For once, I don't have anything to say, so I'm just going to respond to some of last chapter's reviews!
ImATopMagicianFromWonderland: I must say that your reactions are exactly how I want everyone to be when they're reading JaG, so while I'm sorry you have to go through such an emotional rollercoaster ride every chapter, I'm also really friggin' happy you do!
Sky65: I'm a slow-burn lover myself. Love—true love—doesn't come easy. It takes attraction, time, effort, dedication, and many other things. Love comes in many forms, too, and I'm hoping to paint a bigger picture than just romantic love, just remember that as we move forward c:
The kitchen's main attraction made itself at home on top of the dresser, just like the menagerie of trinkets from other parts of the house did. Though Nayla's delirium was promptly swept under the rug, the noticeable accumulation of objects seems a passive way to settle a discussion that never existed. Put everything Nayla needs in one room and just like that she'll stay put, content and placated for the rest of her days.
It would've struck me as a good idea if it didn't seem so reminiscent of a jail sentence.
"You haven't asked."
My vision shifts from the old sitcom rerun and to the woman in her bed, mantled by floral-printed bed sheets and sunken low. For a moment, I think I spot her old resolution in her liquidy stare, I'm honestly not too sure. Perhaps it's just hope and the right lighting.
"Asked what?"
Nayla tilts her head, a look of annoyance ghosting over her features. "You're a smart girl, dear. Smart girls should never ask questions they already know the answers to."
"Sorry—"
"Don't get me started on sorries now, too," her laugh vaporizes out of her throat.
"Sorr— Um. I knew what you meant, but I just...uh. I don't know."
"But you do." Her thin lips curl just enough to make the smile known. "I suppose I didn't word my previous statement correctly. You shouldn't have to ask. After what happened the other day, I should tell you."
I wasn't going to object because, dammit, I am curious. But she suddenly seems heavy, like her center of gravity has been altered in a split second. I don't want her to crumble under it.
"Another day," I announce and rise to adjust the sheets so she's snug as a bug. "I think you're sleeping pill is still working it's magic."
She ignores the change in topic and goes on, "No, sweet girl. Today is the day." Nayla grasps one of my hands and I nearly shiver at the iciness, a stark contradiction to the warmth rimming her hazel gaze. "But I know our time to chat is always short, so here's what I propose: for every day you come and sit with me, you can ask one question. Any question. I will answer them all to the absolutest truth."
Seems a fair trade. "What if I don't have a question to ask one day?"
"Is that day today?" I shake my head no. "Then what are you waiting for?"
Quick and lacking a sugary coat: "How did you know my mom? That she died?"
Nayla's head leans to the side again, this time donning astonishment. It wears off not long after. "Which is it?"
The words had rolled off my tongue in an eager bundle—"Howdidyouknowmymomthatshedied?" They are connected, or at least that's how I imagine it. One question a detail of Mom's before, the other of her after. The saying is life&death, not life or death. I digress, however, for both our sakes. Here is Nayla, offering answers, a department I've been lacking in for quite some time. Here is me, a daughter who knows more than her lifetime's worth about her mother's death and little of her mother's actual lifetime.
I choose the former.
Her response comes after a lingering pause, a finger erect. "Bring me that book there."
I bend over the stack of books by the wall and pick out the large binder-like one. Nayla's eyelids droop as she searches the pages for whatever it is she's looking for. When the search turns up successful, she taps the picture I'm to look at and slides the album over.
My mother smiling. Nayla's son grinning. Sitting at Nayla's kitchen table with a collapsed birthday cake between them, a pound of icing smeared over both kid's face.
"Hiro's sixth birthday," I read aloud from the caption below. They were friends. My eyes raise, expecting to meet hers, but she is already fast asleep. So back to the album it is.
I sit bedside for some time, first getting a good look at the birthday picture, then venture back to the start of the book. Snapshots of Hiro in his everyday life, whether he was stomping around rain puddles or confined to his room with a book. Every single one has him in it, often with his father, some featuring Mom. Far and few show Nayla, so I assume she'd rather capture the moment than be captured in it.
The birthday picture comes up again and, this time, I wander to the kitchen. Book in hands, eyes analyzing placement and angles, I pull out the chair Mom sat in years ago. I imagine the candleflames shimmying in the dark, cards dedicating best wishes to Hiro on the table. Lingering voices singing the traditional song, distant screams of joy accompanying the food-fight.
And I see the boy at the center of it all, legs wagging back and forth from exhilaration, saying "cheese!" for the camera. Sitting right across from Mom, his frosting-covered twin.
The fantasy wanes in one clean stroke across the room when the doorbell rings. I shut the album and go to open the door.
"Yusei?" I gape at the mechanic. "Wha...what are you doing here?"
"I'm here to fix a truck," he answers simply.
"Well, uh, okay. I know we talked about it but I didn't think it would be this soon."
"Is it a bad time?"
"No! Here, let me show you the way." An odd streak of privacy guides me to keep Nayla's den boarded off and, before I know it, I'm closing the door behind me and rounding the porch with Yusei in tow.
Together, we lift the garage door up its track to unveil Nayla's buried treasure. The pickup appears dimmer, for the lack of a better word, than I last remember it. Dust sticks to my fingers after I run a hand across the hood; perhaps that's to blame. Nayla probably hasn't been out here much since she's been put in the wheelchair. I resolve to give it a good washing some time and turn to the duelist, who's surveying the metal organs of the vehicle.
Yusei looks at me suddenly. "Do you have a key?"
"I think so." I yank the driver's door and it's open like I expect. The key sits in the ignition already. "Should I turn it on?"
Yusei gives the go-ahead. The engine hardly makes a sound as it turns over, just a stuttering click. I let it go and round the front back to Yusei.
His arms are folded across his chest, "What did your friend say was wrong with it?"
"It needs a new engine." He hums and continues staring down into the car's bared cavity without a word. "So, is there a final verdict?"
At last, he concludes, "It's old."
"Which means?" I stretch the last word for emphasis.
His eyes rise to me. "It's not bad, but it's not good. The engine turns over, which is good because that means not everything needs replacing. And all the parts are here and intact, so sifting out the kinks shouldn't be too hard, either."
"But?"
"Old parts aren't hard to come by, high supply but low in demand." The mechanic clamps the hood back in it's original position as he says, "However, the problem is that older vehicles tend to be...pickier. They're made too precisely to allow much room for substitution. If it turns out I can't find the exact duplicates for the pieces that are broken..."
"The truck won't run, period." I bobble my head a couple times and lean against the mobile's front. Then I raise two sets of interlocked digits to him. "Fingers crossed."
We close the garage's mouth and go back the way we came, parking ourselves by his D-Wheel.
"I can come around tomorrow with my tools, start running tests, sorting out the clutter," he tells me, resting back on the vehicle's leather seat.
"Tomorrow?" My eyes widen and Yusei is definitely lost to the cause my reaction. "I mean... There's no rush. The truck is still gonna be here if you need a few days." Immediately follows the question of Nayla's permanence and I want to take a swing at my brain for its constant morbidity.
Yusei quirks a brow and glances back at the house, humor glossing over his words. "Should I be concerned about whatever it is you're keeping locked behind those doors?"
"No," I chuckle. "I just... I just don't want you to feel obligated to do this. I know you have more important things to do so..."
"There is nothing more important to me than helping a friend, Maria."
What more could be expected from the Yusei Fudo, ladies and gentlemen? I find myself smiling in an instant, not because of his sincerity or sweet words or anything that I've felt for him in the past few weeks. No, I smile at Yusei Fudo because in that moment—the moment when he sat on his trusty steed and donned his helmet similar to a knight braving himself for a battle to the death—he couldn't have looked more like a giant cheesy, crab-headed, machine-loving dork.
—
"What about Monkey Mania?" Rua proposes to his best friend, pointing to the picture on the menu. "That sounds good, right?"
I had met Tenpei only a handful of times in the past, just enough to make an educated guess of his impression on me. I knew he was Rua's second conscience (up next after Ruka) and that he had been friends with the siblings since their diaper days. Though, for any of my educated guesses about the boy, I hadn't taken him to be such a picky eater. But I guess I'm not surprised—he kinda has that look to him.
"It has bananas in it." Tenpei shakes his head. "I can't have bananas."
"Oh, right." Rua side-eyes Tenpei, his mouth twisting in its routinely conniving way. "I forgot they give you the runs."
Tenpei's pale skin ignites with warmth as his friends laugh at his expense and he sputters his defense, "They do not! I just can't have them because Mother's put me on a very strict diet!"
Which does little to defend him and adds more to insult. Aki and I look at one another, both smiling.
"Do you know what you're getting?" she asks as the commotion settles.
"I'm thinking Blueberry Bullfrog Blitz for today. You?"
"My father gets that one all the time, it's his favorite," she approves with another grin. "I'm just going to get my usual Toucan Surf."
As we both return to watching the kids pressure Tenpei into choosing a smoothie, my mind churns. I had never given it thought, but before this instant, I can't propose a moment that Aki once mentioned her parents. With the guys being orphaned, the twins' parents practically imaginary, my mom dead and father gone with the wind—the assumption had set in that Aki was under similar conditions we all were.
She isn't. Aki has parents she goes home to every night, that she says good morning to every day. I am happy for her. I am envious of her. More than anything, I am guilty with myself.
Said girl's head turns, long silky bangs swishing my way, and smiles as she sips from her drink. I mirror it and turn away. The waves of guilt quit lapping at my feet and drag me beneath its undertow, just like that.
How are we friends if I don't even know her?
"Hey, do you want to go to the bathroom?" Akiza asks when I'm halfway through my beverage. She's already scooting from the booth, so I follow automatically, dodging plastic understory leaves as we pass.
While Akiza's claimed a stall, I spruce my self up. Once my three major points of sprucing—hair, shirt, jeans—are tucked back in place, I lean against the wall in wait. Akiza materializes soon after, suds overtaking her hands in the sink. I stare my beautiful friend as she does so.
"What?" she asks, a slight smile peeking through.
I shrug. "Nothin'."
"Come on. Tell me." Akiza switches to the handless hand-dryer. "Tell me what goes on in that big brain of yours."
"Don't think you're slick, young lady. I know you're just trying to butter me up." I transition from the wall to the counter. "It's working, but don't think I don't know."
"Well!" She nudges my shoulder when she joins me. "It's rude to keep a lady waiting, you know."
"If you're a lady, what does that make me?" Akiza gives me an impatient stare. "Fine, fine. If milady must know," I say in a horrid attempt at a British accent, then finish normally, "I was thinking about the first day we met."
Her entire face brightens, head dipping back as she laughs. "Wow. That seems like it was years ago. But I remember: Annie ran right past me, scared the living daylight out of me and made me drop everything I was holding, then you came along."
"Then we sat and didn't speak a single word to each other until you invited me—"
She gasps, "Until I invited you here! Oh my god, how could I forget!"
"I don't know how anyone could possibly forget this jungle-themed, smoothie-heaven?" I glance at the glass, coiled snake soap container. "You know what I remember really well?"
"Hmm?"
"Your papers."
She sends me a look of disbelief before she straightens up and responds as she smooths a layer of chapstick across her lips, "My papers? Why? I was the one studying them and I don't even remember what was on them."
"No, not the words." I stare directly at her. "The tears."
The cap clicks onto the chapstick. Akiza looks as if she's staring at her mirrored appearance but I can feel her eyes reflecting back on me out of my peripheral.
"You never told me why you were crying, but I can't be mad at you for it. I'm more disappointed in myself for not asking before now. So, here I am."
The redhead focuses her sights on something else, still motionless.
"Why were you crying the day we met in the library, Akiza?"
It's when she hears her name that she raises her eyes to mine. Pained, that's the best word to describe them. "You already know," her voice shakes.
"I do."
"So why are you asking?"
"Because I want to hear you say it."
Akiza stares me down, then shuts her gaze with a sigh. She tries to get out of the confrontation, yet I beat her to the bathroom's narrow hall and block her only exit with my arms. The girl shuffles side to side but I don't let up.
"I want you to tell me. Who were those girls?"
Side to side once more.
"What have they done to you?" It isn't a question of if, it's when. Girls like that are never all bark.
"Maria..."
"I know how family looks, I've had it all my life. I know how friends look, too, because I've seen them all my life—"
Her pain hardens into frustration and manifests into words. "Maria. Move."
"—and I know too damn well how mean girls look, Akiza, because I've dealt with them all my life."
"Just move already!"
This isn't how I'd hope for this to go. I wanted her to admit it, confess it to me—because we're friends and that's what friends do. But if I have to fish it out of her, what good would that do either of us? ...I don't even know her...
"Fine. Don't tell me." My blockade relents. Akiza wastes no time pushing past me. "I just wanted you to know that I understand."
What comes as a surprise is that the door doesn't swish open and slam closed. I spy over my shoulder to see her stand completely still, head hung, and a hand almost wrapped around the doorhandle. That hand drops and balls into a fist.
"'You understand...'? Did I hear that right?"
My mouth parts, but nothing passes through. There is something weird about this picture, about this Akiza. Same shape, same size, different vibe. She faces me at last and it is like seeing her through sunglasses: despite sharing the same light, Akiza seems darkened.
"Maria, you don't understand anything."
She won't stop walking toward me so, in an intrinsic sense of fear, I take a step back for every one that paces forward.
"You think you understand, but you don't. You want to hear about those girls? Those girls who swore their good intentions to me on the first day of school, only so they could use me to get closer to my friends? Those girls who stole my clothes while we were showering in gym?"
She has me backed against a wall now, so close to me that every breath she breathes clouds over my cheeks. A blurred movement catches my eye for a split second. It's the snake jar, teetering from side to side in a drunken motion.
"Akiza," I whisper.
"I'm not done! You wanted to hear about them, didn't you? The girls who, on a number of occasions, put voodoo dolls in my backpack? The girls who once spray-painted a black rose on my locker?"
Her almond-brown eyes are wide, dilated, advanced far past frustration and dead set on sheer anger. The soap jar vibrates with more energy, tink!tink!tink!tink!
"Akiza."
"The girls who sneer 'Witch Bitch' at me every chance they get! That's who they are! That's what they've done!"
"Aki!"
The pot quiets. The yelling had staggered me, the stray tear streaking her face saddens me. But the way she looks at me—like she has no clue what is going on, like she has just awoken from slumber—that scares me. Aki backs up more than enough to clear personal space boundaries.
"You might have had your own mean girls, but I have had mean people. Hatred," she whispers, eyes to the floor, "that is the one thing I've received all my life."
The bathroom door swings ajar and the female half of the twins enters. "You two have been in here for a while. Is everything alright?"
Ruka intersects her gaze with mine as she inspects us and I diverge the eye-contact. A chip has cracked off the soap pot and a thin trail oozes from the snake's topmost ring.
Aki departs with a murmur of being called away to home. Rua is disappointed, but easily manages over it. The only one of the bunch who suspects anything is Ruka (as always), yet she shows no sign of her intuitions and jokes along with her peers (as always).
I slide into the booth and slurp the remains of my smoothie in silence.
Eh? So, how was it? *wiggles eyebrows* Good? Bad? Ugly? I think all of the above could be used, actually. Good: StarCrabiness; Bad: any mention of Nayla; Ugly: poor bby Akiza :/ (I'm crying and grinning at how the end turned out tbh) Send some comments good, bad or ugly my way please~! Or not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
TTFN my favorite poops!