"Spencer?" She mumbles, hunched over with her head in her hands, elbows digging into her knees. I set my coffee mug down with a resonant clang and pad over in socked feet to sit cautiously on the couch across from her.
"Shh." I count wood grains on the coffee table and listen to ticks of the grandfather clock in the corner. She keeps yanking her fingernails away from her teeth.
"Yes?" This time it was me. She doesn't look me, but I could see her brown eyes tracing the ridges of her fingerprints through the thick curtain of her eyelashes.
None of the words in my head feel right. I clutch my hands with white knuckles and tap my feet on the floor. "Why?" I ask, in a voice that should belong to a child, or kitten.
(She stumbled through the church gates on the twenty-first of May, a heavy blanket of ocean fog pierced only by a beam of sunlight, reflected off of her Frisbee-disk pupils as rainbows. She would close them whenever I got close enough to see.
She fell onto the dew-sprayed grass, holding her hands in front of her face like they were the most beautiful things she'd ever seen. She grinned and screamed, and I stood catatonic in a clear patch of dirt, fists balled.
"It's going to rain!" She cried, banging her fists on the muddy earth. "Spencer!"
I stared at the silver linings of the clouds above us.)
"Spencer?" She whispers now, voice shrinking with every unanswered syllable she utters. "I am here." She exhales.
"I am here." I echo.
("Ring around the Rosie!" She sang, hair falling in soaking tendrils, partially obscuring the manic look on her face. "Pocket full of posie!" She grabbed handfuls of her frilly dress with her muddy hands, spinning around with her bare feet sending splashes flying.
"Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!" She shrieked, and she collapsed to the ground, wiggling her toes like earthworms.
"I'm drowning, Spencer!" She inhales greedily, dramatically, writhing at my feet. "Drown with me! Drown with me!"
The thunder behind us rolls, preceding a wild downpour of gray droplets.)
She clutches her cross necklace, the suggestion of a tear straining at the rim of her eye. "Fucking look at me, Spencer."
"I love you."
"Shut the fuck up, no, no, you don't." She trails off.
"Yes, I do. I love you more than my own consciousness, Aria. I've only ever liked the sound of my voice when you were the one saying it. I
We are sentient fucking beings and you're relying on drugs to make you feel alive. I swear to God, Aria, I'm right in front of you. Look at me and tell me that you love your drugs more than you love me."
Her eyelashes flutter.
(She had found a clover patch despite the mess, raking gently at first for one with a fourth leaf, but slowly losing patience and ripping them out of the dirt by their heads.
"Look at all the dead people!" She shouted. "Look at them!"
She gestures all around her, at the headstones and the uprooted clovers.)
"What do you tell yourself when you're standing naked in front of the mirror and the only sound in the house is the breath from your own lungs?" I press my fingertips together, moving my hands like a spider doing pushups on a mirror. "How do you sleep?"
"Not well." She laughs grimly, shaking her head to convey futility.
("I am going to burn down your village! Tie up your horses and leave 'em for dead! You'll be pushing up daisies, every one of you!" She pulled a lighter from a pocket, striking furiously as it grew wetter and wetter.
I felt relief as I was soaked in rain, steam rising to the sky and away from me. The burning leaving my body.
She cried out, "Grave digger, when you dig my grave…")
"I'm drowning in you." I don't remember who said it.
"Breathe in, out."
"I will bury you in raindrops."
"I will bury you in fire."
("Could you make it shallow, so that I can feel the rain?" She finally just fell. And I swear, the sky followed. In a grand cataclysm of meteor showers and stardust, the sky chased her so fast it flew into her arms on the other side.)
"Hey, Spencer?" She clutched a tattered bible in her skeleton hands.
"I am here. I am here. I am-"
"Here." We finish in unison.