Chapter Text
You’d think that in a township of fifty thousand people, I’d manage to find a single person who looks like me.
The thought crosses my mind as it usually does, at least once daily, on bad days twice or more. On this occasion it’s the sole intruding thought preventing a quick nap through Miss Alphys’ first period class.
I’m in the back of the first column of seats closest to the flag, arranged alphabetically by last name. Large pane glass windows offer the natural sunlight entry at a steep angle, bottlenecked by ranks of thin metal shades. The opposite wall is white cinderblock made homely by a few math posters—some basics on set notation and the like, during exams covered by large sheets of construction paper. They surround a large cork board tacked with a number of general notices and such, and at the bottom-right corner of the board there’s a sticker of two anime girls making out.
I slump down into my seat. Before me I see not a single fellow Homo sapien. On days like these hope gets the best of me, and I scrutinize the back of each idle, inattentive head and fantasize that my cryptid habits have me so pathetically detached from civil society that I’ve somehow overlooked a glaring contradiction in my world view.
But the immutable fact of the matter is—and I’ve checked this about a dozen times using the resources at the local library—that there’s only me .
“Well maybe the census is out of date,” a voice sitting beside me, whose name is Ralsei, offers.
He says this every time, and every time he says it I want to scream bloody murder and strangle him until the trace amount of color drains from his fur and he becomes white completely.
Well not actually, but it’s come close a handful few times. Lashing out requires so much effort I’ve grown overworn of it these past years. Nowadays, when the little things start closing in, I simply let vacant inattention carry me away and let the multitude dark thoughts congest my lungs and throat and eyes until I can’t take it anymore and shut down completely.
Ralsei tilts his head. His glasses fall down the bridge of his nose. He has glasses, by the way. “It’s okay to vent sometimes, you know. Instead of drowning in pain all by yourself, why not share it someone who cares?” With a fluffy finger he pushes the green wire-frames back up. “I’m always listening. I’ll always be here for you.” An honest smile emerges beneath his nose.
I implore Ralsei to leave me the hell alone and he does.
It’s the greatest comedy, hearing him go on like that. The hell does he know about my problems? This isn’t some half-baked adolescent breakup, or worrying about climate change or world peace or whatever. It’s different. How can someone like Ralsei even begin to comprehend the lack of self, that I’ll always be the human before anything else? How can he even begin to comprehend the constant self-consciousness, that your presence is broadcast to the world simply by existing? How can he begin to comprehend the constant fear of being alone?
I mean, he’s a goddamn Scottish goat, for chrissakes. His people are dime a dozen—half a country’s worth or something. There’ll always be someone or something to set his life on the path beaten by the people who’ve struggled the same as him. I’m doomed to stomp through the mud for all eternity.
“That may be true, Kris…”
He fumbles with his glasses again.
“But that’s what empathy’s for, right? You can’t expect someone to begin to try to know these things if you don’t tell anyone how you’re feeling.”
I sigh deep. This is exactly how it goes every time, word-for-word. The same build up, the same consolation, it always ends with me screaming and crying and punching him in the face. Though in recent years my eyes have kept wide, staring, so habituated to going through the motions that they dry out and tears won’t form.
“Kris…”
I hold them open, unblinking. I let the pressure build in the back of my throat, holding down the boiling pot’s lid as long as I can hold.
“…Kris.”
Every second I keep staring is a second I inch closer to unconsciousness. I let the pressure build. I let it flow through me. Like bile, or some kind of poison, it grates the inside of my mouth until it wants to bleed.
“Kris.”
I break out into a sweat at the same time a sheer chill runs down the length of my spine. Following its path is a lump in my throat going down to an empty stomach that skipped breakfast. It lands hard, and I suppress the urge to dry heave.
“Kris!”
I blink. The seat beside me takes form—some golden retriever dog girl I’ve never spoken to.
I suddenly realize I’ve been boring holes into her with my eyes for the past ten minutes. She grimaces like I’m something repulsive. The floodgates open and tears fall to my desk. I slump until my chin hits the particleboard and taste the salt. The girl’s eyes sharpen and serrate; she looks at me like I’m lower than the dirt, lower than the worms in that dirt, that I’d be better off dead. I can’t help but concur.
“Um, Kris.” Miss Alphys reaches eye level when I’m sitting. Hunchback and mustard yellow, she’s a biped dinosaur of some sort. Her glasses are small, and her teeth hang from a massive overbite. The way she speaks denotes her as a distinct resident of these parts, or maybe somewhere close to the Brooklyn communities. Without fail she comes to school every day in a neon green short-sleeve button-down and a red clip-on tie, and hides her forearms with an earthy green corduroy jacket. Proper slacks would be too long, so she wears khaki shorts that nonetheless hit her ankles.
Miss Alphys wrings her hands.
“We’re out of chalk again, and, uh, well you’ve been dozing off during class a lot, lately,” she stammers as she speaks, but the same crooked smile never goes away. “I was just thinking a quick trip to the storage room might wake you up, sleepyhead.”
A rumbling laughter washes over the classroom. Presently walking to the door and crossing the view of every single person in the room becomes my least favorite thing in the whole wide world.
But the way Miss Alphys lingers at my desk tells me that trying to wake me up with a morning stroll is less of a consideration and more of a demand—as in, you had better get the chalk or you’re getting written up.
A loud thud snaps everyone’s attention away from me, and for a second maybe I want to jump for joy and do a little jig, but then I see, and I regret.
Closing in on six feet, the newcomer draws reflex comparison to Miss Alphys in that they’re both slouching, corduroy jacket-wearing dinosaurs, but that’s where the similarities end. For one, she’s purple, and doesn’t have a tail, and the jacket is just a shade darker purple than her dry skin. Her jeans are baggy and worn, darker blues in places, giving way to whiteish patches about her knees. The cuffs are shoestring, and dangle over a pair of black sneakers that’ve taken on a dusty ash color. The laces are missing their aglets and attempt to hide inside her shoes. She runs a hand through a greasy brunette mop atop her head that is rumored to be hair.
“Oh! Susie!” Miss Alphys says. “Since you’re already at the door, you and Kris can go together!”
Everything is a blur from then on. And I only register that I seem to have made it outside when Susie slams me by the scuff of my shirt against a locker. The rows of ventilation dig into my back, and I feel a sharp pressure at my neck as I hang from my collar.
“I saw you in there, ogling at,” and then she says a name I don’t commit to memory. “What are you, some kind of pervert?”
She releases me and I slump against the metal’s sheer cold that smites through my shirt straight to my spine. Susie’s height effortlessly eclipses the overhead ceiling light from my sight. The light exploits my anxiety—plays tricks on me. I see her fangs bare, teeth glisten with rancor.
I want to scream for help, but nobody would come.
“…Kris, can you hear me? Wake up!”
I come to feeling Ralsei’s silky fur clamping over my hand.
“You were out of it for a second, there. You had me worried.” He smiles in a way that stabs my stomach with guilt for being so mean to him. Taking in my surroundings a bit more, our eyes move to a white powder dusting the floor. I suspect it’s maybe cocaine when Ralsei gives me a disapproving look.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Susie’s laughter rips away any concept of security. “‘So it was Susie who’s been stealing the chalk!’,” she mocks, halfway through crunching another stick from a narrow box. “Now’s your chance, Kris! Go tell Miss Alphys—that’ll be the final nail in the coffin! That’ll get me expelled once and for all!”
I seriously consider it. The pain from before still tickles my back.
“Kris, don’t listen to her,” Ralsei grabs my shoulder, and then my hand, the last line of defense keeping the hate at bay.
Susie waits for me to pick myself up. “But you won’t tell Miss Alphys,” said as not a threat, but in a manner of knowing. “You won’t tell Miss Alphys,” and she gets into my face until I can see and smell her rotten yellow teeth, “because nobody’s gonna believe a creep who likes to leer at girls way out of their league during math class.”
“That’s not true!” Ralsei’s voice beats against my ear. “You’re nothing like that, Kris. Tell her!” But it’s no use.
Susie bites down on another stick of chalk. “Ha-go-ro-mo,” she enunciates stiltedly. “Some Japanese crap. Pretty rare. Pretty expensive.”
I hear the cadence of her beaten shoes approach a low quickness as she passes me. And she stops for a moment.
“What’s wrong? Can’t talk? Cat got your tongue?”
My eyes squeeze shut. I nearly indulge her. Tell her off, or whatever the hell she wants me to do. But I don’t, because the most cowardly, pathetic recesses of my personality deliver a hand upon my shoulder. “It’s okay, Kris. You don’t need to speak if you don’t want to.” Ralsei’s voice, I’ll note, comes to me queerly prepubescent, if not for a nasal scratchiness proceeding each syllable.
“Come on, freak,” Susie calls over her shoulder. “We’ve gotta get Miss Alphys her chalk. You’ll be trying some, too. Your human guts’ll get used to it.”
So I trudge behind her, kicking the front of my soles into the linoleum. The rubber squeaks against the tile with each step.
Susie flinches with each squeak, and the way I fixate on the back of her head trembles with frustration. My heart rate spikes each time, and adrenaline floods my nerves, but some self-destructive ideation keeps me kicking at the tile.
“You know, Kris, I’ve been thinking.” Ralsei keeps adjacent to me with a precise cadence that matches mine exactly.
I know immediately what Ralsei is thinking, of course—that somehow this is an opportunity to make a new friend in spite of Susie insulting me and slamming me against a locker and very clearly wanting to do far more to me than most people’s basic decency should allow.
These sorts of thoughts creep in from time to time, and it’s important I stay diligent in quashing them. Ralsei tilts his head in the way he does, looking me over to convey scrutiny, but he knows that I know that he knows it’s a worthless gesture. Though maybe some faint hope crossed my mind, that if Susie is weird enough to eat chalk maybe she’d be weird enough to consider tolerating my presence, but that bridge was burnt the moment she saw me as a pervert and a creep, and Ralsei knows that just as well as I do. The nature of our companionship’s very existence means that he’s incapable of acting nor thinking in a way that I won’t permit; however dissenting he pretends to be he’s ultimately subservient to my whims—a mere pawn in the grand chess of my lunatic psychopathy.
That is, unless I’ve truly gone off the deep end this time.
A prospective life chock-full (pun intended) of the exhilarating ups and downs of degenerate schizophrenia aside, I notice Susie turn sharply round a bend leading to an immediate closet door.
She without warning then, being of tremendous stature and weight, stamps her left heel into the floor, leans back, and at the same time brings her opposite heel crashing right beside the knob. The door swings open. Wood splinters in shards.
“Not bad, huh?” Susie grins. “It’s about the technique as much as it is about the power.” She stoops down in the ruined passageway, stretching her legs. “Even a shrimp like you could do it.”
Somehow I doubt that. Though I catch from the leftmost corner of my eye before rounding the bend myself Ralsei slapping a fluffy foot paw against a random classroom door to no avail.
“You havin’ a good laugh, Kris?” Susie whirls around, baring her teeth in my face. “You won’t be laughing the same when I kick down the door to your house and bite your face off while you’re sleeping,” she snarls, opening her jaw.
I shrink back less from mortal terror and more from her breath which reeks of wet, rotten meat. And eventually she backs off.
“Kidding, of course,” she says. “Your mother’s a good lady. I’d hate to make her bury her own child.”
Susie disappears into the dark closet. I consider the wisdom in running, but between returning to Miss Alphys empty-handed and wandering the halls until next period and inevitably finding my path crossed with a teacher, all roads lead to detention. So with a hollow sigh, I offer Ralsei one last look—he’s still kicking at a random door—before stepping past the threshold myself.
A musty sawdust smell burns closer to sulfur inside my nose from the moment I enter. It sends me into a frenzy in the dark. I reach this way and that, all around me, finding little but a sharp edge that I flinch from quickly enough to avoid a cut. After a sightless examination I find no apparent injury, and I remain still, very still.
Susie finds the lights before me. A stiff switch snaps on audibly, and a sole ancient incandescent bulb paints the room yellow, directly above her, casting shadows at her feet. Her imposing frame keeps me partially cloaked in darkness; her head again eclipses the light, makes a crown of it.
“Oh, here it is,” Susie says, apparently standing on the tips of her toes. “Uh, pretty high up, I guess.” Even her tallness struggles to permit access to the far back corner of a ceiling-height shelf cubby thing. It takes a few seconds for her arm to go rigid and pull back with the box in hand, supposedly white, but oddly yellow with age. “Hum,” she grunts softly. A sudden cough blows away a few cobwebs. “Pretty dusty, this thing.”
The sight has my right leg backpedal on reflex. The left follows quickly thereafter. My mind is still reeling from the previous darkness and the arid smell. I don’t think about why I’m leaving—solely that it needs to happen. Like the urge to sprint down through dark hallway, there’s no logic involved. Hoping to weaponize the closet’s strange lighting to mask my escape, my retreat is careful.
Light footwork landing toe ‘fore heel carries me as far as the exit when Susie stops me.
“Wait a sec.” She tears open the box and my hidden fear takes form as a single white cylinder from within. “Don’t forget about your little snack.” Dangling the piece in front of my face, she taunts me. “Looks tasty, doesn’t it?”
Like before, fear compels me. I pinch the chalk, brand name printing along its length, from below, between my fingers. It’s weird. I’ve used other chalks before, of course. Like, the rainbow Crayola brand stuff you get at the Staples for a buck fifty, I distinctly remember Mom buying from time to time to scribble all over the driveway—but this is smooth, not cake-y, almost lacquered.
Susie eyes me sideways-like. Her arms are crossed, leaning against a wobbly cabinet. She gestures with her snout, like telling me to get on with it already.
“Um, well,” Ralsei’s voice begins from somewhere. I want to tune him out but he’s got something useful to say for once in my life. “For what it’s worth, calcium carbonate is non-toxic. You’ll be alright, Kris. You’ll make it through this.”
Welp. Down the hatch.
It cracks open with a bit of pressure from my molars. Initially it fractures smoothly, a single straight break, but further pressure grinds the crumbling material into a fine dust. Though I can’t say I’m intimately familiar with the taste of chalk, there’s something premium about this particular brand. As an adolescent whose palate’s been well-spoiled by the American diet, I find my tongue groping for flavor amidst the initial perceived blandness. It finds a subtle earthy texture previewed by a waxy film. It’s something like screened fill sand, close to uniform and purged of impurities. I’m already convinced of its worth when a sharply new flavor dances across my tongue. Faintly bitter, contrasting the empty powder, I catch a hint of coated metal, like licking a battery.
Susie goes bug-eyed. “Holy—ha ha !” She laughs, then claps me on the back, leaning forward with what feels like half a ton of weight; quickly I . “I didn’t expect you to actually do it—oh, man,” and feigns wiping a tear from her eye. “What a riot. Maybe you’re not so bad after all…”
I hear Ralsei stifle a snicker that’s very much ‘I told you so’, and the ensuing bloodrage urges me to tear the blade off a nearby guillotine paper trimmer and hurl it at where he would be if I wasn’t delusional psychopath.
Susie cocks her head at me, strangely quiet, so I offer the remaining half, twirling it about my fore and middle fingers as one does a cigarette.
She flashes me a pointy smile.
I find the remaining half snatched up and within the seconds the outline of it travels down her throat and disappears behind the collar of her shirt I suspect was originally not so off-white. As I now have context for the taste, I vaguely understand why she’s already digging into the box for another piece.
But then the sounds of rustling stop, and Susie’s face scrunches up. I tilt my head.
She matches my look. I stare back emptily. If she’s planning on making me shove it up my nose or some similar torture she’d have done it already.
“I…” Her words trail off.
Our staring contest continues. I’d like to think this is one of those moments where we’re both thinking about how that chalk tasted weird as hell, but I’ll never know if I don’t open my mouth to ask, so I don’t. On that note, the strange metallic aftertaste from the chalk’s condensed into a pinprick stinging sensation at the tip of my tongue. I’m tempted, briefly, to panic and throw a fit about being poisoned—anything to break the silence broken only by the hallway ambience wafting into the closet with the A.C.—but Ralsei whispers into my ear that old chalk or new chalk oughtn’t make too much of a difference.
“Well that was weird,” Susie finally admits. Huffing past me, I’m shoved against the table with the guillotine paper trimmer, and she’s out to the hallway. “Come on, Kris. Miss Alphys’s probably wondering what’s taking so long.”
I close my eyes and count to ten. Then I follow Ralsei past the ruined door.
Approximately at its center, our school boasts a wide-halled intersection connecting the gymnasium and the pool and the lunch commons and the music rooms to the main building, which we colloquially refer to as the ‘T’. Notorious for its traffic so dense it’d make the most hardened fire chief blow his brains out in despair, it’s eerily empty when Susie and I come across it.
“So what’s the deal with you, anyways?” she asks. We’d been walking without speaking up ‘till now. “I mean, uh, with gawking at that girl earlier this morning.”
I pretend like I want to say something (I don’t), but she cuts me off anyways.
“—and, and don’t think I’m letting that slide,” she starts. “But we’re partners in crime now, yeah? If you snitch on me, then I’ll just have to tell them you were being your ‘usual self’ when they ask me why I caved your skull in. You know, um,” she stops for a sec.
“Mutually assured destruction?” Ralsei offers, walking at my side opposite Susie. Though of course she doesn’t hear him.
Here, Susie stops at a drinking fountain just outside the T. Ralsei vice grips my arm and I watch in mild intrigue—Ralsei, sheer terror—as her massive jaw encloses the entire spout. Stray thoughts reminding me of her poor dental hygiene only worsens the scene. Must be an Irish thing.
Susie stops to catch her breath before going in again. “Wow, you’re really not much of a talker, huh?” she asks.
“Nope.”
Presently I gain valuable insight as to what a drowning purple dinosaur might sound like. Susan O’Brien’s huge hands clamp down onto the fountain’s porcelain bowl as she retches. Her life flashes before her eyes as she roar/heaves, like, a pint of water onto the floor. Ralsei yips and yelps and fails to make himself useful in general. I try finding a paper towel dispenser. Luckily, as the T is close to the commons, there’s a communal hallway sink in sight with just what I’m looking for.
I ensure to keep a light ambling familiarity with the way there, giving Susie ample time to reflect on her multitude misdeeds—and maybe me, my own—and I also decide to wash my hands because that closet was gross as heck.
The running water downs out Susie’s dyingness, and with it any guilt I might have for leaving her there. I wince as scalding water hits my hands, fighting the urge to cry until the pain becomes numb. My eyes stay open. The school’s faucets are always hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and when hot emits the nauseating odor of burning plastic. My eyes stay open.
“A-ha! Kris!”
I whirl around, and my wet hands assail the person behind me.
“Augh! Kris! What gives?!” Lacerated by drops of burning water, Berdly’s scream echoes down the hall.
I eye him up and down. As his name implies, unremarkably, he’s a blue bird guy with yellow legs and a yellow beak. He’s wearing the same green Triforce t-shirt he’s worn since middle school beneath a neon greenish-yellow sash with ‘Hall Monitor’ printed in black across its length. His student ID hangs from a lanyard overtop. He isn’t wearing any pants.
“ A-hem ,” he clears his throat. “I—I see, Kris, that you are being very fascinated with my nether regions.” His sentence stops short. I keep looking. “But—um, well,” he fights to keep composed. “I’m afraid I’m going to need to see your hall pass.”
I switch off the faucet. Taking an extra long paper towel sheet I dry my hands with half of it. A certain reptilian groaning again fills the halls.
“S-Susie?” Berdly’s face goes through the motions of fear, then scorn, then curiosity. “Wait, why is she on the ground? Kris, did you kill her?”
I nod.
Berdly runs ahead, says something about needing to write me up for murder. I figure either Susie’ll smack him dead or he’ll give her a stroke and either Susie goes to jail or he does. I debate how fast I ought to follow him when Ralsei appears and sets the pace at a similar concern to jaywalking across Market Street.
“Susie’s fine, by the way,” he says. “She’s acting all dramatic-like, but she’s breathing okay.”
How hell does he know that? It puzzles me, and maybe I consider I’ve created it from my imagination, but Ralsei won’t let me think.
“It’s awful nice of you to be worried about her, you know.”
Shut up.
“I told you she wasn’t that bad a person, even though there was that misunderstanding at first.”
I swing a hook at Ralsei’s face and hit the wall. The skin of my knuckles cracks and bleeds, but nothing breaks.
He takes advantage of my temporary incapacitation. “You know, once you clear things up and explain that you’re not really a creepy pervert, I bet you’ll be friends for real! And Berdly—”
No. Nuh-uh. He makes me want to slit your wrists in a bathtub after just five seconds of hearing him yap. He’s a weirdo and a nerd.
“And you aren’t?”
I don’t have a response to this. I keep my eyes open until I reach Susie. From the floor she shoots an out at me, clawing the air all dramatic-like, but she seems to be breathing okay. Berdly kneels by her side, acting the part of a mourning widow. In his hands he holds hers—no, he’s not holding her hand. He’s holding what’s in her hand. He’s got the box of Hagoromo.
Arriving at the scene punctually, I hear the entire conversation.
“Susie, this ‘box’ of ‘chalk’ you’re holding,” he says, stressing words at random, pausing for dramatic effect. “Did you happen to find this ‘chalk’ at the ‘back’ of a tall shelf in the supply closet?”
“Uh-huh.”
Berdly gasps. “Oh my God! Susie!” He grabs both her arms; she hasn’t the strength to resist. “Listen very closely, Susie! This ‘chalk’ you’re holding—it looks like it’s been ‘opened’! You didn’t ‘open’ this ‘box’, did you? Tell me you didn’t!”
“Dude, quit talking like you’re a Jojo’s character and spit it out already,” Susie says and I think at the same time. We share a look.
But instead Berdly starts shrieking for whatever reason. “Susie! It’s a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ question! You have to tell me! ‘Yes’, or ‘not Yes’!”
“Yes—man, get off me!” Susie’s frustration overcomes her windedness and she throws Berdly off of her. She takes the chalk. “C’mon Kris, we’re getting out of here.”
“No! Susie!” He calls out from behind us as we both begin the trek back to Miss Alphys’ class. “Whatever you do, don’t ‘eat’ that ‘chalk’! It’s ‘cursed’! Do you understand what I’m saying to you? It’s a ‘cursed chalk’!”
His pleas fade once we round a bend.
We’re well past the T now, down the main corridor where we’ll turn right and arrive just before Miss Alphys wraps up class for the day. She’ll probably be upset, or else glad to be rid of two troublemakers for the period.
She’s a long-term substitute, as it happens. Part of me is weak to remorse for giving her a hard time; it stings my heart, injects its poison; but on the other hand a little poison as penance is par for the course for a person like me. Susie contributes more to making her job hell anyhow.
On that note, she’s been yapping about Berdly all this time. About the weird curse bit. It’s bizarre, the experience, hearing her speak conversationally—or at least not lambasting me for a change. Whereas before it triggered anxiety, an invisible knife’s edge closer and closer to my neck with each word, it feels very normal. I’m not on edge. I’m calm. Well, I’m never on edge and I’m never calm but I’m listening to Susie and not agonizing over every word in feverish flight-or-flight cowardice.
“I mean, you don’t feel ‘cursed’, do you?” she says.
I shrug my shoulders and she starts laughing. I hadn’t noticed it prior, but it’s this strange ritual where her head bucks up like a horse. I wonder if it’s a tic specific to her species or if it’s closer to a learned behavior. Maybe a mix of both—I don’t know the psychology.
“But man, what a weirdo,” Susie snickers. She sends an elbow my way. “Makes freaks like you seem normal, huh?”
At this, the odd stillness of the past several minutes finally breaks. My stomach lurches. I step awkwardly to keep from keeling over. Head hits a row of lockers, the cold metal subdues the burning nausea until it feels like it’s melting into my skin. My eyes stay open. It’s too good to be true; I need to drown it out. The mere threat of praise, the mere suggestion of connection—the hope kills me. I want so badly for it to be true but it isn’t. The cognitive dissonance bombards the plains of my brain back into its deep network of trenches.
My eyes stay open, defiant. I steel my senses, diverting all focus to the searing ember placed at the center of my tongue, the sour aftertaste from the closet. It’s fading fast. The tongue forgets. I keep keep the thoughts at bay.
“Uh, Kris?”
My eyes find Susie’s and she flinches. Maybe my eyes are bloodshot red and dry and it’s creeping her out. And maybe I’ve finally won over my inferior emotions, and this is where she gives me a black eye and cracks my skull against the glass window we’re passing and saves me a whole lot of trouble.
“Well, uh,” Susie begins, “I said—” then coughs awkwardly.
It appears she thinks I misheard her. I want to rectify the misunderstanding but I don’t. In place of action, I hope. I feeblemindedly ‘hope’ she’s adjusting her speech because she felt bad for calling me a freak because I lack a brain and fail to comprehend her slamming me against the lockers twenty minutes ago.
“—I was, uh, saying that, um, Berdly’s weird—like, really weird—and, well, you’re not so bad in comparison, am I right?” She’s back to chuckling and elbowing in her normal way by the end.
The white fur of Ralsei’s head dusts the outskirts of my vision between Susie’s elbowing. He doesn’t need to open his mouth to suggest, ‘stop being a Deborah downer and make some friends for once in your life,’ and every muscle in my body screams to smash my face into the concrete—anything to maintain my status quo hair-thin frown. I’d stitch my mouth shut if I had a needle and thread. I’d sew my eyelids open so I wouldn’t blink no matter the pain.
Yet, try as I might, a crooked smile takes form instead.
“Yeah, I guess so.”