna and Suzie said lune.)

So, she picks up the bundle of letters and she tucks the note from Jewels into her pocket with great care. The letters are held together with a piece of string, tied delicately around the center, and it’s the most Jewels way of returning something that was, apparently, very dear to her. Arri almost doesn’t want to take them back; they belong more to Jewels than herself, but it’s the only thing she can do besides leaving them there. 

The letters find their home in the bottom drawer of her desk. Arri already knows she isn’t going to read them, she knew that as soon as she picked them up. Honestly, she doesn’t know why she has them, what she’ll do with them now that they’re hers. She briefly considered giving them back to Suzie, thinking it could be one last attempt at destroying whatever they had, but she doesn’t think she has the strength. Arri doesn’t know if she can endure any more of this fighting, and that’s something she thought she’d never say, ever. 

All she wants to do is heal, whatever that looks like. Find a quiet corner and lick her wounds. Talk to her sister because she has literally no one else.

Not that Irene’s a last resort, but they don’t exactly have the most in common. The two of them have the same sense of humor, yes, but that’s where the similarities end. Their only form of connection is the fact that, legally, they’re siblings. Maybe Irene feels some sort of obligation to talk to her; the thought makes Arri sick as she descends the stairs from her room, entering the kitchen with a scowl. 

“What’re you doing?” she asks, trying to sound involved and not antagonizing. 

Irene looks up from the table, cracking a smile. “Organizing my Magic the Gathering cards, because I’m a geek.”

The urge to start laughing and pointing comes and goes, but Arri mostly just wants a distraction from thinking about the letters Jewels left.

“Cool, like Harry Potter or whatever?” Arri says, offhandedly, and collapses onto the couch a few feet away.

“Yeah,” Irene snorts. “Like Harry Potter.”

From the couch, Arri heckles her sister some more, wondering aloud how many Magic the Gathering cards it takes for someone to evolve from nerd to geek. She’s thinking it’s somewhere around five hundred. For some reason, the idea of just laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling and talking to her step sister about table top games isn’t as disgusting as she would once believe. 

God, the only thing disgusting about all of this is how different she is. How different Suzie made her. She’s not even going to lie and say she changed for Jewels, even though that was the reason they both pretended to believe. Arri changed because Suzie helped her, thinking anything else would be stupid. It would be a lie, and that’s something she’s trying not to do these days. 

Lying. Something about that word makes her think about the party, and about Sam. About flickering between wanting to run and wanting to face the truth about who she is. It’s been a long time coming, maybe longer than she’d care to admit. 

Arri shifts her position on the couch, turning to look at her sister, who’s still focused on her cards. Irene’s never been afraid of admitting she’s into girls. Irene, it seems, has never been afraid of admitting anything. 

So why does this idea haunt her so? Why does it plague her like a sickness? Why does she insist, passionately, that it doesn’t? That she’s fine just putting on a mask and saying she’s never thought about it too hard when she has? 

Arri is gay, she knows this now, but she still doesn’t know if she wants to talk about it. Or, scratch that, she doesn’t know who to talk about it with.

“I can feel you looking at me,” Irene says, eyes fixated on the table. “What’s up?”

Okay, but if she wanted to tell someone, it would have to be someone who wouldn’t have any opportunity to snitch. Someone who might joke about telling but never actually would.

“Um, just–” Arri takes a breath. Oh. Okay. She’s doing this. And she’s gonna try and be casual about it. Easy peasy. “Just wondering about… things.”

“What sorta things?” Irene says, dragging out the first syllable in an absent minded sort of way. 

“Just about, like…” How the fuck does she even bring this up? What’s a good segue? Hey, step sister I used to never really talk to, I’m kinda really super gay. No, that sucks. How would Irene breach this topic? “Like, how did you know you were bi?”

It’s a non-question. Arri already knows she likes girls, this information is completely useless to her. However, it might be a good way to ease into things. Maybe Irene can just take the hint? 

Her step sister places whatever cards she was holding down onto the table, giving Arri her full attention. 

“Well,” she purses her lips, as though this is difficult to recall. “I can remember feeling really weird around some of the other girls in my class in, like, middle school. Like, the same feelings I’d get if I had a crush on a guy. I kind of ignored that until it became a thing in high school, and then I really couldn’t run from it anymore. I figured, why be ashamed of something so integral to who I am?” 

Arri looks down at the floor. It’s not that easy for most people, y’know. 

“Also, like,” Irene continues, “I have, like, a million gay friends, so I wasn’t really afraid of backlash.”

“Yeah,” Arri says, and Irene can probably tell her mind is off somewhere far away. “If you don’t have, like, people around you who get it… maybe it’s harder then.”

Irene goes quiet for a second, and Arri can hear the clock down the hall ticking away. The feeling is skin crawling, it’s nauseating, but it’s better than just sitting with this by herself. 

“If you need someone around you who gets it,” Irene gives her a soft smile, “I do.”

She doesn’t respond to that, she doesn’t know how. Instead, she resigns to nodding, and eventually Irene goes back to sorting through her cards. The world moves on, but Arri is still stuck on Irene’s words. The way she smiled, like even if Arri never told her, she’d still be there for her. 

It’s foreign. It feels like getting sick after a shot. Sweating off the fever she’s been living with since she decided some peoples’ opinions mattered more than her own. Arri doesn’t know if it feels good or not, maybe she’ll decide that later. 

The sun is just starting to go down. She has a paper due tomorrow. Maybe that’ll be a worthy distraction from this monstrous ball of emotion growing bigger and bigger within her each day. 

So Arri goes back up to her room. She sits at her desk and she picks up her pen and she definitely, absolutely does not think about the pile of letters sitting in the bottom drawer. She also, importantly, does not think about Suzie. And how all the letters are in Suzie’s fancy pen, written in Suzie’s handwriting, using Suzie’s words she had intended only for Jewels. 

Words Arri cannot let herself read. She can’t even let herself wonder about reading them. If she reads them, and they’re anything other than reprehensible, well, then what has she got? 

She puts the pen down, having written only one word of her assignment. Okay, let's try something else. Maybe music will help. Music always helps, doesn’t it? 

Arri pokes her headphones into her ears, plugs them into her phone (vintage), and flicks on some music. It’s mindless pop, but that’s kind of the whole point. Sabrina Carpenter’s been screwed over by her boyfriend again. Tate McRae wants to fuck a guy in a Ferrari. Role Model is obsessed with some girl named Sally– who cares. Certainly not Arri. It’s noise, but it helps.

She turns around to face her corkboard.

Suddenly, quite a few memories rush to the forefront of her mind. Most, if not all, featuring a certain shining jewel, who seems to be the beating heart of everything Arri holds dear. There’s about a million polaroids, some from junior prom, some from dance recitals, some from soccer games, and some, only about one or two, are from the hospital. There’s one in particular that Arri approaches with a gentle hand; it’s the oldest on the board, you can tell from the braces gracing hers and Jewels’ pearly whites. It’s a selfie, too, and Jewels looks so happy despite how tired she must be. Arri remembers this picture. She remembers all of them. 

How could she forget? How could she ever forget loving Jewels Sparkles? So intensely, so fiercely, so pressing and probing and painful. So warm, yet so desolate, but Arri could never blame the other girl for that. 

This photo in particular is making her feel something she thought she left in that theatre. In a breath, she lets go, leaving it to continue hanging on the board with the others. She steps backward, suddenly sentimental, and pulls the headphones out of her ears. 

Before she can think about any other ways of distracting herself, she hears something else besides the fuzzy music emanating from her headphones. A tap. And then, a few moments after that, another tap.

It’s not raining, and she’s never heard this sound before, so she turns around to see where it’s coming from. In true romcom fashion, it’s her window. Someone is throwing fucking pebbles at her window. 

Arri walks toward it, moving the curtain to the side and squinting to find the source. Thankfully, it’s not too late, so the darkness doesn’t hide everything on the ground. 

One thing it certainly doesn’t hide is Suzie, and her mane of red hair, wild from the wind. 

It’s a short while later, and Arri’s hands are still shaking. She’s sitting at her desk, suddenly compelled with a desire she hasn’t had since ninth grade. She wants to read– she wants to read the letters. The ones Suzie doesn’t know she has. The ones Arri told herself she absolutely cannot even consider looking at. 

The wind is pouring in, leaving her room in the kind of chill you only feel the night after a warm day. Suzie left the window open, and Arri didn’t bother closing it after she left. The only thing she can think about is the letters. 

Self control only gets her so far; it’s like her muscles move by themselves to open up the drawer and take the bundle of envelopes out. They sit on her desk for a moment, existing under her harsh gaze. These have only been seen by two other people, it feels rather invasive to open them now. 

But she has to, if only for peace of mind.

After what Suzie just told her, she needs to know just what was in those letters. Whether she really can fix all of this. Whether Suzie was right when she said Jewels is in love with Lune, which means she’s in love with Arri. And maybe she won’t be able to read Jewels’ exact words, but she can read Suzie’s. She’ll probably be able to guess from there.  

It’s daunting. Arri didn’t expect it to be this daunting. Once she opens these envelopes, once she crosses that line, there’s no crossing back. She’ll be changed, but she’s doing a lot of changing these days, so why not give it one last try?

Trying to still the stutter of her hands, she opens the first one. It’s slightly frayed along the edges, like it’s been read and re-read countless times. When did Suzie say she sent this one? After the banquet? It has to be the first. 

Dear Jewels,

I know I said the most recent letter I sent would be my last, but I have to admit, I don’t think I can stay away. There’s something about talking to you that makes me feel seen, and I hope I can inspire the same feeling within you as well. That’s all I really want, to make you feel seen. 

There's more in this letter. Arri doesn't think she can continue, doesn't think she wants to, but her eyes flicker down the page.

There’s something about you, Jewels. Something it doesn’t seem like anyone else sees, or rather, something they don’t even want to see. I don’t want to be selfish and claim that I’m unique, that there’s something about me that deserves to be the one to understand you, but I can’t help but want to try. 

Arri puts this letter down, heart and mind racing. This is Suzie at her most herself, when she thinks no one but Jewels is looking. The writing, if it wasn’t so heartbreaking it could be thought of as beautiful. If this was the first one, she can’t imagine what the rest are like. 

And, well, Arri has to know what the others are like, doesn’t she?

Dear Jewels, 

I’m glad you feel like you can confide in me. Actually, I’m ecstatic. Talking to you, it’s like that moment during an eclipse where the whole world is bathed in something magical. It’s brief, but it’s something that you can feel even after it’s gone. 

Suzie wrote all of this herself. She doesn’t need Arri’s feelings, she has her own. All of those things Arri said in the theatre, sure, she apologized for them, but now she’s seeing how truly wrong she was. Maybe Suzie does feel what Arri feels for Jewels, heaven knows she can express it better. An eclipse? How could she ever compete with that?

Dear Jewels,

I thought about you while reading an astronomy book the other day. Something about the stars and how far away they are, but how we can still learn about them from down here…

Dear Jewels,

What’s your favourite album? We haven’t talked about music yet, but I’m eager to hear what you like. I’m eager to hear anything, really, but music is a good place to start…

Dear Jewels,

I listened to everything you suggested, and I really believe you’d be interested in…

Arri doesn’t even realize it, but she’s crying again. Careful tears drip down onto her desk, just barely grazing the edge of the note. Each of these, they’re so thoughtful. They’re real, they’re not just some act. No matter what Suzie says, she didn’t do this to help Arri.

No, she’s…

Dear Jewels,

You really think soulmates exist? The myth you mentioned, I did some research on it, and I can admit, it’s pretty compelling. The idea that we’re born with another half. That we could spend our whole lives trying to find it. That we’ll somehow know, instinctually, when we find it. When we find them, I should say. 

The article I read about this myth said that this person would understand you, see you, without even really trying. It would come as natural as a heartache, and it’d be borderline impossible to ignore. I suppose I have compelling evidence to believe in this myth now. 

All I need to do is write to you.

It’s so clear. It’s so obvious, Arri almost can’t stand it. She skips to the last letter, unable to tolerate waiting even a moment.

And I can’t write about all consuming feelings without writing about you, Jewels. That desire that Icarus had to fly, to escape, to be free, even if it was just for a moment, that’s what these letters are to me. You’re They’re all I think about, they’re what motivates me. So much so that I understand why Icarus risked everything for the mere idea that maybe, just maybe, he’d get to feel the sun. 

(You’re all I think about.)

The answer is as clear as day. 

Suzie’s in love with Jewels. 

She doesn’t like her, she doesn’t have a crush on her, she’s not obsessed with her, no– no. She’s in love with her. In every way someone can be in love, Suzie checks all those boxes. She loves her. 

And when Suzie said Jewels is in love with Lune, she was right. But that’s not Arri. That’s never been Arri, as much as she wanted it. As hard as she tried to love Jewels loudly, with reckless abandon and with beautiful words, she just can’t. 

But Suzie can, and Arri doesn’t know what to do with that.