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The world of Chloé Liseron Thaïs Bénédicte Bourgeois was a world of hot pink throw pillows, bulimia, and Love Spell by Victoria’s Secret. What wasn’t animal print was monogrammed, what wasn’t monogrammed was fuzzy, what wasn’t fuzzy was dripping in crystal and what didn’t drip with crystal was, obviously, animal print. She woke up when she wanted, went to school when she felt like it (which was rarely), and could get away with drinking as much as she could ask for anywhere between dinnertime and five in the morning. She was—as far as she could define the term—free. She had excess. She was happy, in the lap of luxury, and careless.
…But, liiiike, it was like, kind of ‘not enough’. Or something.
Chloé remembered the summer she’d been given the Bee Miraculous better than anything else. Her absolute to-die-for oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-we’re-breathing-the-same-AIR idol, Ladybug, had handed the delicate little comb to her in particular and told her that she needed her for the job. And, fuck, even if Ladybug had been kind of pissed off about the whole thing, like, it had just made all of it better. Chloé just had one extra person to prove everything to, which she did.
And being Queen Bee was fun, at least for a bit. Eventually it started to conflict with when Gossip Girl was on TV and it clearly wasn’t worth it then, but she’d been literally showered in so much praise it had been utterly ridiculous. Her bright yellow Kill Bill jumpsuit had been so hot, and her tight ponytail had been sooo hot, and because nothing on her jumpsuit had been animal print she’d stuck a big chunky golden “B” right on top of her comb, just to make sure everybody knew who the girl that kicked ass was. It had sparkled. She had sparkled. It was, like, utterly ridiculously perfect.
But not perfect enough to not, like, quit. Chloé had just gotten the sunken feeling that she was gonna lose the miraculous before she even had it for long. Not like she really knew what gave her the idea, or whatever. Looking at the comb just, like, felt wrong, and she’d always start thinking that she’d eventually get it taken back and start seeing someone else wear it before she even got to have it for long. So, she did the same shit she’d done when she got her first necklace from Dior from her mom and also to Mr. Cuddly: Chloé gave it up before it could be taken from her.
Ladybug had been mad, but not for long. It got harder to stand seeing her on the news after Chloé quit, and the less Chloé saw Ladybug on the news, the faster she let herself grow out of it.
Aaanyway, Chloé had been staring at herself in the mirror for way too long. She’d surrounded herself a little crowd of body sprays and towers of makeup and lip gloss—The drawers in her vanity were where she started stashing baggies and pill packs, and they just, like, took the drawer over and shit. One blister pack of her daddy’s Ixprim was too tall to fit in there, so she left it out and would tap the bottom of it against the surface of her vanity when she was bored. Y’know, kind of just like this. Tap tap tap tap.
“…Bibi, when are you gonna be done with…”
Chloé spun her chair around to look at where Sabrina usually sat on her bed, only to remind herself Sabrina was not, in fact, there. Her room was flush with Grand Palais raspberry pinks, velour, and warm light from her feathery floor lamp, but in spite of it all the room felt incredibly bare in its loneliness. Chloé’s grip on the blister pack loosened, and she set it down as if preparing to rise from her chair but did not. The room felt utterly, ridiculously quiet. It made her feel gross.
On the other side of Chloé’s room was her iPod Touch, which she still had because she didn’t like to use her iPhone 3G, which she didn’t like to use because her Motorola Razr could clip to the waistband of her track pants and iPhones just couldn’t do such a thing. If iPod Touches could have a life or wants and dreams, Chloé could think to herself a stupid little thought about how sad it was for her iPod Touch to sit on top of one of the speakers in her room forever, attached to its aux cord like it was an umbilical cord and a baby. She turned it on, scrolled through her music, and tried to drown everything out with Britney Spears and Circus.
♫♩ Superstar, where you from? How's it going?
I know you got a clue what you're doing
You can play brand-new to all the other chicks out here
But I know what you are, what you are, baby ♩♫
Two pills of Ixprim and a key bump later, Chloé had unzipped the fly of her jeans and folded the waistband down twice to get them as low-rise as they could possibly be and started to lip-sync into her full-length mirror.
♫♩ Look at you gettin' more than just a re-up
Baby, you got all the puppets with their strings up
Fakin' like a good one, but I call 'em like I see 'em
I know what you are, what you are, baby ♩♫
Chloé turned in a circle on the ball of her foot, stopping to grab on to the edges of the mirror and enunciate every word she mouthed, like, just to really make it look like she was shutting some guy down. She could move her body through Spears-y gyrations of the hips and shoulders, strutting back and forth and back; It still felt like she was trying too hard to make herself feel okay. And it made no sense, because her stomach was flat and her hair was hot and she had tons of expensive shoes, so Chloé thought whoever had decided she couldn’t be happy was actually utterly autistic and had no clue what a good life looked like. Girls would kill to be her. So what the fuck was the deal?
♫♩ Boy, don't try to front, I-I
Know just, just what you are, are-are
Boy, don't try to front, I-I
Know just, just what you are, are-are ♩♫
♫♩ You say I'm crazy
(You!) I got your crazy
(You!) You're nothing but a
(You!) Womanizer ♩♫
It wasn't doing anything. When the song lulled in the bridge, Chloé popped more Ixprim into her mouth. Her daddy had started getting them prescribed years ago (He was getting old and fat and doctors were gonna pump him full of medication to get him through an extra four terms or until he popped, whatever came first) and it was probably maybe kind of her to steal them before he could get addicted to anything. Her nails scraped the blister pack as she fidgeted with it and contemplated taking another, but it wasn't worth it.
Her eyes glanced over to where the akuma sat perched on a tube of lip gloss. The two of them made eye contact, and Chloé awkwardly fumbled with the blister pack of Ixprim as she slid it away on the desk.
"It's so late, like, why are you even here?"
It didn't respond, but she continued with the conversation.
"Like, it'd be such a waste if I did it now. I literally stopped letting friends take anything from my stash last week. My supply is basically noth-ing," Chloé said, only mostly lying. "It's just, like... why be rude like that? Why?"
She sat back down in her chair again, slouching into it and scowling at the akuma on her desk. The funny thing about them is how little they actually did. Akumas could burrow into clothing or whatever objects they found, but the rest of the time the creatures came off as pretty fucking stupid. Hers would flit into the room and just sit and watch her for hours at a time; Almost like it had been parked and then whoever was driving it just left it there.
Once Chloé thought about it, she was sure the Ixprim wasn’t doing anything for her either. The more she took, the more likely she’d end up in a hospital room. Maybe next time it would even make the news, and the thought, like… kind of terrified her. She started to push around her crowd of makeup, but the akuma on top of her lip gloss tube sat still.
“Am I gonna OD if I let you akumatize me?”
The akuma still couldn’t answer her.
…Being akumatized did feel good. It was, uh… She didn’t know the right word for it, but every time it happened it felt like letting her body pop like a balloon. Ugh, what a stupid metaphor. It also felt like getting high, but it felt better than getting high, and it could last longer and she’d forget everything by the end including why she felt bad to begin with. So much more permanent than a bump.
Chloé gently grabbed the tube of lip gloss and the akuma crawled to sit on the back of her hand. For a moment, she studied the tube itself: Dior Addict Ultra Gloss, with the super-shiny Sparkling finish, in the one bright pink Everdior shade.
And she thought that she might as well, and swiped the wand over her lips once, smacked her lips together, and then clicked the tube closed again.
“Okay, hit me.”
The akuma disappeared somewhere in between her hand and the tube of lip gloss, and she got her response:
“Good evening, Queen Wasp. Forgive me for returning to you once again, but I’m happy to be partnered with someone so… exceptional.”