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The new girl’s name is Pomni.
Pomni’s a jester, and she looks pretty similar to Kaufmo when you think about it. It’s the first time a new human has had such a similar design to someone who’s already in the circus. Ribbit wonders if Pomni’s the type to crack unfunny jokes, like Kaufmo does, but Pomni’s so deep in shock that her personality is barely perceptible. Ribbit greets her and introduces herself, tells her it’s going to be alright, then leaves the rest to Ragatha, who seems delighted to make a new friend.
Surely, given some more time, Pomni will feel more at ease, just like they all eventually do.
Jax doesn’t seem to care for Pomni. When Ribbit mentions her during one of their outings with Kaufmo, Kaufmo says she seems like a nice girl, although still traumatized. Jax says it’s about time she got over it. Ribbit reminds him that he took a while to adjust, and Jax rolls his eyes with a smile. Enough talking about the new kid, he says. Ribbit laughs and points out that Pomni’s clearly an adult, she’s not a kid. “Could’ve fooled me,” he replies. Ribbit thinks he knows damn well Pomni’s not a kid, he just hates being the youngest in the circus.
Pomni gets attached to an NPC, and said NPC blows up right in front of her. It’s unfortunate, especially since it’s her very first actual adventure. Ribbit tries to comfort her, but Pomni seems stuck in a constant state of shock, so she gives her some space. Ragatha tries to go after her, but Ribbit tells her they might just say the wrong thing and make it worse. They’ve never talked about this, but Ribbit sees a lot of herself in Ragatha. She always wants to help, makes people feel at ease, and sometimes means so well she does too much, just like Ribbit herself. Maybe they should hang out more often. Maybe the reason why she gets along with Jax so well is that they’re so different. Much to think about.
Pomni gets separated from everyone else at Mildenhall Manor and comes back with Kinger. It’s the first time she genuinely smiles in front of everybody, and she’s holding his hand tightly. Jax whispers that Pomni must’ve gone insane if she acut ally enjoyed being around Kinger. Ribbit just wonders how Pomni managed to crack through Kinger’s walls. She should try having a conversation with him someday, and with Pomni too, seeing as she seems to be doing much better these days. Maybe they’d get along.
Ribbit doesn’t know how exactly, but she messed up.
Jax won’t talk to her anymore. He avoids her, excludes her from conversations, yet acts as if nothing’s wrong. She’s not good at confrontation and she never has been. Back home, she was expected to take every hit and never throw one back, not even say a word about it, and she’s struggled to stand up for herself ever since. Besides, maybe she really was in the wrong. Yes, this was all her fault, wasn’t it? She pushed Jax to talk about himself—herself?—and something in the way she reacted must’ve triggered him. Her. Is she allowed to call Jax a her?
They were doing so well. Both sitting on her bed, and they were so, so close. Ribbit has never felt so comfortable, so close to anyone in her entire life. She felt a thousand different emotions that night, and she can’t even think about them now because all she feels is pain. She tries to hang out with Ragatha, Gangle, and Zooble, but nothing helps, and she can’t get herself to not get lost in thoughts around them.
She even tries talking to Pomni, thinking they could maybe be friends, but her fight with Jax has left her with a constant nausea that makes her unable to hold even a basic conversation. Pomni seems worried, but thankfully unaware of what happened with Jax. Ragatha says they can talk if Ribbit wants to, but Ribbit feels too ashamed to admit that she did something that made Jax never want to speak to her again.
Well, maybe it’s not forever. It’s only been a week, after all. Still, it hurts like hell, and the prospect of losing the strongest connection she’s ever had, and the person she loves the most her closest friend forever makes her want to die.
Ribbit has noticed two things.
First, Jax has been… different lately. Meaner. His usual teasing of Gangle has straight-up turned into bullying. Ribbit can only watch from afar and comfort Gangle afterward. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” she says. “I’m so sorry.” Gangle tells her she doesn’t have to apologize for Jax’s behavior. After all, she’s not responsible for it. Ribbit can’t bring herself to tell Gangle that she made this happen, so she just cries on her way back to her bedroom. Not only did she upset Jax, she made everybody’s life harder in the process.
Jax trips Zooble on purpose, runs them over with a truck, throws a knife at Ragatha to see what happens, puts caterpillars in her bed, and keeps breaking Gangle’s comedy mask. He does nothing to Kaufmo, who’s been keeping to himself lately, Kinger, who’s long since lost his mind, or Pomni, whom Ribbit initially assumes he simply has no interest in.
No interest, she thinks, until their shift at Spudsy’s. It’s very brief, but she catches him striking up a conversation with Pomni. It’s the most normal she’s seen him act in weeks. Then again, he also looks miserable. Ribbit suggests to Gangle that she ease up on the management a little, but Gangle doesn’t take it well. Not only does she threaten to call upper management, she also points out that Ribbit never said anything when Jax was bullying her. Ribbit doesn’t know what to say to that, so she leaves her alone. She clocks out and cries in her car on the way back to her fictional home.
Jax and Pomni have gotten closer.
Ribbit doesn’t know how that even happened, but now she keeps seeing him crack jokes around her, tease her, do things to get her attention, try to learn more about her. At first, she wonders if he’s doing it to make her jealous, but eventually brushes the thought away, feeling guilty for even considering it. She did something that hurt Jax, and now she’s projecting her jealousy onto him. He’s probably just bored. Or maybe he genuinely wants to be Pomni’s friend.
She gets it, Pomni seems nice, although Ribbit doesn’t know much about her. The only thing Pomni ever told her was, “I’m not a child, you two don’t have to hype me up.” Maybe they just got off on the wrong foot. Pomni was struggling at the time, after all. She looked worried when Ribbit nearly cried in front of her, and Kinger and Ragatha like her, and apparently, so does Jax, so surely she must be a cool person to be around. Ribbit will try talking to her later, when she feels less sick.
Ribbit’s a literal tiny frog during the Poacher adventure, but that one doesn’t last long. For President Pomni, she’s a cleaning lady. Her brief is nearly empty and only tells her to take extra care of the plants, and to be extra nice to the ‘ruler of the great nation that is the United States.’ Pomni gets a suit as well as the main role, and Jax leans toward her and asks what her favorite color is. Well, he tells her to cut whatever wire is her favorite color, but Ribbit knows him well enough to see through his gimmick. Her favorite color is, in fact, green, and that’s the wire she would’ve cut. Pomni answers red.
The place blows up a minute later, but the pain Ribbit feels as she’s launched onto the roof is nothing compared to what’s going on inside her head.
Now she’s in what looks like an anime high school, sitting in a classroom straight out of one of those japanese shows. Ribbit’s never gone to public school, so this actually feels kind of nice. It’s just like on TV. Jax is annoyed, but Zooble tells him to shut up. Ribbit’s sitting not too far from him, but he refuses to look at her. Instead, he gets up and walks over to Pomni.
“Can you believe this, Pomni? First she draws anime, and now she drags us all into one.” He scoffs. “She must be one of those, uh… losers.”
Ribbit furrows her eyebrows. Jax knows what anime fans are called, he used to be one himself. She can tell exactly what he’s trying to say, so why is he pretending otherwise?
“You threw me out of a moving truck.”
Is he trying to impress her? Had they not been fighting, Ribbit would’ve made fun of him for it, but right now, it just hurt to watch, so she turns away. Ragatha tilts her head toward her, silently asking what’s wrong, and Ribbit forces a smile.
A stargazing adventure. This one was Ribbit’s suggestion. Jax and her used to have a habit of lying on her bedroom floor and staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars scattered across her ceiling, but now they’re beneath an actual night sky, sitting in the grass beneath countless real ones. It’s too bad she can’t enjoy it properly, because Jax is nowhere near her. Zooble and Gangle are on a date, Kinger is busy eating a sandwich…
And Jax is lying next to Pomni.
Ribbit didn’t think she was the possessive type, but it hurts like hell to see what feels like her literal replacement beside him. Pomni’s talking to him, and Ribbit can tell from the way his features twist and shift that he isn’t masking. Pomni brought his genuine self back out. Ribbit could cry on the spot, again. Lately, all she does is cry.
“Are you okay?”
For a brief moment, Ribbit feels annoyed, but immediately dismisses the feeling with guilt. Ragatha’s just being her sweet, caring self. She nods. The woman looks like she doesn’t believe her, but thankfully doesn’t push the issue the way she usually would. Instead, she sits down beside her and hands her a sandwich.
Ribbit decides to try something.
“The new girl seems to be settling in well.”
She doesn’t know why she pretends not to remember Pomni’s name. Ragatha looks uncomfortable, and Ribbit gets the distinct feeling she sees right through her.
“Yeah,” Ragatha replies carefully. “She’s… she’s nice.”
“Jax seems to like her a lot.”
The sentence is delivered with a smile, but Ragatha only looks more concerned.
“I think Jax just wants to mess with you. You know how he is. Don’t take it to heart…”
“I know Jax. Trust me, he’s not faking it to get to me. I can tell when he’s being genuine.”
Silence. Ragatha plays with the hem of her dress.
“I… I really don’t know what you two see in him. I mean, Pomni’s new, so she doesn’t know any better, and he used to be nice, but lately…”
Ribbit doesn’t know what to say. She wants to tell Ragatha that she knows a different side of Jax. The real Jax. The sensitive, sweet, awkward Jax. She’s the only person who’s ever gotten to see that warm, friendly side of him.
She’s also the one who now has to deal with the other side.
The cold, avoidant one.
Well, Ragatha is wrong about one thing. Pomni seems like she’s about to experience the real Jax too, except without any of the downsides. Maybe Pomni was what he needed all along. Maybe Ribbit herself was the one who triggered this behavior in him. Maybe she just ruins the people she gets close to, and that’s why she should stay alone.
“I should warn her,” Ragatha continues. “He’s gonna hurt her someday, and she’ll be just like—”
She stops herself.
“She won’t take it well.”
Just like you. Ragatha thinks Pomni is like Ribbit, too.
It’s strange. To Ribbit, they couldn’t be more different. Pomni is straightforward, whereas Ribbit isn’t. Pomni is sometimes rude in ways Ribbit would never be. Pomni adjusted at the speed of light, while Ribbit struggled for a long time. Everybody likes Pomni. Pomni does no wrong, even when she is doing something Ribbit considers wrong… and that’s why Jax likes her better. Ribbit can’t even blame him.
The intermission mercifully cuts off her train of thought. For once, Ribbit is grateful for it.
The black-and-white bar is the coolest setting they’ve had so far and, once again, Ribbit would probably be impressed if it weren’t for… well.
She really should’ve sat this one out like Kaufmo did.
Maybe she’ll talk to him later. They used to be sort of a duo, after all.
She’s wearing a long skirt and a simple T-shirt. Not the most fashionable outfit, but Ribbit isn’t the most fashionable person in general. Having grown up being forced to wear conservative clothing, long skirts and tees are all she’s ever really known. She likes pants better.
Pomni is wearing pants, a blouse, and Jax is sitting next to her again.
Ribbit learns very little about the others and mostly learns about Pomni. She’s a twenty-five year old accountant with a YouTube channel. If this were a normal day, Jax would make fun of her hobby, and Ribbit would punch his arm and tell him to be nice. Then she’d tell Pomni how cool that is, and she’d genuinely mean it. Ribbit never had the guts to post herself online, and for most of her life, she wasn’t allowed to anyway.
She watches Jax look away when Ragatha talks about her mother, his finger tracing circles around the rim of his glass. He avoids the subject by making a Breaking Bad reference, but Ribbit knows that one hit close to home. She wishes she could reach over and brush her hand against his the way she used to, tell him it’s okay, that it’s all in the past, but Jax isn’t even looking at her.
“By the way, Pomni. Sorry about the whole president thing. I just thought it’d be funny.”
Pomni looks surprised, but not nearly as surprised as Ribbit. She’s never, ever heard Jax apologize before.
“Apology accepted… I guess…”
Jax immediately throws himself against Pomni, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and rubbing his cheek against hers.
“Wow. The first steps of a budding friendship. Right, Ragatha?”
Ribbit chokes on her drink, coughing so violently that soda comes out through her nose. Everybody looks at her with pity in their eyes, except Pomni, who just looks startled by what she’s witnessed.
The conversation continues, but all Ribbit can focus on is Jax. His eyes briefly lock onto hers before darting away again. She catches his hand tightening around his glass, then her vision becomes too blurry to make out much of anything else.
Ribbit isn’t too big on sports. Surprise, neither is Pomni. That’s one rare thing they have in common. This is Ragatha’s suggestion and Ribbit doesn’t have the strength to participate, so she sits this one out. Plus, Caine forgot to make an evil clone for her and Gangle. Gangle decides to play anyways, but Ribbit just sits and watches. She wonders what her evil version would’ve acted like. Maybe she’d be less of a coward.
She winces as Jax gets forced to wear a maid dress. There’s no way Gangle nor Zooble could’ve known, but her heart still hurts for him. Her? God, Jax must be feeling terrible… She looks around and her heart clenches. Well, for what it’s worth, she’s glad Caine forgot her clone, because she wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing Jax get along with another version of her. But she already gets hurt enough watching him with Pomni, and now she has to watch him talk to her evil counterpart. Jax would rather talk to an NPC than her.
He spends the rest of the game next to Pomni. They laugh, and laugh, and he leans into her, and Ribbit refuses to believe it’s only because the jester’s so short. He looks so comfortable, so at ease, even if only for a brief moment, and it’s the Jax she used to talk to every day of her life. Her Jax. Pomni even skips her turn just to stay with him.
Ribbit disagrees with Ragatha, she can see exactly what Pomni sees in him. How could anyone not love him? He’s awful sometimes, but he can also be so, so fun to be around, the kind of person who can make even the most boring day feel exciting, who can make her laugh until her stomach hurts and make hours pass by without her noticing. She would do anything to get back what was hers. Did he even miss her at all? Did he like Pomni better? Of course he likes her better. Ribbit already established that unlike herself, Pomni didn’t trigger Jax’s colder side because she was better for him than Ribbit ever was.
She misses Kaufmo. Kaufmo was nice, and fun in his own way, and they used to hang out a lot. Things were peaceful when it was just her and Kaufmo. Love always makes things complicated. So she leaves as they get back to the circus, trying to ignore Jax telling Pomni there’s something he wants to show her down the hall.
Kaufmo’s a pile of black mass when she opens his bedroom door.
Ribbit dreams she’s abstracting too. At first, it’s just a few black glitches crawling beneath her skin, but then, they spread across her arms and throat and suddenly she can’t move anymore. Everybody’s watching her. Ragatha is crying, Gangle won’t look at her. Kinger is talking, but she can’t understand a word he’s saying. Jax is standing further away than all of them, completely still, with a familiar jester-like shadow next to him. When Ribbit tries to call out to him, her voice comes out distorted and wrong. Then her hands split apart into black shapes and she wakes up gasping, clawing at her arms to make sure they’re still there.
Ribbit joins the others feeling worse than she did the night before, which she honestly hadn’t thought possible. Her dream still lingers in the back of her mind, and every time she blinks, she can almost see those black shapes crawling across her skin again. Nobody looks much better. Gangle’s unusually quiet, Zooble isn’t even pretending to care, and Ragatha keeps glancing toward Kaufmo’s empty spot before quickly looking away. Even Jax seems distracted, staring off into space with his ears lowered. For once, nobody is arguing. Nobody is joking. The entire room feels wrong, as though something vital has been ripped out of it and left behind a hollow space nobody knows how to fill.
Caine bursts in and starts explaining an adventure before abruptly deciding he doesn’t care anymore because he has an award show to organize. Ribbit barely follows what he’s saying. The thought of going on an adventure at all makes her stomach turn. Kaufmo abstracted yesterday. Yesterday. The idea that they’re all supposed to move on already feels absurd. She wonders if she can sit this one out, because she really, really wants too.
“Alright, everyone, get into pairs!” Caine announces.
Ragatha raises a hand. “Uh, Caine? There’s an uneven number of us.”
“Oh.” Caine shrugs. “Then one of you can sit this one out. Whatever.”
For a brief moment, Ribbit considers volunteering. The words are already on the tip of her tongue when Ragatha turns toward her.
“We can partner up, if you want.”
Ribbit hesitates, then nods. Anything is better than being left alone with her thoughts, right? Or else she might just abstract as well. Ha. Jokes. Kidding.
Ribbit barely has to prepare herself as Pomni walks over to them. “Are you guys already paired up?”
“Yeah,” says Ragatha. “We just did.”
“Aww, okay.” Pomni glances over her shoulder. “Then I’ll just go with, uh…” She trails off for a moment before spotting something behind her. “Oh. Kinger’s sitting this one out. Guess I’ll be with Jax.”
Both Ragatha and Ribbit tense up.
“A-Are you sure?” Ragatha asks. “You don’t have to be with Jax if you don’t want to. He’s… well…” She laughs nervously. “He tends to go a little crazy around guns.”
Pomni shrugs.
“No, it’s fine. I think I can keep Jax in check.”
It’s one thing to watch them from afar and make assumptions, and another to hear it firsthand from Pomni herself. The casual confidence in her voice, her certainty… As if she knows him as well as she does.
An ugly, bitter jealousy twists in Ribbit’s stomach. Pomni isn’t even being mean. She’s not bragging, nor is she trying to hurt anyone. And she’s right, Pomni does keep Jax in check. He’s always nice to her, because Pomni’s great. Ribbit wouldn’t know, because they’ve barely ever talked, but she seems sweet, or funny, or something. Everybody likes her. Ribbit likes her… Or at least, she wants to. She tried to, really. Or maybe it wasn’t enough.
“Are you sure?”
The concern in her voice makes Ribbit’s chest tighten. Ragatha’s so sweet, really. Why couldn’t Ribbit have been friends with her? Kind, understanding Ragatha. They sure have a lot in common too. Maybe that’s why Ribbit didn’t get too close to her.
“Yeah.” She nods. “I think I’m gonna take a nap.”
“We can lose on purpose if you want.” Ragatha looks back toward the others. “Seriously, nobody will mind.”
“No, don’t worry about it.” She forces a smile. “I really don’t have it in me to play today.”
Ragatha still looks unconvinced, but she still nods. “Okay. Just get some rest, alright?”
“Yeah.”
Ribbit waits until she’s gone before letting the smile slip
Her emotions come crashing down the moment she’s all alone. Ribbit makes it as far as the bed before she folds in on herself. The tears come immediately, and she buries her face in her pillow.
She just misses Jax so much.
This was the build up of every conversation that never happened, every glance he never returned and every time he walked past her like she wasn’t there. And to this day, she doesn’t even know what she did wrong, because he would rather die than talk to her again.
That’s what keeps bringing her back to it. If she knew, maybe she could understand. Maybe she could apologize. Maybe she could at least stop wondering. Instead she’s left trying to assemble an answer from nothing, turning over every memory she has of that night and searching for the point where everything went wrong. Perhaps she wasn’t supportive or reassuring enough, or she said too much and made him feel uncomfortable. There has to be a reason.
People don’t just stop talking to someone for no reason. People don’t wake up one day and decide they never want to look at you again, right?
The thought drags Kaufmo back into her mind before she can stop it, and immediately the guilt hits hard enough to make her feel sick. Kaufmo is gone.
Everybody keeps saying abstracted because that’s the word they have for it here, because it makes the whole thing sound less bleak, but Kaufmo is gone and he isn’t coming back and all this time Ribbit has been so consumed with her own, self-inflicted problems that she didn’t even do a thing about it.
She squeezes her eyes shut. How many times had she seen him acting strange and looked away? How many times had she been too distracted to notice? Everybody says there was nothing they could have done, but how would they know? How would any of them know? Kaufmo had been hurting for who knows how long, and Ribbit can’t stop thinking about all the moments that seemed insignificant at the time. Every missed opportunity suddenly feels enormous when she’s looking at it from the other side.
The worst part is that both thoughts keep tangling together.
Jax won’t talk to her.
Kaufmo is gone.
They’re separate things. She knows they’re separate things. One has nothing to do with the other, and yet some ugly part of her keeps arranging them side by side and staring at them until a pattern begins to emerge.
It really is all her fault.
Maybe everyone would be better off if she stopped trying so hard to hold onto them.
Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe every time she cares about someone she sinks her claws in too deep. Maybe she demands too much and notices too little. Maybe she takes and takes and takes until eventually people get tired of carrying the weight of her. Maybe, maybe, maybe… Deep down, Ribbit isn’t so uncertain. She knows she’s correct.
Noise resonates as a dull blur through the walls. Ribbit ignores it, but the noise comes back, and curiosity gets the better of her, so she wipes at her face, crosses the room, and eases her door open barely an inch. The hallway outside is empty except for two figures standing near Zooble’s door.
Jax is leaning against the wall and he looks so… well, so himself. It’s the Jax she thought only she knew, and now, she can’t even remember the last time he’d looked that way around her.
“Daisyyyyy…”
“Daisyyyyy…”
Their voices fit together unexpectedly well. Ribbit hates that she noticed that, just like she hates that she notices the way Jax is grinning, or the way Pomni laughs halfway through the note. But most of all, she hates the effortless familiarity between them. It took her so long to get there. Pomni did it in what, two weeks?
“Give me your answer, dooooo…”
Why can’t she stop imagining herself in Pomni’s place? It should be herself, singing Daisy Bell. It could’ve been her, had she not acted stupidly. It will never be her. She’ll never be in Pomni’s place anymore.
“I’m half crazy, all for the love of you…”
Everybody likes Pomni because she’s kind and funny and easy to be around and somehow always seems to know the right thing to say. Pomni never does anything wrong. She doesn’t push people to their limits, she doesn’t pry on others lives. She doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable.
Pomni is simply better than she will ever be. Better for Jax, better in general.
“This won’t be a stylish marriage…”
Something moves in the corner of her vision. The feeling creeping through her body is horribly familiar, and soon, a black mass of static dances across her arm.
“I cannot afford a carriage…”
Her hands don’t look right. The panic should be immediate, but somehow it isn’t, because she’s not even surprised. Of course this is happening. Ribbit has spent weeks proving to herself that she destroys everything she touches. She ignored all of Ragatha’s attempts to reach her, choosing to wallow in self-pity instead.
Maybe this is just the natural conclusion, where she was always headed. Ribbit was never meant nor deserved to live for long.
“But you’ll look sweet, upon the seat of a bicycle built for two…”
Before the final note can fade, Ribbit quietly closes the door. She presses her back against the wood, slides to the floor, and finally lets herself disappear as she cries. During her last moments, she mostly wishes she was a better friend to everybody. Not just Jax, but Ragatha, and Kaufmo, and Gangle, and Pomni too.
She also wishes she stood up for herself, for once in her life. What a bleak, depressing last thought to have.