"that must be really hard" // fay, grief, ember, alcohol abuse, (lack of) closure, jealousy, raven can't do séances, mystery, anger, trauma, loss, freeform

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ᴵ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ʳᵉᵃˡˡʸ ᵇˡᵃᵐᵉ ʸᵒᵘ ᶠᵒʳ ᵇᵉⁱⁿᵍ ᵈᵉᵃᵈ ᵇᵘᵗ ʸᵒᵘ ᶜᵃⁿ'ᵗ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ʸᵒᵘʳ ˢʷᵉᵃᵗᵉʳ ᵇᵃᶜᵏ.
ˢᵒ, ᴵ ˢᵃⁱᵈ, ⁿᵒʷ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ʷᵉ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵒᵘʳ ᵈᵉᵃᵈ, ʷʰᵃᵗ ᵃʳᵉ ʷᵉ ᵍᵒⁱⁿᵍ ᵗᵒ ᵈᵒ ʷⁱᵗʰ ᵗʰᵉᵐ?
ᵀʰᵉʳᵉ'ˢ ᵃ ᵇˡᵃᶜᵏ ᵈᵒᵍ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ'ˢ ᵃ ʷʰⁱᵗᵉ ᵈᵒᵍ, ᵈᵉᵖᵉⁿᵈˢ ᵒⁿ ʷʰⁱᶜʰ ʸᵒᵘ ᶠᵉᵉᵈ,
ᵈᵉᵖᵉⁿᵈˢ ᵒⁿ ʷʰⁱᶜʰ ᵈᵃᵐⁿ ᵈᵒᵍ ʸᵒᵘ ˡⁱᵛᵉ ʷⁱᵗʰ.

ˢᵀᴿᴬᵂ ᴴᴼᵁˢᴱ, ˢᵀᴿᴬᵂ ᴰᴼᴳ
ᴿⁱᶜʰᵃʳᵈ ˢⁱᵏᵉⁿ

ᴰᵒⁿ'ᵗ ʸᵒᵘ ᶠᵉᵉˡ ˢᵖᵉᶜⁱᵃˡ?
ˢᵉᵃʳᶜʰᵉˢ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵛⁱᵍⁱˡˢ
ᶜᵒᵘˡᵈ ᴵ ᶜᵒᵐᵉ ᶠⁱⁿᵈ ʸᵒᵘ?
ᵂᵒᵘˡᵈ ᴵ ᶠᵉᵉˡ ˢʰᵉᵉᵖⁱˢʰ?
ᵂᵉⁱᵍʰᵗ ᵇᵉᵃʳⁱⁿᵍ, ᵘⁿᵗⁱᵉ ʸᵒᵘ
ᴳᵒᵗᵗᵃ ˡᵒˢᵉ ʸᵒᵘʳ ⁱⁿⁿᵒᶜᵉⁿᶜᵉ
ᴮᵉᶠᵒʳᵉ ʸᵒᵘ ᶠⁱⁿᵈ ⁱᵗ ˢᵗᵒˡᵉⁿ
ᴵ ʷᵒᵘˡᵈ ᵗʳʸ ᵗᵒ ᵘⁿᵈᵉʳˢᵗᵃⁿᵈ
ᴮᵘᵗ ᴵ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ʷᵃⁿⁿᵃ ᵏⁿᵒʷ

ᵁᴺᵀᴵᴱ ʸᴼᵁ
ˢⁱʳ ᶜʰˡᵒᵉ

ੈ✩‧₊˚

There's this cosmic devotion to beautiful deaths that Fay hasn't figured out how to rationalize. Maybe God likes to keep the pretty rose-gold things to Himself, or the trees and the mountains get hungry in the night, dewey teeth and tongues aching with pavement and electricity. Maybe happy, beautiful girls just have to suffer, or die trying not to. It wasn't always like this. Lately Fay has a feeling she's devolving, like she's swallowed a bunch of glue and now she can't breathe and every minute that passes the world gets a shade darker. Everything grows smaller, molecule by molecule, until she's convinced she's nothing more than vapor, and she will, as the mist does in the fields on grey days, clear into nothing.

On a morning in late September she wakes up with her head under the covers, eyes squinted in the navy blue and purple glow. Her mouth tastes sickly sour, the underside of her parched tongue rough and unreal. She can hear the construction outside, and her stomach flips. That's just what Ember said five days ago, that there was the sound of jackhammers and trucks, in the dark, the rain, it didn't make sense. The police questioned pretty much all the neighbors and none of them mentioned it. But why would they? Jersey's always doing something with the fucking roads.

She sits up and stares around her room, the Polaroids strung on the walls, the stickers all over the mirror, the stuff Gemma left on the chair in the corner ten days ago. They were filming a movie━more like playing dress-up━where Fay was a femme fatale detective and Gemma was a young woman whose husband had been savagely murdered. There was supposed to be a scene where they would antagonize a flock of geese into attacking them, it was going to be super funny. The American Girl doll they'd been using as Gemma's daughter sits on top of the bunch of inside-out clothes, waiting for the next scene.

Bile rises in Fay's throat, she kicks aside the empty Heineken on the floor where it rolls on under the bed, clinking against the corner of her nightstand. She darts into the bathroom and locks the door.

She inhales the scent of water and crumbly old grout, cups water into her hand and rinses her mouth until it's almost numb. She spits and a sob almost spurts up her throat. Her brain goes fuzzy and soft, an uncomfortable lack of support. They were always the same, always laughing at the same thing for no reason, things that were never that hilarious, butchering movie quotes to blocks of sound and twisting words around. If Fay was somewhere, Gemma was going to hear about it. They might as well've shared a brain, and a heart, and a soul, communicating telepathically the way little girls do and the way very few continue to do so when they are not little; and growing into each other like seeds planted too close, brazen strong wood intertwined into the next millennium. If one got her period first, the other would wear makeup first. If one crashed a car, the other would take the blame, back and forth until both of them were always at the behest of each other.

And Fay's heart has been torn right out of her chest, cracked her sternum like an eggshell and picked out the shards and when its claws are drawn away all that is left is green tree roots, searching flakes of new bark, and the scent of fresh wood.

What the fuck is she supposed to do when she has nothing left? Gemma as the girl who took her hand and dragged her down the dark alleys when she was too scared to go herself, the girl who tied dandelions together into necklaces well into middle school, the girl who cheated every chemistry class last year to make sure they both got As on everything. Finally, the girl whose disappearance everyone would notice second to Fay's own solitude.

She leans hard over the sink, leaning her weight on her hands. Downstairs the dog barks to be let out. Her parents talk in barbed wire to each other, where the syllables are loaded with pretense, but never like that to her. She closes her eyes. We're not fighting, they said when she was little, but she knew the difference between a conversation and a battleground━and the miraculous places the two intertwined━before she knew her times tables.

It's all cool, Gemma would say, sitting on her bedroom floor, at least they love you a lot. Who wouldn't? Fay would tell her that wasn't all people needed to be happy, and that a child could not be made something to stick people together. And a kid can't live to stick people together anyway. You're just you, that's all you need. And she'd tell her jokes until it went quiet in the kitchen and fall asleep with her fingers in Fay's hair.

Fay blinks. Her open face and round eyes and mobile lips all look tired, windswept. She drags her fingers through her hair, feeling loose. In her rumpled cream tank top and silky pajama pants she doesn't really want to move, let alone go outside. Has it actually been days? five or six of them? She can't pull it together for one minute, let alone an afternoon. She looks out the window, wondering if it's going to rain. The pines are thick with dark spikes, through the glass the clouds take up the whole sky.

It always rains at funerals in movies.

ੈ✩‧₊˚

The morning after it happened, the cops tore through all Gemma's stuff. Fay heard about it and pictured something like Law & Order, just totally trashing her room, looking into things that were never for anyone. She knew that detectives actually have different methods for searching over crime scenes, and other places for clues, because she learned that in school, but she pictured the Law & Order scene and wanted to scream and hit all of them, in their stupid fucking faces.

If anything like that ever happens to me, she told her parents, don't let anyone go through my stuff 'cause they're not gonna find anything.

They told her to shut up and not to talk like that.

ੈ✩‧₊˚

It shouldnt've taken nearly a week to bury her, the coroner just didn't know what to make of the whole thing. He called in a guy from Morris County, then they both called in a guy from Trenton. In the end Fay supposes they got tired of trying and said, Fuck it, bury the kid already.

Fay didn't look at anyone, the only time anyone saw her cry was when everyone was filing out, after the four and a half eulogies, she has a feeling she'll regret not talking herself. Everyone just stumbled for the right words, at once an excess and drought. How did you talk about a girl in her eighteenth year, whose greatest achievement was being herself, who had not died in any romantic way like a car crash or cancer, but had been more accurately ripped from her own world by something no-one could name? It was fucking humiliating to hear them talk when Fay knew she would not have done much better.

They sit in the raspberry glow of the sunset, behind the school. Up in the bleachers, it smells calm, unlike books and pencil led and breath, but like the trees and the birdsong. The baseball field stretches out, spindly metal and cheap dugout, before them. A ripped soccer net flutters in the breeze like the sail of a ship.

Ember doesn't really say anything, she has a lot to think about. It makes Fay angry: she can only think about one thing that extends outward forever, legs of spun spiders web and the tinfoil impression of a broken heart; and Em is so quiet, blankly determined.

"So the cops stopped talkin' t' y', huh?" Fay says.

"Mm. Yeah."

"That's good." She tilts her head, examining her cousin's profile in the hazy light. Ember wears a cheap black dress with tiny magenta flowers that look like origami. She has pulled her hair out of her silver hairtie so it frames her face, but in a dejected way. Fay knows the way Em's eyes have looked since childhood, rattling on excitedly about cats and cartoons, or how smart and assured she looked when she was drawing: now she sees none of those things. Instead of a golden light behind the brown irises, Fay cannot find anything save for a tired, anxious and still concentration and a sensitive pupil. This newness unnerves her. In the fading sun she feels cold, hands deep in the pockets of her sweatshirt.

"Guess so." But Ember shakes her head as she says it.

A month ago she could've recounted every step and flickered decision racing its way through Ember's mind, now she senses absolutely nothing, like a telepathic superpower cut short, choked out by something━or a cumulation of them━that she doesn't understand. Fay has a feeling those thoughts are still there, but she cannot translate them into her own head. It hurts her feelings.

Fay's voice is solid, stern like the roots of a tree. "What the fuck're you thinking about?"

Em: "I dunno."

Fay knows this is a lie, but she doesn't feel pity or concern: only anger. "What's the point if you're not gonna talk t' me?"

"The point?"

Fay: "Of..." Of this. Of the stupid fucking sky and the birds and the cold metal. What's the point of you seeing it and not me? The truth is she's jealous. Ember didn't deserve to be there, Fay did. The truth is she believes she would've stopped it, if it had been her. At the core of her heart, she does not want to admit that she can't trust Em even if she begs herself to, if knows she should.

Ember: "I'm sorry."

Sorry for not saying anything? Or Sorry about what's more important: that she is not just as bitter and angry as Fay is? If they can't share the feeling, What's the point? She says, "If you were then you'd act like it."

"Act like..." It's a question, there's a ? at the end, but Fay doesn't hear it.

She hates Ember in this moment, hates her that she is probably right, that something terrible really did happen to Gemma that was out of her control. She hates that no-one trusts her, when she can't trust her either. Ember doesn't finish her sentence, she hardly talked at all at the funeral, she has this dull frightening obedience about her, like she is listening to a radio channel that no-one else gets, that has been apparent for a few months, on and off. Fay didn't recognize it when she first noticed, and now that she's facing it, the first thing she thinks is, This is fucked up.

"They never found anything," Ember asks more in the realm of a question, "in any of her stuff?"

"No." She never told me anything crazy, so she hadn't been up to anything. She would've told me. Would've let me know. "If that ever happens to me," she says, the same thing she told her parents, "don't let anyone through my shit."

"Don't say that. Nothing would happen t' you."

No-one understands.

"Yeah, it could." Fay leans over her lap, holding her weight on her arms.

Ember jumps down off the bleachers in her black dress, skirt fluttering in her own wake, too far to the ground so that she bends her knees hard, it must hurt, she doesn't make any noise.

"I have to go," she says.

"Where?"

"Home. I have a thing in the morning." She bites at a nail, snapping it off between her teeth, flicking it to the grass. "Get home soon, Fay."

"Wait, what thing?" Fay braces her hands on the metal bench, like she's going to shove herself off after her.

"Just some doctor stuff. It's all the same." She doesn't seem sad or annoyed in any way. She looks up at her cousin in a birdlike stance, when they size up a person on the sidewalk, deciding whether or not to flee. "Get back safe," she adds, and crosses off through the field.

Maybe she didn't mean it to sound like a warning.

ੈ✩‧₊˚

It's hard to be an alcoholic when you're seventeen, but Fay doesn't have it as hard as other people. When you're pretty and skinny people want to make you happy, and guys might not even care that you'd never sleep with them or even kiss them on the cheek in a million years━they just buy you a six pack so you'll say Thanks, sir, see ya in a doting little voice.

And then you get to go home, and lock the bedroom door, and the dog sniffs and paces at the door but you don't let him in. And you pop the bottle caps off with your lighter and smoke out the window until your stomach feels kind of sour and sick. Then she can go downstairs and behave and get quiet, which her parents think she'll stop doing, but she'll never get over it and her loudness will always have a forced quality to it. So she can still be raucous and hard, wild laugh and burning intense eyes, but she can go quiet just as quickly. The silence doesn't mean so much when it has been preluded by laughter.

ੈ✩‧₊˚

In California, things still suck. They suck worse because Owen isn't there━not that he would've made anything better, but it sucks that he left. He's crazy, because Ha-neul is the best person ever. She doesn't fall apart when her husband skips out on her, like most people would. She is mildly steadfast, but it does not run out and curdle into a frantic tension━her steadfastness has a tender human necessity to it, so that she incapable of pressuring anyone, especially her daughter. She's probably a better mom than Fay's is, but Fay'd never say that━and it's probably because Ha-neul's a teacher and she's very emotionally intelligent. Not everyone can be like that, you probably have to learn it. Fay knows she'll never be as kind or calm or lovely as her aunt, but she watches her a lot anyway.

As an example, she goes a little still when Ember calls; Fay can see her process each sentence like it's its own story, the way they expect you to write essays in school, paying more attention than anyone else. You ever hear someone think? With precision, with questions and room for clarification. She sounds exactly the same, every time, no matter what her daughter says, or if she understands it or not.

ੈ✩‧₊˚

I fucking hate it here, Fay tells her sullenly, across the table; Ember spaces out, but she listens.

Really?

Yeah, really. Everyone's so pretentious and they pretend like they're not. Even where we are, where there's actual cool people, their parent's suck. It's like, you know how rich kids have parents like that? But here it's everyone.

Fay doesn't take Em's distraction too hard: she doesn't look at anyone. She's inwardly paranoid and kind of shaky and her voice is so, so quiet; but she argues in defense of California as a whole: But the kids're cool.

Yeah, I guess. But I don't care.

Ember slips her face into her hands. But you will, she mumbles.

The drive home from the hospital is always at least a little dismal. On better days━or, days that feel better to Fay, which means that the only things that mark them is that she feels more comfortable, and their 'betterment' has nothing to do with Ember at all━they might make some observation. Well, they are observing everything: they will consciously make the decision to voice those findings into the compact silence of the front seat.

ੈ✩‧₊˚

On another day, Ember swings her feet under her chair and watches for them. I needa tell you something, she says. I feel really bad. She stills and rolls her ankle against the floor and stares at the table. There are three stars carved into it, each line slightly curved, like they were done with a fingernail. Her voice is lost inside her, her lips barely move. She says that talking about Gemma makes her feel like she's being watched, like there's this cold fiery feeling in her stomach that knows if she's guilty or not. And when she says guilty, she doesn't mean like she's done anything wrong, she means like there is a subtle and irreversible flaw inside of her that will spread outwards until it affects everything, her body, and things she touches, and things she loves. There is an irreparability about her that she can only soothe, that she does not think she will ever understand, or make dissipate. A total inconvenience, a huge blank part of herself she has to hold and feel and breathe into, a wrongness that chokes her. She says she's very anxious, all the time, that the medication they give her helps but everything goes fuzzy after a while.

Everyone expects her to talk about Gemma, and she can't do that, because the dead girl belongs to Fay. She can be scooped up out of either of their memories and investigated, but where it counts, she's always inherited from Fay. Ember says, I'm sorry. She's yours. I can't talk about her.

Why not?

Because I'm not...please dont tell anyone i said this...o.k....i'm not real. I can't think...i know everyones lying to me. Or something is. My brain just feels soft and tired and I'm not in there anywhere. Like I'm only that weird empty space that's wrong and unfixable. You don't understand.

Fay sighs, How could I?

ੈ✩‧₊˚

When they go home, they go to the backyard and watch the overgrown grass sway in the breeze, fluttering moving shades of green. There are fences out yards away, on a Monday and a Wednesday there are men setting up the gates and the fences, nails and mesh wire and hinges.

What's bothering you? Ha-neul asks once.

What? Fay stares at her Marlboro, white paper dwindling to ash by the second.

What did you two talk about? You look like you're thinking about it.

This is annoying. Sometimes she wishes her aunt were as convinced of Fay's competence as her own mother, in that she does not ask nearly as many questions. Sometimes mothers cannot trust their daughters because they have trusted them too much. Trust overflows into secrecy.

What she said about...

Nah. It doesn' matter.

Fuuuuuuuuck...

Fay?

Fay.

Fay.

What?

Please listen to me. I know you can hear me. You're the only person who ever loved me like that. You know? Listen. I love you.

She wakes up, she fell into an uneasy sleep two hours earlier. She wakes up with the covers bunched up near her mouth, in her new room in California, where the wind is glass-cold but breaks just as easily. The window's open, the screen is new. In her old house, the screen was always ripped or loose. Now she keeps the window open and doesn't worry about the bugs. Laying there in the dark, staring into her half-empty room, she starts to hear it. It starts out as a jumble of frustrated noises, then billows into something else. Her mother's voice.

"You are such a fucking dick!"

She can't hear her father's reply. He always talks so low. Sometimes he lies without meaning to, because he can't see the truth in front of him. If he doesn't say something terrible, he really has said it, by not doing the most complacent thing in the first place. So it's almost always his fault, even━especially━when it's not. When Kathleen apologizes, she expects Aengus to apologize so they're even. Fay needs to believe they are equally to blame. She cannot choose between her parents. She knows they always choose her over each other. She wishes often that she was never born, and that they never met, that her mother had stayed in Ireland or her father walked out instead of her uncle.

"...I never said that. I would never say that to you," Aengus hisses. He tries to be quiet, he gets mad when he can hear Fay cry through her bedroom door. That only happened twice, but it was two nights in a row, so it really only happened once.

"...Wish I never..."

"...Don't know how you can..."

"...You do it all the time..."

Fay presses her head under her pillow and tries to breathe. She presses her fingers against her ears so that the pressure hurts. Oh, God, everything hurts. She feels like a child, pathetic and dumb and sad and naïve. To know exactly how a day full of sunshine can quickly devolve into broken mirrors and lifetimes of bad luck. She is absolutely certain the cause and effect of each slip of the knife, why exactly her parents' marriage will not be helped. What she can't fathom is why she has to be the one to understand it. To be the product and the bearer and the interpreter. It is so, so hard to swallow.

She used to pray. She repeated, Please, God, please, Jesus, help me, until the words got crumpled and twisted in her brain. She doesn't pray about it anymore. She realized God can't fix people who don't admit they're wrong. She realized there are things that are unfixable, and there are people who can't be helped. God can't go back in time and tell two people to break the fuck up. She prays about other things now. She prays, God, please let Gemma be O.K., she deserves it, please... and the words get all mixed up in her head the more she repeats them.

ੈ✩‧₊˚

Fay loves Raven for a lot of reasons. They're funny in the same way, and Raven can be understanding with a weird perspective that is also mean. When they see each other in New York state, she doesn't get weird when Fay drinks til she pukes, but mostly if anyone's puking it's going to be Raven because she is very very nervous, all the time, and she says it to Fay all the time, but it's really her default state. That's why she whispers as they go down into the basement: "I'm scared s-s-so fuckin' shitless right now."

Fay is drunk, but she'd never admit it and no-one would be able to tell. She dumped all her shooter bottles out of her backpack into the garbage outside. She asks, "You wanna back out?"

Raven hates her for asking, because she can't say yes. Even if Fay wants her to. She can't say, I want to back out of trying to reach your dead best friend because I'm scared.

"Whatever," Fay says. "Let's get it over with."

"This isn' a game."

"Don'cha think I...fuckin' know that?"

If Raven feels guilty for reprimanding her, there on the dank stairs in the old house, where the basement is all crooked and cold in patches, she doesn't say so. She just darts down the stairs and moves Mari out of the way in the middle of the room. Tas and Pip's house is really cool, it's really old, it's probably haunted. Raven feels all weird when she's alone in there for too long. She doesn't know how to pick a ghost out of many, she doesn't know how to reach for one in particular. She's told everyone that, but they won't listen. You can still try it, Mari says. Ember agrees on Fay's behalf, but she hardly ever talks directly to Raven. She gets that shivery look in her eyes like a scared rabbit, the same expression she got across from Fay in the hospital, telling her, ...please dont tell anyone i said this...o.k....

Everyone sees it, no-one says anything because they don't want to freak anyone else out. Their meeting in New York state was supposed to be fun. Well, it usually is. It's not so fun when Em says, Yeah, let her try if you want, and Pip offers up their basement, and Mari's already taking Em's phone to look up 'how do seances work' on Google.

So now they're all here, in the basement, dirt and inherited mystery. Raven looks like she's really going to puke, or like she needs a drink. Fay squeezes Ember's hand too hard. She feels all numb around the edges, but Ember can't tell. Pip won't stop bouncing her leg against the floor in excitement, when Tassie lights the candles and says, "So, think you're ready?"

ੈ✩‧₊˚

Maybe if Fay wasn't always angry. Maybe if she was better at listening. Maybe if she could control herself, bite the barbs off her words as they came instead of picking them out of her sentences in the air. Maybe if she was better at spelling. Maybe if she didn't hold grudges like cement. Maybe if she knew more, or less. Maybe if she had not lost someone who was also a thing. Maybe if any of the words mattered. If she could take it back. If she could pick out the spools of film which contained the beauty in her life, and enlarge them. If only she could forget. If the words had not been forged handsomely into her mind. Or if she could say what she meant. Didn't get stuck on the I love yous. That's the only thing she can imagine herself saying anymore: I love you. Come back. One time. Say it. You can't leave me.

ੈ✩‧₊˚

They're upstairs alone in one of the four bedrooms in the big old house. Raven's downstairs with a nosebleed, Pip and Tassie darted off somewhere into the crevices of the building, sensing the same unspoken thing.

"I'm sorry it didn't work," Em says into the silence, which is very brave of her. "Really."

Fay leans on the door to close it. With a snap and a bang, the old wood needs to be forced into place. Chips and scratches. "I didn't think it would. You seriously think that's what I fuckin' cared about?" Her voice is hot iron, hard stone. Her head is a little clearer.

"Then...what...did you want?" Ember paces, she can't think without moving, she touches the windowsill and the bedpost and the wall. Fay remembers that thing she said about the inconvenience, her inherent incurability, and the way it splatters everywhere. Maybe she was right.

Fay argues, against Ember's whisper, a flame against the wool of a lamb: "I only said yes 'cause 't was your idea!"

"...It was Mari's idea first," Em pronounces. Which is true. Or maybe it was Raven's idea first.

Whoever's it was, it sure wasn't Fay. She's too afraid. "You said to."

Ember: "If you wanted it! I wouldn't force you to. Besides, Raven said... Like, she did say she felt━"

Fay: "Christ, Raven didn't feel shit. She doesn't know fuckin' anything. She thought she felt somethin' 'cause you thought she would."

Em: "Me?"

"Yeah, you!" Fay spins, kicking at the dresser, her toe catching the wood painfully. "You're the only one who KNOWS anything! You're the only one who SAW━"

"I don't know! I don't know what I saw, I dunno anything, I never said I knew anything!"

"But YOU'RE... Ember, you're..."

"That's stupid," Em says, clearly trying to convince herself of it, because her voice is so soft and dull, "Raven doesn't even like me━"

"Em, you wanted this bullshit 'cause you're the one who's psychotic and can't let anything go. You'll never understand, and you keep trying to. It's crazy, you're fuckin' crazy."

"I'm not trying to do anything...!"

"Of course you wouldn' fuckin' notice."

"What are you even talking about? Me or you?" Ember asks, mouth working, trying to catch up to everything her cousin has just said. Every part of it hurts, one way or another. She feels a prolonged ache surge up her chest that shocks the wind out of her. Her expression remains neutral, unconfident, passively redundant.

Fay fucking hates her for it, and she hates Raven for never saying anything real, she hates them both because neither of them are lying.

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A girl is so pretty when she is about to cry. She might have that look about her all the time; so that when a guy looks at her he sees it and he's attracted to that lost bunny expression that hovers around her features, he might not recognize that what he's looking at, what he wants to kiss, or hold, or fuck, is grief.

A girl gets that unsettled darkness about the rims of her eyes that isn't runny mascara or eyeliner: this is right before that, where she's not sure she's going to cry or not, whether she needs to get a tissue and bear it right here on the street or flee to a bathroom and have a more private and somehow more humiliating moment. Or she might not cry at all, it might build up inside of her like sand at the bottom of the ocean, a sandbar, warm and soft and tender. Like all the tissues of her heart and her throat are suddenly sick with a fever, with a volatile and remorseful breakup of blood vessels, of sweat━and she has swallowed a great deal of flowery-smelling formaldehyde. A girl has to bear humiliation, backwardly, with only herself as an audience. She might wield it into a necklace and tuck it under her shirt, she might be angry and hold it in a closed palm so that she can never reach out and touch, all the way, with both hands. She might keep it like a sharpener of a knife, or in the side of her gum like a pouch of tobacco. In any case humiliation and deferment are always there, she will always feel them even when she can't see them.

A girl is so pretty when she is about to cry, and, like all pretty girls, Fay knows that. She sinks to the sidewalk, boots splayed out into the street, closes her face in her hands, and sobs.