"Down in the depths of the deepest, darkest well.
All of the wicked suffer where we fell.
You know we loved you before you cast your spell.
But it's a long way back when you're halfway to hell."
-Shepherd, "Halfway to Hell."
As a child, Smackle had experienced frequent and vivid nightmares. They were the kind where she was frozen in place; unable to scream or to move but forced to watch as the monster in the closet slowly made his way towards her through the darkness.
As she grew older, the monster morphed, going from a demon of shadows to one of fire; filling the room with smoke and making it hard to breathe. The worst were the dreams of water slowly creeping up from the floor, until she could feel it soaking into the bedding and brushing against her skin.
She had never quite conquered that feeling of watching destruction sweep through her room and being rendered completely frozen.
She always woke up safe; wrapped in the quilt that her grandmother had made for her and bathed in the morning sunlight that held all the promise of a fresh day. But, sometimes, the feeling lingered; the feeling that when it counted the most, she would find herself paralyzed.
She left the car door open, engine still running, as she sprinted across the sidewalk and stumbled her way down the hill that was mostly mud. It was not cold enough for the snow to stick and she barely registered the wind that was biting into her skin.
The metal barrier on the edge of the bridge had been completely taken out and the car sat half-submerged in water, though it was difficult to make out against the darkness.
"Riley?" her voice was hoarse, as she paused on the riverbank, looking for any signs of movement. The front windshield was completely shattered, and a dark figure was halfway through the windshield, dark hair blowing uselessly in the wind.
"Do you need help?" a voice called from somewhere above her, though she couldn't bring herself to turn from the sight in front of her.
"Call an ambulance," Smackle returned, abandoning her heels in the mud, as she waded her way into the water.
The current was strong, and she could feel it struggling to pull her downstream, but her desperate persistence kept her from being swept away.
"Riley," she breathed again, finally reaching her friend of over a decade and taking in the sheer volume of blood that coated the hood of the car, "I never meant for any of this to happen."
She only ever asked her mother once why her parents divorced.
Her father was kind, compassionate, funny, and people seemed pulled to him like planets orbiting the sun. Her fondest memories from childhood took place in the corner of the kitchen where her father was head chef. He moved with a kind of grace that she could never hope to emulate, and he cooked with the kind of purpose and passion that could only be found in someone whose work was their calling.
Her mother was a Cardiothoracic Surgeon, considered one of the top ten on the East Coast. She was always calm and controlled; the ice to her father's fire. She can remember the two of them standing across from each other at the kitchen island, cutting boards in front of them and knives in their hands; competing to see who could chop the most vegetables, the most uniformly, in a given amount of time.
Their love had felt like something tangible at the time; so thick that it mixed in with the scent of the stew her father had simmering on the stove.
It made no logical sense why two such incredible individuals could find their way to each other, love the way that they had, build a life and a family together, and, then, choose to burn all of it to the ground.
But her mother had merely sat her down and talked about how love faded. If you did not nurture it, care for it, and continue to fight for it, it would fade into nothing and all that would be left is regret.
It is the most emotional that she ever sees her mother, which is probably why she never broaches the topic again.
The first time they meet is at the entrance exam for Einstein Academy. He's wearing a blue suit that brings out the color of his eyes, with an orange bowtie that might have looked ridiculous on anyone else.
They sit next to each other as they wait to be called back and she can feel the hum of nerves buzzing just under her skin. Her mother had taken the time to curl her hair that morning and it's the most time she remembers her mother ever spending with her in a consecutive period, so she knows that this interview is important.
"I'm Farkle," he introduces himself, holding his hand out in the way that she's only ever seen adults do.
"Isadora Cornelia Smackle," She annunciates every syllable of her name, exactly the way that she was taught to do.
He shakes her hand three times in an overenthusiastic pumping motion and, then, he's called back and they part ways without another word.
Their first date is at The Museum of Natural History. They move from exhibit to exhibit, not bothering to read the plaques as they take turns offering their own knowledge.
She does not believe in soulmates; not in the destined, star-crossed meaning of the world. The idea that there is one person in the known universe that is meant to be with her, seems like a flawed evolutionary system if she ever saw one.
She believes in science; believes in what can be seen and touched. She believes that there can be value in the companionship of another human being, and she believes that her greatest shot at happiness comes from finding an intellectual equal.
Somewhere between the Hall of Primitive Mammals and the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, he reaches out and takes her hand and she feels something that has nothing to do with intellectual equality.
He leaves his grip just loose enough that she can let go if she wants to.
She holds tighter.
Their first kiss is on her doorstep; just a brush of his lips against hers and, then, she's darting inside with a blush staining her cheeks. It was unexpected, but far from unwelcome and she cannot keep the smile off of her lips for the rest of the night.
They never say, "I love you."
It never occurred to her to think that she was different.
While other kids read stories with vivid pictures and talking animals, she flipped through her mother's medical textbooks; learning blood composition and microbiology. She liked fact over fiction, and she preferred to be on her own, then to play with other kids her age.
It had never seemed to matter, until it did.
She was playing with the blocks; putting them through the slots, as she sorted out each of the shapes. She had not been paying attention to much, until she heard her father raise his voice.
"She's smart. She is advanced for her age and people who are advanced have a hard time relating to kids who are on target," Her father was saying, his hands flying around the way they did when he was trying to get his point across.
"It's not her intelligence that is in question," Her preschool teacher assured him, staring intently down at the book that sat in front of her, "But her social development is just as important as her intellectual one."
"She's special. She's not another sheep just looking to follow the heard. There is nothing wrong with my daughter," her father continued, his voice going up an octave.
Her mother was deadly silent; hands folded in her laps and legs crossed at the ankle. She stared down intently at the dark material of her skirt.
"We want to give Isadora all of the resources that she needs to succeed in life. This isn't about there being something wrong with her, it's about understanding her individual needs."
"By branding her with some kind of diagnosis that is going to follow her around for the rest of her life; that is going to make people see her as different."
Her mother sighed, one hand reaching up to brush a strand of dark hair out of her face, "At some point, she's not going to want to be alone, anymore. At some point, the opinion of her peers is going to matter. Early intervention is going to help her better adapt."
"She doesn't need to adapt. She's not a sheep that we're throwing into a swamp and hoping evolution will sort out, she's our daughter."
Her father ran his hands through his hair and stood up, his eyes meeting hers for half a second, before he left the room.
"I apologize," her mother's voice was firm, but there was something delicate about it that Smackle had never heard before, "I would like to understand all of our options."
The night the Minkus's plane goes down she receives the notification on her phone. Just a few words that strung together have the power to change her entire life. There are no details, just the revelation that something horrible has happened.
She had read somewhere that you were more likely to be struck by lightning or attacked by a shark, then you were to die in a plane crash. It doesn't make sense that out of all the of the math, reason, and logic Farkle's parents could become nothing more than a statistic.
She never gets up the nerve to call him and it ends up being her greatest regret.
"It's just that they've known him longer," Lucas offered, his voice low as they watched Farkle talk to people in the procession line that stretched all the way out the door. He had Maya on one side, her arm threaded through his and Riley on the other, whose shoulder kept brushing against his every few minutes.
She cannot remember the last time she felt this stuck on the outside, certainly not since she had gotten to know all of them; had started to feel like she was a part of them.
"I used to think that I knew him in a way that neither of them did; that our intellectual abilities, somehow, linked us in a way that no one else would understand," she paused, pulling her sweater closer around her, as she felt the draft drifting in through the open doors, "But everyone believes that, don't they? That their relationship is somehow superior because no one wants to acknowledge that it is doomed to fail."
"He loves you, Smackle. Anyone who has ever seen the two of you together knows that," Lucas's hand fluttered up, as though he were about to try and offer physical support, before deciding against it and letting his hand fall back to his side.
"Maybe, but he doesn't need me; not the way that he needs them."
"Or, maybe, he just needs you differently," Lucas suggested, and she gave him a smile that felt tight across her face.
"Thank you for saying that," She turned and left the room, a part of her relieved when Lucas made no move to follow.
There had been something in her gut that had told her what was coming, though she hadn't been ready to accept it. She had seen it in his eyes at the funeral, heard it in his voice when they had talked on the phone nearly a week later. She was still surrounded by the million letters that she had started but never quite managed to finish.
She could talk about facts; could argue her point with poise and elegance that came from years of practice. In this she was certain and sure.
But emotion comes harder; every inch of ground has to be fought for and there is no certainty of a victory, though she strives to focus on the war instead of each individual battle.
And there are no words to fix what has happened to him; to repair the fracture that has cracked his life in half.
He shows up at her doorstep and there is nothing of the boy with the orange bowtie left in him.
"Do you want to go for a walk?" he suggests, hands buried deep into the pockets of his sweatshirt and eyes fixated on the floor.
She nods her agreement and grabs a jacket off of the coatrack before following him out into the warm, summer night.
They make it down the block and into the small park where her father used to let her play. The swings were always her favorite and, like muscle memory, she followed the path through the gravel, settling into one of the seats. Farkle took the one beside her and she pretended, for just a moment, that everything was going to be okay.
"It used to all be so clear," Farkle admitted, his gaze fixed directly in front of him, "Everything made sense. You, me, all of our plans."
"It could still make sense," Smackle offered, her hands squeezing the chains so tightly she could feel them imprinting marks into her hands.
"Everything feels so different, now. It's like when my parents died, it changed the entire course that my life was headed down. And, I can't pretend that things are the same. I can't go to Princeton with you in the fall and be the person that I've always been."
"Then go to Princeton in the fall and be someone different. Just because some things have changed, does not mean that everything has to change, Farkle. I want to be there for you, you know that I do. I just cannot find the right words to say or the right thing to do that will make any of this any better," she admitted.
"It's okay," Farkle, finally, turns his gaze on her and she found herself blinking back tears, "There isn't a right thing to say or do Smackle. I need to take some time for myself and figure things out and there nothing anyone can do that can change that."
"I chose Princeton for you," she reminded him, biting her lower lip.
They'd had their pick of schools; sat together with piles and piles of acceptance letters and laughed as they picked their way through them and debated the merits of each of them. They'd settled on Princeton because it had been their original compromise. Close enough that they could still see their families on the weekends, but far enough away that it had the feeling of being on their own.
"I'm sorry, Smackle. You deserve better," Farkle sighed, standing up from the swing and hesitating as he waited for some gesture from her of what she needs.
"I hope you find what you are looking for."
"You'll do great things. You've always been extraordinary," he offered, before turning his back to her and leaving the way they had come.
It's anticlimactic, in a way, nothing like the ending that she had expected for her first love and, yet, she cannot see herself fighting with him. They had always understood the power behind their words and had promised to never use them to cut each other, but there is a part of her that thinks, maybe, it would be easier if they had. Maybe, it would feel more final if she could hate him with the same emotions, she had loved him with.
There are no fights filled with raised voices and thrown objects. She, never, once hears her father say a cutting word to her mother. There is just absence where something is meant to be.
Too often, her mother drifts in after dinner has just come to a conclusion, stopping to press a kiss to Smackle's head before heading directly to the shower.
Her father sits up in the living room reading; the light not flickering off until late into the night, while her mother sleeps like the dead in the bedroom that they share.
Smackle looks back over all of the tiny moments and there is no glaring sign that she missed that their marriage was starting to fall apart.
Only, that one argument over her.
Her summer before college is lonely, in a way that her life has not been since she had found Farkle. They had always shared the same group of friends, but there is something different in her relationships with them, now.
Riley sends her a text message with an offer to talk, but the wound is still fresh, and she does not know how to express what it feels like to have your heart torn out. Not when Riley and Lucas are the most stable high school couple she has ever witnessed.
She never hears from Maya, discovering the reason years later, though she thinks at the time that it is because her friendship with them was contingent upon her relationship with Farkle.
She sees them, once, when she, finally, gets up the nerve to go to Topanga's. She had been craving a slice of Katy's homemade cheesecake and she had needed to get out of her room and the depressing task of trying to simplify an entire lifetime into only what she would need for college.
She sees all of them, minus Farkle, sitting in the same booth they always have. They are laughing at something Zay had said and she found herself turning around and walking away before they noticed her.
The first time Smackle meets her roommate, the girl comes in dragging a bright pink suitcase with a white, lacy pillow in her hand.
"I'm Alison," She tossed the pillow on the bare bed, leaning against the handle to her suitcase, "And this is my boyfriend, Jason. He's here on a lacrosse scholarship."
The boy in question had a flowered duffel bag slung across one shoulder and two matching pink suitcases in each of his hands, "It's nice to meet you."
"I'm Isadora Smackle," Smackle returned, watching from her immaculately made bed as Alison checked the closet on her side of the room before moving over to look into Smackle's.
"Is that really all you brought?" She questioned, throwing the door open wide, so that her boyfriend could survey the inch of space that sat between each of her hung items.
"Well, you only really need seven outfits in a week, right?" Smackle pointed out, trying to hide her discomfort.
Alison let out a tinkling laugh that sounded pretty, despite the fact that a smile never spread across her face, "She's funny, isn't she? Listen, you wouldn't mind if I borrowed some closet space, would you? It's not like you're using it."
Alison shoved Smackle's clothes to the side, pausing when she saw the thin bands of tape that had marked exactly where each hanger was supposed to go.
She exchanged a look with her boyfriend, before the two moved back towards the doorway, "We're just going to grab the rest of my stuff. We'll be right back."
Out of all of the things Smackle's felt over the years, invisible is never one of them. For better or for worse, she has always stood out amongst her peers.
It's different in college. Her classes have stadium seating that completely fill with College Freshmen trying to get their general education requirements out of the way. Even sitting on the front row, the teacher hardly pauses to acknowledge any of the students, let alone, her.
She sits, taking notes with her brightly colored pens and, for the first time, when the teacher asks a question her hand stays down.
Alison stains all of the towels in their shared bathroom with her hair products and constantly leaves her clothes on the floor. Smackle starts to be concerned when she wakes up and does not see the bright pink bra hanging from the handle to their main door.
There are night Alison never comes home and nights when she receives a notification on her phone asking for Smackle to open the locked doors, so that Alison can sneak in after curfew.
"She's weird," Smackle hears Alison telling someone through the paper-thin door that separates their bedroom from the bathroom.
The water to the sink is running and Smackle cannot help thinking that if Alison was going to use hairspray without any thought of what it was doing to the ozone, she could at least try and conserve water when she was brushing her teeth.
However, the environment is probably the least of what Alison fails to care about and the water does little to mask her side of the phone call.
"We've all worked hard to get here. All of us had good grades and high SAT scores, she's just one of those fish that never got the memo that the pond's a lot bigger, now, and she's not so special, anymore."
The night that her mother left, stands out in her mind with vivid clarity.
At the time, she had viciously thought that her mother was already gone, and this was just a formality. It had surprised her to discover just how many things that belonged to her were even still left at the house. In her mind, her mother lived in her office, shoes shoved under her desk and clothes hidden on a rack behind her door.
"This isn't going to change anything between us," Her mother had promised, "We'll spend my days off together, just like we always have."
She had watched her mother gather armful after armful of clothes from the closet, sitting there in awe of all of the things she had never even see her mother wear. She had packed some of the things away in a duffel bag that sat open on the bed and others she had shoved into a black garbage bag that she assumed was meant for things to give away.
All of the jewelry that had lined the dresser had been tucked away in the bag, followed by things like her mother's toothbrush and the perfume that Smackle had always thought was a little too strong.
And, when it was done, she was struck by just how empty the apartment looked when it was stripped of half the things that had once belonged there.
"You can come with me, if you want," her mother extended a hand; the same hand that held steady as it repaired hearts and that made perfect stitches in every piece of clothing she repaired for her daughter.
She thought of her father coming home to the empty apartment; thought of the expression on his face and the realization that he was alone.
She was barely seven, but she knew even then that one of the worse things you could be in life was alone.
"I will wait here," she faked an ignorance that both of them knew she did not have.
"He's coming up the street, now," her mother waited until Smackle had already descended down the steps and thrown herself into her father's open arms to duck into the car that was waiting right in front of their building.
"College was one of the best times of my life," Her mother informed Smackle, as they walked across campus together.
It had been a surprise to find the woman that gave birth to her waiting on the front steps of her dorm building; looking almost like a professor in her sheathed dress and designer heels. The dark hair that she shared with her daughter had been cut since the last time that Smackle saw her, so that it brushed her shoulders and curled where it was tucked behind her ears.
"You did not tell me that you were coming," Smackle pointed out, as they ducked into the little coffee shop that was Smackle's backup hideout when the library was packed.
"Your father called me," She admitted, stepping up to the counter before Smackle could say anything in return, "I'll take a Venti Chai Latte. What would you like?"
"The same," Smackle sighed, watching as her mother ran her card through the machine.
"Why don't you find us a table?"
Smackle picked her usual table in a back booth and leaned her head back, trying to figure a way out of the conversation that was sure to follow. But she was worn down, tired, and unsure that she had any real fight left in her.
"How are your classes?" Her mother set one of the drinks in her hand down in front of Smackle and slid into the booth across from her.
"Fine," Smackle sighed.
"I've never heard you describe school with so little enthusiasm in my life."
"It is different from high school," Smackle admitted, picking at the paper of her straw.
"I know that you've had a rough couple of months. I remember how hard the transition was when I started college but isolating yourself isn't going to make it any easier," Her mother advised, the bracelets on her arm jangling together, as she lifted her drink, "You've always been close to your father."
"You never told me what he did," Smackle reminded her, removing the straw from the paper and sliding it into her drink, "This entire time, you let me think-."
"Your father's decisions had nothing to do with you."
"People are born with certain hereditary factors that directly influence behavior. Look at people who have one drink of alcohol and become an addict, or someone who is born with schizophrenia, or early onset dementia. These societal aberrations are born with their choices directly programmed into their DNA," Oswald finished, his voice taking on the superior quality that she'd come to directly associate with the Trust-Fund Frat Boys, who terrorized the campus.
She'd been on her way to pick up her student ID and a pack of them had nearly knocked her over, none of them stopping to offer an apology or any acknowledgement that they had just ran into a human being. Later that night, she'd heard the loud music coming from their dorm and tried to tune out the drunk shouting that had taken place outside of her window for most of the night.
"I disagree," The sound of her own voice surprised, even, Smackle, "There is no scientific evidence to back up your theory. In fact, research shows that up to seventy percent of serial killers have experienced trauma in their childhood, which lends to the idea that behavior is directly impacted by environment. In fact, I would argue that anyone, under the right set of circumstances can kill someone. Evil is not born, it is made."
"Both are excellent points," Their professor pulled the class back to his original direction and Smackle leaned back in her chair, her eyes meeting Oswald's across the room. He gave her a smile and she looked away.
Her pen shook in her hand and she clutched it tighter, remembering a time when she had not needed the approval of anyone else to justify her actions. She had known what was right, had always fought with facts on her side.
"You don't like me," Oswald observed, pausing by her desk as she finished gathering up her things at the end of class.
"Seeing as this is our first conversation, I have no opinion of you," Smackle disagreed, shoving her notebook rather violently into her bag.
"I think we should study together."
"I work far better on my own," She rose from her seat, slinging her bag across one shoulder and nearly taking him out with it.
A smile pulled across his face, as he took a cautionary step back, his hands coming up in a universal gesture of surrender, "And I'm sure that you believe that, but the thing is, we all learn better when someone challenges our ideas. The entire point of college is to have your viewpoint on the world shaken up and you don't agree with anything that I have to say, so I'm suggesting that we use each other. Strictly for the betterment of our education, of course."
"I highly doubt that you have any interest in anything other than drinking and chasing girls in short skirts around the campus. I will not spend the next four years doing your homework for you and helping you get ahead. Find someone else," she brushed passed him, her bag making purchase against his chest as she passed.
Alison does not say anything when she gets back to the dorm room to discover a pile of her clothes, still on hangers, stacked neatly at the foot of her bed.
There had been a part of Smackle that had wanted to be vicious, wanted to toss them on the floor with the same carelessness that Alison treated everything, but, instead, she had just carefully removed them from her own closet and returned them to their rightful owner.
"What is this?" Alison questioned, looking at Smackle with a blank expression that told Smackle that this was the first time anyone had ever tried to fight back.
"I was thinking what the two of us really need this year is clear boundaries."
"Boundaries?" Alison's lips lifted in the hint of amusement.
"Right, those things your parents failed to ever give you," The smile dropped instantly from Alison's face and she turned her back to Smackle.
"What is that?" Smackle questioned, as Oswald sank into the desk beside her.
"It's a coffee, also known in most cultures as a peace gesture," he informed her, reaching into his leather bag and pulling out his laptop.
"I was unaware that we were at war," Smackle informed him, not bothering to reach for the drink, which sat steaming at the edge of her desk.
"Really? So, you just try to make everyone look stupid every time they make a comment in class?" Oswald questioned, glancing away from the glowing screen in front of him.
"Only when someone is blatantly wrong," Smackle returned, trying not to show how unnerved she was by his easygoing nature.
"We're going to be friends, Isadora Smackle. I knew it the moment that you disagreed with me in our Psychology class."
"I am not looking for friends," Smackle argued, "I have no use for them."
"Allies, then, everyone has use for allies," he redirected his proposal, completely unruffled by her continued rejections.
Smackle's hand reached hesitantly for the cup in front of her, all of the stories of drugs being slipped into unsuspecting girls drinks running through her head.
"I do not drink my coffee black," she set the drink onto his desk and turned her attention to the front of the room.
"Well, you didn't dump it on me, so I guess we're making progress."
She does not know why it takes her so long to ask her father. For as long as she can remember, he is the one who has tirelessly answered each of her never-ending questions. He was known to check her out of school for no reason, except for to stop for ice cream at their favorite shop.
She was the one who always got to give the first opinion on any new recipe, and he was the one who taught her to dance before her first high school prom; their feet gliding through the steps of a slow waltz on the hardwood of the living room floor.
Her first lullaby was his muted hum, as he worked around the kitchen late into the night and her favorite stuffed puffin was a gift from him after she'd begged for it at the zoo. When she'd lost it somewhere on the Subway, he'd replaced it, claiming for years that the bird had found its way home all on its own.
And, yet, she waits until she is nearly done with high school to ask her father what happened in his marriage.
Maybe, it is because she knows that she is finally old enough for the whole truth, or, maybe, it is because she knows that time is quickly running out and too soon she will be out of the house and trying to make a life as an adult on her own.
He tells her of the affair in clipped words, that sound rehearsed even to her own ears and she feels something dim inside of herself, like a candle being snuffed out, that she is not sure she will ever get back.
"Don't you agree, Iz?" his voice pulled her out of her thoughts, and she blinked to find herself back in the library staring at a textbook filled with preparatory LSAT questions.
"There was no prenup, it should be a fair division of assets," Smackle returned, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear.
The computer screen a table away was showing footage of where they believed the Minkus's private plane had gone down and she couldn't help feeling sucked into the fathomless depths of ocean that the camera revealed as words streaked across the banner at the bottom of the screen. It was the five-year anniversary of the crash and she felt like she couldn't escape the news coverage anywhere.
"I've never seen you this disinterested in studying, ever," Ozzy pointed out.
"Do you ever feel like there's an entire alternate universe out there where your life is completely different then what it is now?" she questioned, forcing herself to turn away from the images flashing across the laptop screen.
"Not really. I'm sure I'm this devilishly good looking in every reality," He flashed her a smile, "Why? Are you worried you're missing out on something?"
"Sometimes, I feel like my life was supposed to be more than just books and school. I used to have fun," she admitted.
"And here I thought what we were doing was fun," His face filled with mock outrage.
"Ask me another question," she refocused, closing her eyes as she struggled to get her thoughts back on track.
"What are you doing here?" Her mother asked in surprise, as she paused at where Smackle was leaning against the door of her office.
She had seen her mother in a lab coat dozens of times, but there is something different about seeing her in a lab coat at work. She carries herself with a confidence and authority that Smackle is not sure she has seen in any other aspect of her mother's life.
"I never told Farkle that I loved him," She admitted, "It has been five years and not a day goes by when I do not wonder what he is doing, or where he is."
"I liked Farkle," Her mother reached around her to open the door and Smackle followed her into the office, pausing to take in the view of the city streets below.
"It should be easier now; I should feel less. But the news coverage is everywhere and all I can do is wonder if there was any way to prevent the outcome. What if I had said something differently? Or done a better job of being there? Or told him how I really felt?"
"You can't change the past, as much as you may want to," Her mother sighed, sinking down on the couch and gesturing for Smackle to take the seat next to her, "All you have control over is the present."
"I still love him," She admitted, blinking away the tears that had suddenly gathered in her eyes.
"Then, maybe, it isn't too late to tell him."
Smackle nodded, rubbing a finger under one eye, before she rose up from her seat.
"I heard about Georgetown. Words can't even begin to express how proud of you I am," Her mother reached out to squeeze her hand and Smackle squeezed back.
The first time she sees Farkle after five years apart, he is wearing Khaki pants and a green vest over a white dress shirt. There is something about him that is different, though he is closer to the version that she had held so tightly to inside of her head.
"I was glad to hear from you," Farkle rose from his seat, as she approached him; feeling like a child playing pretend in her mother's clothes.
The dress had, in fact, been a gift from her mother and the heels were a birthday gift from Ozzy, who had claimed that the presence you brought with you always started with the way you were dressed. She had worn it to her Georgetown interview nearly a month ago.
"I was surprised to find out you were back in the city," Smackle admitted, sinking down into the seat across from him and crossing her feet at the ankles.
"It hasn't been very long. I just realized that it was time to get my act together and grow up," Farkle admitted, his hands bunching together on top of the tabletop.
"You certainly look grown up," She admitted, wondering how much she had changed over the course of their separation. It was difficult to tell when you saw your own face in the mirror every day.
"I'm going to Columbia. I'm probably the oldest Freshman in the class, but it feels good to be pursuing academics again. It feels like I'm finally getting back to the person that I'm supposed to be."
"I am happy for you," Smackle smiled, suddenly unsure of what to do with her hands, "I thought a lot about what you were doing over the last five years."
"Nobody could tell me what you were up to, but I guess people get busy and drift apart."
"I'm graduating from Princeton and, then, I will start law school in the fall," She informed him.
"I thought you would pursue some kind of career in science, but I always knew you would do great things, whatever field you went into," He smiled, taking a sip of the water in front of him, "I'm glad that you're happy."
"I am happy. But that does not mean that I do not have regrets. I am sorry that I was not there for you when you needed me," She pushed out, knowing that she needed to get her feelings out, before she lost all of her courage.
"I went to a really dark place. I felt alone and, for the first time in my life, nothing mattered anymore. I drank, a lot and I gambled away more money then some people will ever see in a lifetime. I got myself banned from half the Casinos in Monte Carlo and I didn't care. The only thing that mattered was the next drink, or the next high, or the next hand. There was nothing that you could have done to help me because I wasn't ready to help myself."
"Why did you come back?" Smackle pressed, struggling to reconcile the image of the man in front of her with the one that he was describing.
"After a while, I had burned most of my bridges in Europe and I wasn't ready to come home. I thought about going to South America, but I ended up just buying a plane ticket for the next plane that was leaving the airport and it happened to be going to Tai Pai. I joined this group of kids that were taking a gap year before they started University and we backpacked all around Asia. It was the most peace that I had felt since They died and when the group decided to go back, I just couldn't bring myself to leave. I converted to Buddhism and a part of that is breaking away from all of your Earthly possessions. The only way to do that was to travel back home and sell all of my stock in Minkus International. But, when I got here, I realized that there was a lot of damage I still needed to repair."
"With your father's company?" She questioned, searching for anything that she had heard about it in the news.
"No, with Maya. We have a daughter together," He confessed, his eyes dropping to the tablecloth and she felt all of the air leave her lungs in a sudden exhale.
"I had no idea," Smackle's voice came out choked, as she struggled to get enough air into her lungs.
"It was a surprise for me, too. But it was also the final push that I needed to fix my life here. I want to be a part of my daughter's life in whatever way I can be."
"I am glad everything worked out," She forced herself onto her feet, surprised when her legs were steady and didn't wobble beneath her.
"We haven't even ordered yet," Farkle reminded her, looking up in surprise.
"I don't have time to sit around waiting," Smackle bit her lip, looking deliberately away from him, "I've wasted too much time waiting, already."
She wonders, sometimes, when everything started spiraling out of control; her identity unraveling with every choice placed in front of her.
It had all been so simple once, with clearly defined lines. She could divide everything up into right and wrong, fact and fiction, black and white. She knew who she was, what she stood for, and there was no reason to compromise on any of it.
Her demons never wore human faces and her nightmares always ended when the sun rose.
She was a child once.
Everything feels as if it is on mute as she paced the length of the hallway. She had been following the same course to the window at the end, back passed the vending machines, and to the red line that marked the Employee Only section of the hospital since midnight and the sun was just starting to rise, now.
"You look like you took a mud bath with your clothes on," Ozzy informed her, stopping in front of her with a plastic bag of fresh clothes, "I picked these up from your apartment."
"Thank you," she offered, though she ignored the bag of clothes in favor of taking a sip of his coffee, "This is disgusting."
"That's because I don't fill half of the cup with creamer first," he informed her, guiding her down the hallway and out of earshot of the waiting room, "They just pulled the car from the river. I managed to get the folder out before they towed it away. I told them that The Senator needed some personal items from it."
"This has all gone too far," Smackle looked up at the ceiling, searching for answers that weren't there, "It has all just spiraled out of control."
"Isadora," she abruptly met his gaze at the sound of her name, for once not sucked into the electric blue of his gaze, "We're in too deep to ever go back."
"I know," she whispered, the tears finally falling.