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Van's been in her new apartment for two nights the first time she wakes up screaming.
It's a crappy little one-bedroom in Pittsburgh, the farthest she could afford to ride the bus from Wiskayok and still have enough left over for a security deposit and a month or so of necessities. It's January and the vent in the bedroom is broken, so she bundles in high school sweats and sweatshirts, perfectly preserved for nineteen months on the floor of her childhood bedroom, which no one bothered to so much as enter, much less clean up. When they were released from the hospital, she stayed with her mom until the first installment of the Matthews payout hit, and then she boarded the first bus she could, applied for the first cheap one-bedroom she could find, and picked up the keys the next day.
The installment thing is supposed to keep them grounded, keep them safe, keep them available. Fuck that, Van decided, and bailed.
She wakes up not from her own screams but from the pain in her hand. She blinks a few times and realizes she's standing. She's standing on the floor, glass shattered around her, and she's put her hand through the bedroom window.
Fuck.
She doesn't remember what she was dreaming, maybe wolves again, maybe girls, maybe girlwolves, shapeshifting, always on the hunt. Something caught up to her and she—well.
Her palm is bleeding; her bare feet are surrounded by shards of windowpane; for a moment, she's frozen. Blood drips onto her thigh and then the drops chase each other down her calf. Finally, she gingerly steps around the broken glass and makes her way to the bathroom. She doesn't own anything resembling a first-aid kit—the thought is laughable—so she winces as she extracts fragments of glass with her fingernails and then rinses her hand under the water and wraps it as best she can in toilet paper, which it immediately bleeds through. Great, awesome. She doesn't have a broom, either, so the shattered glass will be there til she can go out and buy one in the morning.
What she does have is a phone, plugged into the wall in the kitchen. She threw away her contact book—mostly a scribbled list of names and numbers in the back of a math notebook—when she got back to her mom's place, but she still remembers Tai's home number.
She starts to dial. Blood drips down her wrist. The clock on the stove catches her eye; it's four in the morning.
She hangs up. She goes back to bed.
When she wakes in the morning her bedding on the floor is stained with blood. The remnants of the toilet paper are stuck to the places where her palm is injured, and she gingerly peels them off.
She uses five of her remaining dollars to buy a broom at the corner store down the street, ten more for some band-aids and plastic wrap and duct tape.
If she had health insurance, or a doctor, or a functioning state ID that didn't belong to a girl who was still legally dead, maybe she could get sleeping pills or something. Instead she stops at the liquor store and buys a bottle of their cheapest whiskey.
Van sweeps the glass into the dustpan that came with the broom and then realizes belatedly that she doesn't have a trash can. She shoves the dustpan into the corner, full of shattered glass tinged with blood. Then she covers the jagged hole with plastic wrap, taping the edges with duct tape. She could call the landlord, but she doesn't have an explanation for the breaking—nor for the glass that managed to get both inside the apartment and on the sidewalk outside. She should sweep that up too, she thinks, and doesn't.
At night the broken window makes the bedroom with its broken vent even colder, so she layers on another pair of sweatpants. Then she sits on the bed and drinks whiskey from the bottle. She hasn't eaten much today beyond cold pizza leftovers from last night, and it hits her fast and hard and burning: she chokes it down and her head spins and she drinks and drinks until she can barely fumble the cap back on, and she dizzily sets the bottle down by her bed. The room blurs in front of her, and she rolls over and passes out.
Her sleep is fitful but not haunted; she wakes up with her head pounding. She takes another swig from the bottle by her bedside to ease the pain, and then drinks water from the sink (no glasses). There's a box of off-brand cornflakes in the kitchen but no milk in the fridge. She doesn't feel like eating anyway.
She wishes she had a TV. Instead she drags herself out of bed and down to the nearest video store, which plays movies from the 70s and 80s on a crappy old TV mounted by the ceiling. She stands in front of it watching The Lost Boys until that the kid at the counter asks, "You gonna rent anything?"
Van shakes her head.
The kid rolls his eyes. "Just watching?"
Van glances around and catches sight of the HIRING sign in the window. "You hiring?"
He shrugs. "Guess so."
"You have an application?"
The kid hands her one, and she scribbles down her information, from basics down to "favorite movies." She hands it back.
"Thanks."
The kid shrugs again. "She'll call you in, I dunno, a couple days."
Van watches the rest of the movie, and then heads back to her apartment.
It really fucking sucks that the only number she knows is Tai's. Well, and her mom's, but she doesn't really see much value in that one.
She sits by the phone, dials, hangs up before it rings. She does this repeatedly until the dial tone starts to make her head spin. She lies on the bed in silence until that feels like it'll make her go crazy, and then she walks down the street in the gathering dark until she hits a bar.
The bar is mostly older men at scattered tables, but the bartender behind the near-empty bar is a bleach-blonde with heavy eyeliner—she looks a little like Nat, if Nat had curves and red lipstick. She looks at Van for a little too long, head tilted, before asking, "What can I get you, doll?"
"You got Miller?"
The bartender nods and opens a can, pours it into a smudged glass and passes it across the bar. "Three bucks," she says, and Van passes her four singles. "Thanks."
She winks, and Van registers it as if in a dream: Oh. She's hitting on me.
The bartender helps another guy, and then leans back and surveys Van. "So what's your name, hon?"
Van's mouth goes dry. "Uh, Van."
She tilts her head. "Cute. I'm Sam."
Van finishes her drink.
"Want another one of those?" Sam asks, and Van nods again. As she's serving, she says, "You don't talk much, huh?"
"Not lately," Van manages.
"That's okay," Sam says. She scribbles something on a napkin before sliding it across the bar. Van expects a phone number, but instead it simply reads, I get off at 2:30. With a heart.
Van folds the napkin and puts it in her pocket; she nods curtly at Sam, as if to say, Got it.
She's on her fifth hour at the bar and sixth beer, feeling distinctly outside her body, when the men start to filter out for good and Sam begins sweeping the floor and wiping down the bar. "You stay right there, okay, hon? I've just got to get the cash in the safe and then we're good to go."
Van nods, squeezes her eyes shut and opens them again. Her apartment key burns hot in her pocket, but she doesn't move, doesn't do anything until Sam comes back out and sweeps around to Van's side of the bar. "Been waitin' for you all day," she murmurs, and leans down to kiss Van on the bar stool.
It's like a pantomime: Van tilts her head up and her mouth seems to know what to do; her hands draw Sam to her so she's standing between Van's legs. They kiss until Sam whispers, "Come here, come here," and takes Van by the hand, bringing her into a back room separated from the main bar area by a curtain. There's a black leather bench against the wall, and Sam pushes Van down onto it, smiling. "Now touch me, please," she says, and Van obeys, shoving her hands under Sam's shirt and squeezing her breasts over what feels like a lace bra. She brushes her fingertips over Sam's nipples; Sam moans.
Sam starts to unbutton Van's flannel, but Van stills her hands. "Not me," she manages to say.
"All right," says Sam easily. "I know girls like you, it's okay." Something clenches in Van's chest.
She shoves down the feeling and unbuttons Sam's jeans. Sam steps back to wiggle out of them, revealing lacy black underwear. "You like em?" she asks. Van is so far from the idea of liking anything that she can hardly respond; she just nods and reaches for Sam, pulling her forward. Sam climbs onto the bench, a knee on either side of Van's hips. She kisses Van's neck, and Van accepts the motion and the physiological response it stirs in her. It's too soft, too gentle—it reminds her of the dial tone of her phone at home, a constancy intended to drive her insane—and she wants to beg, Bite me. Bite me as hard as you can.
Instead she slides her hand up Sam's thigh and pulls her underwear to the side—Sam gasps—and confirms that she feels wetness before sliding one finger inside her, then quickly follows it with a second.
Sam whines a high whine.
"Can you take three?" Van asks, low.
Sam nods, eyes wide.
At her next thrust, Van adds a final finger, and Sam squeezes her eyes shut and gasps huh—huh—huh as Van moves inside her. Sam's fingernails dig into Van's back through her shirt and she wants it harder, wants blood. She moves more roughly then, thrusting harder, and Sam grips tighter and cries out in time with Van's hand, high and keening, her red lips forming a perfect o in the air. Grab me shred me tear me apart. Van wants to bite her, now. She holds back for a moment until Sam throws back her head, revealing her perfect neck, and then Van latches on, vampiric. Sam yowls in what could be pain or pleasure or both, and Van finds she doesn't much care which, because Sam's hips are still moving in time with her hand, and when Van curls her fingers, Sam shudders and gasps. Sam's own hand moves to her clit, and Van lets her rub herself there, fingertips making frantic circles, while Van's fingers move in time. Finally the combination takes Sam over the edge, gasping and crying out as she shudders with release.
She clings to Van's neck in the aftermath, hot breath on Van's skin. Van wipes her hand on her pants and tries to extricate herself from Sam, who looks hurt as soon as she realizes what's happening.
"Van?" she asks, and Van had forgotten she gave the girl her name.
"I'm—I'm sorry," Van fumbles. Between the dizziness and the heat between her legs, and the endless pounding in her head, she can hardly speak. "I have to go—" She almost says home, and doesn't.
Sam's red lips form a pout, but she doesn't say anything else as Van leaves, just draws her bare legs to her chest and watches in a pantomime of misery.
Van goes home and rubs herself through her underwear, and when she comes it's nothing but a release of energy. She takes another slug of whiskey and goes to sleep.
—
The video store calls a few days later to offer her the job. She takes it; she's due to start on Monday.
On Monday she wakes up with a pounding headache, finishes off her bottle, and heads to the store with liquor on her breath. She buys a pack of gum on the way to mask it, and shows up minty fresh. She hasn't eaten in days and it feels good; it feels like winning.
The kid from the front desk is named Daniel, and he shows her how to check out a rental and how to re-shelve returns. A fucking monkey could do the job, but she nods and pretends to look interested the whole day. On day two she's left alone in the afternoon and manages just fine.
Another Van, in another life, would be fucking thrilled right now. All this Van can manage is vague, feigned interest.
On day three she misjudges her morning whiskey, swallows too much and shows up tipsy, starts fumbling video tapes.
"You good, dude?" Daniel asks.
Van doesn't reply.
It becomes more frequent, showing up tipsy, and then drunk. The owner, whose name is Shelly or Candy or something, lets her go after just under two weeks, giving her her first and only paycheck as she politely shows her out the door.
Van goes to a different bar and fucks a different woman in the bathroom, practically blacked out as she lifts the woman by her hips and presses her against the wall. Hurt me, she thinks, and then realizes she's said it out loud when the woman says, "What?"
"Nothing."
It's easier with men, she finds. The whole process makes her nauseous, and she has to be wasted to get near them, but it's easy to find a guy who will get a little pushy when she won't let him fuck her, easy to get called bitch and dyke and then she can nurse her bruised jaw the next day and think, Finally.
She lets the city of Pittsburgh beat her up until she's green and purple all over, and then she boards a bus with a suitcase and a bottle, and heads west.