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Zoey’s everything hurts, and she can’t stop crying.
She’s been shut up in her bedroom for at least three hours. She told the other girls this morning that she was just tired and needed a nap, and then went in, collapsed on her bed, and promptly lost her shit.
Nothing is going right. Her lyrics have been lacking since she started getting sick, and that’s to say nothing of how loose and clumsy her rapping has gotten. The other girls are clearly concerned, but Zoey just keeps saying that she’s tired, because she doesn’t know what else to say.
The doctors don’t know what’s wrong.
Something autoimmune, they keep saying; something inflammatory; something neurological. Some of them tell her to go to the bathhouse more. Some tell her to stop going altogether. They all want her to see another specialist, a neurologist, an endocrinologist, an oncologist, a dietician. The only thing they all seem to agree on is that she should be taking it easy… which is hard to do when she has pop star and demon hunter work to do.
So she’s been pushing herself anyway, and… every day the pain gets worse.
What’s going to happen when she slips up? When she can no longer hide the weakness creeping up and down her body her like vines pushing their way through the foundation of the person she thought she was? When she makes a major mistake?
Someone taps softly at the door.
“...Zoey?”
It’s Rumi. Zoey sits up quickly (ow) and scrubs the tears off her face. Hopefully she’ll just look drowsy and flushed like she was napping hard.
“Come in,” she calls, and manages to hoist a bright smile onto her face when Rumi shuffles in with Mira at her shoulder. “What’s up? Slumber party?”
“Yeah,” says Mira. “We want to play truth or dare. I’ll go first. Tell us what the hell is going on with you.”
Uh oh. “That’s not how truth or dare works,” Zoey replies in a small voice.
The other girls sit on the bed with her, scootching in on either side so they’re pressed up against her. Rumi puts an arm around her shoulders.
“Hey,” says Rumi. “It’s just us. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together. But you gotta tell us.”
Zoey plays with a loose thread in her blanket. Doesn’t answer.
“Spit it out,” Mira insists, shaking her lightly by the shoulder, which makes Zoey cringe with pain. Mira’s expression turns from exasperation to alarm in a split second and she yanks her hand back. “Zoey, are you hurt?”
Rumi’s breath catches. She pulls her arm back from Zoey’s shoulders.
Zoey’s eyes well up with tears. They’re looking at her exactly how she feared they would, faces scrunched up in disapproval, affectionate touch withdrawn.
“You should have told us,” Mira starts in immediately. “You can’t keep this kind of thing secret, Zoey - ”
Rumi puts up a hand to stop her tirade. “Hang on. Zoey, are you injured? Did it happen in a fight?”
Zoey curls up with her knees to her chest as if she can protect herself from the disapproval. “No. Not exactly.”
They’re both looking at her, waiting for more, but the frog in her throat is making it hard to talk.
“I’m sick,” she finally manages to eke out past the rawness, the sting. “Nobody knows what’s wrong and it’s getting worse.”
The other two both breathe out quiet exclamations, Rumi’s soft and Mira’s sharp.
“Have you seen a doctor?” Rumi asks.
Zoey nods. “A lot of doctors.”
“And there’s nothing they can do?”
Hearing it aloud makes it worse. There’s nothing they can do? Zoey covers her mouth to try to muffle a sob.
“Oh - ” says Rumi, reaching for her. “Zoey, can I touch you? Does it hurt?”
“A little,” Zoey admits, voice wobbly and tearful - but she tucks herself under Rumi’s arm anyway. “Everything hurts.”
“You’ve been fighting.” Mira’s eyes widen. “You’ve been singing. Zoey! You should’ve been resting!”
“I didn’t want to - ” Zoey stops, but they’re both looking at her expectantly, and she finishes her thought in a tiny voice: “ - let you down.”
More exclamations. Rumi and Mira start talking over each other.
“ - we would never think - ”
“ - what if something happened to you - ”
“ - our best friend, Zoey, we weren’t gonna - ”
“ - would never have put you in this position - ”
A croaky little sob interrupts them both. Zoey buries her face in her knees and confesses, muffled and thin: “I didn’t want to get left behind, either.”
“Oh,” says Rumi, “oh, oh, Zoey - ”
Both of her arms go around Zoey, and then Mira’s tangle with them both so that they’re both holding each other and Zoey.
“We weren’t gonna leave you behind,” Mira assures her with typical shiftless confidence. “I’ll start making dance routines that you can do from a bed, I don’t even care. We’ll make it the new hot thing.”
“And more importantly,” Rumi says right against her ear, “you don’t have to be a singer or a dancer or a hunter to be one of us. You’re Zoey. That’s enough. It’s always been enough.”
“We love you, dummy,” adds Mira.
Another sob bursts out of Zoey. She clings to the arms wrapped around her.
“Don’t leave me,” she pleads, her voice wet and cracking.
“No way,” Mira says, at the same time that Rumi says, “Never.”
They stay cuddled up together for a while. Mira leaves briefly to bring back an armful of snacks. They end up watching When Life Gives You Tangerines on Rumi’s phone until Zoey dozes off, and when she wakes in the night, she finds Rumi and Mira still curled carefully around her in the bed.
Maybe, she thinks, maybe... it's okay that her faults and fears were seen this time.