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She sits by the lake long enough that it feels like a dream, everything. The snow and the hospital and the watch glinting in the tinny light. She isn’t sure which part she wishes was fake the most.
In the morning at school there is no sign of anything different with Kris, nothing but their position, curled further into Susie’s side than normal, mouth grim. Berdly isn’t there. Noelle doesn’t think about it.
Susie catches Noelle looking at them and smiles briefly.
Noelle tries to muster a flutter of infatuation, but finds a simmering pool of guilt instead. In this numb moment, she entertains a thought she’d never allowed before, that Susie and Kris could be together. Susie’s growling overprotectiveness. Kris’ quiet, pleased smile when they look at her. All their disappearing acts.
“What’s that?” Susie is saying, and pulling the sleeve of their sweater aside to show the watch. Noelle’s watch. “Uh, little preppy for you, huh, Kris?”
Kris doesn’t say anything, which is normal, but they press their face into her shoulder and sigh, which isn’t. Susie doesn’t seem even surprised by it, just huffs and flushes and throws an arm around them.
Noelle follows them at a distance after school. They wander in what seems like an aimless, practiced way around the town. At the diner Kris buys Susie’s food and they sit opposite at the table, grinning needlessly at one another. A want carves Noelle so deeply she nearly doubles over with it.
Then it’s the bench by the church graveyard, a little listless, both of their heads tipped back, necks bared to the sun. Susie’s scales, which Noelle had never noticed before, gleam, and Kris smiles slyly and slips a fingernail under one of them. Susie goes red and smacks them away but looks at them when they shut their eyes again, lingering. Father Alivin nearly catches her and she ducks out of sight, into the church.
It almost feels like she shouldn’t be able to enter. She half expected the door to lock under her hands, but it gives way easily.
At the front of the church, sitting on the pew closest to the pulpit, is Kris. Alone.
Noelle looks back over her shoulder, and then back up at Kris, and then back over again. Kris stays there. There’s no way. They couldn’t have gotten there in such a short amount of time. Not a moment ago they were outside with Susie, but now they’re here.
Noelle shakes her head, steps back and puts her hand on the church door knob. This time, it doesn’t give way. Locked. How? She goes up on her tiptoes, rattling the doorknob and looking out the small window at the top. Outside, it is dark. Not the kind of dark that happens at night, but the kind of dark that means nothing is there at all. There is nothing for light to hit, and nowhere for light to come from.
“Sorry,” Kris says, and Noelle turns to face them.
They’re in the middle of the aisle. Noelle has a strange disjointed vision for a moment of them in a wedding dress, walking down the aisle. Of herself, at the end of that aisle.
“That’s my line,” Noelle says, and her voice wavers. They actually spoke to her. Their voice is different than it was yesterday, too, heavier, and more like that of the little kid she used to know.
“That’s my line,” Kris echoes. “We all have lines we’ve gotta say. You said yours. I said mine.” They grimace. “I’m tired. Of this. All of it.”
They lift their hand to their heart, still frowning.
“How are you here?” Noelle asks. “I just saw you outside with Susie.”
“With Susie,” they echo again, and a smile catches their lips, then flickers out just as fast. “No. We’re the ones outside.”
“Outside?” Noelle shifts uncomfortably. “What are you talking about?”
“C’mere,” they say, and turn.
Noelle follows them up to the pulpit. They set their wrist on it, and look at her, waiting. Somehow, she knows to lay her wrist next to theirs.
“A lot of bad things have happened to me,” they say slowly. “I want you to know that you’re not one of them.”
Noelle doesn’t know what to say, so she doesn’t.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” they say. “But there’s something you need to know.”
With the hand that isn’t next to hers, they reach up, and pull at something. As they do, it becomes visible. A glowing green line of string, or fishing wire, or something, buzzing like static in the air.
Noelle looks down at her wrist, and around it, tied in a bow, is another line of the strange green fishing wire. It loops down from her wrist, down past the pews and out the door. On Kris’ wrist, an identical string is tied, which falls onto the floor and twists down a side hallway of the church, glowing in the dark.
“What?” she says, disbelieving. “What is this?”
“Everything yesterday was real,” they say, quick, in one breath, like they wouldn’t be able to get it out otherwise. “The snow, and the other world in the library. But that wasn’t me, telling you those things. It was something else. You got that, right?”
Noelle sucks in a sharp breath, and the note of it wavers in the air like the sharp jolting ring of a bell grabbed and silenced.
“Oh. I hoped…” she laughs, defeated. “I guess I should know not to hope anymore.”
Kris sighs, and wraps their arms around themself, tugging the string. They look down at it with distaste.
“Fate,” they say, throwing the word from their mouth irreverently. “Strings of fate.”
“Like,” Noelle murmurs and twitches her nose, almost laughs at the absurdity of it. “Like soulmates?”
Kris actually laughs at this, but it isn’t a humorous laugh, more a mocking one.
“Something like that. It ties us to a…” they mull for a moment. “Like a story path, in a video game. It ties us to someone that’s supposed to be at the end of the path, like something that has to happen, or someone we’re supposed to end up with. This isn’t the only string I have.”
They tip their head back, and for a moment so fleeting Noelle could’ve imagined it, a web of half broken green wire flickers around them, so dense and interwoven it’s like veins, all leading to an empty spot where Kris’ heart would be.. It disappears. Kris opens their eyes.
“But it’s the only one I do?” Noelle guesses.
“No.” Kris presses their mouth tight, and looks up at her through their bangs. Their eyes are sad. “You have more than this. But it’s the only one she does. I’m sorry, Noelle. I keep asking you for things.”
“Susie,” Noelle guesses, and her chest tightens.
Susie and Noelle are connected by this string of fate. Does that mean..?
Kris must read the look on her face, because theirs briefly shutters.
“Oh no,” Noelle says, and tries to keep her mouth from falling open. “Kris, you…”
“It doesn’t matter,” they say, but their mouth tightens even further. “I’m not going to ask you this for my sake. I’m asking it for hers.”
“You like her,” Noelle says, and knows it’s true.
But Noelle and Susie are connected. By fate. She can hardly believe it. But looking at the things fate has tied to Kris, her excitement at the prospect flickers out.
“She’s my best friend,” they say, their voice finally wavering. Their wet eyes glint from the light of the green wire. It only hurts a little that they never called Noelle that. “And I don’t want her wrapped up in this bullshit.”
“Who is your string connected to?”
Noelle reaches out, half on instinct, to touch the bow on their wrist. They snatch it away, and then sigh, heavily.
“It doesn’t matter. I won’t let it. No matter how much he wants it to.”
“He,” Noelle murmurs. “It’s that prince, isn’t it?”
They reach into their back pocket with their untied hand, and pull out a shard of glass. The sharp edge of it glints strangely.
“I’ve tried to cut, but it always reties itself.” They scoff. “Like a cut healing.”
She looks down between their wrists.
“But why would that be any different with me?”
“Elly,” they murmur, that nickname that Dess used to call her.
Her throat tightens.
“I thought that, if I cut mine and yours, and then we tie them together.” They stop for a moment, take a breath. “That we could keep this contained. Keep everyone safe.”
Noelle thinks of Berdly in the ice.
“Okay.”
Their eyes widen.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” she says, resigned. “We’re already tied together, right? From what happened when we were kids?”
They nod grimly.
“I’ll do it,” she says, and takes the shard of glass.
They lay their wrist back next to Noelle’s on the pulpit, and align the strings.
Noelle counts to three, and draws the glass through them. She half expected it to hurt, but she feels nothing at all. The strings hang loosely, and the long severed arms of each of them still stretch out the doors.
Kris reaches out and takes Noelle’s string, takes their own, and ties them into a neat knot.
At the moment they do, the other two strings go strange and glitchy, almost like a computer game malfunctioning, and then disappear.
“It worked,” Kris breathes, disbelieving. “She’s free.”
Noelle looks at their threads. The loose ends haven’t disappeared, the green strings haven’t peacefully merged. There’s just their wrists, and Kris’ messy knot.
“He’s going to be so angry,” they murmur, tracing their wrist with a finger.
“What now?” Noelle asks.
“Time’s up,” they say, and Noelle blinks, and they’re gone.
She looks down at her wrist. Nothing is there.
She runs outside. It’s late afternoon, pretty and calm.
Down the road, Kris and Susie are walking. In Kris’ hand is a shard of glass.