Okay. Come on, then. I love you, get up, we are going to keep going. Repeat this to yourself in a mirror or in a whisper or in the shower or in a shout. I love you, get up, keep going.
I am tired too. It's okay. We will sleep in the car ride over. We will sleep on each other's shoulders. We will sleep upside down and in the laps of new friends and on the bellies of our lovers and in the hands of better tomorrows. We will sleep and we will wake up rested and we will wake up happy and we will wake up home again.
I love you, get up. It's time to write "maybe next time" on our gravesite. It's time to write: it could not kill me, I would not die. It's time to write a love letter to the sun and our one-act play and the history of our keychains. It is time to write a future where despite everything, we are finally warm and safe.
can i come over? i have been thinking of the ways my body holds knowledge. what is learning on a cellular level. did i learn how to be lonely, all those years ago, or was it taught to me.
i am still shocked by how much hair comes out in the shower. i only know my body in comparison; watch myself the way i’ve been taught to do. is this the motion i make for happy? is this the reaction for i’m-not-ready? is this okay, am i okay, is this happening?
the heart is, after all, a machine capable of learning. i find myself picking up the phone to text you even when i have nothing to say. when i say “i am feeling okay”, it is because the shape of what i am feeling has no name. i haven’t been able to write for days. everything feels a little bit to the left - and gracious, but not quite sane.
can i come over? i can’t stop thinking about what you said - cold hands are slow. i drop things and catch them without thinking, which only matters when i drop a knife. i bite my tongue rather than get into a fight. i flinch when he moves too quickly, i hide my histories, i worry obsessively. my body knows the memory of unloving so well that i could chip a tooth on the tundra of it. im saying i love like cold hands. i love like slow.
hmmm if anyone’s interested im really bad at plot but i do have like … some good writing tips that aren’t just “don’t use adverbs!” because fuck all that shit
I feel really sad this evening and I don’t know how to say it. How to message my mother those words and as I type them imagine the frown between her eyes and worry set deep across her whole face. I can picture her, sat in the black armchair next to me, a hand absentmindedly fiddling with the greying hair that teases at her forehead. And I can’t bear it, can’t cope with knowing my pain, my suffering is being transferred to others. It’s easier to hold it in, I don’t want them to worry.
I could tell my friends but they’d laugh it off. With jokes of ‘Yeah, uni makes me want to die too’ and ‘shit, yeah, I’m exhausted this week. It feels like I haven’t slept all term’ and I’d laugh and joke and play along but not have the nerve to turn the tone serious. And if I did? What would they say? ‘Why?’ Or ‘We’ve all been there’ or even ‘Its ok, just two more years to go’ and it’s true, they’re right, it’s just uni dragging me down. What would be even worse though, would be if they took it seriously. If they saw the way the tiredness feels like it’s anchoring me to the ground but at the same time I’m floating far above myself, losing all control. If they could feel the flashes and aches of freezing hot pain and be caught up in the tornadoes of my mind, how would they feel then? Would they look at me differently? Would they worry about my sanity? I don’t want them to worry.
My dad doesn’t really get it. He tries to, he’s not being harsh. But sometimes it feels like I’m explaining it more than I’m venting, like I need to educate him about how I feel. Like if he’ll just understand, I’ll be validated, that these feelings aren’t all in my mind. And I know he loves me and worries. Sometimes it’s worst seeing him worry than the rest. He’s tense and quiet and withdrawn and it doesn’t show on his face. But it’s there and he’ll keep it bottled up too, it’s where I get that trait from. Like genies in lamps, with no way to escape from our tormenting thoughts and wild hallucinations. He’ll handle it because he’s the man of the house but I don’t want them to worry.
My brothers are much like parents to me. They’re older and cleverer and happier and more successful. They’re everything I’m meant to be. Everything I will be if I can battle through these nights and face the brightness that always welcomes me. They’d tell my parents if I voiced my emotions to them, there’d be no privacy or secrecy there. It would be a family problem, something we’d work through together. But if I think of my brothers now, I feel embarrassed and ashamed and alone. I’m not like them. I’m too emotional, too broken, too alone. They have their relationships, their lives, their own families and all I have is what remains of ours. I can see them and their partners together talking, discussing me and how I’m coping alone. And they’d worry because they love me. And they’d worry because they think they know what’s right for me. And they’d worry because they’re family. I don’t want them to worry
Instead I sit and tell myself what’s really going on in my mind. I lay each problem out and think of it over and over again. Sometimes it helps but other times the thoughts slip between the cracks. They whistle through the alleys of my mind on blustering troublesome gusts. I don’t want to be like this, to think this. I want to be like everyone else. These thoughts aren’t me and these thoughts aren’t mine and it hurts to keep them locked tight. There’s a box in my chest and there’s a pounding coming from inside. Some say it’s my heart, but I know it’s my fears, fighting hard to get out into the light. I’m holding them back but I don’t know how long I can fight until I break down all over again. The breakdown, leading to me building myself back up all over again, becoming who I am for a short period before the fears overthrow my tumultuous reign. And I worry. I worry how long it will be. I worry how long I will cope. I worry who will pick me up when I fall too far. I worry how others will feel. And I don’t want to worry anymore.
It was Carl’s idea, because of course it was. For every day that the sun rises, Carl has another “mind blowing idea” that I have to like, supervise. My mom and his mom are best-friends-since-childhood, and I have eldest daughter syndrome, so I’m like, constantly trying to explain what a pyramid scheme is to him.
Three weeks ago, I think he got the foundation for the idea in the middle of lunch, talking with his mouth full - “Online psychic,” he said. “Reads your internet posts for how you really feel”. I said that’s just called Twitter, Carl, but three hours later, he had registered the domain “internet-psychics-for-hire”. So at this point, I was kind of relieved that it was down-to-earth enough to be “ask a medium about Carl’s dead sister.”
“Are you sure this is necessary?” I ask him. The costume was extremely itchy and was from my 6th grade halloween fascination with Mary, Queen of Scots. We had tried to scrub out the fake blood from it (she had been Zombie, queen of Zombies), but it still had a weird brown-pink tinge and smelled like the attic. His was his dad’s tan jacket - at least it had been, like, in a closet instead of wrinkled in a blue storage bin.
“I crave the authenticity,” he says. “I looked for an authentic experience, I paid for an authentic experience, you wear the dress for the authentic experience.”
As he says this, the Zoom client crashes again.
“Run it from the browser, it’s safer,” I suggest. The frill of the ruff keeps flipping upwards, threatening to launch dust into my mouth like some kind of dirt springboard. “I hate this,” I add.
“I know what I’m doing,” he promises. He’s selected a fake name for his victorian persona - Jack t. Rypfer - and clicks the button to connect to voice and camera. We both look extremely washed out.
“Hello?” Her voice is the first thing that gets me. She sounds so gentle, even with her voice staticky through Carl’s trash speakers. “Uh.... Jack? Just a moment.” The medium’s image is too dark. She’s barely a shadow behind a ton of backlighting. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
“Ah, Sarah. No, thank you. This is my friend, who knew, uh, the departed, so I thought might be able to, uhm...” He looks over at me, fishing for words.
“I’m just watching,” I say. “If I can help that would be nice.”
“I always love having visitors,” she promises. “Shall we begin?”
The process at first feels more like a job interview - who is Carl? What are his expectations? How does he see a manifestation perhaps appearing? What should Sarah be aware of in the Other Realm? And then - 15 minute break while we begin our “First contact.”
Carl takes longer returning to the computer because he’s looking for a candle. Sarah has promised us that if we don’t have a spirit-raising Specially Anointed Spirit Candle, store-bought is fine.
It’s weird to sit in silence with the black splotch that is the medium, so I blurt the first thing that comes to my mind - “So, is this like, the first time you’ve done this?”
“Talk to spirits, or use Zoom to conduct a session?”
I raise one shoulder. “I guess the second.”
“I think there are many ways to open a channel, if one is listening hard enough. There’s no reason we can’t treat the internet as a sort of ... portal, in of itself.”
This does not answer my question. I ask her if she’s staying safe, she says she’s perfectly happy, just misses her family. I tell her I feel the same; locked in an apartment with a roommate from hell. She asks if “Jack” and I are dating, I snort so loudly that I hear the echo of it on her end. I tell her the truth - one Tuesday he kind of just showed up with his things and since then I’ve been forced to babysit him more than I’ve babysat any of my siblings.
Carl shows up with a Yankee Candle brand mostly-burnt Stormy Weather offering. We light it, she chants for a bit, we hold hands, Carl says “I really feel connected right now! I’m connecting.” I move out of the frame so Sarah can’t see that I’m not closing my eyes or swaying. I get kind of hungry but feel bad just getting up to get like, trailmix or something, so I stay put and suffer through the longest 15 minutes of my life.
Then, like that, she says - Time’s up. It’s normal not to make contact unless we do this frequently, and that she recommends a second appointment. Carl says he’d love to, same place same time in 3 days, happy to help. She says some frequent-flyer discount if you buy multiple, he says absolutely he’d be into that, cannot wait for it.
He closes his laptop, looks up at me, grinning, and says: “This plan is actually working perfectly. She totally believes me.”
I still don’t actually like the plan. It feels skeevey, but it’s also not the worst idea he’s ever had, and this might be like, how he processes things. It’s a global pandemic, after all, and if this is how I keep him quiet...
He walks over to our secondary “camera” (my phone on a tripod), clicks it off. “I can’t wait,” he says. “This is literally gold. It’s worth every penny. This is going to make us so much money.”
“I would like it to make rent,” I say. But then I peer over his shoulder to watch him scrub through the video - an hour of what he’s calling “Fraudulent”. I think he was inspired by, like, “Serial” or “S-Town” or something.
The goal - feed this poor lady everything fake he can, and then, at the end of his budgeted allowance, expose the hell out of her.
He had looked up at me when the idea had hit him and said - what other use is having a dead twin sister?
----
What I didn’t expect is to be weirdly invested. I figured - okay, fine distraction, and besides, it kind of wigs me out knowing there are people out there who are capitalizing on other people’s grief. I think about that place in California a lot, you know, the Winchester House - I went through it once during a combined-family cross-country road trip.
Casey had tipped her head back and looked up at one of the forever-long stairs that go nowhere. I was separating my siblings from trying to bite each other. “It’s so creepy in here,” Carl had said. There was that one passage that could only be entered by one direction and exited by another, and I think it triggered his claustrophobia.
“I think it’s sad,” Casey had said. She looked over at me with those blue-green eyes. “She was just trying to get in contact with the people she loved, and she got taken totally advantage of.”
But Sarah was like... Not an evil person in a suit. I mean, probably. Her barely-there 480 webcam was like something from a poorly lit MySpace page. Carl still required our outfits “for posterity” (he thought it would be good TV), and Sarah remained... just a person. She’d ask us questions, talk to us about memories. Sometimes she would say things like “I think your sister is telling me she loved doing that with you”.
Carl kept feeding false information - his sister’s name had been Ashley, she was 5 years younger than him, they were estranged, she was a vegan, she kept pet crabs, she hated dogs. And Sarah kept gently responding - Ashley is a beautiful name, 5 years is a long time, it’s sad they were estranged, veganism is so difficult to maintain, crabs have nice claws, sorry about the dogs.
But it was difficult to hate her. She was funny, somehow, and kind. For all that Carl was trying to be fake, to make up a sister that didn’t exist, sometimes his voice would crack, just a little, while he said something - “I miss her” - and I’d look over at him, worried, while Sarah would have ... just the most perfect thing to say.
And it wasn’t just her responses to Carl, either. During the 15 minute breaks, she’d just chat with me while Carl took his sweet time doing whatever else (usually trying out new graphics to overlay). She sometimes mentioned “Ashley” - but mostly she seemed to know I was only here to watch. We talked about our new quiet lives. She said she wasn’t used to being alone, but that it was kind of better this way. She said she missed having people around, that the Zoom call really wasn’t the same. And she listened to me, in this way that made me feel like... you know. Listened to.
At the end of our fifth conversation, Carl blows out the candle and looks over to me. “How do you think that went?”
I don’t know. “She’s nice,” I say instead. “I feel kind of bad.”
“Of course she’s nice.” Carl frowns. “This is her literal job, remember. She deals with people all the time. She knows what to say because she says the same shit to every poor guy looking to revisit his dead... whatever.”
I don’t know how to answer that, either. “It is weirdly nice to like, have something to do, though,” I admit. “Is it weird I like, look forwards to talking to her?”
“You said it’s weird twice, so yeah.”
So yeah, I guess.
“Besides.” He sniffs as he plugs my phone into his laptop. “What you actually look forwards to is our Netflix deal.”
-----
I guess like, I’m probably in mourning too, even though that feels scandalous and kind of cruel. Carl lost his actual sister. She was my best friend, but he lost his sister. It’s like... different. Even at the funeral, I didn’t really cry too much. I mostly just held up Carl and kept quiet. There were other people more important than me, and I don’t really get to be sad about it in the same way.
There was this one Sunday that she and I were on the porch. We’d just finished watching “The Craft” and, even though we were too old to play pretend, were both talking about starting our own coven.
It was so delicious, to be 17 and standing under a full moon, holding her hand, wind in our hair, promising - I feel magic when I am with you.
--------
He’s editing sessions 6 and 7. The way he’s set it up is that each time he lies, a cool little graphic plays. He likes to do double-takes of her responses with dramatic music.
“I don’t know that it’s working,” I tell him. A lot of her responses are too middle-of-the-road. Not a confirmation or a denial. The one he’s working on plays out over his rig - he asks, Does Ashley still love spiders? She was so strange, you know, loving them, but I loved her for that.
And Sarah’s response just seemed... to be a response. It would be a little strange to love spiders. I could see why you’d be impressed with someone who did.
“That’s my point,” he says. “This is why she’s a fraud. She can’t even tell me that Casey hated spiders.”
For a second, though, on his face, is an emotion I don’t know the meaning of.
“And she didn’t like deep water either,” I say instead. He holds up a finger.
“Hang on. That’s a good one for next time. I’m adding that to the opposite list.”
On his legal pad - all of the things Casey was not, and Ashley supposedly is.
--------
She and I didn’t always get along, obviously. We’d fight about stupid shit only to cry into each other’s arms and apologize and feed each other baked goods. I always felt weirdly lonely without her. Like, I talked to her every day.
What’s weird is that I had the hardest time buying her gifts because I knew her so well that everything felt sort of stupid and obvious.
So when I wrote her the book, it was different. Words aren’t, like, my thing. I try really hard but it always feels... stupid. It was supposed to just be a graduation present - we were both done with high school! Hooray! She was the writer usually, so I thought - why not write about her for a change. I gave it to her at her graduation party.
It was just a dumb thing. A fairy tale about a princess who grows up and goes to college but gets to still visit her best friend and they become ruling queens together and enact social justice and trans rights, etc. She took it into her hands and read it and shook really hard and cried. And like said, “This doesn’t mean to me what you think it does.”
I didn’t know what that meant so I got hurt. I said - sorry I tried I guess. I was just confused. I remember storming into my mother’s car and saying let’s go but my mom, like, wouldn’t. So I stayed there and felt weirdly betrayed and checked my phone a lot, expecting an apology for I-don’t-know-what.
But then I started thinking about how warm Casey made me feel and how I think about her all the time and how she makes me laugh harder than anyone else and how we spent hours just talking, sprawled in the other person’s lap, how we held hands through horror movies, how it felt to sing at the top of our lungs, entirely off-key. I thought about each beach day and every mountain hike and I particularly thought about that empty without-her feeling and how I was going to have to feel that in college. I ended up writing this long text about how I didn’t mean to make her feel weird (if I did) and I’m sorry for spoiling her party.
She just wrote back - Already asked your mom, you’re staying over tonight, come upstairs.
When I got to her room, she pulled me in, shut the door, looked like she was going to kill me. All bright red.
I didn’t know what to say. I felt stupid again. “I’m sorry if I overstepped or something, I just -”
And then she grabbed me and kissed me, and I understood how stars feel.
----------
On the morning of the 9th session, Carl has a good idea. “I’m going to start telling her the truth.”
I look up from where I’m trying to read “Bodily Harm” by Margret Atwood (it’s making me mad, but Casey had liked it). “Oh?”
“I want to see what she does with like, the real stuff. I feel like we’re not getting any good TV anymore. The candle flickering and the thumping on her end and stuff wasn’t good enough. I need like, real.”
I close the book. “I thought the idea was to show that it’s fake.”
He sniffs. “A little uncertainty makes for a wider audience. Think of BuzzFeed Unsolved.”
Okay. We prepare a list of what has been said. He wants to both add new information and backtrack on some of the early proclamations. That way, we can hopefully “catch” her in a lie. He also has developed a cool musical sting for when this happens, so I feel like he’s desperate at this point.
Lights up, camera on. We start in the usual way - “Jack” talks about his life for a little bit, Sarah listens. Then we move into her gentle questions. Today she’s asking about Jack’s life post-college. This is the tricky bit for both of us, because even though he won’t admit it, Carl hates that Casey isn’t around to see the man he’s becoming. I get it.
Then he starts looping in the real stuff. Ashley actually loved dogs, the bigger the better; Ashley hates spiders; Ashley tried to be vegan once but it didn’t stick - and Sarah starts... saying stuff.
“I am getting a message... she says ... hmm... something about a malamute? A big white dog.” “She’s sending me... an image... did you stick a spider down her shirt a few times?” “Ah, yes... I sense... she tried in high school but couldn’t keep to it... so she became vegetarian instead...”
Carl doesn’t react, but I do, off-screen. Their family dog had been a malamute mutt. Carl had absolutely tortured Casey with spiders any chance he got. High school had been where the vegetarianism had started.
Carl just sits up a little straighter. Tries to trap her. “Ashley loved deep water.”
Sarah gives him one of her half-answers. “Swimmers can safe in deep water.”
A real thing - “Ashley couldn’t swim, though.”
“For some reason...” Sarah takes a breath. “I get the feeling she still tried to get on boats, though. Something about treasure hunting.”
Carl looks up at me, grinning. After the session is over, he says, “I’m so glad we caught her.”
I can’t stop shaking.
---------
I didn’t know what to say or do or think or feel. It was like someone had opened a river and deposited the earth’s supply of gold into me. Kissing her was addicting. I felt like if I wasn’t kissing her, I wasn’t breathing.
We didn’t want to tell anybody. Casey was worried how Carl would feel, and my dad was pretty homophobic, like, casually. Plus, I had no idea how to ask her out. Like, we were already best friends that now kissed feverishly - isn’t that already dating? We’d have to “break up” for college anyway, so we just... kept secretly seeing each other. She made me laugh so much I kept clicking her teeth while trying to kiss her.
But it felt weird to not take her somewhere nice, and since I am bad with words, I figured I’d show her. I didn’t know about the water thing at the time - we had never gone on a boat together.
When I tried to take her on the ferry out to the islands for a “treasure hunt”, she still got on board. She wore a sundress and a hat and shook so bad the whole time that I felt horrible. I kept apologizing. She held my hand and said - no, don’t, I am doing this because I want to.
I had made a picnic. We sat on the little island with no shade and piercing sun and I was positive I’d set up the worst almost-a-date anyone had ever set up.
Then she bent down and picked up something shiny. Buried in the sand, a plain silver necklace.
“Treasure.” She said. She washed it in the ocean and then I put it around her neck. Then she turned around, kissed me, and I knew I loved her so much that I wanted to explode for it.
Her, and that sundress, and the necklace around her neck while she said - “I feel as free as pirate.”
And I blurted it - “Will you be my girlfriend?”
--------------
On the morning of our 10th session, I’m kind of afraid.
“You already got dressed?” He yawns through talking to me. “That’s dedication. I think we’re going to do more truth today.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird?” I blurt.
“What? The dress? Yeah, I guess you don’t need to keep wearing it.”
“What - oh. Okay. But no, I meant - she said stuff that was ...” I fish for the word right but I don’t want to say it.
“A broken clock is right twice a day, kid,” Carl assures me. “I mean, I named myself Jack the Ripper and she still hasn’t caught on to that.”
“Maybe she just thinks it’s obvious enough you’re lying about that?”
He shakes his head. “You’re giving her too much credit. Remember what I said - she makes a living doing this to people. If she didn’t have some skill in cold reads, she’d be out of a job.” He starts making a sandwich. “Besides, who is to say she didn’t just ... like, Google me? I mean, it would be that easy.”
“She’d have to know your name, though.”
He shrugs, applies too much mustard. “Maybe the payment ended up revealing my true identity. It wouldn’t be hard to find me. Reverse Google Image search? IP tracking? Like, it’s the future.” He is disgusting and puts carrots and cucumbers on a mustard sandwich. “That’s why it had to be Casey, you know? So that a Facebook check would say that yeah, I’d lost someone.”
“Gross,” I say about the sandwich. I can’t stop thinking about the boat thing, but I don’t want to tell him about that moment. It’s one of my things with her. Doesn’t belong to anyone else. I guess he’s right, though. Lucky guesses get made.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You’re the scientist,” he tells me through his food. “Come on.”
--------------
We kept it secret still. It wasn’t weird that we visited each other so often - it was normal. That’s what best friends do. I worked a shitty fast-food job to afford the tickets. It was worth it. We kept the tradition of little treasure hunts - leaving the other person felt less cruel when we gave them little gifts to look for.
In junior year, living off my research grant, I found a ratty little off-campus apartment. She came more often. We were lying on my bed (on the floor, no money for a box spring), and she said - “I read this thing about how the internet is a graveyard.”
I was studying for fluid dynamics, wearing her undergrad shirt, only giving her half my attention. I didn’t know, then, you know, that our time was limited. “Like, people die on it?”
She sat up. “Whenever we write about books, we use the present tense, because even if the book is happening in the past tense, if you open the book, it’s still happening. A book is a collection of time, all at once. Turn a page, go to a new present.”
I looked up. “Hang on. What?”
“That’s the internet - a bunch of present-tenses that are always, always existing. Somewhere, you at 14 on MySpace exists. And you at 17 on Tumblr exists. And I exist on my mother’s VHS tapes, but I exist, you know, on Twitter.”
“Oh man,” I said. “That’s terrifying. I don’t want that to exist after me.”
“If I die,” she said, laughing, “Please delete my AO3 for me. I can’t have that as my legacy.”
----------------
Carl likes the drama of the slow-burn, so during our 15 minutes break this time, he goes to find something of “Ashley’s”. I don’t turn off the camera like usual. I just keep it on.
Sarah stays.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You can, like, go if you need to.”
“I’m okay.”
I want to ask her a million things. I feel embarrassed about all of them. None of them are good. All of them are not the scientific reasoning Carl expects out of me. I don’t even have the words for any of them, so what I say surprises even me. “If you can really talk to her... is Ashley, like. Okay? Is she happy?” My voice cracks on the last syllable. I clear my throat discreetly.
Sarah is quiet. For a second I think the connection has quit, but then she says, “She says she misses everyone, but that she’s happy to see each person she loves getting older and moving on. You’ll meet again, you know. It will be lovely.”
I look at my hands. “I don’t like the idea she’s lonely.”
“She’s not,” Sarah says. “Trust me. She’s happy.”
“I miss her,” I say. I don’t know why I’m still talking. “She... uh. Meant a lot to me.”
“She says... When you get there, she’ll take you treasure hunting.”
Carl comes back. I tell him I feel sick. I have to leave.
I spend the rest of the day in my room, trying to quiet my crying.
------------------
The biggest argument was about the coming out. She’d admitted she was gay to her parents in our college senior year, but the relationship was secret for my benefit, even on the other side of college. I was in a grad program, she was starting her first year teaching.
“I just want to kiss you in your house! I want to take you to Thanksgiving as more than a friend!” She had looked near-tears. “Don’t you get it?”
I wanted it too, but I begged her - can we just wait a little bit? Can I just have a little bit of time? There were so many excuses, each overlapping. I thought at the time - it would be okay. We were still young kids. Her father had gotten sick. My family was complicated. My siblings all had tiny emergencies I kept having to handle for them.
We lived together, mostly. I had a fake “boyfriend.” We had this carefully-constructed not-a-life. And I thought - I could wait for it. I loved her and I wanted to be in the sun with her, but it just had to wait for a bit. That’s all.
I knew on my 22nd birthday. She made me a to-scale model of the planets to put in my room. We laughed and ate cake and followed her treasure hunt and she looked into my eyes and I just ... knew. So I started saving.
And at 25, after a lot of research, I went out and got a ring.
-------------------------
I skip the 11th and 12th sessions, which Carl says doesn’t go well. Her connection had been sort of staticky and the audio wasn’t good enough for the phone to pick up. He doesn’t buy my “doing work” excuse for the 13th, though, because I’m a bad liar anyway. I don’t wear the dress this time.
Carl now has a whole tactic - two truths and a lie. It’s weird to hear him talk about Casey, only to abruptly be talking about “Ashley” instead. I watch him. I honestly can’t tell how much of this is acting. It feels more like he’s just talking about his twin, and missing her, and having someone genuinely kind answer him. He seems.... almost peaceful, in a way he hasn’t been in a long time. I don’t think it’s good TV, if that’s what he’s hunting.
I keep the camera on again for the break. I don’t want to say anything this time. The zoom client spins and threatens to crash. Horrible little thing. I stare at my chewed fingernails.
“Are you okay?”
I don’t want to answer. “Yeah, I’m feeling better. Sorry about leaving last time.”
“It wasn’t the same without you. I like this change of outfit.”
“Feels better, to not be wearing it,” I admit. Then it feels rude not to ask her anything, so I blurt again. “Does this stuff... ever help people? Like at all?”
She’s quiet for a bit. I see her shifting, think I catch some of her features. She has hair, I think. “I don’t know,” she answers, “Does it?”
Carl comes back. “Thanks for waiting. I wanted to show you this a while ago, but then this asshole got sick, so I held onto it. Maybe it’ll connect with her?”
In his hands, her oversized undergrad shirt. Ratty and overused. Still somewhat smells like her.
I stare at him. “Where the fuck did you get that?”
He looks up at me. “Your room, obviously.”
Specifically, from inside my pillowcase. “Dude.” I feel the anger in me starting to coil like a snake, “This is such. A fucking violation of privacy.” Inside my brain, seventeen alarms are going off, but all I feel is rage. I rip it out of his hands and hold it against me. “Why the fuck were you in my room - how did you?” A horrible thought occurs to me. “How’d you know it was there?”
He glances at the video camera, then at my phone. “Dude, calm down.”
“This is my fucking apartment! Why were you going through my bed?” I want to actively kill him. Memories of her, curled up inside of her shirt, curled up next to me, wrestling me into bed - each start hitting the back of my throat, spilling into each other to strangle me. “HOW?!”
He holds up his hands. “Ever since you were a kid you hide important shit in your pillow case, jesus, calm down! This isn’t even yours.”
“This is mine!” I feel near tears. I feel like I am going to explode. “She was mine!”
“I mean, she was my sister -”
“I was going to ask her to marry me!”
He puts his hands down. He stares at me. I slap my hand over my mouth. Start crying. Feel the sobs like they are being exorcised out of me. “You stupid fucking asshole,” I say. I don’t even feel that way. I can’t stop crying.
“You stupid fucking asshole.” I sit down. The crying just stops, the way it does these days, and I am empty.
Carl gets up. Turns off my phone camera. Walks out of the room. So I fucked that up, I guess. I stare ahead. I want to close the laptop but it feels rude after all that.
“Sorry,” I say instead. “Sorry you had to see that.”
“You really loved her, huh?” Sarah’s voice, still that gentle calm.
It all comes pouring out of me. “The worst part was that I’d finally told everybody. I kept it a surprise from Casey. I wanted it to be perfect. After that last argument, I’d finally told my father. He hadn’t wanted to talk to me. I waited, you know. I was good at waiting. My siblings helped me. They warmed up everyone in my family until everyone was okay, and everyone was ready. We lost the respect of a couple of aunts and uncles, but who cares anyway. I wanted the right people at the engagement party, and we knew my father would come around if he had enough persuading. It would have been a full house. It would have felt like... I don’t know.”
It would have felt like being 17 under a full moon. It would have felt like finding treasure. I had planned a day-long adventure. It ended at the front door. So she could kiss me in my house, in front of my family. So we could have Thanksgiving dinner.
Sarah moves ever-so-slightly. At this angle, she might even have a nose. “That must have taken a lot of courage. I am sure she would have loved the gesture. She strikes me as someone who understood how hard it must have been for you, how brave. Even Carl knows it.”
“She got on boats for me,” I say. “I have no idea what took me so long to return the favor.”
“You always did,” Sarah says. “She says you were returning the favor in every moment.”
“I should have just... asked.”
Carl comes back in. I don’t like that it’s clear he’s been crying. He hands me a package.
“What’s this?” I sniffle. It has Casey’s handwriting.
“Just open it.”
I shake while I do. Inside is a beautifully bound book, and a little velvet box. I feel my breath catch in my throat. I shake it into my palm.
I know what it is, but when I open the box, the ring is so perfect that I don’t comprehend it.
“She made me shop for months,” Carl says. “Literally over a few years for this. I have diamond types emblazoned on the back of my eyelids.”
“You knew?”
“I figured you knew that I knew. She told me a month before she.... uh. You know. I thought you just didn’t want to talk about it yet.”
“You were... okay with it?”
“Are you kidding? I was already planning her bachelorette. I couldn’t wait, kid.”
I look at him. He holds out a single silver necklace. I recognize it immediately. I loop her ring onto it. I want to kill him and hug him and ask what the fuck he was thinking. A knot releases in my chest even as new ones bubble to the surface.
“For what it’s worth, I would have said yes.”
I look up. Casey waves a little from the screen, her features blurry, but of course it’s her. I feel my heart slam against my ribs.
“I knew it was you from the second session. I spent the rest basically proving it to myself.” He looks up at me. “She and I spent the last two sessions just... talking. She’s good where she is. Really. You needed this, too. It was her idea to show you.”
I can’t believe any of this is happening. I feel like crying and weirdly like laughing and my head is spinning. “Why... How...? I...”
“I needed to know.... I needed to see. I am fine, and I am loved where I am, and I am happy. But I need you both to be okay, really.”
“I’m okay,” Carl says. “We miss you and love you but we are okay.”
I look at her. The girl that is my ocean and my treasure both. “I miss you and I love you,” I say, and then I just know, like I knew I loved her, like I knew I’d always love her. I just know. I take a deep breath.
“I am okay. I am going to be okay.” And it’s true.
The zoom app crashes. And it is just us and a candle burning in a dark apartment.
xxx
The link never works again, obviously. I knew, somehow, it wouldn’t.
I read the book she wrote me. It’s a really wonderful fairy tale. It’s about two treasure-hunting princesses who fall in love. Whenever you open it, it’s still happening. They’re still in the present tense. And they are both ruling the kingdom they created, side by side. Both alive and in love.
Her hands were cold on her waist. The cold seeped into her skin but she didn’t want their fingertips to move. If she could have stayed there all day she would have. She knew there were responsibilities, knew that the world was continuing outside of them but she didn’t care. The sounds around them were muffled, the crying baby in it’s pram next to them sounded like it was in another room. She knew that her friend’s hand wouldn’t stay there for long, but she could have lived in that moment that their skin connected. It was like an iv drip, feeding her with everything she needed. Like a jolt of electricity, a drug that calmed every nerve she had. Sure, where she was heading was terrifying but she also knew that her friend would always be beside her, no matter what awaited her.
Her friend.
Friend
Sometimes she loved that word, rolled it over her tongue like a sweet. She’d never believed that she’d have a friend so close, so loyal. It was sometimes like having a sister, with mirrored actions and identical laughs. Someone she looked up to, depended on, felt responsible for, loved.
And that’s when the word felt like a stone, weighing her down. She carried it everywhere with her, the knowledge of their friendship. It was a burden on her back, a sore on her foot, a shadow that she could always see out of the corner of her eye. Sometimes she would see it in the curls of her hair or caught between her friend’s fingers. Their friendship. Such a fragile thing. A thing she could break with three simple words, by admitting the thing that kept her awake at night.
I
Love
You
It tormented her as much as it pleasured her. Love was tantalising, almost cruel in the way it had snatched hold of her heart and dropped it at the foot of the wrong person. The person she felt closest to, the one who flirted and laughed because life was a joke and wasn’t it funny? Wasn’t it funny how you could imagine yourself kissing her? Wasn’t it funny that every time she said the word ‘love’ you felt sick to the stomach? Wasn’t it funny when she made you believe that maybe, just maybe it could be real?
And they told her time would heal it. Don’t talk to her as much and it’ll feel better. Let her start the conversation but act natural. Don’t distance yourself, as you don’t want to lose your friendship, but don’t allow yourself to be drawn in anymore. But maybe, you could just tell her. She’d be fine about it, you know she would, so it might be better to get it out in the open and move on.
Move on. Move on with who? Who could replace the girl who made her laugh until she couldn’t breathe anymore? Replace the person that made her feel so appreciated, so wanted, so loved? Move on to someone who wouldn’t understand her anxieties, her love of superheroes and soppy Disney films? When there were all their inside jokes, their nicknames, their love. Their love. That word that meant different things to each of them. ‘I love yous’ that made her heart flutter and skin tingle, while her friend stood there unaware. Love which physically hurt sometimes, made her want to tear at her own skin to get it out. The love that affected her friend very little.
When she finally got on the bus and her phone lit up with a message from ‘The Love of My Life’ (oh yes, how ironic, how cruelly, deceptively ironic. Sometimes fate just knew how to pull at the most damaged of heartstrings) she knew that there was nothing she could do now but wait. Maybe time and distance would be enough. Maybe if she couldn’t see the way the sun turned her curled hair from brown to blonde, she wouldn’t be in love. If she couldn’t hear her laugh, couldn’t reach out and touch her at any moment, she wouldn’t be in love. It’s harder to be in love with someone you can’t see, right?
No one told her that she’d see parts of them in everyone around them. She’d talk to new people because they had her hair or there was something about the way they stood that just screamed her friend’s name. She’d want to talk about them all the time. ‘My friend from home also likes that band’ ‘Did I tell you my friend and I used to have psychology class together?’ ‘My friend is so funny’ ‘Yesterday, my friend…’ And she heard it, heard the desperation every time she mentioned their name. She hoped someone would mention it, would tell her how to stop being so infatuated.
Miracle cure for love-sickness. Just stop thinking about them all the time and you won’t be in love.
Try our remedy for not being able to get them off your mind. It only costs all your self-love and many hours of sleep.
You wanted to cry again? Perfect! Rumour has it that it’s the perfect cure for bisexuality.
And sure, it’ll go. It’ll go. It’ll go. I won’t be in love with her in a few weeks, months, years. But I’m here. I’m now. And I love her.
“What are you reading, Y/N?” Loki leaned over the back of your chair, plucking the open book out of your hands.
“Hey!” You called trying to grab it back. Loki smiled, closing the book to read the name of the book off the front cover. “Don’t lose my page!” You shouted at him, moving around in the chair to watch him read it.
“What kind of novel is this? A romance?” He asked, turning the book over to read the blurb. “I didn’t think you were a romance kind of person, Y/N.”
“What kind of person did you think I was?” You asked, narrowing your eyebrows at him and frowning.
“Sci-fi.” He answered instantly.
You stifled a laugh before replying, “I basically live in a sci-fi novel, Loki. I don’t need to read them.”
He handed the book back a second later but he continued to watch you from the behind the chair. It was too awkward to continue reading, with his cold stare penetrating through you.
“Did you want something?” You asked, placing your bookmark in the book and putting the book down on the coffee table.
“I was wondering why you sit here alone reading why the other Avengers are all training together.” Loki asked, moving around and sitting in the chair nearest you.
“I trained this morning, I just want to relax now.” You rubbed a hand over your forehead and leaned back in the chair. Loki tilted his head to the side and watched you intently.
“I never get to see you train, Y/N. Someone else who fights with daggers is always intriguing to me.” He leaned forward, blue eyes glinting sharply as his face broke into a wide grin.
“I like to train alone.” You shrugged, before standing up and stretching. You walked towards the doorway, calling behind you “Do you want anything to drink, Loki?”
He stood up behind you and followed you into the kitchen. You suddenly felt on edge. Being with Loki was usually fun. After all, he was the god of mischief. Your conversations usually ended in some sort of planned prank or both of you in stitches, laughing on the floor. Since arriving at Avengers Tower, Loki had been the member to make you feel the most relaxed. It was hard to fit in there, with every one of the Avengers knowing each other so well. They all trained together, ate together and talked about their old missions and shared memories. Those were things you couldn’t join in with.
Now, Loki and your conversation had taken a more serious tone and it was making you uncomfortable. You’d known before long that one of the Avengers would notice that you always avoided training with them. You’d tried not to make it obvious, training before they were awake in the morning or very late at night. It became a habit, destroying any form of sleep schedule you’d ever had. You preferred to workout than having to face the nightmares though.
“It’s good to train as a team sometimes, Y/N.” Loki commented, as he walked into the kitchen after you. You reached into the cupboard and pulled out a glass, before filling it with water. ”That way we can see what everyone’s strengths and weaknesses are and plan in what position everyone would be best in, if there was a real attack.”
You sighed and rolled your eyes. You knew if the Avengers saw you training, they’d find a lot more weaknesses than strengths.
“I know, they’re a hard bunch to get along with sometimes.” Loki laughed. “But it can be good to be able to punch them in their smug faces. And they can’t even complain.”
You laughed at him, but you knew that your laughter sounded forced.
“Why don’t you train with us?” He asked, moving closer to you. He was close enough that you could see every tiny feature of his face, every dark eyelash that fluttered over his crystal blue eyes, the stray lock of black hair that fell in his face and the laughter lines around his eyes and mouth.
You shrugged again, trying to step away from him but he stepped forward too.
“Come on, Y/N, you can trick everyone else by just evading the question but I’m not as easy as that.” He reached out a hand and twisted a lock of your hair around his finger. A shiver ran down your spine and you felt your mouth go dry.
“Look, Loki…”
“I don’t want any excuses, I just want to know why. You’re not worried about one of those guys are you? Because if they’re causing you any trouble, I’ll…”
“No, Loki, no. Everyone’s nice…”
“Nice?” He raised an eyebrow. “But?”
“But… I just don’t want to make a fool of myself in front of them.” The words stumbled out of your mouth before you could stop them.
“Why do you think you’d do that, Y/N?” Loki dropped the strand of your hair and leant back against the kitchen counter.
“They’re all just so good at what they do. They’ve trained for years for this or they were just born naturally talented. Steve can do more push ups than any human around, Tony can endure anything in that suit, Clint never misses a shot, Wanda and Natasha are such strong women that it makes me jealous. I’m not as athletic as Parker or have a fancy suit like Sam or Rhodey and Thor’s the fucking god of thunder.There’s no way I can rival that! As for you, you’re just so good at everything. You’re better than me with daggers and then you have all of your other talents as well. I’m just a child playing an Avenger compared to all of you. And I’m just waiting for you all to wake up and realise that because you won’t want me on the team anymore!” You were shouting, hysteria washing over you.
To finally admit it, to give in to all of your feelings of self doubt and guilt at tricking the Avengers into trusting you, was harrowing. You didn’t want Loki to realise how weak you really were, you didn’t want the Avengers to find someone better than you, because then you’d lose the only family you’d ever known. Despite your differences with them, you loved them all. Tony and Banner taught you about science like stern teachers but cared for you like fathers. Steve and Bucky were too serious for you sometimes, but you loved to teach them about all of the pop-culture they’d missed. Clint was always giving you drawings that his children had drawn for you. Natasha sat and watched movies with you late into the evenings, both of you crying over stupid rom-coms. Wanda was always there if you had any worries and her and Vision often helped you cook a big evening meal for the others, all three of you dancing and singing along to the radio while you cooked. Peter was hilarious when he visited and you loved being able to geek out with him. Sam was great fun to prank with Loki and he always took it well, although you’d heard him cursing about you both to Tony before, calling Loki a ‘bad influence’ on you. Thor was clueless, sure, but there was no other person like him to protect you and he was like the older brother you’d never had. As for Loki, there was no use denying the huge crush you’d developed on him. He was the Avenger who knew most what it felt to be an outsider and that shared feeling caused you to love him more than anyone else you’d ever known. To lose them all, would break your heart.
“Oh, Y/N.” Loki sighed, “You really think we’re all so narrow minded that we’d judge you for not being as good as us? You don’t think we’re like that do you?”
You shrugged. “I try to tell myself you’re not, but when you realise I’m just going to be a hindrance, you’ll change your mind.”
Loki reached out a hand and placed it on your shoulder. “Listen, Y/N, I saw you fighting that day you joined us and never, never, have I seen anyone fight with such spirit. I’m not going to flatter you and tell you that you’re the best fighter I’ve ever seen or the strongest Avenger because that’s obviously me,” He grinned “but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that you’re the most passionate. There’s a fire within you,” He ran his hand slowly down your arm, causing goosebumps to spread over your whole body. “That drives you. Without that you wouldn’t be here. Without that passion, you would have been killed during that fight. But that’s what drives you and it makes you as strong as any one of us. I just wish you would believe that too.”
He smelled like peppermint and his skin was colder than you had ever expected it to be. Standing there in silence together, you couldn’t help but let your eyes wander over his smooth, lithe, muscular chest and arms. Anything to avoid looking him in the eyes, for him to see how close to tears you were. It sounded cliche but nobody had ever said anything like that to you. And the honesty about it all was enough to make your heart beat faster and the colour to rise to your cheeks. He was right, being the best wasn’t what was important as an Avenger. Instead, it was everyone having their niche and their own talents. You had passion that drove you, even if you weren’t always physically the strongest.
Loki placed a hand on your chin, angling your face up gently so that you were looking directly at him. “Now, Y/N, how about tomorrow morning we go train together? I’d like to see what you can do with a set of daggers and maybe then we could go for breakfast somewhere?”
Loki’s face was so close to yours that you could barely nod without hitting your nose against his.
“And maybe we could do more of this?” You asked, before moving your head even closer so that your lips were pressed against one anothers. Neither one of you pulled away. Loki moved closer, an arm lacing around the small of your back and the other moving up so it was resting lightly against your cheek. He was soft to kiss, gentle but fast, as though he was only just holding himself back.
“Definitely.” He breathed against your mouth. “If you can beat me.”
Please send my some Marvel requests. I’m really in the mood to write about Marvel characters so request anything please and I’ll try to write them this weekend 🥰
you have staying power in people’s lives. I’ll say it again: you have staying power in people’s lives.
you exist. you have a presence in your best friend’s life. you have impacted their life. you exist to them regardless of whether or not you’re in contact with them at this very second. in the course of their day, they will see things that can (and have) reminded them of you. they think about you. they miss you when you’re not there.
you’re not a nebulous creature that has no sway in another person’s life. no, my treasure, you are a person who is full of personality, light, love and interests shared in common with the people you most care about.
I know what you feel, but I promise you.
You matter, objectively, to the people who love you. They’re not going to forget about you. You are not disposable.
Top 11 Tips for Staying Inspired on Long-Term Projects
for the writer whose inspiration keeps running away.
Recognize that inspiration is, essentially, a faceless trickster deity and, to control it, you must be very, very clever.
Feed it carefully. If you want it to focus on your dark fantasy rather than your optimistic science fiction … feed it darkness, feed it magic, feed it the grimmest of aesthetics.
Remember that you only have so much creative energy. Use it wisely.
Set up a reward system. If you finish this draft, you can print it. It can be on your shelf. Your book. On your shelf. It exists!!
Remind yourself why you started it in the first place. Make a concise list of all the things you love about it (and conveniently forget those that you don’t) and pin up on your bathroom mirror. Add to this list.
Share it with a close friend. Make them love it. Make them want to read it to the end. Make them promise to swear at you if you don’t finish it.
Set reasonable goals and deadlines.
Let yourself take breaks. During your breaks, consider feeding your inspiration monster art and music and movies and peanut butter cookies.
Write down any and every idea. From the most bizarre to the most wonderful. Don’t discount anything.
Stay alive. You can’t keep inspiration if you don’t stay alive. Eat often (at least once a day), hydrate even oftener.
Find a writing community to scream at and just scream. AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
What is a Creative Handbook?
A creative handbook is basically your own personal encyclopedia of writing stuff. You fill it with anything and everything that helps you in your writing: names, tips, writing prompts, world building and character development, story titles, research questions, and anything else you want to remember. It’s your go-to for when you need to name a character or are building a wonderful new world for those characters or need to think of a better way of phrasing something. Anything that you know will help you right now or something you think might help you in the future, add it.
Here is a handy list of things to include in your Creative Handbook:
Names – characters, towns, cities, bodies of water, businesses, planets, countries, story titles, chapter titles. As you can see, I have my character names organized into different categories and lists that I’ve found online.
They’re gullible or misinformed. Example: somebody who has been told the heroes are out to hurt them.
They are desperate for interaction, validation, kindness, or attention, and the dark side gives them those things.
They want to change their allegiance, but are pressured by people close to them to stay evil.
They have an otherwise noble goal that they will do literally anything to achieve. Example: somebody who wants to protect their child, even if it means throwing other children into danger.
This. This is good fiction writing advice. I really appreciate how it was formatted as “this is a common problem, here is a solution to try in your own work” and not “oh god, don’t do that!” without any extra help. And I extra appreciated the “don’t rely on adverbs” bit, because they do have their place but they aren’t the only way actions can be emphasized.
What to do when you have OC but can’t figure the plot.
Aka self-help guide how to kick start shit in motion.
First do some preparations. You will need:
That gorgeous baby you want to do a thing with;
pen & paper (alt. a computer/laptop/whatyouhavethere);
better if a reference sheet or some notes at least but if you don’t have those it’s ok;
some coffee/tea;
some will power or a wall to bang about your head, if you have none.
Done? Good! Let’s start! Our goal is to document the shit as it unfolds.
1. Write a list of things that your character DOESN’T WANT to happen. Make at least one of those thing happen. Now your character has to deal with what happened.
2. Write a list of things that your character WANTS to happen. Make at least one of them happen. But not in a way how character wants/anticipates/imagined it. What xe is going to do about it now?
3. Let’s combine uncomfortable with unpleasant! Make a list of things your character want or wants to happen, now make a list of things they are NOT comfortable with or bad at or inexperienced with or all at once. Done? Good, now in order to get something from a first list, your character must face something from a second list.
4. Don’t feel like a butt or have a bad day? Make a list of things your character is good at. Now take that list of things xe wants. Match them as you please. Observe what happens. Surprise! Not all things that happen to your character have to be bad in order to make interesting plot. And you will feel a bit better too.
5. Alternatively, you are feeling especially sadistic? Let me help you! So your character wants something? And xe needs to do something they are good at in order to get it? Great, now think of all the ways everything can go the wrongest way possible. Write down all the things! And see how your character going to deal with the chaos.
6. Think about this: is there something or someone your character relies on yet takes for granted? Make a list if there is more than one. Good, now take at least one of those away and see what happens.
7. Write down problems, struggles or just some stuff your character has to deal with daily or at least often. Think of several possible ways to solve them but which are going to cause more problems in the long run.
8. Write down a list of things your character loves and DOES NOT take for granted. Take away one or more. Let character deal with the loss.
9. Take two characters who in several ways are opposite to each other. Do they hate each other already? Good. Now character A wants a thing character B has. And they need to negotiate. Write down all the possible solutions. Apply one that is the most embarrassing for both parties.
10. I have to words for you: ARRANGED MARRIAGE. And no, your character can’t run away from it. And xir friends or/and family can’t help them either.
11. Alternatively, escaping arranged marriage is what you character must do.
12. Take your character and make them do things FOR SCIENCE! Then make them face the consequences.
13. Do things FOR SCIENCE to your character. What are the consequences?
14. Your character has died. But it’s the least of xir problems now. Describe why.
15. Your character makes unexpected discovery and has to deal with consequences. (If you are bad at coming up with ideas for discovery - let it be a puppy or a parrot or any other animals for your liking. Or anything at all, like robot or a mecha in their backyard).
16. Go to the internet and find the most outrageous story of stupid shit somebody did while drunk. Okay, now your character is the main “hero” of this epic horribleness. Write down things with corrections according to your character’s abilities, limitations, setting and etc.
17. Your character wants a thing. But here is a problem: another character is constantly preventing xe from having it. Write down all possible solutions to this situations. Now pick up the one which is going to cause the biggest mess.
18. Completely out of ideas? Have a person with a loaded gun burst throw your character’s door while xe are doing xir daily routine. How your character reacts?
