Smoking was a bad idea. It amplifies the dry heat, the edges of my vision turning to static, like I'm able to see every atom making up the air. I can't get over the fact my mouth touched the same joint Eris' mouth touched. What if she has mono or something? I can't afford to go to a doctor; I can't afford to lay in bed for weeks, overcoming the sickness she infected me with.

I'm acutely aware of the physicality of my body, the tension in my upper back because I haven't been able to wind down enough to do yoga for a week, the towel too soft against my skin. Most of all, I'm aware of her. She takes a few more hits, each puff of smoke smaller until the ember goes out on its own. Then she leans back, raising her arm to pull at her hair, her jewelry reflecting the sun. My first delirious thought is that I want to paint her, fragment her into geometric shapes and calculate her proportions.

While her eyes are closed, I let the towel drop and walk to the edge of the pool, my legs numb, the Lugo mansion looming so close by. What if Iker or Axel walk out? I'd never live down the embarrassment of them seeing me like this. They probably accept that Eris is a lost cause stoner, but I want to portray a better image here.

Then I hear it: "Carajo, Ef, didn't think it would be this hot to have you in my clothes."

I hide myself in the water. Cold assaults me from all sides, reminding me of the time me and Fitz swam in an icy mountain stream during a hike so many years ago; I lasted all but five seconds while he meditated for several minutes until I dragged him out of the water, afraid he'd freeze to death. The hazy memory gives me something to focus on other than the insanity of what Eris has just said. When I emerge, I ask her, "Is that supposed to be sarcastic?"

"Partially."

My stomach lurches, doing one cartwheel after another as she steps into the pool. She's more than a metre away, but it's too close—my nerve-endings are sensitive, and I feel every pulse and heartbeat. I close my eyes and imagine myself growing larger than the pool, the neighborhood, and soon enough the entire earth, forcing my mind to be as still as the vacuum of space.

But what I end up saying is, "Do you tell that to all your little girlfriends?"

Eris leans her elbows back against the edge of the pool, her chest against the sun. I can see every curve of her body, the shapes I never noticed even with all her tight clothes. Her collarbone is sharp enough to cut me.

"Why do you care?" she asks, and a slow smile spreads across her lips. "You jealous?"

"I'm sure you'd love it if I was."

"You already know no one does it for me like you do."

When I don't respond, frozen in the water as my brain goes into overdrive attempting to decipher what the hell she's on about, she clarifies: "Now that was sarcasm."

She dives under the water, and I watch her pale form move underneath like a shark. When she emerges, black eyeliner and mascara are running down her face.

"All that money and you can't buy waterproof makeup?" I ask, grateful that my capacity to insult her hasn't been compromised. "You look crazy."

She doesn't even wipe it away, looking like one of the skulls on her altar. "Not crazy enough to stop you from being obsessed with me."

"Obsessed with you?" I scoff. "Where did you get that from?"

"It's obvious, bro. Even at school, you're always staring at me. It's been the same thing for years. Tell me I'm not the most interesting part of your day."

I sink lower into the water, the shorts too tight between my legs, the top pressing my breasts together. At least the water keeps me steady while the high amplifies every splash, the contrast between the turquoise pool and the backyard trees.

"I was only staring at you because you were ignoring me and we have a competition to win," I say.

Eris steps closer to me, finally wiping her eyeliner away, but it only leaves smudges everywhere. "It's more than that."

"Maybe we're obsessed with each other, then."

"Aren't you sick of it? Of always thinking about me? Always trying to one-up me? Because I am."

"Yes," I say, though I'm not. I'm not sick of it at all.

"What do we do about it?"

I lower myself into the water as much as possible, only leaving my head exposed, the tips of my braids floating around me. My wash day wasn't even today, and now I'll have to move it up to get the chlorine out of my hair.

"I'll be in Canada after graduation," I say. "And you won't have to hear about me until I'm famous."

"Right," she mutters, wiping at her eyes again. "You're off to Canada. Damn. I didn't even think about that until now."

"Don't sound so disappointed."

"I know I'm always getting on your ass, but I don't know what I'll do without you, Ef. I'm serious. Even if you're a pinche snitch."

My chest tightens in a completely unfamiliar way. It's not anxiety or the marijuana. I run through the register of all the things I've ever felt, everything I've carefully dissected in my diaries, and none of them match this.

"I..." I stammer. I want to voice the first witty comeback that pops into my mind—that's kind of sad to say about someone who's not remotely close to being your friend—but I wrap my arms around myself, and all that comes out is, "Really?"

"I'll lose my mind without you," she says.

"You make me lose my mind every day," I say.

But what would I do without her? Where would I direct my latent anger, my bottomless pit of teenage angst? Who would motivate me to reach perfection, humbling me when I fall short?

"You're the reason I even care about art," she continues. "I don't just paint because Iker makes me, because I'm naturally good at it, because he put a brush in my hand before I could even crawl. I've been doing forgeries forever, but I never gave a shit about my own art until you came around. The goal turned into beating you no matter what."

It's not meant to be funny, but I laugh. The chlorine stench wafting around me reminds me of childhood swimming lessons in Ottawa, my favorite oversized pink parka I put on every time before stepping outside.

"And fuck, I don't know," Eris rambles on. "With you, it's not even just about art. Like yeah, it's a nice distraction from all the real shit going on, but... I don't know. Forget it. I'm high as fuck."

Her eyes aren't even red. But I nod, my breathing going shallow.

She steps toward me. I force myself to go motionless like a statue. I don't expect her to get right up in my space, tracing the dark scar on my collar.

"From the car crash, I'm guessing?" she asks.

I nod again. Why, why did the broken glass have to puncture me there—right where she, years later, can feel my absurdly beating heart?

What am I doing? Why am I here? Why her? Out of all people, why her?

It's as if she counted the seconds my hand was on her thigh earlier and is touching me for the exact same amount, down to the second, drawing it out like payback.

I no longer know what to do around her. How to behave myself. We are clearly getting a little too comfortable with each other, and I've lost count of the amount of lines we've already crossed.

"You know, Ef, the first time I saw you, I didn't hate you like you hated me."

By now, I'm having trouble breathing. It feels like she's digging around in my ribs, branding me. My brain shuts down under the massive sensory overload, and all that exists is my body, my body and her words.

"I thought it was destiny. God being good to me for once. I thought we were meant to meet."

"What are you even talking about?" I whisper.

She finally, finally pulls away. "My dad was selling your dad's paintings. Don't judge me for this, but it was one of the first times I saw, you know, Black people in a painting. I was like, woah, something that's not the same European shit for once? I looked up your dad on Google. And I found an article about you. Some prize you won or some painting that you sold, I don't remember. I just remember your picture. Same hairstyle, same clothes—you never change. Anyway."

I have no idea where to catalogue this information. She knew of me before the Olympiad? I vividly remember her in Moscow—combat boots, band t-shirt, choker necklace upon choker necklace, and long dark hair. The way she completely defied the formal dress code immediately painted her as an attention whore, and I soon learned the only reason she got away with it was because of her dad's status. Obnoxious, spoiled California hipster. I hated her instantly.

"I didn't take the Olympiad seriously until Iker told me you were competing," she says. "Because I wanted to impress you. Isn't that the lamest thing? Based on just a picture of you, I immediately felt, I don't know. It sounds so fucking dumb saying it now. And then I saw you in person, and holy shit, I swear I almost died. There you were, hella taller than I thought, looking like one of the triangle figures from your paintings." She starts to pull at her hair, doing everything to avoid looking me in the eye. There's no way she would be telling me this sober.

"It's really not something I can describe, the way I felt then, standing in the same room as you. Nothing seemed real. But I finally got the courage to talk to you. I had it all planned out, how I'd get your number. But my God, you were such a bitch. Such a stuck up, arrogant bitch, and I swear you haven't changed a bit. The way you talked like you were already above me, like you already had the competition in the bag, like there was no one remotely on your level. And you tore my painting to shreds. All the time I spent making it good—and yeah, that time I did try—and it was for nothing. Like damn, you never heard of constructive criticism? I wanted to impress you more than those old Russian judges, and you spat all over it. I went to the bathroom to cry my eyes out."

Even though her work was mediocre, every one of my criticisms warranted, knowing 14-year-old Eris cried because of me... My mom used to say my issue was an overload of honesty—"You need to learn when to put on your pretty smile and keep it to yourself, pitit fi."

I was the one who started this chain-reaction of mutual hatred. If I had chosen to be her friend instead, what would've happened? What would have fucking happened?

"But then I won," Eris says, smirking the smirk I haven't been able to stand since day one. "Most surreal moment of my life, winning first place over you. And the best part was rubbing it in your face after all the shit you said. Before that day, I felt like you were above me, somehow. But then I learned you were just a naive, stuck up gringa. Call me spoiled and rich, but you're the one that's sheltered, living in a bubble all her life. It felt so fucking good to be your reality check."

Now this is more my language. Hating her is ingrained in so many parts of me, it's effortless to slip back into it. She's staring at me like she's waiting for me to say something. Like she expects something from me. Like the insults and snarky comments are no longer enough.

"And now we're just codependent enemies," I say.

She laughs. "You can say that again."

"And why are you confessing all of this now?"

"Here's the thing, Ef—I could die tomorrow. Might as well get it off my chest."

"You're not going to die tomorrow."

"You know you can't promise me that."

I close my eyes. In the last week, as it's really hit me what kind of world she's living in, I've found myself worrying about the possibility of her no longer on this earth. It would make all our fights so petty and meaningless. I don't know how to compute the fact I have no control over it whatsoever.

"Tell me you'd miss me," she says. "Tell me you'd go crazy without me."

"Eris..."

She's high. She's delirious. Her gaze is raw and open and so unbearably lonely like in the car before the art show in L.A. I've always been better at hiding than she is.

She steps closer to me. Grabs my wrists, linking us like opposite poles to a circuit. "I'm your codependent enemy. So that means you need me, right? In some messed up, confusing way."

She was honest with me, so I should be honest with her. We are opposing forces in a system that must always return to perfect equilibrium.

"In several messed up, confusing ways," I admit.

Her hold tightens on my wrists. "Fuck, I need another smoke."

"I will gladly join you."

She smiles a little. "I love being your bad influence."

"Don't get used to it."

We sit at the edge of the pool. Wrapping myself in the towel again eases my self-consciousness while she bears it all—from her jewelry to her scars.

We smoke half the joint, passing it back and forth. She intently watches me exhale each time, like she can't believe her eyes. I have never been this high in my life. I'm floating up, up, up, all body awareness gone as I turn into a hologram projected from the mind of some distant goddess. It's uncannily similar to when I almost died, a hallucinogenic kaleidoscope of colors and static. If she dies, and I die, and there is fact such a thing as an afterlife, what are the chances we cross paths? I don't know. All I know is that we're tapping into a strange, escapist frequency, sampling the intangible.

She leans on her elbows, staring at me while I get lost in the music still playing from her speaker. The sun is scorching.

"You're going to get a sunburn," I say.

"Bitch, I tan, not burn."

I laugh. It's louder than usual, less restrained, and she smiles, eventually letting herself laugh too, and my rational brain is still churning away beneath the distraction of the high, scrambling to put a limit on what is acceptable between the contradiction that is now "us". I shouldn't—I really, really can't—let it get any farther than this. 

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a/n: brooooo this chapter really got to me ToT it's one of the few that has a lot of lines from the early 2015 draft (eris' confession to ef). if any original readers are here, let me know what you think of the differences!

even though it doesn't fit for where they're at right now, i've been listening to COMPL1CADO - FUFU on repeat for multiple days now. it's so eris-coded. song/video linked on the header at the beginning of the chapter.