2.6

 

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Two Nights Ago

I had to fish my keys out of my bag because someone had locked the door behind them, even though I knew no one else in the house went to bed at whatever time it was. The key was left hanging in the door as I pulled my phone out of my bag and checked the time. Only a bit before nine thirty, no way my mom or brother were asleep. Blake was probably the one who looked the door behind him out of habit.

I did ease the door open quietly just in case someone had passed out on the couch and didn’t want to be woken up. My mom may not complain about her job a lot aside from the normal, little things, but I knew it tired her out. She was like me, where she recharged by being alone, and she was on the phone and around people a lot.

“Was that locked?” She asked, leaning over the back of the couch to peek at the door. I nodded at her, and she made a little face towards the staircase, which meant Blake was upstairs in his room playing video games or whatever he did at night.

“Sorry. Glad you had your keys.” Which was a non-malicious callback to my entire childhood spent sitting out on the front step waiting for my mum or brother to get home so they could let me in, because I’d forgotten my keys.

I dropped my bag on the floor beside the shoe rack, and then unlaced my own shoes and placed them beside a pair of Blake’s. Only a size or two smaller than his. We were a very gangly family.

The TV was on pretty low, enough so that I couldn’t really make out actual words. Just some comforting noise. Which I think was the idea my mum was getting behind, because after getting a glass of water and standing against the living room door, I saw her reading a book and paying zero attention to the screen.

“You’re home later than usual.” My mum closed her book as she said this, sticking a finger between the pages to keep her place. The tone was kind of disapproving, but she obviously didn’t intend to make this a long conversation if she was going to be holding the book like that.

I gulped down the last couple mouthfuls of water and took a breath before responding to her.

“Sorry. We kinda started chatting about stuff and lost track of time.” Not true, which I really didn’t like. I’d never felt a big desire to lie to my mum ever. I’d told her about probably the biggest thing I could tell her and she’d taken it really well, all things considered. After that, nothing was ever going to be that surprising to her.

But this, I don’t think I could do a great job of explaining. And she definitely wouldn’t want me doing it. So, here I was. Badly lying to my mum. Bleh.

“Stuff?” She arched an eyebrow as she inquired. She was spread out on the couch, her head on the side farthest from me and her feet closest. She crossed her ankles and bumped one of her slippers half-off.

“Uh, important sort of stuff. Pandora isn’t doing great. Shannon’s doing better than she was, but she’s still trying to cope.” She sat up and crossed her legs as I finished, which I took to mean she wanted me to come sit. As I walked over, she started searching for something on the table. She eventually picked up some small slip of paper that was probably a receipt from Blake getting a snack at the nearby convenience store and eating it down here, and slipped it into her book.

“What’s going on with Pandora, if it’s okay for me to ask?” She leaned forward and rested her lower arms in her lap as I sat down. My mum had the same pile of straight blonde hair that I did, and it was a bit frizzy and puffed from being in a bun all day and then sliding around a pillow for however long she had been here. Blake was the one who got the waves of chestnut hair that a lot of the girls at school really seemed to like.

“I, uh, don’t really know. That’s kinda what we were talking about, because she wasn’t able to come tonight and all she told us was it was her dad who wouldn’t let her. She’s not really talking about it.” My mum’s eyebrow came together in the same way mine did. Or I assumed they did. I’d never really been around a mirror when I was making that expression.

“Is everything okay at home?” My mum asked. I shrugged, and the movement made me realize I was actually really tired. I was used to being active; even now I was still doing the squats and bridges and whatever I could do in my room without any equipment. I’d been running and swimming daily since forever ago, but I was used to getting a good nights sleep afterwards. I was really, really feeling those lost hours now.

“I don’t think her dad is hitting her or anything like that. But-“ I shrugged again and frowned. Took stock of my thoughts for a few seconds. Then: “-I don’t think it’s good. But I don’t want to say anything more, because she won’t really tell us. I’d just being making stuff up at that point.”

“Have you two tried to sit her down and talk to her?” I was already shaking my head in full, slow motions before my mum had finished talking.

“She would run away. Somehow. She’d probably just leave the room if she could. Or even just- just stop talking and shut down.” My mum scrunched her eyebrows together again. I could see her trying to solve the problem in her own way already, all the gears turning in her head and whatnot. I don’t think she really liked to see people distressed or hurting, and I was pretty much the same. She was just a lot better at doing something about it, because she also had a really calm and collected sort of confidence to give her that extra push. Bleh. I really wished I was more like my mum sometimes.

“Do I need to talk to her dad?” My mum asked softly. I blanched at the idea. There was a reason we didn’t go to Pandora’s house often. Her dad was the kind of person that made me uneasy, because unlike my mum’s brand of confidence, he seemed like the type to just bowl over people. Confidence without much of the self-awareness of empathy that I thought was really important in being a good person.

“I-“ I huffed and deflated a bit, because I kind of wanted it to be that easy. Just send my mum to fix everything, like I thought I could do when I was a kid. “I don’t know if that would go great. Can we keep that in our back pocket, maybe?”

My mum nodded softly, taking my fingers in her hand and giving my limb a bit of a waggle. I smiled, looking down at the point of contact a bit.

“If she needs someone to talk to that can maybe do a bit more, please tell her I’m available. She can come over here in the middle of the night if she needs to.” I nodded. I just didn’t know how I could bring that up without running into the Pandora that acted like a cornered dog when we brought up her feelings. Without invoking that subtle panic or whatever it was.

“And Shannon’s doing better, you said?” I nodded at that. My mum smiled a bit at the news, because she knew the whole story, for the most part. Shannon had come over to my house during the week or two she’d had off school, because she had wanted to get away from her parents. She’d felt like they were constantly hovering and it was making everything worse. I’d kept everything from my mum out of respect for my friend, but Shannon had ended up very slowly and methodically recounting the story while we were all on the couch, sipping hot drinks. I think getting it all down chronologically and then stating it had helped her organize it in her thoughts somehow.

“Mhmm. She’s been hanging out with us more, which was something that wasn’t happening before.” But even then, she’d still tried to make as much time for us as possible, because she didn’t want her façade to slip. I’d still really hated that I’d barely noticed my friend was going through all that at the time.

“Whatever happened to that sleepover you three were planning?” My initial reaction to that was perking up in surprise and recognition, because we had all genuinely forgotten about it. Not a single one of us had brought it up, and I know I hadn’t thought about it once.

My second thought was cringing a bit at my mum calling it a sleepover, because that’s really not how I would have phrased that. It sounded like we were ten years younger than our actual ages.

“Oh! God, yeah, we all forgot about that.” My mum smiled a little in response to that, for a reason I couldn’t quite determine. Maybe it was her finding our shared forgetfulness amusing or she was just warmed by my reaction.

“I think that could be a good place to start, to get you all back to ground, so to speak. Reconnect a bit. If you want me to leave you guys alone, I will gladly do that, but any of you are free to pick my brain if it’s needed.” I nodded at that. I’d never been afraid to go to my mum for advice, because I’d thought she was the smartest person ever as a kid. Pandora had been over here a lot after her mom had moved away and after she died, and although she’d never really asked for advice or went to my mum for help she had been slotted in as a third child almost. She liked my mum and my mum liked her.

“I’ll text them about it tomorrow.” It was my mum’s turn to nod now. The conversation kind of trailed off after that, and we both sat and stared at the TV. She eventually picked her book back up and I grabbed the remote and began to flip through channels. It was late, so the only really good things on were movies. The almost-mindless act of surfing channels let my mind wander back to a few minutes ago.

It wasn’t a lie that I thought my mum had been super smart and I had gone to her for everything. And I basically almost still did. She didn’t really complain when I had come out to her either times, she’d made a deal with me to go on hormone blockers first and had accepted me at face value when I’d told her I felt ready for actual hormones last week. But there was something disconnected now that hadn’t been there before. I’d always felt like she understood me on a really deep level, and it seemed like she was struggling to keep up with what it meant to be a girl for me specifically.

She liked dresses and skirts and makeup and walking the mall for a way-too-long time. She was always fine with taking us to the park and was fine with getting dirty while wearing the clothes for it, but she didn’t love the sports and the things that me and Blake did as kids as much as we did. She didn’t really touch any of the game consoles we’d had growing up. I think it just seemed foreign to her.

And now, as supportive as she was being, it seemed to be foreign to her that I wanted to continue to wear jeans and sneakers and shorts and flannel, just as a girl. It sounded really really simple when I stated it in my head like that but I couldn’t ever seem to express it to her correctly without the conversation taking an unoffensive but unexpected turn that I didn’t know how to talk my way out of.

And right as I remembered Shannon telling me to just talk to her about it, she lowered her book slightly and spoke up.

“You’re getting to be almost the same size as me, and although I know we made sure you had a good stock of clothes, I have some stuff in my closet I don’t touch that you can have.”

I blinked at that. My first thought was that I wasn’t sure if I’d fit in any of it. I was already two or three or four inches taller than my mum. But we also did have the same build, even if I hadn’t filled out because of lack of hormones. My transformation was built the same as eh was; kind-of-almost busty, in the way that you could notice it if you weren’t dressed in a thick sweater or something baggy, with hips slimmer than shoulders, made even more so by the constant exercise.

“I’m a lot taller than you.” I said.

“It’s longer stuff, honestly. Dresses and skirts and some blouses that I don’t think will be indecently short on you.” Ah. There we were. I was wondering why my mum had a stash of pants and shirts that would magically fit me, and the answer was she didn’t. Bleh.

I shrugged and furrowed my brow and stared at the TV. Almost opened my mouth to give her a maybe sort of answer that would kick that can down the road and hopefully she’d forget about it. Then I remembered Shannon again, for the second time in a very short span.

“I don’t think that’s really my thing.” I said tentatively. I wanted to slap myself already. Not assertive enough, and it definitely said almost nothing about my actual feelings.

“Not even a little bit?” She said, scrunching her face up and making a very small space between thumb and index finger. I bunched my eyebrows together and stared down at her book. Some historical fiction thing that was way too slow for me to read.

“I-“ I huffed a little bit of air out. “That doesn’t really interest me, honestly.”

“But the wild clothes and the crazy makeup are a fun way to express yourself.” Gah. I forgot how much my mum loved to dress up sometimes. Her and Pandora’s mom got along really well that way. They were the best dressed people at their works by far, on a daily basis.

“It’s artistic, in a way.” She added a sudden but gentle tapping of her feet against my crossed legs as she smiled at me. I was never really the artist of the group, so that wasn’t a great way to pull me in. I really admired the stuff Pandora could make, but I’d always been the sporty one of this particular girl band.

“That was always Pandora and Shannon’s thing. They even tried making me up for the last dance we had and I really didn’t like it. It felt- like a mask. It was weird.” I’d worn the whole face with a nice pair of pants and a tucked t-shirt as a compromise to my friends. I’d scrubbed it off at Shannon’s as soon as we got back and they’d laughed and not really bothered me about it since.

“Yeah, you do get used to that feeling after a while.” She said, smiling at me. Ugh. I couldn’t figure out a way to say this, because I didn’t want to be blunt and hurt her because this was, I think, from a good place. I wasn’t used to clashing with my mum about ideas and the way things worked because we’d always just gotten along.

“You can probably just donate them, if you want to get rid of them.” I said. That wasn’t not forceful, which I didn’t love. It felt blunder-y and dumb, which was something I wasn’t used to. I got nervous talking to people I didn’t know, but I didn’t really have this issue around people I loved, especially about emotional stuff. I liked talking about relationship problems and trying to talk it out and fix them. I just knew my mum was really trying to relate to the new me and it felt really shitty to throw it in her face.

“Okay. Just thought you’d maybe like to try it.” She said. I nodded, and gave her a suddenly very tired smile and then flopped down so my head was on her thigh. She rested her hand on my hair for a moment, scratching my scalp through it, and then went back to her book. None of that felt resolved. How did I manage an entire conversation about a specific subject I wanted fixed without addressing anything?

I stared at the TV until I fell asleep what felt like only a few minutes later. Then, of course, my mum shook me a bit to wake me up, wanting both of us to get in our own beds so we didn’t destroy our backs.

So I very groggily made my way to my room and threw my clothes somewhere near the hamper and dropped down into my bed. My skin felt like I’d accumulated everything that had been in the air around me for the entire day and my hair had that consistency where it felt almost fake but didn’t look dirty, but my need to sleep overcame my desire to be clean.

 

Now

Lady’s tail moved back and forth like a pendulum as she sat and stared at the two of us. Shannon was leaning against a tree, her arms crossed, and I was sat at the base of another with my arms around my knees.

“My mum was asking when you guys were coming over.” I turned my head to face Shannon as I spoke. She mirrored me, very slowly, and blinked once or twice before responding.

“Huh. I’d completely forgotten we planned to do that.” I shrugged at that. Nodded a little.

“The offer’s still open.” Shannon nodded in response, and then peeled herself off the tree and rubbed her eyes really hard.

We’d taken a single night off, and hadn’t heard word of anyone going missing last night, so we were tentatively okay for the time being. One full night of sleep hadn’t gotten me to one hundred percent though, and I was thinking Shannon was probably the same. Especially when we were holding a very sudden meeting at seven in the morning on a weekend.

“Is Pedro coming?” I asked. Shannon shook her head as she squatted and stretched out her legs. Strands of thick hair were falling from the loose bun she had them in.

Lady hadn’t spoken to us much since giving us a rundown of what Pandora had been up to yesterday. I didn’t get a very warm feeling from her, but it wasn’t anything scary or mean. She just seemed stressed or disappointed or something akin to that. Like a mom.

Leaves rustled as Pandora entered. Ah Christ, she looked worse than both of us. The dark circles under her eyes were more pronounced and almost seemed three-dimensional. She was wearing at least the same shirt as yesterday, and I was only unsure about the rest because I couldn’t remember the other clothing she’d been wearing very well. She could be wearing the same socks for all I knew.

Shannon rose a bit at her entrance, going back to resting against the tree with her arms crossed. She had the same energy that Lady did, looking like a mom ready to chastise a child. I didn’t really like this already, because it felt like we were ganging up on Pandora without saying a single word yet.

“Hi.” She said quietly.

“Hi.” I responded, smiling a little. She stopped a few feet from Shannon and shoved her hands in her pockets. I saw Shannon take a deep breathe from the corner of my eye.

“Did you get anything useful out of your unnecessary solo trip?” Shannon asked. A bad start already. And Lady said nothing in return. I could already feel that same uneasy energy building that always began before a big argument between my friends. I wasn’t a good mediator for this, because even though I knew what I should be telling them both to do on paper, I was really not good at inserting myself between them. A stupid fight or flight or freeze response.

“I wasn’t alone.” Pandora said.

“Pedro isn’t the same thing as having one of us with you. Functionally solo, then.”

“He did actually help out.” I could see Pandora’s hands flexing in the pocket of her jeans.

“Then you were lucky that he had the right tricks in his bag, are you going to answer my question?” Shannon asked. Pandora stared at her from underneath her brow and bit her lip.

“The praying guys are easy to kill. Pedro helped by lighting a couple on fire.” She emphasized the second statement and continued before Shannon could retort.

“The big thing doesn’t like when you hurt them. Seems like he can absorb them or something, to heal himself back to full or whatever.” A weird, scattershot sentence which wasn’t surprising coming from a tired Pandora.

“They’re it’s followers, it seems like.” Lady spoke. We all turned to her as she continued.

“They give it power through belief, and once that use is dried up it can use their bodies for something more practical, such as healing wounds.”

“Where do those shades we’ve been fighting come from, then?” Shannon asked. I noticed Pandora was still slightly hunched over, and was keeping a healthy distance from Shannon.

“I do not know. I haven’t seen a link from them to it as of yet. But you three have a way forward now; the worshippers are key to beating this creature.” Shannon was softly biting her lip as Lady finished her statement.

“We have to get rid of them without letting him get their bodies, while also doing enough damage to hurt him.”

“It sounds like a video game boss.” I said softly. Pandora nodded at that. Juggling adds that can heal the main boss without letting hem touch him while also damaging him.

“If we all go over to Ellie’s place one night, we can use that as a very convenient cover for this fight.” Shannon said. Pandora perked up a bit at that. She’d forgotten too.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll tell my mum we’re planning to do it sometimes during the week. Whichever day none of us have exams. If that’s a thing.” God, I was really glad my mum had pushed me to study consistently.  If I had to cram everything in as I was wont to do in these past two weeks I may have just passed out from exhaustion.

Shannon and Pandora nodded in almost-unison. Lady’s tail flicked back and forth and she stepped forward a bit.

“None of you are to go back there until this final confrontation. The entity will adapt to whatever you throw at it, so keep contact to a minimum. That goes for any entity going forward.” She paused, and none of us moved, as if we felt in the air that it was only for dramatic effect.

“I’m not here to give you girls orders, that isn’t my role. I’m here for guidance and to nudge you when you require it. If I was able to explicitly tell you what to do, you wouldn’t develop as magi and I would fail as a teacher. But do not every go into a branch by yourselves again. Never.” That last word was punctuated by the most anger I’d heard from Lady ever. Again, it felt like a mom rightfully scolding her child.

“Zero arguments from me on that.” Shannon said. Pandora seemed to tense up again, and although not much in her face change I saw her fingers dig into her palms before she closed them into fists.

“Even veteran magi rarely work alone. That’s how you get killed, and I don’t want that for any of you.”

“Okay.” Pandora said. Lady’s tail flicked in the couple moments of silence.

“All three of you are intelligent. Please continue to display that going forward.” I nodded. Shannon did the same, uncrossing her arms and standing from the tree. Pandora seemed to rankle at the words in a vague, non-specific way I couldn’t place. When me and Shannon began to move, Pandora was already many paces ahead of us, going straight for the edge of the forest. Away from town, and deeper into the woods.

I ran to catch up with her, and gently grabbed at her wrist before her foot could cross into the thicker foliage. She looked taken back, staring down at my hand and then bringing her eyes back up to look at my face and neck.

“If you want company I don’t have any plans.” There was a lot of unspoken rules ingrained in that sentence from context prior in our friendship. I was good at being silent, at listening, and sometimes Pandora liked to sit in the quiet with someone and not talk. The presence of someone who wasn’t awkward about zero talking or interaction made her feel better, I think.

Sometimes, rarely, she did like to tell me everything in a waterfall of words that she never really wanted me to respond to. That was another way the silence and the listening helped out. I think she rarely wanted help or a response and just wanted to know someone would listen without commenting.

But at this moment, she shook her head at me, and then tugged her arm out of mine. I let it go. Both of those actions were done quickly enough that they were probably her first response. Instinct. Which I knew from past experience she sometimes had to fight past to get to a point where she could accept help.

“If you wanna just walk, we can do that. No talking required. Anything you want.” A reminder of our unwritten rules, to hopefully push past that part of her brain that was building up a wall right at this moment. And it didn’t work. She just shook her head again.

“Just gonna take the long way home.” I felt a look of concern pass over my face as the feeling went through my brain. I knew that wasn’t a refutation to my point. I’d walked home with her in silence before. I lived not-super-close to her, but I liked to walk, and I knew she knew that.

But I didn’t want to be like Shannon in this moment, arguing the finer points of something and pushing her even more. So I let it be, and she walked into the woods after flashing a very tired smile.