Leah Week #1
Leah misses peanut butter. She misses a lot of things about being alive but sometimes she finds that it’s easier to miss one thing with all her energy than to be consumed by how much she misses everything. It’s easier to miss silly things, little things, the taste of peanut butter, than it is to miss the feeling of not being dead.
So today she’s thinking about the taste of it on her tongue, the satisfying crunch of the peanuts in the chunky kind, how she used to eat it out of the jar as she sat on her Aglionby dorm bed and listened to Whelk. But thinking about Whelk leaves a sour taste in her mouth, though truth be told she still misses her old friend. It’s been easier since Gansey and her girls showed up. Leah is like Ronan in that she has always needed someone to follow, a kind of human polaris to orient her in the world, and Gansey serves this function well, and Ronan, by her similar nature, makes Leah a little less lonely. And though she might not need Eve the way she needs the other two, she likes her. She doesn’t quite understand her, though, which is strange, because part of being dead is sort of understanding everyone. It’s not a power she can really explain or even wrap her head around, but she knows what people are doing even when she isn’t there, can tell what they are feeling, what they are thinking. But it’s imperfect, like memory, and for whatever reason, Eve is more difficult than the others. She remembers once when Eve came to Monmouth with a bruise on her cheek just like her own, and Leah had reached up to touch it and said, “Twins.” Eve had flinched away and Leah thought no, we are not the same.
But they all fit together, more or less, have their own distinct places in the hierarchy. Gansey wouldn’t like it if she knew that Leah thinks of it as a hierarchy, but that’s what it is. It’s never bothered her. She loves them and she fits with them but all the same, she goes away for a day because she’s consumed by jealousy after seeing Ronan eating a peanut butter sandwich. Her jealousy isn’t the same as Ronan’s, it isn’t harsh or spiteful, but she’s aware that it makes her singularly unpleasant. It brings out the worst in her, the way she shrinks away from the living world even as she exists in it. So sometimes she decides not to exist in it at all, just blinks out and comes back hours, days, later to find the others much the same as they’ve always been. They hardly seem to miss her, and it makes her wonder if it’s her being a ghost that it so easy to ignore her absence or if she’s always been this forgettable. She doesn’t know whether to be comforted or disappointed by the fact that Ronan does seem to miss her. On the one hand it’s proof that at least someone wants her around and notices when she’s gone, but on the other it means that there’s probably nothing supernatural about how the others go on with their lives when she goes away. On the whole, she thinks she has to be glad about it because there’s always a flutter at her heart when she sees the unusually toothy, earnest grin that flashes over Ronan’s face when Leah comes out of her room after going away for a while. She loves it, the slap on the back, the elbow in her ribs, all the love and affection of a kid, which is what Ronan is around her, and no one else.
After the peanut butter incident, she comes back to a still and silent Monmouth, unsure of how much time has passed. She’s a little unsettled by the fact that everyone in the apartment seems to be sleeping. It’s a rare thing. Gansey is definitely asleep, breathing quietly and evenly in her bed, but as she moves soundlessly across the floor of the main room, Leah thinks she sees a little light coming from under Ronan’s door. Despite Ronan’s strict rule against anyone entering her space, Leah puts her hand on the doorknob and turns it. She has a feeling that something is going wrong in this bedroom. When she pushes the door open, she sees the light still on but Ronan asleep, her body twitching under her thin blanket. It’s a nightmare, she knows, and in Ronan’s head and hands, a nightmare is a dangerous thing. Settling herself on her knees beside the low frame of Ronan’s bed, Leah reaches out a hand and grips Ronan’s shoulder, shaking her slightly and saying her name. “Ronan. Ronan wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”
Ronan jerks awake, making a noise that was less a yell and more a whimper. Leah can see in her eyes the moment when she snaps back into the real world, though clearly the nightmare still has a grip on her bones, the way she’s shaking. Moving as if in a trance, she turns to Leah and blinks. “You’re not supposed to be in my fucking room,” she says, but the usual edge to her voice is missing, so Leah stays put, unintimidated. Ronan sighs and sits up, rubbing her hands over her shaved head. “Why do you lock yourself up like that?” And then, when Leah doesn’t answer, “How do you know when to come back out?”
Leah shrugs. “I guess I know when you need me.”
Ronan snorts, but she doesn’t deny it.
“You want me to stay?”
Ronan doesn’t answer but she scoots over in the bed to make space for Leah to join her. Leah gets up to turn out the light then lies down next to Ronan and they are still together in the darkness, their breaths falling into sync. It’s a good moment. It’s a little, Leah thinks, like being alive. Being so close to someone. It’s difficult to be that way when you’re dead. She reaches out to take Ronan’s hand and finds it unmoving. Ronan is asleep. Leah holds her hand anyway and wishes she could fall asleep too. In the absence of that possibility, she stays in Ronan’s bed until dawn, counting the beats of her pulse against the inside of her wrist.