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“I don’t want you to go.”
There were a few crucial seconds, after Asriel lowered his camera, when Kris wasn’t sure if they had said those words aloud. The slight ache in their throat could have been caused by pollen wafting in the breeze. The wind itself might have picked up the words and carried them away before they could reach their brother’s ears. But when Asriel’s expression shifted, Kris understood that it had happened and it was too late to take it back.
It was early spring. Asriel’s college acceptance letter had arrived in the mail, to general celebration; spirits had been so high that their father had actually been invited over for dinner, and aside from one rogue bouquet he’d more or less behaved himself. Kris had learned to keep their head down over the many weeks of applications prior, as Asriel did his research and drafted letters and essays in between his track meets and schoolwork, but on that night they’d made an effort as well, proposing over dessert that Asriel could smuggle them onto campus in a dog carrier. Everyone had laughed. It was easy to make people laugh when they already wanted to.
The calendars were marked and the days started counting down. On this day, where the trees’ leaves had mostly burst forth from their blooms, and their mother’s car was covered in a fine dusting of pollen, Asriel had managed to hook them before they could skulk off; they’d gone to the diner and then to the lake, the old comforting circulation they’d maintained through their childhoods. Despite the pleasant weather, the lakeside path had been deserted this afternoon, and their father had taken his truck and jaunted out of town to freshen up his stock, so it had just been the two of them, meandering by the lakeside, skipping stones, saying little. Asriel had wrestled out his phone camera as he inevitably would – he couldn’t go two days without adding another illegibly smeared picture to his collection, especially around Kris – but today he had actually taken his time with it, snapping Kris first in secret, then a second time as they noticed him, and then finally with one knee to the ground, framing them against the dividing line where the water met the trees. Kris had stood there in one of their brother’s hand-me-down hoodies, bruise-purple and mostly new, enveloped in the lake’s crisp smell, sun on their back. They’d smiled through the photo and had barely noticed. Then, as the camera’s glass eye had lowered to expose Asriel’s own, they’d spoken those words, and barely noticed that, too.
Asriel’s own smile had gone. He pocketed his phone and stood up, the breeze plucking at his shirt. He’d gotten nearly as tall as their father but remained skinny as a rail, and he favored clothes that would billow on him like sheets on a washing-line. Then they would be passed down to Kris, who swam in them just as much.
“I get it,” he said. “Seriously, Kris, I did everything I could to find a place within driving distance, but Hometown’s out in the middle of nowhere. Kind of stinks, really. Dorm rooms are real expensive.”
He had always been the social dynamo of Hometown, and since their parents’ separation Asriel had taken those skills and put them to use navigating the increasingly treacherous territory around their family. It had honed his natural charisma to a razor’s edge. Kris could hear it creeping into his voice, how he cut the apology with that faint, sardonic lilt. All they could do now was wait for him to change the subject and let them leave.
“But I’ve been giving it some thought,” Asriel went on. “Look, this really did creep up on us way too fast. With everything else that’s happening. The application fee’s a bust, but they haven’t made me fork over tuition just yet, haha.”
He flashed that lopsided, winning grin, and Kris realized to their horror that he was taking them seriously.
“They say gap years don’t look great, but if I snagged a job at City Hall then that’d probably make the next round of applications even better. I could write about it on the essays, make some more cash for Mom…”
“Stop it,” they muttered.
“She might get a little peeved at Mrs. Holiday being my boss, since there’s already that thing with Dad, but I can smooth that—”
“Asriel, shut up.”
His jaw snapped shut with a suddenness that was nearly audible. Kris’s head had started to swim and thump, and somewhere in those depths they wondered when anyone had last told their brother to stop talking.
“I shouldn’t have said anything. It doesn’t mean anything.” They looked around at the lakeshore, the blooming trees, soaked in the honeyed sunlight. Spoiled now. “I’m going home. Thanks for lunch.”
That lunch was churning in their guts, and it lurched again when Asriel smartly stepped in their path, laid a hand on their shoulder. Not tightly, but it was there, and he’d tamped down his grin to a disarming and apologetic half-smile that was a little too stiff. Kris generally didn’t care to look at people’s faces for long, but when it came to their brother, they were a close study.
“Kris, wait. It’s my fault. I had that stuff on my mind for a while, I guess. I shouldn’t have dropped it on you.”
“It’s fine. I just want to go home.”
“You’re not going to disappear on me again, right? I mean, you’ve been kind of hard to track down lately. Reminds me of how good you got at hiding in the house, but now it’s town-wide.” Kris glanced at his hand and he quickly released them and stepped back. “The gap year thing was nuts, fair enough. But we can hang out as much as you like ‘til the semester starts. You’ll be my top priority. Honestly, this is the best day I’ve had in a while, way better than hanging out with the usual suspects. Pete’s a good guy but he can be a little much…”
Kris said, “You sound like Dad right now.”
That one hit the mark. For an instant Asriel’s lip raised, fang-tips glinting in the sun. Kris could lean over and spy their father’s shop half-shadowed at the end of the path. If they juked around him now and went on their way, then he probably wouldn’t try to stop them.
But Asriel would be there later when they came home. He had been right, as usual – outside the house, Kris had grown proficient at making themself scarce, curling up in the town’s disused spaces to watch the shadows’ slow promenade across the earth, before dusk fell and they shuffled home to eat and sleep. They had done this because the alternative would be to tell him about how they felt nauseous whenever they glimpsed the brighter patch of carpet where their father’s piano had been, or accidentally sat on the distended part of the couch where he’d watched TV, or glanced down the trails in the woods where they had walked with the Holidays – Hometown becoming overcome with negative space, the space that only they could see and into which he would inevitably fade as well. And now, because they’d spoken when they normally would have stayed quiet, keeping their distance would no longer be enough.
They took several steps back, out of arm’s reach. Asriel’s own arms hung loose at his sides. Either he’d been struck speechless – something exceedingly rare – or he was waiting to hear what they’d say next.
“You’re not going to be around much longer,” they said. “You need to get used to it. I am.”
“Kris, it’s not like I’m going to just ditch you. I might be back in time for the harvest festival, even.”
“I’m trying to make this easier. I don’t get why you—” They’d raised their hand to rake at their hair only to glimpse Asriel’s sleeve cuff; they remembered when their mother had first passed this hoodie down to them, the horn-holes sealed with zigzagged white thread. They snarled and yanked it off and tossed it aside. “You’re supposed to be smarter than this!”
“Smarter than what? What are you—”
“I read those letters in your dresser,” they said, and Asriel’s eyes went wide. “They suck almost as bad as your pictures. But you still have them. I don’t want you to go but you have to. You keep acting like nothing’s changed but it has. I don’t…” They clutched their head; they hadn’t said this much at once for a long time. “If you want to help me so bad, then stop doing this stupid thing where you agree with everything everyone says until they give up. Just tell the truth and admit that you want to leave!”
Lanky as he was, Asriel covered the distance between them in two strides. His face was set and his fangs were bared, and Kris’s heart leapt with anticipation as he approached; they had crossed a line, and whatever Asriel did next, however much he apologized for it after, would give them a reason to stay out of each other’s way for good. But then he dropped to his knees and clutched their shoulders again, tight enough to hurt. He was so close they could make out the individual hairs on his muzzle.
“You want the truth?” he asked. All that practiced levity had drained out of his voice at once, leaving it hoarse and flat as static. Kris pored through their memories for the last time they’d heard him talk like this. They found none.
“Here’s the truth,” Asriel said. “Mom and Dad bringing you home was the best thing that ever happened to me. The best thing!” he shouted, and Kris flinched, teeth clicking together as they jerked in his grip. “And that hasn’t changed, and it’s not going to change, and the only reason I’m not doing cartwheels over getting out of this place is because you’re here! Kris, I will leave you alone if you want me to.” Now his voice was cracking up in a way that was much too familiar. “I’ll quit asking everyone where you are, I won’t bug you at dinner. I’ll make sure Mom doesn’t suspect anything. But I’ve gotta know you’re going to be okay without me. There’s no point to anything else I do if you’re not okay.” He attempted to smile again. “I know, I’m making it all about me. Call me an idiot if you like! Just let me know that you’ll be all right. Please, Kris.”
They could have lied to him in a dozen different ways, if they even bothered to speak. Asriel wouldn’t have resisted if they made any attempt to break his hold on them; if they said nothing at all, then he’d surrender to that silence in less than a minute. But as they tried to think of the best solution to remove themselves from this shore and from their brother’s sight, Kris’s breath hitched, and Asriel’s face blurred, and holding their breath and averting their eyes didn’t help. Then a cold gust blew off the lake and made them shiver through the warmth of Asriel’s hands. They saw the crumpled heap of his hoodie lying there in the dirt.
Asriel wrapped his arms around them and pulled them in as soon as the first sob escaped their throat. Even knelt down like this he was so much taller that he could almost cradle them in his lap, and they clutched the loose folds of his shirt as they wept; they hadn’t properly cried in some time and it came out wrong, in harsh sandpapery bursts of breath. Asriel, meanwhile, was close to outright blubbering – he frantically murmured apologies, rocking them back and forth, and some of his tears fell on the back of their neck and slithered down their shirt, trailing heat across their spine. They felt the angles of his collarbones on their cheek. The soft percussion of his heartbeat.
When they both calmed down, Asriel released them and they rolled off his lap and sat there on the shore. Asriel dramatically flopped onto his back. Kris glanced at him, and followed suit. They lay there in silence. The afternoon light was giving way to roseate dusk. No sound but a single, lonesome birdcall.
“I haven’t cried like that since I was a little kid,” Asriel said.
Kris, who had overheard him privately weeping more than once in the last few years, said nothing.
“You know,” he went on, “those letters came from the heart.”
Kris wasn’t about to lie now. “They sucked so bad, Asriel.”
He chuckled. “And my photos?”
“They’re not great.” Kris paused. “But I like them.”
“Thanks. Dess might’ve liked the letters, too, after she was done cracking up over them. It helps if you believe in what you’re doing. Easier to reach people that way, even if the result isn’t that good.”
“I don’t get how you can say crap like that and sound like you mean it,” they said.
Asriel went silent, and Kris looked over, expecting to see that wry grin of his. But he just looked pensive, gaze fixed on some anonymous strip of cloud overhead.
“I really can’t stand how no one in this town listens to each other,” he said. “They’re nice, mostly. But nearly everyone seems like they’re only… saying their lines. No one cares if they mean it or not. It’s just something they do to make it to the next step of the day. It almost got to the point where I was looking forward to Mom and Dad’s blowouts. At least when they fought, they acted like they were really there.” He met Kris’s eye. “I only started noticing this when Dess left. Wonder what she would think if she could see us now.”
Kris had to look away from him then, because there were some things they could never share – not when they didn’t have the words to describe it, despite the stifling days spent smearing graphite over easels, the counselors’ questions meaningless as wind. Young though they had been, they had spent much of their time in those sessions wondering when Asriel would finally give up pretending to like them. That moment never came, and as they grew older, they instead wondered if this was meant to be its own sort of punishment.
They felt Asriel’s hand close over their own and turned back to him. Hard to make out his face. The sun was growing dim.
“Never felt like that with you, though,” he said. “Whenever you say something, it matters. Maybe that’s why nearly everyone else has so much trouble figuring you out. You don’t follow the script. I always want to see what you’ll do next.” His grip tightened. “Kris, I know it’s been hard. But you’re going to be so amazing. Even if I’m not around all the time, I want to see that for myself, too. Can you tough it out for me? One last favor?”
This was the trap Kris knew he would set for them. It was half the reason they’d been so elusive in recent months. But now that they saw it, they stepped into it willingly.
“I’ll try,” they said.
Asriel gave their hand one last squeeze and let them go and got to his feet. Kris just sat up, watching him stretch. They made a mental note to retrieve his hoodie before they left.
“It’s really been a pain. Everyone tiptoeing around each other like this,” he said. “Mom and Dad are probably going to do some kind of goodbye celebration for me. Dinner at QC’s, I bet. Maybe I ought to invite the Holidays over there, too. Drag all of this out in the open.”
“We’d get banned for life,” said Kris.
“Oof, good point. Then there’d be nowhere to go but the pizzeria.” He sighed. “Still bugs me, though. Mom’s just trying to hold everything together, Mr. Holiday’s sick, Dad and Mrs. Holiday are driving themselves crazy… feels like there’s something I should do. Though there’s not much point if I just run off and leave you to deal with the consequences.” He extended a hand to them. “Let’s think about it, okay?”
Kris looked up at him, their brother weakly haloed in the last rays of the setting sun, and took his hand. Asriel grinned and pulled them up.
“I won’t pressure you or anything,” he said, still holding on, “but you could try and reach out, too. I bet that Noelle
* Signal disrupted. *
* Calibrating. *
Your heartbeat is in her hands
She holds you such that the hummingbird hammer of blood through your wrists knocks against her fingertips and you cannot look away, cannot look down to your feet and her feet scraping the sand, only listening to the steps, their own inexorable tempo
Her hair a goldspun veil across half her face her sickle smile her lightless eye
Such a serene beauty
Scrape gives way to splash and the water floods your shoes and wicks up your pantlegs, and the lakesilt is unsteady underfoot but her step is unwavering as her grip and you follow and you follow
Follow the words you speak without speaking, spurred by the prayer she raises in her name
She asks and you give and you give, transmitting/receiving, this barbed loop
Water up to your knees now
Aphotic catechism, hadal echo
* Calibrating. *
Since Asriel had left home, Kris had taken to sleeping late – in bed, through class, shaving off as much of their days as possible into the darkness behind their lids. They would leave school long after their other classmates and while away whatever time remained before dinner in their usual haunts, then go home and eat and go back to sleep. Today, however, they’d been among the first to leave, slipping out of the classroom, back to the house, retrieving what they needed and then returning here to the picnic tables where the sun still shone bright enough to feel unfamiliar. They sat at the table nearest the lake, facing the path that led back into town. Their phone was turned off.
They had successfully avoided their brother until the very end; even when he’d managed to spend an occasional afternoon with them, and they could see plainly all the questions and worries he’d locked up behind his smile, Kris had kept their own words to themself. Then he’d gone, and other things had started happening. Lately they had started happening fast.
They could see what was lying in wait for them and it fractured their sleep and chewed at their ribs. The choices that had led them here, to this table, felt dreamlike in themselves, performed more through blind intuition than careful planning, every step spent waiting for logic to re-assert itself. But here they were nevertheless.
It was a cloudless day and the sky was searing blue. The trees had started to shed their leaves and the branches’ shadows swiveled over the path. Kris watched that movement, running their fingers over the table’s gridded holes. They’d become proficient at keeping still, but that talent didn’t seem to be with them today.
When Noelle appeared at the end of the path they forced their hands into their lap. She had her schoolbooks under her arm and they watched her smooth her skirt, stop and peer into the window of their father’s shop. She wouldn’t have seen anything; they knew he would be cleaning the Holiday estate today. Then she looked over and saw Kris and waved with her free hand. They didn’t wave back.
Noelle approached. Her hair was neatly combed and the jolly check pattern of her sweater so vivid even on this autumn day. The sound of dirt crunching under her hooves grew louder and then she was upon them. She carefully set her books aside and settled into the opposite seat, after giving it a quick scan for potential booby traps. She smiled.
“Hi, Kris! You sure picked a nice day for this.” She removed a notebook from the stack. “You, um, didn’t really tell me what you wanted, but I came prepared. Miss Alphys’s lessons have been kind of hard to follow this week, fahaha.”
Yesterday they had murmured her name at lunch, their head still on their desk. Noelle had been in the middle of her sandwich, and soft as their voice had been she’d still jerked in her seat as if she’d seen a spider crawling up her arm. They’d passed a note asking her to meet them today, at this time, and she had scanned it and made it disappear with only a few confused glances from their classmates. The day came and went and their classmates had forgotten, while Noelle remembered.
“I see that you didn’t actually bring anything, though.” Noelle couldn’t hide her trepidation as she checked the rest of the path. “Was this not about school?”
Kris reached beneath their seat and produced a one-gallon, zip-lock plastic bag. Inside were two dozen pencils in festive colors.
They had asked their mother to order these. She’d learned some time ago that asking them questions would seldom produce answers, and she hadn’t questioned this, though Kris could see them forming – there were a limited number of reasons why they would have holiday-themed pencils on their mind. When the delivery had come in, they had cracked the boxes open and dumped most of them into this bag. Presentation was important in these matters.
They raised the bag over the table and let it drop. The pencils within clattered. Noelle appeared to contemplate this for a while before looking back to Kris.
“For the ones I borrowed,” they explained.
“Oh! Kris, that’s really thoughtful, but you didn’t have to… wait, what are you doing?”
They went behind their back, pulled up their shirt. Tucked into their belt were several more pencils and they withdrew them one by one, setting them in parallel beside the bag. Then they gave their sleeves a shake and loosened another three pencils for each arm and presented those as well. Noelle had not blinked in all this time.
“Kris, I’m pretty sure you never took this many.”
“Interest,” they said.
They pulled at their collar and reached into their shirt, where careful application of scotch tape had secured more pencils. They extracted these, laid them out, and finally pushed their fingers into the hair over one ear and produced an ICE-E branded pencil stub no longer than their pinky. With a certain degree of ceremony, they clacked this final pencil in front of Noelle and then leaned back and slumped and went still.
There was a long silence. ICE-E’s perspiring visage leered up from the pencil stub and Noelle stared as if mesmerized by it. Her mouth twitched, and when she started to laugh it was initially no different from the faintly musical titter that Kris had heard all their life, but then it built and broadened into a helpless cackle that made her convulse in her seat. Every time the fit started to calm down she would look at the pencil again and be struck by a fresh gale. She listed drunkenly to the side, still laughing as she wiped her watering eyes. Throughout this entire spectacle, Kris remained impassive as a stone.
“I’m sorry,” she managed to say. “I don’t, I don’t know why this is so funny-hee-heeee…” She trailed off into a wheeze like the air leaving a balloon and covered her face with her hands. A few unladylike snorts and many deep breaths later, and she carefully lowered them again, and appeared capable of resisting ICE-E’s gaze. Her hair had come askew and her nose was a brighter red than usual, but she was grinning wide.
“Cheese and crackers, I’m dizzy. Oh gosh. I haven’t laughed like that all year.” She grabbed one pencil and playfully jabbed at them with the eraser. “You must be really proud of yourself, Krismas. Don’t try to hide it. All day long you had me thinking you were in some kind of trouble.”
The seconds ticked by, and little by little, Noelle’s grin drained away.
“Kris,” she said. “Are you in trouble?”
Their eyes flicked over her shoulder, to the path back to town. And though they hadn’t moved and their hair covered their face as always, Noelle looked that way too, and then back to them. The breeze picked up; the dried trees conspiratorially rustled.
She set the pencil aside and stood, palms still on the tabletop as if trying to keep her balance, and crossed over to their side. They hastily scootched away as she sat down, but she was still close enough for the wind to carry her scent. Faint peppermint, the same as ever. Noelle folded her hands and spoke low.
“You haven’t been sleeping well,” she said. “In school, I mean. I mean, you probably haven’t been sleeping well if you’re asleep in school anyway, but lately I’ve noticed you’re tossing and turning more. As much as someone can toss and turn on a desk.” She coughed. “Not like I’ve been watching you sleep or anything. It’s just something I noticed. It wasn’t any of my business. Has, um, everything been okay since Asriel left?”
“It’s fine,” they said.
“Okay. That’s good. He tried talking to me, you know. Wanted to know where you were hanging out. He tried to play it off like it was no big deal but I think he was pretty worried.”
“It wasn’t something for him to worry about.”
“Still, it was nice to talk to him. And I was really happy when you passed me that note, even if it had me wondering whether it’d be just another prank. You’ve probably saved up a lot of those too, faha.” She smiled again, more brittle. “Even back then, it was pretty fun. Us hanging out. Before I… kind of ruined it.”
They didn’t bother to argue with that; there was no point. No one remembered anything correctly.
“I want to apologize for that. For whatever it’s worth.” She leaned over, hair swinging free. “Kris, what have you been up to? I heard MK spotted you and Catti walking together but she’s not telling me anything either.”
They’d known this question would be inevitable. The answer they would have to give, and the other answers that would follow, had been what caused them to hesitate going through with this meeting above all else, even more so than having to see Noelle’s face in such a clear light, or allowing her to get close enough to touch. They’d eventually decided on a response that was true enough without revealing too much, and they spoke it now, addressing the tabletop.
“I wanted to show I was sorry,” they said.
Noelle’s answer was so long in coming that they angled their head toward her again. She was in the same pose, mouth silently moving as if repeating their words back to herself. She straightened up and took the pencil stub, rolling it between her fingers as she talked, watching that motion.
“I’ve had way too much time to think lately,” she said. “Especially since Dad got sick. I keep going back to when we were kids, and everyone was still around. Me always dragging you and Asriel over to my house, or us coming over to yours. And eventually, I realized something.” The pencil went still. “Kris. I’m pretty sure that meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not. Well, maybe I am, a little. Still, it’s the truth. I don’t blame you for keeping your distance. After Dess, and everything else. But if we’d never met, who’s to say all of that wouldn’t have happened anyway, or worse? Unhappiness always finds a way in, I think. That’s just life. At least you made me feel… more awake, for a little while. Before we met, I could barely even leave the house.” She brandished the pencil stub. “If you wanted to apologize – if you really believe there’s anything to apologize for – then this is more than enough. Now it’s my turn. Let me know what I can do. I don’t want us to just walk away from each other again.”
The sun had shifted. The colors rusted and sanguine. Kris’s silenced phone dug into their side and they stared unblinking at the end of the path. They heard Noelle’s voice, now tinged with concern.
“Kris,” she said. “You’re shaking.”
“I thought I’d found a way,” they said. “But it’s getting out of control. I don’t know if I can…” Finally they turned to face her. “Noelle, I’m scared.”
The trees shivered again. Noelle brushed her hair away from her face, staring.
“You don’t get scared,” she said distantly. “Kris is never scared. That’s supposed to be me.”
Maybe it was. But they didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
They flinched when Noelle reached out. She paused, looked up to them for assent, and though they didn’t nod or speak, she must have found it regardless, because she gently took their hand and cradled it in her palms. The fingers of their other hand seized and dug into the table’s holes. The wind gusted hard enough to flip Noelle’s notebook open; the flipping pages went unacknowledged.
“Can you feel that?” she asked. “Now I’m shaking too. Anything that can scare you must be really, really bad.” Her hair was whipping round again but she made no move to correct it. “Kris. I’m wide awake. Tell me how I can help.”
Her gaze didn’t drop this time. They couldn’t recognize the face under those clutching tangles of gold. Solemn and set as if it had been chiseled into shape. But she had them by the hand now, and despite the torpid dread that had leaked into their sleep over these last weeks, when Kris saw Noelle
* Signal disrupted. *
* Calibrating. *
With hands still entwined you brace your palms beneath her chin and attempt to bear her up as the earth leaves you behind
Water burning in reflected sunset, horizon devoured by static dander
Faraway screech of grackles a farewell from the shore you have departed
Her face is stained by spume and her grin so wide you feel its piano-string tension against your skin and she forces your hands down and you sink, head submerged, world in murk, birdcall swallowed by the thunder of the lake rushing in
You kick and gasp and break the surface and she laughs or perhaps snarls and pushes down again and always in you the thudding mantra the broadcast loop her desire to drift beyond that firmament
Eyes upturned you see it leave you too
The gasping pit of sky
* Calibrating. *
Hometown slept. The rain had passed and left its echo, the drops plinking off its streetlamps and eaves, a soft shine to accentuate the shadows that blanketed these streets. Kris and Susie had left the church and slouched through that velvety dark, and their wanderings had guided them to the lakeside. There was nothing in the sky for the water to reflect; the lake was so still and blackened that aside from the dull bronze ripples of fallen leaves on its surface it seemed little more than a shadow itself. They sat on the wet sand and listened to the treeleaves shedding their own moisture, a pattering gossip.
Susie leaned forward. The late-night gloom rendered her indistinct, purple hide and purple coat and the ragged folds of her jeans all blending together into a vague hulk upon which her mane of hair sat like lichen. She appeared monumental.
“You hear that?” she asked. “No? Sounds like someone’s playing a song out there. Y’know… on the other side of the lake.”
Darkness had swallowed that horizon. But from that furthest edge could possibly be heard notes from no distinct instrument, spaced so far apart that the melody seemed itself a hallucination. Kris listened to it, and said nothing, and eventually Susie settled back in place.
They angled their head over and watched her. The lakeside wind caressing her clothes. Stiffened knots of hair obscured her face but every so often her eye could be glimpsed beneath it, and eventually that eye swiveled in their direction.
“What? I got something on my face or something?”
Kris said that Susie had been right.
“Heh, yeah, probably. About what?”
Kris said that Susie had been right, when she’d talked to them at the church’s Dark Fountain. When she had talked to them about her dream, Kris said. A shared dream. Yesterday the same as tomorrow, for as long as tomorrow would last.
“Damn, you put it better than I did.” Her teeth glinted in the dark. “Guess we really were on the same wavelength, huh?”
Kris said that the only difference was the yesterdays. The ones they had wanted to bring back. They had thought the yesterdays they had wanted to bring back were outside of their reach. But for a time, they had stopped believing this, because they had the days they’d spent with her. Kris said that they were holding onto the days they had spent with her.
“All of them?” she said wryly. “You sure about that, dumbass? Even the ones where I slammed you into a locker?”
Kris said they hadn’t minded those, either.
Susie’s grin faded. “Dude, that’s not right. I mean, it’s cool that you’re not mad at me or anything, but I wasn’t… I was really trying to mess you up, back then. You deserved better than that.” She pushed a few coils of hair out of her eyes. “Take it from me, it feels a lot better when someone’s actually being nice.”
Kris said that they knew. They said they had spent a long time sleeping as much as they could, because it made things easier. Because they believed it would make things easier. But in these last few days with Susie, they had felt awake. It had been good, Kris said, while it lasted. Feeling awake.
Susie blinked. She rocked back and forth a few times, tugged on her shirt. When she tried to laugh again, it trailed off into a sort of coughing stammer.
“It’s, uh… it got kinda warm all of a sudden. Is this how all those Darkners feel when you get to work on them? What, you decided to use me for practice or something?”
Kris stayed quiet now, and after a moment, Susie’s expression turned solemn. She gazed back out over the lake.
“Kris, I’m not great at talking about this stuff. Dunno how the hell you got so good at it, but I already told you that I, um, didn’t have many friends. Especially not like whatever we’ve got going on. But, I shouldn’t really have to tell you anything, right? ‘cause it’s pretty obvious already.” She huffed, kneading her claws together. “Being your friend’s basically the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s like, last week, I didn’t have a damn thing to look forward to, and now I’ve practically got more than I know what to do with. Even with this prophecy crap. And all of that good stuff, it’s all coming from you. One way or another.” Her voice was dropping to a mumble. “So, however you feel about me, I probably feel that way too. Or whatever.”
The raindrops sounded off, burying that distant music. When Susie talked again, she’d gone quiet enough for that soft patter to nearly smother her voice, too.
“Was that okay?” Susie asked.
Kris said that it was.
“Okay. Cool. Arright.” She chuckled, teeth once again on full display. “Look at this. You’ve got me all psyched up. Practically bouncing in my seat. Guess this is what you meant with the whole awake thing.” Susie looked over to them, fist raised. “That stupid prophecy really doesn’t stand a chance.”
She leaned over, ready to knuckle them on the shoulder, but then stopped. Kris had turned back to the lake, head bowed, arms over their stomach. The words they spoke now tore at them like razor wire, but nonetheless, they were said.
Kris said that Susie could do anything. They said no matter how strong she believed herself to be, the truth was that she was even stronger than that. They wanted her to understand this, Kris said.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, Kris. You’re laying it on a little thick, here.” She tried to sound annoyed but smiled wider than ever.
Kris said that she could do the rest alone, if she needed to. She would be able to handle the rest of this alone.
“Wait, what was that?” She moved in closer. “Didn’t catch that. Kris, did that diner food screw you up or something? You really don’t look too good.”
Kris said that it had all been spoiled again.
“Spoiled? What?”
Kris said that they had ruined everything again.
“Kris, you’re freaking me out! Let me…” She laid her hands on their shoulders, now close enough for them to feel her hot breath on their cheek. “God, you’re shaking all over. We need to get you back to your mom’s place. Just let me know when you’re good to walk. I ain’t going anywhere.” She lightly rubbed their back. “Be pretty stupid if I did, after all that mushy crap. It’s you and me, okay?”
The lingering raindrops and the music over the lake had ceased. Kris felt her claws in the crenellations of their spine. Her coat draped over them like a cloak. Whenever she was at their side, they’d felt the gravity of her, and tried to hold on to this feeling.
Kris said that earlier that day, when they had been alone with Noelle
* Signal disrupted. *
* Calibrating. *
Now in these depths, directionless
Even if you could swim there would be no way of knowing the surface, every escape another descent and a coldness that claws at the bones
Behind your eyes come bursts of light, fatal stars, a constellation only you can see
She has laughed out the last of her bubbling breath and yet still she clutches you tight as you sink
The anemone drift of her hair on your cheek, her warmth receding into the water
Immersed always and endlessly in this love
This bright and terrible love
A love that tethers, and anchors, and
* Signal lost. *
* That’s enough. *
* Where will we go next? *
* Will they find us there? *