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Music faded from one song to the next and played softly from Summer’s phone. Pop-y lyrics were quiet underneath all the giggling between her and Morty, lying on her bed with an array of nail polish colors around them.
Morty leaned forward to reach Summer’s hand, and his spider crawler moved with him. He gently swiped a soft red shade onto his sisters’ nails, being careful not to get the color onto her skin. Summer watched Morty work, a grin pulling at the corner of her mouth.
“I know we’re just waiting for Grandpa to get you back to being human, but I’m actually having a fun time with you like this.” Summer blows at the wet paint on her nails as she talks to her brother in her mind. She had gotten used to doing that since the rescue, already making little jokes only they could hear and laugh at to annoy Rick on the way back home. “I’m. . . sorry I was being such a bitch to you about it earlier.” She glances up at him with a shy smile.
“I-It’s okay, Summer.” Morty holds out his little hand for his sister to paint a shimmery blue onto his nails. “It's kinda my fault we’re like this in the first place.” He put his head down and looked away. “Kinda messed up your chances with t-that Jimmy guy.” His inner voice shrank as he thought about his actions.
“Eh,” Summer shrugged quietly, not pulling her attention away from her brother’s nails. “It wouldn’t have worked with him anyway. After you won the Frolf game, he asked if he could hook up with me on Tuesdays. Tuesdays! Like, why specifically Tuesdays? No, thank you.” She rolled her eyes at the thought and kicked her feet up behind her. “How lame would that have been? My girlfriend is much better anyway.” She capped the lid to the nail polish and smiled. “So, I guess, thank you. . . for turning us into a Kuato.”
Morty looked back up. “O-Oh yeah, your girlfriend. How-how’s that— s-she? How’s your girlfriend?” He felt embarrassed by his fumble but stuck the landing.
“Jocelyn? She’s great.” Summer said with a giggle. “Didn’t I tell you about her? We met when I was trying to save you.”
Morty shook his head. “I remember seeing her at the party before I was taken from you, and-and then after the Frolf game.”
“Omg, really? I thought I did. Well,” Summer clears the stuff off her bed and gets comfortable with her pillows and plushies, explaining the parts where she saved Jocelyn from the traffickers.
“That whole experience definitely goes in my top five traumatic adventures with Grandpa. Possibly top three. The thing with my hair and Grandpa Rick forcing us out of a three-story window, being shot at!” Summer hugged her pillow tightly, easing her tension and forcing herself to laugh about it now.
“I know you and Grandpa have had some pretty messed up adventures too, so,” She hesitated to ask, her eyes shifted from her brother to the door, looking out to the hallway through the slight crack as if anyone else in the family could hear the conversation going on in their heads. “What traumatic experiences do you have?”
Morty felt something strange open up in his chest. “I-I-I don’t know, a lot has happened. Where do-d-do I even begin, y’know?” He tried to laugh about it, lighten the ache he was feeling. “There was that time with the clones, and then re-watching the memories Rick wiped, a-and that time I almost had to cut off my own dick for that Knights of the Sun thing!”
“Well, yeah.” Summer scooted closer to Morty. “All those kinda sucked but you came out okay after those. Okay, the worst one I had probably had to be when we were supposed to go camping, then ended up going to that planet that Grandpa had sex with, right? You remember that one?”
Morty nodded his head. How could he forget it?
“And then we huffed the stuff we found in that crashed ship?” Summer bit back a bitter laugh, the awful memory somewhat nostalgic in a way now. “Whatever it was I huffed, it actually destroyed part of my brain. I remember losing some of my functions for, like, I guess it was a couple of days. If Grandpa didn’t notice it in time, he might not have been able to fix me. It was really scary and it put me off doing drugs for a while.”
Morty frowned at the memory, his own not being too far off. “Yeah, that-that really sucked. That happened to me before too, with-with the megaseeds that Rick wanted me to get, they stayed inside my butt too long and I was on the floor for a while.”
“So was that your most traumatic experience, too?” Summer laughed lightly, nudging her arm against Morty’s mobility crawler.
“Well. . . n-no. . .” Morty looked away, his little arms pulled close to his body.
“Then what? You can tell me.” She turned Morty to face her. “What we say won't leave our brains.” She smiled.
Morty paused, hesitant. “Y—You—you promise?”
Summer nodded. “Promise.”
There was a long pause. Morty fought through the safeguards in his brain that kept the memory locked away. Like he was getting ready to unleash some sort of beast. He took a deep breath and just let the words come out.
“I was almost molested.”
The ache in Morty’s chest grew when Summer didn’t immediately say anything. So he kept going.
“It was, um, during the first adventure I was in charge of with Rick. We went to this fantasy place. T-The villagers needed some gold and some bad things happened.” He shook his head, skipping over a couple of details. His hands started to shake. Summer noticed and reached for his hand.
“I went to the bathroom at-at this place R-Rick and I stopped at. I was mad at him for putting me and the adventure down, and I needed space from him. In the bathroom was this. . . guy. M-Mr. Jellybean." He gripped Summer’s hand, easing himself. “He rubbed my shoulders and said ‘Just go with the flow’ a-a-and started touching me all over. I tried to get away from him but he-h-h-he pushed me into the stall and h-his mouth. . . he p-pulled my hair and t-tore my shirt.”
Teardrops began to fall from Morty’s eyes, his thoughts became rapid as he relived the memory. This time it was like he was watching it happen with an outside perspective, seeing everything else he didn’t when he was in it.
Summer stopped his thoughts, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him tightly. She felt his tears soak into her shirt, his little body heaving with the sobs he tried to choke out.
“Oh my God, Morty. I had no idea, I’m so sorry.” She said, guilt eating away at her stomach as she stroked Morty’s hair, soothing him. “That was really fucked up.”
Morty clung to her, hiding his face in her shoulder as he calmed himself down. “I-I never told Rick about it. H-He never knew.” He thought between hiccups.
“Morty. . . I’m sorry.” That was all Summer could think to say.
“I-It’s. . . it’s okay. I-I. . . feel a little less burdened with it now.”
Summer pulled them apart, looking down at Morty’s sad face. She wiped a tear from his eye.
“Well. . . the best way I’ve found to handle my trauma is to turn it into a joke.” Summer gave a half smile. “So, from now on, how about whenever someone says ‘jellybean’ we can say it's a slur.”
Morty giggled through his sniffle. “A slur? Jellybean is a slur now?”
“Exactly.” Summer smiles.
Giggles erupt between them, lifting the pain of their conversation.
“Thanks, Summer,” Morty says, leaning his head onto her shoulder.
“Don’t mention it, little bro.”