"Hi, I'm Rachel."
I don't know what asshole said time stands still when the big shit happens, but they must not have been fucking paying attention.
Nothing is still here
The cloud-filtered light is playing with her hair, shifting it on her right side between about seven different shades of blues and purples, and I swear to God it's not so much hanging as it is floating around her face, just grazing her neck or her cheeks or her ear every so often as if trying to get her attention, offering to share some secret she's actively choosing not to hear.
Her bitten black fingernails are slowly digging into the thick fabric around her crossed arms, and the dark stripes warp as she seems to pull herself in. She wiggles her left fingers slightly, playing a tiny piano melody into her bicep, and I think of the clock back in the manor moving to reveal the hidden passageway in response to the proper sequence on the old baby grand in the corner. Her right hand repeats the motion, chipped and chewed black nails dancing a little over her elbow, but her lips don't move to the beat of it, not like when I'm reciting some stupid code for whatever goddamn safe for the thousandth time, anyway, but the way you absently tap the beat of a song you forgot your parents or whoever the fuck once cared used to play for you a long long time ago.
Shit. She's saying something, but I swear it's like I'm hearing it under water, swept up in the crevices of the smile I see around her mouth, skin twitching up the bridge of her nose and wrinkling between her eyebrows. The smile seems to gather around the corners of her eyes only, the slight folds careful never to touch the pools that are maybe a bit too calm—thin, pale ice that looks safe enough to trust, but could crack at the slightest pressure in the wrong spot … not that I would know anything about that, of course.
Fuck. I need to know what she's saying. I'm drowning in a million points of her and I swear this is fucking oxygen, so I physically tear my eyes away from every tiny detail that has suddenly become so goddamn important, hitting more as a stumble back
—a flawless, glittering red gem on a tarnished silver chain—
and back
—a stray eyelash clinging to the others on strength of will and makeup alone—
and back
—a shadowy dip behind a pale collar bone just deep enough to sip from—
back into my own body, left to run on auto pilot while tumbling through the web of hers.
Of course, this is when I realize the biggest fucking detail I somehow missed.
She's coming right towards me.
Oh God.