Chapter Text
Ashe Winters wakes up at 2:02 PM.
When she first wakes up and rubs her bleary eyes, she glances at her phone and decides her day is shot, might as well sleep until 2:30. She wakes up 43 minutes later to the afternoon sun in her eyes and finally decides to roll out of bed. It doesn’t matter much anyways, she has nowhere to be. No one is up worried why she hasn't texted back, no one is incessantly calling her phone.
Ashe has half the mind to consider it a blessing that she can have these late mornings. If anyone was waiting on her, she’d have to go to sleep at a strict 9 PM, probably, and maybe even wake up at 7. She cringes at the thought.
She pulls herself out of bed and stumbles into her bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. Her mouth tastes like cheese puffs, her dinner last night. She must’ve forgotten to brush her teeth, which is decidedly disgusting, but also, no one is ever here to judge her. She can get away with it, just this once.
After brushing her teeth and pulling up her sleeves to wash her face, Ashe notices a smudge of something navy blue on her arm. Ashe doesn’t pay much attention to it and scrubs at it with soap. The stain doesn't budge. What did she sleep on? Did a pen explode in her bed? Not this color– she only has glitter pens. And she doesn’t sleep in bed with them, she hardly uses them. Ashe inspects it closer.
THIS IS A PORABULA: Y-K=A(X-H)TINY CORNER 2
The handwriting is big bulky smudged lettering, the word parabola is misspelled, and the formula is from Algebra II, a class she took online last year. Ashe glances back at the mirror, then the formula.
Tiny corner 2?
That is not fucking normal in the slightest.
Before Ashe can panic, she strips her clothes and begins running a hot shower. The only logical conclusion is that someone broke in, right? To write that on her arm?
Ashe immediately regrets hopping in the shower. She should be getting her baseball bat from the closet and creeping downstairs to catch the intruder, who probably hasn’t left yet. Ashe can imagine them digging through shelves to loot her mother’s antique spoon collection. Maybe taking her father’s OLED flatscreen and shoving it through the window. No, on second thought, it wouldn’t fit through the window. The back door, for sure.
She takes a sponge and starts scrubbing at her arm, before noticing more scribbles above her knees.
Above the left:
PITHAGERUM THERUM: A TINY CORNER 2+ B TINY CORNER 2 + C TINY CORNER 2!!!!!
Above the right:
SLOPE INTERCEPTION: Y= MX+ B
Ashe Winters is going fucking crazy. She’d hoped to push off her eventual psychotic break for another few years, at least. It was bound to happen eventually, she was expecting it. But schizophrenia is usually diagnosed later than her age– she’d researched this. It’s possible but less likely. Though, Ashe remembers, she is the primary age demographic for BPD to develop. Roughly half of people with BPD also experience hallucinations. Ashe calms down.
It must be that.
Regardless of the BPD showing, Ashe scrubs for another few minutes to no avail.
-
After checking the house for intruders and deciding there was none, unless they’d hid in the washer, Ashe then glues herself to her computer and begins googling, home intruders who write slightly incorrect math formulas in permanent ink on sleeping teenagers, and bpd in 17 year olds. She takes a quiz: BPD or hypochondriac. She is graciously deemed by the online quiz website, hypochondriac. For good measure she takes another quiz, schizophrenia or hypochondriac, and gets the same result.
No, that can’t be it. Definitely BPD.
Ashe hears a loud noise and jumps before even fully processing what it was: the front door slamming.
“Ashe?” Mark calls out, “‘m home!”
Without even thinking about it, Ashe decides she must hide this from her father before he puts her in a ward. She pulls a hoodie over her head and stumbles into her sweatpants.
“Are you awake? You better be awake! Come to the kitchen, I brought Chinese takeout!” his gruff voice seemed to shake Ashe’s ribcage, which had gotten used to the week of uncomfortable silence.
“You didn’t call,” Ashe says from the hallway. Mark grunts in response. When Ashe doesn’t respond, thrown off by the lack of a reply, Mark adds, “phone died last night.”
Not true. Her tracking app had pinged around 1:30 AM when Mark had entered the neighboring city, New Haven. He’d then stopped at 4 different houses before 5. He must’ve forgotten to turn it off again.
“Oh,” Ashe says, seating herself at the dining room table, “okay.”
On the table was a bag containing lo-mein noodles and two takeout boxes of orange chicken. Ashe picked up the box of orange chicken. It was cold.
“Not hungry,” Ashe lies.
“Bullshit, course you are.”
“It’s cold,” she admits, “I’m sorry.”
“Oh.”
Mark shoves the boxes into the microwave and begins heating them up. Ashe re-adjusts herself in her seat. They both awkwardly listen to the microwave whirr.
Or, was it comfortably? If awkwardness is baked into every interaction Ashe has with her father, does that circle back around to comfort? This is her normal, after all. Ashe decides she prefers comfort. Her father’s presence consistently wraps her in a warm fuzzy blanket of awkward.
The microwave pops. There is thin metal wiring attached to the tops of the boxes. They both pretend not to notice.
“Have you been attending your online classes?” Mark asks.
“Yes,” Ashe lies. She’s been skimming the recordings.
“What are you studying?”
“Next week is mole day, so we’re studying molecular theory and making powerpoints in chemistry.”
“What the hell is mole day?”
The microwave beeps. Mark dumps half the lo-mein and one box of chicken onto a plate he’d prepared and shoves it in front of Ashe. He sits down on the other end of the table and begins eating out of the boxes.
“Some scientist came up with it. It’s a holiday for chemists. Molecular theory.”
“That scientist was a nerd,” he grunts, “what about english?”
“Romeo and Juliet. Next month we’re moving onto Pride and Prejudice.”
“Forcing you to read a lot of romance, huh?”
Ashe nods silently.
“What about, uh,” he pauses to scratch his scruffy blonde stubble, then up to his pale green tattoo of an iguana beside his eye, “history?”
“I tested out of history this year, remember?” Ashe says, not surprised in the slightest that her father had forgotten.
“Oh,” Mark replies, deciding that was the end of his school related questions.
The pair then eat hot-on-the-outside and cold-on-the-inside chicken in silence. At least the lo-mein was warm. Until it stopped being warm moments later.
Don’t bring up the BPD, Ashe tells herself, he’ll just check you into psychiatric care, and then they will put you on medications.
Ashe doesn’t want to deal with medications. That means she’ll have to wake up at a consistent time every morning to take them. More trouble than it’s worth.
“How long are you staying?”
Mark glances up from his box. “Few days.”
“Ah.”
Right as Mark had settled back into the silence, Ashe asks, “can I come with you?”
Mark shakes his head. “Can’t bring kids on business trips.”
“I’m not a kid,” Ashe says, “I’m a young adult.”
Mark snorts. “You’re a kid.”
And that was the end of that.
-
“They’ve got idiots behind the wheel of our country,” Mark retorts to no one in particular at the local news, “they’re steering us into a ditch, I can tell you that. Can you fetch me a beer?”
Oh, he must be talking to Ashe. She fishes a dark brown bottle out of the bottom drawer and pops the lid with her father’s bottle opener. She unceremoniously drops it into the cupholder of Mark’s recliner and sinks into the couch. She tries to focus on the news– politics and such. Her mind is wandering rapidly though. Something’s scratching at the walls of her mind. Something she overlooked. It’s a quiet murmur, but it’s distracting.
The notes on her skin. Hasn’t she heard of something like that before? Some sort of psychic link between people? Ashe has no one she’s psychically linked to, that’s for sure.
Ashe glances back to the news.
The politics segment is wrapping up. Next up is local journalism fodder. A segment on soul-linked couples in Rockfall.
Ashe’s stomach flips.
That is most definitely what she had missed.
Yes, she’d heard of this. Extremely rarely, a couple is so compatible that their bodies link together. Birthmarks transfer, bruises gained by one person shadow onto the other’s body, and most notably, any writing or tattoos transfer instantly until washed off. Ashe’s first concern is the most vain. She pulls up her sweatpants to inspect her birthmark, a strange splotch in the shape of a fish on her ankle, and deems it just as odd as she remembered. She then notices a fresh bruise on her shin. Ashe presses lightly on it. No pain.
“When did you fall?” Mark, who has apparently been watching her, questions.
“Earlier today,” Ashe lies easily, “tripped off the back porch.”
Mark accepts this and focuses back on the T.V., which Ashe had forgotten to watch. A couple is being interviewed. They show their shared birthmarks. They show their shared bruises. One person draws a line on their arm and it’s transferred to the others in an instant. Mark picks up the remote and switches the channel.
“Can you switch it back?” Ashe requests, straining to keep her voice even.
“S’all bullshit,” Mark says, “I bet it’s some genetic thing. Bet they’re not even compatible. It’s the media.”
“Did anyone in our family have it?”
Mark laughs a shallow laugh. “Not at all.”
“Can you switch it back?”
Mark takes a swig of his beer for four excruciating seconds. “Nah.”
“Dad?”
Mark spares a glance to his daughter.
Ashe pulls up her sleeve and showcases her various Algebra II formulas. They’re smudged now. Mark squints. “School notes?”
“Not mine.” Ashe says simply, praying to whatever god did this to her that she makes it out alive and unmedicated. Mark’s eyes narrow.
“I didn’t fall. I lied. Not my bruises.”
Mark scoffs. “Have you tried washing it off?”
“Scrubbed for like, 20 minutes in the shower. Won’t come off.”
Mark pauses and rubs his face. He mutters something indiscernible behind his hands.
“Huh?” Ashe asks, desperately clinging to his words, or lack thereof.
“I said, oh hell no, Ashe, I said fucking no!”
Ashe recoils at the sound of his voice, deep and gravelly and loud.
“It’s not real. Don’t write back. It will go away.”
“If you don’t want me to write back, then you think it really is that?” Ashe says, afraid to give it a name.
“I think it’s crazy.”
“I wanna know,” Ashe presses, “I need to know if it’s real or if I’m crazy. Because it can’t be that it’s crazy. It has to be that I’m crazy.”
Mark pauses. He glances between Ashe and the floor a couple times, refusing to keep eye contact for more than a few seconds.
“I think you should go to a doctor or something. Don’t write back.”
Ashe’s prayers to no one were chewed up and spit back out. Ashe stood up and walked to her room. Mark had nothing else to say on the matter. Ashe tried not to slam her door and failed.
Whatever. It’s fine, whatever.
Ashe repeated this to herself for a solid three minutes while pacing around her room. Whatever. Fine. It’s whatever. It’s fine.
She’s got to prove she’s not crazy. Even if she is crazy.
She almost falls reaching for her desk to find her gel pens.