The next time she sees Alyssa, it's after Zzyzx, after the dragon war, after a number of other smaller affairs. It's been years, and she's on another mission in between semesters, whispering heatedly to Seth in the candy aisle of a lonely Virginia gas station. But that's Alyssa Carter, alright.
Her hair's longer than it was before and the sleeve of colorful tattoos is new, but there's no mistaking the lines of her furrowed brow as she rings up Vanessa's energy drink nor her bored brown eyes as they rove over her cash register. She couldn't read the tag hooked to her tan polo shirt from here, but she's fairly certain. No else's (probably chapped) mouth curves like that and no else's fingers move like that (nails likely with ragged bitten edges). And no one could ever give their voice that quality, even in the tired, raspy tone of the more than half past midnight hours.
She nearly found herself starting over, a joking smile already tugging at her lips.
But Kendra was dead. She turned back around, clutching harder around her bright pink-and-yellow plastic bag, idly circling her finger around the nutritional information. She can't let Alyssa see her. Kendra Sorenson is supposed to be dead. Alyssa attended her funeral, watched a corpse that looked just like her be buried. Six feet under. Now they can't be more than ten, maybe fifteen feet apart. She needs to get out of here fast.
She isn't sure how she came in here without being spotted in the first place. Had she changed that much over the last few years? Had it really been so long now that Alyssa couldn't recognize her? Sure, years, but this wasn't the type of thing you were supposed to forget, she thought. Or maybe you were. But Kendra knew her. And she knew her. And it hurt to think that Alyssa might not.
(If Kendra was feeling a little more rational, a little more composed, she might think that Alyssa simply hadn't looked up. It was two o'clock in the morning. A lot of people visit gas stations. And Alyssa was half asleep at this point, in the throes of muscle memory.)
(But Kendra wasn't feeling all that rational, more like rattling, more like holding on by the smooth plastic pink-and-yellow bag.)
However she got in, she knew she had to get out now. Kendra was dead. Alyssa couldn't see her dead best friend, walking around, standing upright, tracing letters, like some ghost hovering just out of reach in the candy aisle at two a.m. in Virginia. Alyssa didn't deserve that. She didn't deserve any of it. Not the first time around and certainly not now.
She nudges Seth slightly, but that's awful of her, too. She wasn't there the last time those two saw each other, maybe at the funeral, or who knows (Seth does, Alyssa does, and who knows else), whatever blurry, bubbling moment between the daycare and Seth climbing into his ride home. However it went…
So she just nodded to the cashier, and whispers, "Leave a little bit after me, and don't let her see you." Seth mostly looks confused at the tallish girl behind the plexiglass plastic, but he nods slowly.
She carefully replaces her sour gummy worms on the beige metal shelf, dragging her fingers back to throw up her hood. She weaves to the other end of the aisle, wandering to the back transparent doors of the drinks, vivid wide-stanced powerades creeping into sugary bright juices creeping into tall cans of teas into thick-necked coffees into loud painted sodas to curvy alcohols; she creeps with them around the edges of the store, just the front facing windows now, pasted with sticker advertisements, until she can slip through the entrance/exit and out of Alyssa's orbit forever. For the last time.
(She wants to think of it as the last tie to her old life, a normal, if a little anxious, teenager in another suburban sprawl town, hooked pinkies together on the soccer field, sitting against her bedroom door with her cheek nestled into her shoulder, that kiss and the flaming cheeks afterwards, the lone crying in the shower of before. She's cutting it late, drifting free into that other, permanent life.) She cut this last tie ages ago. It's nothing now. A collection of fond childhood memories, tinted blue or gray or whatever. They're nothing to each other now.
She's pushing against the metal bar of the door when her own name hits her ear. It's a choked on, warbled "Kendra," and she can't help that her head darts up, meeting mutual shocked eyes on the cusp of shedding tears.
She's not sure if she murmurs Alyssa's name back, but she knows she's frozen against the cracked door when the first tear drops. And when Alyssa's awed sorrow sets itself on fire, shoving away from the counter disappearing out of the boxy space of cigarettes and condoms to grab her arm and push her out of the store, out around the corner where the parking lot borders on a yellow-green plain.
For a moment (for a lifetime) they just stare at one another, assessing, searching, scanning. Alyssa brings her hands up to hold her face with a red, scowling wonder, brushing at her cheek with her thumb. Their moment breaks at Kendra's contact with her wrist, and she finds herself shoved against the grimy wall.
"What are you doing here?" Alyssa yells, her voice becoming shrill as she goes on. "Fuck, Kendra, how are even here? I mean, what the fuck, Kendra!"
Kendra wants to tell her "I can explain," to lay the whole of it at her feet, but that's not exactly an option. There's not much of anything she can say, really, and she's not sure if it's better that Alyssa grapples with her sanity or her not-death, when there's no scrap of anything close to the truth to give. All she knows, scratching at the painted off-white bricks, is that Alyssa shouldn't be involved in her bullshit. Even if she could wrap her head around the magical nonsense, The Society and the preserves and Zzyzx, her life was dangerous and the lives around her tended to fall to pieces in lightning strikes.
"Answer me! Don't just stand there, Kendra, I saw your fucking corpse. I saw them bury you, and I heard them say you had a fucking stroke at fifteen years old! So, tell me, what the fuck is going on?"
"Alyssa, I," sobbing, "Shit, Alyssa. What am I supposed to say? I don't know. I can- I can't explain any of it. I never meant to die."
"What the fuck does that mean?" she screamed in the mode opera singers crack windows.
Pushing away from the wall, nibbling on her lip, Kendra looks away. "Look. It's probably best if you just forgot you saw me. I'm in a cemetery in Rochester, and that's all I can tell you."
"Like hell, it is. You tell me what's going on right now!" Alyssa cried, stabbing her in the chest with her finger for emphasis. Yes, the same bitten down nails, done over in splotchy, blue polish that she remembered, Kendra thought blearily.
"I ended up in the middle of some shady stuff, and it caught up with me," Kendra shrugged. "I never meant to hurt you, and I didn't do it of my own consciousness, believe me. But shit happened and I couldn't stop it, Lyss."
Alyssa's eye twitched as she geared up to scream some more. She almost certainly would have, too, if Warren hadn't interrupted them, popping in from the front with a vaguely threatening expression and heavy footsteps. Alyssa instinctively shrunk back, grabbing back at Kendra's hand.
Warren raised an eyebrow at her. "What's going on here?"
"I'm fine, Warren."
"Then why do I keep hearing screaming? And why did Vanessa say she pulled you out of the store?" He looked like he wanted to glare at Alyssa, but he mostly just managed to look confusedly at their interlocked hands.
"Who is this?" Alyssa demanded.
Kendra sighed, "This is my cousin, Warren." Then, aside to him: "I'll explain later, okay."
"Your cousin?" Alyssa gestured at him. "And wasn't he at your funeral too, Kendra," she blearily rubbed at the bridge of her nose, "So how about you just go ahead and explain it all right now, instead," she growled.
"Oh…," Warren blinked, "shit."
Kendra nodded minutely at her cousin, sharing a puzzled grimace.
"Oh, for fuck's sake! What? Did you join a cult? Is where you used to go during the summer and your whole family is in on it or some shit?" Alyssa huffed, apparently unable to decide between continuing to wave her hands about or folding them sternly.
"Um," Kendra squinted, "yes?"
After narrowing her eyes and pursing her lips at Kendra for a few moments, Alyssa looked up at the cloudy black sky, angrily tapping her foot against the cement.
"Ok, fine. 'Warren,' will you tell me what's going on since she won't, even after she left me thinking she died in her sleep five years ago?"
Warren panickedly tried to communicate with his eyes to Kendra before settling on a queasy, "Yeah, we're all in a cult."
Alyssa screamed, mangling her hair with her hands. She stared at Kendra with a red, tear-streaked face. She stared at her like, she stared at her like, like, like….
Kendra couldn't quite wrap her head around how she was being stared at. But it fucking hurt. And she wanted to tell her everything. She was owed everything. Kendra wanted…. And she wanted.
"Kendra, please," she pleaded. And she still had that look on her face.
Kendra swiped away the girl's tears with thin, brown fingers, silently deliberating, adding up what she could say, what to say. Darting her eyes over her face, she smoothed back Alyssa's blonde hair made messy, half pulled out from her hair tie in every direction.
Sighing, Kendra dropped her hands from Alyssa's face. "I…, It's complicated, but you're headed in the right direction. When I went to my grandparents the summer before we met, I became a part of something, another world you could say, crazy shit you wouldn't believe if I told you. And that winter you thought I'd died, I was really kidnapped, by someone from that other world. By the time I got away, you and everyone else already thought I was dead."
"Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean by other worlds? And if you were kidnapped, then who the fuck did we bury?"
"I told you," Kendra hedged, scuffing her heel against the ground, "You wouldn't believe me."
"Well, I really don't believe your vague-ass nothing rambles about 'another world,' 'crazy shit,' and your magical body double," Alyssa said, shooting her a deadpan look.
"Ok, guys, I don't know what's going on here, but it's time to go. If we're here much longer, I am going to fall asleep at the wheel!" Vanessa announced, her combat boots clacking with her annoyance as she appeared around the sidewalk.
Warren intercepted her, shooting a last weary glance at the pair before turning to lead her away. Whispering, not quite quietly, "I'll take your shift, Van. Just let them work it out."
Vanessa grunted, "I didn't even get my monster."
Alyssa eyed their retreating backs, "Where are you even going this late, anyways?"
"We're on our way to Vermont, actually. Have a…" she hesitated, "we have to go retrieve an artifact?"
"An artifact?"
"Yeah…"
"Ok," Alyssa breathed in deeply, "Time out. Let's start from the beginning. What happened with your grandparents? What is this 'other world,' quote on quote, you're talking about? Don't worry about me believing you, ok. If I can believe you're here in front of me, how big of a jump can it really be?"
Kendra chewed on her lip, "You're really not going to let this go, are you?"
"No, Kendra, I'm not just going to let this go!"
Kendra took a deep breath, "Ok, yeah, yeah, ok. This is going to be a lot. I'm sorry for it all in advance."
Alyssa interrupted her several times, "Wait, wait, back up," to crush her into tight hugs, "What the ever-loving fuck?" and to throw a "douche" at the traitor of the hour, but she got through it, and Alyssa mostly seemed to believe her.
Alyssa pulled her into another hug, burying her face into her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Kens."
Kendra slowly wrapped her arms around her back, "It's not your fault."
Alyssa shrugged, pressing a kiss against her cheek and darting back to nuzzle into her shoulder, "I'm still sorry. You were a fucking kid for most of that, and you shouldn't have had to do any of that."
Alyssa wouldn't let them leave without her. Is that more tragic than if she had gone back into that gas station, sharing a last forlorn look, and that was it? That long-cut tie cut a final time? It doesn't matter. Kendra certainly seemed to think it was, and the uneasy looks her cousin kept darting to her seemed to corroborate. To speak nothing of the lip-chewing the goliath of a man named Tanu did. It didn't matter. Like hell was Kendra waltzing off to somewhere between a near-death experience and the real deal while Alyssa worried after her here, and never knew for sure.
Seth at least seemed about the same boy, if a little sadder and a little more serious. In their gray SUV, he fistbumped her, complimented her tattoos before his attention was consumed by his twizzlers.
Alyssa left with them, and, snoring against Kendra's shoulder, she slept off her graveyard shift a whole four hours early.