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She thinks the reason this joke is funny is that they’re unloveable.
Well, not impossible to love. But not quite easy to love, either. Certainly not the right candidates for the effortless, high-school-sweetheart infatuation they’re suggesting.
Marcy doesn’t want to be a downer, but she is a realist. And from a technical standpoint, all three of them should be very hard to fall in love with. Their problems, their nonsense fears and intricacies, are far too many to be accounted for in a candy graham from a secret admirer or a note with a yes/no checkbox slipped into one of their lockers.
The joke is funny for the reason a lot of jokes are funny: it challenges this well-established status quo. It makes them out to be something they’re not. Because Anne, Sasha, and Marcy did not come out on the tail end of a war as normal, socially acclimated high schoolers.
Case in point, the first time it happens.
She and Anne are sitting outside of the principal's office, waiting. Really, Marcy thinks, other students aren’t supposed to wait out here. But Anne had insisted. It’s not like Sasha’s parents were going to show up. And, Anne had said, somebody needs to reprimand her for this.
Marcy swings her feet over the ground, and listens to her companion sigh at the ceiling. She leans back in the chair, resting her bushy head of hair on the wall and tapping her fingers on her legs. A far cry from the girl who'd frantically dragged Marcy out of class a few minutes ago with panicked, exasperated whispers about their mutual friend.
Marcy crosses her legs under her chair, and curls her hands over its edges.
To their right, the door of the glass-walled office creaks open.
“This isn't a private school anymore,” they hear, in that classic stern adult voice. “It’s not pay-to-attend. We can kick you out anytime we like. The rules even say we should suspend you for this, but we’re aware of your… situation.”
He leaves it at that. Just “aware.” Nothing else. Marcy doesn’t know why they even bother being aware, if nobody takes the time to do anything about it. That part is just too difficult, it seems.
That’s not even how private school works, she thinks. But it would be no use to say aloud. She doubts his fear tactics will have the desired effect anyway.
“Uh-huh,” Sasha says. Marcy perks up, hearing her. Her voice is rough and tired and, as suspected, bored. She pushes the door open the rest of the way, coming into their view.
She looks awful. Her short hair is clumped unevenly on one side, like somebody had taken fistfuls of it to pull her away. A faded trail of blood runs between her nose and the top of her lip, crusted red. A yellow-green bruise is forming on her left cheek, near her jaw, and her shirt is halfway untucked, with the right sleeve rolled up over her elbow. Marcy can see all of the scars on her bare forearm. The palest of pink lines, thin and crisscrossed. Scattered inconsistencies that betray her lifetime of fighting.
“I’m glad you understand,” the man, presumably the principal or some other administrator, says. Like he’s threatening her into doing so. “This won’t be taken lightly, Miss Waybright.”
“I know,” she sighs and rolls her head to the side.
“Good.” The door closes, rattling the windows.
Anne jumps up.
“Hey, hey, I know.” Sasha holds up her hands. “They already explained the consequences while I was in there.” She tracks Anne’s approach with her eyes, but doesn’t stop her from getting up into her personal space with sour expression and crossed arms.
“Sasha, tell us what happened.”
Marcy remembers that she’s supposed to be part of this interrogation, too. Or at least she should moderate until Anne cools off. She rises from her seat and ambles over.
“It was nothing,” Sasha says, burying her hands in her pants pockets. “The kid had it coming.”
“Sasha-”
“He was talking about you guys.” Sasha’s gaze flits between the both of them.
Anne’s eyebrows knit. She glances to Marcy, who says nothing and tries not to let her blank, impartial expression waver. When Anne turns back her face is a bit softer, and her crossed arms have gone slack. “Really?” she asks.
“No.”
And all of it is undone. “Ugh, Sasha! You can’t just go around fighting people for no reason!” Anne grabs onto her shirt collar like she’s going to fight Sasha herself, next. “What is wrong with you?”
“Well, if you must know, he- um-” What had started as a confident statement falls apart with her uncertainty, and Sasha is left with the truth. She takes a moment to continue. “I don’t know. He just- he was being a jerk, not caring about getting in my space, but I’m sure he didn’t mean to make me fall when he bumped into me. But there were people everywhere, and then I did, and-” She rubs her right hand, over the bruised knuckles. “Then he was down there with me.”
“What happened to him?” Marcy asks.
“He’s fine. I mean- I won, but he’ll be okay.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“No, Marcy, it’s not good to hear.” Anne’s exhausted disappointment sounds genuine. She unclenches her hand and moves it down onto Sasha’s shoulder, looking very serious. “Like it or not, you still beat someone up. You’re gonna have to apologize. If the school won’t make you, then I will.”
Sasha frowns. “There you go being all responsible again. I kinda like you more when you’re angry.”
“I am angry.”
“No you’re not. I know what you look like when you’re angry.”
Marcy doesn’t think they notice themselves inching closer to each other. But she notices. With each step, their arguing loses some of its grounding.
“Really?” Anne asks. “How’s that?”
A grin breaks out on Sasha’s face. She looks all of the sudden like she’s won something else. “I know you. Your nose gets all scrunched up, and your cheeks go red.” She waves her hands over Anne’s face while she says it, fingers nearly brushing skin. Anne moves back a fraction of an inch, following their movement.
“Honestly-” Sasha glances out from half-lidded eyes. “It’s a good look on you.”
Marcy blinks. She has to hand it to her, the subject change is flawless. There’s no way Anne can possibly go back to reprimanding her after such a bold, unexpected turn. Her mouth opens and closes, searching for any hope of a reply.
Sasha keeps on staring for a second too long. Then, she bites down hard on her lower lip, trying to stop the laughter from scratching the back of her throat. It’s futile. Her shoulders shake, and she doubles over, in complete hysterics at her apparent joke. Anne follows shortly, holding onto her to keep her upright. She’s laughing, too.
Marcy thinks that she gets it. Maybe. A bit confusing, but she can reason through it like she does with every other joke.
“What are we going to do with you?” she muses, placing her hand flat on Sasha’s back in hopes of grounding her.
It doesn’t work. Sasha straightens up, just enough to meet her eyes. “Oh, I’d let you do lots of things with me,” she says. Her giggling lessens the effect, and makes it so obviously sarcasm.
But, of course, Marcy’s never been the best when it comes to sarcasm.
Her face burns, and she goes silent, condemned to watch. Anne hits Sasha’s arm and scolds her, but they’re smiling still and whatever they’re saying doesn’t reach Marcy’s ears. They’re both so caught up in laughing over a world in which they’ll never be wanted, that they don’t notice how she looks at them.
They’re wonderful, she thinks, and they’re so, so wrong about how hard it is to love them.
Instead of the one-off instance Marcy had expected, the joke progresses and runs its course. Its very long, seemingly unending course. She hopes for her own sake that they’ll tire themselves with it quickly, but the evidence points elsewhere.
She should’ve known before. She can trace this back to their attitudes ever since they started rebuilding their relationship, through the hordes of honest, heartfelt compliments exchanged to make up for how they’d damaged each other in the past. It had gotten to a point of almost seeming fake, and so now they’ve decided to reverse it so the awkward parts are intentional and exaggerated. There are a number of reasons that this inside joke, in theory, works.
For example: the fact that they’re all girls. And it’s not that her friends couldn’t be gay, but that they probably aren’t, if they’re willing to make a joke like this and be comfortable with it. Perfectly secure in their own feelings, perfectly reliant on the impossible irony of their implied relationship. Marcy had thought they at least suspected something on her part. But maybe their trust in her not liking them is testament to the unwavering platonic-ness of their friendship.
Marcy can’t break that. She wants to, just a little, soul-crushing bit, but they don’t need to know. She’ll let them have this, and soon it will all come to pass.
Hopefully. Because Marcy doesn’t know how much longer she can take it.
Anne has taken to winking at her, when she walks into their History class. Or whenever they meet eyes at all, really. Anne will smile and tilt her head, and she winks with her right eye, always. And Marcy smiles back like it’s all for fun. It hardly goes farther than that, for Anne.
Somehow, Sasha is worse. Simply because she’s more creative. She finds a way to spin a flirtatious remark out of every situation. And she’s very touchy. When they were allowed to choose their seats at the beginning of the year, Marcy had obviously chosen to sit with her, because she had obviously never predicted this all happening. Sasha takes advantage of their proximity, to nudge at her, or act embarrassed by a brush of hands, or to generally invade her personal space. She crosses their ankles together under the table, and casts her longing glances while the teacher talks.
It’s all very distracting. Marcy’s been noticing herself having to put more effort into school lately, even before they started acting like this. Now, she’s missing entire sections of instruction from zoning in on what they’re doing each class. She wishes all three of them didn’t have English together. It’s gotten so bad, trying to sit between both of them while they’re being like this, that her heart starts fluttering at the sight of the classroom door before she even goes inside.
She really should say something to them. The gestures themselves don’t bother her, and she maybe even likes them, but at the same time, they hurt. They’re fake.
Deep inside her, an unfamiliar twinge of anger flares like a sparking match.
“Marce?”
She jumps, coming back to reality and shoving the burning sensation into an untouched corner of her mind. That’s right. She’s waiting for them, here.
Sasha and Anne stand over her in front of the park bench she’s sitting on, looking every bit as intimidating as they did during school. They’re linking arms. Marcy’s been so lost in her own mind, thinking of them, she doesn’t even know which one said her name.
“Y- yeah?” She rises from her seat, bracing herself.
Anne makes a weird face at her. “Are you ready to go? We were gonna grab something to eat.”
Right. So far so good. She nods. “Yep, I remember. I was just… thinking.”
As soon as Marcy says it, she regrets it. The setup is right there. Sasha’s used this same line on her too many times for her to be so forgetful.
Her hand closes around Marcy’s wrist to pull her into their group. She bats her eyelashes and brings her other hand up through Anne’s looped arm to pretend she’s tucking hair behind her ear. “About us?”
Marcy’s heart beats against her ribcage like it’s trapped there, though she could easily break the hold on her wrist, if she wanted to. (She doesn’t want to. Why on Earth doesn’t she want to?)
“Y-you know it,” she stutters out, for the sake of the joke, and shoots Sasha the weakest finger gun imaginable. Sasha laughs, and for just a split second she’s smiling and Marcy is watching, and it’s alright. The anger in her chest fades to nothing.
She feels Anne’s sigh more than she hears it. “I get that you guys are doing your thing right now, and it’s cute and all, but can we go? I’m literally starving.”
Sasha and Marcy nod in unison. They start off to the pizza place down the road. Sasha does what Marcy had been too scared to do, and adjusts her grip so they can hold hands on the way. They’ve held hands a lot before, so in and of itself, that’s fine. But maybe something’s changed, because Sasha’s index finger slides into the space between Marcy’s pinky and her ring finger. Which probably means nothing, and is probably a mistake she can’t be bothered to correct, but all the same, it’s never happened before.
“So,” Marcy says, because she’s talking to Anne now, and social rule demands that she look at people when she talks to them and so prevents her eyes from lingering too long at her and Sasha’s hands. “How is tennis?”
Anne shrugs. “It’s fine. I still don’t like that the courts are right next to the football field.” She sends a pointed glare at Sasha.
“You don’t have to look at me, you know. I get that I’m distracting but-”
Anne cuts her off. “I wouldn’t be looking at you if you weren’t calling my name all the time.” She makes an exaggerated step over the crack in the sidewalk Marcy wouldn’t have seen otherwise. “Seriously, Marcy, I’ll be in the middle of a match and she’ll be all ‘Anne, look over here’ and then she’ll just wave or something.”
“You don’t have to get all defensive. It’s okay to admit you can’t keep your eyes off of me when I’m practicing.”
Anne laughs. “Please. Nobody looks good in those school uniforms.”
“Aw, Anne.” Sasha bumps their shoulders together. Though it might just be because they’re walking on uneven ground. “Don’t sell yourself short like that.”
Anne laughs again, but this time it’s different. High-pitched and breathy. She’s blushing. Marcy can tell.
Anyone would, at Sasha’s flickering eyes and half-smile. Marcy feels herself blushing, even.
Anne clears her throat, and points to direct their eyes to the front of the restaurant. “We’re here. Do you wanna sit outside?”
Marcy shakes her head.
“Anne,” Sasha says. “Don’t you know we need the privacy?”
“Ah, of course. How could I forget?” Anne winks at them. This is a lot harder than Marcy thought it would be.
So they file into the place, walking into the backmost corner booth over grungy tile floors. They have to stay close to each other to fit through the thin walkway while dodging other people’s legs in the path.
The red, torn booth seats look smaller than Marcy remembers. She takes the side they’re farthest from in hopes Anne and Sasha won’t follow. But Sasha, with her hand still clutched in Marcy’s, sticks next to her. Anne collapses opposite them, and leans across the little table to keep near. The fake, thin plastic layer on the seats squeaks loudly at their every movement. They settle in, which ends up with Sasha pressed too close to Marcy’s side, pulling her in with an arm around the shoulders.
Over at the counter in the back, Marcy sees a waitress gathering three menus, and angling herself in their direction.
“Sash,” she warns. “If you don’t stop, people are actually gonna think we’re dating.”
Sasha turns to her, and beams. Oh no.
“What?” She clutches Marcy closer. “Are you saying you’re embarrassed of me?”
The waitress straightens the menus in her arms, and starts walking over.
“Hey,” Anne says, tapping her index finger on the table between them to get their attention. She lowers her voice. “Betcha can’t get her to think you’re really girlfriends.”
That’s a completely nonsensical bet. How would you even judge whether she succeeded or not? How would we know what the waitress is thinking? Marcy’s mind does that thing again, where it jumps to several non-imminent problems instead of processing the more immediate-
“You’re on,” Sasha says, and both her arms fall around Marcy’s waist. “What do I get if she does?”
This is happening very fast. Marcy wonders again how they would know, and preoccupies herself with the wondering to distract from the everything else. Either way, Her friends seem eager to continue with this. And Marcy’s not objecting.
“I’ll think of something later,” Anne says. “I just wanna see you try.”
The waitress reaches their table. Before she can lay out the laminated cardstock menus for them, Sasha holds up a hand.
“That’s alright. I think we know what we want already. Right?”
They both nod. They’ve been here enough to have memorized how to divide the communal pizza. Anne tells the waitress their order, while Sasha tries her hardest to look and act like world’s clingiest girlfriend. She pulls Marcy halfway into her lap, and wraps one of her legs around Marcy’s, and tucks her head into the place between her neck and shoulder. To her credit, Anne keeps direct eye contact with the waitress.
She turns to the other side of the table, for their drink orders. Marcy sees her falter, which she’d consider the most obvious sign that they’re ever going to get to confirm her thoughts. She glances up at Sasha, and her gut twists. Sasha’s expression simmers with a fierce determination, and she might’ve noticed too, but she’s not done.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she says, and begins to turn back to Marcy. But she stops in the middle of it, as if remembering something, and faces the waitress once again. “Oh, and, can you bring out a side salad for my girlfriend? Thanks.”
Marcy’s first thought is that she does not want a salad. The thought that she is not Sasha’s girlfriend only comes afterwards. This could be considered a problem.
The waitress jots down their order, and hurries away. Marcy almost wishes she had that kind of freedom.
Anne falls back against her seat with her arms crossed. She raises her eyebrows at Sasha, prompting an explanation.
She doesn’t get one. “What? What is it?” Sasha’s cheeks must hurt from smiling.
“You know what! That’s cheating.”
“You never said so,” Sasha says, and shrugs, which jostles Marcy’s entire body. They’re far, far too close.
“It kind of is cheating, Sash,” she says, breathless. “I mean, I don’t know how you would’ve known what the waitress was thinking otherwise, but it was implied that you couldn’t just, y’know- say it to her.”
Sasha scoffs. “Whatever.” She presses her cheek against Marcy’s. “I still won. You know you shouldn’t expect me not to fight dirty.”
Anne purses her lips. “You know you can stop now, right? You’re gonna make people uncomfortable,” she says, tightening her arms into her body.
“Yeah, I know,” Sasha says, and doesn’t.
When the waitress passes by with their salad, Anne thanks her. And, since nobody actually wants it, picks out a cherry tomato to roll thoughtfully between her fingers.
“What are you doing with that?” Sasha asks, mere seconds before it hits her between the eyebrows.
They push out of the restaurant as the sun dips to the horizon. Sasha has let up on Marcy, so they’re back to just holding hands. Reason as well as science supports the fact that she should be relieved, now that her heart rate has slowed with the greater distance between them. But Marcy doesn’t know what she feels. She wishes they’d stay closer, and knows the closeness would be fake if they did. It frustrates her, like she’s walking in an unbreakable circle around them.
Anne has off from work, so they both walk Marcy home that day. The spring evening is cool and damp, promising rain later in the night. A chill hangs just above them in the air, and the branches of trees along the sidewalk drape over into their path, seed pods rattling in the breeze. Sasha reaches ahead of them, pushing the delicate, swinging branches with the side of her arm to clear the way. It’s very sweet of her, Marcy thinks, but doesn’t say.
Before long, the shingled roof of her house reveals itself over the treetops, dulled from its usual deep green by the dimming sunlight. The entrance to her street emerges from the lengthening shadows.
It feels like they’re here too soon. She grabs onto Anne and Sasha’s forearms, to stop them. This is all wrong, the way it’s going. It’s slipping from her too fast.
“Can we-” Marcy huffs a breath in the humid, suddenly suffocating air. “Slow down for a minute?”
“Sure thing, dude,” Anne says. Sasha nods. And Marcy feels a little guilty, to see them agree with her so readily.
They end up leaning with their backs to a tree at the very edge of her family’s yard. The windows are lit up yellow, with faded shadows further inside. Marcy stares forward. She can’t resign herself to her house with this unsatisfied feeling so prevalent. The thing is, she doesn’t know how to fix it. She doesn’t know what she wants.
She looks at them. Anne twirls a strand of hair around her index finger. Her nails are painted alternating blue and pink. Marcy’s never been able to understand how she doesn’t chip them. On her other side, Sasha turns over one of the restaurant’s complimentary mints in her mouth. She’d stolen a handful of at least ten on the way out, to Anne’s dismay. The mint clicks against the back of her teeth as she smiles.
“Hey, Anne,” she says. “You said I’d get something if I won the bet.”
“You cheated.”
“Half of something, then,” Sasha amends.
Anne thinks for a second. “Fine.” She leans towards Sasha, and brings up a hand to nudge her forward so they’ll meet in the middle. Which happens to be directly over Marcy. She presses her back against the tree and sinks down. Bark catches on the knitted material of her sweater.
Above her, Anne guides Sasha’s head to the side with a careful thumb on her chin, and kisses her cheek.
“There,” she says, backing away. “Halfway.”
Marcy makes an involuntary squeaking noise. They look down. The back of her head presses into the tree as she angles to meet their eyes.
Anne sucks air through her teeth, disapproving. “I mean-” Her hand is on Marcy’s chin to bring her up. “You helped too. With selling the act, right?” She kisses Marcy’s cheek, too, and moves on to whisper in her ear. “Really, dealing with Sasha for that long is way more commendable than anything she did.”
“Hey!”
Anne laughs. Her breath flows over Marcy’s cheek, gathering around the searing mark her lips must’ve left.
“Ugh. Whatever,” Sasha says. “Fine.” Her hand trails across Marcy’s shoulder. Marcy realizes all too late that the teasing is only half the reason she’s annoyed. The other part comes from the perception that she’s been outdone. After all, it was her joke, in the beginning.
That’s what Marcy reminds herself of, when Sasha turns to her. It’s just a joke. Sasha’s eyes hold a question. A second’s pause stretches between them, broken when some wayward beat of Marcy’s heart spurs her into nodding her head. Just once, but it’s enough. Sasha’s fingers curl into her shirt. Marcy closes her eyes. Her lips burn with the taste of mint, and ache with the softest pressure.
It comes alongside a sort of distance. Physically, they’ve never been closer than they are in that split-second. But Marcy’s too afraid to kiss her back. There’s a barrier, a guard of falseness neither of them can break, slipped between them under their guise of satire. It numbs the sensation, dulls it, and all her trapped anger rises to take its place. Burning, to match the feel of Sasha’s lips on hers.
And it hurts. Marcy wishes it would hurt more. She wishes it would all burn, if just to take this last thing separating them with it. She-
She pushes away, returning to her spot against the tree. These aren’t… good thoughts to have. Her hands are shaking. She stuffs them in her pockets, digging her nails into her palms in the confines of her clothing.
“Um-” She looks at the ground. “Alright then.” She feels both of their eyes on her, and their bodies, still close, radiate heat in the cool night air. “Th-thanks?” she says, in a moment of panic.
Anne snorts, which leads into a muttered “sorry.”
“Aw, you’re welcome,” Sasha says, laughing under the words. Like it’s the funniest thing in the world. Usually, Marcy loves to hear her laugh. It's different now. This sound catches her at its high point, a roaring flame, and then disappears, fizzling into smoke and taking a vulnerable piece of her up with it.
Marcy blinks hard, to dispel the forming tears. They might simmer out, anyway, if she let them fall onto her skin, hot with roiling shame and suppressed frustration.
The light disappears from one of her downstairs windows. She sighs. “I should go.”
“Of course,” Anne says, squeezing one of her shoulders and pulling her into a tight hug. “See you tomorrow.”
“Sleepover’s at yours, right Anne?” Sasha asks, joining the hug, albeit more loosely.
Marcy had forgotten. Anne nods, and both of them feel it, so it’s final.
She slips away, disbanding their hug so her friends can say goodbye and head off in opposite directions. She watches them go. Her porch lights flicker on behind her, blazing yellow-orange in her peripherals.
Marcy used to be scared of her father. Before everything. The thought of having no-one to rely on but him in a new, unwelcome place had been too much to bear back when she was fragile against his will. So she ran away, and held tight to the strongest things she knew. Her only two constants, who then shattered and broke at her hand.
Now, things are different. Marcy’s lost everything and fought within inches of her life to have it back. She wonders if he knows that, or if the only reason he agreed to stay was to keep her in place. Under wraps. To have things back the way they were.
But they’re different, Marcy thinks. She’s changed. He doesn’t scare her anymore.
The crying is only a reflex. She hardly feels it, but she knows how it blurs her vision. She knows how her airways constrict, and how swallowing feels like sandpaper. She knows the weak senses of resolve, stirring in her stomach, that she’ll never reach. Not when he stands there, towering over her hunched form at the end of her bed.
“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” He sighs the question, and for a moment, it sounds like he really might regret having to ask it.
Only, she doesn’t know what this conversation is about. So she can’t respond. She flinches at nothing in particular, and keeps quiet.
He lets out a grunt of frustration. “So that’s your plan? Sit there and cry and pretend like you can’t speak. Pretend like you can’t fucking speak to your own father.”
She barely recognizes him, when he gets like this. His kind eyes pinpricks, the mellow lines of age deep gashes in his face. With everything he does in this state, he drives a wedge between them. One day he’ll be too far gone. Or she will. One day it’ll be beyond repair. Maybe it already is. Marcy has a habit of holding onto things long after they’ve crumbled in her grasp.
“The hell is wrong with you? You think you’re too good for me? Speak.”
He’ll break soon. He’s already coming apart. But Marcy’s not scared. He’ll yell, and complain, and pry at everything she hates about herself, and then what? Let him. She’s seen horrors deeper than he’ll ever understand. Had her greatest, deepest fears ravaged and exploited for torment. She knows how death feels, curled around her limbs, at the ready. Can he replicate that? Does he even know? Or was everything she went through just another elaborate ruse to denounce him?
“Speak,” he says, with a hissing sort of rage that boils over at the vowel sound. An ultimatum.
Marcy won’t, or can’t, give in to him. She’s between two places. She’s not so weak-willed and naive that she’ll try to appease him, but she’s not so brave to speak up for herself. She’s not much of anything, really. His eyes leave her like ash.
A muscle twitches in his jaw. She knows he’s gone before he even opens his mouth.
Her body reacts before her mind can. Tears flood over anew, leaving cool streaks down her face to ward off the scorching torrent of his voice. She floods over with them, and retreats inside herself to the empty, ashen plain. She spent a lot of time there, when her body wasn’t hers. And she guesses it isn’t hers now, either. She doesn’t want to cry. If she could, she'd will herself to stop hearing him. But her body doesn’t obey. The functions are ingrained in her. In these moments, she feels every bit the prisoner she once was.
Sometimes she wishes he were a drinker. She knows it would only make things worse. But maybe then she’d have reason to believe he doesn’t mean what he’s saying.
“You make it so hard to love you.”
He yells it just like the rest of his monologue, with the same volume and tone, but it sticks to her differently.
When he burns himself out, storming from her room and slamming the door, she lays back on the mattress. She leaves all of her school clothes on, trying to feel the night air trapped in the fibers. She doesn’t bother getting under the covers. The room’s desolate cold soothes her blistered skin. And when it sinks deeper than skin-level, she might deserve it.
The first drops of rain patter against her window. She bites her bottom lip, trying to distract herself out of more tears. It tastes like mint.
The English classroom is quiet. The teacher left her here for the moment, and the lunch period is still a couple minutes from being over. Marcy sits in her hard plastic chair underneath the humming fluorescents, and sets out her supplies for the coming class. There aren’t many she needs. English has always been an easy class. She’d have to want to fail, to be doing badly.
Her father showed her the teacher’s note this morning, before she left. The slip of pink notepad paper, the tightly-wound cursive of mild concern for her grade, written proof of her tragic fall from grace.
“I’m sorry for last night,” he said while she waited for the toaster, her back turned. He says it a lot. “I shouldn’t have said all that.”
Marcy wonders, still, if that means he thinks it was untrue. It wouldn’t matter either way. She sees the logic. In subconscious, she already thinks of herself as “hard to love.” It just doesn’t feel good to have it called to attention. But none of a person’s flaws ever really do. Marcy should know, she has a lot of them.
Her father said, “I just want you to be grateful. I know you’re meant for more than this. I want you to live the life I couldn’t.” And Marcy’s first, selfish reaction was anger. Because no, she’s tired of living other people’s lives. She’s tired of not being anything of her own.
But then, she has tried to take control of her life before, and it never led to anything good. An alternate, more hostile world, traumatizing the people she cares about most, her own death. And now, a C-minus in English.
Maybe some people are meant to be used. Maybe they’re just built that way.
The bell rings, and Marcy jumps, strewn from her thoughts.
She reaches for her folder and slides it underneath her notebook, already open to the correct page. Her classmates trickle in from the ajar door, sighing off the high of socialization from lunch and meandering to their seats. She doesn’t have much time before they’re here, but she also doesn’t have anything to do during that rapidly shrinking allotment, so she waits. Her stomach twists and twists again, and she feels her heartbeat echoing down in the deepest pit of the confusing spiral.
Sasha and Anne come through the door at the back of the crowd, arm in arm. Marcy’s heart beats one final time down in her stomach, and then rockets up into the rest of her body. The sight of them blankets her in lung-compressing warmth.
And so that’s the difference. Now that looking past the technical aspects has become second nature, loving them is the easiest thing in the world. It’s effortless, even when she doesn’t want it.
And there only exists aspects to look past by Marcy’s own design. She’s the reason Sasha’s first, fear-blind instinct is violence. She’s the reason Anne’s trust is so fragile, so volatile and largely kept to herself. She can’t count their number of physical scars, either, though she really should know. They might as well have been left by her own hand.
(Some of them actually were. They refuse to tell her which.)
For Marcy, it’s fundamental. She isn’t built to be admired for what she is. Her sense of agency corrupts. It infects. It outright wounds. Anyone willing to go through the struggle of caring about her will meet this bitter truth. Her scars are warnings. She earned them simply by being this way.
The two of them sit down on either side of her.
“Marcy,” Anne says, dragging out the last syllable. She’s smiling, sweet and ignorant, and wrapping Marcy in a hug from her left side. “We missed you.”
“Our table’s so boring when it’s just the two of us,” Sasha says, and rolls her eyes. “You and your studying.” She balances her elbow on Marcy’s desk, knocking her notebook out of place. It takes a few minutes for the annoyance to hit, though, because she drops her head on Marcy’s right shoulder and sighs. “At least we get you to ourselves later.”
Anne laughs lowly, moving her hand from Marcy’s arm down to her waist. She toys with the hem of her shirt. Marcy jumps at the unexpected feeling, and twists her head to catch Anne’s eyes. She’s met with a wink.
Her face heats up. Ah. They must be joking with her again, in some continuation of last night's... antics. That’s fine. She can ignore it, and then maybe they’ll start responding similarly, and then it’ll be better for everyone.
But of course it can’t be that easy. Anne’s brows furrow, and her smile falls away. “Is something wrong, Marcy?”
She shakes her head, trying to look anywhere but at them. But they’re on both sides.
“Aw, are we embarrassing you?” Sasha crosses one of her legs over one of Marcy’s, at the ankle. “I get it. If I kissed someone like me I’d be a little flustered too.” A pause. She drops her voice. “Seriously, though. You’re being quiet. What’s up?”
Marcy fixes her notebook, aligning it with the other supplies on her desk. The seconds until class starts are ticking down.
“Marcy?” one of them says.
She should answer. To make them feel better. But the overhead lights are flickering, and she needs to pay attention in this class. The teacher is milling outside the classroom, her heels rising and falling with inconsistent clicking and clacking on the linoleum. Classmates behind Marcy whisper, and in front of her they whisper. People always whisper. And she tries not to mind usually, but now she needs to pay attention, because she needs to be better. She eyes the notepad of pink paper on the corner of the teacher’s desk. She eyes the black pen poised parallel to it, ready to reach out in crowded cursive, and she needs to be better than that. She is better than that, because her father wants her to be better than that, and if she isn’t what somebody else wants, then she’s only herself.
The teacher’s heels click closer outside the open door, intermingling with the hallway chatter and the screech of the bell. Most everyone else settles down. But Sasha and Anne press closer, and Sasha is reaching up for Marcy’s face and Anne is saying, “Can you speak to us?” and all the warm things they blanket her in are flaring up like they’ve caught fire.
“Get off of me,” Marcy says. Because can’t they feel it? This angry heat, this awful, suffocating thing comes from within her. It originates deep inside her chest, and when it flares it spreads however it can, through every point of contact. Can’t they feel how she’s burning them?
Sasha pulls her hand back. Anne blinks, and her fingers untangle from Marcy’s shirt. “What?” she says.
“ Get off of me. ”
Anne jumps back into her chair. “Sorry!” She swivels her legs so they’re underneath her desk. “Sorry.”
“Our bad,” Sasha says, averting her eyes.
The teacher walks inside. Class begins. And, with the worried glances her friends keep casting each other over her shoulders, combined with the cooling mass of molten regret in her stomach, Marcy cannot pay attention.
Weekly sleepovers have become the bane of her existence.
Not so long ago, they’d been the opposite. The time with her friends had been a night-long escape from everything else. It’d never been perfectly comfortable, all cuddled up with them on the same bed, but that was Marcy’s own fault for being weird about it.
At least it’s been less her fault, recently. Anne and Sasha’s new habit of incessant flirting gets much worse in a private, socially unregulated environment. Over the past couple of Fridays they’ve established a devastating pattern of faux-intimate cuddling and pointing to the screen during any romcom they watch while saying “that could be us.” And sometimes it devolves from there. Like the prior week, when Anne’s sleep deprivation sent her on a four am mission to find the worst pickup line ever created. (She never found a definitive answer, but Marcy had had to endure quite a few of them before Anne passed out at her computer, still open to one of those romance-advice blogs.)
Tonight, they don’t give into that sort of thing right away. A momentary reprieve lasts the time it takes them to walk from school to Anne’s house. For the most part, Marcy is grateful for the break. But by the last few blocks, after they’ve entered Anne’s neighborhood, she can tell her friends’ silence is stiff and evasive, not easy or carefree like she’d initially thought.
It must be because of how she acted earlier. They’re probably waiting to address it until they’re inside, where they can sit down and have a proper conversation with her.
Dread crawls over Marcy’s skin. She doesn’t know why she snapped like that. She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to explain it when they ask.
They reach Anne’s house. She hops up the porch stairs and fumbles with the lock before letting them inside. Her parents won’t be coming home until later.
“I’m sorry,” Marcy says as soon as the door shuts behind them. She faces the other end of the hallway. “I- I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to get angry with you earlier, I just-” Her throat constricts, squeezing the life from the latter part of her apology. The words are far too familiar for her liking.
A hand hovers over her shoulder, then retreats. “Hey, it’s alright,” Anne says, coming around on one side. “You were overwhelmed. It’s all good.”
“Yeah.” Sasha appears on the other side. “If you’re uncomfortable with all the touching or anything, then we’ll stop.”
Heat rises in Marcy’s cheeks, though it’s a completely reasonable and respectful thing for her friends to ask. She’s just surprised to hear them address it. And then she’s confused about how to answer. She’s not sure what she wants. It’s all fake, and it’s distracting during school, but she’d miss it if it were gone completely. Is that wrong? Could it count as deluding herself? As self-sabotage, even?
She should say ‘yes, thank you, I would appreciate it if you stopped because it does more harm than good.’ Her mouth moves faster than her mind. “I… I guess I just don’t want you to do it while we’re in school.”
Anne smiles, just a little, and touches her fingers to the outside of Marcy’s wrist. “Sure thing, dude.”
Sasha opts to put an arm across both of her shoulders. “Whatever you want,” she says, and Marcy wonders whether she knows the full extent of what that means. “How about we go choose something to watch together?”
“That sounds good,” Marcy says. She doesn’t know her hand is shifting to interlace with Anne’s until it’s already there. An imperceptible layer of guilt rests between their palms.
Hours later, Anne picks out their second movie of the night, and of course it’s a romcom. Her parents called a couple minutes ago, saying they won’t be home until later than expected, so the three have full access to the living room for a little longer. They sprawl on the couch and take turns changing in the bathroom and Marcy does her best to cope.
When Anne comes back from her turn, she takes the center on the couch, getting comfortable between the two of them. The stretched neckline of the old t-shirt she uses for sleep slips to the side, revealing the gentle slope of her neck and shoulder. Her skin looks soft. Finding out whether it really is would be so easy.
“Hey, Marcy.”
She jumps up. She wasn’t staring. “Yeah? What is it?” She feels how wide her eyes are.
“Um- sorry, can I play with your hair?
Marcy nods, leaning in. “You don’t have to ask,” she reassures. “I said it’s fine in private.”
“I like to make sure, though,” Anne says, twining her fingers through at the base of Marcy’s neck, and drawing them down to the ends, just below her chin. “Do you ever think of cutting it again?” she asks.
“Hm. Sometimes. But I kind of like it like this.”
Anne nods but doesn’t respond. The chirp of recorded T.V. voices fills the silence. The visuals are pretty and pastel-colored from a distance, but Marcy has no interest in the story. When she glances over, Anne’s focused solely on braiding together a few thin strands of her hair. Her eyes squint, and the tip of her tongue pokes from the corner of her mouth.
Marcy turns away. Maybe she should try to focus on the movie’s plot, so she won’t trip over herself and break something about their shared comfort.
Anne finishes whatever she’s doing, or gives up, and stretches out on Marcy’s shoulder. Her hand leaves Marcy’s head with a final movement to push her hair behind her ear. Her temple meets the now-unobstructed side of Marcy’s jaw, and the pad of her thumb absentmindedly skims across the part of her shirt that rests over her collarbone. On occasion, it grazes skin. Marcy tries to find a pattern in when, exactly, the moments of contact occur, but can’t.
Onscreen, the protagonist insists to another girl that the guy she’s known her entire life is nothing more than a friend. She seems to really believe it, too.
“Anne,” Sasha says. She’s sitting a few inches away from both of them, with her arms crossed tight around her. She’s been silent until now, apparently sour at not being included. “Guess what.”
“What?”
Over top of Anne’s head, Sasha makes direct eye contact with Marcy. There’s something familiar, mischievous and daring, about her gaze. Marcy braces herself.
“Marcy let me kiss her last night.”
Nonetheless, blood rushes into her cheeks, echoing behind her ears.
“Um, yeah. I was there?” Anne squints. “Where are you going with this?”
“Wherever you want.” Sasha stretches out, climbs on top of Anne’s lap, and looks at her for a long second.
Anne frowns, breaking the charged air between them. Her eyes dart to Marcy, who is suddenly very aware of herself being here, in this moment. She can’t imagine what her face looks like right now, but she feels the steady flow of heat throughout it.
Sasha continues over to take her place at Marcy’s other side. She’s laughing under her breath, and Marcy should really be tired of that sound and its implications, but for all her anger, she can’t bring herself to really dislike it.
“I mean, I’m just saying,” Sasha says. “It’s something, right?” Her voice drawls on even after she’s through speaking.
Anne rolls her eyes. “Frog, you’re so weird. What, are you trying to make me jealous?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to incite some friendly competition. Y’know, for fun. If you’re not up to it-”
“Sometimes I really wish you knew how to shut up,” Anne scoffs, and leans back into the couch cushions. She lets her head fall backwards, and lets out a raucous, grating sigh. A moment passes. Marcy startles, at feeling a hand close around hers. “Marcy?”
Marcy makes a weird, involuntary sort of coughing sound. “Go ahead,” she says, in place of saying that maybe Sasha would shut up, if Anne would stop listening.
She moves Marcy’s hair out of the way, and kisses her cheek. Just above the scarred line trailing over her cheekbones. She moves down, kissing it again right in the center. The tip of her nose presses into soft skin. Marcy’s heart leaps, at the subtle reminder that Anne is really behind all of this. She pushes off of Marcy’s shoulders, guiding herself away. Her eyes are darker and more unfocused, like her mind is somewhere different, but her arms, rife with grounding tension, say otherwise.
To the side, Sasha takes a breath, like she’s about to say something else. As Marcy understands it, Anne cannot let that happen. Her arms lose their unwillingness, and she stutters forward into a feather-light, second-long kiss. Marcy aches for everything that isn’t there.
“See?” Anne mutters, moving away. “Easy.” Her eyes are still glazed over, reflecting the pretty, blurred colors of the television screen. Her hands grace the juncture between Marcy’s chin and neck.
“Oh, yeah,” Sasha says, with that mocking purr still in her voice. “You sure showed me.” The expression she casts Anne’s way is best described as extraordinary (and slightly condescending) amusement.
Anne’s hackles raise. The old couch creaks underneath her. “Okay, y’know what-”
“Guys,” Marcy interjects, comparatively quiet and collected. They turn to listen to her, regardless. “Could you not fight? Please?”
They give a second’s pause. Onscreen in front of them, the scene changes. The movie music swells into something deeper, then fades for the characters to talk.
“Only for you,” Sasha says, plopping down onto the couch at Marcy’s side.
And Anne agrees, and follows suit. “Only for you.”
Marcy hums appreciatively. One they’re situated, she closes her eyes to try and gather herself together. It barely works. They shift closer as soon as they see her relax, so automatic it can’t have been on purpose. Her acceptance of the comfort is equally as mindless.
She is so far gone for them, she thinks. The thought vanishes in the endless, intimate darkness behind her eyelids, never to be heard.
Many minutes of spoken-through, onscreen love triangle drama pass in dramatic fashion. It's all so drawn out, so inconsequential. She could lose herself in it.
One of them is tracing Marcy's cheek, drawing their finger back and forth over the unscarred portion of her skin. The other one- it must be Anne, from the brush of her curls- leans over close to her ear.
“You’re so adorable,” she whispers.
The flutter in Marcy’s stomach nearly makes her flinch, from how powerful it is. She sits up. Her eyes shoot open. What is she doing? She shouldn’t have emotional reactions like this. She shouldn’t have even allowed herself into this position, in the first place. Anne’s not serious. Neither of them are. This is wholly unnecessary, in the long run. They’re just using her to prove something meaningless.
And that’s okay, Marcy reminds herself. It’s what she’s meant for, after all.
“How are you both so good at this?” she says. Keeping her voice light takes some effort. “It’s not fair.” As if that’s her utmost concern. As if reinforcing this wall between them doesn’t hurt.
“Aw, don’t be a sore loser, Marce.” Sasha’s eyes glint like daggers. Against her better judgment, Marcy finds herself enraptured by the silver sheen. “It’s not our fault that you’re madly in love with us.”
And, buried easily inside of her giving flesh, they twist. Pulling up through her chest, along her throat to silence her. What can she say to that? She knows it’s as true to her as it is unimaginable to them.
Marcy fists her hands in the front hem of her sleep shirt. So hard, she worries the nails might tear through the fabric. Sasha’s laughing again. Marcy’s body stiffens straight up. Sasha’s head is thrown back and she’s laughing, and Anne’s half joining in, and Marcy should laugh with them. Should be with them.
But she can’t. Not in the way she wants.
She leaps from the couch, stumbling backwards over a coffee table leg in the low light. “I need to go,” she says, turning and making a run for the stairs. She jogs up and doesn’t trip once, not even when Anne calls her name behind her.
Her head pounds, and her stomach clenches. She thrusts open the bathroom door at the end of the hall. Flickering lights reflect off of the white floor tiles and slice into her eyes. A headache blossoms, beating at the inside of her skull in bright-colored lashes.
She closes the door behind her and braces her back on it. She can’t keep on her feet, so she slides down onto the floor. The ceramic is a mix of cold and hot through her flannel pajama pants.
They didn’t mean to do it, she knows. But they’re prodding at her weakest points, flaunting everything she can’t have. Pulling up the molten anger from its resting place, down and buried where it should be. She knows it’s wrong to be angry, but they just won’t let up.
She saw scenarios like this all the time, when she was torn from herself. The same fulfillment of her most shameful desires, the same caveat of untruth. Mind games and ideal futures to subdue her while her deepest subconscious struggled against her prison of wire and cable, a metallic, infuriating delusion.
They broke her out of it just to repeat it, just to bring her that much closer to something that will never happen.
She should be grateful. They didn’t have to do it. They could’ve killed her back then and she wouldn’t have blamed them. It would’ve been justified, completely sound from a moral perspective. A lost life for the good of a country and its thousands of innocents.
There’s even a chance that it was meant to happen that way. If prophecy scripted her life, why not her death? It would’ve removed the issue of her free will. It might’ve been better to end it under somebody else’s control, by somebody else’s hand.
But she’s here now, and she’s only her small, curled up, corruptive self. Knuckles as white as the tile as she grips her t-shirt. Chest heaving, hot tears pooling at the upper lip of the rough, raised skin across her face. She hates that scar. It tells her she’s still damaged. That she might never be fixed all the way.
Marcy wipes away her tears and feels it under her hand. Voices rumble far below her. She stands up, and hunches in front of the sink. She stares into the mirror.
Her puffy eyes and bedraggled hair are a dark blur. The ugly scar sticks out on her face. From the farthest point on her right cheekbone, stretching over the bridge of her nose, all the way across to the left. The skin is marred, deformed. Cracked. Barren. It’s not hers. Something cold and inhuman seared it onto her. The instinctual part of her longs to be rid of it.
Maybe this is the problem, she thinks, feebly. Her fingernails latch above the scar’s edge. If she was meant to die, maybe everything and everyone she carried was meant to die with her. It isn’t really gone, is it? If it lives in her skin, if it lives in her anger, if it lives in how she hurts people. Not enough to control her, but enough to make her worse.
The sharp edge of her index nail digs deep into soft flesh, positioned to gouge at the harsh, intruding thing that brands her. Maybe this will fix her. Perhaps there is soft, raw, moldable skin underneath.
Her nail drags along the line, sinking in more the farther it goes. Right to left. And again. It stings, but it’s more of a numbing buzz. Marcy’s pain tolerance has grown high.
Her physical pain tolerance, that is. She’s weak-willed and weak-hearted under the shield of her body. When she rids herself of this angry mark, this thing that wars for control over her, she’ll run away like she always does. But she’s learned. She won’t take anything with her this time. She’ll hide from the people she’s hurt. She’ll pull into herself, into that ashen plain, and it will be better like that. Maybe her body will go through the motions without her. Maybe that will make her a better friend and a better daughter. Maybe it will make her what they want.
Her reddened skin argues against her pursuits. That’s her problem, the thing in her way. She’s always arguing. Why can’t she just duck her head down and focus and speak when he asks? Why can’t she just let them have their joke of her, their friendship and their laughter? Doesn’t she care? Doesn’t she care about her painstakingly forged and broken and reforged connections? Why would she throw all of that away, just because she thinks she wants something else?
The line she’s tracing deepens into a pit, and the sting deepens into hurt. It’s become so deep red that the blood fades into the rest of it instead of pouring out all the sudden. It seeps out of the crevice, but doesn’t even get so far as to bead before her fingernails are scraping it away. Right to left. A washed out reddish stain forms at her left cheekbone, where the nail flicks out and starts again.
She tries to pry her thumbnail into the forming split, underneath the hardened section to pull it from her. It hurts too much. Her eyes water, and her hand jerks away. Her body is not her own. It won’t let her go through with this final sacrificial act, though she knows it would be for the better.
She tries again, and fails. Blood congeals under her fingernails, dark and thick. It sinks into the lines on her skin, the folds of her hands. The pads of her fingers push into the cut, slipping on the mixture of it with her tears and coming away coated in thin, filmy orange. Breathing is a pattern of sharp gasps and winces. Of stuffy claustrophobic air taken through her bared teeth and clamped jaw. She’s forgetting why this all is necessary, but she knows she has to do it and she trusts her knowledge. It’s all she’s good for.
A knock sounds on the door, right next to her. Marcy jumps, and her left hand slips from the edge of the counter, knocking something off as it goes. Her bloodied right hand drifts from her face.
“Marcy?” Anne. “What’s going on?”
“I’m fine,” Marcy says, voice rough.
“That’s not what I asked.” Anne says more firmly. “What are you doing in there, Marce? You sound like you’re crying or-”
Fear, white hot like lighting, splits through her and leaves anger in its aftershock. “I’m not. I’m not doing anything,” she snaps. Anne wouldn’t understand why she has to do this. “Leave me alone.”
“Marcy-”
“Leave.”
A second passes. Her footsteps pad, hurried, down the hall and onto the stairs.
A heavy droplet of something rolls from the crest of Marcy’s cheek down to her chin. She wipes it away. It paints her hand orange. She hates that color. Hates the marks it left on her and hates that it’s still in her, still stains her. She hates that her weak will ever allowed it to happen. Her hands claw towards her face and meet their mark. She feels them tear.
The scar is no longer barren. It’s a mess of reddened, mangled tissue. Unrecognizable. But she wants it gone. The way it was before. Her arms shake.
There are footsteps again, loud and careless and close. The locked bathroom doorknob shudders, then jolts to the side. “Marcy, open the door.”
She’s frozen in place, seeing her reflection, hearing Sasha’s voice.
“Marcy, I swear to god, open the door or I’ll break it down.” She’s breathing heavy, but she manages a sigh. “Please. Speak to me at least. I need to know you’re alright.”
She’s fine. She touches the place her scar used to be, and gasps at the shock of pain.
“I’m- I’m sorry!” Sasha says, and there’s fear behind it more than anything else. Marcy freezes again. “Please let me in.”
She needs to keep going. But she can’t. She isn’t strong enough. She feels the hard patch of skin under watery blood. The metallic smell sticks to the roof of her mouth.
The door shudders. Marcy stumbles against the wall opposite the mirror, hitting into it with her back.
“What’s happening?” Anne has joined her, farther off.
The doorknob creaks and wails. Marcy’s chest heaves. Her arms brace against the wall behind her. She screws her eyes shut, and her entire face burns with the movement.
“Sasha-!” Anne’s closer now.
The doorknob gives a final wrenching noise, and snaps. Wood splits and the inside half clatters onto the floor. Marcy flinches, trying to press herself flat on the wall to hide her shame. The door is thrown open. She turns away.
Sasha starts to her side, but stops short at Anne’s soft “be careful” from the doorway.
“Marcy,” she says, standing in place. “Are you okay? I thought I heard you crying- or hurt.” She shuffles closer, hovering a foot behind Marcy’s shoulder. “Can I touch you?”
Marcy hugs herself, breathing so hard and fast it wheezes up through her chest.
Metal- the broken doorknob- clinks on the bathroom counter. Sasha whispers a “sorry” underneath her breath, but it goes unacknowledged.
“Oh, hey, shh.” Anne approaches, plush steps on tile. “Deep breaths, okay? In four, hold seven-” She circles around to Marcy’s front. Marcy tries to angle her face straight to the corner so they won’t see, but the red is bright on her sallow skin, vivid in the warm yellow lighting of the bathroom.
Anne gasps. Tears spring into her eyes, but don’t escape.
Marcy’s face heats in humiliation. She lets her head fall, and hiccups for air.
“Ah, okay- it’s fine, just-” Anne picks up Marcy’s right hand, and makes a pitiful, disturbed noise in her throat at seeing the blood there, too. “Um- alright.” She places the hand on her chest. “Try to follow my breathing. Can you do that?”
Marcy nods. Anne starts breathing at a slow, timed interval, and she struggles to align herself with the rhythm. She allows Anne to sit her down on the floor.
“There you go. Good.” Anne strokes her hair in time with the breaths. “Keep doing that. Sasha, do you have-”
“Yeah, I’ve got it.” She gets down onto her knees, medical supplies tucked under her arm from the now-open cabinet behind the mirror. She takes the hand Anne isn’t holding and rolls up the sleeve a little to check the circular scar on her wrist. A shaky, relieved sigh breaks free from her. She folds up the facecloth she’s brought and reaches to the side, turning on the faucet over the bathtub and waiting for it to warm up.
Anne squeezes Marcy’s hand. “Just focus on me for now, Marce.”
Marcy sighs. “Okay,” she breathes.
The faucet squeals off, and Sasha brings the warm, damp facecloth to her cheeks. She’s gentle, but it still stings. Marcy flinches away.
“S- sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Sasha sighs and leans over so her forehead is on Marcy’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” Her voice is syrupy, thick with regret.
“It wasn’t you.” Marcy’s sounds raw and weak in comparison. “It’s something with me.”
“But- I still made you uncomfortable- with what I said, I mean. I’m sure- I’m sure you have other stuff going on, but I still set you off. I took control of the situation. And if I made you feel like you couldn’t tell us you were upset just for- for some stupid joke-”
“It’s not your fault,” Anne tells her. “It’s no-one’s fault.”
Sasha holds the cloth back up to her face, at the right edge of the cut. “I know, I know.” She brings it down. “But, Marcy, I never want to force you into anything, okay? None of all that stuff I said- or did- none of it meant anything. How you feel is more important than all that.”
She gives Marcy a watery smile, and presses warm water on her face. It all feels like fire. The softest pressure lights embers deep in her torn skin. It’s meant to be comforting. It should reassure her. It should prove the stability of their relationship, it should be easy to let go and slip right back into being suited for the pattern of her life. The pattern that other people, important people, decide for her. Marcy knows it’s better that way, but her selfishness is a hunger, a growing spark. She seethes at her lack of control.
“Slow breaths, remember?”
Marcy heaves a dry, scalding breath out through her teeth. She’s never felt an anger quite like this. Pained and helpless and sad, but angry.
Anne looks her in the eyes, past the raw, bleeding evidence of her self-regulation, and finds something. Her mouth drops open, searching for how to put words to it. Her hands grow weak and disbelieving around Marcy’s.
“Sasha,” she says, with a glance to the side.
“What? What’s wrong? I told her- I’m telling her I want to fix it.” She grabs Marcy’s shoulders. “It wasn’t real, Marcy. You can always talk to us about what’s going on. You don’t have to pretend we’re something we’re not.”
Heat tears through Marcy’s limbs. Down from her head, into her shoulders and through her arms. She takes Sasha’s face between her hands. She’ll show them. Both of them. How angry and ugly she really is. She’ll show them how her intention runs rampant and horrible, how it distorts and disfigures, when they don’t stamp it out.
Blood on her hands, tears in her throat, weakness written clear on her face, she pulls Sasha close and kisses her.
It’s awful. Sasha jolts backwards at first contact, and liquid guilt drowns out Marcy’s thinking. Her face stings from the cut. Her lips taste like iron and salt. Her anger is what drives her forward, and it remains in every motion she makes. Her jaw clenches. Her teeth scrape Sasha’s chapped bottom lip.
But it’s real. It feels terrible, and Marcy must be an equally terrible person for doing it, but she’s glad it’s real enough to hate.
And then Sasha’s hand climbs between her shoulder blades and lays flat, and she doesn’t hate it so much. The sharp desperation softens. It’s terrifying, sure, and it’s wrong, but she doesn’t hate it.
She pulls back and her head hits the wall, blurring her vision. When it clears, Sasha’s eyes are wide on her and her mouth is trying to form a question. There’s a faint thumbprint of orange-red on her cheek, because Marcy is shameful and disgusting, and just look, she’ll stain them too, and can’t they just start yelling at her? Can’t they just leave her already? Instead of flickering in the hazes of her mind’s eye, untouchable and illusory.
“I don’t- I don’t understand,” Sasha says, breathless, and that’s all. And Anne looks on, petting the hair on the crown of Marcy’s head. As if they don’t hate each gruesome product of her childish frustration.
“All that stuff you did, the joking and pretending,” she says, jagged, like tearing out a part of herself in a blinding flash. But it feels better, somehow, to have it spoken into separation from her, laid out for them to see. That way it can’t cut her from the inside. “I wanted it to be real.” Isn’t that horrible? Isn’t it sad? “I just- I don’t know. It’s stupid, right?” Tell me it’s stupid. Make me hate that I ever thought it.
The words are a weight off her chest. She relaxes against the wall, but it’s more like giving up.
“Oh, Marcy.” Anne’s hand comes to a stop an inch above her shoulder. Marcy shifts up so it makes contact. “It’s not stupid. I think I-”
“Thank fucking god, ” Sasha sighs, loud. “I totally thought I was gonna have to lie to you for like, ever.” She brings the washcloth up to Marcy’s face again and motions her forward.
Cautiously, she follows Sasha’s instruction. “Lie… about what?”
“Meaning all of that.” The cloth touches down, but Marcy barely notices. “It was kind of a really shitty thing to lie about then, huh?” She grimaces. “I’m lucky that you’re braver than I am.”
Anne nods along. “Me too.” She dabs under Marcy’s eyes with her thumb, drying tears she didn’t know were there. “I guess I kind of felt like it was starting to be real, but I never said anything. I should’ve. I’m sorry about that.” She taps the back of Marcy’s hand and, receiving a nod of permission, laces their fingers together.
Marcy doesn’t get it. From what she knows, this is meant to be impossible. She doesn’t believe them. She can’t. Isn’t this supposed to be difficult? Whatever they’re doing doesn’t feel like the arduous thing she’d made it out to be. Her friends seem relieved that she feels like this, not burdened. That can’t be the truth. This must be another joke they won’t explain to her. Why else…
An acid taste fills her mouth. She feels sick to her stomach. Why is she thinking of them like that? It can’t be the part of her that loves them, that’s convincing her they’d ever be so cruel. She admires them for quite the opposite reason. Letting herself think they’d deceive her to such a heartless degree is a disservice to both of them. They wouldn’t lie that way to anyone, and not to her. If nothing else, she has to believe that.
She looks at them with clear eyes. Sasha snaps the cap off of the antibiotic she’d gotten from the cabinet and applies it in slow, small circles. Anne holds her hair out of the way.
Here they are again, pulling her back from the pathetic, delusioned end she was supposed to meet.
“Do you think I was meant to die?” she asks. And she’s not sure, really, whether she meant to ask it. Or if she just wants to break her self control, expose her most private wonderings. Anything to give them a last chance at taking it back.
“What?” Anne asks. Sasha falters in her movement to retrieve the bandages. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“Well, logically,” Marcy stares past them. “It’d make sense, y’know? If you’d killed me while I was-”
Anne’s gripping her arm, hard. Her eyes are wide and horrified. “Don’t- don’t say that, Marce. We wouldn’t- we wouldn’t have done that.”
“Yeah, but in order to save the world you would’ve. You would’ve done it if you had to.”
Sasha smooths a bandage over her face and keeps her hand there. “No,” she says. “Why would we ever want to save a world that needed you dead?”
Anne hugs her around the waist, burying her head in Marcy’s neck. She kisses underneath her jaw. Marcy’s breathing hitches. Above her, Sasha kisses the crown of her head and then tucks it under her chin. Her fingertips dance over the small of Marcy’s back.
She doesn’t understand this. Given what she knows, it seems impossible that this would be easy for them. But their bodies are relaxed, and their movements are slow and soothing, and it seems almost like they could fall asleep like this. As if the task of consoling her and patching her up is no more of an effort than breathing, and worth just as much. She can feel the “I love you”s passed through in every action. Shouldn’t it be more of a struggle to say it?
She dares to ask, though it may just be her own lethargy moving her lips around the words. “Why is this so easy? I thought it would’ve been harder to feel like this about me.”
Anne sighs, and kisses her temple. “Never. Pretending I didn’t was the hardest part.”
And Marcy doesn’t mean to cry. And when they wrap her up tighter, she doesn’t mean to smile and squeeze her eyes shut to relish in the feeling. But she welcomes her body’s betrayal. Maybe one day she’ll make peace with it.
The notion of being “hard to love,” plastered like a label on her skin, breaks apart and washes away. They never saw it to begin with. Maybe it was never really there.
The thick line of well-trimmed pine trees on one side of the stone walkway separates the quiet half of the park from the rest. Marcy hears the excited, playful yelling of children from beyond the packed wall of branches and needles. She closes her eyes, breathes in, and leans her head back against the thick trunk of the tree behind her. They’re alone, mostly, with the closest other person being a dark smudge in the distance. The air is clear and weightless.
Just as she makes notice of this quality, it turns stuffy above her. “Tired?”
She giggles. “I’m just relaxing, Anne.”
“Nice try.” Anne leans down, gives her a tiny kiss on the lips. Marcy’s eyes open, taking in the sight of her girlfriend perched above her. Dappled sunlight shines onto her hair through the leaves. “You still have to help us clean up.” She jerks her head backwards, gesturing to the picnic dishes behind them.
“Mm.” Marcy sits up, places a hand on her cheek, and kisses her again. “Sasha’s not helping,” she points out.
“She’ll help as soon as I make her.”
“You’ll have to catch me first,” Sasha says. Anne turns around to look at her, and starts to rise. As she does, Marcy slips out from under her and backs up across the checkered picnic blanket. She stands up quickly, hitting the tree with her back. In hopes of keeping herself steady, her arm conveniently falls to one of its limbs.
She attempts to pull herself onto the chest-height branch with some difficulty. But then Sasha, having somehow evaded Anne, is running up to her. She wraps an arm around Marcy’s waist and lifts her onto the branch without a problem before jumping up on her own.
“I could pull you down from there, you know,” Anne says, catching up. She folds her arms on top of the branch and tilts her head.
“But you won’t,” Sasha counters, speaking through her breathlessness.
Anne hums under her breath. “We’ll see,” she says, but they both know she’d never.
Marcy settles back into Sasha’s lap under the cover of leaves, eyes fluttering as she presses kisses across the back of her neck. The daylight is a comfortable warm. She’d lose herself to the fading park sounds and rustling leaves if it weren’t for the rocking of the branch as Anne heaves herself up in front of them. Sasha moves to rest her chin atop Marcy’s head. Marcy feels her other girlfriend smile as she sees Anne lean into her space. She can’t help but smile also.
Anne ducks down shortly, holding both Marcy’s cheeks and kissing her nose.
“Mm.” Sasha flexes her hands. They find a hold at the end of Marcy’s shirt, arms crossed over each other around her stomach. “This tree branch is really hurting my ass.”
“Ugh, you didn’t have to say it like that.” Anne’s face scrunches. “I could still pull you down onto the blanket, if you’re that uncomfortable.”
Marcy runs her hand along the bark. It’s relatively soft, actually, as far as trees go. She plucks a yellow-green leaf from where it’s gotten itself tangled in Anne’s hair.
“Cinnamomum camphora,” she says, holding it to her face. “Camphor tree. Evergreen. Record heights of about 75 feet. They’re technically considered invasive in North America. Neat, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Anne says. Her hands have fallen a bit. They sit at Marcy’s neck, thumbs brushing at her cheeks. Her eyes wander across her face, unfocused.
“You weren’t listening.” Marcy twinges with annoyance, and ignores the ensuing panic. She swings her leg forward in the air, crossing it gently around Anne’s.
She snaps to attention, embarrassment coloring her face. “Sorry! You’re not upset, are you?”
“A little. But it’s okay. I can tell you about other plants.”
“Hooray,” Sasha mumbles into her hair.
“You can.” Anne’s hands rise again, to feel along the ridges of her scar.
It stopped hurting the other day. She feels foolish to hope that it will never hurt again, but she has to, or else she’ll believe the opposite.
“You’re getting better,” Anne reminds her.
“You think so?” Anne nods. Sasha nods, too, judging by the curt motion of her chin across Marcy’s head. “That’s good. Sometimes I feel more like I’m just getting by.”
“Well, that’s something, too,” Sasha says.
“That’s something,” Anne echoes.
“It is, isn’t it?” If she can be something, with a voice, and the desire to stay here despite whatever she’s meant for, then that’s enough.
(And if she can mean something to both of them, it’s more than that.)