CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
like tinsel and ribbons

SAWYER TOOK COMFORT IN THE idea that this would be the last Christmas she would be forced to spend at home. After graduation, she could do whatever she wanted. She could cut off all contact with the people she knew here. She could be free. No more manacles, no more reminders that nothing she did would ever be enough. For now, though, as she stepped off the train onto the platform with her luggage in tow and her friends bidding her goodbye, the last dregs of that thrill ebbed away like a tide receding from the shore. And then she was back in her father's car with her mother in the passenger seat and they were driving back towards the junction where the potholes in the streets dipped and made the insides of the car tremble in agitation. Leaving Hogwarts, she'd immediately felt her mood improve, felt new all over again. Getting back in this car seemed to undo all that again. Like two hands pressing down on her shoulders, forcing her back into the confined space where she couldn't breathe, she felt it poking at all her organs, pinching the flesh of her flaws, sneering, you poor sad thing.

One moment to another Sawyer barely remembered unpacking. (Maybe it's because she didn't unpack at all because of a lack of motivation to do anything except crawl under her covers and sleep until this was all over, and all her luggage was still sitting at the foot of her bed, waiting for her to decide what to do with her possessions—stay or go? But of course, there was nowhere to go yet. That part of her life was still waiting in the wings for its cue.) Barely remembered forcing herself into the shower and washing away the hours of a train ride freezing her muscles stiff and rolling out the aches in her joints.

Standing before the mirror in her towel, bathed in a pharmacy of lights, Sawyer gazed at her reflection with flat eyes. This is you, she had to tell herself, staring at her heat-flushed skin and recognising none of it. This is your face. Your nose, your freckles, your sad/angry/empty eyes. This is you, and you are supposed to be better. Touching a hand to her inky hair, limp and wet and dripping down her back, she made a mental note to get her father to arrange another session with Dr Josten. And then she remembered that her hair was still due for a trim to keep the weight off. Some part of her didn't know where all that weight came from. It was when she finally traced out the line of her jaw and spotted the purple blemish like a stain at the base of her neck from yesterday that she thought, Let me do it right this once.

And then she turned off the light and stood in the dark listening out for the sounds in the pipes behind the wall like a pulse, all that putrid toilet water rushing around like blood in veins, and pretended she was underwater, feet in the eddies, floating away, floating into oblivion, floating into the future.

Moments later, she'd been ejected from her room by her father, who'd donned his hideous 'kiss the chef' apron everyone expressly despised, brandished a rolling pin, and declared that they needed to restart their annual tradition of making gingerbread houses on Christmas Eve, so they better get practicing from now until the weekend. Fine, Sawyer thought, if this was one step to doing things right again, so be it. And then Christmas Eve came round the corner and the December-bleached sky brought in a curtain of watery snow and things got so much worse.

Apparently Wyatt had decided to make it a competition of teams and hadn't drawn a consensus from his family members (namely Sawyer). Sawyer wanted to point out that just because she was on the Quidditch team didn't mean she was actually a team player, but before she could make her escape plan Wyatt had staked his claim over their father, which left Sawyer no choice but to team up with her mother and wish for the sweet release of death.

Perhaps it was the timing that was off. All timing seemed to be off where her mother was concerned. Perhaps it was because she was just riding the coattails of her medication, still due for her second dosage. Perhaps that was why she knocked down every wall that her mother constructed. Perhaps she didn't want to build a foundation with her mother any more than she wanted to be in this kitchen making gingerbread houses for no reason other than the limp evil of sentiment. Here's the kicker: let me do it right this once sounded like a faraway cry.

"We could line the roof with something to make it less boring. The M&Ms are somewhere... oh, they're right here," her mother said with a sheepish laugh, a small smile tugging at her lips as she shook the bag of peanut butter M&Ms. Their gingerbread house was barely a skeleton, just three walls and a roof, and it looked more like a sad mud hut than real estate. They had a pathway that was meant to lead up to a door they hadn't built yet on the base piece, but it looked more and more like a puddle of mud the longer Sawyer looked at it. If she cared any less about it the gingerbread house would still look the same.

On the other side of the counter, Wyatt and Dad were making much more progress with their house. They'd even had the time to make a small pond out of blue bubblegum and ducks out of pieces of sugar-crystallised peeps. It looked like something out of a Christmas card. Probably because they were actually having an infectious amount of fun. All their boisterous laughter and playful bickering over the design, over Wyatt intermittently sneaking a couple chocolate chips into his mouth and Dad threatening eviction if he didn't get the powdered sugar on the roof of the house and not all over the kitchen floor where the snow shouldn't be, filled the space, and on their side of the island counter, it sounded like Christmas Eve. They both had icing and powdered sugar smeared all over their faces like warpaint.

"Dad, just hear me out, okay? I have a vision—"

"No! No more visions!" A pause, a narrowing of eyes. "Unless you're talking about a stable—"

"That's so stupid. Who the hell is bougie enough to own a horse—you know what? Nevermind. Our gingerbread bros can afford it. Let's do that."

Dad laughed, and Sawyer couldn't watch anymore.

"Why don't you do the M&Ms?" Her mother asked, her eyes shining and hopeful as she held up the bag of icing. "Make them look like Christmas lights. Or I could do it, and you can put the icing on so they'll stick."

Sawyer flicked her mother an impassive look. This time last year, her mother could barely stand to be in the same room as her. Now, she was asking whether she wanted to frost their gingerbread house so it looked semi-presentable. Something had changed, and Sawyer didn't care what. Presently, though, she wished she could be with her friends. Even though she would potentially be third wheeling all of them since Quinn had taken Jeremy home to meet her parents, and Rio had accepted Marcus' anxious offer to house him for the Christmas break, she didn't care. (Technically, Marcus and Rio weren't getting back together, but it was a start. Sawyer didn't know when that conversation happened, but she didn't hate it. If they were mending, then maybe this would be the first step towards repair.) But her mother's sudden change in attitude was more jarring than welcome. Sawyer didn't know whether to trust it.

Snatching up the icing, Sawyer avoided her mother's gaze, and began to squeeze the icing out along the roof of the gingerbread house, not bothering to keep her lines neat. With a shaky sigh, her mother leant over the house and began to stud the icing with M&Ms in alternating colours, her breath a misplaced weather.

"This line's a little crooked," her mother said, lightly. "Maybe if we—"

"We can do this quietly," Sawyer said in a voice made of teeth, her fingers curling around the piping bag, squeezing out a clump of icing, not to suppress her temper, which was already at a breaking point, but in a mimicry of crushing the life out of someone. She dropped the bag, and picked up the spoon lying in the bowl of chocolate chips to scoop it away, gripping it so tight she felt the stem bend.

Wyatt frowned at them. "Hey—"

Sawyer slammed the metal spoon against the counter, the dissonant clang effectively shutting Wyatt up. The dark look she sent Wyatt's way should've been enough to swallow her brother whole; the source of her anger, boiling under her skin and threatening to ooze through her pores—a menacing inhibition that could eat her from the inside out.

Their mother blinked, hurt flickering over her face. She glanced once at her husband, who nodded at her to keep going before turning back to Sawyer. "I didn't mean to—"

"To what?" Sawyer said, viciously. Immediately, the air in the kitchen soured, like rapidly rotting fruit. In the moment, the hurt on her mother's face made her want to take a knife to her flesh and shred it to ribbons. How dare she look at her this way? How dare she try to act like the past year never happened? If she was trying to gain recognition that she'd authorised this getting-better process, if she was now trying to reconcile their shipwrecked relationship because Sawyer wasn't the mess she used to be, then here was another kicker for the day: it wasn't going to happen. Not now. Not ever. Rage simmered in her veins, steel glinting in the back of her throat. "We washed our hands off each other, or have you forgotten? In fact, there is no we. You promised me that we wouldn't play house if we didn't have to because I can barely stand to be here as it is."

Guilt crumpled her mother's expression, Wyatt looked caught between worlds, and her father merely pursed his lips. But Sawyer wasn't going to slacken her iron grip on her rage anytime soon. She cut her mother a dead look. Without a glance over her shoulder, she turned sharply, and stormed out of the kitchen.

All the way to her room, her hands hadn't stopped shaking. Something sharp dug into the soft part of her chest.

As she washed her hands in the sink in her bathroom, Sawyer seethed, scrubbing off the icing and the slick remnants of the chocolate under her nails. She scrubbed until her hands were raw-red. Until all she heard was the roaring of the water gushing from the tap, the roaring of her heartbeat in her ears, the roaring of static as the rest of the world faded out of periphery and her vision tunnelled. Until there wasn't anything left to wash off, but she kept going until a line of skin scraped off one of her old scars and the blood sprung to the surface, stinging and waspish. There was no relief in it.

Frustration raked down her skin, and she slammed her hand down on the faucet, shutting the water off. And the silence sat stunned in the coffin of four walls. When she caught her reflection in the mirror again, she had to say, out loud, seven years bad luck, over and over, like a mantra tethering her to the last fraying straw of her sanity.

There was a knock on the bathroom door then.

"Sawyer," her mother said, and Sawyer wanted to kick down the door and let the splinters rain down on them like missiles. "Look, I just want to talk. You don't have to answer, but I'd really like you to listen."

I don't care what you like, Sawyer wanted to say, and even though her callousness was harsh, it wasn't unjust, I don't have to do anything.

Instead, she loosed a little bit of her impulsive rage and struck the door with her fist. It shook on its hinges, but didn't give. It'd weathered worse under Sawyer's ownership. It could weather the storm brewing inside Sawyer this time.

On the other side of the door, her mother sucked in a steadying breath. "I loved you the moment I saw you. You were the first one out. Then it was Wyatt. But I loved you the same, and I never stopped. I didn't, for one second, think it would come down to this. But I've learnt that things like this, the outbursts, the violence, the reckless behaviour... It always starts from home. I know it's too late for anything I have to say to matter now that you're so close to graduation, but I just want you to know that... that I'm sorry. I should've been better."

Something in Sawyer shattered. Like a crack in a stone that started deep, a long time ago, spreading outward until the entire thing crumbled to pieces.

The door opened and Sawyer didn't even know she'd been crying until she spat out, "you're a liar."

Devastation replaced shock when her mother fully registered the sight before her.

"You hurt me," Sawyer sobbed, the hot tears splashing down her face, brimming in a thick film over her eyes, and the rest of it wrenched free. Three words she never thought she'd confess out loud. Not to anyone. Especially not to her mother. They drove fishhooks into her chest and tugged so hard her voice came out like broken glass. Through her burry vision, she couldn't see her mother's face, but she heard it all and her chest burned from all the acid in her tone, so thick she could choke on it. "You're supposed to be my mum, but you hurt me. If you loved me so much, why would you do that? Why would you tell me I'm not worth it?"

Her mother flinched, her features fissured with heartbreak. She reached out to Sawyer, her hands going to her elbows. "I never said you weren't—"

Livid, Sawyer slapped them away. "Don't you fucking touch me," she snapped, the bone-crushing anger coiling like a python around her body, refusing to let go. "You didn't say it, but it's what I heard."

Just then, her bedroom door flew open and Wyatt came in, disbelief crossed his face first, then his expression darkened a split second later, when he spotted Sawyer's teary rage and his mother gaping at her in helplessness. In three quick strides, he caught Sawyer's elbow. Her skin flared up, and she flung him off, but he didn't back away. Instead, he planted himself between them, and stared down his mother.

"What did you do?" He demanded, and for a flash of a second, Sawyer thought about the summer before sixth year, through the haze of medication and saw her mother's shocked face as she stumbled back into the painting, the broken glass scattering all over the floor, and Wyatt, holding their mother's shaking frame, the same accusation in his tone. "Why'd you make her so upset?"

Tears glimmering in her eyes, their mother blinked at him in stunned silence. "I—"

"I think it's better if you left her alone," Wyatt said, and the frost in his tone froze the air in the room.

For an endless moment, their mother stood there, processing what her golden child was telling her to do. For an endless moment, Sawyer thought her mother would launch into another tirade, and this time blame Wyatt's defiance on her again. But then the shutters pulled over her expression, and she merely nodded before making her swift exit.

Finally, the silence settled, and Wyatt turned to Sawyer, who fixed him with a blank expression. She sniffed and wiped her face down with the hem of her sweater.

"Do you want me to stay?" Wyatt asked, softly.

Sawyer cut him a flat look. "Why would you?" Why would he? Logically, after all she'd done to push him away. After all she'd done to take her rage out on him where it wasn't justifiable. Why would he stay? Why would anyone?

A funny expression crossed Wyatt's face. Sawyer couldn't pin it down. "Because you're my sister? And I love you?" He said it like it was a question—one she should've had the answers to, but, really, she didn't. As she brushed past him and crossed over to the window seat, he followed her, and perched on the edge of her bed.

"Don't say that," Sawyer said, her voice rough.

"Why not?" Wyatt challenged. "I mean it."

"You can't."

Rolling his eyes, Wyatt pulled one of her pillows onto his lap. "Just because you've been a total asshole to me these past years doesn't mean I hate you."

He let that settle between them for a second.

"Dad talked to mum, y'know," Wyatt said, meeting her eyes unflinchingly, even though her stare was piercing and her riven-granite expression unyielding. The thing Sawyer thought she hated most about Wyatt was that he didn't know how to back down. Until now, when she realised it was something else. He knew when to back down. He knew how to read the room. He just didn't know how to give up on something or someone he stood by. "He told me just now, that he thinks you'll probably find your own home elsewhere someday soon, like everyone else. Kids rarely want to live with their parents these days. He told her if she wanted to have a relationship with you, she had to stop freezing you out. I guess she got some sense knocked back into her, because she was being so nice to you. Mum said that you couldn't be reasoned with, but Dad thinks it's only because she makes broad statements. How much of that is true?"

Leaning her head against the window pane, the cold glass burning against the heat of her temple, Sawyer dug her fingernail into an old scar on her kneecap. What was between her mother and her was made out of toothpicks and expired superglue. Nothing stuck, and one flare-up could send it all crashing down in flames. Too much effort to rebuild, too little time to bother. "I won't talk about this anymore."

"Cool," Wyatt said, shrugging. Then he levelled her with his solemn gaze. "You know you don't have to forgive her if you're not ready, right?" When she cut him a death glare, Wyatt lifted his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, dropping it... Are you and Oliver, like, an actual thing again?"

On a technicality, Sawyer wanted to say no, because, technically, they were never really a thing before. But she didn't know if Wyatt would bring the question to Oliver. Really, she didn't want to talk about it. Especially not to Wyatt. Every time she heard Oliver's name a warm glow touched the inside of her chest, like a sunset flaring over the horizon. She didn't know what this foreign feeling meant, and it was too strange. Instead, she flicked Wyatt a deadpan look.

Wyatt arched a brow, a corner of his lips tugging up. "I'm just saying, I don't hate it. I mean, I know I'm not supposed to approve or whatever brothers do for their sisters, but... I genuinely think you two are good together."

"Pass," Sawyer drawled.

Wyatt groaned. "Fine."

Silence lapsed between them. Sawyer turned to the view outside her window. The streets were blanketed in a muddy sludge, and a blue car down the street skidded, nearly taking out a row of bicycles chained to the stands like a row of dominoes. She stared past her distorted reflection, the ghost in the window pane with red-rimmed eyes and a watery complexion, an imagine so fleeting yet growing so opaque each time she blinked, like a movie in stop-motion.

"Why do you look at me like we didn't used to ride our bikes together everyday when we were six?"

Like the sea shattering itself over and over on the rocks, Wyatt's voice throws itself against the bank of silence. She felt his lighthouse gaze, the beam sweeping over her, illuminating her into existence. Sometimes she wished he'd pass right over her because she didn't deserve it. Because she'd spent so long ignoring the docks. Because she had the answer to his question burning under her skin, but the right words wouldn't come, and all the wrong ones twisted her tongue into paperclip knives.

Before she could answer, her bedroom door whined open just a crack and Dad's head poked in. When his eyes landed on them both, surprise flitted over his features, and he blinked like he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing, like this was a mirage that'd dissolve when he opened his eyes again. Sawyer understood his dubiety. It'd been a long time since they'd both been in the same room together voluntarily.

"Hey, kids," Dad said, finally, unable to contain his smile. "I'm going to need you both to run to the shops real quick. There's a bunch of stuff we need for tomorrow's dinner."

Wyatt flicked Sawyer an uncertain look. "I can—"

"Extra money for more ice cream," Sawyer said, and when Dad shrugged in consent, she straightened to her feet. "Deal."

* * *

LATER THAT NIGHT, a conversation on the phone:

"So... I heard someone almost broke a girl's neck for her twin in a Tesco..."

"She deserved it."

"I know," Oliver mused. "But a Tesco? Really?"

Sawyer leant against the wall, twining the cord around her wrist. "She picked the fight." The wad of gum in the corner of her mouth smacked loudly. Gum that'd been purloined from that girl, of course. Sawyer never paid for her own gum if she could help it, and she didn't think of it as a crime, really. It was due diligence (slamming the girl to the ground, one foot crushed against the back of her neck, pressing down hard enough for her to feel it) and indemnification (bending down to pluck the pack of blueberry gum out of her lipgloss-filled purse). And then Wyatt had dragged Sawyer out of the store, laughing through his reproach of her methods. Nobody touched Sawyer's things without consequence.

"Oh, she's one of those." She could almost hear Oliver rolling his eyes in his half-mirthful, half-patronising tone. Maybe he found her show of violence a little far fetched, but he understood, and he was smart enough not to comment on it. "Y'know, like big voice, big personality, picks on everyone who looks different—I thought that type only spawned in Manchester?"

"Maybe they've spread to Bristol," Sawyer shrugged. "Migration happens all the time."

"I'm proud of you."

"For getting banned from that Tesco?"

This time she heard the dull thump of his head smacking lightly against the wall in exasperation. "No, you monster. I meant, like, for taking the first step. Even if you haven't exactly talked it all out with Wyatt. It's difficult to get over grudges in a day."

"I had to get my ice cream from Lidl," Sawyer deadpanned. "Of course I can't let go yet."

Oliver laughed. And deep in her chest, that warm glow, like a sunset between her ribs, poured liquid light into her veins.

And she wanted to make him do it again.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
8

yes, sawyer fought a chav girl in a tesco.