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“Look at those bangs! They’re perfect!” the woman exclaims, turning around and smiling broadly at the sight of Sara.
Sara blinks.
“All wispy in the right spots and thick in others. Much better than mine were way back when, but I guess that’s what you get for cutting them drunk in a friend’s bathroom.” She laughs, then glances at Sara’s wrist. “Oh, and with the scrunchie—that’s cute! Vintage, I guess you would call it nowadays. But look! I match,” she continues, gesturing to herself.
The woman is wearing a marigold yellow tank top tucked into dark, wide-legged jeans that have some sort of batter flecked across their waistline. The deep navy of the denim makes the dots of cream pop, but if she cares about the mess, she doesn’t show it, the few bangles she has on clinking gently when she puts her hands on her hips to size Sara up.
She stands in a kitchen that’s not all that big but has sun coming through the windows. It illuminates the well-loved cutting boards leant against a herringbone backsplash and a whisk resting against the side of a mixing bowl. The fridge has a kitschy Coney Island magnet on it, holding up a kid’s drawing of an arc reactor. The likeness isn’t great, but the artist might’ve known that since they bothered labeling it. There’s flour dusted across the countertops and an open bag of chocolate chips slouched near the mess, its plastic shiny with condensation.
Toll House instead of store brand—fancy.
Sara’s mom used to store them in the freezer, too.
Sara feels like a dust mite, as though the luck of having landed anywhere visible is only the precursor to being swept away.
“I—”
“Girls your age are so stylish—I love that you all can do whatever you want with that stuff. Marching to the beat of your own drum, right? Well, you must be hungry. Give me a sec to get my pan greased, and we’ll get breakfast going.”
“Breakfast?” Sara asks.
It’s been a long time since someone made her a hot meal.
“You bet. Do you like pancakes? Or, wait, actually—do you like chocolate chips? I haven’t added them yet, so I can leave them out of yours if you’d prefer.”
“Chocolate chips are okay,” Sara manages, and the woman nods.
“Now you’re speaking my language. Grab a seat, sweetheart. I’ll bring them to you.” She gestures to the right, and Sara looks away from her for the first time to see a few stools pulled up to a bar counter. The stools themselves are wooden, but they’ve been painted. One’s purple, and the other’s blue.
Sara takes the purple one. It squeaks a little under her weight but seems sturdy enough.
“Where am I?” Sara manages, watching the woman fight to scoop her measuring cup within the chocolate bag, then give up and start free pouring into the batter.
“Sorry if they’re too chocolatey—I really do hate measuring things out. I’m better than I used to be, though, swear it.”
“Did I get away?”
“From where?” the woman responds, stirring the chips in.
“The—the men. They stuck me with something. I think they’re taking me somewhere.”
“Ugh, men,” the woman sighs and turns, her face falling sympathetically. Her eyes are brown and very, very big behind the wire-rimmed glasses slipping down her nose. “I don’t know about that, honey—I’m sorry. I just have a knack for finding strays and good company. We’re in the kitchen right now, but if you stay long enough, maybe we can go on a coffee run. I’m the boss here, so we can do whatever we want.”
“And where’s here?” Sara presses.
The woman smiles. “My favorite apartment. The counter you’re at was the best for talking with my boys while someone cooked.”
“The men took me to your apartment?”
The woman shakes her head. “Not quite. You’re probably wherever you were last. Found out I’m no good at changing stuff like that after the last few times. But sometimes I get to host people, when they float away from reality for a little while. Special visitors, usually.” She winks at Sara like they’re in on the same secret.
“You’re—” What’s the word the news is tossing around? “—enhanced?”
“Oh, nothing like that. I’m a talker like anybody else, and I love a good story.” She wanders to the fridge and grabs a stick of butter, then peels the wrapper back until she can smear it across a pan with one hand while using the other to turn on the stove. “Hon, I—actually, what’s your name? I’m so sorry—I completely forgot to ask.”
Sara’s hands curl into fists. The polish Jean put on her a few days ago is flaking. “I’m Sara.”
And she’s welcome, for some reason. In this space she doesn’t know.
It’s unnatural.
Tension settles heavy at Sara’s temples. Something has to give, but pressure has to mount before any rupture.
“So pretty,” the woman says half-absently, like she’s confident Sara’s heard that a million times before. “I’m May. Anyway, I was going to say that I totally forgot to grab the syrup. You can get it from the pantry if you want some.” She turns and plucks a napkin out of its holder to lay in front of Sara, then sets the butter she used for the pan on it. “There’s that, too. Do you want a Mickey?”
“What’s a Mickey?” Sara asks.
“We’ll get you one,” May decides, certain. “I have it on good word that teenagers like them as much as littles, and you look like you’d fit right in with Ned and MJ. Oh, and if you’re a music person, I have some CDs you can flip through and put on. The only thing in there right now is best of Led Zeppelin.”
Sara looks down the counter. Next to a player, there’s a basket of discs, some in the original cases and some tossed into plain, black sleeves.
“You don’t look like a Led Zeppelin sort of person,” Sara replies, squinting at May’s fluttering movements, a little erratic but not rushed. Someone that’s long accepted not moving through life linearly.
“Oh, I’m not, really. One of my friends likes them though, and I let him pick when he visits. Ben is more of an Eagles guy, but for whatever reason, it’s just me when I host certain people. Probably because I have more experience as a go-between.”
“Between what?” Sara asks.
All of her questions feel dumb. Between her and Jean, she’s older, even if only by ten months. She’s in charge of making sure the coast is clear, that the next home knows not to mess with them from the jump. She’s been on the lookout for people that want to hurt her the moment their mom realized the horror of what her daughters were, and she always knows which strangers are watching her and which are walking through life blissfully unaware that anyone might mean them harm.
But May’s distracted pouring batter onto the pan, and Sara shelves the thought to put the Muppet Movie soundtrack into a pink, beat-up boombox.
Rainbow Connection starts, and May nods her approval. “Good choice. We haven’t played that one in forever, but it was Peter’s favorite when he was younger.”
Her back’s to Sara, but she can hear her beaming anyway.
Sara pads over to the pantry and finds the syrup while May chatters about bubbles rising as the pancakes cook and how she’s always liked Miss Piggy best.
When a plate appears in front of Sara, there’s a pancake a little smaller than her palm on top of three larger ones. Its base is a big circle, and then, next to each other toward the top, there are two smaller circles poking out. Like a cartoonish, doughy mouse head.
May was right—she did want a Mickey.
“Eat up,” May advises, sliding a fork and knife toward the rest. “You’ve got to get yourself energy for the day.”
//
When Sara wakes chained to a chair, she swears there’s maple running down the back of her throat.
//
“Oh goodness,” May says when Sara sees her next. “You look tired, sweetheart.”
She is tired. They’re—they’re forcing something out of her, and they can shove her toward a jump, and even though she can’t because no one’s in range, they can hold her there, in the weightlessness, in the empty where she’s nothing except the desire to belong, to have someone else and see through their eyes, to be anyone except herself.
“Let’s get you a hot shower, and then maybe I can touch up those nails?”
How does Sara know this woman’s name?
How does she know, as May gingerly grabs her shoulders, that her stomach is full and this woman is why? It wasn’t before. She screamed so hard she retched acid, and they finally let her be until the shakes wracking her body carried her off to someplace darker than sleep.
But the shadows here are amber and are cast by a few mismatched floor lamps scattered around the living room. Somewhere, there’s a candle going that smells like vanilla.
“They’re hurting me,” she whispers to May. “I can do things they can’t, and they’re tearing me apart for it.”
May’s mouth twists, but there’s no surprise in the creases around her eyes. She reaches forward and squeezes Sara’s hand, and here, it’s not bruised, not sore from straining so desperately against where they have her bound. Sara’s ready for the touch to land warm. Gentle.
“I’m sorry, Sara. You don’t deserve that.”
“I didn’t do anything to them—I was just—I wanted ice cream with my sister. That’s all.”
“I can get you ice cream. What flavor?”
“Jean likes strawberry.”
“And that’s what you like, too?”
“I want Jean,” Sara chokes, and she hears herself sob before she feels the dampness on her cheeks. “I want to go home.”
“I know, sweetheart. Why don’t you rinse off, and then you can tell it all to me? Let the water take some of it, too.”
May squeezes her hand again. There’s a wedding ring there. The band presses cool against Sara’s skin. The diamond is small but still throws rainbows when it catches the light just so.
Sara showers.
When she gets out, May has blankets waiting on the couch for her. Sara sits in one pulled snug over her back when May hands her a bowl and spoon. The ice cream is already scooped, generous curls of baby pink. It’s gone a little melty, so Sara can see how it clings to the edges of the dish, made with enough milk to sit thick on her tongue.
“Jean likes this type best. Without any of the actual fruit chunks.” Sara takes a bite. Feels the cold spread along her gums. “I like mint chip, and she likes stealing some of mine, so she gets chocolate if we’re eating together because she says it pairs better. But when it’s just her, she always gets strawberry. She has red hair and hates how pink looks on her, but I think it’s pretty.”
“I bet it is. You’ve got great taste,” May promises, and she smiles a little as she glances to Sara’s hair and makes sure Sara sees her looking.
It doesn’t feel condescending. Not like the homes that only wanted to be close until they realized there was something wrong with the two of them.
She told May she was different, and May let her use all her soaps that smell like coconut.
“I don’t know if I’m going to see her again,” Sara whispers.
May doesn’t make any false promises. Only pulls the blanket a little tighter around Sara’s shoulders.
“Tell me more about her, then. We’ll remember together. It’s the best thing you can do for someone you love.”
//
They want Sara to work with them, but there’s nothing to offer when they’ve already reached into her chest and left it hollow.
//
The third time, there’s debris all around, but the grey threading through the brown in May’s hair glows like steel wool set ablaze as she kneels next to Sara.
Sara’s breath rattles in her chest. She’s always had an awareness of her flesh bordering on molecular. Jean thought it was because of how intimately they had to understand their own body to stay tethered in the process of seizing someone else’s. So like seeing at a glance if something is where she left it, Sara knows the plasticity of her neurons and the roots of each nerve as unerringly as the veins on the back of her hand, and she can feel a corrosion spreading through it all, unstoppable. Meteors breaking apart when they encounter gravity.
May looks like she knows how it feels, to fracture and scatter into something new. Something frightening. Total destruction in the process of reincarnation.
“It’s alright,” she says. “I come back here sometimes. I know it looks scary, but it wasn’t so bad with someone to send me off. I was okay with Peter there.”
“Your son?” Sara asks through cracked, panting lips.
“My nephew, technically. But yeah, my son.”
May leans down to clear whatever’s blocking Sara’s view, feathery and pale. Sara blinks to take in the newfound clarity, but a bright, inexorable pattern sears itself into her eyelids and drags her away.
After a moment, she settles again with May, strewn across the wreckage.
Distantly, she hears someone screaming.
How does she know May?
She’s never met a May, but she likes that time of year—spring on the cusp of summer. It brims with potential.
“Was Peter different? Like I’m different?” Sara asks.
Her mom left them for it, but May makes her think that something like that could change. Be better.
“That’s one way you could put it,” May laughs, even though Sara can see the water hugging the whites of her eyes. “It’s so good to see you again, honey. I missed you. But sometimes you have to love yourself enough to let go.”
“Don’ need to—”
“Don’t lie to me,” May says, firm but still, always, kind. “You all only find me when you’re hurting.”
It does. Hurt.
Sara shakes her head, even though whatever’s under her doesn’t make it very comfortable. “But my sister—”
“She’ll be okay. I’ll check on her if you want.” May smiles, even though the rest of her is so sad, draped in the firelight flickering around them.
“Really?” Sara asks.
“Of course. I’ll make more breakfast. I have to show off my bag of tricks, and I bet she needs a good meal, too.”
Jean does. Needs food and love and a sister, and Sara is sorry.
//
“Well, the hair must be genetic. Yours is gorgeous too,” the woman says, and there’s a wafflemaker steaming quietly on the counter in front of Jean.
They’re in a snug but colorful kitchen. There’s a stained glass sun catcher of a lizard in the window, casting green shapes on the hardwood. Jars labeled for flour and sugar are balanced on top of the refrigerator, and the sink has dishes from what looks like last night’s dinner dribbling soapy water. The plate sitting next to the waffle maker has daisies printed along its edges, and Movin’ Right Along ekes out of a bubblegum-colored CD player a little ways away.
The woman’s talking nonsense, and Jean doesn’t know her.
Instinctively, Jean leaps into her with the intention of seeing herself and where she’s ended up, but nothing happens.
When Jean looks down, in the same brain as always, she finds a wooden bar stool that’s been painted the color of the sky on a clear day.
“You like it? Ben took them to his shop and painted them our favorite colors. You’re in Peter’s, and the purple’s mine.”
Jean looks over. It’s a good purple, too. The perfect lavender.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“I’m May. And you are?”
“. . . Jean.”
May hums, and the light on top of the waffle maker turns green. She lifts the lid, then uses a fork to transfer the waffle to a plate. “What do you like on it? The syrup’s in front of you, and I have whipped cream and berries in the fridge, or—”
“Do you have peanut butter?”
May pauses, then nods. “Yeah, we can do that. Skippy okay?”
Jean nods back, and in a few seconds, it’s set in front of her.
This is a dream. It has to be a dream. But—
“Why peanut butter?” May asks, pouring a waffle for herself, too. The batter looks homemade, fluffier than a box mix.
“Keeps you full longer.”
“Oh, that’s smart,” May says. “I should’ve had Peter do that, but he was so scatterbrained in the mornings he probably wouldn’t have had time, anyway. His metabolism was crazy though, my God. I had to rework the entire grocery budget as soon as he hit fourteen.”
“Your kid?”
“Mhmm.” While her waffle cooks, May wanders to a set of cabinets. “Do you like coffee? Tea?”
“Water’s fine,” Jean says, and May brings a glass. Her face is wrinkled enough that she must be older than Jean’s mom, but she’s so open, nearly airy. She drifts between Jean’s requests so easily. Like there’s nothing she’d rather be doing, no place she wants to run to get away.
And the food is good. Really good.
Jean swallows a bite around the lump in her throat.
“Are you real?” Jean asks, eventually.
May shrugs. “I was.”
“And then?”
“Oh, it happens to everyone, honey. Don’t worry. I lived as much as I could.”
. . . ah.
“You don’t look dead.”
She’s pretty markedly unbroken. Not like something’s left her at all.
May grins and tosses her glossy hair over her shoulder. “Once it’s all over, you get to make more decisions than you realize. Forever’s a long, long time, and there’s so many people to see—you have to make the most of it. Ben and I have gotten everyone on board for poker night recently, but so far, the pot’s either gone to one of his old work buddies or Natasha.”
The light comes on the waffle maker again, and as May reaches for the plate, Jean sees flashes of a thousand different outfits on her, a thousand different vignettes of a life resolved, hair permed then cut short, nails manicured then bitten down, tired then vibrant then small then pale then giddy then as she was at the start. Middle aged and clearly in her element, swirling dots of whipped cream onto her waffle so that it looks like clouds. She shapes her strawberries into a mountain range beneath them.
“Plus, I wander. I try not to get too close to Peter—I don’t want to smother him when he’s trying hard to get on his feet. But I love to find a new face, especially if they remind me of him. Take care of yourself, okay? I’m in your corner, no matter what.”
“But—”
//
Jean sits up, but the bed in the stranger’s house doesn’t have Sara in the next room over.
A song from the Muppets is stuck in her head, though.
She gets moving.
//
Frank doesn’t dream very often, mostly because he doesn’t sleep very often, but even so, this one’s new.
He’s in a dive bar, which is weird ‘cause he doesn’t risk alcohol dulling his senses anymore, and from the jump, the bartender slides him something on draft.
“‘S not mine,” Frank says, but she’s already moving down the bar, motioning toward the back of the room.
“Gal with the glasses covered it for you.”
Oh, fuck no.
He whips around to find who she’s talking about and finds a willowy brunette giggling with a slim, red-haired woman and an asshole wearing sunglasses indoors above a stupid fucking goatee. The pair of them are sipping shirley temples, but the woman’s holding, Frank assumes, the same brew she got him. She wipes the foam from her mouth after she takes a sip, then steals the cherry out of the asshole’s drink.
She’s older than him but really, really beautiful, in the bone-deep way a person can be when they understand exactly who they are.
Frank glares murder until she catches sight of him, and then she waves back with a grin like he’s the one handing out free shit. She even spins to tap another, more unassuming guy within her group on the shoulder, then points at Frank.
Other guy waves too.
Frank takes a drink of the beer—but only because the economy’s a shit show, and since dinner was light, he can’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth. And if the gift horse is really fucking crisp, that doesn’t hurt anything.
Then, the lady cups her hands around her mouth and yells at him: “Hey, loosen up a little! Life can be really fun if you let it. Promise!”
He doesn’t think she’s talking about the beer, but he also gets the purpose of a peace offering.
“Who the hell are you?” he shouts back, out of principle.
“Trust me, man!” she calls, then pecks the plain guy next to her on the cheek. He’s got glasses too and messy hair a few shades darker than hers. He’d blend in a crowd pretty much anywhere, but he’s looking at her with a depth of affection that makes Frank’s guts curdle with envy.
He means to holler something rude about it, but then she raises her glass to him, and she’s so fucking pleased about it that Frank only sighs and lifts his in return, then drinks up.
//
Frank comes to with a crick in his back, which is just his luck since what woke him up was the spider kid being loud as fuck on his way in. With company.
Figures.
//
Laying in a bunk bed in a strange man’s house, MJ stares at the ceiling until she gets drowsy, thinking despite everything that happened to her earlier about the sort of companies that can throw out the highest offers for aerospace engineers. She wishes NASA would let her know one way or the other about her application so she wouldn’t have to talk to the rest.
She doesn’t want to hear how easy they could make her life.
In the sleepy space between wakefulness and rest, studying which rivets in the wall are missing their screws, the skeleton of a dream she had the night before the interview trickles in, of a woman who slid MJ a mug of her favorite tea and toasted a glass of orange juice against its rim.
Her features are indistinct, now, but her faith wound around MJ like a scarf in the dead of winter, tucking itself along the nape of her neck: “You know what you want to be, sweetheart. Go get it.”
She had sounded so proud, even though MJ hadn’t done anything yet.
MJ closes her eyes.
//
Jean just wants her sister back. Someone else like her.
But for all her fight, she loses, and with Spider-Man’s help, they rip the only thing she has to defend herself right out.
One of the foster homes was with a vet. He’d learned in all those years of school that declawing a cat is amputation. Severing those little toes at the last knuckle.
No matter how much it hissed, the tabby that wandered his house had four harmless paws and a bell tingling around its neck.
//
Jean finds herself at a playground. The reds and yellows of the equipment are faded with age, but the wavy-haired boy running up its stairs doesn’t seem to mind. His shoes are untied, and there are two Star Wars bandaids on one of his knees. When he gets to the top of the structure, he throws himself down a swirly slide. His dirty sneakers squeal against the plastic as they careen around, and when he gets to the bottom, he hops off and races back up.
On loop.
Jean watches him ride three times before she notices the woman standing next to her. She’s in a violet sweater that slouches past her wrists and a polka dot skirt long enough to brush her ankles.
She recognizes her—May.
How?
“You don’t have to watch,” May says, nudging their arms together. “It’ll go on forever. His aunt’s keeping an eye on him, but I like to visit too. It was the first time I really saw him smile after we lost his parents.”
“He’s not yours?”
“Oh, he’s mine alright, but I didn’t grow him. Ben was his father’s brother.”
Jean mulls that over. The kid’s missing one of his front teeth. She wonders if May and Ben gave him the tooth fairy money for it or if that happened before.
“You didn’t have to take him.”
“I guess not. Scared the shit out of me to sign the papers, honestly, but that’s family.”
She’s so frank. Like there was no other way.
“You must’ve loved his parents a lot.”
“In the way you like your in-laws.” She doesn’t take her eyes away from the boy. His name is Peter, Jean thinks. “We got along fine, but they were a little quieter than Ben and I. More academic. We weren’t even supposed to be watching him the weekend they went away, but the daughter of the friends who were going to keep him got the flu.”
“And you still adopted him?”
May doesn’t blink, watching Peter run himself ragged. Staring like she’s keeping time and he’s the last rays of a sunset.
“He didn’t have anyone else.” May turns to her, at last, and smudges her thumb across what Jean thinks is dried blood at the side of her mouth. “Are you okay, honey? I’m worried.”
The start of a migraine gathers threateningly at the crown of Jean’s head, but it doesn’t stop the warmth that drips, slow and sticky as honey, into her belly.
“About me? Why?”
“I move in between, but I can only get close like this to people who need it.”
“What do you mean in between?” Jean whispers.
“Here and there. In the middle of what special people hold inside and what’s asked of them. Or where real people’s bodies anchor them, then where their souls go after. Sometimes in both. It’s not an exact science.”
“So I’m not dead.”
That’s something, at least.
May laughs and tucks a piece of hair behind Jean’s ear. “No, nothing that serious. But if you were, you could come to poker.”
“I don’t know how to play.”
“Someone could teach you. It’s not too hard, and you’re clever. Not just anyone could’ve found her.”
Jean feels heat prick at the back of her eyes. “Her?” she croaks.
On first impression, Jean thought May was too happy, too satisfied to know what Jean was searching for, but maybe she wasn’t rambling, that other time. That sweetness that wicked through Jean’s fingers.
May nods, pensive. “The cut looks good on you, too.”
“But that means—you met—”
May drops a kiss on her hair, and Jean makes a sound like a thing strangled. “Some things you have to see for yourself. You’ll find your answers. I swear.” She uses her sleeve and wipes the wetness from Jean’s cheek. “And you’re so strong. You’ve got what it takes.”
“Why are you here?” Jean whispers. “Why me? I could—I scare so many people. Why not help them instead? They’re handling a threat they can’t even comprehend.”
May scoffs and pushes her glasses up her nose. “You’re not unfathomable. You’re a little girl. A brave little girl, but still. There are so many worse things, and I’m a people person.” She studies Jean’s face, then seems to soften. Like she can’t help it. “I’m not doing this just to be all altruistic, either.” The shoes squeak along the slide again. “It’s important for me to see who out there can still help him.”
It must be innate in May, the ability to see goodness. To look at Jean and think, by virtue of existing as she does, that she must be a savior.
May cards a fraught hand through her own hair. “I did everything I could, but it’s a big universe now. Someone’s got to keep track.”
Jean flinches, feeling guilty, suddenly. For accepting this so greedily and not being able to care for what May so clearly cherishes in return.
“But I don’t remember you outside of this place.”
This moment where there’s still peanut butter in the pits of her teeth and May’s boy is small enough to remain within her line of sight.
Peter. Does Jean know a Peter? She thinks so. The familiarity scratches like a rat nesting in a wall, but her head aches too much to be sure.
May blinks at her for a long second, then laughs. “Oh, honey, of course you don’t. I’m only so real, and you’ve got bigger things to worry about than some random lady’s anxieties. But I think giving somebody a bit of kindness makes them a little more willing to share it with the next person, right?”
Jean wouldn’t know, really.
She opens her mouth to say thank you, to offer whatever she can, but May waves her off. “Hey—you’ve got to run, I get it. Give ‘em hell out there, okay? I’ll see you when I see you.”
“That’s not—”
//
Jean wakes up surrounded by men who want to convince her that subjugation could be merciful, and as she howls, as she throws her head back so that they can’t catalog the tears budding in her eyes, she sees a yellowed sticker peeling off an air vent.
//
When Spider-Man, bloodied and haggard, looks at Jean and invites her into his unguarded mind, the first thing that registers is the smell of vanilla. Then, more faintly, coconut.
The bed beneath her is simple but clean. The decorations on the wall sit a little crookedly, and they were hung by someone who wasn’t going to get yelled at for using nails instead of command strips.
She can feel the presence next to her. The other weight on the edge of the mattress.
Not foreboding—just expectant.
When Jean turns, May Parker looks at her like she’s the entire world. Even though Jean’s afraid. Even though she’s angry. Even though she wants to raze whatever she can touch, whatever can be punished for making her the one who survived.
May speaks around a smile for her boy with a scraped knee, and Jean soaks in every word.