T H I R T E E N

LOS ANGELES, CA

          I don't dare move an inch.

          I'm still standing far too close to Adam to do so safely—even the simple act of breathing would inch my body closer to his, a fact that disgusts me and always has—but Michelle is also standing at the end of the hallway, right after a sharp turn to the right, and we're all frozen in place like this is a Madam Tussauds exhibit.

          Naturally, when you visit such an exhibit, it's presumed from the start you're minimally interested in what is available to see and you care about those things. Adam doesn't care about me—and never has—at a personal level, not in a positive way, and I'm either just a body for him to take advantage of or a meek victim for him to intimidate and make himself feel more like a man over it. I don't bother wishing for him to treat me like a human being, refusing to set myself up for disappointment, and I learned a long time ago to not expect basic human decency from this man.

          Michelle, on the other hand, had loved me once. Something inside me aches for times like those, when she sets every ounce of animosity she feels towards me aside and remembers we're supposed to love each other unconditionally, but it reeks of hypocrisy. I've been shutting her out for years, even now that I'm back in Los Angeles, and it's not fair to ask her to disregard the emotional hell I've put her through; after all, just because I was so willing to leave everything behind, it doesn't mean it was easy for her. I dropped her without a word or any poorly attempted explanations and have always been adamant to not give anyone a chance to ever get close to me again, so it makes no sense to want her to give me the time of day.

          And yet, I do. She approaches us quietly, face blank, leaving me to wonder just how much of my conversation with Adam she overheard, and, based on the brief sliver of panic that washes across his face, he's thinking the exact same thing. This fact brings me no joy; in fact, it's a harsh reminder that it's so easy for him to manipulate everyone around him, make them believe what he wants them to believe, and I know Michelle already has one foot out of the door when it comes to me. She's convinced I'm hostile towards Adam because I'm jealous they've been seeing each other, whatever that means, and correcting her would also imply I'd have to explain the whole thing and would run the risk of not being believed.

          Again.

          I don't know how much more beating this little heart of mine can take. It has shrunk considerably throughout the years, and there's barely any of it left to keep me alive.

          "The ceremony is about to start, so you guys should be heading outside before my mom breaks something out of stress," she finally says, getting closer and closer to us, and I'm still glued to the floor. Adam moves away from me at last, which should give me enough room and a nice opportunity to breathe, but my lungs aren't working as they should, all these years of chainsmoking catching up to me. Instead, I focus on making myself smaller, after spending half a decade accepting I deserve to take up space. This is not the right place for a girl like me. "I just need to go to the bathroom and freshen up, but you guys go ahead."

          "Chelle," Adam calls. It takes everything in me to stay put and not slam my fist against his jaw, his cheekbone, and try to see which of us it would hurt the most. If I could, I would break him into a thousand pieces, crushing them under the heels of my Louboutins. Somehow, not even that would be enough. "Chelle, hey—"

           Michelle dodges the hand he reaches out towards her with the seasoned expertise of someone whose nos are rarely listened to or respected, and it shatters my heart in a fraction of a second. 

          I know that because I've taught her that. I know that because my absence has contributed to her hardening, to her skepticism, and she used to be so bright-eyed, such a glass half-full kind of person.

          She used to be just like me. Somewhere along the way, we both left those girls behind. The difference is that I've also left her behind, not just Rebecca.

          "Becca, come with me," she asks, quietly. "I'll need you to zip up my dress."

          Adam looks like he's just been punched, and I don't want to give him enough time to react accordingly by dragging Michelle back by a frail wrist. I move faster than he does this time, body blocking her, but she already has her back turned to us to enter the bathroom and doesn't even see it. It's the thought that counts, I tell myself, just as I slam the door right in his face. To hell with consequences.

          It's Michelle time.

          I'm still not quite sure what to make of her, as we've been estranged for so long that I hardly recognize her, pink hair aside, and I don't know how to behave around her, either. If she hates me, something I'm certain she's capable of, then I don't want to risk doing or saying something that will inevitably trigger a rampage, and she's too close to Adam for comfort, which means I need to take the high road and protect myself.

          It's what I've been doing for so long that I don't know how to do anything else. My life has turned into an obsessive quest for protection and isolation from danger that I rarely get to experience anything else, fueled by a desperate need to both please everyone around me so they won't hurt me and to stay far away from them just because it's the safest decision. My job requires interaction, but I limit my social circle to a total of two, sometimes three people, and I never linger in post-shooting parties and cocktail outings for too long because my anxiety always acts up. No one wants to watch me have a panic attack in a bathroom.

          I can make small talk just fine. I can stay half present in conversations, even when my mind is so ready to escape the minute I decide to pull the trigger and excuse myself, but this is different. This isn't a coworker I pretend to like or a fellow actress I'm terrified will judge me.

          This is Michelle Oakley Kane, my baby sister. I've loved her unconditionally for as long as she's been alive, but somewhere along the way that same love she had for me must have vanished. I don't blame her, not when I would've done the same; had she abandoned me the way I did to her, had I been left behind by the person who had always sworn to protect me, I'd be keeping my guard up. I am keeping my guard up, unsure whether I can trust her or not, but I want so badly to be open to whatever she wants to say.

          However, I can't. There's a mental brick wall separating us, and I know she knows it's there.

          She doesn't actually need me to zip up her dress because she never takes it off, but she walks up towards one of the windows, creaks it open, and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of her tiny purse. I quirk an eyebrow at this, wondering if my sister's smoking habits can also be traced back to me or if they're just something else I've missed out on while I've been gone, but still accept it when she reaches it out towards me, a cigarette peeking out of the pack.

          "I just needed to clear my head," she mutters, through gritted teeth, and leans her back against the cold tiles. I stand by the line of porcelain sinks, back turned to the mirrors. This level of distance is the most comfortable thing for us at the moment. "Stop looking at me like that."

          "Like what?"

          "Like you're judging me." She takes a drag of her cigarette. "You smoke too, so don't act all high and mighty. Just because you look like you smoke just to prove a point, it doesn't mean other people don't have a valid reason to do it."

          "I smoke because I'm addicted, Chelle. It's not that deep. If anyone's acting all high and mighty over something that literally kills people, during a funeral, even, it's not me, babes." She shoots me a truly homicidal glare, one that wouldn't be out of place in Mommy Dearest. "Pray tell, what's your valid reason?"

          Michelle avoids my eyes, staring down at her feet, and I watch the waves of smoke swirling around her instead. "Mom's been a fucking nightmare all week."

          I scoff. "Shocking."

          "Be serious for once, will you? This has been stressing me out so much I can't even sleep. I barely have time to eat. My hair's falling out in clumps. Even then, even after all the work I've done, all the help I've given her, all she talks about is you." Her bottom lip trembles. "It's not your fault, and it was Dad who wanted you here, but I tried telling her you wouldn't want to come, and tracking you down and forcing you to come would be an insane invasion of privacy. For whatever reason, all of this is somehow my fault. Since you're not around for her to dump all her frustrations on . . . sorry." She lets out a deep sigh, pressing the heel of her hand against her brow bone. "That's not what I meant."

          "I know." No, she meant it. We both know that. However, I decide to indulge her and pretend to be oblivious to her finally laying it on me, sick and tired of holding her hurt feelings inside. Though I appreciate knowing she told our mother she shouldn't have tracked me down across the country and emotionally manipulating me into being here was wrong, I know she's not here to spare my feelings. "It's understandable why you're stressed."

          "And this whole thing between you and Adam is driving me up the wall. I heard part of your argument, you know. You weren't being discreet." An evil shiver runs down my spine. The right thing to do is to tell her the truth, but I can't. Whenever I even think about doing it, the fog in my brain grows thick, and I can't breathe, like I'm combusting from the inside. "I don't get it, Becca. You've been so hostile towards him since you arrived, and for what? And what has this petty vendetta of yours accomplished?"

          That does it.

          I'm erupting like the volcano from earlier, the explosion Adam's mere presence triggered, and Michelle has no right, no fucking right to talk to me this way. Even if she doesn't know a damn thing about what Adam has done to me, it doesn't give her the right to invalidate it by reducing it to some vendetta, like this isn't serious.

          Deep down, I know she doesn't know any better, and I should be grateful that my little sister has never had to worry about that sort of thing, about all the precautions she needs to take brought by her status as a woman in a patriarchal society. Even if she has—every woman has to, at some point in their life, which is terrible to say—I'm going out on a limb and saying it was purely out of instinct.

          I'm not trying to invalidate anything she might have gone through, and God knows how hard I've fought to not have my own experience invalidated and tossed into the garbage, to varying degrees of success. As someone who has, in fact, gone through that kind of trauma, I also know it's the kind of thing you empathize with when you detect the smallest sign of it having happened to someone else, particularly if that person is someone you're related to. It's not the kind of thing you weaponize or the kind of thing you use to hit someone under the belt just because they hurt your feelings when they abandoned you without saying a word.

          That's not the kind of person that I am. No matter how upset I am, no matter how badly I want to explode out of resentment, I refuse to feel bad for wanting to treat people with respect, especially survivors, and I will no longer make myself smaller to please other people. I'm not here to be disrespected, and I'm certainly not here to not be believed. If that's the kind of game Michelle wants to play, she can play it by herself and follow her own rules. I have my own, and none of them include stooping so low.

          I put out the cigarette against the pristine porcelain of the sink because I can sprinkle the scorching ashes all over her. "Petty? Petty? This is my goddamn life. This is my life, Michelle. He ruined my fucking life."

          Her eyes narrow. "I'm not having this conversation with you here."

          I throw my hands up in the air, frustration spreading across my chest in scalding waves of lava. "Great. I've never expected you to believe a single word that comes out of my mouth or that you even want to hear what I have to say, but I refuse to let you be like Mom. I won't stand here and let you tell me what he did to me didn't matter, because it did."

          "That's not what I said!"

          "Well, you implied it!"

          "God, Rebecca, Harley, whatever, shut up. Shut up. We'll talk later." She stomps past me towards the exit and slams the door open. "Whatever you think of me, however you feel about me, I don't care. Just don't tell me I don't believe you."

           She leaves the door open on her way out. It's more than what I've ever done for her.

⊹˚. ♡

chelle gang? for now?