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Anya was six years old—secretly five—when her parents first had her use a nebulizer. She didn’t see much of how Papa actually prepared the machine, though she’d heard plenty of his thoughts: something about the hose being annoying to attach to the air compressor, his fixed concentration in trying to avoid spilling her medicine, lingering anxiety about if he was setting this up correctly because He has to get it right, he has to, Anya needs this.
Mama sat next to her on the couch, Bond curled up over both of their feet, as Papa carefully brought the device over to the table in front of them. Anya wasn’t sure whether or not she should be scared—it was a machine, a machine meant to be hooked up to her, a scenario that should have awoken many horrible memories within Anya (and maybe it did, a little bit). But this “nebulizer” also looked nothing at all like what the scientists used on her. It was small, for one, just a plastic box with a few tubes, and the facemask Anya was meant to hold over her nose and mouth was a vibrant teal—such a cheerful color compared to the intense circumstances that brought about the need for this device.
“The doctors say you likely won’t need to use this your whole life,” Loid said as he sat down in the chair to the right of Anya, “just until we figure out what triggers your asthma. Eventually you should be able to manage your symptoms with just an inhaler. But for now…” He held out the teal facemask to Anya. “Ten minutes on the nebulizer. Once a week or more as needed.”
Anya instinctively turned to bury her face in her mother’s side. What if it hurt? What if she had to use it way longer than ten minutes? What if—What if—
Yor wrapped her arms around Anya, and Anya couldn’t help but relax at the gentle touch.
“We’re right here with you, Anya,” she heard Mama murmur into her hair. “It’ll be easy peasy—you’ll be done before you know it!”
And thus the nebulizer became something like a ritual, Mama or Papa holding her hand while the other helped her fit the teal mask to her face. It went so for a couple years, at least. Anya never mentioned it to her friends—well, no, that’s a lie. At one point she tried to tell them she was a cyborg because this machine was now practically part of her, but Becky had merely giggled and Damian had rolled his eyes. Whatever.
But just like Papa promised, Anya did gradually identify and learn how to manage her asthma triggers. Taking two puffs from her inhaler before intense exercise (like gym class), wearing a mask in the cold—especially dry cold—to avoid a flare-up, and copious other preventative measures allowed Anya to stop using the nebulizer on a weekly basis before Year 4. (And thank goodness. Once she—mostly—got over her anxiety about being attached to another medical machine, it just got plain boring to sit for ten minutes or more holding a mask to her face. At least Papa would sometimes let her watch Spy Wars.)
What was presently annoying was that the Eden school nurse was required to hold onto her inhaler for another two years until Anya was 14—well, fake 14—because only students in Year 9 and up were allowed to carry their own medicine on campus. Which meant every time she needed to use her inhaler, every time before instances as routine as P.E., she had to go all the way to the nurse’s office. What, was she not trustworthy enough to keep track of her own medicine? Did the housemasters think she would let other students take a puff for kicks?
Thankfully, Becky would often accompany her to the nurse, which made the frequent pre-gym class trips a lot less boring.
But all things taken together, Anya considered herself an expert at managing her asthma.
Which makes this stupid slip-up all the more embarrassing.
Becky laughs gleefully with Connie as the two of them throw a volley of snowballs at Damian, Ewen, and Emile, all three of whom yelp as they duck behind their already crumbling snow fort.
“First snow of the season!” Bill bellows, scooping up his own snowball—or a snow cannonball, at that size. He launches it toward George, who shrieks and hides behind his half-made snowman.
“Come on, Anya!” Becky cheers, turning toward her friend as she gestures toward the collapsing wall behind which the three boys still cower. “We have to take advantage of the break in their defenses!”
Bare-faced, Anya forces herself to return Becky’s smile. The familiar burning sensation that currently itches throughout her lungs causes her stomach to roll with nauseous frustration, because she knows better than to let this happen. She knows better. She should know better.
But the snow was so sudden. Sudden and beautiful. In a rare moment of camaraderie between teachers and students, the faculty decided to extend the students’ afternoon break so everyone—themselves included—could enjoy the weather, as fat, shapely, perfect snowflakes endlessly streamed down from the sky, coating the dying rosebushes and evergreen pines that dot the open landscape of Eden’s central courtyard.
And Anya let herself get caught up in the contagious excitement. Let herself rush outside with her friends but without her mask, which was still tucked away in the exact same pocket of her satchel that she always kept it in.
Embarrassing.
Anya realizes Becky is still waiting for a response. “I, uh—” She manages to swallow a cough. “I think I’m actually gonna run inside and grab us all some hot chocolate! From the cafeteria!”
Becky squeals, clasping her hands together. “You’re so smart, Anya! That sounds perfect.” She flexes her arms. “Don’t worry, Connie and I will hold down the fort when you’re gone.”
Connie nods in affirmation, giving Anya a salute, and Anya hopes she successfully disguised her cough—when it finally slipped out—as a laugh.
“Of course. Be right back, okay?”
With an awkward wave, Anya turns on her heel and all but books it back indoors, even though outside with her friends in the crisp, fresh snow is the only place she wants to be.
It’s not fair.
Anya slips inside the first open classroom she sees, inhaling the warm air and grimacing as her inward breath dissolves into a fit of dry coughs. Not so intense a fit as to be overwhelming—to need to make the long, aggravating trip to the nurse, in other words—but enough to be plain annoying.
Anya really hates this.
She follows the prescribed steps: keep her back straight, maintain breath in as even a pace as possible, don’t fight the coughs—just ride them out. It’s a training she has internalized even better than Mama’s self-defense instruction, which is saying something.
Though her symptoms don’t abate as quickly as Anya would like, she allows herself to feel relieved that her occasional coughing fit at least hasn’t downgraded to sharp wheezing.
A sigh escapes Anya despite herself. She closes her eyes, leaning her head back against the classroom wall, distantly able to feel heat from a faraway furnace thrumming inside.
She should’ve been more careful. She could’ve prevented this. She knows better than to let this happen.
Anya can hear the echoes of stern doctors in her mind. Yes, fine, she hadn’t been great at looking after herself when she was a kid, and yes, sure, she’d had some asthma attacks before the age of eight—so actually seven—that could have been prevented, which were all mostly just in front of her parents (like when practicing dodgeball with Mama got out of hand…). But she wasn’t that irresponsible child anymore. She could take care of herself.
Anya’s teeth dig into her bottom lip, hard enough that she swears she tastes copper.
Yeah, right.
If that was true, if taking care of herself was so simple, if she could be trusted with the responsibility, persistent embers wouldn’t be clotted in her chest right now, would they?
Anya opens her eyes and gently massages her sternum. It’s more psychosomatic than true symptom relief, but the steady movement calms her, and sure enough, her coughs seem to gradually come fewer and further between.
A pause.
Then, knowing full well she’ll regret this decision, Anya drops her hand from her chest, using both palms to help her clamber on top of the nearest wooden desk in order to better peer out the massive window that stretches across the side of the classroom. Through it…
Yep. As expected.
She has a perfect view of her friends playing outside in the snow.
Becky and Connie are indeed holding down the fort against the boys. Bill has apparently started assisting George in his effort to make a snowman, and the… entity they have created towers well above the height that two seventh years should be capable of creating. (But Bill is Bill, so.) She catches a glimpse of other students, people she’s certain she should know the names of but can’t quite recall, making snow angels side by side and laughing.
The burning in Anya’s chest is from her stupid asthma flare-up. The burning in Anya’s stomach is from her even more stupid jealousy.
Bittersweetly, Anya’s eyes continue flitting over the snowy activities that adorn the winter wonderland which has transformed Eden’s courtyard, but all color drains from her face when her gaze lands on Damian.
Because he’s looking back.
With a gasp that becomes a strangled cough, Anya immediately drops from the window, nearly tumbling off the desk but somehow managing to keep her balance. She slowly lowers herself into a sitting position to avoid another near fall, blood pounding in her head like waves against the shore.
He… He couldn’t have actually seen her, right? She’s pretty sure Eden has tinted windows, or semi-tinted windows, as one of their million security measures. And—And even if he had seen her, he couldn’t have known it was her. She told Becky she was going to the cafeteria, and on the off chance Damian had overheard that comment, then he’d have no reason to suspect that she wasn’t where she said she’d be.
Anya takes a deep breath, grimacing when she still can’t inhale as completely as she’d like. Maybe another five minutes of sitting in here before she grabs her mask from the Cecile Hall homeroom and heads back outside. Another five minutes while she pretends Damian didn’t—
She hears his thoughts before his footsteps.
It was this classroom… I think.
Anya has gotten better—ish—at stopping herself from constantly tapping into the inner dialogue of every person around her. Truthfully, it was more for her own peace of mind than for the privacy of others. (Sometimes she wonders if she should feel bad about that…?) She’s still not perfect, though, and it’s especially hard with people who are noisy thinkers.
Like Damian.
Somehow, his mind is louder than his mouth.
The door to the classroom creaks open, and Anya winces. Damn. Discovered already.
“Anya?” Damian pokes his head around the door. In seconds his eyes land on her seated figure, and he steps fully into the classroom. “What are you doing in here?”
“Nothing!” Anya fights back the cringe that threatens to contort her face at her way-too-quick, way-too-unconvincing response. “I mean… What are you doing in here, Sy-on Boy?”
Damian raises a brow. “You’re acting weird, Forger.” Weirder than usual, that is.
Ugh. She hates how well he’s gotten at reading her, even without the added benefit—the blessing and curse—that she has of reading minds.
A cough rises in Anya’s throat, and she instinctively suppresses it—suppresses it and how her eyes threaten to widen in shock. In fear? Some combination of the two.
Anya is underestimated enough—for her height, for her below-average test scores, for her presumed youth that is secretly even more so. She knows others see her as weak, as in need of protection, despite the martial arts training she loves to do with Mama. Getting diagnosed with asthma as a child certainly didn’t help this perception, though she thinks—she hopes—that her diagnosis has faded out of Eden’s public memory, since she hasn’t had an asthma attack on school grounds since the nasty one in P.E. (the first and only time Anya ever forgot to use her inhaler beforehand).
But her closest friends haven’t forgotten. They aren’t weird about it, not usually, but what makes Anya’s stomach clench is that Damian has done more than not forget—he remembers. Because he was there the first time.
The worst time.
Yeah, something is definitely up with her.
Anya releases her held cough as a distorted grumble, only half in jest, as Damian approaches and lifts himself up to sit on the desk beside her. The burning in her chest continues to flicker, a candle stubbornly refusing to go out.
“Becky thinks you’re getting hot chocolate,” Damian says after a pause. He absentmindedly picks at a fingernail. “Do you actually intend to do that?”
“Well—I mean yes, duh,” Anya sputters, choking back another series of coughs. “I just… wanted a second for myself. That’s all.”
It’s a terrible lie.
“Right. That’s a terrible lie.”
Anya’s nose crinkles as she pouts, frustrated. “Listen—”
“Anya Forger?” Damian interrupts, leaning back on his hands as he turns to look at her. (She swears his eyebrow is somehow cocked higher than the recently completed Fernsehturm as he gives her a dubious stare.) “The most extraverted student at Eden? Wanting time alone? Don’t bullshit me.”
Anya swallows a cough. Tries to swallow a cough. But the burning sensation in her chest is starting to inch back upward from its abated state, and despite her best efforts—and her most desperate wishing—she has to snap her elbow upward and release what ends up being a short coughing fit into its crook.
At least she’s still not wheezing.
Damian’s eyes widen with immediate recognition, and Anya hates it. “Wait. You weren’t… You weren’t wearing your mask outside.” He sits up so straight it’s like his spine was replaced with an iron rod. “Are you—Should we go to the nurse? Do you need your inhaler?”
“No! I’m—” Another abrupt but thankfully still brief coughing fit cuts her off, so she instead furiously shakes her head.
“If you’re having a flare-up, or an attack, you should take—”
“Argh!” When the coughing finally ceases, Anya drops her elbow to slam her fist into the desk. “Don’t tell me what I should do! I’m fine!”
The crack of her hand hitting the wood echoes in the empty classroom, silencing Damian. Anya refuses to look at him as she slides off the desk to start walking toward the door.
“I just—I just need some time,” she says. One hand creeps up to cross her chest and grab her opposite upper arm in the semblance of a hug. “I’ll be fine.”
She’s mad at me. Shit, she’s mad at me! I messed up. Damnit, I didn’t mean to—I never mean to—
Anya squeezes her eyes shut and tries to silence Damian’s torrent of thoughts, panicked and frantic (and wrong) as usual. She pauses at the threshold of the classroom, hesitating but turning around to look back at him.
A carefully neutral expression is plastered on his face, the one Damian always wears when he doesn’t want to betray what he’s really thinking or feeling. “I didn’t mean to tell you what to do,” he says, pushing himself off the desk to stand, though he doesn’t close the distance between them. “Sorry. I was just—”
“Worried?” Anya finishes, not needing to read his mind to know her fill-in-the-blank is correct. “Yeah. I know. I just…” She coughs again, but now that she’s no longer choking down the tickles in her throat, the burning sensation is starting to ebb once more. “I just don’t want to go to the nurse. I want to—I want to be in Year 9 so I can finally be allowed to carry my own stupid medicine around.” She throws her hands up in frustration. “As if I’m not responsible enough to do that now!”
She half-expects Damian to make a joke. To crack a smile. To say, Well, Forger, you know you’re famous for a number of “incidents” that involved mild bodily harm to yourself and others, because Damian always takes advantage of this type of opportunity to make fun of her questionable reputation at Eden. Poking fun like that—it’s their thing.
Instead, he takes a step toward her and says, “Yeah. It’s not fair.”
His uncanny echo of her own earlier thought is almost enough to make Anya burst into tears. Almost.
“But…” Damian adds, slowly continuing to move toward her, “and I’m really just parroting your pops here, Forger, you have a chronic medical condition. That’s nothing to be ashamed about. Much less doing what’s necessary to take care of yourself.”
The coughs that were caught in her throat for the past ten minutes have been replaced by a rising lump. Anya runs her thumbs beneath her eyes, hoping Damian doesn’t notice the act is to wipe away the tears that threaten to escape and slip down her cheeks.
“It’s not fair,” Damian repeats, “but it’s not your fault, either.”
It’s not your fault.
He stops a foot away from her. Maybe less. His face has grown typically pinker at their proximity, but Anya pretends she doesn’t notice.
“I’m not—” Anya inhales a sharp breath. “I’m not weak, you know.”
Damian chuckles. “You? Weak? Two words I’d never use in the same sentence.”
Anya doesn’t need to dip into Damian’s thoughts to realize he means it.
Her breathing is steadier, now. The urge to cough is all but gone. The warm air inside the halls of Eden has replaced all of the discomforting cold that invaded her lungs outdoors.
“Thanks,” she finally says, giving Damian a small—genuine—smile that soon shifts into a smirk as she steps forward to lightly knock his arm. “So many kind words for little ol’ Anya, huh? Didn’t know you had it in you, Sy-on Boy.”
At her touch, Damian’s face goes from pink to scarlet. “I—no—it’s not because of you, Forger,” he sputters. He crosses his arms, avoiding her eyes. “I would’ve done the same for Emile or Ewen. Maybe even Blackbell, if she hasn’t been on my nerves that day.”
Anya laughs, clearly and freely. “Sure, sure. Whatever you say.” She yanks his left arm down to loop it through hers, ignoring his stammers of protest as she begins leading him out of the classroom. “I still have to get the hot chocolate I promised Becky. You’ll help, right? I may be strong, but even I don’t have enough arms to carry drinks for all of Cecile Hall!”
“All of Cecile Hall?”
Anya snaps her fingers with her free hand. “You’re so right, Sy-on Boy! Not just Cecile Hall. We can’t forget Bill, or Tertius, or Arnold, or Freddy, or—”
Damian scowls at her all too intentionally chosen list of names. “You don’t need to get drinks for them.” He hesitates. “Well, maybe Bill, I guess. Since he was making a snowman with George.”
Anya is pleased to notice that Damian has not retracted his arm from hers, though rubies remain embedded in his cheeks.
“And on our way back with the drinks,” he continues after a pause, giving Anya a tentative glance, “we’ll grab your mask from the classroom?”
Is that too much? Maybe she didn’t need the reminder. Shit. I hope I didn’t cross the line again. Damnit, how do I always manage to—
Anya gives Damian a soft smile. “Couldn’t have come up with a better plan myself.”
She feels Damian’s arm relax, still nestled within hers.
Some things still aren’t fair, Anya supposes. Being a science experiment for the first four years of her childhood. Bouncing around orphanages for another. Being hooked up to a nebulizer for several more. Unable to go anywhere, do anything without considering if her lungs could take it, without keeping a rescue inhaler on hand, without the risk that she might find herself unable to breathe for seconds and minutes that would burn like hours.
Yeah. Definitely not fair.
But… As Anya—grinning, laughing—drags Damian into the cafeteria, and as they order an obnoxious number of hot chocolates for only two students, she decides that things don’t have to be fair to be worth it.
Anya giggles as the chef shakes her head in exasperation (but maybe also amusement) before she turns around to prepare two dozen hot chocolates. Then, looking up at Damian, Anya squeezes his arm. He smiles, awkward but true. She beams back.
Yeah. Worth it.