Mikasa
Levi's writing habits unnerve me.
He's a stickler for single-spaced text with narrow margins, leaving me no space for comments and suggestions. He rejects staples and paperclips, and he wastes paper by printing one-sided instead of double-sided. Originally, he enlisted me as a reader, telling me to put myself in the shoes of the "general public, but maybe a notch higher, so 'general public' minus the population that supported George W. Bush." My job was to highlight any lines or passages that simply didn't make sense. Rambly sermons, overly-florid descriptions, excessive snark, failed metaphors. I'd leave the marked-up pages on the dining room table, and in the mornings, over breakfast, he'd contest each and every one of my comments.
"How the hell does this not make sense?" He'd take a pen and strike through my feedback. "You're supposed to take a mini pause at this em-dash, then bam. Mind-blowing conclusion hits you out of nowhere."
"It's still a run-on sentence," I'd argue back. "And you have a hanging participle right here."
"It's a stylistic choice."
"It's a flag in Microsoft Word."
In the evenings, he paces back and forth on our patio. He asks me what I'd like to know about Erwin Smith, and when I suggest something, he takes a sip from his beer before launching into a long-winded anecdote.
He tells me about the time a roadside explosive sent their vehicle flying off the road. By a stroke of luck, he and Erwin climbed out of the accident with only scrapes and bruises, but for their driver, it was another story. Levi pulled the man out and started doing chest compressions. Erwin, on the other hand, stood off to the side. "Look at his skull. It's crushed into his head," he told Levi. "Say you resuscitate him. But what will that mean for the rest of his life, living with severe, irreparable damage to his prefrontal cortex?"
"I wanted to knee him in the crotch," Levi said. "And while he's down, kick him a couple of times. And after that, maybe throw him down a flight of stairs."
He tells me about the time Erwin was just about to publish classified national security details when he was summoned to the Oval Office. There, he was grilled for two hours by the president of the United States, but he published, nonetheless—which later earned him his first Pulitzer Prize.
Levi also tells me the finer details, like how Erwin called the bathroom "the loo." Or like how he only consumed non-fiction, convinced that he constantly needed to be absorbing and processing new knowledge. He preferred documentaries over movies, long-form journalism over novels, podcasts over late-night comedy. He was somehow both a night owl and an early bird, but he never looked gaunt or had bags under his eyes. He loved Latin dance—bachata, salsa, merengue, he could do it all. He could win big at poker, and he knew how to play the trumpet.
On top of being Levi's copy-editor, I also took charge of "competition research" on Floch Forster, which involved keeping tabs on his Twitter and LinkedIn activity. I made spreadsheets that monitored who he was following and tracked his likes and retweets, and Levi demanded a daily briefing of his online movements after we bickered over my edits. A number of interview subjects had remarked that they had already run through the same questions earlier with Floch, so Levi had reason to be paranoid.
It's been tough balancing these new responsibilities of reading and editing and listening and stalking an unsuspecting Floch Forster on top of the lacrosse season and homework, but I've needed the distractions—or rather, the excuses for not yet having a prom dress for this weekend.
When Levi and I took that ditch day to Chicago, the principal announced something horrific on the intercom that afternoon: Jean and I were nominated for the prom court.
"This is an awful joke," I told my jeering teammates the next day, as we were changing in the locker room. "Didn't you want to be Prom Queen anyways, Ymir?"
Ymir lightly whacked my behind with her lacrosse stick. "Oh, trust me, you're going down, Ackerman," she said.
"You can literally have it. I don't care," I insisted.
But Jean was fizzing with excitement when he got the news. He left more than three voice messages while I was interviewing Erwin's former coworker, and when I finally picked up the phone, he went on and on about how the stars aligned perfectly for prom night. His parents were going to be out of town, and he had already planned on throwing a post-prom party at his place. "I love you so fucking much!" he yelled into the phone, and I mumbled back a hurried, "Love you, too!" before hanging up. In the driver's seat, Levi snickered.
And so here I am at the mall, rooting through hangers upon hangers, in search of a dress the day before the dance. I expected to see more people from high school here for some last-minute dress hunting, but unbeknownst to me, prom shopping is meant to be a weeks-long affair of parsing through dozens of shops (both retail and online), consulting with friends by texting photos back and forth, researching hair and nail salons, and planning logistics down to the minute. Thankfully, Ymir and Jean had that last one covered. Starting at noon, tomorrow is a straight marathon:
Noon-1PM: Lunch with the lax girls. But nothing too heavy, staying mindful of our waistlines.
1PM-4PM: Agonize over hair, make-up, nails, etc. For three hours. At my house, apparently?
4PM-6PM: Meet up with our dates. Max out multiple SD cards with photos.
6PM-7:30PM: Dinner at a restaurant booked a month in advance.
7:30PM-8:00PM: Pregame in the school parking lot with a water bottle filled with tequila.
8:00PM-9:30PM: The actual prom, in which we try to uphold the facade of sobriety.
9:30PM-unknown: Absolutely trash Jean's house.
Sasha was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago, but she just texted saying she was going to be held up by a vague "something," much to my dismay. I was hoping that she'd grab a couple of things off of the racks, and we'd call it a day after that.
I never understood the fascination with glitter and studded jewels on dresses. An overly kind sales assistant who reminds me of Jean's mother suggests some bright pink and baby blue styles, but after twenty minutes of gaping at how ridiculous I look in the changing room mirror, I shuffle to the food court for a tray of what my mother used to call "fake" Japanese food.
When I check my phone, my messages are flooded with a string of apologetic texts from Sasha, who says she's going to be another hour. There was also a missed call from Jean, and he followed up via text, asking what color I was wearing so that he could get a matching tie and corsage. He's been trying his hardest to conceal it, but I can tell he's a little frustrated by how much I've been procrastinating on this.
Listlessly, I stir my miso soup with a splintery pair of disposable chopsticks. I never told Mom this before she passed because I always went along with her grumbling, but fake Japanese food is one of my guilty pleasures. Dad and I bonded over this, and whenever she was out of town for work, we'd pig out on California rolls and burnt tempura for consecutive meals. It was our secret.
When I look across the food court, I almost drop my chopsticks into the soup. Several tables down, facing away from me are a blond bowl cut and a head of scruffy, brown hair. I gather my things together and make my way in that direction, reaching for my ice-cold plastic bottle of Fanta. Armin spots me, but I quickly raise a finger to my lips before he can say anything. Eren is in mid-sentence when I press the chilly soft drink to the nape of his neck. It's always been his Achilles' heel.
"The fuck?!" he yelps, clapping a hand to his neck and twisting around in outrage. "Mikasa!"
"Can I join you guys?" I ask, nodding to the empty seat by Eren.
"You're absolutely evil. I'm getting a brain-freeze now," Eren gripes as Armin moves aside the napkin dispenser for me to slide in.
"What's up, Mikasa?" Armin asks me. "Are you pumped for tomorrow?"
"Oh, right. We're in the presence of royalty," Eren adds, elbowing me. He's been relentless about my prom court status since the news came out, teasing me each time I passed him in the hallways.
"I did not ask for this," I mumble, dousing a shrimp in sauce. "You guys better not have voted for me."
"Should I tell her?" Eren says to Armin. Armin gives him an uneasy look, but Eren shrugs and takes a bite from his hotdog. He still orders them with his strange condiment cocktail, which consists of a heaping pile of relish with a dollop of mustard. But never, under any circumstances, should ketchup come within a foot of his food.
"Tell me what?" I demand.
"Jean kept dropping this line a couple of weeks ago, being all like, 'I wonder who's gonna get on the court.' And we were all like, 'Okay, fine. We get it. We'll vote for you.' Which means voting for you, by extension."
"Oh, geez," I groan, my stomach tying itself in knots.
"At least you get a $5 gift card to Ben & Jerry's!" Armin chirps.
"Yeah, Your Highness. Congrats on being popular," Eren adds, and I shoot him a burning look.
"Who are you guys taking to prom?" I ask, trying to steer the conversation away from me.
"I've got a debate tournament," Armin says woefully. He pats Eren on the back. "This guy here, on the other hand…"
"You wanna hear some hot gossip?" Eren wads a used napkin into a ball and drops it onto his empty plate. "So Connie and Sash have been secretly a thing for the longest time."
"Isn't this common knowledge?"
"They're in so much denial about it. In fact, I think they're hooking up right now. Connie was supposed to show up, but he keeps saying he's running late."
"It all makes sense now," I mutter. "Sasha ditched me here."
"Yeah, so they're being weird about how everyone's catching onto what's going on. Like everyone's expecting them to take each other to prom and all, so they hatched this grand fucking plan to throw everyone off by having me take Sash, while Connie takes Annie, but I don't know how that's working out because I think Bertholdt asked her. Basically, it's a shitshow, but it kinda works out since Annie and I aren't really talking much nowadays."
"Sasha never told me about this," I mutter.
"We're just going as friends!" Eren says quickly. "Don't worry, it's just a stupid Sasha-Connie gimmick."
"I'm not worried." My tone comes out a little more defensive than I intended, and I can feel heat rushing into my face. "I think it's ridiculous how much denial they're in," I add.
"Preach," Eren agrees.
Armin makes a weird sound in the back of his throat.
"What?" Eren and I say at the exact same time.
"Nothing," Armin says. He gets up and flashes us his dimply smile, "I should probably head home and get a good night's sleep. I'm supposed to be up at 5AM."
"Wait, dude. You're my ride," Eren protests, but Armin gives him a knowing look. Eren's ears turn red instantly.
"I mean, I could drive you," I offer. "Since we're neighbors and all."
I could've sworn Armin shot Eren a wink before heading out of the food court.
Eren is looking for a bowtie, but he makes it very clear that he hates bowties. "Do you think I could just roll up without one?" He visibly cringes at the options before us. "You know, the whole one-button-undone, no-tie, Silicon Valley vibe? As long as the flower thing matches whatever Sasha's wearing, it's all good, right?"
I hold a polka-dotted bowtie up to his collar, and when he grimaces, I laugh. "I feel like half of it is the attitude. It's impossible to pull one of these off if you look like you're wanna strangle somebody."
We float in and out of stores, forgetting why we came to the mall in the first place. Eren tells me about how he's considering growing his hair out and trying out the "man bun," so we dig through the bins of overpriced scrunchies and hair elastics at Urban Outfitters, and I tie the hair on his crown into a bean sprout, the way we did as kids. When the store managers give us the stink eye, we escape into a Bath and Body Works, where we sniff at things until we stagger out, lightheaded from the pungent smells. We try on brand new cleats at the Adidas store and kick a soccer ball through the aisles of shoeboxes. Eren shits on lacrosse as a "knockoff" form of soccer. And we're back at square one, idling in the food court yet again.
He tells me about how he and Connie are starting a garage band—well, a garage band without the garage part because he has to park his car somewhere—but they're making slow progress because Connie sucks at the drums. Also, neither of them can sing, so they're relying on Armin, their manager, to find them a lead vocalist, on top of a guitarist and bassist. "Hey, what do you think of this band name?" Eren asks me, as we wait in the Auntie Anne's line for soft pretzels. "The Hash-Slinging Slashers?"
I wrinkle up my nose. "Like that Spongebob villain?"
He opens up about his mom's divorce and how he's noticed gray streaks in her hair. He sees his dad every other weekend. Conversations between them don't feel the same anymore, and Eren struggles to connect with his dad's "old-new" wife, Dina. He tells me about how his half-brother Zeke has introduced him to the world of LSD and the Grateful Dead, but he assures me that he does it in moderation, promising me that he won't touch cocaine with a ten-foot pole, even though Zeke has offered, numerous times.
We split a cinnamon-toasted pretzel, and he tells me to screw off when I urge him to accept my Venmo transfer. Connie and Sasha bail on us, and we put our text messages side-by-side, making fun of their elaborate excuses.
"So how are you gonna get your dress?" he asks.
"I don't even know," I groan. "Why does Jean care so much about these things?"
"Was that a rhetorical question? Because I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with his fragile ego."
"Why do you hate him so much?" I threaten to chuck a piece of pretzel at him.
Grinning, he ducks instinctively. "Why do you like him so much?" he counters. "Change my mind, then."
"Well," I begin, nervous all of a sudden. I feel like I'm arguing a case before a judge right now, but I showed up to court utterly unprepared. "He cares a lot about me," I stammer. "He's open-minded. He makes an effort to enjoy the things I enjoy. Like he's started watching late-night comedy. He reads the New Yorker with me. He's gotten into biopics. We saw Vice last week." I lift my eyes from the food court table, seeing if Eren's convinced. He sits across from me, pinning me with his paralyzing gaze, waiting for me to go on, saying not a word. "I mean," I say, watching him carefully, "I bet he had a swallow a lot of pride to come asking you for help. I guess I really appreciate the lengths he took just to get to know me."
Eren is uncharacteristically silent for a moment. His eyes are stormy, like there's a thought churning in his head, on the brink of bursting out of his mouth, but he's trying his hardest to hold it at bay. He lets out a weak laugh and follows up with an even weaker reply, "I wish Jean treated me that well." It's his turn to shift uncomfortably in his seat. "So this dress," he says, changing the subject. "I'm guessing this is a 'keep the tags and receipt' sorta deal?"
With thirty minutes left until the mall closes, I can feel the anxiety pooling in my gut. Flustered, I take Eren through the same racks, explaining why this dress is so embarrassing with its frills and why that one hugs a part of my body better left concealed. He follows me, nodding his head vigorously, pretending to know exactly what I mean.
Jean calls me, asking about colors again, and I hastily reassure him that I'm working on it. Before he can inquire further, I fabricate a white lie about bad phone service and hang up.
Defeated, I swipe a hand through a line of reject dresses. "I'm starting to think we should've thought twice about screwing around in Bath and Body Works."
"Yeah, I still have a headache from all those fruity sprays," Eren remarks.
"How shitty would it be if I pretended that I was having one of my migraines?" I sigh.
"Wait, Mikasa, what about that one?" He motions his head towards the changing rooms. Standing by them is a girl our age, and she's trying on a gown in a red wine color.
"She's already got dibs on it—"
"She doesn't look happy with it, though."
With bated breath, we watch her frown and check her butt in the mirror. She's accompanied by her mother, who's shaking her head with distaste. The girl is a couple of inches too short for the dress. She disappears back into the changing room, and when she comes out in her normal clothes, empty-handed, Eren gives me a fist-pump.
The dress is left hanging in the changing room. I mouth the words please, please, please as I fumble around for the tag, praying that it's in my size. Relief rushes over me when the sizing checks out. It's the proper length when I slip into it, and it's got a simple halter top with thin straps, free of the bells and whistles that bogged down the other dresses.
"Eren, you might be the real MVP," I say, opening the door. "Can you zip me up?"
He's gaping at me when I step out, and it takes him a moment to gather himself before he blurts out a "yeah, sure thing." His fingers accidentally brush against the small of my back, and his touch sends static-like sensations up my spine. It takes him a while to get the zipper to behave, and his hand sweeps aside my hair so that it won't get caught. In the mirror across from us, I can see that we're both growing redder by the moment.
"There we go," he says, finally.
I swish around, checking the dimensions in the mirror. I already have a pair of open-toed heels that would complement this well, and I can probably find something in mom's old jewelry boxes for accessories.
"Gotta hand it to you," I remark. "I think this is it."
"I think so too, Mikasa," he agrees, smiling.
Levi
Mikasa's copy-editing habits drive me up the wall.
She is a champion of the semicolon, whereas I use them sparingly, siding with the great writer Kurt Vonnegut on this issue, who summed it up aptly: "All [semicolons] do is show you've been to college." The public education system has engineered her to have a zero-tolerance policy towards sentence fragments, and she is absolutely unbudging when it comes to defending the Oxford comma.
But I will admit that she is exceedingly thorough. She also gives me a page or two of her own personal criticism, and while I disregard the majority of it, I always do find a line or two of keen insight. She works hard. She's recently switched over from tea to coffee, especially since her lacrosse season has started up. I've watched a couple of her games, and her team is a well-oiled machine that'll sweep the state competition without breaking a sweat—which surprises me because they are a rambunctious bunch.
My morning of quiet, peaceful productivity skids to a halt when the girls varsity lacrosse team parades in through the front door. The ladies dump cosmetic bags, backpacks, and boxes of Whiteclaw on every free surface—the dining table, the kitchen island, the marble counters, even the stove-top. They squawk compliments at each other and blast pop music through a portable speaker. Both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms are occupied by girls smearing make-up onto their faces, frying their hair with curling irons, or complaining about how bloated they look.
Mikasa's ready within half an hour. She steps out in a full-length crimson gown with her hair twisted into an up-do. "I should've given you a head's up about all this," she tells me apologetically.
I pop open an intriguing "mango-flavored" Whiteclaw. But after one sip, I shake my head furious and hand the rest to Mikasa. "This is a sorry excuse for an alcoholic beverage," I tell her.
Carefully, she raises the aluminum can to her mouth and takes a sip.
The other day, she asked me why I enjoyed beer so much, so I took several cans and bottles out from the fridge and lined them up in a row. One by one, from the lighter ales to the darker porters, I walked her through the different brews, and she basically gagged on all of them. "How do people enjoy this?" she gasped after chugging down a glass of water. Yet she has been joining me on the patio for evening beers. Her tolerance, as expected, is abysmal, and she flushes fire engine-red by her third sip, but gradually, she's developed an appreciation for chocolate stouts.
Usually, she listens to me talk about Erwin, jumping in occasionally to ask a question. Sometimes, I indoctrinate her with the golden rules of drinking beer. And other times, we sit out there without saying a word, a radio between us blaring the local rock station.
"I thought you were against drinking," I commented one evening as we watched the sunset.
"I'm against the way my father drank," she corrected me.
We clinked bottles after she said that.
Hours later, as the girls reach the finishing stages of getting ready, the doorbell rings again—multiple times. Some idiot is jabbing at it incessantly, and when Mikasa gets the door, a horde of adolescent males marches in, hooting and hollering at the dressed-up ladies, their noisy dress shoes clacking against the hardwood floors. They bring in a cloud of cologne that mingles sickeningly with the fog of perfume hanging in the kitchen. Even Eren and his annoying bald friend have cleaned themselves up.
Mikasa scampers over and drops a Kodak into my hands. "Go easy on the flash," she whispers. "A lot of the girls say too much makes their skin too 'reflective.' Everyone's going to be hounding me for photos because I have the journalist uncle."
"Who else is showing up?" I demand. "Don't tell me we're scheduled to have the marching band as well."
"Parents," she answers.
"Sorry, what?"
"They wanna take pictures too. We'll be in the backyard."
"You should've told me this a month in advance!" I hiss after her, but with the regal posture of an aloof queen, she's already drifting towards Jean—who, correct if I'm wrong, has a hard-on at this exact moment.
When I step outside, a crowd of ooh-ing and ahh-ing parents have coalesced in our backyard. I'm whisked back to those days of covering the Chicago city hall, shoving my way through the camera equipment of my competitors, vying for a good spot.
"ATTA GIRL, SASHA! THAT'S MY GIRL!" A huge man with a southern drawl bellows, snapping photos of a brown-haired girl, who is somehow bridal carrying a bug-eyed Eren. Behind them, Eren's bald friend looks unimpressed (and date-less, as it seems).
"If he doesn't get a concussion from this photo shoot, it's gonna happen sooner or later when they all get wasted tonight." Carla materializes next to me, holding up her iPhone camera. Still wearing her hospital scrubs, she must've just ended her Saturday rotations.
"Do you want a beer later?" I offer.
"Damn straight I do. Huh, Jean's a little excited tonight," Carla snickers. "Don't blame him, though. Mikasa looks so beautiful."
"You know what's the best part?" I tell her as we make our way towards them. I click on the Kodak. "He'll be haunted by photographic evidence of this. For the rest of his life. Say cheese, kiddos."
Carla struggles to contain her laughter as I get pictures of Mikasa and Jean—from all angles, may I add. But out of sympathy, I take a few photos from the waist up. Jean tries to take one kissing her, but Mikasa accidentally twists away at the last moment, leaving us with a glorious shot of him with puckered lips, while she turns her shoulder on him.
"Here, let me get some of you and Mikasa," Carla says, reaching for my camera.
"I suck at photos," I protest, but she's already pushed me next to Mikasa, who now towers over me, now that she has her heels on.
"Levi!" Carla whines. "Show me those pearly-whites, will you? You look like you're at a funeral."
"I am smiling."
"No, that's a smirk."
"It's hopeless, Ms. Jaeger," Mikasa says. "That's his default setting."
"What's choppin', neighbors?!" Eren photobombs one of the pictures, almost leap-frogging over my shoulders. He wilts when I glare daggers at him—an interaction that Carla manages to capture in a series of shots.
"How did they turn out?" Mikasa asks me when I flip through the photos, but as she wobbles towards me in her heels, she stumbles over the uneven surface of the patio.
I catch her arm and steady her. "Like I said before, I'm forecasting a twisted ankle."
"Supportive, as always," she says. She nods at her photos with Jean, wincing a little at the failed kissing one. She cracks a smile when I show her our pictures. And she breaks out into a full grin when we reach Eren's photobombs. "That's my favorite one," she remarks. "You look like you want to assault him with a tube of toothpaste all over again."
"So tell me, just so it's fresh in your mind, all the dumb, little sayings I've taught you," I say firmly.
"Relax, I won't drink that much."
"Still, rattle them off for me."
She sighs, counting off on her fingers. "Hydrate or die-drate. Don't drink and drive. Always use protection. Don't get preggers. A drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts. He that drinks fast, pays slow. Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy—"
"Did I seriously teach you that last one?"
"Yep."
"You forgot the one with beer and liquor."
"Oh, right. Beer before liquor, and you're in the clear—"
"Wrong."
"Liquor before beer, and you're in the clear. Beer before liquor, you'll never be sicker."
"Okay, run along. Leave me in peace," I tell her. "Try not to get your stomach pumped in the morning."
She does something she's never done before. Still unsteady in her shoes, she bends down, arms outstretched, and she hugs me. "Thanks, Levi," she says, before rejoining her friends.
I snap some candid shots of the teenagers before breaking out a couple of IPA's to share with Carla. As Mikasa leaves, she waves good-bye to me, and I raise my beer bottle in her direction. The kids trickle out, and the parents follow suit, leaving Carla and me to ridicule the photos. As we do this, I notice a pattern. In Mikasa's photos with Jean, she's barely smiling. If anything, she almost resembles the grim-faced woman in Grant Wood's American Gothic painting. But in her candid shots, where she's talking with Eren, she looks radiant.
"Carla," I say.
"Hmm?"
"You know that bet we made? Over when these two will do something stupid?"
"I still stand by senior year homecoming."
"If I raise you twenty bucks, can I change my bet to this weekend?"
A/N: The updating spree continues! I'm new to this terminology, but usually, when I write WUARD, I'm more of a "pantser," aka I've kinda been winging the plot instead of having everything planned out in painstaking detail. However, I think we're at a point in WUARD, where it's necessary for me to sketch out the plan for the next few chapters, so I actually spent the past couple of days rereading everything I've written—which is SUCH as a strange experience because I feel like my writing has changed so much from three years ago… IDK, mainly, I feel like my prose is tighter and more concise nowadays, though I gotta say, pacing has been a persistent weak point of mine, even up to this day. Anyways, I scraped together a game plan, and I've come to the realization that, holy crap, we are in the third act of this story, as sumireh surmised on in the comments! I'm estimating that WUARD's got roughly six chapters left before we wrap things up for good. Reiterating that that's a rough estimate, though, since I'm a "pantser" at heart, and some silly ideas might pop into my head at the very last minute ;)
Thanks so much for all the kind words, my dear friends! I've been getting the most heartwarming, soul-lifting messages on Tumblr, and it's been such a delight hearing all of your takeaways in the comments. As always, I'm so excited to hear what you guys thought of this chapter, and I'll catch ya in the next one! (Hopefully I can get this upcoming one rolled out by the coming weekend… anticipating it to be a bit of a loooong one.)