next steps
She drives.
She doesn’t entirely remember getting into the car. Can’t say when her hands closed around the steering wheel, or who turned that ignition. Her whole body aches, her throat raw; her chest is constriction, howling something primal whenever she draws too deep a breath.
“Breathe anyway,” advises her passenger. She doesn’t turn her head, but she nods. She will. She must. Breathing is the first step, the first item on a long to-do list.
Breathe, and drive.
She crosses state lines, heedless of traffic lights, of speed limits, of the sun as it sinks over the horizon and blooms bright once more. She squints into its feverish rays, and her passenger makes an approving little sound. Sneakers rucked up on the dashboard. Hand pattering out a rhythm on torn-up jeans. It’s an old song, something by Radiohead. She shakes her head, tries not to dwell.
Breathe, and drive, and almost before she knows it—and there is something so unjust about that tiny sliver of unreality, about the slipstream of time—she is here. Standing on the threshold. Staring up at that sign, at the windows, at a memory weeks gone. Push in. Listen to the bell. Look across the stretch of video tapes and cheerful signage.
Her passenger has beat her here, is leaning against the counter. Hair too long, smile too thin. Nodding to herself like she already knows the story, like she’s just counting the beats until the end.
“It’s okay,” her passenger says. “Take your time.”
She can’t. There isn’t any left. That isn’t how time works, isn’t how any of this works, and doesn’t she know that better than anybody? Doesn’t she know what it is to ball up fists and rail against the walls of a cave that just won’t crack open for anything?
She fought her way here. She’ll fight her way through this, too.
“Yeah,” her passenger says quietly, thoughtfully. “Probably will have to.”
She doesn’t answer. Scuffs a hand across her mouth. Her lips taste of chemical desperation, of a plastic mask and a final kiss. There’s iron in her mouth. When did she bite her tongue? Twelve hours ago, probably. Before she even left Virginia, she thinks. Unholy fucking state.
“Didn’t think anywhere could be worse than Ohio,” muses her passenger. “Guess we don’t always know our shit, do we?”
The shop is muted, dust-caked after weeks of neglect. She’s a little surprised the key even worked in that lock. A little startled there’s anything to find here at all, anything still standing. The debt collectors must be lurking, parasitic, ready to descend. Maybe they’ve already started. She thinks of the boxes in her basement, thinks of scrawled Sharpie on flimsy cardboard. Thinks of a phone blinking neon in the dark. Her throat threatens to close, and her passenger makes an abortive little gesture toward her.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
How? She wants to scream it, beg the rafters for an answer. How is any of this okay? How will it ever be again? How could anything be okay after—after—
Hands on her arms. Hands a little too steady, a little too rough. Callouses on every finger, scratching through the weight of her jacket sleeve. Crazy. She’s going crazy. This is what it feels like, surely.
“Look at me,” her passenger says, and she doesn’t know how to disobey. That face crinkles around the eyes, that smile lighting the whole abandoned shop. “Look at me, and remember what we talked about. First step, right?”
“Breathe,” she rasps, and her passenger gives another encouraging nod.
“C’mon. Let’s do what we came here to do.”
We, she thinks hollowly, a hand reflexively stroking up toward her mouth. Blood on her lips. Something else, too. That kiss, firm and certain and so full of relief. Firm and certain and joyful.
You begged for that, once, she thinks, and maybe it isn’t her thought at all. Maybe it’s the other one, the one she tackled to the ground and forced out of the driver’s seat. The one shackled in that cave.
She’ll come back, probably. She always does. She’ll come back, but it won’t be like before. Won’t be, because that one always wanted the same things. The same essential, foundational elements of life. Food. Meat. V—
Shut up, she thinks savagely, shut up, haven’t you taken enough? Her hands tremble, and she realizes she’s digging her nails into her palms hard enough to dent the skin. Hard enough to prick fresh crimson points. Her hands aren’t calloused anymore, don’t remember what it was to do the hard work, but she’s always been a quick study. Always been able to pick it back up. Like a slide tackle, she’s sure the muscle memory will return when she needs it most.
“Later,” her passenger says. There’s a look in those blue eyes she almost doesn’t recognize. Not that potent steadiness, not the storyteller in the depths of the narrative turn--but a girl. Just a girl. Just teenage, just insistent, just come on, you can afford ten minutes with a crooked little grin.
She takes the stairs slowly. Most of the work’s already been done—the important things packed away back before, when they were two fewer body bags and two months less traumatized. How that’s possible, how there could ever have been a more innocent version of adulthood after everything their adolescence wrought, she doesn’t know. Can’t think. Can’t think at all, and it’s not like it was, not the dipping in and out of consciousness as she drifted further away from her own body. This is new. This is—
“It’s going to hurt,” her passenger warns from the top of the stairs. Somehow, she’s coaxed the front door open, is reclining against the frame with arms folded over her thin chest. She knows what that chest feels like, breathing against her back. Knows what it feels like under her cheek. Knows that heartbeat, that endless lullaby that has, impossibly, gone silent.
Tears track down her face. Her passenger sighs.
“I know, dude. I do. Come on.”
She follows the beckoning tilt of a head. The apartment is lazily structured in stages of half-impermanence. Most of the clothes are still here. All of the dishware. None of the VHS collection. It’s so easy, looking around, to determine what has value and what does not. The things that mattered, the things that counted for anything—pictures, and signed posters, and that old skateboard—are already gone. The job’s half done. The job is—
You never knew what she needed.
It’s really you.
I love you so much.
Don’t go anywhere.
The floor stretches up to meet her before she even realizes she’s crumpling, and her passenger can’t fly fast enough to stop the impact. Even as she’s folding into herself, she feels arms around her shoulders, a cheek pressed to her spine.
“Shh. Shh, yeah, I know. Believe me. Hey, I got you.”
“No,” she gasps. “You don’t. You—”
Her passenger muffles a sound against her jacket. A laugh, a sob; she can’t tell the difference. “When have I ever not got you, Tai?”
She can’t do this. Won’t be able to make it another step, much less the constant revolutions it’ll take to pack up the rest of these belongings. Won’t be able to muster the strength to stand, much less cart it all down to her car, back across state lines, to a world that is suddenly so fucking hollow.
“Yes,” her passenger says resolutely into her ear. “Yes, you can. You have to. Who else is left?”
Shauna, she thinks miserably. And Misty. And—
That surge of fury so potent, it kickdrums her heart into a painful tattoo. And that one, the one who shouldn’t be, the one whose funeral they attended together. She remembers it vividly the way you recall shit that hasn’t mattered in twenty years. The way they’d stood afterward. The way she’d chain-smoked, something visceral about this loss she hadn’t had words for.
She recalls the burn in her chest, the ache of that smoke. The way a pale hand had stretched over, slender fingers plucking the cigarette right out of her mouth. The filter between thin lips, the tip of red hair back against a brick wall.
“Never had a sister,” she’d said then, like that was news. “But in a way, she was kind of…almost, you know?”
Almost. Story of their lives. The sum of everything comes down to that one word, doesn’t it? Almost made it. Almost to Nationals. Almost out of the woods. Almost found perfect bliss. Almost.
“I’m going to kill her,” she tells the apartment now. Her voice is more level than she anticipates. The voice of a politician. The voice of trust me, I’m going to take care of us.
“I know,” says her passenger, smiling sadly. “I know you are.”
“You can’t talk me out of it,” she insists. That head tips back just as it had against brick, blue eyes searching for answers somewhere in the ceiling.
“When could I ever talk you out of anything?”
“She deserves,” she snarls. Stops herself. Steadies. “For what she did? There isn’t a deep enough hell.”
Her passenger watches her guardedly for a moment. Patiently pulling the words into focus. She stares back, daring that mouth to shape platitudes, to tell her to forgive, Tai, forgive and let it go.
“Yes,” her passenger says instead. “Yes, there is. And you know that.”
She remembers. Remembers an axe, a knife, a rifle. Remembers a deck of cards deadlier than all three combined. Remembers deft hands shuffling, shuffling, a quiet curse in the shelter of their home. Remembers reaching over, taking the deck, setting it aside.
“If you’d just,” she begins, and her passenger gives her such a look. Such a sharp, uncompromising stare, she actually pulls up short.
“I would never have. You know that.”
I never had a sister, but in a way…
Her fists slacken. She reaches out, and her passenger’s skin is hot under her fingertips. The curve of a cheek not entirely past its adolescent softness. The ridge of a scar she’s kissed a thousand times.
“I am going,” she repeats firmly, “to kill her.”
Her passenger gives her a wry smile. It doesn’t touch her eyes. It took years to learn that trick again. This version isn’t there yet.
This version: nineteen years old, a birthday celebrated in the quiet enclosure of their hut, still telling the story she needed to believe. This version: not soft, not sweet, but kind anyway. Always kind, when it mattered most.
If you hadn’t been so, she thinks, and shuts her eyes. God, how can she wish otherwise? How can she wish away such a fundamental piece of the love of her life?
If you hadn’t been so kind.
If you’d stacked that Queen a little differently, just once.
If you had that knife first.
“Tai,” says her passenger quietly, this beautiful ghost who grew up and still stands unchanged before her. “What did I tell you?”
It’s really you.
I love you so much.
Don’t go anywhere. Promise.
“Breathe,” Taissa whispers to the remnants of Van Palmer’s apartment. The ghost of that girl, of her truest love, of her soul, nods.
“Breathe. Come on. Things to do.”
Next steps, Taissa reminds herself. Van was always looking at next steps. Don’t cast the net too wide, don’t waste time with big picture calculations. Look for the ball. Look, and strike.
Just take the next step.
She thinks of a queen of hearts. Thinks of the heft of an axe. Thinks of how quickly muscle memory returns, when needs must.
Thinks of lips on hers, of a warm body curled close, of a half-laughed god, I can’t believe I’m back here. Thinks of brick walls decades apart, of a hungry kiss, of the way she’d known there was never going to be anything even close again.
“Breathe, Tai,” Van’s teenage specter repeats. “Breathe.”
Taissa draws a breath and holds it until her vision blurs.