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you awaken to the sound of long fingernails tapping against glass, and the sound of your name whispered, over and over, soft but implacable:
jane, jane, jane, jane, jane, jane, jane, jane
you grunt, regard the flesh-colored blur behind your window. you can tell who it is before your glasses are even on.
she whispers on, sweetly wheedling with her jane, janey, hon, i know you’re awake--
you reach over, pull the window up and let her in. she tumbles into you, a tangle of bones and bones and more bones, she’s so thin. like someone took a brittle skeleton and stretched skin over it. her body reminds you of one of those supermodels, those that sway on the catwalk because they don’t eat enough. but you know full well that roxy’s not like that: she won’t deprive herself, not for anyone. it’s fitting for her; she’s built like a alley cat, or a bird, ready to run, ready to fly.
roxy laughs, that infectious giggle-squeal of hers, as she sheepishly moves off of you. she smells different, you notice. before she quit drinking, she always had that faint booze-stink clinging to her clothes, to her hair. now it’s something crisp and a little salty--the sea, maybe.
when she gets off of you, you and her are facing each other; you sitting with your knees up to your chest, her crouched atop your covers, almost kittenish in her posture. the open window lets in the winter chill; a frigid breeze stirs roxy’s hair, ash-blonde and lovely even when it’s an uncombed disaster like it is now.
thought i was gonna freeze to death out there, she says, mind if i stay the night?
the only response she gets out of you is a resigned sigh, you know not to question this girl, who is somehow both a millimeter away from catastrophe, and more put-together than anyone else you know. roxy gives you this peck of gratitude on the tip of your nose, then flops down at the foot of your bed. she’s out like a light within seconds, all this frenetic energy suddenly ceasing; she goes limp like someone felled by a firing squad.
you notice that you’re shivering a little. refusing to tell yourself it’s from the contact, the affection roxy so readily gives out to you, you figure it’s the wind. pull the window down, shroud the room in silence. you stare at the steady rise-and-fall of her chest.
you’ve known roxy lalonde for three years, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. you were paired up with her for some physics project, you remember. you were fully prepared to do all the work. roxy lalonde to you back then was just a vapid, leggy blonde; an obnoxious stream of slurring, sleazy innuendo.
you did not expect her to end up doing more of the work than you. you did not expect her to gush about wizards and retro games and dead things in jars.
even less did you expect the first thing for her to say to you, with your roundness and your soft edges and your overbite, was a comment about how pretty you are, delivered with a wink and everything. (you didn’t think it was genuine, back then. silly you, everything out of this girl’s mouth is a confessional in the guise of a joke.)
you also didn’t expect her to stick around after the project was already over. you didn’t expect seeing her to become a routine, like clockwork, like some unspoken courtship. you didn’t expect to spend muggy summer afternoons on rusted swingsets with her, murder-mystery novels spread on your lap as she stands on the creaking seat beside you, swaying back and forth. she stares skyward and rambles in her dreamy stream-of-consciousness sort of way.
have you ever jumped off a really tall place at night, crockpot? everything’s dark and it’s like you’re in space, or the afterlife maybe. you dunno what’s up and what’s down and even whether you’re dead or alive but you don’t care---
when you glance to the side, you’re at eye level with her bare thighs. when you glance up, it’s her shoulders. she’s fond of cocktail dresses. you’ve always been a tee-and-slacks kind of gal, but it just works on roxy. she also likes to wear this scarf, this threadbare pink thing that trails down to her ankles. you think it has some sort of sentimental value, the way she keeps it close like a replacement for something she never had.
within months, she’s coming up with all of these ridiculous, increasingly intimate nicknames for you. crockpot. doc croc. bffsie. jaaaaaaaney. she giggles uproariously at the one you come up for her. ro-lal, she drawls, dragging the syllables out in that pseudo-erotic way of hers. i like that! cap’n ro-lal at your service, motherfuckers.
the first time you saw roxy cry, it frightened you. because even when she’s sad she still smiles, a glasgow grin with her lipstick a smudged fiasco. her dreamy absinthe eyes pouring over like a breaking dam. you think you can help me give her a funeral, janey? i’ve never been to one of those, don’t really know how they work---
you smile back and squeeze her wrist. of course, roxy. of course we can.
you can’t sleep now. roxy’s somehow moved from the foot of your bed to your side, curled facing away from you. she makes good work of hogging the covers, her lanky body takes up more than half the bed, she tosses and kicks. you’re pretty sure her elbow’s lodged itself in your side at least thrice. you can’t say you mind, though, because she’s so warm--
--and she talks in her sleep, too, and it’s your name, soft but implacable:
jane, jane, jane, jane, jane, jane, jane, jane
you move forward, closer to her. her white shirt’s slipped down, leaving her pale back exposed.
(you’re not sure what she is to you, you’re never sure of anything with her, but at at the very least you’re certain that she is the best friend you’ll ever have)
you tuck your face against the ridges in roxy’s spine and smile to yourself as you wait for the morning light.