Chapter Text
Regina thinks there’s something wrong with her.
For a while, everyone told her it was because when she was eleven, a police officer knocked on her closet door.
Well, it wasn’t because of the police officer, per say, it was more that a neighbor had to call a police officer, and there was no one to answer the front door so they had to break in and knock on Regina’s closet door, where she was waiting for her dad to tell her it was safe to come out.
The police officer’s name was Candace. She wrapped a blanket around Regina and the two of them talked on her stoop for a long time. There were a bunch of police officers there but they all stood a little ways away as Candace and Regina talked. They talked about why Regina was hiding in her closet, and why the neighbor called nine-one-one.
Regina remembers at the time the way her hands shook around the blanket, the way she wished Janis was there, the way tears kept sliding down her face. It felt like there was a hole in chest, ripping everything out of her.
When Regina is thirteen, all of those things—the shaking hands, missing Janis, the tears—are a distant memory, and she can’t for the life of her fathom what may have caused them.
When she was ten, she and Janis downloaded The Sims on her mom’s computer, and it was great, like seeing into her brain. Everyone had little health bars, and Regina could fill them up, force them to do whatever she wanted. They had a bar for praise and if she filled it up too far and too often they got bored, but if she kept it a little empty all the time, if she remembered to make the right snide comment, they’d hang on her every word. It was easy to figure out what to say and when to say it. It was easy to read people with a single glance, to use them.
When she was five she heard her parents fighting, whispering to one another in harsh tones.
“I don’t know why—”
“Because we could have another one like her!” Her dad responded.
Her mother poured all her love into Regina, poured it into that black hole, and it made Regina hungry for more. Hungry for all of it. For everyone to do the same.
There’s something wrong with her, something her dad saw and no one else could. When she was thirteen she decided its name was Janis ‘Imi’ike.
Janis had a crooked smile and held her hand for a week straight after the police officers left. She played with makeup like it was a game, not a tool. She tried on silly clothes and laughed at Regina. Laughed at her. No one laughed at Regina. Janis liked messing with her because it was fun, hung out with her because she liked her, not because she needed her. Not because she had little health bars Regina could fill. Regina tried not to get addicted, she tried to let go, she tried to avoid her, to abuse her, none of it worked, just earned her a playful shove or a kiss on the cheek. Regina could see all the ways to destroy Janis, it was written all over her, but she couldn’t bring herself to use them.
Until Janis kissed her.
Little secret? Regina hadn’t put on a show, really she hadn’t. She didn’t even like girls. Boys were easier to use, easier to fuck with. Why would she like girls with all of their sticky feelings and soft skin? Janis practically threw herself on Regina, let Regina put her tongue in her mouth, and it was like kissing a boy. It’s easy to destroy a boy. Regina does it all the time, she was planning on doing it to Kyle after like, a week. So she pulled away, wiped her mouth, and said: “I knew she would let me do that.”
She didn’t have to avoid Janis, after all, if Janis avoided her.
If she went through withdrawals when Janis left school for the rest of the year, well, that was none of anyone else’s business. Isn’t everyone saying that addiction’s a disease? That it’s not Regina’s fault? It wasn’t Regina’s fault. Janis shouldn’t have let her kiss her. She started getting migraines and she was sure they were Janis’s fault, somehow. Some voodoo lesbian curse or something.
For three whole fucking years Regina controlled the school with a twitch of her hand, she kept Gretchen going with scraps here and there, Jason following Regina’s every command. She kept Karen around with a steady parade of bodies. It was easy.
But after the bus, with her mother crying in the corner, all Regina could think about was how easy it would be to twist the knife further. To say “where’s Dad?” in a bleary enough voice and really gut her. It wasn’t the right thought to have. Karen and Gretchen definitely didn’t think like that. She didn’t always think like that, right? She used to think it was a super power, to know where to hit to cause the most damage, but Cady fucking Heron took her down. So clearly it didn’t work long-term.
“Wilson’s,” The doctor announces to the room as she shows her mother the scans. “Almost certainly. This MRI is textbook wilsons.”
“Wilson’s?” Her mother’s hands twist around each other and Regina snatches the scans away from her: her brain next to a normal, healthy brain. Spot the difference for babies.
“It’s a genetic disease, from heavy metal poisoning,” the doctor says. “It’s causing the migraines you’ve been complaining about, not a concussion like we thought. It presents around puberty.”
“Heavy metal poisoning?” Her mom repeats, unable to say anything of value. Regina rolls her eyes even as it sends a stabbing pain through optic nerves.
“Your body can’t process copper the way most bodies can,” The doctor explains. “It’s very rare, and the symptoms are both neurological and physical. Luckily there’s only light scarring on your liver—”
“Scarring on her liver?” Her mom interrupts.
“So we caught it early,” the doctor continues. “The scan does indicate neurological changes, have you noticed anything beyond the migraines? Insomnia? Muscle stiffness?”
“I just got hit by a bus,” Regina drawls. “It’s safe to say my muscles are a little stiff.”
“The scans indicate a smaller prefrontal cortex,” the doctor says. “That’s the part of the brain that controls our impulses. Do you have trouble with self-control?”
“No,” Regina spits. She wants to cross her arms but they’re both in casts. She can feel her mother shifting uncomfortably beside her.
“Regina,” The doctor says with a voice she probably thought was soothing and learned in medical school along with how to perform a lobotomy on a terrified pig. “It’s important that we understand the extent of your symptoms so we can understand the extent this disease took on your body. It’ll help us work out a treatment plan. I can’t help you if you’re lying to me.”
“You said it was genetic,” Regina says. “Did you test my mom or are you just gonna assume I have it?”
“Your mother tested negative,” the doctor says. Regina scoffs. “But the disease causes neurological symptoms, like personality changes and depression. I understand your father died recently.”
Regina almost groans.
Back to the stoop are we? She once had a therapist who would say, “and if we go back to the stoop, we can see how you must’ve felt—” It was right around when she was fourteen, during Covid, her mom saw her drowning a squirrel in the pool and got all freaked out. Regina tortured the therapist for a few sessions then pretended to have a big revelation about kindness.
The stoop, Candace, her dad—none of those actually caused her fucking issues. Her fucking issues are the bitches at school, her weight that won’t stop fluctuating, her shitty algebra two teacher, and Cady Fucking Heron.
Not her loser dad who died when she was like, in elementary school. The idea that he gave her anything more lasting than his father’s inheritance is laughable.
“Yeah, my dad didn’t have this,” Regina says. She looks at her mom. “Obviously.”
Her mom shifts on her feet. “Some of these symptoms sound familiar,” she says in a quiet voice. Her hands flit through a booklet the doctor gave her while Regina looked at the scans.
“I’m here because I got hit by a bus,” Regina says to the doctor. “I’m not here for my migraines, or my insomnia, or my depression, and if there’s scarring on my liver it’s probably from going to too many parties. So do your job and sign the release papers.”
“No teenager has scarring on their liver, no matter how much they’ve been drinking,” the doctor says quietly. “How long have you been depressed?”
Regina’s spine tightens. “Fuck. Off.”
“Regina,” her mother says. “You never told me you were depressed.”
“Why don’t you step outside for a moment?” The doctor suggests. Her mother leaves and Regina glares at her, she redirects her glare at the doctor who looks her over. “Why are you so resistant to getting help for this?”
“I don’t need help for this, I don’t have it,” Regina says. “You’re just trying to sell me another treatment for something.”
The doctor frowns. “Why do you think I’m trying to sell you something?”
“Because everyone’s trying to sell something,” Regina says.
The doctor raises an eyebrow. “I’m paid yearly here, and there’s plenty of work to go around. I have no financial incentive. Even if I did have one from the initial treatment, the illness is chronic and will require you to take a daily zinc supplement. I can assure you I don’t get kickbacks from zinc supplements. That’s a pretty cynical view of the world.”
“It’s the truth,” Regina says. “Do you see any of my friends around? Of course not, because they were only hanging out with me because I was popular, now that I’m not they couldn’t care less. Where’s my boyfriend? Do you think he cares about me now that I can’t fuck him? My mom’s only here because she’d probably got to jail for child neglect if she wasn’t. None of them actually care, that’s just a nice story we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night.” Not that she does.
“How long have you felt this way?” The doctor asks.
Regina tries to shrug but her neck brace digs painfully into her shoulders and she winces. “It was pretty clear once I got tits that guys only wanted one thing.”
“Is that when the depression and insomnia started?” The doctor asks. “And the muscle stiffness?” Regina narrows her eyes. “This is all consistent with Wilsons. What you're describing is a pretty severe personality shift, something that happened around puberty. Trouble controlling your impulses? Struggle with following rules? Having a hard time keeping friends? A cynical worldview?”
“Are you saying I’m brain damaged?” Regina demands.
“This is the early stages of late onset psychopathy,” The doctor says in that same calm tone of voice. “Something that Wilsons can and does cause. But we can also treat it, we caught it soon enough. But what I’m wondering is how no one noticed the shift before. Why is this the first time you’ve gotten a brain scan?”
“Like I said, everyone is only ever out for themselves,” Regina says. It’s easy to ignore the pit in her stomach that tells her she’s lying. It’s as easy as breathing.
Someone did notice. Once. Someone with big brown eyes and paint stained grubby fingers, who’s nose got all snotty when she cried and tears poured down her cheeks in big ribbons. “This isn’t you, ‘Gina.” But Regina made sure that Janis never doubted who the real Regina was, ever again.
It’s a two month set of pills, and she’s no longer allowed to eat shrimp and mushrooms. Not that she was eating them anyway, mushrooms are high in fat and shrimp is usually cooked in all sorts of oils. Gross. Her mom forces her to do therapy, something about depression or grief counseling or something, and the dude makes her look at a feelings wheel like she’s a third grader. Most of the things on the wheel she hasn’t felt since she was a third grader.
They come back in waves.
Some days she feels so terribly lonely she cries the whole day, having to constantly re-hydrate and moisturize, lest her skin get dry and she breaks out again. She can put a name to the insecurities that haunt her now. Rejected, inferior, exposed, isolated, abandoned. If she gets acne then people will like her less. When she says it aloud it has less power. Her therapist tells her she’s still allowed to feel it.
Some days she walks along her neighborhood, feeling like a ghost on Friday nights where she can hear people dancing and singing at parties she was given pity invites to. She hasn’t reached out to anyone once she got out. Not even Shane.
Her sleep schedule returns to her like an old friend, her limbs do what she tells them to, and she does cartwheels in the backyard. Take that Gretchen. Her therapist asks her what her plan is for school and she blinks at him.
Is she gonna be the same queen bee, he asks, or is she gonna finally let her peers in.
She can’t be the same queen bee, there’s not enough copper in her liver, slowly killing her anymore. She manages to sleep, and her dreams are filled with nightmares.
Her only choice is to disappear, to hope she can finally go unnoticed at her school.
It doesn’t work. Kids stare as she walks down the halls, watch her ignore Gretchen and Karen, who both ignore her in favor of the art freaks. And there’s that stab of guilt, they’re not art freaks, just odd. Once upon a time she’d been proud to be Janis’s friend. Thought it was so cool that Janis didn’t care what anyone thought, and did her own thing.
She has to apologize eventually, she knows. She desperately doesn’t want to.
She doesn’t have a choice when she’s walking along her nice suburban streets one night, and finds Janis throwing up in a neighbor’s trash can.
“Oh, shit,” Janis says when her eyes focus on Regina.
“Were you at Shane’s?” Regina asks. She knows there’s a party right now, Kevin G. is DJ-ing and Gretchen posted on Instagram about how proud she was of her man.
“You weren’t at Shane’s,” Janis responds, teeter tottering on her feet. “You aren’t anywhere. Cady thought you dropped out. Or transferred.”
“No,” Regina says.
“Yeah, Gretchen says you’re just in the library every lunch though,” Janis says. “She says you’re always reading. Which is crazy cause she thinks you hate books. You. Little Miss Spelling Bee Champ in fifth grade.”
“I guess everyone forgot about that,” Regina says.
“I didn’t,” Janis says. She narrows her eyes at Regina. “What’s up with your, like, face?” She gestures at it. “You aren’t wearing makeup.”
“Yeah,” Regina says. “Shane’s house is like a twenty minute walk from here.”
Janis huffs. “I was trying to walk home.”
Regina checks her phone. It’s eleven pm. “Your house is another thirty minutes.”
“Sure,” Janis shrugs. “Not like I’m gonna drive, or pay for an uber.”
“I’ll drive you,” Regina says.
“Fuck no,” Janis steps back and trips, almost landing straight on her ass in the asphalt before twisting herself to fall into the grass of a nearby yard instead.
“I’ll drive you,” Regina repeats, putting a little steel in her voice. It sounds almost rusty from disuse. Janis sneers but she scrambles to her feet and follows a pace or two away from Regina
Regina waits for the buckle before she starts the car and peels out of the driveway, Janis leans back against the seat, clearly freaked out by the lack of door. Regina kinda is too, she’s thinking about asking her mom to take the car to the shop. Once upon a time she liked the thrill.
“You missed the turn,” Janis says.
Regina blinks. “No, it’s the next one, after the stop sign.”
“Are you gonna drive through the bike path?” Janis asks.
Regina slows down and puts her turn signal on. “I guess I’ve never driven to your place. Force of habit.”
Janis scoffs. “Yeah.”
“I’ve been meaning to say, actually,” Regina clears her throat, she and her therapist prepared a million letters and stuff for this, it all flies out of her mind. “I’m sorry, I guess. I blamed you for everything that happened in middle school but it was like, my fault too.”
She can feel Janis’s eyes on her.
“So yeah,” Regina says. “I shouldn’t have, like, done the thing with the doll or whatever. And I should’ve told the principal that I was doing it so you wouldn’t get suspended.”
“And outing me,” Janis says.
Regina swallows. “Yeah. That too. I didn’t mean to but like—”
“You kissed me, how did you not mean to?” Janis asks.
“It wasn’t exactly planned, Janis, it was spin the bottle,” Regina says. The words snap out of her and she flinches at how harsh they sound, accusatory almost.
“You could’ve kissed my cheek or not—”
“Yeah, well, I wanted to kiss you,” Regina says. It shuts Janis up and makes heat rise behind Regina’s eyes, they’re almost tearing up and she blinks rapidly as her heart pounds. Janis isn’t saying anything back which is crazy. Don’t people usually say something back when someone apologizes? The silence gets heavy and Regina wants to hunch around it. Finally, “I got hit by a bus.”
“And if I’d have been close enough to push you in front of it, I would’ve,” Janis says. They pull to a stop in front of Janis’s house. Janis’s eyes are still glued to her.
“I am sorry,” Regina says. She looks at her knuckles on the wheel. There’s a scab at one of them where she’s been peeling at the skin. It’s anxiety, and she should be on meds for it, but it’s been kinda nice having the new-old feeling. She wants to feel it a little longer.
“Okay, what’s up with you?” Janis asks. “No makeup, no parties, no queen bee, you aren’t even texting Shane who pretty much throws parties just to have an excuse to text you to invite you,” Regina flinches, she feels guilty about Shane. And Aaron. “Now you’re talking to me like a human being. Did you get a lobotomy or something?”
Regina picks at her knuckle.
“I just had a lot of time to think, in the hospital. I made some mistakes,” Regina says.
“No, something’s up with you,” Janis says, her eyes narrowed.
Regina swallows and finally forces herself to make eye contact. “Are you gonna go in or—”
Janis rolls her eyes but goes inside regardless, her body still stumbling through the front lawn and into her house. Regina takes a deep breath before driving home.
At lunch on Monday she’s curled up with something decent. She finished her math homework early, it was easy once she realized the stuff the teacher said in class actually matched up with the textbook. Someone flops a backpack down on the chair across from her.
Janis glares at her. “You gonna be a bitch if I finish my art project here? I need a table.”
The art room was full?
“I mean, I guess,” Regina says. She resists the urge to get up and leave, if she sits on the floor she’ll fuck up her back, but it’s basically her only option. Besides staying.
Janis settles down and ignores her for the rest of lunch, Regina stares at the words on the page until they stop reading like English.
When the bell rings they get up and leave together, side by side, not on purpose it’s just that—well the bell rang. They had to get to class.
A few kids glance their way but Janis heads the other direction and Regina hunches over at her desk in her class, focusing on pretending she’s writing stuff down.