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She emerges, one day, as if she’d never left—a rhapsody in white and pearls, perched atop the stable bench like freshly fallen snow.
Resolute, name too fresh to be encoded on Downtown’s tongue, squeals. “Holy shit- You guys didn’t tell me you had a ghost!”
“Not a ghost,” White and Downtown mutter at the same time—White does it better, probably, flip of her hair leaving the topic to trail languidly in the air behind her. “I’ve merely been out for a while, is all. When did the two of you arrive?”
From her place beside White Pink stops and stammers out frenzied half-syllables. “Um- Ah- W-well, um, a-about…”
“Two days ago!”
Only after two days did Downtown start dreaming of the day where she could beat the lopsided grin out of Resolute’s face. Judging by the distinctive sound of White’s tongue click, it’s taken her about ten seconds. “Of course. I shouldn’t have expected anything less.” Pushing up with her hands, she stands up, impossible heels skewering the ground below. Her dress weighs heavier on her than it has for days, and Downtown wonders, for a moment, why the thought that comes to mind is Saturday she didn’t look this perfect. “I’m leaving,” White announces, entirely unprompted.
“Kay,” Red-no-Resolute responds unnecessarily. “See ya around, ghost lady,” she yells to the thin air behind her—just as quickly as she’d arrived, White is gone, leaving nothing behind her but dust.
Wasn’t that fast Saturday, either, Downtown thinks with a wince.
A distinct feeling of haziness begins to nag at her. It’s odd, really. Everything about this is. White’s absent for two days, then she comes back without Cyan, who Downtown swears to god before this was attached at the hip to her. She doesn’t come with a greeting, nor with the lack of one, but in the middle of the others’ race, left to wait for them back at home. There’s this uneasiness in the air, and maybe Resolute had it right when she called her a ghost. Looking at White felt like seeing a creature from a dream, one too enchanting, too perfect to be real.
Downtown’s about to wake up. “Hey,” she whispers, nudging the girl next to her. “Yellow.”
“Huh?” Big, innocent eyes and ears shoot up from where Merry’s captured them at her other side.
She throws a thumb backwards at the stable behind her, universal signal of keep the colts company for me, then takes off running.
“Whoa, hey-” Whatever Door Knob had to say to her’s reduced to shrapnel by the wind. It can wait—she’s had her eyes off White for less than a minute and already she’s completely gone.
Maybe she’s disappeared over the horizon, her mind helpfully supplies. That’d be just perfect, wouldn’t it? It’s the sort of thing a folk hero would do, or a particularly cruel poet. Gone in the middle of the night, there for a chance encounter days afterwards, then retreating back to the land of fantasy where she belonged. It’d be just out of a story, or a song. Downtown’s sure everyone here would tell it like one.
Life doesn’t have as smart a sense of narrative as Downtown does. She finds White behind the bleachers, absent-mindedly filing her nails.
“What,” she says, back turned and pristine white dress unfolding out below her, “do you want.”
“Mostly just… wanted to know if you had time to talk.”
A hacking excuse for a laugh burbles its way out of White’s throat. Her slender arm waves in the air dismissively: “Does it look like we have anything but?”
“So, that’s a yes?”
“Of course it’s a yes, Grey. What, does it look like anyone else wants to talk to me right now-”
“Downtown Skybox.”
“...What?”
“My name,” Downtown says, feeling the syllables gain power as she says them, “is Downtown Skybox.”
White’s head turns. Her voluminous hair out of the way, Downtown can catch a glimpse of a frozen blue eye looking back at her, shining like a melting icicle in the midday sun, piercing White’s pristine veneer. For a second Downtown’s name hangs in the air, inaudible echo ringing through both their ears. Just as Downtown’s about to look away she hears an odd, keening cry, like that of ice about to crack, but when she snaps back to attention the moment’s gone as White’s turned back around again, and the illusion is restored.
“Typical,” White says, and nothing else.
Fingers course through Downtown’s choppy hair, as if she could will that moment back to life just by wishing hard enough. “Look, let’s not get hung up on that, alright? You’ve been gone for two days. I’m sure somebody’s going to ask what went down.”
Too late: White’s fangs are bared. “Oh, allow me to guess! That somebody is you, isn’t it.”
“I- Well, yeah, but- I’m not the only person who’s going to ask, you know.”
“I hardly see anybody else lining up to talk to me out here.”
“We just came back from a race. Odds are everyone’s just washing up right now.”
“Shouldn’t you be?”
“You-” God, she hadn’t been this difficult Saturday, either. Something was going on, here. It was a shame Downtown’s composure was going to snap before she figured out what. “You’re pretty belligerent for somebody who’d said she was willing to talk.”
White’s scoff she sees before she hears it, shake of her shoulders rustling the waves of her hair anew. “I never said I was willing to talk. Just that I had the time. What a talent for assumptions you have, Downtown.” She hisses out her name like a curse. Distant memories of Door Knob telling her about rattlesnakes come to mind, the ways they rattled to ward off predators, to warn them the snake’d hurt them worse than they could ever hurt it. Pushing any further on this would mean getting burned.
The image of White turned to her with that unreadable expression in her eye flashes before Downtown can stop herself. “Then give me something so I don’t have to assume, White!”
With one last shake of her shoulders, White freezes, and a gunshot tears through her.
Silence. Seconds that feel like minutes. More than enough time for Downtown to wish the words back into her throat, consider leaving White alone and backing away—but then White whirls on her, rage in those crystal blue eyes and brows knit in a kind of fury Downtown hasn’t ever really seen, and it becomes clear that wasn’t nearly enough time to run.
“Incredible advertisement, Downtown. Really, bravo.” She claps lazily with mismatched nails. With every clap Downtown feels the temperature dropping, as White takes step by measured step forward, closing in on her. “If I hadn’t wanted to tell you anything about that before, I’m certainly never going to now. You’ve outdone yourself.”
“I’d…” That unreality from before hangs off White in waves. It’s just instinct that causes her to look away, Downtown tells herself. “I hadn’t meant it like that.”
“Hadn’t you? My, you must tell me how you do it—make it so every word out of your mouth is more disappointing than the last.” White’s close enough to touch, now. She makes contact first, tilting Downtown’s chin down to force her eyes onto hers, deathly chill mirroring Downtown’s empty stare. Not as if there’s much to put in it but shock. White had been bratty before, sure, and weird and posh and uppity, but never actually threatening. Never like this. It’s hard to tell whether it’s supposed to excite or terrify her. “Why are you still here, anyways?”
Her eyes turn glassy, searching, as if by just trying hard enough she can find something in Downtown’s that justifies herself. “Why are either of us,” she whispers. It comes out as prayer; it comes out as dirge.
“You’re an idiot.”
“What?” Downtown can feel the recoil as White’s shoulders shake—for another precious, glorious second, White was there. White was real.
One second’s not enough, she decides. Downtown’s greedy. She wants another.
“I wanted to talk to you because I was worried,” she says, simply, and again the glass cracks around her.
“I- W-Worried. Worried. Really, you expect me to believe that-”
“I don’t expect you to believe anything, White.” She starts to shrivel up, weakening like a puppet who’s been running for the past few days on cut strings. It’s intoxicating. Something about Downtown enjoys seeing that fake light leave her eyes, tugging her into reality piece by piece. She supposes it must be the part of her that wants to race in the first place, the part that privately delights in setting others back, watching them hurt. Her competitive spirit, maybe. Indulging it is more natural than breathing. “I just want you to know, so you know why I ask.”
White’s voice, when next it comes, is quiet enough to cut herself on. “...Save it. There’s nothing worth worrying about here, anyways.”
“White.” Downtown catches the cracks in the illusion, and holds them in her grasp. “You’re crying.”
Tracing the red circles under White’s eyes, Downtown watches on, transfixed, as the snow melts away.
“...How dare you.” Some people’s cries are beautiful things, heralded by choruses of angels from on high, all pretty dewdrops and perfect smiles and adorable tears. White’s aren’t. Her words come out slurred, shattered, shaking things, passed through imperfect lips around broken tears. She shivers slow and vigorous, cold turning in on herself, tearstains staining her chalk-white dress, fractured and broken as a porcelain doll at the epicenter of an atomic bomb. She cracks and cries and wails and sobs and it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful, Downtown’s arrested by the sight, forehead meeting hers and eyes scooting closer to watch the ice thaw and drink up the mess they leave behind.
She’s horrible. She’s a bombed out, sobbing wreck of a person. She’s imperfect.
She’s perfect. “H-How… how dare you. Act like this. Live, live like this. How, how dare…”
“So.” It takes all Downtown’s effort to keep her voice even, to settle into the quiet monotone she always wears and not the thrill seeping off of her, clogging every pore. “Mind telling me what happened, White?”
That awful haggard laugh rises up in White again, the one Downtown can tell now is just a carefully hidden sob. “...Stupid.”
Silently, Downtown lays a hand on White’s shoulder, mute motion for her to go on, to pull herself apart for Downtown to see.
She complies only when the tears force her eyes shut. “...It’s- just completely idiotic, is all. You’ve no right to correct me over your name. You’ve been getting mine wrong this whole time.”
The instant the last of her words escapes her, White(?) wills her jaw to a stop, buries her face in Downtown’s jacket, and screams.
That hand on White’s shoulder seems to have found a mind of its own. It says more than Downtown ever could here, stopping, pausing, rolling around her torso, burying itself in the crook of her ribs, hugging her flawed beauty tight. It’s animated. Far more than Downtown is. All she can do is watch, sitting through every sob and every tear, every intake of breath and every release. She wasn’t like this Saturday, she again thinks, dumbly, like a broken record. And then: this is better.
Holding her head down to sniff at the top of hers, sniffing at her feather-white hair, Downtown thinks, with her last conscious thought before the fall, ah, so this is why racing only ever feels like a job. Merry can have every win, if she wants them. Downtown doesn’t care.
She can’t ever be as obsessed with winning as she is with watching White in this moment.
She could never be.
“...Superstitional Realism,” she mutters into Downtown as the shaking subsides, with a voice finally hollow enough to match herself. “That’s the name I stole from her.”
“Sounds… aggressively convoluted and contradictory.” She waits, lets the shot hang in the air, then deploys the chaser. “It suits you.”
Pulling away, Superstition looks up at her with the eyes of the dead and flashes Downtown her winning, winning smile. “Doesn’t it?”