Chapter Text
You’re used to being on the outside. You tell yourself this. Not in so many words, not "you’re used to this", because that would be thinking in words, and you don’t do that anymore. Not when you can help it, anyway.
Well, okay. You do think in words, for a second. You think, Why are you surprised?
You turn away, the smell of floor cleaner and school thick on your tongue. It’s so quiet that you can hear the rhythmic tap of the little plastic end bits on your untied shoelaces as they hit the acrylic tiles. The air conditioning struggles against the day’s heat, the stagnant halls unaware as yet that the sun has set, and autumn settled in again to dispel the last of summer’s restless tossings and turnings.
You try to swallow but something goes wrong; you choke a little, but it’s nothing new. You glance at the water fountain as you pass.
This can’t just be a you and me thing.
You let your guard down. You knew it was happening–you had felt it happening, and you had tried to stop it. You really had. You clutched your shield, white-knuckled, and braced against the astonishing blunt force of caring. But somewhere between swapped controllers and church clothes, you opened your hands and let it all through. Let them through.
The school door falls shut behind you with a sigh. You are alone with the evening–with the crickets and the wind in the leaves, and the ringing in your ears that drones them out.
You have not been slapped. It does not make sense to feel like you’ve been slapped. Susie is right, after all. Or to Susie, Susie’s right. To you…
Okay, so maybe you’ve been slapped. Kind of. But the aftermath should be the sick, electric current of terror across raw nerves, or the dry itch of frustration inside of your ribs. Not this. Not this hollow feeling. Not this stinging of your eyes, so at odds with the numbness of the rest of you. You need to be worrying about what's about to happen. You need to be panicking about—
Instead, you're just reminding yourself that you’re used to being on the outside. The third wheel. The last choice.
You’re used to this.
So why are you surprised?
Of course Susie would reach for Noelle. Clever, sincere, secretly strange Noelle with the big brown eyes and the bells in her laugh. The screwed-up Cat Petterz 2 projects. The horror movies. She’s a puzzle, Noelle, and just because you’ve seen the sad entirety of her doesn’t mean you don’t get the appeal of sifting through the pieces to put the picture together yourself.
It’s not Noelle’s fault that she’s pretty and interesting.
It’s not Susie’s fault that she’s found a challenge worthy of her: sweet and raw-nerved.
It’s neither of their faults that they’re about to make everything so much worse. It’s not their fault that Mrs. Holiday will–
You shake your head, hard enough that something in your neck pops. No words. Don’t think. That isn’t for anyone but you to know.
Your shoe touches a promising bit of gravel. You kick it weakly, watching it skitter away from you. When you reach it again, veering a bit from your path, you stance up properly, hands tight in your pockets, and send it rocketing across the road with a clatter that you feel in your molars.
So you’re surprised to have the door slammed in your face by your first real friend. So what? This is nothing new. You’re useful until you’re not, and then it’s time for the fun stuff. You’ve never been very fun.
But you’d thought…
You and me make a pretty good team, right?
You shake your head again and send yourself stumbling in the process.
Stop it. You’re just tired.
You are tired. You’re exhausted, you realize. You’d forgotten, somehow, and all at once, you’re borne down by the tide of it. Heavy, heavy, you’re so…
You sink to sit on the curb, only just barely saving yourself from collapse. Your head spins, and your mouth is dry like you’ve been eating cotton balls again. You draw your legs close, your head dropping hard into the cradle of your knees while you try to hold yourself with your noodle-limp arms.
You just wanted one thing that was yours. You don’t know why you had to go and choose this, though. It was stupid, because it was never yours. You wouldn’t have volunteered for it in a million years. In fact, until yesterday, you would have done anything in your power to forget all of it. To erase yourself from Carol Holiday’s contact list; to remove yourself from the scene entirely.
Why?
Why?
Stop it.
“Stop it,” you say. There’s a fissure in your voice that you don’t want to hear, but you haven’t figured out yet how to get away from your own voice. You can stopper your ears all you want, but it’s still there in the bones of your jaw and the hollows of your skull and the farthest warrens of your ears. You hear it fracture, and suddenly, you’re not hollow anymore.
Something bursts in your chest, a water balloon with the entire ocean inside. Fills you up, floods you to the gills, this pressure up against your ribs and your guts and the apple of your throat. Your skin is too thin a scrap to keep it in, but you try. A clenched fist can hold water if you’re careful—and you’re always careful.
You were, anyway. Not anymore. Clearly.
You curl tighter around yourself. Tighter, tighter, like maybe if you just squeeze a little harder, crunch a little smaller, the sea inside your haunted fucking scrap of flesh will drain away, and you can unclench, and breathe, and sit here until you either fall asleep or find enough of a second wind (third wind, fifth wind, umptillionth wind) to figure out what kind of damage control you should do, or plan to do, or daydream about doing, and–
A sound crawls up your throat like bile, and you could grind your teeth to dust, but that still wouldn’t stop it from breaking out. You hold your breath and squeeze yourself so tight your elbows creak and your knee pops and something in your back twinges.
But the battle is already lost. Just like all the rest of them.
The sob breaks free. It sounds like a cat caught in a bear trap and feels like puking up glass shards, or dying, or clawing out your meat heart instead of the haunted one.
You are so tired, and you just wanted one nice thing among all the nightmares. One thing that was yours, one person that didn’t know who you’d been or what grave you pulled yourself out of.
You just wanted Susie to keep looking to you first.
Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid—
What had you thought was happening? She had said Would you mind walking me home, and I’ve been thinking about us, and just the two of us, and for the briefest space, you had thought, maybe, that she—
You fist your hands in your hair—your tangled, unwashed mop of mud brown, dirt brown, shit brown hair—and pull, but it doesn’t hurt enough to distract from the pain in your chest. Another dying animal sound wrenches itself free of you, halfway to a scream. You think too many things to parse now. Flashes, archetypes over words. Knife, skin, bandage, knife skin bandage, but it doesn’t—
Nothing hurts enough anymore. Not even pulling the soul out, and you—
You bang your head once, twice against your knobby knees.
You promised Azzy. You promised—a lot of things. And followed through on few.
“Stop it,” you sob. “Stop it.”
You don’t know who you’re pleading with. Yourself, the soul, Susie, Mrs. Holiday, the Angel, your own heartbeat—it doesn’t matter. You just need something to stop, just for a minute. Just for a second, so you can rest.
“Stop,” you say, banging your head again, weak. The knees of your jeans are sodden and your throat aches and you just want—
Your phone rings, and everything in you screeches to a halt. You wait, frozen to your marrow—but one ring turns into two, and two into three. Not answering its own self; no voice slicing through of its own accord.
Shaking, you pull it from your pocket. The light hurts your eyes; you wince, one eye shut against the glare.The name on the screen surprises you enough to answer.
“K-Kris?”
"Hey,” you say, willing your voice into its normal monotone. You feel like roadkill, but you can at least sound alive.
“Hi,” Noelle says, high and quavery. “Hey, I’m— I’m really sorry, Kris, I know we’re— Not…” She swallows a sound and you feel yourself returning to reality with a lurch. “I know we’re not… I just.”
Her breath gusts hard through the speaker, harsh and shaking. You’re sitting up now, your tension turned from cracking glass to bowstring. You wait for her to continue, but she has caught the best of herself. She laughs, and it’s a horrible sound, brittle and sharp as ice.
“Ha ha, I’m— Nevermind, Kris. Sorry, I don’t know what I—”
Dimly, you remember her getting a phone call. The muddy, rich smell of lakewater in your nose, the soothing tingle of sweat cooling on the back of your neck as the breeze played with your hair—and something about Mr. Holiday.
“Noelle,” you say, and it’s stunning how fast she stops. “What’s up?”
“O-oh,” she says, and hiccups. “I…”
You’re on your feet, forward-balanced. You've never answered a call like this, and it's surprising to learn you know how to do it.
In a voice so small it almost makes you burst into tears all over again, she says, “I’m scared. Will you come over?”
You’re already moving, so fast you forget to respond. She keeps talking, and you think she would talk herself off the side of a bridge if given the chance.
“I know we’re not close anymore, and— and maybe we weren’t really that close before, but I felt like we were, like we didn’t talk much but you were around, and you’ve—” She whimpers. You want a better word for it, but that’s what it is. “You’re good at just. Being around. Sorry if that’s weird, I just…”
The wind picks up, cool and broad as it lifts your hair from your face.
"Hey,” you say. “It’s okay. I’m on my way.”
She’s silent for a beat, and then sniffles.
"Thank you,” she says, and she’s a little girl again, hiding in the corner of her bed while you giggled, not quick enough yet to notice you’d scared her in the wrong way. Only this time, you’re not the one who’s frightened her. You’re here by invitation.
"We can stay on the phone while I walk,” you say. “If you want.”
You're not alone.
"Oh,” she says, and you think the tremble in her voice might have had the flickering edge of a smile this time. “Okay. That’d be nice.”
Relief. You can get one thing right, at least.