"You're such a Gryffindor; you might as well be Ginny Weasley!" Wynonna Earp crowed, crawling across the living room floor to loop the red and gold tie over her sister's fiancée's neck. "Or..." She leaned back to sit on her knees. "Maybe a cousin. Fuckin' Jo was gonna put a Weasley cousin in book four, y'know. Mafalda, like the Ministry chick. That could be you. Ginny's more reckless. She dates the fuzz, but she wouldn't be one."
Nicole arched her head up to look at Waverly who was sitting on the couch. She adjusted her knees to press more firmly against Nicole's shoulders and shrugged. Meanwhile, Wynonna muttered something about "book!Ginny," and "character assassinations." There were more than a couple expressions of surprise in the room—coupled with Rosita turning her whole Zoom background into a emoji.
Rachel dared to give voice to the feeling in the room. Jeremy looked like he was buzzing to; he might have gotten through unscathed, but Rachel was the surer bet. "You've read the books?"
Wynonna took a swig of the Holiday Haze beer Waverly ordered specially for this Christmas. Nicole's ribcage contracted. She knew that literacy had been a go-to for Wynonna's childhood bullies. From her seat, she couldn't see her friend's eyes flashing above the neck of her beer, but she could imagine.
Wynonna lowered the bottle, her constantly busy hands picking at the label. Her face spelled out her desire to take slug number two. Then, the screen on the video baby monitor next to the laptop they'd put Rosita on lit up, and she put the beer on the nearest table with a clink.
"S'alright," Gus reached over from her chair and put a steadying hand on her niece's shoulder. "She's a sleep talker."
Wynonna stayed tense, poised to charge up the stairs, but let her aunt's reassurance keep her in the room. A different version of her would've strolled out the door within seconds of Rachel's question, with a casual crack about reading condom wrappers. Nicole gave Rachel a look, trying to convey apologize without drawing the attention of the woman still sitting across from her.
"I didn't mean anything by that," Rachel said finally. Thank God. Nicole wasn't sure she could've jerked her eyes one more time. "Just, surprised me you were familiar enough to know about fan speculation."
"The break between books four and five was long," Rosita, of all people, pointed out. "Every word she said was analyzed."
"And now they should be ignored," Wynonna added. Nicole had to bite the inside of her cheek to hide her own surprise. Wynonna had been at the top of her hot-mess game during the whole JK-Rowling-is-a-transphobe debacle, but apparently still absorbing pop culture like a sponge. If accused, she'd deny it to her dying day, but Wynonna was nothing if not an onion.
Alice made another noise, which was followed by the squeak of her pulling up on the wooden rail of the crib she'd only need for a month or so more. Wynonna swiped up the monitor and stood.
Halfway across the room she turned to Gus. "Go on," the older woman directed. "I'll be here if you need anything."
Wynonna bit her lip, and then clambered upstairs. Gus made a point of settling into her chair. "Waverly, weren't most of your pleasure reads still at the ranch? Far as I recall you only moved the reference volumes up here."
"They were. Oh, are you going to use my room for something? I'll come get 'em. Sorry they were taking up—"
Gus held up a finger. "Girl, take the next exit so I can come back around to my point."
Jeremy snickered.
"Willa weren't much of a reader. Knowing what I know now, I'm sure Ward considered it a waste of the time she coulda spent training. Maybe didn't want her thinking about other folks' stories.
"Wynonna, on the other hand. That child couldn't sit through a meal, but hand her a book in the morning and she'd have it read by sunset."
"Um. You're sure you're not thinking of Waverly?" Jeremy asked. "Just, that seems more like...Not Wynonna."
"No way," Waverly held up her hands. "I'm Research Girl, but I wasn't a reader as a kid. My dyslexia didn't get diagnosed 'til first grade, for one."
The primary expression in the room was chagrined, not surprised, which said a lot to Nicole about how Waverly fit into their little family. Recently, she'd admitted that she hadn't ever let Chrissy know how hard she worked in school, much less Champ.
"That's how I justified him not caring about my graduation," she'd told Nicole. "I told myself he thought school came naturally for me, so of course I'd be the best. I blamed myself for keeping things from him, but I know now it's a mark of how unobservant he was. Chrissy figured it out at some point, I think, but Champ…." She'd shrugged.
Nicole didn't think anyone appreciated Waverly as much as they should, but at least in this room they knew she climbed mountains rather than assuming she hopped over molehills.
"And, for two," Gus said. "You could bat your eyes anyone would stop what they were doing and read to you."
"Just Wynonna!" Waverly protested. "And you. Mama, I guess. Curtis. A couple of the ranch hands." Gus raised an eyebrow. Either one of them could've said things more simply, but except Ward and Willa wasn't something that got said, and that probably wasn't going to change anytime soon.
"Slid through school on that smile for a while," Gus noted.
Waverly looked down, but Nicole caught the self-satisfied quirk of her lip. She had no doubt that on some level her girl had known exactly what she was doing, even at six years old. She'd figured out how to ingratiate herself, in spite of the generations of prejudice against Earps working against her. With both her sisters still getting sent to detention regularly, and Ward Earp's reputation slipping downhill quickly—she'd made work for her. Realizations like that made Nicole so proud of her wife, but also sad for the little girl she'd been. That all three Earps had been.
"Anyway," Gus continued. "Your novels ain't here; Willa didn't read. Any fiction lying around this old place is likely…."
"Wynonna's." Rachel retreated a little into the over-sized knit sweater Waverly had given her, but there was a thrill in her wide eyes. There hadn't been a whole lot of downtime during the eighteen months they'd weathered here alone, but Nicole knew she'd worked through a majority of the shelves. It would take her a little bit to process this new connection to the woman she idolized.
"But didn't…didn't you guys, uh, move in 2001?" Jeremy asked. "That was during the book four-five break, but you've got all seven books here. Not that I check out my friends' bookshelves on the regular or anything."
"Kinda hard to lug your library between foster homes, Jeremy-Beremy." Everyone turned to the staircase where Wynonna stood, holding a sleepy-eyed Alice, who had a stuffed Peter Rabbit dangling from one hand. "I stashed pretty much anything I could call my own here. Few things I couldn't, too."
Nicole knew the disapproving expression on Gus's face was probably mirrored on Waverly's. Personally, she had trouble getting hung up on teenage thieving when she imagined a skinny girl clambering through a window shattered on the worst night of her life to shelve a book with her name scrawled on the endpaper, while her sister had a white-trimmed room at their aunt and uncle's ranch. Looking over at the curtained-off living space where Rachel now slept, Nicole wondered if Wynonna ever had a room that she could truly call hers before she moved into the apartment over Shorty's. Maybe at the McCready's, prior to her stint at St. Victoria's, but that hadn't been long—Nicole would not apologize for looking up Wynonna's records when the whole town knew everything she didn't. Once she'd both gotten to know Wynonna, and read the "official" perspective, she truly hadn't had all that much trouble accepting that demons really were involved. Purgatory's insistence on denial baffled her, and as much as she respected Nedley, but sometimes she judged his tendency toward willful ignorance. It wasn't possible that it only encompassed the supernatural occurrences.
"Yeah," Jeremy said. "Uh. Yup. That makes sense."
"It better, Neville. C'mon, help me get this one some p-i-e."
Alice's blue eyes went as wide as quarters, and her mouth formed an excited 'o.' "Pie, Mama?"
The dimples that matched her daughter's flashed on Wynonna's face, and Nicole heard the weight in her throat when she said, "Yup, baby, pie." She tickled the toddler's belly. "You are so smart."
"I know," Alice said. "Wha's a Nebil?"
"Neville is a character from a story. Actually, you know what? His mama's name is Alice." She continued into the kitchen, talking to Alice about the Longbottoms—the name made Alice shriek with laughter.
Nicole turned to Waverly. "If you think about it, that's a really interesting coincidence." Neville was almost the chosen one, and after his parents died, he was raised by family who were both well-meaning and a bit negligent. Looking at it slantways, there were a lot of parallels that could be drawn to both Alice Michelle and Wynonna.
"Is it?" Waverly ran her fingers through Nicole's hair, a trick absolutely meant to distract her. "I was more of a Percy Jackson girl, until it turned out being dyslexic made learning Greek and Latin harder. I wrote Rick Riordan a long letter about how he was giving kids with learning disabilities false expectations."
"Wasn't his fault you're half-angel, not a demigod!" Wynonna called from the kitchen.
"Bite me!" Waverly slumped against Nicole. "Just because she picked up conversational Greek within a month…."
"Wynonna speaks Greek?" Nicole had almost forgotten about Rosita, who was still framed on the laptop.
"Conversationally." Waverly huffed. Nicole shifted to kiss her on the cheek.
"Geez, Earp," Rosita spoke up, ensuring that she'd be heard in the kitchen. "Anyone who didn't know better might think you're a Ravenclaw."
Waverly winced. Nicole levered her up by the elbows as Wynonna came in to pick up the laptop and challenge Rosita's claim face-to-face.
"C'mon, baby," Nicole murmured. "Let's go upstairs. I'll put on the Gryffindor tie I definitely don't have, and you can take it off."
Waverly's face lit up, the same way Alice's had at the mention of pie.
Wynonna slapped the folded cardstock on the table in front of her aunt Gus, and then flipped the plastic chair so that she could sit with her arms draped over the back support. "Did you bring it?"
"'Course I did." Gus lifted the tome—SAT word, and no one could say it didn't fit a book that could serve as a doorstop. "Not sure it's the kinda thing you should be seen reading in here, though."
"They won't confiscate reading material you give me. S'long as it's not, like a Harlequin romance."
One girl had been gifted some mass market paperback with a Fabio wannabe on the cover. By the time Sister Irene confiscated it, there'd been plenty of cracks in the spine, and dusting for fingerprints wouldn't have given the staff any insight into the original owner. Wynonna knew for certain they hadn't traced the handwriting of the marginalia. When it came her way via her roommate's bedside table, she'd found it kind of boring. The protagonist's "hourglass curves" and "round doe-eyes the color of emeralds" sparked her imagination more than the dude's abs "round and even as bubblewrap." Having a dick that "pulsed like the candle she'd left on the table" stuck in your hoo-ha didn't sound all that great, especially since the dude didn't put anything between the chick's legs beforehand.
She hoped her notes had benefitted the next reader. The pseudo-bookclub of the ones who'd already read it definitely hadn't appreciated her perspective.
"I'm just sayin' she wouldn't even be wet. They didn't use lube or a rubber. It's not gonna go in. Not 'swift and slick' anyway."
"Ew," Dawn, her roommate at the time, had squealed, her face going as crimson as the sky before sunrise.
"You're disgusting," added Kelsey, who Wynonna was pretty sure brought the book in to start with. She had the thin hair and knobby hips Wynonna had learned to associate with anorexia, which tended to mean she didn't think she had anything wrong with her, and she stuck her nose up at anyone who couldn't deny that the pills changed things.
Mostly the snobs didn't actually have the energy to pry into anyone else's issues, but Kelsey was nosy. She'd memorized the labels on everyone's files somehow, but she hadn't gotten past the covers. Wynonna knew that for sure. Kelsey thought she knew why the PERMISCUOUS sticker got slapped on Wynonna's file, but beyond that she never referenced anything Wynonna hadn't let slip during group. She'd never believe that it only took two documented incidents to earn that label.
First, Brock Eastley asked to see her tits a month after Mama left, and Coach happened by the bleachers at the wrong time. No. it was the right time, she knew that now. She'd known it then. She was fucking eleven, and she hadn't said, yes, so much as she'd stared at Brock blankly and let him pull up her shirt. She hadn't had a training bra yet.
Willa had promised to buy her one when she turned twelve.
Strike two had come on her first, and as-of-now last, day in seventh grade at Purgatory Junior High.
Her twelfth birthday had passed in a blur—Curtis made her chocolate chip pancakes, but they both knew it was an excuse to make up for the shit day that was September eighth; Waverly's sixth birthday, which nobody remembered until past midnight. Wynonna already had a feeling that the social workers were planning something. There were a lot of hushed voices, and reams of paperwork in manilla envelopes passed around after her appointments with the Big City psychiatrists. She tried to be unobtrusive and easy for Gus and Curtis, but sometimes the emotions constantly storming inside of her forced themselves out. She'd watch herself raging about demons and throwing the tchotchkes that proved her aunt and uncle had never had to baby-proof. Wresting control back meant regaining control, but it also meant having to see Waverly's frightened expression, and her aunt and uncle's concern. Making it through a day without losing her grip only seemed to make the nightmares worse, and she'd wake up sweating and shaking, hearing her own screams rip through the darkness.
To give them all a break, she'd agreed readily enough to Gus suggesting they start the school year off like normal. A week in, she'd known nothing could be normal ever again. Whispers followed her up and down hallways. Kyle York laughed too loud at lunch, his beady eyes fixed on her, and she'd put a spork in his arm—It bounced off, else ways she probably would've gotten a suspension, not ISS—The day she rejoined her classmates, she'd had a panic attack in study hall, thanks to the building's thin walls and the history teacher next door turning up the volume on the Vietnam documentary he'd chosen to show that day. By the time her mind registered that no one was actually shooting everyone had heard her screaming about demons.
Then Harvey Lamont found her in the brush behind the gutted lab building—it'd exploded in exactly 1984. "And that's all I'll say about that." Mama would wink, and Daddy would snort—He'd chased a kickball off the elementary school P.E. Field, where jocks like him got credit for tossing balls to the kiddos, and spotted her in the seconds before three "bells" shrieked in unison. She'd watched him debate with himself. It'd been a surprisingly animated argument.
"I could turn you in," he said.
"You could," she agreed, swigging from the bottle of whisky she'd taken from a crate in the corner of Shorty's basement. He'd notice it, and probably recognize the scratches of her pocketknife, observant asshole, but she'd stop seeing random people's eyes turn red. One glance at the pictures hanging in Mercedes's locker could turn on the filter in her eyes—no, her brain. That was the problem. Her classmates didn't actually look like they'd stepped out of a flash photograph; her brain was filling in the knew that before St. Vic's. Knowing didn't mean she could ignore it. Or stop it.
"What'll you do to stop me?"
Wynonna hadn't said anything.
Harvey took silence as an invitation. "I went out with your sister, y'know."
"Bullshit. Willa never went out with no one." Gus used double-negatives all the time; probably would until Waverly's class covered them, and she got all hoity-toity like she did about water wasting in Pre-K. She'd probably driven Mama nuts when they were kids. Mama's admonitions not to talk like "rodeo hicks" always increased during rodeo season. Hypocrite. She was such a hypocrite, and Willa definitely came by her bitchiness honest, and Wynonna shouldn't miss either of 'em so much.
"Well—Well, we did stuff," Harvey stammered.
"And?"
"And… We could…" He took the bottle out of her hand, snatching like he had a right to it. She grinned at the way he held his face firm to hide the shudder but couldn't stop his shoulders from wiggling. "You kinda look like her."
"No, I don't." She took her bottle, even though no amount of the liquid inside could bring back Daddy, or Willa, or even just turn her into an heir who could keep Waverly safe.
Fourteen years and fifty weeks until she'd be twenty-seven. Double her the amount of time she'd been alive, but it felt like no time at all.
"Don't worry," Waverly had whispered as she fell asleep the night before. "Willa will come save you. Bobo will bring her home."
It wasn't fair how Waverly could have seen as much as she did and still have faith like that. Wynonna knew her sister was gone. She'd stay gone past her twenty-seventh birthday, and on to Wynonna's two years later. She wouldn't be able to drink anymore, then. Daddy drank all the time. He claimed it didn't affect him, but Willa said it threw off his aim. Wynonna couldn't afford that. She took twice as long of a pull as usual for her older self.
Harvey bounced the ball against the sandy dirt. "Not like-her like her. It's uh. In your face. Here." He traced her eyebrow, which was thicker than Willa's; her cheek, which was fuller than Willa's; and he ran a finger against her bottom lip, which was thinner than Willa's. His nails were dirty and stubby.
Then his mouth was on hers. Not his lips, his mouth, and she didn't know how to kiss back, because this didn't feel like two gummy bears squished together, and he took her wrist, wrapping all five fingers around it unnecessarily and tugged it toward his bulging—
"WYNONNA EARP!"
It'd been Mrs. Hanson—who did not deserve the name, for sure—and wasn't about to let Wynonna slide. Harvey had more or less flung her backward and fled through the gate to the high school. That Mrs. Hanson had let him was a monumental pile of steaming bullshit, and Wynonna let her know. That'd probably been what made the old hag go through the hassle of the referral—but it could've also been the puking on her boots, and dumping the remaining whiskey on top of it to "clean that up for ya."
Cue: a trip to the school psychologist, who was on the elementary school campus that day. Good ol' Dawes asked her why she felt the need to cuddle up with a bottle at ten a.m., two weeks into this fun year of theirs, and being less-than-sober, she'd said enough about the red eyes to earn her an emergency appointment with the Big City shrink.
She'd landed in St. Vic's within a week. There hadn't been a fire or a fistfight. She hadn't been dragged away kicking and punching like her daddy taught her. The adults knew the words to say to make her compliant. "You want to protect your sister, don't you?"
Gus and Curtis said more than that. Curtis had sat straight up in his recliner, worrying his hat between his hands while Gus puttered around the living room stacking magazines and picking up wayward colored pencils.
"Regardless of what happened out there," he'd said. Gus had made a tutting noise, and Wynonna turned to glare so fast her neck cracked. "Regardless," Curtis repeated, holding his hand out toward Wynonna in a stop gesture like he was taming a damn bear. "It's eating you up, big girl. You're not sleeping; you admit to seeing shit that ain't there—those two things are probably related, I can't say; I'm no doctor. My expertise is ranching, not what's healthy for a twelve-year-old. What I can say is it isn't drinking all day, and sitting on the roof all night."
"They could come. The ones Daddy didn't get. Only the shot ones go to Hell, and Daddy..." Daddy got shot. He got shot by Peacemaker. "Is he there, too? Did I send Daddy there with the assholes he'd already killed?" Her breath was coming faster than her thoughts, and her heart was fluttering even more quickly.
"Hey, hey." She would've expected Curtis to get up and come to her, but Gus was the one kneeling next to her. She took hold of Wynonna's shoulders and braced her. She smelled like the stable, but in a way that reminded Wynonna of the times Daddy worked all weekend and Mama brought them over to the ranch to ride. Those were good times. Times when the Earp girls felt normal. Gus must've bought it, too, until everything fell apart.
"I can't speak to much of Ward's bullshit, honey. I don't track with there being devils in this hills, or whatever seeds he planted in your minds, but he believed in protecting people. He'd say you did what you could to keep yourself and your baby sister safe. Wouldn't he?" she demanded of Curtis, who'd come over from his chair. He'd let Wynonna drop her head onto his shoulder, but he kept looking off through the front window, like he might see an answer to a question.
"It shouldn't be this hard for ya, darlin'," Gus concluded. Wynonna's crappy ponytail had given up, and her aunt tucked an escape piece of hair behind her ear. "Let's get the professionals to help us make it better."
She got up to check on dinner not long after that, but Curtis stayed in place. "Strange things happen in Purgatory," he said in a whisper. She sat up a little, pursing her lips. She'd come to understand that they sometimes led her on a little, made her think sharing was safe and then BAM, you stepped into the trap, you crazy person. "Strange things. Some folks don't want to see 'em. Others keep on living their lives. Way I see it, if you jump at every shadow, you're going to tire yourself out before a bigger threat comes."
Wynonna wiped the sleeve of her flannel shirt across her face, picking up snot and the tears that weren't already dried into a mask over her cheeks. "It did come. To the Homestead, it came. We weren't even safe there, Curtis. How can I live my life knowing we weren't safe there?"
"Sweet girl, there's demons everywhere. Visible or not. Physical or not. I s'ppose the only way to deal with knowing it is to keep going until they catch up with you."
"'Til I'm twenty-seven," Wynonna said. Then, because Curtis had come as close as anyone to saying he believed her, she added, "Not sure what the rest of them'll do until 2016. The ones Daddy didn't get. They've got fourteen years. The couple Granddady missed had almost the full twenty-seven.
"The night Daddy turned twenty-seven there was a big snowstorm. You 'member?" The noise Curtis made was uncertain, and Wynonna shrugged. It didn't matter. "Wherever they went, they came back that night. Gathered round the perimeter of the homestead, hooting and hollering, waiting for their reborn buddies to join 'em. Mama kept trying to tell us it was the wind and singing her lullaby over and over. Eventually Daddy went out and shot Peacemaker at 'em. Claimed he saw hellfire out there. Willa said she believed him, but it wasn't midnight. He wasn't even the heir yet, and he'd started lying to us." Her voice cracked and a new stream of tears poured out of her eyes. In the weeks since that night, she'd probably cried her body weight a few times over.
Curtis rocked her on the sofa, like she was still Waverly's age. Like he could protect her from the darkness outside. And maybe he could. It was the inside-darkness they wanted to purge from her.
The next day, she'd stayed dry-eyed while Waverly clutched her waist. "It's okay, baby girl," she said, her voice hoarse from yelling into her pillow. It'd been the first night she didn't get up to keep watch. Maybe part of her wanted to be snatched out of bed. "I'm going to go stay with the doctors, and they're going to give me medicine that makes me stop talking about the red-eyed men."
"The demons who got Will—OW!" Waverly's little face screwed up in a scandalized look. "Pinchers get pinched!" she declared, digging her tiny nails into the flesh of Wynonna's bicep. There wasn't as much for her to grab as there used to be, even though Gus's cooking was far superior to the cans Daddy put on the stove, or the Kraft Dinner Wynonna let sit in the microwave too long.
The last time Waverly had visited Wynonna in St. Vic's, her belly had been curved under the polka-dotted dress she wore so proudly. It made Wynonna want to punch the girls who thought they wanted to starve. She knew it wasn't their fault; Mama told them how the world gave girls too many messages about who they should be, and none of themHar made it easier to survive. Still, she didn't feel reciting the words they'd devoured thinking no one would make them face the truth of what they hungered for.
"And 'his hot seed dripping like wax,'" she'd quoted to that group of erotica readers, months after she'd arrived at the psychiatric facility, hollowed-out and silent. "That shit isn't room temperature as it rolls down the candle. Prob'ly people who like that kinda thing, though. My daddy was a sheriff. He saw all kinda messed up fuckery—things get outta hand when you're doing it, you still gotta call 9-1-1, y'know?" She shot a look around the circle, daring any of them to say something about pigs in blue. Daddy never denied that system was corrupt. Sometimes you just had to play along to get what you needed; Wynonna thought of that adage a lot here.
Didn't stop her from clocking the last girl who bad-mouthed the uniform, though. Wouldn't stop her telling Nedley to take off next time she saw his incompetent ass, either.
"Shh!" Jaqui had shoved Wynonna by the shoulder, and she knocked into Sadie. The girl nudged her, her lips turning up in a small smile that slipped away once she turned her dark eyes to the hole she was picking in the wood of the picnic table they were perched on, one of three in the yard, for the girls who didn't want to run through slush after a deflated ball. Sometimes Wynonna ran the track, circling for the full twenty-five minutes the ten or so girls in her cohort of eleven-to-thirteen year-olds were allowed outside.
Five months past twelve, and Wynonna was seen as someone who'd been around. She didn't do a thing to dissuade that. It was only when someone like Sadie spoke in group that she remembered how easy she'd had it, really. Her euphemisms were inflated, and almost anything she said about one of the magazine cutouts papering other girls' walls was something she'd heard Willa say about one of the hockey players she hooked up with—"but what did you do exactly?" "Nothing you need to worry yourself about, little sister. Just enough that his girlfriend is gonna enjoy herself way more than usual Friday night." "Don't you want to be his girlfriend?" "I've got bigger concerns." "Literally, am I right?" "Fuck off, you're such a child sometimes—Willa was right. She was a child.
She had been, anyway.
Some of the girls here hadn't been that lucky.
Wynonna didn't mention any of that to Gus in the visitor's room. She sat up in her chair, fighting the urge to snatch the book and undoubtedly draw the attention of Fran, the nurse overseeing visitation. She wasn't a nun, or "penguin" in St. Vic's parlance—most of 'em weren't—but she was just as vigilant as Sister Irene.
"You know, maybe you're right, Gus. They took the whole series out of the school library a couple years ago. You may have seen it in the paper. Good ol' Bunny Ludlow was chair of the committee that went to the school board."
A muscle in Gus's forehead twitched. "You don't think I don't see what you're doing, missy?"
"I wouldn't dare."
"Fine. Just don't..." She trailed off midway through sliding the green-jacketed book across to her niece.
Wynonna grabbed it and pulled it into her lap. "I won't start telling people I saw a grim, or Sirius Black is after me. It's fiction. I understand what that is." Just like she understood her daddy's stories were fact and telling the truth had gotten her locked up here, where they kept telling her the truth would set her free.
"I know," Gus said. "You're getting better."
Wynonna heard the comparison Gus was making in her head. She didn't go see her sister as often as she did Wynonna, though technically she was as much Michelle's guardian as Wynonna's. On days when the similarities in their situations made Wynonna sure she'd be stuck in this concrete-walled shithole, Wynonna would spit truths like that at her aunt like venom, hating herself for the rush of devilish satisfaction she got when Gus recoiled like she'd been bitten. On those days, clouds blotted out the hospital windows, and fire burned behind her eyes. When she couldn't see this place as anything but a waystation en route the place where her mama had been consigned, so why shouldn't she strike? She was a step away from Hell and Purgatory was populated by demons.
On this day, the serpent was curled up in her chest and lulled to sleep by the slanted sunlight keeping the buzzing overheads at bay. Sometimes those were enough to make the hairs on Wynonna's nape twitch and trying to drown them out took so much concentration that she couldn't hear her aunt, or her uncle when it was Curtis's day to visit, or either of them updating her on Waverly's school play. That had been happening less often; her body had adjusted, maybe to the meds or maybe an increased level of paranoid jumpiness that she was never going to shake.
Had she made the climb that sent her mama falling, or was there another ledge above her? She'd think about it later. This wasn't the time to zone out; she had a point to make. "I got this in the mail the other day," she said, tapping the card. Her nails were painted a pink called gum bubbles and she'd made Dawn shriek one last time before the girl's release by calling it blow me pink."
"Girls don't get blown," Dawn had insisted. Wynonna felt sorry for her, but not enough to keep from pocketing the bottle. She'd slipped it into her cubby that afternoon. Three days later, the nurse who oversaw the few girls trusted enough to "manipulate toxic chemicals" or whatever bullshit phrase they used in the paperwork hadn't batted an eyelash at Wynonna applying nail polish she hadn't had last visiting day. They liked the girls who took advantage of the visiting day nail-painting privilege so they could catch nail-biters. That wasn't Wynonna's vice, and she didn't care who knew it. A checkmark had was one she didn't need to earn or whatever.
The polish matched the strip of Washi tape placed in a perfect line below the lettering at the top of the card.
"Yeah, I offered to bring it along with me today, but apparently that ain't 'how valentines work.' She insisted on putting it in the postbox herself," Gus said, the lines around her mouth softening. "Downtown, not down the driveway. Curtis said he's surprised she didn't demand to hand it to Ron directly."
Wynonna couldn't help smiling, imagining her little sister outlining the process of card-sending for Gus and Curtis, mimicking Mrs. Kowalski explaining it to her class, word perfect. She must've gotten too caught up in the idea, because Gus tapped the back of her wrist.
"What about it, then?" Her prodding was gentle, and Wynonna had to pull her chest in to stop from letting out an avalanche of defensive assertions. She hadn't been seeing things or listening to voices. People got distracted.
She wasn't crazy.
Not like that.
Not like Mama.
"Look here." She pointed to the letters of her name. In other cards Waverly had sent her the middle had been a mountain range of peaks; the Ns of a kid who hadn't figured out how it differed from M. This time, she got the number right. but both Ns slanted down, then up.
"And here."
Her little sister had written a handful of sentences inside, making such an obvious effort that Wynonna felt bad using it as evidence. Was that how Gus felt, fretting over bringing the book? She did it, though. Care and concern were synonyms on a spectrum. Wynonna knew that.
She also knew binaries were bullshit.
"Here, too."
Waverly made her letters carefully, like she did everything. That was why Wynonna knew the reversed Rs and backwards Ns meant something. She couldn't say what. Being tested for about a million learning disabilities didn't mean she had them. Any mistakes she made in her chicken scratch were scrawls made to get the shit done and run off. The Ritalin they had her on was the only drug she agreed she might actually need.
Not the antipsychotics. She wasn't crazy!
She had seen red eyes in the faces of folks who weren't revs, but she'd been sleep-deprived, and eaten up by guilt. Shit like that did things to the brain, right? It probably would've gone away if she'd spent a few days knocked out at one of the big city hospitals. Probably.
Waverly didn't need Ritalin, or anti-psychotics, or anything. She just needed someone who paid attention. That shouldn't fall to Wynonna, what with the need for Ritalin and all, but she'd been doing it for long enough that she wasn't about to let a forty-five minute drive and a couple of heavy doors stop her.
"Huh," Gus said, tracing one of Waverly's Bs with her finger. Wynonna glanced at her own hand. Mama said she had piano-player's fingers, which sometimes made her feel bad for not having the patience to learn to play. Gus did, though, and her knuckles stood out on stick-thin fingers, too. Wynonna couldn't say how she felt about sharing any trait with Gus, save the bullheadedness she couldn't deny, but it did mean that not having Mama's stubbier hands didn't mean she took after some spindle-fingered Earp ancestor.
Willa's fingers were rough like Daddy's, scarred and callused from hard-to-pull triggers.
"She used to pretend to read her books, but we could tell she had 'em memorized," Wynonna said. Coming up with this speech, she'd remembered all the times Willa purposefully skipped a page, and how red Waverly's face would get. She didn't mention that. Mama hadn't taken them to Gus's as much once Waverly came along. Willa must've acted like a bitch sometimes before the baby, but Wynonna couldn't remember. Maybe Gus wouldn't either. Gus might accuse her of speaking ill of the dead, or something, and Wynonna knew she wouldn't be able to handle that. She'd freak out, and Waverly would be the one to suffer. Again.
"I told Mama she should think about keeping Waverly home another year. She always said she would've done that with me, 'cept I kept taking Willa's books out to the barn, and when she quizzed me, I'd read 'em. But Mama said that whether you could read at four wasn't a ber…a bar…weather vane?"
"Barometer," Gus suggested.
"That." Wynonna wanted to swear at the way the meds took words she knew right out of her head. So much for all those hundred-percent vocabulary tests. "Just some kids picked letters up faster, and it would do Waverly good to get...out of the house." Away. I have to get her away.
"Then the thing with the mirror happened, and the fire, and Mama…" Wynonna twirled her hand in the air, half you know, half crazy spiral. "I think they kind of took it easy on Waves in kindergarten. I made sure her hair was neat, and she'd have been the first to object to dirty clothes, but I think they still knew things were…hard without Mama. I read to her whenever I could, but I had my own homework, and…" She shrugged. It didn't feel like enough, even with all she wasn't saying.
How sometimes she'd done Willa's homework, too.
How she'd saved up her allowance to buy ear protection in Waverly's size, because the sound of Peacemaker scared her.
How more than a few times, Waverly had fallen asleep in her bed, and Willa dragged her out, snapping "she's too big for that!" but then Wynonna would wake to find her big sister pressed in between her and the wall.
"It wasn't your responsibility, girl," Gus said. "Every day I wish I'd come by more often."
"You were busy with Mama," Wynonna said. Unlike her sisters, she'd been happy hanging out in the Sheriff's office, and she knew where to sit to make everyone forget she was there. She could keep the volume down on her Walkman and hear them talk. That's how she knew that Daddy hadn't gone to Mama's hearings, and that Gus had. Randy Nedley said it was about time the Gibsons remembered her. Wynonna hated that she'd caught herself nodding at something that worm said.
"Was I?" Gus glanced out the dusty window. "I'll set up a meeting with her teachers. They probably think they're doing right, being lenient with her, and that smile could charm the dev—could charm anyone. Waverly's so smart, I could see her using it to run rings around 'em up there, 'stead of letting us make the basics easier." She barely adjusted her gaze, but Wynonna could take a hint.
"Thanks, Gus," she said. "I appreciate it." She held her aunt's gaze until Gus gave her one sharp nod that meant she understood, and they could leave it there. Not for the first time, she thought her aunt's sharp angles might be better at cutting through the bullshit than Mama's soft, gentle curves would've been.
With the conversation she'd stressed about in the days since the card appeared at mail-call over with, Wynonna slumped back in her chair, clutching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to her chest.
Reading that stupid Harlequin book had kept her all-too-aware of her surroundings, of the experience the girls around her had had, and hadn't had. With this book, she might be able to escape for a while. She'd re-read the third one not all that long ago, and she wasn't stupid. She got that she probably identified a little bit too much with the orphaned Chosen One who couldn't convince the authorities that the bad guys were back. Where one generation was doomed to fight the same fight their parents faced. They'd lose battles, but they would win the war. The light would outshine the dark.
All things considered, Wynonna didn't think she should be judged for hanging onto a lifesaver that could keep her from drowning in the grey.