CHAPTER TWELVE.
IF YOU LOOK CLOSELY

THERE were only a few things that were important to Monika Godfrey. In another life, one where she did not know the taste of vodka, or the sound of a revving car and the smell of burning rubber and smoke ─ in another life where she was not the way she was there might have been other things, but they would have been superficial. She knew these things were the most important to her because even at her worst, there was nothing she would not do for them.

And Amelia was one of those things. 

Once upon a time, life was going to kill Monika Godfrey. And once upon a time, Monika Godfrey would have let it.

But Amelia had saved her.

So it had scared Monika significantly when she had heard about the Washington Monument disaster. But what had annoyed her, even more, was that it had been Peter Parker who had saved Amelia, and not Monika. Now, jealousy was a complicated emotion and this was not the first time it had festered in Monika. Times when she would see some boy flirting with Gemma with her standing just beside, or when she would see the heartfelt messages Amelia's parents left her somedays ─ it caught up to her, and justifiably so.

But this jealousy she felt at the moment was without reason, and it confused her scrambled thoughts well. The Q-tip in her hand, dipped in rubbing alcohol, glided over the wound on Amelia's forehead with practiced precision. Monika had had plenty of opportunities to practice basic first-aid on herself.

Amelia sat quietly, a cushion in her lap, her fingers playing with a stray thread restlessly. 

"Heard the party was a blast," Monika said monotone, a sour aftertaste in her mouth.

"It was distracting enough," Amelia answered, disinterested. She was staring out the window at the afternoon sun, a gleaming dreaminess in her big black eyes.

"Right," Monika commented, a tightness to her tone that made Amelia glance at her, "from the mortal danger you had faced hours ago?"

Amelia's eyebrows knitted and her eyes slit. "What's going on with you?"

Monika sighed. Her anger was black and slick as oil, hard to hide. She let all the little things get to her even though she pretended to have armor made of vibranium. She sighed again, through her nose. Then shook her head. This was all pointless. "It's nothing. It's just ─ "

"It's just what?" Amelia asked. Amelia hated unsaid things. She hated mumbled words after a fight. She hated buried words that ate you up inside. It was healthier to say it all, anyways.

So Monika did. Monika said it. "Did you not want me to come? To the party? Hell, I didn't even know there was one." She had let jealousy sneak into her voice, and anger, too.

It made Amelia's response about managing rather than answering. "I didn't know it was a party. It was black-tie, anyway."

Black-tie. Amelia knew Monika well enough to know she hated those sort of things, absolutely loathed them. With visible effort, Monika pulled herself back. Her shoulders, which had curved like a raven's talons, straightened. Still, there was the pricking feeling: So what? So what if it was black-tie? If Amelia had asked, she would have gone. She would have behaved, even. 

Lump in her throat, she pressed, "Did you not want me to come?"

Something stuck in Amelia's chest. "I would take you anywhere with me."

Once upon a time, Amelia had made a promise to Monika's mother that she would watch out for her. It hadn't been out of pity but love. It was strange to love someone like Monika. Days Amelia wondered what it said about her. Couldn't you have made friends with someone else? Willow used to ask her. Someone, I don't know, fixable? 

But Monika was not unfixable. She had never been unfixable ─ she just hadn't been given the tools. What many people omitted about being better, about getting better, was that it was you who had to do it yourself. No one could fix you but yourself. And you needed to want to be fixed. You needed a reason to get better. Amelia had given Monika a reason.

Monika Godfrey was brash and serrated. She was sharp and a safety hazard. She was unfiltered and unapologetic and unsophisticated. She was every wild thing with blood at the corner of its mouth. But Monika Godfrey knew that. Monika Godfrey was trying to make up for it. Monika Godfrey had a soul.

She stuck the band-aid to the corner of Amelia's forehead, then gave her a once over. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yes," Amelia groaned. She was tired of that question. "I'm fine."

"Dude," Monika said, standing up and stalking towards the wastebin in Amelia's room, "you fell from the Washington Monument."

"I didn't fall," Amelia corrected, emphasizing.

"Oh, yes," Monika said tolerantly, throwing the ruined cotton in the bin, "an important distinction."

Amelia huffed. She tossed the pillow at Monika who caught it skillfully. "Peter saved me, you know."

"Oh, I know," Monika made a face. "I saw it on the news."

"Hmm," Amelia trailed off, staring off into space. Monika paused to watch her, her face contorting when she realized Amelia was daydreaming. "You know," Amelia said, a little breathless, "there's a bit of gold in his brown eyes."

"What?" Monika snapped. "Oh, please tell me you're not falling for that nerd Parker."

"What?" This seemed to wake Amelia up. "No," she scoffed. "I'm just ─ I'm telling you that he has nice eyes," she said simply and shrugged.

"Yeah, right," Monika replied back sarcastically. She swung the bedroom door open. "Look, it's Sunday and we're in desperate need of a grocery store run, so you gonna be alright here by yourself?" 

"What, no!" Amelia protested, springing up from the bed and following Monika out of her bedroom. "I'm coming with."

"No, you're not," Monika said, grabbing the keys.

"Yes, I am." Amelia snatched the keys out of Monika's hands then she turned to jimmy her feet in her shoes.

"No. You're not," Monika pressed. "I don't want you to have a sudden amnesia attack in the middle of the parking lot and forget who you are and get lost."

Amelia, in the middle of pulling her shoes over her heel, turned to the silver-haired girl, her face twisted in confusion. "Why would I have an amnesia attack?"

"Because you hit your head," Monika shrugged. "That's what people have in the movies, right? Then they forget their name."

Amelia sighed through her nose and swung open the front door. "Let's just go," she said quietly, knowing there were more of Monika's hilarious jokes to come.

GROCERY shopping in the convenience store with Amelia and Monika was more like a treasure hunt than a field trip. Gemma had discovered this on one of her very first expeditions. It was all a game. They took the grocery list, tore it half with each of them having a piece, and raced with carts to see who could check off all the ingredients first.

It was mostly always Monika, but that had more to do with her ruthlessness of cart-pushing rather than her ability to find stuff.

"How many boxes of Mac and Cheese do you guys need?" Gemma asked, reading the contents on the back of the box.

"A lot," Monica said.

"How much is a lot?"

"It's less than too many and more than some."

Gemma huffed. "Well, that's helpful." She dumped five boxes of the stuff in the cart, then bit her lip. When Monika had asked her to come along and help her shop, she had forgotten to mention Amelia. Or maybe she had knowingly omitted. On certain occasions when Gemma had had a fight with her mother, she avoided seeing Amelia. Amelia with her perfect hair, and her perfect teeth, and her perfect family. Gemma shook her head. Even after this long of friendship, there was a small, petty part of Gemma that felt like this was all out of pity, still. But it was not. It was not and she had to tell herself that after every fight with her mother.

Elaine Burke worked two long shifts at the hospital as a nurse to put her daughter through school. To rent the apartment they lived in. To bring food to the table. And sometimes Gemma forgot that. Sometimes Gemma wanted more. Sometimes Gemma wanted to be a teenager throwing a tantrum about wanting to buy some stupid thing that was way too pricey and not worry about dinner, or rent, or the water or electricity bill. Sometimes Gemma wanted to not be adulting at fifteen.

She glanced at Amelia, trying on oven mitts just for the fun of it, and frowned. The band-aid stuck to the corner of her head cinched close her wound. "Hey," she said quietly, "how's your head by the way?"

Amelia put away the oven mitts and furrowed her eyebrows. "Why is everybody worried about my head?" she asked, pushing the cart forward.

"Because you hit it?"

"I did not hit my head," she stated. Then turned to Monika as the realization dawned upon her, an offended gasp falling from her lips. "You told everybody I hit my head!?"

"How was I supposed to know?" Monika shrugged. "They didn't show what was going on inside." She picked up a few bags of chips and dropped them in the cart.

Amelia threw her head back and groaned in embarrassment and frustration. She turned to Gemma and said, "My head is fine."

"Your head is not fine," Monika snapped with attitude. "Not if you're falling for Parker."

Gemma's eyebrows rose, reaching for her hairline. "Peter Parker?"

Amelia stammered. "I'm not ─ " she started, then saw her friends' judging faces and sighed through her nose. She threw her hands in the air in exasperation. "Why do I even bother?" Monika and Gemma snickered. Shaking her head, Amelia tugged on the cart. "Are we done?"

"No, ketchup," Monika said and rounded the aisle to get ketchup.

"But I don't like ketchup," Amelia frowned.

"Well, it isn't for you."

As Monika disappeared behind the aisle, Amelia wandered closer to Gemma who had been staring at Monika, too, but now her gaze was fixed on a snowglobe. From the looks of it, it had been shaken recently because it lay still on the shelf, the glitter precipitated on the eternal holiday snow. Both Amelia and Gemma watched, transfixed, as the silver bits caught in the pine tree.

"You wanna buy that?" Amelia asked quietly.

"What?" Gemma blinked out of her glitter trance and shook her head. "Uh, no. No."

Amelia bumped Gemma's shoulder with hers, running her finger over the glass of the snowglobe. "Come on, Gem." She gave it another shake and set it down to watch the glitter cover the winter wonderland.

Gemma's voice tightened. There was a lump in her throat. "We're a little tight this month, Amy. And the rent's due soon. So no, I don't wanna buy that."

Amelia looked over her shoulder at Gemma, eyes dulled. Gemma feared she would say something and then Gemma would say something in return and it would turn into a fight but all Amelia said was, "Okay," a tinge of melancholy in her voice. She gave the snowglobe another shake and abandoned the aisle for someone else to find it as fascinating and beautiful as she had.

Gemma wasn't exactly sure why she was angry. Although Amelia had done nothing to invoke her vexation, she was definitely part of the problem. Currently, she stood by the billing counter, eyeing Monika who dumped the contents of the cart onto the counter to be billed. No one could deny that Amelia was a glorious portrait of youth, the well-tended product of a fortunate and moneyed pairing. Ordinarily, she was so polished that it was bearable, though, because she was clearly not the same species as Gemma's crude-and-lamentable family. But tonight, under the fluorescent lights of the grocery store, Amelia's hair was messy and tied and her shorts were frayed from wear. She was barelegged and sockless in her uggs and oversized hoodie and very clearly a real human, an attainable human, and this, somehow, made Gemma want to smash her the snowglobe on the floor.

But really, it wasn't about Amelia as much as it was what Amelia represented. The having it easy crowd made Gemma's skin crawl. She gazed out at the ceaseless afternoon sun and thought about her mother. Gemma Burke lived in two houses ─ the one her mother paid the rent for and the one in her dreams. The dream house was always painful but the longing for it was interminable. It smelled both of her mother's baked goods and was void of the feeling of lack she felt in their rented home. It was perfect and heartbreaking. It was home and not home and everything Gemma wanted, but she wasn't sure if it would be good for her.

She was made in these narrow New York alleys and had an inkling that mansions would make her sick. But the feeling prevailed. The sweet feeling, to retreat in her dream house, to close herself like a flower bud. When she closed her eyes, home felt so close. It was thirty minutes from the grocery store and an instant from her mind. She wanted to smash everything off these shelves.

But Monika hollered her name and clasped her hand, palm against palm, heartbeats syncing. Gemma unfurled.

USUALLY, it took about a day for Gemma to settle down after her mother and she had butted heads. Elaine Burke hated it when her daughter lived more in her fantasy than in reality and that led to a few many disagreements. But today seemed oddly different in all ways. First, it was Monika driving Amelia's car back to their apartment, a very unusual thing. Then it was Amelia deciding she wanted to bake a cake and asking Gemma for help.

Then it was Gemma, following a twirling Amelia inside the apartment and towards the kitchen. There was something different about the Song girl but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. As long as Gemma had known her, Amelia had been looking for something. Her shoulders had always been heavy with that knowledge but right now it seemed she was dancing on air. Barefooted, she made a bad attempt at a pirouette then stumbled against the kitchen counter laughing at her own silliness. Something in Amelia felt lighter, younger, glowing.

"Now, I've never made it before myself," Amelia started, unlocking her phone and searching for a cake recipe, "but I imagine it would be easy." Gemma shrugged in answer as she joined her.

"What would be easy?" Monika asked, joining them at last and closing the front door after her. In her hand, she carried the last bag of groceries that she dropped on the kitchen slab.

"Homicide," Gemma answered.

"Well, the stabbing part is," Monika shrugged, dropping grandiosely on the couch. "The cleaning up after requires skill."

Both Amelia and Gemma descended into stunned silence. "Creepy, Mon," Amelia commented, her face screwed. "I'm not even gonna ask how you know that."

"We were actually really talking about making some cake," Gemma said as Monika turned the television on, "so if you have any helpful input there . . . ?"

"Nope," Monika shook her head, flicking through channels. "My two topics of interest are serial killers and ─ holy shit."

Amelia looked up from reading the recipe off the screen of her phone to where Monika sat at the utterance of expression of surprise. She sat on the couch, leaned forward, staring unblinkingly at the television. From here, Amelia couldn't make out what it was showing but the lowly sound told her it was a news channel. "What?" she asked, curious.

"Uh, nothing," Monika stammered and hastened to turn the television off. But Amelia was already rounding around the kitchen counter. 

"No, what is it?" she demanded but Monika pressed her lips against each other, hiding the remote behind her back. "Mon," she pressed but Monika shook her head. Amelia contemplated. Then Amelia dived. She pushed Monika against the couch and reached for the remote in her hand but Monika only raised it higher. Monika grabbed her and turned and now Amelia was on the floor. Still, she scampered up and threw her body over Monika's. Behind them, Gemma in an apron had set to work and was whisking peacefully and whistling some show tune while the other two girls fought over the remote as if this was all completely commonplace.

Somehow, Amelia managed to grab the remote and while she proclaimed it was because of her brute strength, Monika would have attributed the win to Amelia's sock that had hit her in the face. She laid back as Amelia turned the television back on and turned up the volume.

" . . . we're bringing you live coverage from the New York Harbor where the New York's very own masked vigilante Spider-Man . . . ."

Amelia pretty much drowned out the rest of it. Her eyes were stuck on the screen. She crawled across the floor and sat down on the floor with a defeated thud a few feet away from the television screen. Peter, or more appropriately, Spider-Man was struggling to hold together the two halves of the Staten Island Ferry that had been cut in halves. He was hanging in the air by nothing but the his webs as he desperately tried to pull the two halves back together again. Amelia covered her mouth with her hand, her shock-wide eyes still hadn't gone back to their original size. This definitely warranted Monika's surprised profanity. Amelia would have uttered a few to just as soon as she regained the ability to speak.