Author's Note: OC centric crap. Plotless, disjointed, mediocre. Just something that popped in my head because I was drawing diagrams for the crayon company I'm never going to have. The timing in this is err, ambiguous, I guess? It's tied in with some of my other crap. Rating is for cursing and pervy things and perversion and whatnot. Oh and like, I just noticed that I have like followers on here. I mean, I guess I kinda knew that, but it didn't really register until I checked my email and another person was following me. So like...I dunno how many of you there are or why my crap is interesting enough to you to warrant keeping tabs on, but thank you all very much!
Title is from Elijah Bossenbroek. References to The Boondocks and Metalocalypse.
(and i'll try to find something on this thing that means nothing)
—the national
Marcese doesn't really understand herself. She supposes that's normal because really, what teenager does understand themselves? The hormones are raging and she's finding herself, they're all finding themselves and trying to fit somewhere, anywhere, even though it's a place they won't occupy for very long because they're still changing in every way.
Most of the time she thinks in riddles, or thinks about riddles, or thinks about things that could be riddles but might not come off that way.
She thinks about things like where balloons go when you let of the string, and they float up, up, up (the moon, maybe?). She ponders the purpose of life itself, and supposes there might not really be one at all (though that doesn't bother her). She thinks about how everyone is an onion, because onions have layers. People's layers aren't that much different than onions and some have more than others.
Sometimes she tries to count her own layers, but sometimes she confuses which ones are which and she always loses track.
Her nonchalance and easy confidence is the outermost layer and the thinest one. Not false, just thin.
"Oh, Nathaniel," she breathes fondly as she saunters into the student council room and hops onto the laminated tabletop. She leans back and folds her hands between her legs and watches him scribble on his clipboard with an impish grin. "You're almost as cute as your sister."
He raises his eyes to her, with rose dusting his cheeks as he clears his throat. "If you're going to be in here, please don't sit on the table. There are chairs right there."
Marcese slides down and pulls out a chair, popping a squat and tilting her head back. "She's into me, you know," she continues on with notes of glee and jest lacing her syllables. "That sister of yours, I mean. She wants me so bad it's driving her crazy."
Nathaniel simply pauses for a moment and the noise of the pen scratching the paper stops. He scowls at her as his nose screws up. "I don't know what to say to that, except it's definitely not true."
"It's true," she chirrups. "I catch her staring at me all the time, all aggressive 'cause she wants me so hard. It's too bad though. I already have a boyfriend." So Dakota wasn't really her boyfriend. She could pretend, right?
"A boyfriend? You?" Nathaniel raises a brow and points to her with the pen in a gesture so resolutely nerdy she just wants to give him a noogie.
"Yup."
"I thought you liked girls," he blurts in stupefaction.
Marcese laughs and stretches her legs out, toes idly curling inside her mud-encrusted boots. "Did I say I didn't like girls?"
"You just said you had a boyfriend..."
"Doesn't make boobs any less appealing." She shrugs, smirk on her lips and tongue stuck out at him playfully. "Don't be so narrow, Natty."
"I'm not— Just don't stare at Amber's. Or call me that." A sound a lot like a groan and a little like a sigh leaves his lips as he smacks a palm to his forehead.
"I make no promises," she singsongs.
He rolls his eyes in annoyance and returns to scribbling on his clipboard. But he doesn't tell Marcese to leave, so she knows her presence is welcomed and spends the rest of the afternoon in the student council room.
That all happens before she sees his bruises.
It's an accident. She's not supposed to be in the boys' locker room, let alone in a locker, but that's neither here nor there, because her eyes are widening behind the metal door and transfixed on bare flesh so battered, its a collage of purples, blues, and blacks. And she's absolutely horrified when she inevitably studies more closely and sees that these bright bruises are overlapping fading, ugly yellow and pale brown ones that were already in place.
And then somehow she's out of the locker, but she's not registering that she's out of the locket because all she can see are those bruises! Nathaniel's bruises! He is just as stunned to see her as she is to see every square of that painfully cluttered skin. He yells at her. She scrambles away.
They don't talk much after that.
The layer under her nonchalance is a layer of doubt. It's thicker than the first, but only just so.
Marcese apologizes a few days later, though for what she isn't sure. Is she apologizing for accidentally spying on him? Is she apologizing because he shouldn't have to be splattered in bruises like that? Is she apologizing because she doesn't know how to make them go away?
Nathaniel forgives her for whichever, so it doesn't matter either way. He silences her muted questions with a pat on the shoulder and the terse request to forget it ever happened.
They still don't talk as much as they used to.
They were friends, but now they're acquaintances because she can't decode the depth of his layers and she feels just a little too hurt, a lot too helpless, and equal parts worried and confused, but the layer under Nathaniel's polite smile and friendly chuckles is a wall stronger than any brick one ever was to keep her shut out. To keep her on that diplomatic, pleasant exterior. It succeeds.
She doesn't spend any more afternoons in the student council room.
Marcese's figure is a rectangle. Her limbs are lithe, her breasts are slightly smaller than teacups, and her behind is a subtle bump under her back. 'Boyish' is the word her aunt uses to describe it. That word suits just fine, as her physique is quite akin to that of a thirteen year old boy in middle school. She doesn't mind it much. Everyone has body insecurities one way or another, but hers are mild.
She started cross-dressing to embrace her shape. It isn't an everyday thing. She never cross-dresses at school. She usually only does it on the weekends, and even then it's not every weekend.
Boys' clothes feel nice to her. She likes they way they fit and sometimes she thinks they look even better on her than girls' clothes. When she wears them, she doesn't actively try to pass as male. It's simply a comfortable style of dress that suits her frame and nothing more. Not to say she hasn't passed as a male before; it just isn't something she tries to achieve.
If someone makes the mistake of thinking she's a boy, she generally corrects them.
On one of these particular weekends, she's clad in baggy black jeans, a Thugnificent t-shirt she'd bought on sale, and a matching Lethal Interjection beanie that makes her scalp itch just a little. She isn't doing anything in particular, she's just strolling the city and filling her time with placid triviality. She spots a neat, little curio-type shop she's never been in before and heads in just for the hell of it.
The door chimes in tunes of crystal as she crosses the threshold and the musky, sagey scent of incense curls up her nostrils. Marcese shuffles down the small row of aisles, flaxen pools studying the intricate mini-statues on display, most fairies or dragons, but skulls and grim reapers as well. She dips down one aisle to expand her search, only to find a classmate.
"Hey, Lysander," she calls cheerfully and waves to him.
He looks up from the slip of parchment he's holding and looks to her, head tilting. "I'm sorry? Do we know each other?"
Marcese's waving hand drops and she feels a little like smacking him upside the head. "Well yeah. You need glasses or something?" She closes the short gap between them with a lazy stride.
Lysander's brow furrows and his head tilts a bit more, as though he thinks looking from an angle will help him recognize her. And hey, maybe it does, because then his head is popping up again and his bicolored depths are alight with surprise.
"Oh, Marcese! I'm sorry. Forgive me, I haven't seen you in such attire before."
She glances at herself, almost forgetting what she's wearing, and then chuckles sheepishly. "It's cool. What are you reading about?"
"My horoscope." A soft smile tweaks his lips. "'Outstanding personal, family, or economic issues may spring up. Use your ingenuity to get rid of them once and for all.' I'm not quite sure what it's talking about as of yet, but I try not to be too superstitious of these anyway. Would you like me to read you yours?"
"Sure." Marcese doesn't exactly believe in horoscopes, but she doesn't exactly disbelieve them either. She thinks they're like the universe's little notes, possibly helpful if noticed and kept in mind, but definitely not something to take to heart with upmost expectance of results.
"You're a taurus, right?"
"Yep."
"Your associates are making the Three Stooges look like pre-med students. Do whatever you can to project an air of serenity.'" He gives a thoughtful hum. "Does that sound accurate to you?"
Marcese chuckles into her palm and nods. "Yeah, it does. If by 'associates' it means Armin and Alexy. I have them as partners in chemistry..."
The look Lysander gives her seems to say you poor soul, but amusement shows in his dimples. "I have Nathaniel."
"Pfft, lucky." She laces her fingers behind her hat and tries not to think about things she doesn't want to remember. "You couldn't have gotten anyone better."
"Though I mostly agree, I must admit that he gets a little too fascinated with the bunsen burners at times. It's a bit unnerving."
"I wonder why," she hums. And she truly does wonder. Because her third layer is her thickest layer, and that's the one that's always musing. The layer that ponders in riddles and not-riddles and nonsenses and unsures. Nathaniel is an aquarius, the water sign. Yet drawn to burning. Maybe that's why, really. Don't they always say that opposites attract? Though this seems like a very poor, bland conclusion.
"So what brings you here?"
Marcese shakes off the clouds of amateur deductions and gives a shrug. "Oh, you know. I was just walking around and this looked like a neat place to stop in. What about you?"
"I got lost on my way to another store, so I decided to come here instead." Lysander's lips shape into a sheepish smile that somehow maintains elegance.
"Jeez, man," laughs Marcese. "This has gotta stop. You need a GPS."
"To tell the truth, I had one. Rosa bought it for me. But I lost it." Guilt gives his features a pitiable depth and Marcese just shakes her head.
"Well, what store were you trying to go to?"
"Ned Mart."
"I can take you." She's mystified as to how Lysander ended up all the way here, if Ned Mart was where he was trying to go. It's on the exact opposite side of town. But this is Lysander, and losing things, himself included, seems to be a talent for him. She loops her arm through his to make sure he won't get lost from her as well and leads him out of the shop.
They talk as they walk, and Marcese feels free to share her third-layer oddities. Because Lysander is also odd, and Lysander also thinks from obscure corners and in tilted processes.
"Do you know that feeling?" she asks him a few blocks later. "The feeling where you know you have a bruise, because it hurts just like a bruise, but for some reason it isn't showing up on your skin?"
He gives a thoughtful hum. "I can't say I've felt that one exactly, but I've felt similar feelings. I've tasted my favorite food just by thinking about it, but it's only the hint of a tang and a far cry from the real thing."
"There isn't a word for that feeling," she murmurs. "There's not a word for the feeling of invisible bruises either."
"Not to my knowledge," he replies.
"There are only so many words. How do you write, Lysander?" How can he? How can he write so many poems and songs when there are so few words? When there aren't even words to describe those nagging, important feelings like invisible bruises and phantoms of flavor?
"I'm not sure," he answers earnestly. "Sometimes inspiration just rains and the words flow onto the paper like they were always meant to be there. Other times I think and if something comes to me, it ends up there too. There may only so many words, they're enough. Believe me."
Marcese doesn't think she agrees. But Lysander is the expert in this department, so she decides to trust his judgement.
Porn magazines seem to have gone out of style. When people want porn, they look it up on the internet. It's usually free on the internet and there is an endless supply and all the kinks one can dream of. But Marcese likes porn magazines. There's no chance of getting a virus, and you can read them anywhere. Anywhere; including the courtyard where she now sits on the bench with a half-eaten granola bar on her lap and a new magazine in her hands.
She whistles softly under her breath, lewd eyes reveling upon the image of a woman naked aside from fluffy white angel wings, eggshell white fingernails, and a sparkly white thong that contrasted strikingly with her flawless olive skin.
"What's that?"
"Giovanna Sugar," she answers without looking up. Castiel takes a seat and scoots next to her, humming in approval.
"Not bad. Nine and a half."
"Please," Marcese scoffs, though it doesn't matter because she knows this is all photoshop anyway. "She is a ten. Look at that ass."
"It's damn good ass, but you know I'm more of a boob guy." Without asking, he takes the half-eaten granola bar from her lap and takes a big bite out of it.
Her eyes narrow and she rolls up the magazine, swatting him in shoulder. "Go get your own food!" She snatches it out of his grasp and possessively shoves it in her mouth. "This isn't even your lunch hour!"
"Class was annoying," he remarks drily.
Marcese finishes off her granola bar and unrolls the magazine, flipping to the next page, where a sun-kissed blonde is pouring coconut milk over her mouth on the beach. "If you keep skipping like this, you're going to get suspended."
"You're going to get suspended if you keep bringing porn to school," he counters and then tilts his head, ogling the page. "Now that's a ten."
"Not quite," she singsongs and flips to the next. There doesn't seem to be any running theme, as the next woman is a redhead in pale sunflower lingerie sleepwear. Marcese thinks she looks like the woman on the Wendy's commercial, only with fuller lips and bigger jugs.
"Hey you too," comes the greeting that announces Rosalya's approach. "What are you looking at?"
Without waiting for an answer, she glides around behind the bench and curiously peeks at the magazine. "Ooh...Obviously not my type, but I really like her underwear."
Marcese tips her head back and flashes Rosalya a seductive grin. "You'd look better in it."
Rosalya laughs and pushes her head back up. "Flattery will get you nowhere," she trills teasingly.
"I better it's gotten me more places than Castiel," she declares playfully and nudges him with her elbow.
"Pfft, I don't even need to use flattery," he dismisses with a cocky grin. "Girls just flock to me."
"Get over yourself," Rosalya rebukes flippantly and Marcese scoffs under her breath.
She likes this. The carefree, easy atmosphere with joking and superficial rule breaking and light-heartedness. Things are nice when they're like that, unimportant but happy and threaded with simplicity. She isn't thinking in times like this, not in riddles or almost-riddles or anything of the like. Her thoughts aren't muddled or overanalyzing or underanalyzing. They're as uncomplicated and content as the atmosphere and the traces of mirth in her friends' eyes. She wishes it could stay like all the time.
But the bell rings and signals its time for her next class.
You never really know what's going on inside someone, not even the people you're closest to. You could be with them around the clock for years on end, and though you think you might be able to grasp a pretty solid idea of what they're thinking or what they're dreaming, you will never truly know for sure. That's why, really, Marcese is scared of everyone.
It's a mild fear. It's hardly ever at the forefront of her mind and it never inhibits her interactions (she doesn't think it does, anyway) but it's a reminder to be wary that she's tucked into the back of her mind. A precautionary fear. She thinks she first realized this when it came to Viktor.
Viktor was...Viktor is...Someone she doesn't usually see anymore. A childhood friend of a sort. Her aunt worked for his father for awhile when she was young and had stubby little legs and stubby little arms and a habit of catching wild creepy-crawlies that drove her parents nuts. Viktor fascinated her at the time more than anything, because he wasn't anything like her. He didn't uncover rocks to look for squiggly worms. He didn't splash through the pond to find frogs. He didn't pluck the centipedes off the brick and let them tickle his hands with their weird little legs.
He read picture books and built things with blocks and collected tiny cars and motorcycles that he never, ever let her touch.
"Why," she begged one day a very long time ago that she only vaguely recalls now, when she longed to take a vehicle no bigger than her palm and vroom around the room.
"Because you're always touching bugs. But if you wash your hands, I'll let you play with it for five minutes," compromised the equally stubby future businessman.
"I can't reach the sink!" Marcese exclaimed in absolute distress and flailed her tiny limbs.
Viktor blinked and nodded, taking this into consideration and looking far more pensive than any four year old should. "You can use my stool," he decided resolutely. He took her by the sleeve because he knew better than to touch her buggy hand and marched her to the bathroom. He graciously presented her with a very nifty looking orange and white plastic stool. She felt very regal standing on it.
"I like you," she decided when she stepped down from it with soapy fingers. "I'm going to marry you."
"You can't say that," Viktor informed her as he passed her a towel. "To get married, the boy has to give you a ring first and ask. Then you say 'yes.'"
"Oh...Well, go get a ring and ask me to marry you."
"Okay. I still have one I got out of a cereal box." And then he hurried off to find it, and she hurried after him. It was plastic and gold, with a picture of the cereal's bunny mascot. But it was a ring all the same, and from that day on they were engaged. It's the only truly precise memory she has from their days of playing. It's fuzzy, but everything else is fuzzier and only the memory of the knowledge of the things they did actually stuck with her and not the memories of the things themselves.
She thinks that's a little sad, maybe. But maybe not, maybe it's just growing up. She still has the ring somewhere. She can slip it on her pinky if she wants, even though it's a tight fit. Right now she doesn't know where it is, exactly, but she has a pretty good idea that it's in her crooked sock drawer that she scarcely uses because she doesn't like socks.
They don't make that brand of cereal anymore. They discontinued it when she was in middle school. She thinks that's a little sad too. But maybe it isn't that much, because she can't remember what the name of the brand was. Only the mascot. Come to think of it, she doesn't think she ever ate a single spoonful of that cereal.
She and Viktor remained friends, she thinks. They stopped hanging out come the double-digit ages, with his traveling in all, and growing apart naturally happened. He stills travels to this day, often, everywhere, but she always makes a point to go see him when she knows he's around. He's polite, she's polite, and they exchange tales of what they've been up to. But it always feels more like friendly conversation than it feels like a conversation between friends.
It was during a conversation where he described his most recent trip to Seychelles that it really occurred to her that she didn't know him at all. She grew up alongside him and his face was as familiar as the back of her hand, but she had no idea what he was thinking about. It was so plain then to her then because experience means changes, even if small ones, and he had experience in things she never would and he could very well be thinking about a place she'd never even heard of. But the concept itself applies to everyone.
The unknown seems to be something humans in general fear. Marcese wonders why this fear doesn't seem to extend to the unknowns of one's closest friend. A matter of trust, perhaps? Or maybe everyone really does have that fear and it's just one of those acceptances people don't talk about.
In one of the compartments of her mind, she dwells on this as she walks to his opulent estate. But it's a faint, stale dwelling and it's silenced by the buzz and musing over everything else that feels so meaninglessly important. She rings the doorbell just once and some hired person answers and lets her in. She shuffles to the living room while they scuttle off to inform Viktor of her presence.
It's been rearranged again. And the furniture's been replaced again. She's about to push her nose into the couch cushion and inhale the new scent when her friend of a sort crosses the threshold and offers her a smooth, warm smile.
"Hi, Marcese." There's always familiarity attached when her name leaves his lips.
"Hey." She smiles back and it's small, but it's real. They fall back into effortless conversation like they always do, even if yet another sheet of distance has walled the words.
Being aware of the unknown that comes with companionship doesn't have to ruin it. It could even enrich your experience and perception of someone. Marcese doesn't think she's doing that though. Not now, anyway.
She's probably a slut. It isn't that she's slept with an obscene amount of people (she hasn't) and it isn't that she wears clothes that show off the places of her physique deemed inappropriate (she doesn't). But she's not shy about sex either.
Marcese feels that she's a slut after her first time with Debrah. Or rather, she feels nominally dirty and a little guilty. She barely knows the first thing about Debrah and yet she slipped her tongue between her thighs in a surprisingly classy hotel room. Debrah initiated it, so Marcese tries to pass over some of the mental blame. She knows she's being unfair. But it's almost easy to be unfair when you're taking the blame off yourself, something that she shortly learns Debrah is shamelessly guilty of herself.
All in all, however, the pleasure outweighed the prickle of guilt. You only live once, as the saying goes. She didn't expect herself to get attached. But beyond the sex appeal and the manipulative wiles, she finds that Debrah is an enigma. And as she eventually tells her, Debrah makes her feel special. She lies to everyone and graces them with plastic smiles and crocodile tears, but she (brags about) tells Marcese every decidedly cruel thing she's ever done and bestows her with the wicked grins.
She's exclusively exposed to Debrah's masked intentions and she indulges in this uniqueness, even though she doesn't understand it. But she doesn't ask because the sex happens more than once and the sex is good, and she doesn't want her curiosity to keep it from happening. And after that, they start hanging out with each other. More often than not this ends with Marcese's teeth in Debrah's shoulders and Debrah's nails tearing furrows in Marcese's back.
Sometimes it doesn't though. Sometimes they just hang out. It's during one of these said times when Marcese is particularly insecure and warily jealous of a certain someone, that she awkwardly asks Debrah out. It was an inevitable question she knew, as she was growing far too attached and involved in studying her precious enigma and spending too many nights tenderly stroking her chestnut waves as opposed to rolling over and sleeping. She's still surprised when Debrah says yes.
She likes Debrah's fingers. She doesn't just like them because they know exactly how to torment her below the belt, but she likes them because they fit very nicely between hers and no matter how sappy and hackneyed the ideal, they feel exactly like they were always meant to fit there. She tells her this one day.
"You're adorable," Debrah giddily replies and kisses her cheek. Marcese beams and quietly blushes. It's funny how Debrah can make her flustered like that. Most people can't.
Since Debrah is open with her, Marcese returns the courtesy. Around Debrah she lets herself peel back the layers down to the third and she shares her mismatched thoughts and blobby pondering.
"What do you think about reincarnation?" she asks one day when she's stretched along the back of Debrah's couch like a cat. Debrah sits on the cushions below and is fully aware that Marcese can manage to be pensive and stare down her shirt at the same time.
"I don't," Debrah hums.
"So you don't you believe in it?"
"Not really. Do you?"
"I don't think I do, but maybe I do on a subliminal level."
Debrah tips her head back and those steel-blue, magenta touched pools that Marcese will never ever get tried of beholding look into hers. "I'm not sure if that makes you deep or weird," she says lightly, "but I'm leaning towards weird."
"I could be deep and weird." Because even if Debrah's right and she's probably just weird, she can't deny the possibility that two elements coexist within her. Also, they don't necessarily have to be equal. She could very well be just a little bit deep, but a lot weird.
"You could be," Debrah chimes and pokes her in the cheek.
Another time, it's;
"Debrah? How many pieces of gum do you think have been dropped on the sidewalk? I mean on every sidewalk around the world."
"I have no idea," Debrah breathes. "I have no idea why you care either."
"I don't care, I'm just thinking about it."
"Then I have no idea why you're thinking about it."
"Do you think maybe if we scraped all the gum up, we could turn it into a fuel source?"
"Nope."
And one time it's;
"What do you think makes good and bad people?"
"Oh," Debrah chirps in surprise. "This is actually an easy one. That's unlike you."
"You think it's easy?" Marcese questions dubiously. She's puzzled when it comes to that one. She's puzzled when it comes to everything she wonders of course, but this one is particularly difficult for her.
"Of course it's easy. People who do good things are good people, and people who do bad things are bad people."
"But doesn't everybody do both?"
"Yes, but I'm talking in majority. For instance, as a thief and someone who uses people as disposable, I count as a bad person." It doesn't bother her apparently, she's as suave and mellow as always.
Marcese thinks about this. And then she blinks in bemusement and tilts her head. "You're a thief?"
"I stole your heart, didn't I?" Debrah's grin gleams victoriously.
If anyone else had said this, the line would sound ridiculously, inanely, and pitifully cheesy. Just so plain bad that she would have to laugh. But when it's Debrah with that look on her face and danger lurking beneath the endearment, Marcese feels a hot chill arrest her spine. Debrah is right, of course.
Instead of replying with words, she shifts closer and holds onto Debrah's arm, laying her head on her shoulder. Debrah purrs and gingerly pets her head.
There is another time just a couple of weeks later when Debrah is at her house and poking through her closet that Marcese is struck on another one of her non-riddles and splayed out on the bed, looking up to the ceiling for answers it won't reveal. She chews on the tough skin of her thumb and her brows narrow, and she can't seem to let it go.
"Do you think anything is important?"
"Huh?" Debrah asks and she pokes her head around the corner of the closet door.
"You. Me. The world. Is there any significance to anything at all?" She leans towards feeling like there should be, but maybe she's overestimating herself. And maybe the world too.
"Oh boy, there you go again." Debrah saunters over and plops down on the edge of her bed. "Of course there's significance," she says matter-of-factly and pats Marcese on the knee.
"How?" She tilts her head to the side, azure bangs catching in her lashes and making her eyes itch. Instead of brushing them aside, she closes her lids.
"Because we make things important." She takes Marcese by the shoulders and pulls her up, squaring them accordingly. "The problem isn't whether or not things have significance, or why they do. The problem is you. You're way too passive."
"I'm passive?" Marcese repeats doubtfully.
"Yes, you are. Tell me something, am I important to you?" There's an edge to the light in Debrah's eyes and a steadiness to her jaw that Marcese doesn't know what to make of.
"Of course you are, but that's dif—"
"No." Debrah pushes a finger to her lips. "That's it right there. Things are important because you make them important. You give something, whatever it may be, its significance and that's why it matters. You can take it away just the same. It all depends on how you're looking at it."
Marcese is surprised to see her girlfriend so genuinely serious. Debrah's input is usually humoring more than anything. She isn't sure what to say and Debrah's finger is still pressing to her lips and silencing the words she doesn't even have. She likes it there. Debrah's skin is soft and it fills the cracks in her chapped, mildly pink flesh.
"By the way," Debrah says when she pulls back. "I found Gangstalicious and Dethklok CDs in your closet. I would love to hear an explanation." She crosses her arms and lifts a single chestnut brow.
"My taste varies," is all Marcese has to say for herself.
"Ahh," Debrah hums. She then takes the tie she'd previously tied around her girlfriend's neck and and tugs, smashing Marcese's lips to hers and grinning beneath them. Marcese embraces the spontaneous kiss and possessively wraps her arms around her waist.
"Do you wanna go in?" Marcese asks when they're in the mall, referring to the candy store Debrah is staring into.
"Yeah. I could always use something sweet." She strides in with Marcese on her heels, hips swinging with an alluring fluidity. The perfume of chocolate and sugar hangs in the air and encourages her stomach to growl.
Marcese strolls down an aisle and tries not to drool over the shelves of caramel dipped marshmallows, neon candies, chocolate coated nuts and butterscotch popcorn. She was under the expectation that Debrah veered and followed her, so she's surprised when she turns and empty space occupies by the singer should be. Blinking, she ducks down the next aisle to search for her. And then the next. She realizes she's going in the wrong direction and wheels around to rectify this, but Debrah finds her first.
She giggles impishly and tosses a loop of black licorice around Marcese's neck. "There. A leash, so you won't get lost."
Debrah calls it a leash, but it looks (and feels) more like a noose. Marcese doesn't mind, she breathes a laugh and takes a step closer.
Debrah bites off the end of the licorice leash and chews it over with a little grin.
The very same night she's exhausted and she can't sleep and she doesn't know why, so she pokes her nearly as drowsy girlfriend's arm to get her attention.
"Huh?"
"Will you sing to me?"
Debrah rolls over and studies Marcese's features with tired, bleary eyes. "You're such a child."
"Nope. Just your number one fan."
"Something tells me you're just buttering me up," Debrah yawns.
"Please."
"Fine." She sits up, chestnut tresses falling over her naked shoulders and bare breasts. "Which one do you wanna hear?"
"You know which one," she mumbles, eyes sliding closed. Debrah naturally complies with the request and gently rubs her back as she does so, the touches stinging sweetly on the freshly scratched skin.
Marcese is walking to Geometry with her book in her hands when she hears a distinct piece of bitter venom.
"She's a total slut."
She pauses and cranes her neck, unamused to see Amber and her friends against the lockers and gossiping.
The blonde's aquamarine orbs meet hers and narrow instantly. "What's your problem?"
"I heard you," she scoffs, unfazed by Amber's aversion to her. She's used to it. "And if you have something to say about me, you can say it to my face. No need to mutter about it behind my back."
Amber huffs and strides forward, hands on her hips. "For once, I wasn't talking about the likes of you. I was talking about that tone deaf goat you're always hanging on."
For a moment, Marcese stops. She doesn't just stop talking. She stops breathing, she stops thinking. And then she hears Debrah's voice as clear as when she spoke the words, firm and precise; You're way too passive.
Her next move is to swing her hardcover geometry book and crack Amber upside the head. The haughty bitch goes sprawling to the floor and Marcese leaps atop her, seizing her throat with one hand, fingernails pushing into her skin, and punching her in the eye with the opposite. Passive, huh? No. Not passive. Not now.
"Don't you talk about her like that," she shouts in a strained, volatile voice she scarcely recognizes as her own. "Don't you ever talk about her like that!"
Her fingers clench tighter around her neck, so tight she feels the disgusting pulse of Amber's jugular against her skin. She's about to punch her again, but Charlotte restrains her fist from behind before she gets the chance. She vehemently shakes her off, but by then Kim has her by the waist and they're forcibly pulling her off Amber.
Kim alone is stronger than Marcese is, so she knows it's futile to fight back against both her and Charlotte. Rationally with this knowledge in mind, she should stop fighting. But she doesn't. She keeps writhing and twisting with limbs flailing and fists so tight her nails are ripping into palm.
"You better calm down, little girl," Kim hisses into her ear.
"Why do you always call me that!? I'm just as tall as you are," she snarls. If Kim replies she doesn't hear it, because her livid gaze is flashing back to Amber. Li's helping her up and Charlotte leaves her to be Kim's problem and joins her. Staring students line the halls, and once Amber is dragged off out of sight, the fight in her just dies out. Marcese feels small and shaken under the stares and limply presses back into the arms that hold her back.
"Let me go," she breathes flatly.
"That depends," Kim replies mildly. "Are you gonna go crazy again?"
"No, I'm just gonna go home." She lowers her head.
"Alright." Kim releases her and she stumbles out of her grasp, picking up her fallen textbook. There's a fresh blotch of blood on the upper part of its spine. She's quick to cram it back in her locker and sprint away, because she knows it's only a matter of time before she gets called out on the intercom and she doesn't want to be here. Bailing will probably get her into more trouble in the long run, but Marcese doesn't care about that, she just wants to leave.
Beneath all of her layers is her core. She's never found it, but she knows that's where the instincts are, including the fight-or-flight response. Today she's responding with both in that order. No one's home when she gets there and that's more than okay with Marcese. She hops in the shower, figuring she may as well get herself clean even though she can't clean up the mess she's just made. Under the hot spray and inhaling the hot steam, there's just one main topic on her mind.
Coffins.
Corpses are a commodity just like anything else, she knows, and coffins are expensive. They come in so many different designs and shapes. Some are lavish, some are plain. They're made in all sorts of different materials too. Marcese has heard of biodegradable coffins made from recycled paper, even. She hopes when she dies that someone will bury her in a coffin like that.
When her shower is done, she naturally changes. Though it isn't the weekend, as none of her girl clothes are clean and she's too lazy to do laundry, she finds herself cross-dressing. Since none of her casual male clothes are clean either, she throws on a classy ensemble with neat slacks and a tie and all. All dressed up, but not going anywhere. It's somewhat amusing to her.
She hears the phone ring and heads downstairs though she doesn't answer it. She's not surprised to hear the voicemail on the answering machine from the principal confirming the suspicion that she's been written up and suspended for a week. She should probably care about this, but she doesn't. She feels something about it, but that feeling is unnamed and it's not the same as caring.
There's a knock at the door and Marcese irrationally jumps to the conclusion that it must be the principal. People who call are usually the same people that come over, right?
She saunters over and cautiously opens the door, lips parting. "Oh, it's you. Hey, Debrah." She smiles weakly and steps back, allowing her girlfriend entrance.
"I heard what you did to Amber," she purrs, eyes glimmering with delight and grin shining gleefully. "I didn't know you had it in you."
"How'd you hear about that already?" Marcese self-consciously touches the back of her neck.
"Peggy texted me," she chirrups. "At first I wasn't sure I believed her, but she had proof. She got it recorded on her phone."
Marcese swallows, feeling weary all of a sudden. She didn't want that recorded. To be honest, she almost regrets hitting Amber altogether. It's one of those things that's going hang over her head for awhile and now it's a certainty she's going to end up in that paper she never reads. This is the last kind of attention she wants.
"Oh," she finally breathes and stumbles back, flopping onto the couch.
"Don't be so glum," Debrah chides. "It was really sweet of you to defend me. I'm flattered." She glides over and climbs on top of Marcese, lacing their fingers together as she delicately unites their lips. Marcese closes her eyes and deepens the kiss, sighing blissfully through her nose. It erases more tension than anything else could.
When Debrah breaks the kiss, she releases her hands gently and absently pulls at her sleek tie as she sits. "Listen, there's something we should talk about."
"Yeah?" Marcese tips her head to one side.
"Yeah." Debrah slides off her lap and stands up on the carpet, apologetic smile slipping onto her face. "We should break up," she announces just like that.
The words are articulated simply and firmly, but they just don't register. Marcese's heart comes to a stop for the second time that day. "What?"
"Please don't give me that look," Debrah sighs. "It's been fun and all, but this wasn't meant to be serious to begin with. I like you, Marce, but I have bigger and better things to do and you're a distraction."
She bolts upright, organs jolting and suddenly icy on one side and burning on the other. "I don't have to be! W-We don't have to see each other all the time, but we don't have to break up! I'll rework my schedule around yours!"
"Oh, don't do this...It's not as simple as changing schedules or seeing each other less, it's— Oh, forget it. You want me to be honest with you, right? Like I always am?" Debrah tilts her head, eyes soft but mouth in a line.
"Yeah," Marcese squeaked numbly.
"I don't want to try. I'm probably going to be seeing other people and I don't want you tying me down."
Something inside Marcese squirmed as it died, but she finds herself saying, "You've cheated before. You could cheat again." And then once the words leave her lips, she really realizes how utterly pathetic she is and something else in her kicks the bucket too. Maybe it's one of her layers. Maybe it's one of the layers she never found, or else forgot to count. She wishes she could bury it in a biodegradable coffin.
"I don't want to cheat on you," Debrah admits and lovely carnations bloom in her cheeks. It's actually the first time Marcese has seen her blush, outside of being flushed and panting on the sheets. "I guess I feel like I owe you more than that..."
"Thanks," is what she says. She honestly, wholeheartedly, and absolutely does not know what she means.
"Yeah...I'm going to leave now." But she lingers, stepping back slowly like she thinks Marcese has something else to say. She's right, of course. She usually tends to be right, for someone so wrong.
"Wait. You can have this." She unties her tie and slips it out from under her collar, slapping it into Debrah's grasp before she can refuse and closing her slim fingers over it. It's code for Don't forget me, but that's really code for Please don't do this.
"Alright." And Debrah grins a little, a faintly amused twitching at the corner of her lips. "You can have that underwear of mine I know is still in your room."
"I wasn't planning on giving it back," she murmurs and grins a little herself even though it feels broken and alien on her face.
They don't say goodbye, but they must mean goodbye because Debrah leaves. And then Marcese is crying, practically choking on those pitiful, blubbering sobs, and she feebly throws that pair of Debrah's underwear in the trash. She knows in her heart that Debrah's going to throw her tie away too. Maybe they'll both end up in the same landfill.
It's a two weeks later when she's back at school and quietly minding herself in the gardening club when Amber approaches her. Marcese absently gives her credit for having the nerve to do it alone, as their last interaction was the one that messed up her pretty face. But maybe she's forgotten it, because it's all better now.
"I heard Debrah dumped you," she gloats, arms crossed and eyes glittering with satisfaction.
"It's old news," she mutters even though it doesn't feel old at all. She's swallowing nettles every time she thinks about it.
"You poor thing," she taunts in chipper singsong. "Your heart must be so broken."
"No," Marcese says flatly. "Not broken. Just bent. Is there anything else you want from me?"
"You should've been expelled for what you did to me." She squares her chin.
"I'm not in charge of that, Amber. Go bitch to your brother." She's defeated.
Amber rolls her eyes. "He's not in charge of that either. Anyhow, you might want to watch your back, because even if the administration won't do anything, I'm not going to let it go."
"Thanks for the warning, princess." Marcese dutifully bows her heard. If Amber says anything else before she leaves, she doesn't hear it. She's thinking about that feeling again, the one she told Lysander about. When you know you have a bruise because it hurts exactly like one, but for some reason it isn't showing up on your skin. They agreed there wasn't a name for that feeling, but now Marcese wonders if they were wrong. Maybe there is a name for it after all. Maybe it's a common word people use all the time, just in a different context.
A couple months pass as months tend to do and it's summer. There's no school and the air is hot and humid and Marcese wears sunglasses everyday because the galaxy's lightbulb is always shining. She's in a tank top and bulky shorts and walking to the beach with a friend that's also a prior fling, Dakota. He gropes her butt every now and then and he wants to hold hands, but she won't let him because it's just too damn hot outside for that.
There's a local newspaper stand on the way, and Marcese catches the front page out of the corner of her eye. The image stops her in her tracks. She trots over and lifts up her sunglasses, gazing at the image under the headline. There's Debrah, singing on stage just like she was always meant to, bathed in neon light and dressed in torn fabric and adorned with crimped lace.
In her hands is the microphone, and tied around the microphone in an awkward bow is Marcese's satin turquoise tie. She knows it, she'd recognize it anywhere.
"Hey, what's the holdup?" Dakota's voice breaks her out of her bittersweet reverie.
"Nothing," she calls over, grateful that he's walked a bit ahead of her because now there are beads of moisture rolling down her face that aren't sweat. She brushes them away and jogs over to catch up with him, shoving him playfully from behind. "You didn't have to walk so far ahead of me, jerk!"
"I didn't know you stopped," he protested and gently shoved her back.
"Neither did I," she chirps with a shrug.
He raises a brow. "Eh? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Don't worry about it," she breathes and pats him on the back.