rule 4: if you can't fit, compact and try again

The city smells like poison.

I close my eyes. It's just a bad first impression and I've been taught not to judge based on those but I can't help but think that the place is bad all the way down to its black steel bones. Trace guides us through the streets with Angel's hand heavy on her shoulder which is the first time in a long unspoken period that she has not kept me close against her chest. I feel barren in the city even under the layers of clothing that keep folding out from me so that I am all layers of jackets and almost no person left.

Trace pauses at a street corner verging on a park where a small house stands with its roof slanting down to us. It is colored as if made of mist but when we enter it is solid and full of soft light. The floors are grass but as Angel's grip on Trace hardens that turns to wood. The whole house is empty in a way that makes me feel like I am spinning.

Angel says to Trace "This is our house isn't it Trace we've always lived here" with her lips pulled apart from each other until we can see the gums above her teeth and I want to tell her that it's okay and she doesn't have to smile like that but I also don't want to upset her right now.

Trace nods but she has to bite her lip as she does it. She breathes once through her nose and guides us over to the bedrooms. She opens the door to a green room with curtains and paintings and all the things we'll never get in real life and Angel puts her hand to her mouth and starts crying.

Trace falls across Angel just a touch the way I used to and her eyes are dull. I join the hug putting my hands around Trace but also around Angel and looking up at them both thinking please be okay but we're all just leaning on each other as a unit right now thinking about the future and the past I guess but I think I might be putting thoughts into their brain.

Angel sobs "I'm so sorry girls" and she shakes our shoulders a little as she reaches out to hold both of us and says "I didn't want to do this but I think I was going crazy in that house with a bunch of animals and I want you to grow up happy and human so this was the only choice I had" shaking on every word like it might be the last one to ever come out of her mouth.

"It's fine" Trace says in a voice like it is not fine at all.

---

We start going to 'school' because Angel says we can now "Isn't that right Trace" and Trace nods twice because the first time Angel didn't see it. She shifts tall and guides us out to the place where the big angry yellow car picks us up. She stands next to other people who think they know us but don't really at all. Our house disappears behind us as we get on board and Trace's face is radiating heat the entire time as she watches Angel fall away behind us.

"What is she going to do all day without us" I ask her wrapping my fingers around hers "What are we even going to do all day and why do we have to do it" I follow up trying to look her in the face.

Trace wipes an arm over her head and says "I don't really know I guess this will make it easier to learn things" and I want to say that her hair is like a big cloud of foam or that her lips are like the flowers we stop to smell in cities or that she is beautiful but also obviously in pain right now but I don't know if that would make things worse so I just bite my lip and don't talk again.

The place we go to is called school and it is bad.

Human children have to sit still all day and there are no trees or plants and everyone there has to do things with letters and answer questions and everyone knows all these words and thinks we should know them but I can't remember anything Angel has taught me with everyone staring at me and there is a big human who is stalking us like the white jackets who have been gone for a very long time again but it feels like being back under their eyes right now and Trace is slack across her desk barely working on anything and the other children look strange when they stare at us because Trace must be holding up the whole world around us right now pretending that we are them or maybe we are pretending that they are us and anyways we are doing a bad job and the pencil makes this noise when it goes across the page. I hear it and feel the gray under my fingers and see the line appear in Trace's skin.

I tap her side and ask "Are you okay" and she nods a little bit but she's biting her lip the whole time and sniffling a bit from the effort of keeping up the illusion that we are loved and known in this place but we are not and everything in the bookbags is fake and we are so, so fake right now.

We go outside for a break that they call 'recess' which is like the rest of the day in that it is crowded and loud but we don't have to do anything else which means lying less. I hold Trace's hand while she stands next to the other children smiling like things are okay right now.

"There are so many kids our age Addie" she whispers sauntering off "and we belong with them" and we follow them down the field .

"Abby and Brandon were kissing the other day" says one of the kids whose name I don't know because I don't know any of their names but I think they all know each others and there are so many people how do they even remember.

"They're dating" says what I think is a guy because he has short hair and Angel says guys have short hair but he sounds like a girl and I think we just might not understand how to tell the difference.

Trace announces proudly "That that's what me and Addie are" and she gives them a big smile like she is expecting this to go well but I already know that it won't and I won't to stop her or put a hand around her mouth but that would be so so rude and Trace you are everything to me but you know that humans probably don't do that at this age or in this way and whatever we do loudly we are doing wrong.

"How are you dating if you're both girls" asks one of the kids.

Trace looks at me and we realize that there are probably a lot of things that humans do not do and I don't remember why I am a girl or how this is supposed to work. Maybe I have also been doing this wrong. Trace says "We're really close that's dating right" and bumps my side.

"No it isn't how do you not know what dating is" one of the girls says with her hands on her hips. "That's just best friends"

"I knew that" Trace says angrily because she did not know that but also I think that we are dating whatever that means.

We spend a lot of recess standing around and a lot of time back in class with Trace trying to transfigure our papers to look like the papers next to us. We sit together in the corner when reading happens and pretend that we can read the one book we are working on. We have pretended to be humans for one whole day and it is so exhausting I think I might cry. When we get back on the bus I cry. When Angel finds us back at the place she left us hours and hours ago Trace has vanished all the tears off my cheeks and she smiles all the way home. Angel keeps talking about how "we're doing a good job" or how she "learned all about families today from the library and has some fun ideas for things we can do if Trace can create a yahtzee" and I don't know what a yahtzee is and kind of want to cry more.

"Do you like school" Angel asks pinching my cheeks a little "I know this is all super new for us but if we stick around and get a real education you can go do things in the real world. You'll have to teach me everything you learn so that we can both learn it together and maybe I'll get myself a job and a husband" she continues for a while like this.

Our house flickers back into view when we get back to it and Trace runs in mumbling about going to the bathroom. I hear her retching from a corner by herself and feel my heart break a little. Angel goes back to her books and Trace finally comes back out of the room wiping her arm against her mouth furiously but she still smells like sick like I did back when I was the one who was in danger.

"Are you really going to be okay" I ask Trace who pushes me out of the way like a door and enters our room. It is the color of the dawn we kissed under and has two beds and shelves full of little glass animals that catch the light streaming through the windows. I have never been somewhere so beautiful in my life but when she lies on the bed and crumples back in on herself I can't bring myself to tell her that the thing she has made for us is beautiful and that I love it because then she might keep going.

Angel comes in and reads to us and Trace ignores her while I read along with a story about kittens but I want to cry again because I can't make out the words. Angel says "You're reading in your grade aren't you" and I nod gulping back water as she says "and you're doing a good job aren't you"

"Yes I'm doing fine" I say "Everything is fine"

"I know it will be hard to adjust Trace dearie but things finally might be" Angel kisses my head walks over to Trace's bed and kisses hers. We both moan a little bit as if this is the worst thing in the world but secretly we're both just tired and a little relieved when Angel closes the door that isn't there, not really.

The house shakes as Trace gets to sitting and folds her hands against each other, moving the little digits back and forth with their peach nails and I desire to eat.

"Keep thinking about those stupid kids on the playground" Trace looks up at the moon out the bedroom window and asks "Are we freaks addie"

"Yes but Angel is going to fix us" I tell her putting a hand around her shoulder.

Trace shakes me off. I step back to let her up and she jumps up on the bed and grabs a glass fish from the shelf which the throws across the room close to my feet where it cracks with a resounding noise that is not quite glass and is not quite bells. I can hear it splintering in my soul.

I bend down to pick up the pieces and hear her breathing, crying out in pain, and when I try to sweep the pieces up I'm touching her fingers instead. I drop them again and they spill across the floor in a thousand shades of brown and red and then Trace is holding my hand which is covered in small cuts from the glass shards. The remains lie on the ground before us untouched. "Trace" I beg "what are you doing to yourself right now"

"I'll just fix it I already fixed Red I should be able to fix something silly like glass" she bends down to touch the glass but when she runs her fingers over the shards they remain dormant on the ground. They reflect her cut hands and she turns her head with her hair falling behind her like a stormcloud. "You know what the problem is"

I want to pretend I don't know what she's saying and loop my fingers through my hair until my finger finds its way back to my face. She is still watching me from the ground begging my response with her eyes. "I do know but I want to hear you say it" I tell her.

"When I want things to stay broke they stay broken no matter what I pretend to want" Trace says "Broke like us and not human like us"

"I don't want to be like them" I whisper thinking about the way the man's blood blossomed out of him and the way the group split into a thousand shards of glass when Red was gone. "but Trace what if I start having bad thoughts here and you can't do anything and we get in trouble again but this time Red's not there"

Trace jolts my chin up and kisses me and when she pulls back I almost throw myself out her but she whispers really low "Addie I'm all your bad thoughts aren't I"

"I'm so scared for you right now" I whisper really low right back "and I don't know why you keep doing this if you don't even like Angel"

Trace shakes her head "No but I like you plenty and Angel was right that you're not safe there anymore and probably never were" she leans back on her bed "and you're right Addie if Angel wants us to do something there's nothing that we can do"

(A/N: aaaaa thanks for 11 reads on last week's chapter (bet that was kali's fault wasn't it?) please like and/or comment if you're enjoying the story or if you see anything that looks really good or really bad. your support is my world. love you all <3)