!Warning – Violence, Mentions of the Choking Game!
I have some time to myself on Sunday, walking the grounds and lapsing for fun. I climb a tree in the yard and watch people walk by, oblivious to my gaze. At lunch I sit on a couch with Blossom. The dining room was much too loud.
We don't talk much, Blossom and I. We watch a cooking show on the television, wishing we were eating what they made. We made comments as though we were experts. "That's much too much salt." "She should peel those cucumbers first." "What an ugly shade of green. She should add more blue dye to that."
We end up gathering a small group who play the game with us, acting as cocky as the contestants on the shows. Another group gets annoyed at how loud we we're getting and confiscate the remote, forming a sort of wall keeping us from the TV. We start talking with each other instead.
Two of the girls wander off, but the other two stay and introduce themselves in depth. They're roommates in another wing of the school, far from our room. That's probably why I haven't seen them around. I certainly would have noticed. One of the girls has large feathered wings, a deep blood red. She holds them close to her back to keep them out of the way, but as we talk I watch them. She moves them occasionally, stretches. I can tell the position she keeps them in is uncomfortable.
The other girl seems average in comparison, excepting the darkness I detect in her eyes. This is someone who's had some damage done. The winged girl calls herself Douma. "It's the Angel of the Silence of Death," she says, "I was raised Catholic, so I thought it was fitting." The other girl tells us her name is Scarlett. "But if I'm going to be a superhero," she says, "Like the Professor says I might, I want to be Panther Girl. So feel free to call me that."
She has green eyes and shoulder length blonde hair. The only reason I can think of for her to name herself that is if she has a tail or something catlike I can't see, because nothing that's visible to me is particularly feline. Well, besides her thin shoulders. And she's quite muscular. Maybe she can run like a cheetah or something. I'll have to ask her later.
Douma has skin pale like death and rare gray eyes. She smiles only slightly when she catches me looking at her wings. "I grew them when I was twelve," she says. Her voice is surprisingly chirpy. It doesn't match her appearance. "My backwards little Catholic town created a cult around me. It was getting weird, so I left."
I feel mildly uncomfortable hearing about this so soon after I met the girl. Everyone around here is always bursting at the seams with tragic backstories they can't wait to rant about. Blossom tells her about herself, not once mentioning her late sister.
I tell them a brief version of my own story, saying out loud for the first time that my parents disowned me. The words are sour, but I lean into the taste. We try not to make Scarlett feel pressured to share, but in the end our glances in her direction make her spill.
"When my parents learned about my power, they were supportive, actually," she tells us, "They tried to help me keep it a secret, but, It wasn't that easy for me. People found out. They got mad. First there were signs outside. Harmless, you know? Crudely spray-painted words on cardboard. 'Die, mutt.' and stuff like that.
"We cleaned it up and moved on. But the signs got meaner. People started picketing. Eggs and fireworks hit our house every day. Eventually, my parents called the police because people were getting rowdy. We were just watching a movie together when we heard beating on the door. That was too much for them, so of course the police are where they'd go.
"Well, it was a bad idea. A bad, bad idea." Her eyes are dark. I want to tell her she doesn't have to continue, but I feel like interrupting would be worse. I stay quiet while she collects her thoughts.
"The police got there, we heard the sirens, but the group only got louder. A window broke in the back. We heard a door open, and," she pauses, looking at a point in the distance, "The police led the mob in. My parents were scared, I was terrified. I did the only thing I thought I could possibly do. I did my thing. I turned into a panther. I tried to get them to leave, but there were gunshots. I just," she pauses again, unmeasurable emotion moving on her face, "The Panther's ears are so sensitive. I ran. I wasn't thinking. I couldn't control it. I looked back from the street and saw my parents being shot through our front windows."
The conversation dies after that. We all say our apologies, of course, but it's so light against the violence she's described that it might as well be dust sprinkled in the ocean. Douma gently pats her roommate's shoulder and they walk away. "We'll see you later," she mouths over her shoulder at us. A wing reaches around Scarlett as they walk away.
I rarely see them around school. We must get the timing exactly wrong. When I do see them, though, I tell them my room's always open. "Just tell my roommate Blanc that you're a friend," I say. They agree to, but I haven't seen them there yet.
Blanc has been awfully quiet. In fact, she has been different since the night she argued with her sister in the hall. I feel like I would be intruding if I asked, but of course whatever's eating her eats at me too. She's sitting on her bed one evening while I do homework.
I keep glancing over at her, assuming she'd start reading a book or something, but she's inspecting the open closet door. She pulls her hair up and drops it down, and I realize she's looking in the mirror. She doesn't look impressed.
"Blanc," I say quietly. She startles and looks at me. "What's up with you lately?"
She doesn't want to look at my eyes. I push my books aside and go to sit beside her.
"I'm serious. You've been weird," I say.
"Well," she says, still looking away from me. "You could say that. But it's not now that I'm being 'weird.' It was before."
I stay quiet.
"I came here hoping I could change." She sounds remorseful. "My parents never made it a requirement that I come here. I just wanted to get out of that house. Be someone different. I knew my sister would be here, but I didn't think she'd make it this hard."
"How is she making it hard, if you don't mind my asking?"
She counts on her fingers, "She introduces me as Christine, she tells her friends about my personal issues, she's as judgmental as our parents, she's still 'perfect in every way,' and somehow she still can pretend that she cares about me." Blanc huffs in frustration.
"I just wish we had a few more years age difference."
I think about what she's said. "Blanc, I don't know about your sister's friends, but I still see you as the person I was introduced to. The second time." She smiles. I continue, "This Blanc is the weird one for me. So, excuse me if I've missed your point, but I think that you can still be a new person here. Just, not with your sister's friends."
She looks at me sadly. "You're very kind, Lapse, but I think you have missed my point." She laughs, and it surprises me. "Not that I've given you all the facts." She looks at me, "Are you ready for a long story?"
I scoot closer to her and lean against her.
"Ok," she says, "I think I've already told you that my parent's were part of the brotherhood, so as you can imagine that doesn't set them up for a particularly accepting view on anything. When I was little, they told me how much they were looking forward to knowing what I could do. Knowing how, someday, I could help the brotherhood."
She laughs mirthlessly. "I suppose it wasn't as bad as that sounds, but it effected me. I, uh..."
I put an arm around her.
"I started playing a game," she says. This throws me for a loop. My thoughts scramble to figure out where she's going with this.
"I was homeschooled, but I still had a group of friends. Private-schoolers from the institution down the street. They introduced me to the choking game."
I pull back from her and look closely at her face. I mentally recoil. My parents, of course, told me that this was something teenagers did, and why it was such a bad thing. It was a similar conversation to the ones they had with me about drugs and unprotected sex. And mutants, for that matter.
I inspect her throat only briefly before looking into her eyes, inviting her to continue the story.
"It was a spiral," she said, "Whenever my parents gave me that awful, disappointed look, I just..."
I notice, now, that she's trying not to cry. "It was an ecstasy that was unmatched, to me. But my sister found out. I guess I could have erased it, but I think I knew how much trouble I was getting myself into because I let her continue to know."
"She said she had things she knew she shouldn't do, so she wouldn't try to stop me. She helped me cover up bruises with makeup and stuff, but she never spotted for me or anything. Maybe she was more worried about me than she let on.
"Eventually, though, I found out what it was that she did that made her keep my secret." She grows quieter and quieter, as if afraid her sister's listening. "Elizabeth's Bulimic," she nearly whispers, "She pukes what she eats."
I try not to make a sound.
"So, I told her I wanted to b someone else here. I wanted to stop choking. And she was really supportive, actually. She laughed and said it wouldn't work. That she'd tried that sort of thing a lot and it never worked." She absentmindedly pulls her hair into a ponytail.
"So, I wanted to prove her wrong. To be someone new here, you know? But she wouldn't leave me alone. I know you were awake that one time, when she and I fought, but she bothers me a lot more than that. She's trying to be sisterly or something, I don't know."
I don't want to interrupt her train of thought, but she's stopped talking.
"So, you did it again, didn't you?" I whisper.
She looks at me and nods only slightly.
"When?" I ask. She shrugs. "I slipped into the closet when you were at class. I don't know, I've done it three times already."
"Well, you have to stop." I go sit in front of her so we're eye to eye. "It's dangerous. Like, really dangerous. You could die."
She doesn't want to meet my gaze. "I know it is."
"Listen," I say after a pause, "Come get me when you feel like you want to choke, OK? We'll Lapse. Do something crazy. Keep your mind off it for as long as possible."
She smiles a little. "Sure, Lapse."
"You have to promise, Blanc." I want to give her some sense of commitment.
"I promise, Lapse."
