When Jan moves in, the first thing Priscilla notices is how she sleeps.
Curled up on the couch, the blankets covering her regardless of how hot it is and her face buried in the cushions. Almost like a small animal trying to escape from something. When Pris is in the kitchen flipping pancakes like everything is normal the next day, she sees Jan staring at her from the couch. The other girl immediately looks away when she notices, so Priscilla pretends she hasn't seen.
Jan rarely touches her food, picking small bits of pancake off of her plate. When Pris tells her, crudely, like she always does, to eat her fucking food because she went to the trouble of making it when she could have just given her the shitty cereal that you can buy on the corner store, Jan just shakes her head. However, she does put a larger bite of pancake in her mouth, and Priscilla smirks.
She goes out, not knowing where she's really going but just wanting to go out, because she wonders if Jan regrets leaving her small Maine town and coming to live with a girl she barely knows. She'd suspected that putting an ad for a roommate needed up on the internet had been a bad plan, especially on Craigslist.
Why Jan left was beyond her. A small town was surely not too bad, not like the smog-filled suburbs of New Jersey where there are more car lots than people and the few people who live there permanently have their children hitchhike out of there at the age of sixteen.
Pris stands in the doorway for a few minutes, then turns around, deciding that she isn't going out after all.
Neither of them speak to each other for the rest of the day, but Jan eats her food and stares quietly up at the ceiling, occasionally murmuring a "thank you" or an "I'm sorry."
Before Jan is about to go to bed on the couch, Priscilla sits next to her. "I lost somebody, too, if that's what's your problem. I didn't like him at all, but I still lost him." Jan says she's sorry for her loss-what stupid, silly words those are-and stares down at the carpeting. "You can talk to me, if you want. I'll listen. I'm a shitty talker, but I'll listen."
Jan whispers that it's alright and that she doesn't need to talk, and that she's just glad she has a place to stay.
But Priscilla sits with her for the rest of the night, despite the fact that Jan never talks any and eventually falls asleep.
She wakes Jan up by turning on the radio, playing the stupidest, loudest pop song she can find. The singer wails about their lost love and Jan's eyes flutter open to Priscilla standing over her and looking impatient.
"Food's ready." She goes and turns down the radio, just enough to be audible but not enough to be more than slightly irritating. This time, breakfast is cereal from the corner store. "I figured you'd be the type of person who likes Cheerios," Priscilla says dismissively.
Jan says nothing, taking her food with a humility that makes Priscilla want to slap some sort of sense into her. "Hey." Pris grabs her shoulders, looking into her somewhat terrified blue eyes. "What happened to you? We're gonna live together, I should probably know." Jan wipes her eyes and sniffles. Priscilla immediately feels a rush of guilt. "C'mon, don't cry..."
Jan stares up at her, her eyes wide and full of pain. "The Long Walk."
Priscilla blinks. "Serious?" Jan nods, and Priscilla can't believe it. "My ex, Jan. My ex joined the Long Walk. His name was Pete, he was an alright guy. I was a bitch to him, Jan. I cut his face open with a letter opener. He wasn't a bad guy, just dumb. Real dumb. Sure, he wasn't a good boyfriend, but he didn't deserve to die." Priscilla looks down, recalling the horror on Pete's face when he fell to his knees in her apartment with blood pouring from his face and she'd screamed and ran to the bathroom and vomited because she was horrified at him and at love and most of all, at herself.
"P-pete?" Jan's expression is curious. "My...my boyfriend. His name was Ray. He won." Priscilla's jaw drops even more. "He doesn't want it, though. He keeps on...keeps on babbling about some boy named Pete and how love hurts and how...he just doesn't love me anymore and I just..."
Priscilla laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Boys really fucking suck."
Jan smiles weakly and gets up from the table, leaving her Cheerios untouched. Priscilla watches her long, golden hair swishing back and forth behind her as she disappears into one of the back rooms. Pris couldn't care less if she goes into her bedroom, the sanctity of having her own room is something that she gave up awhile ago.
When she comes in, Jan is praying. Priscilla kneels next to her and tells her that God can't help real people, and sometimes praying just makes it worse. Jan responds that she never believed in God, but he's the only one who listens to her.
"I'm here to listen."
Jan says she knows and continues praying, her hands clenched together and her eyes squeezed shut so tight that Priscilla can see tears forcing their way out. Priscilla pulls her up off the bed and tells her that they'll go get lunch somewhere and that Ray and Pete and the Long Walk don't matter anymore.
Jan obviously had some plan to make money, but she never mentions it and instead just regards the tiny, ugly concrete New Jersey town with some strange wonder. And the best Priscilla can do for her is make her dinner and not ask questions and play Lana Del Rey CDs for the rest of the evening, because Jan seems to like it.
Priscilla stays up working on schoolwork, because she'll be at the community college before she knows it. She's sure it'll be the community college, because she's not any better than that and it's where almost every girl in town goes.
"Got any plans for the future?"
Jan shakes her head and pulls out a copy of Dracula from the tiny packsack she brought with her. Priscilla laughs, and Jan looks at her quizzically. "Nothing. Just never thought a girl like you'd be reading Bram Stoker."
"I like horror novels. They make me feel less afraid because if I can get over physical fears like vampires, then I'm not afraid of feelings and death anymore."
It's the most Jan has said in two days, and the more she says, the less Priscilla understands.
When Jan goes to bed that night, she follows Priscilla into her bedroom. Priscilla doesn't complain, because it's nice to hear someone breathing next to her for once.
Jan lies on the one side of the bed, and Priscilla on the other, and neither of them look at each other. A train goes by outside, a long, drawn out honking sound followed by short, soft chugging. Jan appears to be asleep, Pris thinks that it probably doesn't take much to get her asleep. So Priscilla tiptoes out of the room and into the bathroom.
Living with someone else would make it harder, less freedom, but somehow the prospect of being alone suddenly seems terrifying.
She stares at herself in the mirror, her collarbones and her high cheekbones and her short, messy dark hair. She's about to turn around when she feels Jan wrap her arms around her neck.
"I thought you were asleep."
Jan murmurs something, she's still half-asleep and Priscilla vaguely wonders whether she's really making conscious decisions. "Why're you just standing here looking at yourself?" Jan's voice is barely a whisper. Priscilla doesn't think she ever goes above that volume.
"I dunno." Jan rests her head on Priscilla's shoulder, and Pris can feel how cold Jan is compared to her. "Go back to bed, Jan."
"Not if you don't come with me." Priscilla sighs and follows, and when she finally falls asleep, with Jan having stolen most of the blanket and the moon shining in through the open window, Priscilla wonders whether someone as cynical as her could need someone small and broken and naive like Jan.
a fic i found while playing the "what unpublished fanfics can i find if i look deep enough into my folder" game. i claim no ownership to the long walk