She called Gert. She had to, she needed someone. Everything was getting to be too much. Her mom’s a murderer, she… has a superpower and everything with Nico-… She just needed someone to talk to…
After they’d hung out after school a few days ago, Karolina had begun to think of Gerd as a friend again, little by little, and she didn't even think twice about calling her.
Gert picks up on the third ring, and after Karolina asks a quiet “Can you come over?” she promised to ‘...be there in ten.’
“Hey, rainbow,” Gert greets her when she opens the door and Karolina can’t hide her surprise as she stumbles back a step, leaning heavily into the door,
“E-excuse me?” “Uh, your lights…” Gert explains as she gestures awkwardly to her arms, “You light up, changing different colors, you literally shoot colored light from your arms… any of that ringing a bell?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Karolina mumbles and her ears grow red in embarrassment. They’re surrounded silence a moment later and as it grows awkward, Gert shifts on her feet and a few sharp ‘clinks’ ring through the air. A pack of Heineken dangles unnoticed in her left hand.
“You brought beer.” Karoline states, moving aside to open the door wider, letting Gert in,
“Yeah, uh, you sounded like you needed some on the phone.” She nods at that, trailing after Gert as they make their way to her room.
“What, did you raid your parent's liquor cabinet or something?”
“No, they keep it open. They always say that it’s better to experiment with drugs at home and supervised than somewhere else,”
Karolina nods at her words before stepping forward to enter her bedroom door.
“Woah, what happened to your room?” Gert just about exclaims as the destroyed state of her pictures and the contents of her desk come into full view.
“Oh yeah. I broke some stuff, it’s not a big deal.” She shrugs before kneeling, moving to pick up the binders and strewn pieces of paper that had fallen out of them and littered themselves around her floor, brushing wayward pieces of glass off of them as she goes along.
“Wow, you’ve got some anger under that smiley exterior.” Gert says as she sets the beer down next to Karolina’s bed before kneeling beside her,
“Yeah, just because I’m blonde and religious doesn’t mean I’m not capable of feeling more than one complex emotions.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Gert mutters teasingly, her words holding no malice.
They work together quietly, efficiently picking up the papers and the larger shards of glass and depositing them on her desk.
They stand together, admiring their handiwork when Gert points at her once neat wall of pictures, asking
“What are you going to do about those?”
“We’ve got some extra picture frames in the basement, actually.”
“What’re the odds that your basement has a murder dungeon, too?” Karolina rolls her eyes, exiting her room, and moving to grab the broom from the kitchen before re-emerging in her doorway. Gert walks over and takes the broom from her wordlessly, beginning to sweep up the glass.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
The basement of her house was the most cluttered part of it by far. There were enough boxes down there to hide the gray of the walls behind them. There used to be enough dust residing on the cardboard that when she was younger, she almost died from an asthma attack from being down there for only a minute or two. It was better now, thankfully, an air purifier made by Wizard Co. ran perpetually down there but still, even in the present, her throat closed up a little in the confined space.
She’d ventures around a stack of boxes before she found ones labeled ‘Living Room’. It’s crazy that they’ve kept all of this stuff even though they’d been living in that house all of Karolina’s life. The tape sealing the box together come off easily, it’s adhesive long since withered away.
A small smile forms on her face at the first thing she sees; an old photo of her grandfather. Her fingertips ghost atop it. He looked practically ethereal as he basked in the warm glow of the sun near the Santa Monica Pier. It was one of her favorite memories, one of the only memories of her grandpa that she still remembered.
They’d sat together in the sand and he explained to her the importance of a smile, how the small gesture of smiling at a stranger could give them a reprieve from their hardships, a small reprieve of the storm of their day into a bright clear sky, if only for a moment. One of the philosophies of the Church of Gibborim that she would soon come to know.
The memory makes lacks its usual loving glow, instead, it makes her heart heavier, placing bitterness and sorrow in the place where warmth used to reside whenever she thought about the practices of her church… Whenever she thought of her grandfather she’d used to think about the love and light of the Church of Gibborim provided her but now… Now she can only wonder how much of that her family actually believed. Believed in.
As she looked around her basement that she knew held so much family history that there almost wasn’t enough space to keep it all, Karolina felt nothing but sadness and revulsion as she regarded it all.
Gibborim paraphernalia disguised as family heirlooms and treasures items litter the house, masking the disingenuity of it all behind religious practices Karolina doesn’t even know her Mother actually believes -that she doesn't even know if she believes anymore.
After all, how can you preach daily about the spreading happiness and sharing smiles when one of the last smiles one of you followers may form very well might be the last they ever get to bring into this word.
Her stomach roils painfully at the thought.
Everything she’s been taught might as well have been a lie. It feels so cold. Sterile. Impersonal. And it’s then that Karolina realized that she has more color and warmth in her left arm than in her whole house.
Karolina finds herself wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible. She places the picture back down, finding the empty frames she’d been looking for in the next box over and as she climbs back up the stairs and into her houses back room, she feels like she can breathe a little easier. For more reason than one.
“We’re not going to be able to drink those here, my dad likes to pop in to check on me and they’re definitely not going to be happy that this.” Karolina reminds Gert as she gets handed a picture frame, placing it in its previous spot on her wall.
“Yeah, well, our parents have murderous tendencies, are you really that worried about what they approve of right now.”
“Not my dad.” She interjects sharply and Gert raises her eyebrows in question.
“What?”
“My dad’s not a part of it,” Karolina states resolutely, her voice strong.
“How do you know?” Gert asks and Karolina can’t help but release a small chuckle.
“Have you seen him? My mom’s the head of the church, my dad hasn’t even officially gone ultra-”
“Is that even a real thing or is it a code for.. You know.” She shrugs,
“I don’t know but… I just know that he’s not. I have faith in him. That he believes the things my mother preaches.”
“Do you still believe the things your mom preaches?” She doesn’t answer.
They park on the far side of the beach parking lot, Gert’s car stalls under a blanket of shadow as a low rush of warm air coaxes itself through the car’s vents, cutting through the slight chill of the night.
Gert reaches into the backseat and grabs the pack of beer, resting it on the middle console as she slips one out and hands one to Karolina. After the time it took to clean her room and drive in the heated car to the beach, the beer’s warmer than what Karolina would call desirable but with the anticipation of the alcohol releasing the tension on her shoulders… she can’t complain.
They sit in silence together, comfortable and content in each other’s calming presence, watching together as the waves lap lazily against the shore.
It took her a little longer than expected to get used to the bitter taste, she’d have to admit, but when she finds herself more relaxed than she’d been in the three days prior, she can’t find it in herself to care.
It took Karolina almost draining all of her beer to make the thought come into her head: ‘Come out.’ She’s been thinking that more and more lately. It whispers to her in the night when she finds herself fixated the female characters on whatever sitcom is playing and screaming full force whenever Nico comes near her.
She doesn’t really know what comes over her this time, though. Maybe the combined efforts of the alcohol and the betrayal she feels from her mother takes a toll on her awareness… But for some reason, it makes her think that everything will be okay.
“So uh,” She begins, breaking the silence for the first time that night.
“You believe in fighting for social justice and… equality for all and all that, right?”
“Within reason, yeah.”
“Within reason?” She questions, not being able to help it as she tenses up a bit.
“Yeah. You’re not going to see me defending the rights of a neo-nazi, that’s for sure.” She explains and Karolina nods, hiding her sigh of relief in another sip of beer.
They’re silent after that just sitting together as they take in the sea air, lost in their own thoughts. When their first beers are finished, Gert grabs two more, before handing one to Karolina, barely making a sound. She finds her gaze hyperfocused on the alcohol sloshing inside the glass bottle and only after she takes one courage-fueled swig, does her mouth open to spill what she’s wanted too for a while.
“I’m gay.” She blurts out and Gert chokes mid-sip. She begins coughing violently and Karolina reaches out a hand, firming patting her back until it dies down. Gert's eyes are wide, watery from the coughs and her voice sounds strained when she speaks up.
“Wait, you’re not into Chase?” She asks and Karolina visibly retracts, shaking her head vehemently.
“No. Definitely not. I-I uh,” She takes a deep breath. Steeling herself, steadying herself. She contemplates stopping at that as the suddenly more and more familiar feeling of fear rests lowly in her stomach but the confused look Gert’s giving her isn't one of disgust, but one of curiosity and it's that look that gives her the strength to continue.
“I’m a lesbian.” Karolina finds herself enveloped in a tight hug a moment later and she has to tilt her beer away so it doesn’t spill all over the seat. The position’s a little awkward but it gets the point across and the moment is nothing less than perfect. When Gert pulls back, her smile is the most genuine she’s ever seen it and it’s almost enough to bring Karolina to tears.
“Thanks for trusting me enough to tell me,” Gert says and Karolina smiles shyly down at her beer, sighing deeply as the anxiety she was feeling a moment earlier leaves her body.
“So,” Gert says, taking Karolina’s silence as a prompt to continue.
“How’d you figure out that you were a lesbian?”Gert asks and her casual acceptance makes Karolina feel warmer than the buzz that the alcohol is giving her.
“Well, I’ve been trying to ignore it but recently that hasn’t been working out the best for me,” she jokes a bit before her smile grows somber.
“And I have the biggest crush on this girl but I think she’s strai-”
“Nico?” Gert cuts her off, smiling as the look on Karolina’s face confirms her suspicion. “Yeah,” Karolina frowns at her, “How’d you know?”
“I saw the way you two interacted at the coffee house after our mission to save Alex.” She explains, “I don’t know, I assumed that you guys just… really bonded before Molly and I got there… I guess it was a wildly different type of bonding than what I was assuming, though.” She teases. Karolina takes another helpless swig.
“No, nothing like that. When we were back at Alex’s I saw Nico and Alex kissing so… I’d say her heart’s unobtainable at the moment.”
“Oh, man, I know how that feels,” Gert mutters. Karolina looks at her expectantly, prompting her to continue and “Chase,” is all Gert offers to her.
“Oh,” Karolina breathes out. “Oh.” She says again. Gert nods.
“And you may not be into Chase but he’s definitely into you.” She huffs out, sighing into another sip from her bottle. Karoline nods understanding.
“Is that why you’ve been acting a little...”
“Bitchy?” Gert supplies and the giggle Karolina releases turns into a drunken hiccup.
“You said it.”
“I’m really sorry about that, actually...” Gert apologizes,
“I’m not used to being jealous,” Karolina nods at her words, tilting her glass towards Gert’s own and they clink against each other in a mock toast.
“Yeah,” she breathes out. “Neither am I.”