Chapter Text
There was never a point in trying not to cry.
They were standing at the turnstiles, the point of no return. Her parents had already left to hold a place in line. This would have to be quick.
“Well,” Sasha said. She sounded like she was about to cry, herself. “I guess this is it, huh?”
Marcy nodded. She had stopped trying to hold back her tears as soon as her parents were out of view. “Yeah. I’ll see you, uh. At some point. When I have the money to—”
“We’ll call!” Anne interrupted her. “Once a week, at least. And we’ll text too.”
They all knew it wouldn’t be the same. All three of them were thinking it. After everything, all of the strain, all of the trauma, would their friendship survive this? Would they last with nothing forcing them together?
In some ways, it would certainly manage better than it would’ve if the whole Amphibia thing never happened. They were connected now, bonded by this terrible thing that marcy did to them happened to them, and it wasn’t like they would ever forget her now, not like she had been so scared of before. But now they had a reason to want her gone. They’d be right to want time away from her, to realise they were better without her, to want a fresh start.
She didn’t say any of that. She nodded, a lump in her throat, sniffing hard. “I… I’ll really, really miss you girls.”
Anne jumped her first, nearly knocking her right over, “I’ll miss you too!”
Sasha was crying the most, which would’ve been surprising before all of this, but somehow wasn’t now. Marcy giggled through her tears, holding her closer.
To think, she was so scared of this moment that she trapped them all in another world, and now that it was here, she was almost happy. Her friends loved her! And she loved them. She really, really loved them.
They were probably holding up traffic, huddled together right before the turnstiles like this.
She didn’t want to let go.
Marcy wiped her eyes. “I… I really need to go now.”
She started to pull back, but Anne tugged her back in. “Wait, wait, let’s take a selfie first!”
For some reason, that nearly made her cry again. Anne pulled out her phone. “Say besties for life!”
“Besties for life!”
Click. Marcy really really hoped Anne would send her a copy.
“Are we done now?” Sasha said. She didn’t move, though.
“Yeah,” Marcy nodded. “I think we are.”
Anne let go first, wiping her eyes, then Sasha second. For a second, their hands touched. Sasha sniffed as she handed over Marcy’s suitcase. None of them said anything more.
Marcy walked in one direction, and the loves of her life walked in the other. She braced herself, closing her eyes and forcing herself away from them, step by step. Her parents were sitting just a little further. Just a little further, and she would’ve done it. She would’ve proved that she changed, that she was better.
She turned back, just in time to see her girls turn around the corner and vanish.
Marcy’s throat hurt. Part of her desperately, desperately wanted to run after them, to stay with them.
But that wasn’t how the world worked. That wouldn’t be good for her.
—
Marcy had never been to therapy before.
She’d wanted one for a long time— in middle school, she spent most lunches in and out of the counselor's office, paralysed by the anxiety of being stuck in crowded hallways and loud cafeterias. She lied to Anne and Sasha when they asked where she was, and they easily believed that she would spend her free time looking after their biology teacher’s fish.
That counselor hadn’t really done much. It was less of a therapy session and more of a quiet reprieve from the rest of the world. She could sit in there eating cold half-baguettes, rambling about her favourite games to somebody who would politely pretend to care. It was nice. It was enough, she thought.
Then Anne’s sixteenth birthday happened, and the six months that followed it. Long story short, she has a real therapist now, and a real doctor, and a real dentist, and all the medical professionals they could throw at her.
It had taken a little while to get to this point. She did have someone to talk to about everything, before she moved and she was still in the hospital, but that wasn’t really a therapist. Someone who visited her once a week and asked her questions, who was eventually able to diagnose her with anxiety and PTSD, told her that they'd look for people she could talk to about assessments for the rest of it. That wasn’t so bad. Just knowing that she wasn’t crazy, that there were words for the imbalances in her head, felt like enough.
After she got to Connecticut, though, the waiting lists got a lot longer. This was to be her first session. She sat in the hospital waiting room, downing paper cups of fountain water, waiting for her name to be called. The toddler across from her was staring from his mother’s lap. Marcy’s own mom looked like she was weighing up the ethics of telling her own daughter to stop tapping her crutch against the floor.
Sorry. She couldn’t help it, nerves.
“Marcy Wu to room 12.”
Right, that was her!
Marcy shot up and walked down the hallway to the left. Then she paused. She had no idea where room 12 was, so she had two options. One, she could walk down the hall and wander around until she found the right room. Or, she could ask for help. Which would be an idea. Exactly the kind of thing her parents would encourage her to do. It would probably help with her recovery, wouldn’t it? Yeah, she should definitely just ask. It’s the receptionist's job to answer little questions like that, right?
She just had… to ask. Not like anything would happen.
Just ask. Just turn around, walk a couple steps, and ask.
…Whyyy was she so bad at this?
“Excuse me, did you need anything?”
There was a staff member behind her. Honestly, she was faceblind enough that she couldn’t tell if it was the receptionist or not. That was probably… really selfish of her.
Marcy jolted. “Uh, do you know where room 12 is?”
The receptionist (?) looked briefly like he was going to burst into laughter. Yeah, of course he would know that. Stupid. “Just walk down and to the left. It’s right at the end of the hallway.”
Nodding, Marcy skittered off down the hall, face burning. Oh boy. Wow, she felt dizzy. To be fair, she did most of the time. She managed to get to the room without (major) incident, though. It’d been juuuust long enough since the announcement that she was fairly sure the person behind the door wouldn’t be expecting her to actually come in. Hopefully it would be a pleasant surprise. She knocked on the door, then, feeling a little silly, decided to just open it.
“There you are!”
The woman inside must have been in her thirties, though the sleeve of tattoos on her left arm dyed pink hair, and bright smile made her look younger. She reminded Marcy of the sort of incredibly cool teachers she used to dream would adopt her (you know, like Matilda).
“Sit down, sit down,” the therapist said.
Marcy sat down. The only available chair was oddly low, plush and comfortable. In front of it was an equally low table covered in various fidget toys and distractions. Suddenly, she felt the urge to ask how young her clients usually were, but she didn’t say a word. Her new therapist was sitting with her legs crossed on her office chair, so Marcy pulled her own up.
“You can call me Colette,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“...Marcy,” she answered. Then she paused. “...Do you ask that to get people to talk, or in case they have a different name than the system says?”
Colette jolted a little. She kept smiling. “Both? I think it’s a good idea to ask directly. It makes it feel a little less intimidating, doesn’t it?”
Her voice was softer and more… casual? Than she was expecting.
Marcy shrugged. Colette kept talking. “So, uh, your family practitioner let me know the basics of what happened to you.”
This was the problematic part. Her parents hadn’t told her this, but she was able to figure it out; they didn’t believe her, not really. They knew something happened, she went missing for six months and got badly hurt. They believed the broad strokes; she got stabbed, she got electrocuted, somebody hurt her, other people helped her, Anne and Sasha were there, it was all Marcy’s fault, it had something to do with the whole frog-vasion thing. She knew they didn’t really buy the rest of it, especially since they weren’t in L.A when it happened. That was fine by her. It wasn’t like she expected more than that.
“Mm-hm,” Marcy said, “How much?”
“Your parents told me you and your friends ran away from home. You stayed with a man who later attacked and attempted to murder you?”
“A man,” Marcy snorted.
Colette paused. “Was anything about their account wrong?”
Just a few things. But it wasn’t like Marcy didn't expect them to tell a fake version of the story. Not only was it too dangerous to spread information about the whole thing, but if the therapist thought she was delusional she might have been hospitalized again. Sure, she couldn’t say some things, but that didn’t matter.
(There were other parts she couldn’t say. Parts that meant more than the frogs and newts. That would have to be fine too.)
Marcy shook her head. “No, it’s right.”
“Well, alright. That’s most of what they told me. And obviously, I know the extent of your injuries, mostly so I can know what support you need. Your parents also told me a few things they’ve noticed about you, both before and after the incident.”
“Noticed about me?”
Colette nodded. “Nothing bad, don’t worry.”
Well, that was a lie. What could her parents have possibly noticed that wasn’t bad?
“You moved recently, right? How are you, like… feeling about that?
Isn’t that the question of the year? Marcy shifted. Moving out felt like the worst thing in the world when she heard about it, it was like being told the date of her execution. But after all the stuff that happened in Amphibia, after actually dying, things were put into perspective. A new start was more of a relief. It felt a little like part of her had been left behind, and she still wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
“Um… fine?” She said, unsure how to compose all of that into something digestible.
“Fine?” Colette asked. “Have you met anyone new?”
She shifted. “Not really?”
There were some people she talked to. She even kinda made a friend in drama class in her first new school! Then she had to leave that school. And realised she didn’t get her number or anything. Or even her last name.
…Frog this was awkward. She was actually starting to feel really bad for giving this poor woman nothing to work with.
“I, uh, haven’t really made any friends yet.”
“Well, that’s alright. Are you having a hard time talking to people?”
“...Yeah. I’ve never really made any friends.”
“Ever, or just recently?”
Marcy nodded.
Colette looked at her computer screen, reading something. Oh, god, did her parents tell her about Anne and Sasha? “You didn’t make the friends you had in L.A?”
“No, they made me,” she said. Then she realised how that sounded. “I mean, I didn’t do anything. They just, um, happened? And I was really young, so…”
“You never felt like you had to make friends, so you never learned.”
“Yup.” That was it. Though, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t have been able to learn even if she tried. She was never the sort of person who could, even around Anne and Sasha. The two of them were just good enough to put up with that. Really, what kind of person never learns how to talk to people? It’s like not knowing how to read.
“And now you’ve been through this horrible thing, and you feel like you wouldn’t fit in with other people?”
Slowly, Marcy nodded.
“I’ve got a way you could meet some people,” Colette took a piece of paper from a drawer. “You don’t have to, of course, but it could help.”
The paper was a flyer for some therapy group thing. The graphic design was honestly pretty terrible. Marcy really, really wanted to remake it for her.
“It’s a group I run for teenagers who’ve had traumatic experiences. You’d be able to meet people a little more like you, and I’ll be there to make sure everything stays civil.”
She stared at the paper. Something about talking about her problems in front of a group of people her age was terrifying. She definitely wouldn’t mention the frog stuff there, at least. And what if they all thought she was weird there? Being the outcast in a group of outcasts might just kill her, honestly.
“Consider it. But either way, socialising is a skill that can be learned, even if a little late. We’ll get you there.”
Staring at the floor, Marcy’s hands closed around her shorts. A skill to learn. She’d tried to teach herself how to be more normal that way. It hadn’t worked.
“Anyway, I have some questions I have to ask you, legally,” Colette said. “Don’t worry too much about it, okay? Just answer honestly.”
Marcy nodded.
“Is there anything you think you need to tell me? Anything serious going on right now, anything you’ve heard?”
Marcy shook her head.
“Any history of harming yourself or others?”
Well, she’d been in fights, but harming others implies a one-sidedness that wasn’t there. She shook her head.
“Mm-hm. Any suicidal thoughts?”
Marcy didn’t answer. She always hated this question.
Colette didn’t push her, not really. She just kind of waited. Marcy’s throat felt tight. She’d have to say something, huh? She had promised herself she’d stop lying. She nodded.
“I mean, like, in the sense that either you have a plan, or just that you think it might be better to not be around sometimes? Remember, nothing’s going to leave this room unless it absolutely has to.”
“I mean, I’m definitely not planning to? It’s just…”
She trailed off. Colette kindly acted like she finished the sentence. “Between you and me, I don’t know why we have to ask that. I mean, if somebody is planning it, they’re not gonna tell anyone, because they know they’ll get in trouble.”
“...Yeah,” Marcy said. “It probably doesn’t work often, huh?”
“Not really, no!” Colette laughed.
Huh.
The whole meeting so far, Colette had been looking at and typing away at her computer, probably filling out some sort of file on Marcy. At this, she pushed her chair away and looked straight at Marcy. Marcy stared at the table.
“Well, we don’t have to worry about all of that today! For now, I want to get to know you. What sort of things are you interested in?”
Marcy tried not to perk up too obviously. Okay, she had to go for the most normal ways possible to describe the things she liked. She’d done that plenty of times! (Except that one time with the class ice breakers. That was a nightmare.)
“Um, I like games?”
Colette nodded. Oh god.
“And, uh, board… games? And books?”
Colette lit up. “What kind of books?”
Marcy shifted in her seat, sitting up a little straighter. “Fantasy, mostly! I just started reading the Elixir series.”
“Really?” Colette said. “I love those books! How far through are you?”
She relaxed. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
They spent the rest of that session talking about the book, and what Marcy was thinking of it. It was honestly… nice. She couldn’t remember the last time she talked about something nerdy to someone in real life and they actually talked back.
—
Being a year behind in school wasn’t exactly Marcy’s worst fear, but that’s only because she never thought it would happen. She was smart and on top of things, school was one of the only things she could truly be called good at. She wasn’t the sort of person this happened to.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t like she got held back for bad grades, just because she… couldn’t do any of the work.
…No, that was just as bad, wasn’t it?
“There’s a school opening this September, near the library,” Marcy’s dad said, unprompted. “It’ll be everyone’s first year there, so you won't be left out. Nobody will have any friends.”
Marcy nodded, ducking under the table to pick up her pen. Stupid fine motor skills. “Uh, I could try there.”
Her mom walked behind her. “And there won’t be any trouble now that you’ve got those meds, right?”
She should’ve expected there would be a big conversation. The three of them are never in the same room for no reason.
“Yeah,” she said. “They’re helping a lot.”
“Mhm. You should be taking them about now, right?” Her mom said with a pointed look.
Oh, right. She got up to the sink, clicking open a pill organiser. Paracetamol, levetiracetam, prozac. Three pills a day, all for different problems she had. All, apparently, enough to fix her.
The prozac was for after dinner, so that was the one she took now. That one, her mom always had to be there to watch, to double-triple check that she actually took it. The other two, she took in the morning, before she would, hypothetically, leave for school.
She was used to this routine by now. Fill the water bottle, take a drink, put a pill on her tongue, take another drink, swallow, repeat.
“It says here you can just sign up online and then show up. Isn’t that strange?”
“Oh, that’s good,” Marcy said, taking another drink. She hated how dry pills made her throat feel.
“It’ll be a relief to finally have your schooling back on track,” her dad said. “At least you have a late birthday, so you won’t be too much older…”
“Mm-hm,” Marcy mumbled. “I’ll sign up tonight, then.”
“Good,” her mom said. “We’ll get you back on track in no time.”
Her parents didn’t really talk about what happened. It had stunned Marcy at first. She’d been driven to angry tears more than once in her hospital bed, wondering how her own mother couldn’t muster up any anger or sadness about what had happened.
Then it kept not being a big deal, and she got used to it. Oh well. It was pretty childish, anyway. What did she want, for them to cry? She didn’t want that, she would’ve had no idea what to do!
It had been like this her whole life. It wasn’t so bad. Certainly not as bad as she convinced herself it was when she ran away. They were patient when she got kicked out of school. They got her medication, they put her bedroom on the bottom floor, they let her have an emotional support animal. Really, she was lucky.
They’d be so disappointed in her when they realise she isn’t as good as she used to be.
She walked into her bedroom and closed the door.
—
Later that night, Marcy took out her phone. That photo from the day she moved was still her lockscreen after all this time. She swiped past it and opened the page for the brand new high school in her town.
It would be nice to go to a newly built school. One of her biggest worries this whole time was that she would join the school when everyone else already had friends. Hopefully it wouldn’t be so bad that way.
There’s a banner on the website that says they accept everyone. She really, really hoped they meant that.
Well, no point stressing about it now.
She wondered how everyone was doing back home. She was a year behind all her old classmates now. Before all of this happened, she would turn down offers to move ahead. If she hadn’t, she’d be on track now.
Oh well. Her new-new start would be soon enough.
…She hoped everyone back home was doing okay.
There was a knock on her door. Dang it, she should’ve turned off the lights earlier. “Sorry, I’m gonna go to sleep now—”
“No, you don’t have to yet,” her mom said, peeking around the door. “I just wanted to talk?”
Marcy tensed. “Oh. Um, okay.”
Her mom sat on the edge of the bed, a little further away than she really needed to. “Have you signed up yet?”
“Mhm. I just did.”
“That’s good.”
They were silent for a moment. Marcy didn’t know what to say. Her parents didn’t do conversations like this. She couldn’t remember the last time one of them went into her room while she was in there.
“You know,” her mom said, “I really think things are going to be better this time. I mean, with your medication, and that woman you’re seeing…”
Marcy nodded. Her mom sighed like she’d done something wrong.
“Just promise me you’re going to try? See if you can join a club, or something. And start looking at colleges as soon as possible, because that time’s going to pass quicker than you think, you know.”
“Yeah,” Marcy said. “I will.”
Her mom shifted, sitting up a little straighter. “Well. You know I love you.”
Marcy felt a lump in her throat, and she couldn’t say anything back. She just nodded, even though she knew that was cruel. You love me, she thought but I don’t think you like me. Her parents just supported her because there wasn’t anything else they could do. But she couldn’t think about that too hard. After all, she was sure her parents were the only people who loved her, which was nice, even if it was only out of obligation. It wasn’t like she was a good daughter, either. Really, she was more trouble than she was worth. It was a miracle that her mom still had faith at all.
Marcy’s eyes drifted to John Garlic, asleep in his hutch.
“Well, alright. I’ll let you sleep now.”
She left, turning off the light as she went, and Marcy wasn’t sure she could put words to how she felt. She was certain she wasn’t going to get to sleep, at least. So she gave up, wiped at her eyes, and pulled out her switch.