Chapter Text
Marcy is the one who wakes up first. Brute evening’s sun forces it’s way through the drawn curtains and blinds their eyes, but none of the girls even seem to care that much about it. Only Marcy suffocates from the heat and stiffness, sweat tracing down her temples.
She pushes herself up just with one hand, her right arm broken and casted. Every cell of her body longs to tear that cast apart and free sweaty and itching hand, but she cannot. That thing has to stay on for a good few weeks at least. Until the cracks in her bones decide to knit themselves back together.
Marcy went to the window, throwing the curtains wide. A view on the Boonchuy’s backyard, good three-something feet down to the ground that was fond of kissing her face a couple of days before – at a failed attempt of escape. Sasha was supposed to catch her that night.
If there was even a little bit of wit in their heads, they would have known better. Midnight flee wasn’t their kind of thing, anyway. And the result - Marcy's cracked bones, Sasha's crooked nose, and a scared shitless Anne, who for the first time had to stand up to Sasha. They begged her to keep quiet, assuring her that they would take care of everything themselves, but, of course, they couldn't. How could they? And so she, thank God, ran to her parents' room, waking them.
With some hesitation, she still did it. Marcy could never.
So, wit is a commodity that was in short supply for them. Marcy, a seventeen-year-old, ready for the most prestigious college in the states. A hundreds of universities across the globe would kill to have her. Already with a serious amount of scientific honors behind her back, and lot of wins in a bunch of international chess tournaments. Marcy is still just a child. Right now her cast was defaced with poorly drawn pink marker flowers. She is terrified of people of all change. And she grits her teeth and wrenches the window open.
Behind her Anne had pulled Sasha hard in her hug, lips pressed against forehead. It’s hard to grasp how did they end up asleep in such position, but nonetheless Sasha shows no intention to extract herself from the embrace. When Anne mumbles something in her sleep and tries to turn over, Sasha holds her tight. In few hours she’ll be awake and in a full denial.
Cool air feels good. Marcy stuck her head out of the window. From down below Mr. Boonchuy looks at her with a bit of disapproval, which makes Marcy flinch back and retreat into the room again. Boonchuy’s were still… unimpressed of their little night misadventure.
Marcy navigates her way back to bed. Still desperate to scratch even a small amount of itching skin behind her cast, she groans and shifts until Sasha’s arms firmly settle over her stomach.
“It’s almost midnight.” Marcy doesn’t really expects a reply.
“Go sleep.” Sasha mumbles into the crook of Marcy’s neck, pulling her closer.
The only thing that Marcy can think about – is that of how their relationship is already rushing towards its end, long before it’s even properly begun.
The clock is ticking, loud and unforgiving.
Sasha’s been crashing at Anne’s for a week straight.
The Boonchuy’s became so used to her presence that they just stopped asking why. Sasha makes her own bed on the living room ouch, spends breakfasts with the whole family like she belongs there, and leaves for the day – though her days mostly consist of tagging Marcy and Anne along in a pointless scattering through the city’s streets. And no one could say no to her, because she’s the one to always come up with witty responds on the spot. Last summer of childhood, she’d say. Gotta get our fill before the end, she’d say. Before Marcy leaves us all alone.
Marcy obeys. If it were her choice, she’d be living at Anne’s too, till the last day of summer. But unlike Sasha’s parents, hers will never achieve that level of not giving a shit about their daughter. Marcy needs to study hard, even if she finished school, for God’s sake. Her mother is so sure that mastering the knowledge of the university curriculum would benefit her greatly and lead to guaranteed success. However, knowledge yet never guaranteed Marcy anything but envy and resentment for her classmates, who can't really understand on why Sasha, of all people, would tolerate her and keep close.
For them Marcy learned how to perform. Mastered the art of the needed smirk, tease and wicked smile. Persona that would hush all of the question on why she was one of the cool girls' clique. Marcy can also be childishly cruel, cunning, and she despises teachers like everyone else; as long as social contract demands it. She can be sarcastic. It just requires more energy from her. That's all.
But can she sustain the performance when Sasha and Anne wouldn’t be with her in the college? Whose spine would she hide behind, when the mere act of a simple conversation felt like a struggle?
“Marce, cut the sad girl aesthetics here.” Sasha’s voice cuts through the loud music, body sprawled across the fully reclined driver’s seat. Freaking Chapell Roan blasts from the speakers, and the choice of artist, of course is not random in any way. It was a code that was so easy to crack that Marcy never tends to – and the dominance of sapphic anthems in Sasha’s playlists circled back to being just absurd.
And Anne, it seems, remains oblivious to any of this. Or, most likely, performs it with Oscar-worthy dedication, yet basking in all of this unspoken affection.
They could joke all they wanted. All girls kiss each other, it’s nothing. All girls try to fuck each other (with their first attempts always ending up in Sasha’s tears and a frantic escape at night, followed with week straight silence). You’re basically required to have a lesbian phase in college, so why not get a little prepared for it?
But it was never a joke. Just no one really wanted to say it out loud.
“Wow, Sasha, ten stars pep talk,” Anne laughs, crossing her arms. Lets herself fall into Marcy’s lap, planting her muddy shoes on the Sasha’s car door, chuckling at every curse that follows from the driver’s. It was filthy long before this, a fact that Sasha obviously denies. “I’m myself on the verge of tears,” obvious lies. Anne fondly looks at Marcy through her half-lidded eyes and savors the view. “You drag us to a gas station at night just to… What? Hang out in your car?”
Darkness outside only intensifies. Marcy probably should text her parents and say that she’s with Anne. And better not to mention the other girl here.
“We’re going to a party.”
“Doesn’t look to me that we’re going anywhere.”
“Of course we’re not leaving yet, duh. Have to be fashionably late, otherwise they’ll think we’re too eager to be at this mid-tier party. Gotta keep that status rolling.”
“We’re not in high school anymore, Sash.” Marcy chimes in. She places a hand on Anne’s face, her thumb finding a pimple beneath the layers of foundation. On autopilot, she starts to apply pressure, making Anne screaming and shrieking in her grip.
The car smells of gasoline, mint gum, and Sasha’s perfume. However that cocktail was objectively gross and had an awful side effect of head spinning and choking, Marcy still wants to sear it in. Archive the sensation for all the years that will come, for a life without her girls. She closes her eyes and tries to stop the time wih all of her might. Inhales deeply, feels the sticky and greasy seat under her tight, music loud to the point of a physical pain in her eardrums. She does everything she can to make the moment permanent.
“You’ve no right to talk about status here,” Sasha looks at them from her forehead, her loose hair is a blond pool spreading on the headset. “You’re the on ditching us in this damn town. And me and my beloved Anne have to go to community college with all these school kids. Ew.”
Marcy stays silent. She hates the role of the traitor, but the accusations still stay true. She is leaving. Fantasy of a steaming hot polycule with her two childhood best friends shatters on the rock that was reality. Long distance was just teeth-rotting sweet desire that never works out in the end.
“Well, hope you’ll get to wear this cast forever,” Anne pokes at the names written on the cast. “Every annoying nerd over there in Boston would know whose girl you are.”
A flush creeps up on the three of them, but only Marcy is capable of a small, weak smile and a holding gaze.
“Maybe I should just take your last name, then.”
Anne chokes. Cough forces her upright from Marcy’s lap, into a hunched position. She loses her balance and her hand lands on driver’s headset, pinning Sasha’s hair. Panic falls upon the car with Anne’s gagging and Sasha’s screams, as she tries to get her hair from Anne’s hold.
Marcy just stares out of the window. Complete darkness and flickering, barely working sign of the gas station makes her sigh in sadness. In another state there would be no such exact station, no Sasha’s beat-up car, no litter scattered all across. Like, she could possibly spend every night at the gas station of the same franchise, sit in a thousand of shitty Subaru – but it all would be just strange. Unfamiliar. Life in another state just feels alien to her, and she can’t make herself believe that it would ever feel like her own.
She opens the car door and steps out in the fresh night air. Outside she can hear crickets and frogs; and from inside the car muffled Aerosmith and the sound of girls bickering. Marcy sits on the side of the road, gaze turned into the grass. She sees something moving in here, and her hand reaches towards it to find in the long, long forgotten to cut grass, small newt.
“Hey, buddy,’ she whispers and finally allows herself a genuine smile. Well, she doesn’t have to be mean to a newt, right? “You probably hate it here, huh? Polluted air, loud cars on the road.”
A small creature climbs onto her hand, just like Marcy is one of those damned Disney princesses. That makes her giggle like a child, imagining herself as the hero in some poorly written fantasy story, with the little newt on her arms as her comic-relief animal sidekick. That would be kinda cool.
Cars moving past them, chilling wind whistles. Fall comes quickly, leaves already turning early yellow and red, but it’s no wonder here – with all this poisoned air.
“Feel like ya don’t belong? You’re the creature of the nature, and this gas station is definitely is a devil making,” she lets it crawl on her hand. Marcy feels like she should be a bit worried that the newt might be contagious with some awful infection, or, maybe, be filled with tapeworms. Suburban amphibians have a lot more species of helminths than town’s ones. But it did not matter right now. She had a newt friend over here, and it was nice and humble. “Can feel you, buddy. Same here. Life sucks.”
“Hey, Marce, what are you doing over there?” Sasha screams, what made the newt friend scared. It jumps from Marcy’s hand, slipping away back into the grass.
“Nothing! Just checking out this grass.”
“You weirdo.” Sasha shrugs and sits down on the hood of her car.
Marcy joins her, cool metal though her skirt make the body shiver. Sasha re-ties her ponytail, sight that disappoints Marcy just a little, yet brings a relief. This Sasha is familiar to her. Formal, a bit mean, with her ponytail high.
“You’re gonna freeze to death out here.”
“Yeah.” Marcy looks at how Anne makes her out of the car just to be immediately ordered by Sasha to go to the station’s convenience store and get something to drink.
Marcy’s throat, in fact, parched. Good to think that Sasha has it all planned.
It was cold. Sasha could have given her jacket to Marcy, but she never will. Because Sasha was a bitch who curated her own survival first. She took her stupid strawberry-stinking vape out of the pocket and took a drag; it was hard to look away from the way Sasha’s lips curved as she exhaled the plume directly into Marcy’s face.
Marcy had to press her deep hatred towards oversweetened flavors down, because she herself needed a hit more than anything. She took the vape from Sasha’s hand without a pleasure and took a drag too.
“Disgusting,” she coughs. Oh, how she used to hate the strawberry over the years. “We’re not actually going to any party, are we?”
Sasha snorted and shook her head.
“Nuh-uh.”
“You know, you didn’t have to come up with some stupid excuse.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be thrilled to spent your birthday at some stupid gas station in that case. Had to make up some alibi,” she scowls. “We were supposed to take you to that trendy cat cafe tomorrow, you know? Then the mall, a movie some shitty escape room, and by nightfall find some abandoned rooftop and get you wasted.”
“Lucky me that my parents saved me from such a horror.”
“Come o-o-on, do you really have to spend the day with them? Can’t you, like, bail them or something?”
“Do I look like a Boonchuy? I can’t just say “no” and get away with it. If Anne gets a slipper thrown at her, then I’ll get cut out from the outside world until the summer ends,” Marcy gets a shiver down her spine from the memories of her last detention. “They just want to spend some time with me before I leave.”
“Like we don’t. We’re your friends, Marce! We choose you. They… just an assignment,” she rolled her eyes. “They don’t even like you you. Only your GPA.”
Marcy knew all this, but still she physically couldn’t bring herself to dunk on her parents. Not when they were signing the checks for her education.
“We can just do all this stuff the other day. Cat cafe and rooftop one.”
“And spend all that attention and money on you just on some random ass day? Darling, that only works on birthdays.”
Sasha leans in closer, closes her eyes and smiles, and Marcy smiles back and lets Sasha kiss her. She feels strange. They have never dared to do anything like this outside, in broad daylight (although it was nighttime, it doesn't matter). Usually, it's a sacred ritual that happens behind closed doors, with curtains drawn and a wall of complete, concrete silence surrounding them. Always with a dare or “curiosity”, always with an excuse.
But Sasha kisses her, and Marcy is only aware of the disgusting flavor of a fake strawberry. It makes Marcy pull aback, but Sasha holds her firmly by the back of her head, fingers tracing short black hair. Still, it was sort of nice. Sasha was enjoyable when she stopped being aware of herself and left the real Sasha inside of her take the lead of not taking the lead.
They pull away from each other and gasp. Sasha laughs, leaving Marcy grasping for air.
“Do you really have to leave for fucking Boston?” her gaze drifts back to the flickering gas station sign before she took another hit.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Maybe Marcy was a bit happy to leave them behind. Like, she couldn’t imagine a life without the girls, but more importantly, she couldn’t imagine a life with them, either. Childhood was fun, fantasizing on a triple wedding, shared house and all the adult stuff they really weren’t aware of, but still dreamed of experiencing one. But the imagery cracked into a gray and simple reality, in which Sasha’s life was veering off a cliff, and poor, loyal Anne was tagged along with her for life.
Marcy knew that Anne wasn’t cut out for the management. She just applied for the programs because Sasha applied to it, that’s all.
They all really turned out to be insufferable and sad, sad people.
“You traitor.” Sasha tossed the word like a joke, but it was never a joke in the first place, The way she always said it was filled with pure spite and hatred that made Marcy cry at night in her pillow.
“Sorry.”
Both stay in silence, passing the vape back and forth, staring at the starless night sky above them, each lost in their own thoughts. Marcy was starting to freeze, but Sasha would never offer her a jacket. And she will never suggest a blanket from the trunk. Because Marcy knows perfectly that the blanket is in the trunk. Why wait for an offer that Sasha would never find herself make, fully believed that such attitude would make Marcy more independent and mature?
Without a word she slides off the hood and climbs into the driver’s seat for the keys – and falls. Of course, she falls.
Silly Marcy. A ghost in the machine, as Ryle’s once said.
She rolls onto her back. A sharp, pulsing pain radiates through her entire arm, and something thick and icky – her own blood – drips from her forehead where it bumped into the gear shift.
Something sticky is spilled on the seat, gluing itself to her hair. The smell of gasoline, fake strawberry, and unjustifiably expensive perfume, now mixed with the bit of pain, triggers a violent gag reflex. Marcy chokes, gasping.
Somewhere in the periphery, Sasha is asking if she's okay. But Marcy just stares at the car's stained ceiling, thinking in a frantic, high-speed view of the very last few years that were her life.
Anne, who doesn’t even made it fully out of the store, seeing Marcy covered in blood – rushes to her side, immediately trying to sit her up.
“Sasha, get the vodka”
“What vodka?”
“Who the hell are you trying to fool? Get the fucking bottle, I know it's in here somewhere!” Anne brushes the bangs from Marcy's face and blows softly on the fresh bruise. A pointless, childish gesture. “We need to disinfect your forehead, okay?”
Marcy always in awe when Anne shows a flicker of her old spine. It's a rare thing nowadays. She's grown too accustomed to pushing herself to the background, enduring whatever emotional debris she and Sasha throw her way. Marcy really misses her old friend, one who wasn't bummed at the thought to take the lead, and who used to guide them all by the hand. Anne buried that girl somewhere back in middle school.
Sasha unwantedly takes out the half-empty bottle from the glove compartment and shoves it to Anne. As the liquid hits the bruised spot, Marcy hisses in pain, but still find a little comfort in the care.
“You can’t be left alone even for a second.”
“Sasha’s car is sentient and malevolent. It clearly takes pleasure from inflicting pain on people. Like in that novel, you know, the one with the mad supercomputer that forced people to-…”
“Shut up, Marce.”
“Shut up, Marce.”
“Okay.”
Anne presses her lips to the bruised skin. A bit too long she stays like that, especially for a normal casual gesture of comfort.
The clock on the dashboard blinks to 00:00. Anne and Sasha exchange a look before reaching for a black trash bag on the front seat and handing it to Marcy.
“Woah, you got me a trash! Nice.”
“Just shut up and open it!”
Marcy does. Wrapped inside the black plastic is a music box. The very one she’d mentioned only a couple of times in the group chat – a stupid thing from some esoteric book she’d stumbled upon in the library. Who didn’t have a witchy phase?
“We, uh, stumbled upon it,” Sasha shrugs, trying to act so nonchalantly it’s almost painful to watch. “Looked like that idiotic cryptid crap you’re always going on about.”
“Yeah, right,” Anne blinks a few times too many. “We totally just found it. Actually, we spent two months tracking this thing down. You know. For the bit.”
“Yeah.” Marcy clutches the box to her chest. She feels a lump form in her throat, her hands shaking in a stupid, overwhelming state.
Travel to other worlds. Sounds like something from an anime or one of the silly books Sasha always claimed to hate, but Marcy and Anne had secretly devoured for most of their teenage years.
Somehow, Marcy had always felt it was inevitable – that they would stumble into some grand, unbelievable adventure. It felt as real as brushing her teeth in the morning, or going to bed at night. Just a mandatory part of life that should totally happen. But the miracle, of course, never happened. Why would it? Real life does not contain some stupid isekai in it.
“You know,” Marcy sighs heavily. “Sometimes… don’t you ever get the feeling… like…”
“Spit it out,” Sasha clicks her tongue in irritation.
“Don’t you ever feel like you just want to… be stuck in childhood forever?”
Silence. Grimace of annoyance on Sasha’s face; but Anne, it seems, is genuinely taking the question and puts it in her mind.
“Sorry, just stupid thoughts.”
“No, for real, though,” Anne laughs. “I mean, I hate all this adult responsibility. Ugh! Nobody expects a kid to be responsible or do anything serious. Now I’m being saddled with all this crap. Do this, call them, fill out this form, order that till tomorrow, I hate it. Better to just be a dumb kid forever.”
Marcy nods and smiles. It wasn’t quite what she meant, not the specific ache she was trying to name, but she’s glad to share this little hatred towards adulting with Anne.
Silence.
“You both have no idea what you’re talking about. Marce, you’re the one who always said that guys like us are cool in college,” Sasha rolls her eyes. “I’m personally tired of everyone looking down on me. It’s time to show everyone who’s in charge. Shed all the crap school and family piled on us. It’s gonna be great. Finally being an adult among adults, doing adult things.”
“Yeah, sure…” Anne frowns, scratches the back of her head, and gives an involuntary nod.
Marcy looks away.
“I guess I just miss being a kid. You know, when instead of sitting in a car at a gas station at night, we were explorers of deep space, studying alien lifeforms.”
Sasha laughs and grabs Anne by the shoulders. They both stand over Marcy in front of the car, looking expectantly at the music box. Then, something clicks in Sasha’s head. She pushes Anne and hisses.
“Anne, you ass, we forgot the photo!”
“Oh! The photo!” Anne’s eyes go wide, and she rushes to open the back door.
“What photo?” Marcy asks, bewildered, as Anne looks throughout her clattered backpack. She pulls out one of those mid-tier colored Polaroids she’d begged her parents for a couple of years back, only to abandon it in a bedside drawer once the novelty wore off.
Anne snaps the picture without warning. The gas station, the night, a sky devoid of stars. Marcy, sitting in the driver's seat, blood trickling down her forehead and a casted arm. A half-blurred Sasha, still with her vape in one hand, flipping off the camera with a scowl. And Anne, smiling oh so brightly as ever, caught mid-motion, holding the camera at arm's length.
Sasha insists on taking more proper photos, and everyone reluctantly agrees. But Marcy doesn't want the better ones. She chooses the first shot: the stupid, chaotic, incomprehensible one. Sasha hates it, but the birthday girl’s wish is the law, and against their better judgment, both sign the bottom of it with Sasha’s lip liner (of course they have nothing else to write with): “SEVENTEEN YEARS LOL”
“Happy birthday, Marmar.” Anne, still grinning with that impossibly bright smile, tucks one of the “more acceptable” photos into her inner pocket.
And Marcy finally opens the music box, and the entire gas station fills with a blinding light.
They change the cast on her arm.
A cluster of newts that crowded around a human, possibly seeing a Homo sapiens for the first time, showed her a kindness and respect that all of Marcy’s world’s public institutions combined had failed to muster.
New names on the new cast. Olivia, Yunan, Andrias. Right now, Lady Olivia is sitting beside her near the window, where the dawn sunlight falls across the infirmary ward. Marcy can’t remember the last time her own mother stayed with her in a hospital for this long – like Olivia did right now. From morning until night, from night until morning.
Simple politeness, probably. Or maybe she’s a hostage. Olivia is her warden, and outside the door probably stands a bunch of cops (guards? knights?) ready to stab their shiny pointy swords into her heart the moment she tries to cross the threshold of the infirmary.
Isekai'd into another world, and the first thing she did was fall down a flight of stairs. Of course, she fell. Clumsy Marcy. Silly Marcy. What would Sasha say?
She clutches the broken pieces of her old cast, ones that got shattered in the fall. Her fingers trace Sasha’s and Anne’s names on it and she sighs.
Well, at least the newts have free public healthcare.