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I was almost foolish enough to hope Enid would have greeted me with something marginally more gratifying than the too-familiar, too-enthusiastic “howdy roomie!”
On one hand, I determined a new blade for my steam-powered guillotine likely would have served me well, despite my lack of necessity, considering I polished it frequently enough to the point that I could always catch a glimpse of the sadistic grin staring back at me before its satisfying plunge. Although, a spare was a spare, and the gesture would have been appreciated, even if everything under the sun paled in comparison to the snood I received last semester. Admittedly, the guilt for destroying it so promptly lingered, but less so when I remembered it very possibly saved Enid’s life. She was too valuable to lose.
But on the other, I supposed the broad, ebullient grin she had given me would have been more than sufficient regarding gifts. Not that it was ever necessary, but I had already moved on to observing the fact that it wasn’t just astonishingly toothy anymore, due to the way her lips curled around her—dare I even venture to consider it—impressively sharpened canines. Truthfully (and far sooner than I would have liked), I couldn’t help but be reminded of home. More specifically, mother’s garden, where she would delicately tend to Cleopatra—an extension of herself, it often seemed—and more specifically, her roses. Glaring red, which closely resembled the prepossessing flush that rapidly crawled across Enid’s cheeks and over her ears as I tried not to state too eagerly, “I have something for you.”
Her brows jerked toward her hairline as if she was poorly trying to convey her excitement in a way that wasn’t entirely and disgustingly overwhelming, her head careening to the side. The grime on the floor became unsettled by the frequency at which Enid was vibrating at, teeth nearly chattering despite the broad grin that should have, by all means, kept them fixed in place.
I wasn’t quite as dismayed as I should have been to have the doll out of my possession. Of course, I could have glanced at it whenever I pleased and relived the gruesome happenings that took place in his dungeon that day. Getting kidnapped by the Kansas City Scalper was an exhilarating experience, and being the one to retire him—the one to best him when nobody else could—was even better, especially since he had even been so kind as to deliver such a wide variety of tools; even if they weren’t exactly my preferred instruments of torture. Yet, screaming for your life was always the most impressionable way to disappear (in a somewhat secluded setting), and he would continue on and leave an abiding mark on whoever managed to find his body, just as he did on me.
Enid accepted the doll with striking enthusiasm, concerning me momentarily with the embrace I assumed ought to be sure to follow. Shockingly, it never did. Instead, in exchange, her fingers grazed against mine, simultaneously a moment and an eon I wished to lurk in for the rest of my miserable life. Her skin was always so warm in comparison to mine—so unusually alive—and I could take the time to dwell on something so mystifying now that I wasn’t particularly concerned about the visions that once dared torment me.
If I’d been fortunate enough to inherit my Uncle Fester’s power instead of my spineless brother, I may have sworn an actual charged bolt of electricity passed over my skin. Truthfully, I didn’t think being struck by lightning would have felt nearly as satisfying.
I waited for her reaction more anxiously than I would have liked to admit, drinking in every flutter of her lashes and the way her throat jerked when she swallowed, voluntarily letting the shear of her flush fuel the conspicuous curl in my lips.
The puppet itself was nothing overly extravagant, purloined from its original home not only because it was fashioned with the locks of the Scalper’s very first victim—ironic, wasn’t it, that I would have become his last?—but also partially because I had met its lifeless eyes and found myself staring directly into my former roommate’s instead.
The doll—or anything, really—was trivial in contrast to what Enid truly deserved, and I wouldn’t lie and say it wasn’t also moved for my own partial benefit, but its value was not lost. And still, I would be certain to make it up to her one day, when—not if—I managed to find the means to articulate how.
Then Enid finally spoke up, after an eternity of trying not to allow my smile, as I was brave enough to call it, to shift into a pained grimace. “I mean, it is a little creepy, but, um…the curls are super soft.”
I could have gone as far as to tell her it was her hair on top of the doll’s head, but I gave up lying to Enid a long time ago. The fact that it might have diminished its significance was merely an afterthought, even though her hair was much too dark to have been an authentic match.
Eventually, Enid’s eyes left mine to seek the blank gaze of the porcelain in her arms, taking a generous amount of her bottom lip between her incisors. I observed, silently, as she slowly prowled around her eyesore portion of a dorm in an attempt to find a location for it where nothing else would inevitably come crashing and burning. Apparently, the foot of her bed wasn’t satisfactory enough, so she positioned the doll beside it, amongst her ominous wall of various stuffed figures—if only temporarily. It wouldn’t watch her rest as thoroughly as I did, and it wouldn’t lull her to sleep with a cello on the nights she feigned unconsciousness, but it would have to do.
The silence that settled was nothing unusual. Comfortable, even, whereas the look Enid met me with as she twirled around unnerved me; as if, somehow, she already knew. As if access, too, noticed every accidental half-blink, of the slight twitch in my brows when I realized her heels never touched the ground, all of her weight on the lifted toes of her boots as if gravity didn’t apply.
I could say it anyway.
“Thing said he missed you.”
I said it anyway.
I would never be intrepid enough to wholly commit, it seemed.
Somewhere to my left, amid my luggage, said appendage waved. Even without a functioning brain, he was intelligent enough to not correct me.
I remembered that, once, I told myself I would never, in a million years, admit I was glad to see Enid. Really, I should have known how incorrigible I was at keeping my word, as I’d gone back on whatever half promise had been quid pro quo for the look she was giving me, her eyes boring straight into mine and her lips spread open too wide. Like a slit throat, I thought to myself, without the blood.
“I missed him, too.”
The air grew heavy around me, nearly too thick to inhale through my nose. Evidently, Enid felt it, too, because her breath hitched audibly in her throat and the very corner of her mouth twitched. She stared for a lengthy moment, as if she was wordlessly challenging me to give in and say something else first. I stared back, even though I lost this battle months ago and would have had no problem surrendering again. I realized, just as Enid blinked, that there was absolutely nowhere for me to flee to regard whatever unfortunate entity was squirming desperately inside my rib cage. Her eyelids flittered closed once, twice, and perhaps a third time I managed to miss when my gaze shifted, in a way that was not entirely against my will, slightly south. Enid was gnawing on her lip again, I observed; albeit awkwardly around her newfangled canines, and only when she released it from its enamel shackles to speak did the air gradually return to normal.
“So?” she prompted, dragging the question out for as long as she was capable of leaning toward me without sustaining any substantial injuries. In hindsight, it was really not that long at all, but the silence that stretched afterward was possibly the culprit of my foggy mind, and I told myself her proximity had zero connivance.
“What’d you do over break, silly?”
She was beaming as though she might have been genuinely interested, but there was a flicker of doubt—gone as soon as it had arrived—that couldn’t evade my watchful eye. Almost as if something on my face made her regret it the moment she asked.
Enid, always so valiant, wholly committed and swayed closer still. Unexpectedly, I could distinguish precisely where the purple and pink touched and diverged in her eyeshadow. Heavier in some places, where she must not have had enough time or even patience to properly blend the two shades. She looked beguiling, I thought as I choked on her perfume. The fragrance stung the insides of my nose, and I eagerly let it—willed it to drown me and my senses and overwhelm me. Enid was overwhelming, like a tidal wave or drug withdrawal, and it was determined that there was nothing I wanted more than to be overwhelmed by her.
“I hunted down a serial killer and stretched Pugsley’s limbs with my medieval torture rack when I got bored,” I replied, perhaps with too much clarification. While it was not entirely a lie, I could have had nothing to do with his abrupt, irritating, and completely unnecessary growth spurt. I was merely trying to cope with the fact that I was—once again—one of the shortest in the family, next to Thing and Cousin Itt. Although it wasn’t as if I would have much competition in any relevant aspects, considering they were a mere five inches and four feet respectively—but it did nothing to soothe the sting. Embarrassingly more so, in comparison to Enid, who I could now only dismally stare at through the gaps between my lashes, because not only had she somehow gained a few inches on me over break, but her shoulders had grown broader as well. Though not by any significant means, only enough for her muscular arms and legs to appear proportionate to the rest of her, as if the additional strength was even necessary. It wasn’t particularly patent, past her brand-new uniform; a slightly shorter skirt she must have negotiated herself into being able to keep, with ripped tights that appeared to have been damaged deliberately (what a ridiculous choice of fashion). And at her neck, a black bow, which I could only assume she exchanged for her previous tie.
Then, for the last of her supposed creative look, she’d swapped the more vibrant, dispersed highlights in her hair for more banded ones that intentionally complimented the makeup around her eyes. Of course, like her hair (which I was not entirely surprised to discover was tied into braids at the side of her head), it was darker, since she seemed to have a charming recurring theme going. It suited her just as well as her habitual backdrop of pink, but nostalgia compelled me to prefer the brighter, more abhorrent shades.
It was entirely likely I would have realized the aforementioned later, if not for the fact that I had already seen Enid as I was assessing Nevermore’s latest victims. Only, of course, whilst simultaneously trying to ignore both mother’s and father’s purrs regarding how thrilled they were to be back for a second semester—hopefully as equally stimulating as the last.
Originally, I hadn’t been so sure as to why the Sinclair’s vehicle stuck out to me—such a pitiful-looking thing, really—until I spotted Enid. She was standing slightly off to the side, clad in her familiar offensively vibrant array of colors, her lips pursed as if she was trying her damndest not to say something she shouldn’t. And for every obvious reason, she was difficult to ignore, even without beaming at me. I would always be drawn to her, like one was drawn to a car accident. Trying desperately to look away, but just not quite capable.
So it was only natural that I recognized Enid then, in all her confident, refulgent glory. I could have greeted her and efficiently frightened her family, just to have her all to myself; then I could have tried to scare her, too, but it was a joke she was used to by now, and she would have just laughed that beautiful laugh and maybe try to embrace me again. The embarrassingly large part of me that had no regard for anything when it came to her made me think I might have let her.
“Oh,” Enid croaked, but the corners of her mouth didn’t quite sink like they had when she’d first caught sight of my visceral murder board last year. Instead, her brows furrowed to compensate for the lack of expression on her face, and my eyes dutifully followed. Too far, it seemed, as I gazed at her hands, perched comfortably on her hips.
The color of her nails were different now, a multitude of shades clearly of a different variety than last semester’s. Dark purple on her index finger, an unpleasant vermillion-looking shade on her just as vibrant as her personality on her middle, and—oh. I blinked suddenly, as if trying—uselessly—to efface the image from my mind. I might have been successful, if I had any ounce of luck left, but it seemed as if I allocated the remainder of it whilst fighting Crackstone because instead it engrained itself onto the backs of my eyelids, unable to avoid.
My gaze darted back up to Enid’s face—already half expecting a somewhat reasonable explanation—because on her ring finger was a glossy black polish that didn’t particularly clash with the opposing lineup of colors. Unfortunately, I would have had to be insane—significantly more than I already was—to misconstrue it for anything else or even chalk it up to an injudicious mistake. Enid had never been put together so carelessly, always meticulously touching up her appearance throughout the day. Maybe she ran out of any other polish, I thought, and I almost wished there was a chance for it to be true, but Enid never would have allowed that to happen. Honestly, I didn’t know whether or not I should have been flattered, or if confronting her was even necessary, because Enid was still looking at me as if she didn’t have a clue in the world (well, maybe a little), and nothing left my lips.
“Well,” she began, her smile adorably canine, “Did you do anything else? Maybe something slightly less macabre?”
For whatever reason, she suggested it as if she were expecting something. Although, I suppose, Enid had always been like that—so personal and driven so strongly by her emotions and the heart she wore on her sleeve. It was only a small fraction of what made her so enthralling to me; she was my exact opposite. My other half, some might assume, but then I would argue and say that she was all of me. I wouldn’t have been there, looking her directly in the eyes as if I was attempting to convey my appreciation through a stare—since I didn’t know how to otherwise—if not for her. If the girl scared of everything had not turned out to be the bravest of all.
Of course, I could have told Enid what I’d really been keeping myself preoccupied with, but I didn’t. And not just for her wellbeing, because I was sure I wouldn’t live nearly long enough to hear the end of whatever admonishment she would have had in mind, had she known.
The intensity of her smile didn’t wane, but there was a certain light that returned to her eyes; whatever it was that compelled her to weakly joke, “Right. Don’t answer that question,” and ease. From being spared an inevitably gruesome story, I imagined, but it was not the most potent emotion I had seen from her.
Closing my eyes wasn’t a necessary step in imagining it; the circumstances in which it had arisen (Enid’s brush with death and mine) plagued me anyway.
Initially, the source of my fear was her forlorn figure in the distance. Close enough to taste her fear on my tongue, but far enough to have to call her name from across the clearing to earn her attention. Her robe was tattered, despite all odds, her hair a beautiful mess. A flash of purple there as she whipped her head around in search of me, then blue, and finally red that had my motionless heart skipping a beat from relief of my own. She was sprinting closer, but I couldn’t estimate the extent of her injuries, only the despondency in her gaze and the limp—the buckling of her knees—that excused her stumbling into me.
Wind whistled through Enid’s hair and beyond my ears, voicing the hiss of her sobs as I pushed her away from me. She should have stopped before, just out of arm’s reach, but it seemed that whatever bravery she’d expended was replaced by the dire need to grasp onto something sturdy enough to keep her steady. Unfortunately, I could not be that for her. Unfortunately, I was anyway.
Tears glinted in her eyes, flames of relief licked and swallowed them whole. She was beautiful, she was relatively uninjured, and that was all it took for me to give in to the reassurance that she was there and not hidden within the confines of the circumambient wood, concealed beneath twisted branches or in a ditch surrounding gnarled roots; out of sight, out of mind.
The scalding streams of salt in her tears lingered on my skin even then, and while I’d long determined crying never solved anything, there was something springing in my eyes that night, too. Relief manifested as an overly dramatic well in my waterline that wasn’t quite enough to spill over my lashes, but more than adequate to blur my vision past the uncomfortable fabric of her robe.
A marginally more rational part of me believed it was the most depressing welcome to date, due to the lack of knives and hastily placed booby traps. Thing couldn’t have arrived earlier, and I arrived far too late.
Enid might get used to it over time, but I didn’t think I would risk it. She preferred this, anyway, even though we’d only been apart for just a few months. Not to mention the fact that she’d been thriving rent-free in my head since we had parted, her small but vehement voice grasping onto literally anything it could. She disapproved of fishing but eagerly agreed to painting over the polish on my nails.
That wasn’t even to mention her ever-persistent texting, which came through my—or, more accurately, now Thing’s—cellphone at every ungodly hour of the night. I debated over whether tossing it into the lake with Socrates would have been beneficial or not, despite the fact that my own idiocy had been the cause of it originally. Of course I should have known nothing good was to come from Thing having his fingers on such a device—especially since Enid was elated once she realized she could make contact with me, too. Only at the cost of one of his digits, because he was always too soft with her, but she wouldn’t immediately notice if his balance was off.
The cellphone had been put in the wrong hands, you could say, if he had another.
And that was, undoubtedly, completely disregarding the amount of times Xavier had attempted to come into contact with me—Thing—as well, before he received quite the text message explaining exactly why I desired absolutely nothing when it came to him. It was Enid’s brilliant idea, although Thing was quivering with excitement as he pressed send and poked the bright red block button.
There wasn’t any part of me that cared enough to count the seconds I stared at Enid (despite the normalcy), but the look on her face confirmed she was more than satisfied by the supposed longevity of our staring competition. Aside from that slight furrow in her brows and the charming tilt of her head that perfectly conveyed both her confusion and concern—presumably about my conceivably deteriorating health, which I almost reveled in. Thrilled, I thought that—now that we were back together—she might manage to drive me to an early grave. That was only if I didn’t do so myself out of ignominy, because Enid looked as if she had been waiting to see me again her entire life, and maybe I had been, too.
Wordlessly, I dared her to say something. I almost prayed she would, as I pried her lips apart with my eyes, so that I might destroy the fetter that originally urged me to return to this ghastly place—as if I ever would have had the guts. Not when it came to her.
“You know,” Enid effused, thankfully avoiding any further confrontation, “Yoko’s waiting for me in the Quad…if you’d like to tag along?”
Her confidence was a horrible facade, for she spoke with the awkwardness that only came when the expected response to a question was rejection. Even though she appeared to be bracing herself for it—despite the overly optimistic glint that resided in her eye—by nudging her chin in toward her chest.
While my typical response would have been an averse promise to “think about it,” I found myself more than slightly tempted by the offer, even if it was likely just Enid trying to bait me into hanging out. Just hanging would have been preferred, but even that made it sound much too entertaining for an activity proven to be so abhorrent—especially with those Enid dared call friends. Still, I couldn’t find myself turning down this proposal and risking my chance to expand my reign of terror over this school—now that Weems was no longer here to stop me—even if it meant I would be diverging from Enid’s particular band of misfits. Anyway, I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to withstand Yoko’s often unfamiliar lingo.
“Why?” I inquired, despite my blatant lack of indecision to determine what my answer would be.
“Well, believe it or not,” Enid began, pausing to sway back and forth on the balls of her feet—one endearing idiosyncrasy of many. I wished she would wipe that too-fond look off her face, too; it was starting to scare me. “Your company isn’t the worst.”
For whatever fascinating reason, her sentiment wasn’t followed by the typical pleasant wave of agony, but something warmer, like being touched by the sun’s rays themselves. Something unusual—but not uncomfortable—that made my chest want to cave in on itself and my heart to jump out of my throat simultaneously.
My face twitched, shaping that kink in my brows I loved to hate. “I’ll pretend that didn’t offend me.”
Her familiar stare told me she noticed, but I didn’t think there was anything I did that ever got past her. When I licked my lips, her proprietary gaze was already on them. When I blinked, she blinked back, although I wasn’t quite sure what it conveyed when I did it, but when she responded in kind, lashes drawing curtains over her eyes so slowly and so deliberately, I thought some part of me began to understand.
Just a moment later, I followed with, “I suppose.”
The look on her face should have been priceless, eyes as wide as saucers above her parted lips—phrases she couldn’t quite muster to say balancing on the very tip of her convincing tongue. Words may not have always been her strongest suite, but it was difficult not to tell precisely what Enid was both feeling and thinking when her expressions were as easy to read as an open book.
“Don’t tell me Wednesday Addams is mellowing out,” she teased as her smile returned, and the look in her eyes startled me. We couldn’t help but stare at one another, and betwixt us was every little thing we’d ever taken the time to notice about each other—those precious green flecks in her eyes, or the stray hairs in her brows that always stubbornly refused to cooperate—and all the things we’d ever confessed, stashed with the ones neither of us have been intrepid enough to say, and the ones we’ve never exactly had to. “Best friends,” but if you could become inebriated off stolen glances we would both be in a maudlin stupor, stumbling, falling, and taking turns catching each other in our arms.
“Don’t be absurd,” I countered, blinking at the light switch such a simple response seemed to have flipped, because Enid’s face lit up—almost unbearably so—as she began to optimistically prattle, “Perfect! We’re going to Jericho to shop; we’ll have so much fun.”
I tried to school the disdain on my face at the mere idea of such a thing: venturing deep into the hushed town just outside Nevermore to partake in Enid’s frightening notion of entertainment. Frankly, she wouldn’t know “fun” if it sidled up with her and stuck a lollipop in her mouth, but I digressed.
“Don’t worry,” she chirped eventually, as if she sensed my moment’s hesitation. “There’s plenty of people to glare uncomfortably at.”
She said it as if I may have actually required her dispensation, her voice characteristically—annoyingly—soft. Her brow twitched as she winked at me, eyelashes sweeping across the apex of her accentuated cheekbone. Enid’s smile shifted into that familiar smirk, and I found myself thinking she was offensively similar to a rainbow on a sugar rush. Far too bright and far too much.
Even if thanks were in order, I was never given the chance. Her phone chimed from her back pocket, drawing her eyes away from mine before I could attempt to reel her attention back in. She giggled in that way I once disliked, never hated, and then I began to realize how much easier my next breath came as she tapped furiously on her phone screen.
“Yoko’s getting impatient, but...” She trailed off, glancing behind her at a mysteriously unopened cardboard box. It couldn’t have been an assortment of stuffed animals; they would have been her top priority—simply to avoid getting in the way later, as she would likely claim. No, it had to have been something worse.
“I had so much free time back in San Fran, so I had no problem making you something. Well, remake. Close your eyes.”
Enid was moving too quickly, talking so fast her tongue was starting to trip over itself and tie—telltale signs of her already apparent excitement. It just meant she didn’t even have to turn around—didn’t even have to flash me that cheeky smile as she extended her hand, enclosed in a too-familiar black knit, and exclaim, “I made you a new snood!”
I swallowed, my initial reaction not entirely unlike it had been the first time I was presented with such an interesting article of clothing. She was waiting for me to receive it with indefatigable buoyancy, bouncing excitedly again on the tips of her toes but not necessarily forcing me to accept. She would never dare, but it would be pointless anyway—I knew I’d never be able to help myself.
“You shouldn’t have,” I deadpanned, hesitating briefly—waiting for that adorably agog look I knew was to come—to fold the fabric around my neck in the way she taught me. Enid nodded then, apparently pleased, and hurriedly ushered me out the door. I didn’t understand how the prospect of shopping could excite her so, but she was happy so I would try. And maybe one day I might, just as well as I understood the looks we shared from across the room and the guilt she pretended not to feel. Or those not-so-secret glances she spared at my mouth—the ones she tried to act as if never happened because she thought I didn’t notice. Then I would have to echo what I had said, because Enid had never been a good lip reader.
I couldn’t have forgotten the roads throughout these sacred hallways, collections of august trophies etched with largely unfamiliar names, accompanied closely by portraits of equally unfamiliar people. All were affixed to their respective places behind the glass panes, lining every wall to flaunt what their achievements had titled. My mother’s haunted me the most, her youthful but grainy eyes following my every move from their photographs.
The crowds steadily began increasing in number, parting slowly without needing to be urged—and by “urged,” of course, I could have only meant threatened. Gently, as Enid wouldn’t tolerate anything else, as we neared the godforsaken Quad.
My sights had been set on Yoko long before Enid determined skipping to her side would be necessary, meeting underneath the shade and squeezing her until she began to dramatically wheeze. Yoko must have realized she was no match for Enid’s strength, as she began to pry her off, because she bent down and whispered something short in her ear. Some kind of incantation, most likely, but it had her arms springing away to grant her freedom all the same.
Only once Yoko was free did she glance my way, her arm framing Enid’s waist, and lisp, “Honestly, I thought I’d never see you back here again.”
I stared, watching her brow rise above the dark frame of her spectacles.
“You could never be so lucky.”
Yoko looked like she knew the true motive for my homecoming—or thought she did, at the very least—the corner of her mouth curling unpleasantly. She laughed, incredulous, and shook her head just as Enid’s gaze settled on an individual over my shoulder, abruptly sporting a smile that didn’t quite manage to reach her cerulean eyes. Still, she shouted right through me, her voice approaching tentative territory, “Hey!”
Heavy, negligent footsteps approached me from behind, though I didn’t bother turning around—hardly even got the chance to, as- “Bruno,” Yoko muttered, disconsolate, in greeting—rounded my side.
Bruno looked over Yoko with a fixed glare, his eyes all but physically prying her pale arm off Enid’s waist so that he had the ability to affix his there in lieu. Perhaps too tight—Enid looked as if she were suffocating, even if it hadn’t quite registered in her mind. He was alarmingly similar to a python, twisting around her with a vice-like grip and cutting off all remnants of her air supply. It was repulsive, and I couldn’t help but abhor him already.
My eyes raked unwillingly over him—sunken eyes, disheveled hair and full lips sculpted into a grin that was supposed to—by every textbook definition—be winsome. He would look even cuter with wet, blue-hued lips, but I obediently said nothing while Enid stared at him, visibly transfixed by whatever attraction was to be found. Something alien constricted in my chest, and I swiveled my head away to meet Yoko’s equally disquiet gaze. She couldn’t seem to be as bothered with schooling her expression, the corner of her lip snaking up to reveal a sole fang. Not that I could blame her, forced to bear witness to this disgusting show of affection—or possession. Details, details.
“Whenever you guys are ready,” Yoko interrupted when she deemed it necessary, attempting to laugh and deflect a short look from Bruno simultaneously.
Enid tittered, a short, light sound that effortlessly managed to put any complex melody to absolute shame. If I ever got the opportunity to bottle it up, I would. I’d stick it on the corner of my desk and get drunk on it every evening until I couldn’t live without.
“Sorry,” she bubbled, meeting my gaze as she entwined her fingers between Bruno’s. “We’re ready to go now. Promise.”
Yoko sighed, resigned, and whipped around.
I expected it was wholly safe to surmise Bruno had not been willingly summoned, despite his exasperating confidence that made it seem as if he were too full of himself to realize his presence was not exactly desired, but Enid allowed him to latch onto her side so willingly that I briefly second-guessed it.
Enid didn’t glance twice in my direction as she passed, walking too close to Bruno and sitting too close to him on the noisy shuttle ride to Jericho. Yoko wasn’t quite courageous enough to seat herself beside me, and neither of our stomachs would ever be settled enough to handle sitting across from Bruno and Enid. So instead, we endured the pleasure of each other’s company in the very rear of the bus, silence so agonizing I was almost capable of finding solace in it. I’d prefer anything, though, in comparison to my futile attempts to ignore Enid’s ever-persistent giggling, which rose higher in pitch and volume than the otherwise scattered conversation. Shamelessly, I wished the driver would flip the vehicle so that the caterwauls of the crushed victims could be more tumultuous than her fits of laughter.
It was a relief when the brakes finally shrieked, steam rising steadily alongside the window as the bus jerked to a stop.
I wouldn’t venture as far as to say it was a pleasant day—let alone nice—however, I could almost consider it to be close enough. Large, dark figures of fog drifted leisurely above my head, and the pavement was just slick enough to be a slipping hazard; unfortunately, I was never able to witness someone falling victim (literally.)
To my chagrin, the majority of the rain had already poured down on Jericho, which meant the only remainder was the insipid sprinkle of water the clouds had remaining. Still, a diminutive scent of wet asphalt and melancholy pervaded me, and I thought it was such a shame I would be spending decent weather doing something as trivial as shopping in comparison to grave digging while the ground was still preferably soft.
I stood stiffly before the doors even had their opportunity to slide open, all but treading on Yoko’s heels in my desperate strive to leave. Traveling in a rolling death trap hardly appealed anymore, I silently surmised as I stepped outside.
The shuttle driver informed no one in particular that two hours was all the time available to spend in Jericho—absolutely no exceptions—and that everyone should return before then. “Unless, of course,” they joked slowly (sounding so bored that I almost pitied them), “you wore the right shoes for a hike.” I hadn’t really, clad in platform boots that were supposed to make it seem as if I wasn’t just an accurate ankle-biter. Although it was partially true, the element of surprise also worked in my favor.
“Weathervane, anyone?” Yoko suggested, though not to deliberately mock. It seemed as if it was just an attempt to get away from Bruno, who chittered lamely (but enthusiastically) with Enid as if he could hardly stand sharing.
“Pass,” I stiffly answered anyway, taking a brave, momentary glance through the glass panels. There was no Tyler Galpin standing just beyond the counter, pivoting around at the peal of the bell atop the door while wearing that grin whose sole purpose was to stratagem me. There was no Tyler Galpin making me a free drink to sweeten the pot, standing there until I had to mend the espresso machine because he was too concerned with playing clueless to realize it stopped working to begin with. And there certainly was no Hyde, looming uncomfortably high over me and knocking me off my feet, winding me completely with a single, lazy swipe. Instead, in his wonted place, there was a new barista, peering over their hand with wide eyes as they knocked over and shattered a cheap glass. While they began sweeping the shards off the floor, I willed myself to look away… only to find Enid staring directly at me, with her head tipped to the side, as she never seemed to overcome her paroxysm of curiosity. She opened her mouth to speak, and I almost dared to attempt to stop her.
“Come on,” she all but whined, “It won’t kill you.”
She’d never been one to impose anything on me, such as those unbearable hugs (unsettling, once upon a time, but proven to be not entirely unwelcome) or her equally insufferable pop music—even if it seemed as though she played it louder than necessary on numerous nights just to invoke that feeling of familiar, satisfying horror—and it was immediately evident she wouldn’t even consider beginning then. Her brows furrowed slightly in that way she did whenever she was borderline pleading; as if it was any better than the cursed alternative.
“Unfortunately,” I deadpanned, eyeing her as if there was a possibility she’d become deranged. Truthfully, she might have been, ever since she began to lean further and further away from Bruno, who hardly appeared to be displeased with the fact. His little grin—the slight tug at the corners of his mouth—was almost more unsettling than Yoko’s next suggestion: “We’ll come back to it. How about something else?”
She pulled a sharp breath through her teeth, pointedly cocking her head in the direction of a shop sign somewhere just above Bruno’s shoulder. “Did you not say you wanted to look around, Enid?”
Still, Enid’s eyes lingered at first, despite being directly spoken to. Stuck fast for longer than they should have been; certainly longer than they needed to be.
It left me, admittedly, puzzled, and the feeling did not vanish even as she nodded her head thrice (didn’t ignore Bruno’s attempt to grab hold of her hand but didn’t otherwise address it) and finally replied with increasing zealousness, “Yeah, I did. They actually had some pretty cute stuff on their website. Plus, they just released a new line! Here, I’ll show you.”
While it was relatively impossible for Enid’s description of “pretty cute” to be even semi-accurate in any regard, hope stirred to life in my chest anyway.
Then, of course, promptly vanished upon realizing the exact direction I was being led. Hawte Kewture loomed as distinctly in the distance as a sunny day, still as intimidating as ever, and I barely managed to suppress an eye roll as Enid looped her free arm through Yoko’s.
Bruno, as I came to realize, had since detached from her side and unfortunately (for himself as well as I) chose to stand by mine, still a respectful distance away, but he smiled something soft the moment I met his eyes, still guarded—though not to the same extent of familiarity—and it unsettled me just as much as the alternative.
For reasons too obvious, I didn’t return the gesture, but Bruno hardly appeared surprised. It was all he could do to allow a flicker of amusement to ghost over his expression and turn away before it shifted into something less tame, though it continued to haunt me.
I wanted nothing more than to pass through time and somehow find myself back at Nevermore, lulled by the familiar resonating of my typewriter and comforting flow of novel ideas. Enid’s respectively quiet music would only be background noise—there, but not quite the center of my attention, similar to the occasional squeal of her sneaker on the wood floor as she absentmindedly danced, or her mumbled apologies she thought I was too far in my element to grasp—even though I always did.
While I’d been partially successful, I wasn’t quite where I desired being on the timeline. Stuck somewhere between freedom and imprisonment, thrust into the same dismal clothing store I dreaded the mere existence of. That, along with the sheer duration I’d been incapable of leaving (it would have been inhumane to leave Yoko unchaperoned, and I was not a monster), or the amount of times Enid had sauntered in and out of the dressing room, clad in new attire.
“I’m not sure about this one,” Enid vacillated from inside, her voice muffled despite the wholly superfluous aperture between the bottom of the door and the ground.
The furrow in Yoko’s brow was perceptible from across the carpet that divided us, as she leaned half-out of her armchair. Even though Enid wasn’t yet exiting the fitting room, hesitating for no immediately apparent reason, I already knew her disquietude was asinine—as it always was when it came to her physical appearance.
“It can’t be that bad,” Yoko cajoled softly in response. “Can you come show me?”
It still took Enid a moment to show her face, and I was attempting to feign disinterest as the door swung open at last. My eyes darted away as if I’d already been caught staring, unwillingly meeting the unfortunate gaze of an innocent shopper; I didn’t even have to throw physical daggers for them to turn heel and leave.
When I dared to glance back, Yoko was already looking at me. Staring, more accurately; the sensation of her eyes boring into mine was no less subdued by the heavy tint in her sunglasses. She simpered, her intent anything but innocent, and tilted her head slightly in Enid’s direction as if she were actually attempting to be discreet.
“What do you think?” Enid wondered for her, releasing a breath of air she didn’t even know she was holding.
Ultimately, I met her anticipatory gaze. And part of me wanted to say I regretted it.
She expected me to be capable of words because we were friends, I thought. I should have been able to say something because it wasn’t normal for my heart to be hiccuping in my chest, and it wasn’t normal for my throat to be closing to ensure it wouldn’t find a way to escape. Though nothing about us was particularly normal, I reminded myself, even if it did nothing to comfort me and the maelstrom that seemed to effervesce in my stomach.
We were best friends, Enid’s voice eagerly emphasized in the back of my mind, deliberately neglecting the veracity, except I could tell she didn’t believe that to be entirely true. I knew just as well as she did that whatever we were had long passed that. We were sprinting circles around each other, nipping at the other’s heels, and one of us was bound to stagger eventually—except we had both already begun. Desperately stumbling and trying to regain our balance, arms and legs flailing.
But—even though all of this was still a foreign concept to me—I knew too well my gaze shouldn’t have been the one she sought. She should have summoned Bruno back to his post by her side; except she didn’t. Except, in truth, she looked beautiful. No, I forthwith corrected myself; she looked absolutely ethereal in that positively psychedelic dress and I would have apprised her until all I could achieve were breathless gasps as my vocal cords began to fail me, just as everything did when it came to Enid. And because nothing would have ever been enough—nothing would elucidate the enormity of my devotion—I would have meticulously scrawled it until the bones in my fingertips rubbed away to dust.
I swallowed whatever vehement sentiment began to crawl up my throat, withholding the most recalcitrant part of it against the flat of my tongue. I might have failed to realize it before, but there was no denying it now: I really did have my father’s eyes, and I tried for so long not to become my mother that I had become him instead.
I tried to act as if it meant nothing, but it meant everything and I had a difficult time gathering my wits to meet her gaze again.
“‘Kay,” Enid huffed past a tight-lipped smile, her arms dropping at her sides like lead. “Thanks for the help.”
Yoko stared, brows furrowing, before she overcame her confusion and tapped her lower lip in her supposed paroxysm of contemplation.
“Personally,” the vampire began, blinking and eyeing Enid as if it were necessary to determine the answer. “I think it looks great. You look great,” she emphasized, and my stomach didn’t twist into knots like it did when Bruno held Enid. I knew that shouldn’t have been the case; I had no business feeling any particular way about him or caring at all.
Against my will, I found myself wondering: When had I grown so concerned with whom Enid latched onto when I wasn’t within arm’s reach? And why didn’t it bother me if it was Yoko, her girlfriend, or even her twin?
Jealousy should have been the simple answer—the one I told myself at night so that there was a slim possibility I could rest easy—the one that made sense. That was, aside from the fact that nothing about the way I felt particularly made sense.
I believed that was part of what Enid wanted from me last semester. She wanted to discuss dates and boys, and it was likely safe to assume feelings were somewhere among that mile-long list as well. I found only minimal comfort in the fact that her priorities hadn’t changed, almost going as far as wishing they had. It might have made it easier for me, if I could articulate this in a way that wouldn’t risk damaging this fragile, sacred thing that we had. Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have ventured to care.
“Pouted” was a scarily accurate description of the look Enid sported—not entirely disappointed but not quite happy with the answer she’d received, but she acquiesced all the same. “Alright. Thanks.”
Then she promptly disappeared back inside the dressing room, so kind as to spare my eyesight from the peculiar coral-colored dress she’d been so diffident of.
Yoko dared to spare another glance and I said nothing, because sitting somewhere across the shop was Enid’s new boyfriend, Bruno, always standing protectively by Enid’s side, or never there at all when she needed him the most—always somehow in the wrong place. He wasn’t the person she came crying to when Yoko was put in the infirmary, or the person who was there for her when she and Ajax broke it off (whatever ‘it’ was.)
But I was, of course, once Thing re-demonstrated how it worked, because she called me. Not teary-eyed, as I’d half expected, but strong, like those tall oak trees in the wood outside, and bright, like the moonlight that ever so softly pressed the ghost of its lips against her skin. It kissed the tip of her nose as she chattered endlessly about how much she had liked Ajax, then the space between her brows as she explained how going their separate ways would be beneficial for her. And finally, the moonlight kissed her lips shut as the line fell completely silent. She had run out of things to say, and I was suddenly full of them. Instead, we both stared because eyes were the gateway to the soul, and for the first time in my life I wasn’t eager to be pulling them closed.
Enid sighed then, a small huff of air as if there were something she wanted to state but couldn’t quite determine what, and I blinked because I knew exactly what was bubbling unwillingly up my throat. Yet somehow, there was nothing that needed to be said, because we’d learned how to communicate without opening our mouths over time. Long, unnecessary glances from across rooms, standing too close whenever the opportunity arose; or, more accurately, Enid moved too close so that she could nudge my shoulder with hers, and I willingly let her every time.
Our first (and last) video call ended not long after that, once Enid cleared her throat, forcing herself to look away as if there was something more interesting around her (there wasn’t—the mirror behind her desk betrayed her), and finished painting the remainder of her nails. It was only now I realized she never exactly flaunted the finished product, despite the one time she said she would and then promised she would paint mine, too, given I let her. She vowed she would only use my signature color, black, but now I determined it was only fair if I, too, made that indelible mark she left on me physical. Her favorite color should suffice—not pink, as most would likely expect, but blue. Not quite as dark as her eyes, but a little lighter, like one of those clear, phantasmagoric days I knew she would have loved.
Yes, I could surely manage. Enid would appreciate it, wouldn’t she?
At some point, Enid decided to return in her original clothes, and Yoko stopped offering to help find more. I could have been relieved, if not for the fact that Enid suddenly refused to meet my gaze—she didn’t even attempt to, as Bruno guided her out the door and down the street, past Uriah’s Heap—the familiar hellscape I originally located my Rave’N dress at—and directly into the Weathervane. Still not a glance as Bruno beelined for the register, ordered a drink and paid with a kind of natural charm that made it hard to dislike him. He seemed nice, but Ajax was, too. In hindsight, they were both perfect for her. I hated it. I hated that I hated it.
Yoko all but physically shrank into her side of the booth as I sat down, seeking solace in the meager shade the corner granted. She was the more fortunate one—however, I supposed it was obligatory—since the sun was shining directly into my eyes instead. And because I wasn’t quite ready to go completely blind, I had to squint more than necessary just to maintain the glare I fixed on Bruno from across the table. He didn’t look as uneasy as he should have been; the corners of his lips pulled up as if he thought I didn’t mean it. Still, he found it in himself to look away—too smug, as if he found my distaste to be humorous—just as his name was called (shouted) from behind the counter.
Only in the moment he was gone did I register how quiet the booth was in comparison to the significantly more lively tables lining the walls. Yoko was toying absentmindedly with her cellphone, Enid was chewing on her lower lip and picking at her nail polish simultaneously, and there was no longer any part of me that could be concerned with what Bruno was doing (taking his seat again, unfortunately.)
“What time is it?” Enid asked instead of looking at the clock suspended above the door or at her own cellphone, securely tucked away in her back pocket. For whatever reason, I still glanced at her as if there was any chance I might have been the one she was asking.
Yoko looked pointedly at Bruno before replying, “Almost time to go.”
Despite the fact that I found it hard to believe we were running so short on time already, I acquiesced—I was not, by any means, even slightly disheartened to be leaving Jericho. Earlier certainly would have been preferred, even if it meant sitting on the dingy shuttle for an unfortunate, indeterminate amount of time. Anything was better than here.
Bruno didn’t don that obdurate mien quite as well as Enid did, I determined the first time he leisurely raised the plastic cup to his mouth. The second time, I decided I wouldn’t have been able to stand sitting there much longer—and not just because we were running painfully low on time.
Enid dragged her fingertips across the expanse of Bruno’s arm almost absentmindedly, as she had done so many times with Ajax; aside from the fact that she had seemed significantly more fond of the latter, her eyes always alight with something that bordered the unmistakable lines of adoration. It was a look I’d since had the misfortune of growing familiar with, always directed toward the wrong person.
“Since you guys have never been formally introduced,” Enid began, latching onto my distant gaze with hers and steering it toward Bruno’s. She wore a smile that didn’t quite reach where it should have, and there was a certain stern look in her eyes, one I’d seen too often on Principal Weems—I wasn’t afraid to admit that I actually preferred her to Dort. Even if she really had given too many outcasts—me, in particular—and Normies (I shuddered; Enid really was rubbing off on me) too many chances, I was still convinced she should have expelled me at the first opportunity, despite my irritating persistence in destroying the school’s reputation. Supposedly, of course; I wasn’t sorry for anything aside from her unfortunate fate.
Sometimes I missed feeling her condescending glare outside what was once her office.
“Wednesday, this is Bruno. Bruno, Wednesday.”
Enid turned and met his eyes as she added, “We were roommates last semester, as you know. Totally couldn’t stand each other for the longest time. Did I tell you about the duct tape? There was duct tape to separate our sides of the dorm and everything. Very strict.” Then she grew quieter. “We had our ups and downs, but we persevered, despite all odds.”
The sarcasm in her voice was palpable, but Bruno laughed and asked “Really?” as though he wholeheartedly believed it anyway, and Enid’s cheeks flushed red as if it were somehow considered charming.
“Is that why you’re back, then? For Enid? Or is there another reason?” he asked, and I was almost startled by the show of courage he displayed when he directed his query toward me.
“I’ve always had a penchant for investigating crime—specifically, the cases where people mysteriously disappear.”
Bruno’s eyes narrowed and mine did back, as he suddenly seemed significantly less concerned with maintaining whatever act he was desperately trying to adopt, while Enid was too distracted—fixing me with a glare that shrieked ‘WARNING’ in giant letters, while the real one was sitting right beside her—to notice.
“So you’re some kind of de facto detective?”
The corner of Bruno’s lip twitched as he wondered, and it was becoming increasingly evident we wouldn’t ever truly get along. It was too familiar yet simultaneously too foreign. A shame, honestly.
Yoko, who, truthfully, I had forgotten was at my side until then, cleared her throat and startled Bruno out of his pathetic attempt at intimidation—that was what I assumed it was supposed to be, at least.
“Play nice,” she hissed, and this time my glare was fixed to her. Of all people, I figured she would have understood, at the very least; she didn’t like him as much as she was letting on, but she was superior to me in that aspect: pretending she did just because Enid was ostensibly happy, and I supposed that’s why she would have always been the more attractive option, but I disregarded what she said anyway.
“You should hope,” I scowled, “because no one else will be bothered to look for you.”
Out of the corner of my eye, Enid blinked once as if she couldn’t quite believe it, and I could have sworn Yoko snickered, coughing to conceal her very brief but very real moment of weakness.
Bruno paused just before the cup reached his mouth, his lips pursed.
“Wednesday,” gasped Enid, but I couldn’t be bothered with sticking around to witness the look she wore. So I stood—quite abruptly—and relieved myself from the table. Such a poor excuse for one, given it was overcrowded with outcasts.
While I hadn’t necessarily hoped anyone would have immediately escorted me, a part of me was partially relieved to hear Enid overcoming her momentary shock and impatiently ushering Bruno out of the booth. Although I was significantly less relieved when she remained steadfast by his side all throughout the abnormally silent shuttle ride back to Nevermore and through an unappetizing dinner. I tried, halfheartedly, to ignore their audible chatter from a few solitary tables over, but Enid’s voice rose effortlessly above all others, downright impossible to ignore. Her confusion was even louder when Bruno abruptly excused himself from the table and hurried off. Perhaps to his dorm, but I soon found that not knowing didn’t particularly bother me, as long as it was anywhere but alone with Enid.
She looked at me for the first time then—when she stood to leave and softly asked if I was coming, too—I thought that was probably the easiest answer I’ve had to seek: of course. Wherever she strayed, I would always follow.
Enid bid Yoko goodbye with one of her signature hugs: the kind that could hold every little piece of you together when you began to shatter, or the kind that left a bit of her with you so it was a little harder next time. Perhaps that was what compelled me to embrace her earlier—my desire to be carrying some part of Enid around with me.
The stroll back to Ophelia Hall was an abnormally hushed one. Not only because the halls were deserted, as the majority of students remained comfortably in the dining hall, but Enid’s habitual loquaciousness seemed to have been completely abandoned. It was possible she left it at Hawte Kewture, in the very back of the dressing rooms, or maybe even in her seat at the Weathervane. In any case, it wasn’t with her, and I believed the silence was more agonizing than the subjects she could have been passionately gushing about instead.
I was slightly less dismayed to discover Thing was waiting patiently for us when we arrived. Maybe Enid, more so, since he sat blithely on the center of her bed and was filtering through her impressively excessive conglomeration of various fashion magazines.
Thing greeted Enid with striking enthusiasm for a disembodied hand, positioning himself on his wrist in a way he always complained made his stitches hurt, just so that he could wave. However, it was quite the contrary when it became my turn—in one swift movement, he was facing me head-on (if he had one), his knuckles bent at such an angle they well-nigh distinctly popped. Some might have interpreted it as a staunch bow, but I knew it was muscle memory from the numerous times a knife had only narrowly eluded the thread of his precious stitches. Yet, I was only keeping him on his toes—or fingertips, if you will.
Naturally, Enid and I fell into our respective places within the dorm: me, my hands poised idly above the keys of my typewriter, and Enid, hidden on the other side of her bed as she muttered with Thing. It wasn’t that I particularly cared about her hesitance to fall in sync with me, as I observed she was far too preoccupied with tactfully tending to his cuticles since, apparently, I had been far too rough with his supposed “delicate skin.”
I didn’t think she noticed the obvious absence of her favorite melodies amidst her passionate rambling and Thing’s determined, equally zealous retorts, but, like everything else, I did. Because, even despite the fact that I would never willingly admit it, I found that—within those muted thirty minutes—words had a marginally more difficult time finding me. Perhaps, if I’d turned to my tried-and-true, the decades-old phonograph I had once relied on as if it were a lifeline, something remarkable would have happened.
Although part of me dreaded it might have prevented Enid from playing that blood-curdling music I’d grown to anticipate, because it was our thing—although it wasn’t quite like not hugging or always being close enough to feel obligated to brush against one another just to make sure we were still there—it was the thing we both knew as well as we knew one another. I would keep writing because it was the rhythm her feet adopted when her songs began to trail off and fall silent, and she kept singing because, despite everything, she knew I never minded it.
Yes, that overwhelming de rigueur to turn around and look at her was nothing out of the ordinary. Yes, the kaleidoscope of butterflies flitting around and sweeping against the inside of my ribcage was as normal as anything between us could be. Expected, even, because Enid was finally dancing—wildly and like a lunatic, of course, but dancing, completely in her element all the same.
She looked so beautiful, I couldn’t help but think, with her hair in such a state of disarray it manifested only as a bold flash of color. Even more so as she whirled around, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth, and god, she wasn’t even trying. I swallowed, because the truth I’d been running from all along was finally beginning to catch up to me. Naturally, I would keep fleeing, but the truth would always be that much faster, that much smarter, and that much harder to evade and forestall.
My tongue grew heavy with the words I had always fiercely wanted to say, the ones that forced their way past my lips until the only option remaining was to wrench them out and hope she would never know, because I had always been hard to like. Even harder to love, but Enid had always been determined, and I was selfish enough to hope she would try.
Solely because my eyes had only ever been exceptional at betraying me, they steadily detoured down the middle of her face and to her lips as she mouthed whatever asinine lyrics were being passionately shouted. Not voluntarily, but it might as well have been, with the way I did absolutely nothing to stop them.
She grinned, flashed me that adorably lupine look, and asked what could possibly be the most appalling question to date: “Do you want to join me?”
Perhaps she did it just to elicit some kind of reaction; to prove how easy it was—and would always be—for her to read me, despite my attempts for it to remain otherwise, because all it took was a subtle, remiss twitch in my brow and she was already laughing. She was euphoric, and maybe part of me was, too.
‘I think I could live like this,’ I remembered thinking to myself, because there hadn’t been a time where I thought of my possible future and she wasn’t the first one I imagined in it.
I could do this every night, I determined; closely observing her because she would let me. She always would, and she didn’t even realize how much it meant.
Maybe one night I would be tempted to demonstrate, and I would be entranced into agreeing, so we would dance together until our feet complained of a satisfying ache and the floor wailed desperately for relief, since nothing else existed when it was just the two of us.
Then I’d probably agree to a second night, too, and a third and a fourth because I’d always been taught to appreciate the good things while I still had them. Except for the fact that she wasn’t just a good thing—and I felt foolish, for lack of a better word, really, but I found that she was the best thing, and I would treasure her that much more.
One day, when someone asked when, exactly, it was I knew, I would think back to this specific moment in time—this seamless transition between what was and what is—and determine it was then, that fleeting moment my eyes were glued stuck fast to Enid’s, despite the fact that hers maundered lower, somewhere beneath my nose. “Hungry” was a good word for what lurked behind her blue irises, but I preferred “proprietary;” she claimed them as her own, stashed them away for safekeeping, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Coming to terms with the truth wasn’t quite as easy as falling asleep, because I believed, at some point, I just tripped over it. Or maybe, in a fit of disgrace, nothing at all, and managed to drag her down with me. It hurt significantly less then, with her right by my side and her arms to embrace me and her body to cushion me, and I think that’s what made it all so much easier.
Enid grew understandably awkward as her song came to a close, but I welcomed it and didn’t dare look away; she had already interrupted my hour of writing, and I so easily let her. It wasn’t the first time, and I was sure it wouldn’t be the last.
“Satisfied?” I wondered, but I hoped she wasn’t. I could watch her forever.
Again and again, her lips curled in a way that warranted the return of those godforsaken butterflies, and again and again I gave her an overly fond look that manifested as those slow blinks I’d long given up on controlling.
Enid poked the screen of her watch, and her music came to an abrupt end. “More than.”
The long pull of air she took through her nose must have been mine, for I suddenly seemed so devoid of it.
“Did I interrupt?” she asked—though she hardly seemed concerned—her eyes lingering somewhere just past me. I determined it was likely my typewriter, as she took a cautious step toward the center of the room, and I quickly mirrored her.
“Never,” I said firmly.
Somehow, it reminded me of the annoying, supposedly insufferable habits I’d once listed off as if I’d ever truly hated them: the growling in her sleep, which was never audible on the nights she had already fallen unconscious when I returned from the balcony, sheet music in hand; the giggling when she texted, which inexorably led me to wonder if that was something she did while she spoke with me, too; and the absolutely unreasonable amount of perfume she spritzed—notably, that one scent in particular I made the mistake of mentioning over the phone once. Not a phone call, but the (miraculously, worse) texting I was still making attempts at getting used to.
I’d almost considered indulging in a laptop, just so that there was some of the familiarity I sought in typing.
Somehow, amidst Enid’s (miraculously still) passionate typing, the topic of perfume had surfaced. She mentioned that she was running low, perhaps, and maybe I had entertained it by trying to clarify which one—woefully, by name. I think the blitz of messages I received after that—the ones with too many typos to be even slightly more coherent than her blog—was undoubtedly more overwhelming than the ghost of the smell that pervaded my nostrils soon thereafter.
She addressed me by my full name when she realized I stopped reading her messages (I didn’t know how she could tell in the first place) and I duly noted the fact that she spelled my surname with two D’s instead of her usual one.
That could have been a typo, too, of course, but I didn’t believe in coincidences.
Enid was beaming again, as if I’d said something to vindicate the charming rosy hue that steadily blossomed across her cheeks. Not that I was complaining, but if I could decipher exactly what it was that warranted such a reaction, I might have never stopped.
I expected the comfortable silence that stretched between us, but I didn’t anticipate Enid interrupting it as soon as she did.
“You know what?” she said, and I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. She noticed and continued, “I think we should go out to Jericho again, just the two of us. Maybe we can go to Uriah’s Heap, if that’s something you’d be interested in?”
It was growing increasingly familiar, the manner in which she adopted as she prolonged the vowels in that peculiarly teasing way she always applied when speaking with Ajax—now Bruno, I added sourly—and I thought it was safe to assume she was no longer upset about what transpired at the Weathervane, if she ever had been. I was thankful, but I wasn’t sorry.
“I was under the impression it ‘freaked you out,’” I retorted, “after Outreach Day.”
Enid looked shocked I’d even remembered, but her smile grew in size all the same as she professed, “Oh, I don’t mind, really. It was kind of boring because it reminded me of you, I think, with the—um, dead things.”
I needn’t remind her it was where Ajax had originally asked her out, which I believed should have—if anything—made it thrilling. For her, at least; anything of the sort hardly appealed to me.
My brows twitched in no particular direction. “I’m flattered,” I said, and I realized—for whatever reason—I truly almost was.
Swallowing and hoping it would douse the confusing and my confusion, I entertained Enid’s expectant look.
“Fine,” I acquiesced, even though I refused to even consider being happy about it. I would only go to look for myself—because, after all, Thing informed me about the taxidermied squirrels, among other riveting antiques—and the fact that Enid happened to be tagging along was just a bonus.
It took Enid a monumental effort not to squeal, I noticed, and Herculean efforts not to close that distance between us embrace me. I didn’t have to tell her I appreciated it—she already knew and settled for an excited shriek instead, nodding her head so rapidly I thought her eyeballs might be bouncing in their sockets.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, because she still managed to fix me with that too-fond look.
Annoying, I thought grimly, but my lips moved to voice my opinion and it wasn’t silent at all.
By all means, it should have been genuine, except my voice lacked any of its habitual bite—my eyes were revealing all the wrong things—and I didn’t mean “annoying” as in the dirt that inhabited your boots and hid under your fingernails after grave digging, or having a phrase residing on the tip of your tongue but not being able to determine exactly how to word it. It was something I was gallingly familiar with, because that’s how I often felt when it came to Enid: desperate to say something but unsure of how to articulate it. It still rang true, because never in a million years could I have told her she was vexing and be sincere about it. Irritating at times, definitely, like Ichabod’s persistent attempts to be acknowledged—to be given something to keep his branches busy—or Enid’s endeavors at embracing me just because she wanted to be closer. Yes, annoying, but endearing, too.
“You love it,” she beamed, and I turned my back to her so she couldn’t see the realization dawning on me because yes, I really did. I always had and I feared part of me always would, but another didn’t venture to care, because I hoped she’d annoy me forever.
I could feel Enid’s wolfish grin burning its place into the back of my skull, like the sun itself was the one standing behind me (although maybe it was, with the way everything revolved around her) and not my overly expectant roommate. She wanted to catch up, perhaps, but talking hardly appealed to me anymore, out of fear I might say something I probably shouldn’t.
To deflect, I cleared my throat and bid her an all too-quick goodnight, pointedly ignoring the hesitance and confusion in her voice when she bid me one back.
I crawled rather ungracefully under the solace of my sheets and crossed my arms over my chest, but sleep eluded me. Or perhaps I eluded it, because I didn’t close my eyes long enough for it to be effectige or attempt to knock myself out—Thing didn’t preemptively offer. Instead, I stared at the ceiling, unwillingly picturing the bright look in Enid’s eyes as she hummed, curious, and retreated to her bed.
For a moment I thought she might have been better than me, as she flipped off her lamp and shuffled atop her covers until she deemed herself comfortable enough to relax. The room fell silent, aside from the cacophony of crickets in the lawn outside our spiderweb window, or the zephyr that audibly flustered the tree boughs. Aside from the blow of air that left the confines of Enid’s mouth—the sigh I wished I could have swallowed and softly breathed back out when I asked what had caused it, what was bothering her so—or my strident heartbeat, thundering so loudly in my ears I didn’t dare venture to decipher my thoroughly disarranged thoughts.
When I was sure Enid’s breath had evened and she was fast asleep—when I was daring enough to look in her direction—my gaze roamed over the imperceptible text on the posters that bestrewed her wall, and my eyes found purchase on hers in the dark.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any remarkable terrors that night. I would have even settled for the classic “spiders crawling in every possible body cavity,” but it too evaded my covetous grasp. Although, I supposed the sight I woke up to was worthy enough of being classified as a nightmare itself: Enid, quite the mess, pacing back and forth at the foot of her bed and chewing on her bottom lip as if it was her last meal.
“Oh my god, you’re finally up. I thought you might’ve actually died over there,” she exclaimed with saucer-wide eyes as I rose, and I thought this might have been one of the first times she’d stirred before me.
“That would have been a shame,” I replied, and Enid quelled my sarcasm at once with a look I was already turning around to avoid, engrossing myself in smoothing out the wrinkles in the sheets of my bed.
She didn’t add a word as I kneeled and retrieved the satchel from beneath the mattress, but her brows began to draw together as I ushered Thing inside, and I couldn’t say I was entirely surprised when she questioned, “Where are you going?” as if I owed her any explanation.
I didn’t, technically, but of course I answered anyway: “To see what kind of mayhem Thing and I could get up to. I was considering hanging hyperrealistic dolls off the chandeliers—what do you think?”
For whatever reason, even my stare wasn’t enough to drag an answer out of my roommate. She only frowned, silent for a moment before a grouse left her lips—one too loud to have been anything but a deliberate attempt to further gain my attention—and who was I to deny her that? “Enid,” I said. “What is it?”
There couldn’t have been a single good thing that came from that look in her eyes—undressed, I noted once I’d grown curious enough to look a little closer, sans any lustrous makeup.
She whined again, hopeless, mewled, “I need a favor,” and I was immediately dreading all the equally detestable directions this conversation might take.
I crossed my arms over my chest, but bid her to continue anyway.
“I’m kind of going on a date with Bruno later and I need help.”
‘Kind of?’ I thought, but it wasn’t the only thing that managed to disturb me. I hardly understood how I would be of more use than Yoko or even Divina when regarding which colors looked best together and which clashed, but I almost felt pressured to oblige anyway. Surely, she would correct me if I was wrong.
“Blue matches your eyes,” I concluded quickly, but on second thought, tacked on, “orange makes them stand out. Do with that what you will.”
Enid paused as if she weren’t sure how to process the information, and I succinctly wondered if it might have been the wrong thing to say until she faltered, “That’s not really what I meant.” My brows twitched in a manifestation of my confusion, and Enid clarified—sheepishly, for a werewolf, “I need help with my makeup.”
Somehow, I understood that even less. Enid, who always refused to leave her room without a meticulously arranged color palette in and of itself around her eyes, needed assistance? Curiouser and curiouser, she wanted mine specifically, while Yoko—as per usual—was likely the much more reliable option.
“Was Yoko fed garlic again?” I questioned, because I wasn’t sure why else she would have deemed me as a satisfactory option for this; I was the furthest from it.
“Yes,” she replied, but aside from the fact that the truth was already painfully obvious, her tells informed me she was lying. Her hands were folded in front of her, and the way her gaze skillfully evaded mine immediately raised my suspicions. I wasn’t sure why she felt the need to fib, but I didn’t feel compelled to push for an answer. After all, it was just a favor; the very least I could do for her, after everything she’d done for me.
I waited a moment before groaning, “Fine,” but Enid must have known I was caving the instant I uncrossed my arms; perhaps even the moment she asked. Unfortunately, I was not immune to anything when it came to her, from the pleading look in her eyes to whatever lengths it took to charm me into bending to her every whim. Unfortunately, she knew, and she used it to her advantage every time.
“But I thought you were leaving.”
It was a statement, but it rang like a question.
“It can wait—it’s been deemed not as important anymore.”
Enid beamed because she knew exactly why, and I deflected because I did, too.
One moment I was at the door, and the next I was setting my satchel down, eyeing Thing scampering out to observe, and asking Enid what exactly it was she expected me to do. It was no surprise when she answered with an image I barely took a moment to glare at, already dreading having to (somehow manage to) put together the psychedelic look she was desperate enough to ask my help with.
Yes, I was more than au fait with the fact that standing wasn’t the most ideal position to be in, but I believed I might have actually broken out in hives if I had to venture anywhere near Enid’s desk—let alone her abhorrently garish bed, which led me to wonder how she slept comfortably at night, amid her collection of stuffed animals—all more uncanny than the last.
I didn’t completely register just how close Enid was until I cautiously lifted the brush to her face. No forbearing pressure was immediately applied—no powder was dusted across the expanse of her eyelid—because my gaze was too fixated on hers to pay attention to what I should have, by all means, been doing in lieu, because I was abruptly aware of the fact that it was the first time I’d been able to observe the green flecks in her eyes from so close. There was a certain vehemence to them—a whisper of longing like a soundtrack in the hindmost parts of our minds. I’d been listening to it for months with the volume at its limit, and for some reason I still tried to talk over it; I shouted until I became querulous. But I’ve learned that solace I hunted—the congenial tranquility—I only earned when Enid was around.
Her breath pushed against my lips as she sighed, and for a moment I feared she’d drained her forbearance and it was her mouth pressed against mine instead, but I found I still didn’t flinch in the opposite direction to escape her fictitious avidity.
Enid wasn’t even touching me, I realized; she didn’t preemptively lean forward to capture my lips with hers, whereas Tyler veered in first—pressed his name into my mouth with his tongue because he believed that’s what would come out—Enid waited. She gave me enough time to let all the flummoxing things I was experiencing sink into me, slow as molasses, and she gave me enough time to stare at the corner of her mouth until it twitched. Not out of impatience, because she continued to let me wonder, slowly, of just how easy it would have been to dip forward and kiss her. To think of how easy it all happened to be; stepping closer and letting her do the same until we were toeing the odds of inevitable.
It was something largely unfamiliar compared to how it felt when Tyler touched me—when he kissed me. Somehow, the proximity was something I was far more sure of, and whatever else it was, because I knew it was unquestionably everything I wanted and simultaneously even more. I wanted Enid and everything else that came with her as a package: the wildfire in her eyes kindled the inferno in my chest, and the smoke that divagated from them made it difficult for me to catch my breath; the heart she wore on her sleeve, while simultaneously being so mystifying; and the fact that I would invariably, despite my efforts, be nothing but clay in her hands. She always had the chance to mold me into whoever she wanted—someone who cared a little more or someone who pretended to care a little less—but she didn’t. She never did.
I watched Enid carefully as she closed her eyes, and I dragged the brush steadily across her lid. I refused to breathe—she didn’t, either.
My eyes fell lower than warranted once I pulled back, and I discovered she’d since delicately pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. An attempt to cover up the fact that she wasn’t breathing, perhaps, but the swell in her chest and the flare in her nostrils that matched mine had long given her away.
Black dust arose from the palette as I dipped the bristles back in. Already, it deviated so far from the picture I didn’t bother to remember; it was as if I’d never been shown an image at all.
I wasn’t used to this—being so adjacent to another. I had an entire room to reside in: my desk, my bed, my closet—anywhere across the imaginary line dividing our space, but I still chose to be close enough to smell her shampoo, close enough to let her bear witness to the fact that I was just as much of a liar as she thought I was; close enough to let her see I really was no better than her when it came to being in her space.
Enid’s head was pushed to the side—too rough, I determined—and I allowed my fingertips to press a benign kiss to her jawline—pushing gentle marks into her skin where my lips never would—and I let my eyes press one to the tip of her nose, then the side of her face, where my index finger lingered significantly longer than it should over raised skin.
The gestures of the brush ceased because I was a mess—and she was, too. Such a beautiful one.
Enid slowly willed her eyes to open and looked down at me—curse her growth spurt—and I paused. It was so unfair, that stare. She was radiant, and I determined this—if nothing else—would have been the one thing I wanted to remember for the rest of eternity.
For all its potent envy, the sun only ever did her justice. Where it didn’t envelop her in a kaleidoscope of vibrant colors through the veil of her window, its golden rays highlighted her silhouette and glistened off the wave crests in her cerulean eyes. I could almost imagine myself in them, sheltered from the unforgiving sun underneath a black parasol, but catching the most vitamin D I’ve ever had in my entire life, despite all odds, as the water crashed and rolled onto the shore. Among the scattered seashells and dappled shadows that littered the beach—the only solace from the sun—dark delineations of shrieking seagulls soared from somewhere just overhead. This was too unpleasant a place to be in, I determined, until I saw that Enid was at her rightful place by my side, laughing with her head thrown back—her hair pulled well out of her face—and I was staring, wholly unashamed, because there was a certain peace to this moment I was in. As if I was finally allowed to look at her without fearing it would give absolutely everything away—maybe because I already had. But then she looked at me, wearing that too-fond expression that should be reserved for anyone else, and I thought that perhaps there really was no tranquility reserved for me, and I was only destined to be drowning forever in her gaze, out of other harm’s way and just out of safety’s reach, and I found I would have enjoyed that just as much.
She looked older somehow, from this angle. Not significantly, but there was a shallow collection of wrinkles splitting the space between her eyebrows, and the beginning of crow’s feet sprouted like an intricate design from the corners of her eyes, not entirely unlike vines. They flourished across the entirety of her face in the same way they had as they wrapped around my ribs—a habit they adopted to ensure there was no easy escape for me, or to ensure an unfeasible one, because being as eager as I was to be ruined by her was not enough.
The flowers blooming on the tendrils could have been the sporadic freckles on the sides of her face, or maybe the darker shades of blue in her eyes that represented the serenity of this potential life. I was undeserving of anything permanent with her, but I was selfish and greedy, and—given the opportunity—I would have accepted this regardless.
I could have carefully untwisted them myself, but instead I surrendered, because Enid was the only one who had sprouted a backbone when it came to the likes of each other.
My heart seized in my chest, because that wildfire in her eyes still remained. Her gaze raked over me—withholding something soft and something curious simultaneously—and the flames licked every inch of my skin her eyes touched.
Enid’s voice hadn’t changed—still soft like silk with the body of a fighter. She was still the love of my life—and I wondered whether or not that’s what it always had been. Was I just emotionally compromised, or was it recognition at first sight? Love at first words? Devotion at first laugh?
That was an easy one, but that was all that loving Enid was: easy. She tried to sweep me off my feet, and I so willingly let her—not because I was a fool; it was something somehow worse I could tell I’d finally learned to embrace, because aside from being passionate and obsessive, I was nothing else.
Once, I wouldn’t have believed Enid to be the person I sought, with her overwhelming barrage of contrasting colors that assaulted my eyes or her (at times) too-cheerful demeanor. I would have—should have—pursued someone with identical interests to mine, but Enid, with thoughts so inexplicably strange and behavior even more so, had turned out to be the only one I wanted all along.
Even back in our dorm, she looked absolutely radiant, and the sun had every reason to be jealous of her. She looked phantasmagoric—otherworldly. She was perfect, like what heaven was described to be or the warmth I seldom sought—but not from the sun—from Enid, because you could see everything the world had to offer and still be more astonished when your eyes met hers. And her attention—as inviting as an evening in the mortuary lockers—was somehow like the sun, too, and I determined the heat imbuing my cheeks must have been the satisfying burn from basking in it for too long.
I could have admitted defeat and confessed every single one of those little things, but “You’re beautiful” was the only thing that came out of my mouth instead, my voice hardly capable of being deemed a whisper, because in reality, I was trying not to let the words choke me. Saying them lifted a certain weight I wasn’t even aware existed, and Enid breathed it in through parted lips.
Perhaps it was just a lackadaisical breath, because I was still evaluating whether or not friends could admit something like that without meaning something else. Can I call you that again, and still want to worship you? Can I devote my entire being to you?
I flipped it over in my mind, twirling it between the pads of my fingers in a way that was not entirely unlike the ministrations I performed with the stray strands of Enid’s hair—the ones she neglected to clamp with her pink and navy clips. Or maybe it was intentional, the blonde fringe that fell just past her brows, because she wanted to match me. It suited her, and the realization only further convinced me of the fact that maybe I did mean something else by what I’d said after all.
It wasn’t delivered in a voice that was particularly soft, as she might have expected from anyone else, but something firm, because I wanted her to believe me when I said it. I needed her to.
I spoke with a little more confidence, despite not having a definite answer, when I whispered, “Don’t say a word,” because I was afraid I would be forced to exercise more drastic measures to keep her quiet. Like closing that little insignificant lacuna between us—that single inch that managed to feel just its size and simultaneously so much more—and pressing my mouth to hers to steal whatever she might say from its source, or uttering something that ought to have her turning tail before she had the opportunity to argue anyway.
My index finger fell to her lips—or maybe rushed was a better word—to hush her. To stop whatever lie it was she considered uttering, because I could see the gears turning in her head and because of the doubt that made its home in her gaze. Not like a zephyr or the beginning of rain, but something overwhelming, like a maelstrom or a tsunami, and I refused to let her get swept up by it.
There was much less bite instilled into my voice than anticipated, because I’d always been too soft when it came to addressing Enid—my voice always exuded a fondness I would never be intrepid enough to venture to name. It was hard, after all, to focus on something that made your heart stutter in your chest.
Her mouth was barred, but her lips were parted past it—she was just as shocked as I was, I thought, or maybe she was just surprised I’d originally bitten into her so-obvious bait, because I probably should have rejected her the very moment she asked. Except I was nothing if not putty in her hands, or maybe I was just a moth circling a flame—more specifically, that raging conflagration of passion in her eyes—or a plane headed straight for my sepulcher in the ground. In one case I’d be struggling against instinct, fighting to keep myself parallel to the floor, but in another I’m the one completely in control. I could pull up at any moment and save myself from the fatal danger—from my rapidly approaching fate—but I never would if it meant just a few more identical seconds with Enid.
She swallowed, her lips pursed against my finger, and the horrible realization of what I’d just done took its time to befall me.
I didn’t clear my throat or leave, but I blinked and tore my eyes away from her, because I knew if I didn’t then, I wouldn’t have been able to at all.
It took a monumental effort to continue after that—to ignore every time Enid’s blue gaze sought mine and to ignore every time I let it. Once, as I was blending two different shades around her eye; twice, as I stood too far on my toes, because she seemed suddenly disinterested in making this any easier for me; and thrice, when she exhaled another one of those endearing little breaths and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth like it might have somehow prevented it. There wasn’t a single time, I noticed, where I glanced at her and her eyes weren’t already on mine or on their way somewhere noticeably lower. She was entirely without shame.
Once I was finished, I didn’t step back to admire my lackluster handiwork—because I would never compete with my roommate’s impressively sharpened skill—I stepped back to admire Enid. She looked striking, with that broad, lupine grin stretched across the entirety of her face, donning black around her handsome eyes. She was luminescent. Bruno’s heart wouldn’t be able to take it, because mine almost couldn’t, either. It was a pitiful thing, jumping to my throat so that something alien—something decidedly softer, something far more compelled to knock down the walls I’d attentively constructed and surrender to Enid’s carefully orchestrated attacks—could replace it instead.
We’d both already determined I was never sane, but I thought this was something else entirely. She trusted me, and I neglected the fact just so that I could say she was carrying part of me with her. It was only equitable, though, because she never left me. She was in my eyes as I searched for her in the midst of her absence, and she was that soft spot that resided just above my heart. She was always with me, even when I wasn’t with her, and maybe that’s what made her so unfair.
I was still standing too close, so I took a step back—deeper into the space that was supposedly Enid’s—to avoid further inhaling the scent of her perfume.
“You’ll be late,” I gathered enough of my wits to say, but I believed part of me just wanted her to leave so that I could breathe again.
Enid swallowed, nodded once. “Right.”
The body mirror stared at her as she strolled past, messenger bag in hand, and willed her to spare a glance with the promise of her reflection, but she didn’t dare make eye contact because she trusted me. Would I have, too, given the circumstances?
Apparently, Enid wasn’t as concerned about being tardy as she should have been, because she still took the opportunity to whirl around on her heel and thank me. “For what?” I was tempted to question, but the door was already screaming on its hinges in an unnecessary announcement of her departure.
“Not a word,” I told Thing, because he was already inviting himself into my space and because I wouldn’t have an explanation for any of the questions he had to ask.
Later that evening, when Enid finally returned from her date with Bruno, she had absolutely nothing to say. She didn’t delve into the mysteries of the places she’d been or what transpired at them. Where her eyes normally housed an inviting warmth, they were cold with disappointment and something else I wasn’t quite capable of naming. It was one of the few looks she would never be able to pull off.
I wholly expected her to sulk for the remainder of the day, so imagine my surprise when she approached me instead and insisted that we leave and go on the trip to Jericho I had promised her just yesterday evening. I was under the impression that it would have to wait longer, but I was in no position to reject her.
That was what I told myself, at least, to make sense of the fact that I was abruptly back on the shuttle to Jericho.
The driver didn’t question anything at all as Enid led us aboard, and I challenged them to do so with a glare. They didn’t, of course, but I could feel their eyes on me until I sat down in the very back of the bus. Enid saved the smaller seat for me, I noted, although I doubted anyone would have been brave enough to venture toward the back once they saw her—the sun itself, swathed in a meticulously layered outfit that should have been too balmy for the summer heat—especially for her, who always radiated an overwhelming warmth. “It’s a werewolf thing,” she’d probably say, but I thought it was just her.
Enid tugged lightly at her collar like the heat might have been getting to her, and I noticed her makeup was relatively untouched as she stood to open the window—and was intrepid enough to reach over me and unfasten mine, as well.
The intensity of my glare didn’t wane, even as she settled and apologized, because I was too preoccupied with ignoring the intolerable blaze that singed my cheekbones. She had just moved too close, I told myself, and hoped it was a reasonable explanation enough.
Unfortunately, it was much less pleasant outside than it was the last time I stepped out of the shuttle. Immediately, the heat and humidity sucked the air out of my lungs and went to work on burning my skin. Enid, however, was glowing, smiling and willingly breathing it in. She’d always been peculiar, of course, but this was almost inexcusable.
“Are you excited or what?” she asked as we began walking, and it took all of my self control and more to not let the corner of my lip curl.
It seemed as if Enid’s hopes had been lifted, somehow, so I only entertained her with a look. She wasn’t sent into a fit of laughter, but I preferred the less conspicuous little smile she gave me—the one I could take right off her face and carefully place inside my pocket where no one else could access it. I wouldn’t flaunt it, but I’d exude a certain confidence because I would’ve been the only one capable of such a feat.
I could have said I was shocked Uriah’s Heap wasn’t significantly busier than it was, but I found there was no point in lying. After all, I supposed taxidermied squirrels didn’t appeal to very many, but that then begged the question: What was the real reasoning behind Enid’s desire to come here specifically?
No other customers were present, but in the back room, an employee was.
Part of me wished I hadn’t swapped assignments with Enid on Outreach Day solely because of the sights inside. Antiques lined the majority of the shelves—the most impressive pushed to the front line, the most lackluster as hidden as they could be on display. Some were admittedly more dilapidated than others, such as an old hand mirror forced to stand in the center of a shelf, while the pocket watch just beside it almost appeared brand new. It eagerly ticked away the exact number of steps my roommate took away from me, her attention caught, the dripping of the faucet behind a door—only slightly ajar—that counted every time my gaze fought its way back to her, and finally, a necklace in an open drawer that captivated me. Against the sun, it glinted as brightly as Enid’s eyes, and as I stepped closer, I was able to determine exactly what it was: moonstone. How ironic.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Enid cooed from just over my shoulder, and I thought that was the first and last time she’d ever managed to sneak up on me.
It would be hers.
I didn’t say a word then, either, as Enid observed it so closely I feared it may move on its own. It didn’t, of course, and I blinked, snatching it out of the drawer as she strolled deeper inside the store, hiding herself behind a cabinet as if she knew, with her back turned to the register.
“Thing,” I called, waiting for the lappet of my satchel to ease open, “Keep her busy.”
There was a sense of enigma comprehension as he eased himself out of the bag and down the side of my thigh, because he always knew. Somehow, in some way I’d never been concerned to question, he did.
Something—just luck, perhaps—must have been on my side that day, because there turned out to be no need to ring the bell on the counter and attract Enid’s (for once) undesired attention.
“That’s a nice find,” said the owner, I could only assume, in a mystified kind of voice, her dark, wide eyes adhered to the grey chain—not real silver, fortunately—clasped in my hand. “Moonstone,” she began, “often represents feminine wisdom and can provide protection—”
“I’m not interested in a lesson,” I interrupted, because frankly, the prospect of Enid catching me in the midst of purchasing something for her (again, her voice sounded in my head, much too thrilled for her own good) didn’t exactly seem enticing.
“Very well,” she said, and to my utter disappointment, only gave me a tight-lipped smile and rang up the total. There was a flash in her eyes—her irritation completely transparent—as she grabbed the cash out of my palm and preoccupied herself with counting out change.
From atop the door, the bell pealed, and there was a brief moment where I believed it might have been one of the (admittedly, few) customers or (admittedly, fewer) employees of Uriah’s Heap, but the telltale sound of giggling in that familiar high pitch combined with the patter of fingerprints could have only come from two people.
The change drawer slammed shut, and the owner droned with a tight-lipped smile, “Here’s your change, dear.”
Her arm was outstretched, palm open, but there was not a soul present to receive it.
From its hidden confines of my pocket, the meaning behind the tchotchke weighed on me like a particularly heavy dumbbell. It could have been considered a gift, had every sign not pointed otherwise, so instead I told myself it was a mere token of my gratitude to Enid for saving my life last semester. She deserved something more, something I poured my time into—my blood, sweat and tears—and not something I waltzed into a store and had half a mind to purchase. I would have crafted something of my own, if I wasn’t so afraid of what it could have meant—what unwarranted feelings would have caused me to do such a thing in the first place.
Still, there was a lurking desire to please, so yes, I told myself it was my appreciation, because it was the only explanation I could stomach enough to offer.
The chain imbued a certain heat into the palm of my hand, as if it was trying to mimic the comfortable warmth that radiated from Enid in waves, but nothing could replicate the feeling; that was the excuse I gave myself as I hunted it back across the street, chasing it at Enid’s heels, but the heart was not so easily placated.
She greeted me with one of those signature smiles, and I tried to ignore the knowing sway Thing executed from the secure junction between her shoulder and neck. He knew better than to sign or tap a single word, but knowing it was so blatant was nothing short of humiliating.
“So…” Enid said, standing too close. Her hand brushed against mine once before I snatched it back. “Might there have been anything else you wanted to do while we’re here?”
The answer to that should have been obvious; I hadn’t even wanted to return to Jericho in the first place. Still, there was something almost hopeful lurking in the depths of her gaze, not to—under any circumstances—be entertained.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but this was your idea.”
Enid blinked, but the beam on her face didn’t waver. “Yeah, but I figured you’d actually break out in hives if we went back to Hawte Kewture again, so maybe consider it a gift.”
In a way that was no better than skipping rocks, something cheeky bounced across the scant freckles that dappled her cheeks as I corrected, “Your second,” and recalled my snood, draped carefully across the back of my chair in the dorm. All of it was far more than what I deserved.
“Whatever works for you,” she replied, twinned it with an annoying wink that came too easy, and somehow expected me not to have a physical reaction, though it was the exact opposite of the response I’d grown to predict from the display of—well, anything—from Enid: the typical unease that manifested as a curl in my lips was replaced with a red-hot burning hidden at the tips of my ears. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, because it was just the sun’s gaze becoming too overwhelming—surely.
There was a silence that stretched gradually between us—not entirely expected, but not entirely unpleasant, either.
She was leading us back to the shuttle, I realized not long thereafter, despite the fact that the driver seemed highly unlikely to make any exceptions in regard to an early ride back, especially since I’d left my pocket mace at home—the persuasive medieval kind.
“There’s nothing I need,” Enid eventually said, skirting well around a group too busy eyeing Thing to be paying any attention to where they were going before returning to my side, and I couldn’t decide whether I should have been relieved or not.
I eyed her momentarily, grateful to not have been forced to meet her gaze, and acquiesced, “Very well.”
Obediently, Enid trailed me past the side of the shuttle and down the road that connected Nevermore to Jericho without so much as a word, and it wasn’t long before I discovered I enjoyed the time shared between the two of us. Although it wasn’t exactly the most shocking—nor the newest—breakthrough, it unsettled me all the same.
Despite the clatter of my boots and the softer fall of Enid’s sneakers on the asphalt—a much smarter choice of footwear, in hindsight—I deemed it too quiet, but was still surprised when it was my voice that sliced through the agonizing silence instead of her’s. “I trust you’ll be spending the remainder of the day with Yoko.”
Enid grinned just as the sun burst through the foliage above her, and my breath caught, stuck somewhere in between the middle of my throat and the tip of my tongue, where words precariously balanced themselves.
“Don’t tell me you’re actually going to miss my company,” she said, and I wondered whether or not my imagination was merely playing tricks on me, or if she sounded a little breathless, too. Evidently, she’d been waiting for me to say something, and I couldn’t say I was particularly surprised.
With a look that was supposed to convey the fact that I absolutely would not (even though part of me believed I would anyway), I settled her—or rather, attempted to, because none of the daggers I could glare came close to being capable of killing her glow. It was almost admirable.
Enid shrugged, but her smile didn’t waver—she wasn’t giving up yet. She never did so easily. “It was worth a shot.”
What ensued, to no one’s surprise, was another one of those hearty moments of silence where the only comfort came from the familiarity (or lack thereof) of our surroundings. Leaves skipped across our feet, shaken and ripped away from their branches by the breeze; a crack resounded somewhere in the distance, rang through the wood like a gunshot; a squirrel scrabbled across an opposing branch, hoping to remain unseen; a hawser materialized, invisible, and drew my gaze back to Enid, growing taut as if anchoring me whilst it found purchase somewhere deep within the abyss of her eyes. It was so easy to see how people drowned, because nothing was as alluring, nor as dangerous, as getting swept into their tides.
“Well, since you’re so curious, I actually am, but only for some of the day; we’re just hoping to have an actual girls’ night before classes start.”
I shuddered despite the heat. Enid continued. “Painting our nails. Gossiping. Doing each other’s hair. The usual horrifying teenage girl experience.”
Odium fell sour on my tongue, but the soft look in Enid’s eyes sweetened it somehow. The sweet ones were always the most dangerous, and she’d always been cloy. It was always a miracle she didn’t melt in the rain.
“My condolences,” I said, trying to hide the too-salient manifestation of my distaste.
Her grin dropped only slightly. “So… I guess inviting you would be kind of pointless?”
Truthfully, yes. But the fact that she’d even considered it almost made me frustrated. With her. The irritation welled and flourished because of all the things it could have indicated and all the things it couldn’t possibly have, and like kerosene, the little flicker of hope that resided in my chest fueled it.
“It’s not my preferred method of torture,” I said, but Enid fixed me with a look that had me swallowing the lump in my throat and admitting in lieu, “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
She really was something dangerous, with a mouth so convincing and eyes that squealed everything I’d ever imagined being able to hear. One day I might see those words leave Enid’s mouth, when I was just as brave as her and significantly less fearful of the truth; when I preferred it over the lies I grasped close at night, like the stuffed unicorn swathed in muttered apologies every morning it was discovered on the floor by her bed.
“You could never,” she breathed. Part of me didn’t quite believe her.
Something ghosted across her vacant gaze. The weight of what I believed to have been realization drug her eyebrows toward her nose and tugged her shoulders down.
I didn’t utter a word about it. Enid didn’t push me to accept her invitation. There, too, was a certain unspoken understanding, conveyed largely through the silence we adopted and those little absentminded nods she sent my direction, or the slight scrunch in her nose she demonstrated whenever someone said something she disapproved of (or otherwise through her silence.)
To love was to recognize the fact beforehand and anticipate the minuscule, sinuous creases it intricately designed around her brows. To love was to deliberately allow her to creep closer because her smile was growing progressively tight-lipped and artificial. To love was to sanction the accidental graze of her skin against mine and the contrite look that followed. But to cherish, to favor, and to wish was to finally determine an excuse I shouldn’t even require to reach out and drag her away, because that was all I was capable of doing: wishing. It was so inconsequential, but I would always wish I was capable of being deserving of someone like Enid. I wouldn’t call her perfect only because such a feat was impossible, but if it was, she would establish the paradigm.
My preferred choice of colors, despite my aversion to them and how unbearable they were on her multifarious articles of clothing, were the ones that resided within her eyes and around the very tip of her nose. Not nearly as dark or as potent as the blood I was so familiar with, but a more scarce, deliberately lighter shade that I supposed was meant to make her appear almost sunkissed. Pink dusted her cheeks, too, and drew disfigured shapes around the attractive curl at the corner of her mouth and the indistinct hair above the bow of her lips. Nonexistent, had I not ventured as close as I did, and I leaned away with the next step I took. Our shoulders didn’t brush anymore.
Unfortunately, she was the greatest love I would ever have. Unfortunately, she would never know it.
Thing took my position in the conversation and Enid eagerly entertained him, chirping her way back to Ophelia Hall with such ardence the robins outside had to have viewed her as competition.
Enid cavorted to her bed, and Thing dug his nails into her shoulder in a futile attempt to brace for impact. The fact that he wasn’t immediately sent soaring into her pillow (or somewhere equally hapless) told me something must have been behaving in his favor—likely just to spite me.
Again, we all fell into our respective positions. I, sitting at my desk with a novel in hand, and Enid and Thing on her mattress. One was already perusing idly through a dreary-looking magazine, and the other kicked her legs back and forth from her stomach, wholly interested in her cellphone.
I thought we adopted this so quickly because it was practiced. Because it had been rehearsed far too many times last semester to not have been burnished and ingrained into our minds as a habit. But in reality, it was always just another reminder that it was the consequences of taking that brave step out of line that were to be feared. The repercussions of disregarding the determined do’s and don'ts: meeting her expectant gaze and allowing my eyes to murmur everything I could not (and she would always feign her reaction; she acted as if my words fell on deaf ears) and never daring to utter a word out loud.
Barbed wire lacerated my throat, robbed me of my ability to speak as if it was under the impression I had ever been capable in the first place.
No, I wasn’t staring; observing was a decidedly better word, because she somehow managed to be so complex and perplexing, yet simultaneously so easy. She was easy to please, as I called her name from across the room, and a smile immediately emblazoned her face; easy to adore, because her eyes were weapons in every sense but physical and she had a way of charming me into falling on the sword; and she’d grown to be well-nigh too easy to love—or maybe she really had been all along—but there was no particular reason, only contributing factors. Our not-so-clandestine language, conveyed largely through the jolts we experienced when we touched, the satisfying afterburn we’d come to crave, and the glances we stole since we weren’t permitted anything else. Among other details, of course, that I would not repeat out loud so I was never concerned with battling the twist in my mouth.
She was a thief, and it’s determined I was, too, as she snuck a kiss from my lips I so willingly let her take (though it was not so much stealing, was it?), and I returned the favor because I’d always desired things I had no business calling mine.
Determined, the sharp edge of the paper drew a knife to the delicate skin of my fingertip and grinned at the flush of red. I’d dealt with my fair share of papercuts before—often a given with my typewriter—but this was different, somehow. Enid flinched, bothered, and her nose twitched, presumably because the scent stung.
In a futile attempt to disguise the smell, since she’d always been particularly queasy, I pushed the pad of my finger past my lips and let the copper taste melt on my tongue. I couldn’t quite gauge her reaction, but past the remnants of what used to be her smile, she didn’t exactly appear pleased.
If I wasn’t already certain of the fact that I had all her attention, the wordless tilt of her head, so effortlessly proficient at reassuring me, confirmed it.
“Come here,” I said, and something constricted my throat.
Briefly, I considered it to be the thrill of her compliance as I stood—not quite level with her eyes, but decidedly close enough (I was in denial, still)—and repudiated the possibility that it could have been her proximity.
The tendrils of her perfume wafted in my direction, twisted themselves around me at a pace that was set far too slow to have not been a deliberate opportunity for me to step away, and I determined that was what compelled me to do the exact opposite: to take a step closer so we were toe-to-toe across an invisible line and nothing else. And perhaps it was just because I couldn’t quite stomach any of the other possibilities.
Drawn to them like a magnet, I faltered briefly as I met her eyes. “Turn around.”
Enid appeared skeptical because she didn’t yet know I would turn a knife on myself long before I would on her. I believed that to be the source of her doubt, at least.
I sighed—something I was never even aware I was holding—as I tore my gaze away from hers, fished deep inside my pocket until it found purchase on linked metal, and bit down on it.
The quiet gasp that left the confines of her mouth was what stole my next breath, because her eyes were sparkling, she was radiant, and she was completely transfixed. “It’s beautiful,” she said, and her voice was full of such wonder and conviction I almost could have been convinced she’d never seen it before. If only she had not been looking at me.
“It is,” I said, but I missed the way the sunlight glared off the stone and focused on how well the reflection complimented the shades of blue in her eyes.
Only then was she significantly more eager to turn and bare the back of her neck, raising what little of her colorful hair was obstructing my decided path. Only then did I hesitate, my fingertips just a breath away from her skin, and turn over the remaining options in my head. Only then did I finally lean in.
Even if I’d chosen to go out of my way to not touch her, my endeavors would have been futile; the necklace clasp was far too small and actively attempted to pry itself out of my unusually clammy hands, and something determined I was far too close already for me.
Shallow, my breath fanned across the back of her neck and raised goosebumps along the pale expanse of her skin.
Moving away or changing my mind entirely—thrusting the necklace into her capable hands instead—would have been the more prudent option, but because I’d always been weak when it came to her, I didn’t do either of those things. But because entertaining the shudder she attempted to suppress as I skirted around the nape of her neck was much too inveigling an opportunity to pass up, my feet planted roots in the ground.
The clasp hooked onto its counterpart at last, and I released another involuntary breath that must have been decided as Enid’s cue, because she whirled around with a too-bright grin to briefly inspect the chain around her neck.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice quiet, and I could only manage a slow blink, because she was already firing the question: “How does it look?”
Although it wasn’t the question I was anticipating by any means, I choked anyway.
Reading between the lines had always been one of those habits I’d adopted from Enid, ever since last semester. Painfully obvious was the only word I could insert to describe the question she had really meant to ask.
My eyes detoured from hers and latched onto the necklace like a parasite. That was me she was wearing around her neck—the only piece of me I was capable of offering to someone that was so effortlessly deserving of so much more.
I spun on my heel before I made the mistake of meeting her eyes again—expectant. Hopeful. As if she thought there was something within me worth her time or worth whatever wishes she had the ability to waste.
The smile on her face audibly crumbled, and I swore I felt everything else collapsing along with it.
She would always hope for something I was incapable of giving her, and I would continue to disappoint her every time.
There was a faint sigh that ensued from behind me; somehow more tumultuous than the crash that led to it. I had little time to think (hope) it was something softer than exasperation, because she was suddenly in a rush. To gather her belongings, to bid Thing goodbye, and to spare me a glance that conveyed everything she wasn’t yet ready to say. Disappointment resided on her tongue, but she didn’t have means to articulate it.
The door closed and it was all-too quiet. The lack of k-pop music and the resulting blood springing out of my ears, or the hushed conversation I could only ever catch wisps of when Enid became especially enthusiastic, was all but physically crushing. It weighed my shoulders down at my desk and blocked words from finding the keys of my typewriter. Even my once-reliable phonograph did very little to soothe the silence, and it left me feeling even more hollow than I had before.
Between the time that Enid left and the time at which she arrived—unusually late, I noted the moment the door swung open—there was a moment in which I considered seeking Yoko’s dorm. Perhaps to apologize, but for what exactly? I relied on Enid to do the returning, because there was not a single part of me which understood what half of these feelings were or what they meant. Would Enid even understand?
Thing was of relatively no help. He uttered a word about Bruno and I was not ashamed to admit I ignored the rest of what he said. Of course he noticed, and he didn’t need to be capable of a sigh to sense the disappointment that radiated off him.
Sleep eluded me again that night, between Thing’s habitual restlessness and the twitching of his digits (likely running from a crime scene) and Enid’s texting—sans giggles, replaced by quiet whines and comments whispered under her breath that bordered irritation.
I stiffened further as her gaze fell on me; the unwavering intensity was difficult to ignore.
A short sigh followed; it shook me from across the room as if I were merely a leaf blowing in the wind, and the sense of helplessness or of fear of a power so strong wasn’t something entirely inaccurate to my predicament. Enid was mine, that force that was capable of doing whatever she pleased; she could sweep me up like a flood or siphon the air out of my lungs like smoke from a wildfire.
Too benign—she expressed just enough vehemence to sting but never had the heart to hurt; she was more akin to a gentle breeze, nipping at the tip of your nose but far too eager to pass up whispering sweet nothings in your ear as it whirled past, or a blanket knitted comfortable enough to envelop but not sturdy enough to hold. Enid was both. She was undoubtedly everything I could never be. Her mind, her body, and her voice were soft like silk and held all the power of an avalanche and more, and I was just as weak as the layer of snow that contributed to its plummet when it came to the likes of her.
The next morning, there was not a physical word exchanged between the two of us. Rather, further than a single breath could grasp, the unspoken lurked within the uncharted depths of her irises; the false truths melted—superficial—on the shore and flushed away the text of something sacred traced within the sand. But despite all odds, her reticent glances persevered past tired red eyes, and I let them.
Even throughout classes, she was unrelenting. During botany, she lingered behind me at her workbench with Yoko, where their whispers persisted like clockwork and bounced off my back; or during fencing, where her mask should have, by all means, dampened the sensation, it felt more potent than ever instead.
It was never particularly difficult to determine where she stood; not everyone expressed such prowess (or hung over me quite like she did, but with that fact aside), and such confidence. I had to admit, it was one look of countless others that suited her well.
Flattery wouldn’t get me anywhere, I knew, so I didn’t attempt to take first place or feign indifference as she lunged toward her opponent. She did it in a way that was so certain—so driven—that I could not help but reminisce the very first time I’d witnessed such a feat from her; twas the very night she saved my life.
I couldn’t catch a glimpse of her face as she threw her riposte, but I could imagine the beautiful, triumphant look she wore as the tip of her blade found purchase on her competitor’s abdomen.
The final point was given to Enid. I blinked, though any genuine surprise was absent and I didn’t look away as she exposed her face. She was grinning. She was beautiful.
Something not entirely unfamiliar bubbled in my chest, determined to wipe that look off her face because I wasn’t the one that prompted it, and perhaps it was that joined with the fact that we had yet to speak a word to each other—or merely my morbid curiosity getting the better of me—that compelled me to be the one that challenged her.
Horrified, she accepted, but I couldn’t deign to imagine the look on her face had I offered to invoke a military challenge; even if she allowed me, I could never bring myself to draw blood from her.
I didn’t dare look away as I drew my mask over my eyes, or as Enid followed suit and obscured her face with her own.
There was a moment that ensued where the only source of sound came from the ringing in my ears and the distant, droning clash of blades I’d absentmindedly begun to tally. Each strike was the ticking of an imaginary clock, counting the seconds in which I could only manage a distant stare, moored firmly to a single spot. One, bright dots of cerulean revealed themselves from behind her mask, because her soul was far too bright to be concealed within her body; two, she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, and her perseverance threatened to draw blood from it for her; three, the blonde in her brows manifested as a brief flash as they plunged toward her nose. It wasn’t even a moment later before she mimicked the lunge with her entire body, sailing toward me before I could decide exactly which strike would be counted as the fourth.
I wasn’t given ample opportunity to convey what little surprise it warranted, but she caught me anyway on a little fishhook in some uncharted territory between a parry and a determined thrust of my own blade.
My left arm was more difficult to move on such a whim—sluggish to function in a way that made it feel as if I was trying to run underwater—and she knew. As well as her size (which I almost reckoned to be unfair), it was one of those things she decided to use to her advantage, and within seconds the rounded tip of her blade was homing in on my left shoulder as though nothing else existed.
Both her speed and accuracy were feats more than worthy of reverence; hence, it didn’t discomfit me to allow the corners of my lips to curl toward my cheeks abaft the confines of my mask.
The hesitation I expressed was almost enough for Enid to declare her victory, but I eluded her blade at the last possible second and met it with a strike of my own.
We clashed, but she’d already deliberately let me get too close anyway, and our eyes met. The frenzy that followed wasn’t of my culpability directly, but I wouldn’t deny the fact that I initiated it because I had (and always would) enjoy being able to teeter right on the edge of fraying Enid’s nerves. I savored having the ability to toe the line she pretended to set—never enforced—like I bounced over the space that split us, or being able to tell, despite everything, that she would always be one to adore it; she would always be the one that bounded closer.
‘How did you know?’ someone might ask one day, and I’d probably admit it was those little tells that never failed to give her away: the grins she tried not to let sculpt shapes in her lips or the twitch at the corner of her mouth her futile efforts warranted.
I was a fool to consider the exhilaration I felt was from my saber finding purchase on her abdomen (to which she paused and replied with a sigh), because in truth, it was from seeing Enid in such a state: chasing after me as the next round began, saber in hand, that was identical to the way I’d pursued her for months, except the rules had now been reversed; she was the predator, and I was the prey.
My disappointment in the fact that she hadn’t again attempted to meet my gaze was all-too vigorous, but she—thankfully—trampled over it as she advanced toward me and I voluntarily took a step back to allow it. Unfortunately, it was just then that Enid made her first mistake. She reached, chest half exposed, toward me, and I lunged forward with my arm outstretched to steal a second point for myself before she could take the opportunity.
Enid tensed. Perhaps upset that I’d technically won, but she still prepared herself, situated in front of me, as if it didn’t matter anyway.
For a moment, I considered simply walking away—why waste my time on something that would make as little difference as one final round?—but I was in no position to deny her this. Or much of anything.
Quicker this time around, she launched herself toward me again. She was impatient, swinging wildly and with renewed fervor.
Tentative step after tentative step was taken backward, but Enid only rapidly continued to close the distance between us. I quickly realized attempting to hold my ground was futile; she was swift and lithe, and I was no better than the dirt beneath her shoes, giving way to her every attack without so much as one to parry.
Suddenly, the ground felt as if it had shifted from beneath my feet, trailed by the indisputable sense of weightlessness that made it feel as if I was packed with feathers, and Enid was the giant fan settled in front of me that only had one goal in mind.
I was thinking: this was why they called it falling. The mechanical reaching for something close enough to the sense of security to claim you were stable, the tension in your muscles to fortify yourself against the inevitability of the impact, and the air rushing out of your lungs—pinched tight until there was not a source left—from the final collision.
Then I really fell, for lack of better word, unceremoniously onto the floor with a technique identical to the one I had when I fell in love with Enid: gradually, so that I had enough time to notice but not enough to prevent it, then all at once when it came crashing down on me and I it.
The noise that left my mouth in the same manner was not an exalting one, but then there was Enid’s face—suddenly, abruptly unmasked—suspended above me, her brows furrowed and mouth open. Concerned. Talking. Yet, I could only focus on the way her hair tumbled around the sides of her face like blinkers, as if such a thing would ever be necessary; she was so abstracted she made it seem as if there weren’t any witnesses anyway.
Fortunately—though her voice was hushed only slightly—I could just discern her multitude of apologies as though ‘sorry’ was the only word she had equipped in her vocabulary.
“Oh my god, Wednesday,” she said, and it was only then I registered how well my name slid off her tongue; she could fill her mouth with it or swallow it whole, and I would never dare to question her. “Are you okay?”
If I were any more of a fool, I would have asked her the same question. Instead, I could only bring myself to say, “Only my dignity is shattered.”
With my mask on, the intensity of Enid’s gaze was unremitting, and it was soon discovered it was an unstoppable force—never waning, destined to eternally spotlight me—and I was anything but the immovable object that was supposed to be able to withstand her.
Enid offered her hand, an anchor and an unuttered invitation simultaneously (because we didn’t need any audible sound to communicate; the looks written in our dialect spoke enough volumes alone), but despite it, I was torn, wholly entranced by the mellow light that fluttered through the windows and caught the disheveled flinders of dye in her hair. The wisps on her head exploded and ignited into an echo of broad, kaleidoscopic shades that made it feel as though I should have been on my knees worshipping the transcendental being that was Enid Sinclair instead of capsized on my back, or perhaps cradling her head just as gently as the nebula cascading around her ears like a psychedelic waterfall, rather than observing the droplets that delved deep beneath my skin as if they were shards of glass.
I wasn’t in love, but the prod of every fragment was a heavy kiss threatening to bruise; I wasn’t in love, but every attempt to remove them felt like an arduous endeavor to uproot my own heart; I wasn’t in love, but the spurts of blood that followed extraction were the tears of having to forfeit something so beloved, because I’d be jealous if anyone else was offered the right. I could say I wasn’t in love, but unfortunately, yes, I was; my heartbeat spelled it out for me—thrummed inside my chest as if it was trying to flee its confines. It knew who it belonged to.
The lingering taste of humiliation was too frigid on my tongue—Enid’s eagerly proffered warmth too beguiling. The anticipated shame never settled, preferred to whirl shapes around me without so much as a vague idea as to where to plant its roots, and Enid cleared it away with a puissant, effortless yank of my arm to get me on my feet again. Besides the fact that she was much too strong, much too fast; she always underestimated her strength, so the extra step I spared because of her miscalculation was entirely requisite.
Call it what you will. A trip, a stumble. Both. Or the force of Cupid’s tardy bolt lodging itself in my back—whatever drastic measures it took to expunge the insufferable look off Enid’s face, the complacent one that was more than enough to imply she could see the tip of the arrow poking through the flesh above my heart. She saved me once, but now she and the love I had for her would be my demise.
For a brief moment, I was grateful it was Enid pulling me to my feet and not Yoko or someone equally intolerable (Kent was the first name that came to mind, god forbid), but maybe then it would have been easier to ignore the compulsion—or entire lack thereof—that sanctioned my hand dropping to my side as if it was filled with lead or the surfacing desire—necessity—to look away.
Enid couldn’t read lips, but I once found that she knew Morse code, and I feared my feelings would persist—because nothing was so easily killed—and find every way they could to translate the words to her just so they wouldn’t have to leave the security of my mouth. Blinking. Absentmindedly tapping my pencil on the edge of my desk.
But if all else failed, I was the one she knew how to read best. She had her tells, and I had the ones left unconcealed, too: darting eyes because hers were the best lure for my secrets, and closed lips because mine were proven far too eager to give them away. She was what made me strong, and she was also the reason I was so weak.
Yet another apology was what begrudgingly drew me back to the present—she was my anchor, after all, but her fidelity still did not warrant a response.
A moment passed, perhaps two; I wasn’t sure how much time it took for my gaze to deviate back up to her eyes, because everything else about her was as beguiling as a black hole, and I couldn’t help but allow the force of it to stretch my next breath directly from my nose like a backward sigh.
I could have stared for an eternity and been none the wiser; time refused to carry on whenever I gathered enough courage to meet her eyes. To study them and to commit every little aspect to memory—the grinning luminosity of her soul or the reflection of mine in the pool of her irises—or to not, so that I had a reasonable rationale to meet her gaze over and over again.
Brazen, I stole one more glance as we exited the room—still, she refused to meet my eyes—and an additional one later that evening upon the realization that there was no dancing following the clicking of my typewriter; only silence that even I could only find unappealing.
The ghost of her sneakers shrieked against the floor, but Enid remained unmoving, stubborn.
It wasn’t a silence that desperately needed to be filled, but she released a heavy sigh from her cocoon inside her favorite overly frizzy blanket as though it was necessary anyway. In my case, comfort wasn’t something I sought, but Enid always provided it so willingly; grounding me with silent stares, lifting me with a deliberate brush of her knuckle against mine, skin warm. Seeping. Always just a reminder that she was there, and that she wasn’t leaving. Couldn’t, perhaps, and part of me had grown to crave it: the inevitability, the attention that was destined to be mine all along, basking in it—and shaming myself for shying away from it for so long. For standing beneath the shade instead of letting myself burn. And now, I couldn’t live without it, even if it killed me.
The warmth in her gaze softened my stiff limbs just enough to turn and look at her.
Half-lidded eyes, bangs disheveled and scattered across her forehead, fallen far enough to the side to obscure a portion of her face. The intensity of her gaze didn’t wane, but it didn’t need to; I met her during a lazy, periodic glance around her phone and her brows unfurrowed, shoulders relaxed. She blinked once and stared as if she couldn’t bear to look away, her video still playing and casting shadows across her face, muted and momentarily forgotten.
She pursed her lips as if she wanted to say something and brushed her hair out of her eyes. It didn’t hesitate to roll back. She visibly fought a huff.
“Can I ask you something?”
Perhaps unwillingly, I nodded, almost imperceptible. Enid didn’t mistake it for hesitance.
“Yesterday,” she recalled, “with the necklace, and at Hawte Kewture, you didn’t say anything when I asked how I looked. Why?”
I might as well have been sent into another vision with the way she appeared in front of me again, clad in that flattering gown, and it was then I hesitated. Words died on my tongue because of all the things she was—my ever-genuine best friend, and all of those countless other things that I let teeter on the flummoxing lines of in-between—and I hesitated because of all the things she wasn’t and could never be.
She was growing expectant again, as if there was an answer I could give her that made any sense.
“I don’t understand my opinion’s significance,” I admitted, but it sounded small—like a lie. Pitiful.
Enid unfurled herself from her cocoon, rising to her feet and suddenly intimidating, stepping toward the center of the room. Habit compelled me to do the same.
“It’s significant because I wanted it,” she said in an unusually stiff voice, her brows drawing together over those handsome blue eyes that once effortlessly doused all my dubiety, and now only kindled it—not entirely unlike kerosene—with the violent wildfire that raged within them.
The corners of her lips distorted to match that look that was beginning to grow increasingly familiar as she scoffed and added, “God forbid I want my best friend’s opinion.”
Yes, there were those words again, that empty title that narrowly evaded the truth, delivered in the same manner as a swift blow to my diaphragm—except for the fact that something led me to believe a physical blow would have pained me less. I would have been able to defend myself then, at the very least, because I’ve yet to learn how against this emotional torment. Against the defiant swell in Enid’s chest and the way I deflated in return.
“Well,” I started, and I wasn’t even sure where, exactly, I planned on going with it, “I gave you my opinion. I’m not sure why you’re pressing this matter.”
Time appeared to be slowing around us, from the breeze that rustled through the branches of the woods just outside the window to the clouds that slowly obnubilated the moon and then held their position; however, Enid’s rejoinder was still spit out of her mouth the moment I closed mine.
“That was not an answer.”
I couldn’t discern all that lurked behind the whirling inferno in her gaze, but hurt—while it wasn’t the most prevalent—was the most familiar. I’d caused it again, somehow, though I didn’t think it was my response (or lack thereof) but perhaps something deeper; something I couldn’t quite understand and something I didn’t think Enid would have been open to elucidating.
I didn’t know what to expect when she blinked—lingering anger, or something overwhelming enough to shrivel the guilt clawing at me—but her eyes jumped a little wider like there was something in my gaze that surprised her.
Like a jump-scare, those feelings I swore up and down I would never experience were now the ones I was desperately trying and failing to push aside and ignore; the same ones that had long begun to compel me into staring longingly by her mouth—sculpted by the gods themselves—and the ones that carefully observed her tells: the soft flutter of her lashes and the slight, impatient quiver in her mouth.
These were the same feelings that grasped onto the little things she told me and dangled from the hope—the promise of something more than this—they caused to surface, too, and the ones that kissed her lips closed so they couldn’t utter things I had no business hearing.
But she wouldn’t shy away from me like she did from Bruno, because she was used to it by now. I had kissed her many times before—unconventionally, like everything else—not yet with my lips, but with my eyes, the same way I often kissed her mouth and she kissed mine back. She was unashamed; never quite as shy about it as she was about her scars—the beautiful wounds she received from protecting my life when I was unable to—so I kissed those, too. Yet, all the times her stares lingered a little too long on her reflection, I didn’t stare—I never had to. There was not a piece of her that was not loved by me.
“Bruno is more than qualified,” I deflected at last, unconcerned with schooling the potent disdain and concealing my sneer.
“Why do you talk about him like that?” She asked, “Like he’s somehow so far beneath you?”
It took me a moment to come up with a plausible answer—one that wasn’t rooted entirely on the lies I’d long begun to bury myself under just so I didn’t have to come to terms with the truth. “Because he isn’t good for you,” I determined at last—just as I silently resolved Ajax wasn’t good for her, either—and Enid was already loading another question I couldn’t find an immediate response to into the chamber.
“How do you know what’s good for me?”
Of course, the simple answer was that I didn’t; that I never had and I would ruin her and everything we had before I ever would.
Where she went out of her way to include me and to consider my feelings, I pushed against it. I pushed against her by fighting tooth and nail and arguing as though I wasn’t already aware that I was bound to lose, or that my fate wasn’t already beginning to creep in and reveal itself; there was a chance that Enid was leaving tonight. What could I do to stop her?
My mind promptly blanked, and only one vehement, selfish thought surfaced from its murky depths: “He doesn’t deserve you.”
The silence that ensued was the only weight capable of dragging her lips into the array of different shapes they adopted. First, a slight frown—a manifestation of her brief but evident confusion—then, a little smile, as though the aspiration I instilled in her from what I said made the weight a little lighter; a little easier to lift. As if, in that singular second, hope was allowed to tug at the strings, instead of whatever vile thing pressed her mouth back together in a straight, taut line, and only let it snap apart so she could ask, “So who does?” and exhale a tired, faint breath as if she’d been holding in the question and all the air in her lungs on the tip of her tongue.
Her gaze was too soft, rolling over me with intent to study in lieu of the skimming I’d grown accustomed to. When I needed Enid to bite into me and dig her teeth into my skin, she used her eyes to carefully unveil answers to questions she sought written within me instead—and among them: my name. A lie—a filthy one—but I wished for it to be true, so maybe it was.
My mouth sat closed. Bile perched, bitter, on Enid’s tongue—a familiar disappointment on mine—as she pressed on, face broken.
“I know you strive to be alone forever, but I can’t be. I’ve tried to fit in literally my entire life, and with you it’s always been so simple, like I’ve never even had to try. You saw me for who I was—not just the girl who still couldn’t wolf out. Not the late bloomer who no one wants to be around—and it became so easy so fast, and I’ve always been scared,” she breathlessly said, and paused—if not to release a sigh and suck air back in to replace it—to prevent her voice from wavering. “I'm always scared of the things I can’t control and the ones that I can. I’m scared I’ll say the wrong thing and lose this sense of belonging I’ve fought my entire life for. That I’ll do the wrong thing and lose you.”
Her hands were wild, unrestrained things, fingertips splayed across her chest in a nonsensical gesture toward herself, then they were paused in time in front of her. There was more she needed to say, brows still furled tight above her eyes, but I interjected anyway, my voice one of conviction, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know, and that’s somehow the problem, too. I’d stop you myself,” she said.
Enid stared as though she couldn’t believe the words had left her mouth, nostrils flaring, eyes wide. Glimmering. Irises rippling as if I’d disturbed their tranquility.
“Being with the pack over break—it felt really good to finally get what I wanted. Great, even, but I kept feeling like I was only there because I’d earned it by finally doing something I wasn’t even in control of.” She laughed, but it was empty. She stared, but not at me. Her gaze was distant, as if she needed to be reeled back in, and I lacked a line sturdy enough. “My mom finally said she was proud of me after I shifted with them, and for the first time in years, I thought, ‘This is it. I’m finally going to fit in.’”
It was then that her hands stopped orchestrating her thoughts, but they didn’t fall still. They trembled—not violently—but steadily at her side and with all the tension of a newly plucked string.
“But I didn’t. Not really, at least. Suddenly, wolfing out still wasn’t good enough. Defeating a Hyde didn’t even make me worthy of her time. And then I got so swept up in mourning the things I never got the chance of having, I started to forget what it was like to be with you,” she sighed, and I was ashamed to admit my breath caught halfway in my throat and robbed me of any words. “They introduced me to Bruno because he was just like me. He knew what it was like to never really fit in anywhere, but he wasn’t shy.”
Enid’s voice went quiet, almost reverent. “In a way, it was familiar. Like it was the next best thing I could get to something unobtainable, and I wanted that one thing I couldn’t have so badly, I just let myself take what I thought was closest. I let him kiss me, even though it made me feel like a liar. Even though he wasn’t really who I wanted, I settled for it.”
In the back of my mind, I clung to the fact that she had said who.
I exhaled just to make a sound. Just to hear something other than the blood roaring in my ears.
Altruistic as ever, Enid was making another sacrifice. Offering another opportunity for me to crawl out of the trench—now, perhaps my grave—I’d dug for myself. And I wanted to accept it—oh, I did—but the dirt was crumbling underneath my fingers and rolling tauntingly around me.
The violent maelstrom lurking behind my eyes reached for the blaze licking the tears in her waterline, but its efforts were futile.
I didn’t ask who it was she wanted. I didn’t think I could live with that information—knowing the definite answer to that question. Knowing it wasn’t and would never be me and having to stand witness to whatever chaos her confession prompted.
Could it have been Ajax, soft and gentle in every regard until he was foolish enough to stone himself? Evidently, it was getting to his brain, and I briefly wondered if his heart was next. Then swiftly dismissed it; if he was what Enid wanted, perhaps I could settle for a stoned limb just to see her face lighting up again.
“Why are you with him, then?” I ventured to wonder out loud. I didn’t say it, but thinking it was more than enough: only a fool would turn Enid down—for a second time, no less—and the thought alone made it difficult to maintain eye contact with her. “Why settle for second best?”
The swirling flames in the depths of her gaze, once doused, were rekindled by my questions, and I cowered as they roared on.
Her answer was as slow and as thick in the air as molasses—descending upon me with the patience of something that believed it had all the time left in the world—but it exercised all the cunning of a cloud of smoke, narrowly twisting through my teeth and rolling down the hollow of my throat.
“Because the one person I actually want to belong with doesn’t want to belong with me.”
Enid stared as if words were suddenly too loud, attempting to convey something through the shimmering in her gaze or the arch in her brow, but I didn’t know how to read past the welling desperation in her eyes and then the silent, decisive understanding that felt as dominant as a physical blow.
“For the first time in a long time, somebody liked me. Someone liked me for who I was and didn’t avoid me because I was an embarrassing late bloomer. Bruno didn’t hang around just because I could finally wolf out—just because I was no longer a disappointment—and he didn’t leave the moment he got the chance, either,” she said, but I was no longer sure which one of us she was trying to convince. “He wanted me—to know me—when nobody else did.”
Liar, I hissed, but I never stopped holding my breath.
“You don’t get to determine that,” I said instead, my voice rough but soft in its remark. “Or act as if you exist solely to be read.” But not understood. Reviewed, but not memorized. Touched, but not absorbed. “Don’t you dare imply he’s your savior when you’ve never needed one. You’re so strong without even trying—you don’t need anyone else to prove it.”
Enid’s lips curled as if it meant something, but she continued because it didn’t.
“That’s the thing. I wasn’t, really—not until I met you. You changed everything.”
It left her as a breath she could no longer hold, and she took another step closer so it felt as if we were nose-to-nose across the center of the room again, sans the reasonably thick line of gray duct-tape to separate us. I felt more vulnerable then; exposed by the realization that my space had long become hers, and that I could smell the mint in her breath and the mingling jasmine in her perfume. Familiar enough to recognize the words that left my mouth as lies, and close enough to acknowledge the fact that the eyes were only ever sincere.
“I’d never really felt comfortable with myself. Sometimes the realization was literally suffocating, and other times I was so tired of trying to mold myself into somebody that was less of me and more of the person everyone else wanted me to be, I just pretended I was putting on a second skin and thought it was good enough. And then you came along, and you tore it off me because it didn’t matter. Because there was no reason for me to pretend or hide anymore, and I was finally able to really, really find myself with you. There were no expectations to wolf out every full moon; you didn’t change the subject when my name was mentioned. I just existed, and that was more than enough.”
Enid sighed. The tips of her fingers twitched as if they were reaching for something, and I didn’t immediately shy away. The realization was as terrifying as it was exhilarating.
“Even though I’m not always sure it’s such a good thing anymore. It’s not like that with Bruno; it never is. He’s like the one person my mom actually approves of. He’s sweet and charming, and ‘He’s a werewolf, Enid. Don’t you want to fit in? Don’t you want to have a mate that really understands you?’ And yeah, I did. He does. Since we met, he understood me enough to know it never could have been him. He never pushed for something I couldn’t give him, and I owe him so much for it.”
Then her brows drew together above her eyes, as if in thought, and she let a moment of silence stretch a little longer than necessary. “When I look back on it, I think…” she trailed off, pressing her lips together as if she was fighting for the right words. “I think it makes sense that you were the reason I wolfed out first. I didn’t even know that I would, either, which is terrifying, because I’ve always lived my life like fear was just second nature, and then the moment you were in danger, it all just… disappeared. And suddenly the thing that scared me the most was the thought that I might really lose you. That there wouldn’t ever be someone looking for me when I stepped into a room again, or that I wouldn’t be able to hear your voice. That I’d have to live the rest of my life just trying to remember the sound of you because I took advantage of the fact that I’d be able to hear it whenever, instead of paying as much attention to it as I did everything else about you.”
When I expected Enid to sigh and backtrack like she didn’t mean it—never would—she held her breath. When I expected her to look away, she stared at me in a way that was somehow ten times more intense.
“Sometimes, I would watch you when you were playing your cello—ignore how weird it sounds—just to see you like that; so deep in your own element it was like you were drowning in it,” she said. It didn’t sound entirely unpleasant. “Even before I even knew it was possible for me to fit in with other people, the only person I ever wanted was you. That means everything else I’m lucky enough to get, too, even if it includes your loud, annoying typewriter.”
Unfortunately, words that were supposed to intend to insult and offend missed their mark, delivered in a voice too warm to hold any real malice—only an edge soft enough to blur at the fringe—and her eyes detoured from my face, disloyal, and in total sync with mine.
“If there was anything that could get the sound of your voice out of my head, I think that would probably be it,” she admitted, but she didn’t seem as thrilled by the idea as she tried to sound. “It’s not obnoxious, because it’s just so you, and I think that’s why I love it so much. And I love that you let me turn my music on one time and then you never tried to stop me again.”
“You’re persistent,” I said. “I found there was no point in wasting my time on something as painfully inevitable as your eventual victory.”
Her cheeks flushed red—determinedly one of my favorite colors—as she quipped, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost think it was starting to grow on you,” and at my resulting silence, ultimately abridged, “So. Yeah, it’s just a little annoying.”
My voice was too low when I replied, “At the very least, you two have something in common.”
Enid only smiled—brightly, as always, but perfunctory enough to be just short of her signature grin—as if it spurred her just enough to say, “You say things like that, and then you still look at me like you’ve stared hard enough to find something really worth looking at.”
Enid’s eyes were shimmering. Not with tears, but with something soft enough (so, so painfully soft) to blur the edge and make my heart skip a beat in my chest. Even then, she was luminescent, and if anyone was ever deserving of being condemned to the shadows—just out of her reach—it was me.
But I would keep trying anyway—always striving for even a trace of her warmth—because if flowers bloomed where Enid walked, then I would be every blossom trailing obediently at her heels. If she lost her way, I would be the overgrown byway spiraling around her to guide her back to me. If she started to fall, I would be the soft bed of greensward always there to gently lay her down and safely envelop her until she was well enough on her own.
Try as I might, it would never—by any means—be idyllic. The branches that embraced her would be bone-bare, and they would keep their distance out of fear of leaving splinters. But she, the one who would make the prettiest flowers once her body decomposed into the earth, would not care. She would want the branches to come a little closer, to embrace her a little tighter, and she would not care that their flowers had begun to wilt. And when it finally came time, she would beam at that chip of wood that resided above her heart, because she, the one who didn’t mind the unpleasant and ugly, would still choose that same path every time.
“Am I wrong for thinking you feel that way? Or that there might be something else?”
I blinked and hoped the sound of our breathing was enough to fill the agonizing silence that followed. The air was so charged yet simultaneously so still, every breath felt like sipping from a vat of battery acid without having the courage to swallow.
Enid didn’t ask because she didn’t already know the answer; it was a plea for confirmation. Answer me now, before I assume and say something I’ll regret. Before I do something I probably shouldn’t. And I almost wished she would anyway.
The answer was already suspended tauntingly just above our heads—had been for longer than we could recall—but neither of us were prepared to hear it.
“No,” I breathed, and Enid took it between her teeth and swallowed it whole. She almost unspooled me.
It was such a simple response, but it carried the weight of the world and more with it. The pressure on my chest eased, and Enid breathed as if a portion of hers did, too.
Then, far too soon, she asked, “What was it for?” and the weight settled again as if it suddenly realized it didn’t know where else to land.
If I pretended hope didn’t distort the edges of her voice, could I preserve what we had? If I pretended her hand didn’t fabricate an excuse to twitch toward me again, could I disregard the fact that I wanted to let it?
I couldn’t say it was because we were friends; we were something worse. Something that was inevitable but doomed from the very start. Dangerous, like the way I longed to twist our fate to play in my favor, or the way that little spark of affection I once housed for her kindled into a raging inferno.
“Don’t lie,” she said—pleaded as if she needed the truth more than the air inside her lungs. Something fragile cracked inside me and opened willingly for her. “You don’t even have to say anything. Just don’t lie to me.”
There were no words for me to find because they weren’t scattered—they were arranged. It was disturbing, and they were only telling me to just spit it out already, but I’d loved her in silence for so long—glances delivered through gazes too soft in a time where words would have been too loud—I wasn’t sure how.
I ripped my ribcage open for her and she leaned in closer to study the rhythm of my heartbeat just because she could.
“You hug like you’re engaging in a competition, and you hold yourself as though you’ll unravel if the tension begins to loosen. Sometimes, when I’m brave enough to meet your eyes, you gaze at me with all the awe of someone who has just been granted sight, and I’m the first thing you’ve ever had the displeasure of laying your eyes on. Yet, one moment you look at me as if you want to swallow me whole, then the next you look like you’d allow me if I summoned the courage to request it. You breathe like you’ve been convinced your entire life that you may never be able to again, but you still find it in yourself to laugh as if you can afford it. Oftentimes, I let myself wonder, is it because you know I would offer my last breath just to hear it again, or is it because you know that you’ve already stolen it?”
Where Enid’s mouth failed to gape wide enough, her eyes made up for it in full. She blinked owlishly, the wildfire within them burning just a little brighter, and swallowed the lump in her throat she couldn’t breathe past.
The freckles on her face sizzled like live coals against their molten backdrop, and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth—indiscretely—as if it were a lifeline. A tether to the ground where her weight failed, and without it she would start floating. She didn’t breathe.
“Tell me if you regret it, but don’t apologize for it. I’ll only ask you once, and never again,” I said. “Do it. Swallow me and spit me out once you realize you don’t favor the taste; love me in silence or shout it until your throat is hoarse. Hold me until it’s impossible to discern where your body ends and mine begins.” Because that was what she would have wanted, wasn’t it? “Do whatever you must. Just don’t curse me with remembering and not having been given the chance to be loved wholly by you.”
Enid’s gaze fell to my lips—her eyes ever eager to give away the things she supposed were secrets, but never well-kept from me—and it was then that the familiar look found its home within her features. Her desire didn’t douse; it devoured where she could not.
Enid first, swallowing the flames within her gaze in return for the courage it took to advance a step closer; then me, wrapping its lips around mine and sucking the air from my lungs as her mouth eased open, words rolling freely from her tongue as if they were really that easy to deliver. As if, instead of adding to the weight of it all, they had the ability to ease it when nothing else was capable.
“It’s so stupid, but I don’t really believe in love at first sight. It’s too fast when it should be slow, or too unexpected when you should just wake up one day and realize that you don’t want to live the way you do with that one person—maybe you can’t even begin to imagine it—with anyone else. I guess it’s kind of the same thing with soulmates, but I like to believe that there’s always someone out there made for you, waiting for you to find them. And I thought for the longest time that maybe I just wasn’t supposed to find mine, or that I deserved something less than, but I stopped when I met you because I thought I’d been patient enough for someone else to find me instead. And maybe you’re not even my soulmate—maybe they’ve never existed in the first place—but I like the idea of loving you on purpose even more. I like being able to look back and remember every single time I was able to fall in love with something else about you, and there has never been a moment where I haven’t loved you as deeply as that.”
It was a lot. Too much, even, but words were spewing from Enid as if the pressure within her had become too much and weighing on my shoulders was the only place they had left to go.
“The first day I jumped at you with my claws, you just looked at me like it was somehow something you were used to. When all I’d gotten my entire life were haughty looks and pity dressed as reassurance, you looked at me with complete indifference, and it was like finally being able to take a breath of fresh air after being held underwater for a little too long.”
Enid’s voice broke off at the end like a record being scratched to a halt or a bullet train soaring off its crumbling, broken tracks—shifting her weight, though not uncomfortably, and worrying her lower lip absentmindedly between her teeth just to keep her mouth busy. It grew ineffective quickly.
“There were a lot of little moments that just felt like plunging further into quicksand or sinking on a boat with too many holes in it. I grew too fond of your typewriter and the way your typing would sometimes slow down if I realized I was humming too loudly. I’d smile a little too broad, and you would turn your back toward me like it was a problem, but you’d keep looking for a second or two longer all those other times you thought I wasn’t paying attention. There was a point where I realized how careless you’d gotten about concealing it, like you couldn’t even be bothered anymore,” she said, and I thought back to all the times I’d watched, transfixed, as her smile stretched impossibly wide, lighting up her eyes and the entirety of her face as a whole in a way that was only so captivating because it was Enid, and then I silently agreed. “And I still tried to deny it for so long. I tried to bury it beneath whatever feelings I had for Ajax and Bruno, but nothing worked because I was always drawn back to you so fast I basically got whiplash.”
Silence met her, and she paused, though she was not the only one attempting to catch her breath. It was terrifying, just how quickly a confession could make a heart exert itself; how such overwhelming fondness could drip from words and leave a mouth as parched as mine. My tongue worked like sandpaper, softening the words just enough to be swallowed without struggle. Yet, I did.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” Enid said softly—suddenly—but she didn’t know that trying to prevent the world from spinning would have been easier than stopping this. “And we can try to forget about all of it. We can go back to pretending we don’t notice every little thing about each other for the rest of the semester, or even after that, when we keep acting like we’re trying to move on and I pretend like the day of the week doesn’t gut me. I don’t want to ruin us, but I want it to make it worth it, if I do. I don’t want to separate and go back to San Francisco trying to forget about you for the rest of my life, or have to realize I’m not even allowed peace after you because I’ll be forced to see you in everything instead.”
She was close enough that I could map the constellations of freckles on her cheekbones, scattered across her flushed skin like stars I wish upon in the sky. Could I draw a line to connect them, I wondered, or seal them in formation with a press of my lips?
“An old typewriter in the window at an antique store will give me a headache. One of the pieces you used to play will come on the radio, and I’ll have to pretend like the volume is stuck on maximum or that I can afford to listen to it multiple times over even if it makes me late. I’ll think about how much you would hate something pink, and I’ll see you in the color black or the cello sitting untouched in the corner of a music shop. Maybe one day I’ll walk into a library and find your novel finally sitting on the shelves, and I won’t have any choice but to buy a copy just so I can have a piece of you again, and I can stop looking for your name everywhere like it has all the questions I need answers to.”
Then she grew impossibly sheepish, as if there was any reason. As if my answer wasn’t already fighting its way out from between my lips; the truth was, it never could have been anyone else, anyway. Not after her.
“Or maybe we don’t have to forget any of it. Maybe we can leave here together and we can spend the rest of our lives doing it all over again until we get bored. We could go to school together, just play music on nights we’re too tired to talk. You could pretend not to look at me as often as you do, and I’ll pretend not to notice every time. Maybe you could eventually meet my family—formally. My dad would like you-”
I imagined she would have continued on a rant regarding why, but for once, I interrupted her and tried not to let the flash of guilt—despite how brief it was—consume me.
“It would be unwise,” I said, because I wouldn’t be able to guarantee the edge in my voice as any more blunt than that of a silver blade if Esther had the audacity to scorn Enid before me, or if Murray enabled it.
“He would like you because he knows how happy you make me,” she finished quickly, the curl in her lips a quiet confession of its own where anything else would have been too much. (It was already.)
My brows furrowed, the admission unwonted but not unwelcome. “You’ve told him about me?” I asked, though I couldn’t come up with any reasonable explanation as to precisely why in the moment it took Enid to fire back, “Who haven’t I told about you?” and then smiled as if the casualty of it wasn’t actively burning holes beneath my skin. “I think I’ve said your name more times than I’ve heard my own.”
We’ll have to change that, I thought, praise your name until the generations after us worship the mere idea of you and what you were—what you always will be to me.
“Yoko pretends she hates to hear it, but I think it’s just because she already knows,” she said, and there was a certain type of fondness in the way she spoke about her that I couldn’t help but silently admire.
“It’s likely the most exciting thing in all her 300 years,” I replied. It didn’t bite as hard as I’d hoped.
“Hey!” Enid exclaimed, but her voice was far too soft to be of any major significance. “She’s only 217.” And the silence that settled afterward was heavier, pressing upon my shoulders as if it was a physical but invisible weight, and when Enid’s tongue darted out from between her lips, I swore I felt the shallow breath she exhaled along with it against mine. We were both still shouldering something, not quite able to face it together, as we had with everything before this, but now the only question was ‘whose knees were going to buckle first?’ and with it, the promise of a full experience like it actually meant something with Enid, with whom everything already felt whole.
“We don’t have to decide anything now,” came a whisper. “I don’t want to rush it, even if it means taking all the time I have left with you. You can ask me why I fell in love with you, and I’ll make a list. You can ask me what I love about you, and I’ll have a different answer each time, even if you don’t have one for me.”
I thought the sound of someone’s breath catching was hers, but it was mine—much-needed preparation for the confession that forced itself to follow. “I would. It’s arguably fate’s worst plot twist to date; I’m in love with you. I have no other explanation to offer.”
It’s as blunt as a weapon in every sense but physical, and as heavy on my tongue as one, too. Enid looked as if she’d been struck violently enough to have been dazed, but I couldn’t shoulder past the fact that finally admitting it out loud felt too good to be as wrong as it was. Or perhaps it wasn’t wrong at all.
It wasn’t something that needed any introduction or explanation; it had been obvious for a long time now. It didn’t make itself known at first—it just existed between us as if it was meant to be there all along. Every glance was crafted of our desires; eyes lingering where hands were under the impression that they would never be able to, breath fanning across each other’s faces because there was no better way to get so wholly beneath the skin than to plant a seed of yourself inside the lungs. Hearts thrumming flawlessly sync without having to memorize a specific rhythm, because that was what it had come to be: perfect.
Perfect in the way we gravitated toward each other. Perfect in the way that Enid, who communicated primarily through crawling close enough and scribing words she couldn’t quite bring herself to say out loud into the skin (standing more than close enough just because she could, bordering touches I refused to let become casual, or offering hugs where they were never necessary), instead poured her heart out to me and expected me to drink it, and the worst part was that I did. So willingly.
There was a significant difference between dancing around it and having the courage to admit it out loud, and that much Enid made obvious.
“I can’t tell you when I realized, because—since we met—it has always just existed as if it’s as natural of a process as breathing. I could live without your laughter and the warmth of your smile that comes too easily, but why would I want to when it feels as if my heart was never supposed to beat if not for the excuse to be closer to you?” I said, Enid’s lips parting to drink in the following silence, and I reveled in it. In the way her hands balled into fists at her sides, the way she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet as if she was growing uncomfortable, or the way she pulled her lower lip between her teeth and chewed on it, despite the fact that the corners of her lips remained curled. It was impossible to misunderstand.
“Even if we aren’t soulmates, I hope mine always finds yours to haunt anyway. If there is life waiting for us after this, you can anticipate the day I deign to darken your doorstep again. In every life I don’t have the opportunity to introduce myself to you, I will love you twice as much in the next. Every time you aren’t present to prevent me from tumbling or aren’t there to soften the blow, I will fall twice as hard just to demonstrate to you that I can and that I will. We could be roommates or more in every life; I’ll watch you dance and listen to you sing because I’ve grown so tired of loving you in silence that anything else would completely exhaust me. We could study together again and act as if we’re not sparing glances at each other when we should be devoting our attention to writing down notes instead.”
The tips of her fingers twitched again, remarkably candid to their desires.
“I still did, however.” And tucked away her little tells in a safe place at the back of my mind.
“If you’re not gnawing on your eraser like it’s a chew toy, you’re attempting to spin your pencil without snapping it in half when you inevitably fail. You doodle nonsensical things in your notebooks and scribble initials in different fonts where you think they can be concealed within the creases of the paper, but you miscalculate.” I paused because laughter began bubbling up her throat, and not because of the brewing storm it triggered. “You’re ambidextrous; you use it as an excuse to warrant sharing a textbook from either side of me. Almost as if you know it’s the one place you will always belong without fail.”
Enid’s grin slipped steadily from her grasp. “You’re wrong about one thing,” she said, though not unkindly, and I was slightly more than halfway prepared to argue that I was not when she continued. “I scribbled initials just where you could see them—ours. I thought you would catch on eventually. Maybe sense some kind of disturbance in the air and chew me out for it because it was so cheesy.”
And for some unfathomable reason, the confession kicked my heart into overdrive behind my ribcage. Too early; too presumptuous. Instead, I let the corner of my lip rise to express my obvious distaste, and Enid dared revel in it.
“Consider me lactose intolerant,” I muttered, briefly considering swathing myself in her collection of sweaters—arraged strictly in rainbow order, endearingly enough—just to escape the beguiling flutter in her lashes and the curve at the corner of her mouth that convinced me of whatever it pleased without ever making a sound.
Enid remained flushed—her skin an unnaturally vibrant shade of red—as if there was any light capable of beaming bright enough to shine through her.
She unfurled her fist to itch the back of her hand. I slowly blinked. She worried her lip between the blunt of her teeth again and I deigned to watch it unfold, both completely unabashed and utterly entranced.
At that moment, there was no question regarding what I wanted. Willingly or not, I’d had it by my side, dressed in various shades of pink, for as long as I could remember. Enid, who had only ever cared for me and not a false projection she’d conjured in her head; Enid, who had once played a part in teasing the line between everything we once were and everything we had since become—strangers, allies, friends, and now what? Not quite lovers—not yet—but our confessions pressed against the space between us like a gentle reminder that it was finally an option, humming in sync with our hearts to braid together a steady rhythm.
“So does this really mean you like me?” Enid asked, and the question was so utterly ridiculous that I couldn’t help but blink again—fighting a twitch at the corner of my lip—and so absolutely Enid that I was helpless to prevent the way my voice audibly softened.
”Enid.”
And for the absolute worst of any possible reason, she only smiled.
The truth was obvious; it had been all along. Perhaps since the Poe Cup, or the fruitful trip to the Gates’ mansion, fighting for every breath between the flush of our bodies in the dumbwaiter and flinching with every heartbeat, each just as powerful as a drum.
Enid’s fear radiated off her in waves that tremored as violently as herself, shaking my hands by extension as I secured my snood into knots. It wasn’t nearly as thrilling as a near-death experience was supposed to have been, I determined as claws raked through metal and a single enlarged eye peered inside, and then it disappeared and was replaced by the sight of Enid’s face; cheeks flushed, lips parted and chin trembling. I was her sword, her shield, and always her protector.
The prospect of my death never scared me, but I couldn’t even begin to imagine a life where she had never managed to worm her way in. I couldn’t imagine a universe in which a warmth didn’t sprout in my chest at the sight of her overwhelming array of colors, or my ears didn’t sing at the sound of her voice, and I wasn’t entirely sure I ever wanted to.
Maybe friends were all we used to be, but I would have spent my last breath trying to be the best she’d ever have. Maybe I would have to suffocate, but I would be selfish enough to continue gasping and observing her habits: the way she had to carefully choose some words and the way she stumbled ungracefully over others. The way she often retracted her claws and just stared like any other movement might unravel her. The way she tried to act as though she couldn’t shine any brighter, but the moment I stepped into a room it was as if she’d been lit on fire and doused in gasoline.
Maybe something more than friends was what we could be. Enid couldn’t rush anything for the life of her, though perhaps for my own, and that was why it was so easy for the both of us. We could sink a little further into the holes we’d dug with each lingering look, fall a little more in sync with every thought conveyed through a wordless glance. And what choice did we have but to fit together like the cogs in clockwork? What choice did we have but to let our teeth align to make one perfect machine? What choice did we have but to finally admit that the turning of the gears was something we couldn’t live without?
Neither of us wanted to mourn this thing we could have had, if only we’d been brave enough to take it. It wasn’t something to be feared, I’d come to realize. It was like bracing yourself for a blow, expecting a punch, and finding the touch to be featherlight, instead.
If there was ever a chance to do it over again—to witness the light in Enid’s eyes or the gleam in her smile for the first time—I would succumb sooner. I would let it destroy me as thoroughly as it had faster, because being in love was never about defending yourself. It was just about falling and trusting someone enough to know that, inevitably, they will always be the one to catch you, and the impact was never something to be wary of; it’s finding yourself in their arms that will wind you every time.