Chapter 7: talking body

"It's that conflict between heart and mind that rips me limb from limb, plucking the petals off a flower playing 'loves me, loves me not.' I'm like this for sentimental and utilitarian reasons. I've only been able to alter this world so much because of using him, but I know there's more worlds out there. It's where he's from. Sometimes I want to hold him until we turn to dust and die. Sometimes I want to tear him apart hoping he feels just a tenth of what he's done to me. He brings out the unrestrained amygdala in me, and it's the most human, the most flesh and blood, I ever feel."

— 15 —

She isn't subtle. Not in the least bit. But I pretend not to see her watching me. I enjoy my music and turn to the next page of Portrait of Markov. Isn't much else to do as I wait in the dead periods between classes.

The next song that comes out isn't to my taste. I reach for my phone on the table and see the texts from Sayori.

Sayori (do not resuscitate): you didn't have to run D:

Sayori (do not resuscitate): sorry it got so awkward, call me?

Two missed calls.

Sayori (do not resuscitate): okay you're not checking your phone I'll leave you alone :(

They'd come Saturday night and Sunday morning. Monday hasn't seen anything new. So I sit by my lonesome and read, sometimes drinking water, enjoying the warm sunlight against the cool air. It's not a long book and I'm not entirely a fan of the prose.

Oh, and pretend I don't see her.

Eventually I win the game.

Yuri just kind of stands there, one hand to her chest like a gnarled Parkinson's arm. The girl is holding a copy of Blood Meridian. She looks comfy in that outfit, fit for the weather. I see so little skin that it's hard to dehumanize her. I watch her mouth move, reading her lips and translating nothing but static. Silence only makes her fidget, fingers unable to rest still.

She takes a breath. Points at her ears and looks like she expects me to yell at her.

Lazily, I remove the earbuds. "Hm?"

"I…" She looks around. "Funny meeting you here. I saw you from over there—not following you or anything. I saw your book and, y'know, just thought…" Her eyes go down. "Anyone sitting here?"

I shake my head.

Yuri takes a breath and sits. The motions are delicate, precise. More like she's doing some sort of curtsey that's wholly inappropriate for the borderline homeless chic any self-respecting college student wears around campus.

"What were you listening to? Something to help you read?"

I turn my phone over to her. She leans in and squints, then gives me a questioning look.

"Like anyone going to work or walking to class, I vibe to songs about murder, drugs, and women." I shrug.

"I see," she says in a voice that says she does not. I wait for her to speak, and she plays with a strand of hair frayed from overdoing that gesture. "I never got the chance to, y'know, talk. Apologize for being weird. And thank you for the book. It's actually a funny story. Not funny haha, but more…" Yuri frowns heavily. "When we met and you said you'd be interested in it, I went to the bookstore. Home, I mean. I had two copies. That's not suspicious. I went to find my spare copy of the book and thought you'd like it, but instead you… Well, you already found a copy and got me something new instead. Thanks for that, by the way. It was nice. And you were right, the book is horrifying."

"Okay."

She swallows. Starts to look increasingly like something is trying to dig out from behind her eyes and she doesn't want anyone to notice. "I mean, no, not okay. The book is weird. I thought at first it was poorly written, then I realized it was a style thing. Everyone speaks and it's written with bad grammar on purpose. I watched an hour long video on YouTube just to tell me how to read it. So, I mean, it was hard. I could do it, though. You gave me the book so I wasn't going to give up. That's not me."

Yuri lets out a breath, hand to her chest again. "But no quotations and all the dialect and idioms, it's hard to follow. But once I figured that out, I couldn't put it down. Until I got to the tree. Y'know, that one. The chapter is named for it, and then I read it, and I just put it down and had to go outside and think."

"The tree of dead infants," I say.

She nods. "Yes. Yes, that scene exactly! In any context, I'd laugh. Not that it's funny, don't, uh, that's not what I'm saying. But it's so over-the-top and horrific that any other author, it'd be a joke with them. But here, no, it wasn't. People are murdered and children slaughtered and that racist Army captain gets his head pickled, and the Kid is only spared and hired into the Glanton Gang because he's Anglo and—wow, this is really weird."

"How so?"

Yuri looks around, between the occasional trees and hedges outside the library, to that one rocking-swing thing under an awning. Not many people milling outside when it's so comfy inside. "Just… you don't talk very much, do you? Not that that's bad! I usually think I'm quiet. Natsuki tells me I need to speak up more. But I feel like I'm just rambling and this feels really uncomfortable and you're not saying anything so I feel compelled to fill the dead air and—" She bites her tongue, sucking on her lips. "I'm sorry, I'm being weird."

I take a long pull from my water bottle. "Ya good?"

She nods quickly.

"I don't have much to say." I shrug.

Yuri grimaces. "Is it because of me? Because I'm sorry I was so weird with the tea. Natsuki pretty much hit me with a rolled up newspaper and told me you were making a joke. Not that she's violent—we're friends and that's just what she does. Am I doing it again? Is this a bit I'm not getting?"

I shake my head. "No, I meant in general."

Her expression implores me on.

With a shrug of the hand holding my book, I say, "You said it yourself: compelled to fill the dead air. Humans have a need to do that. You hear and see more when you surrender the stage."

That seems to give her pause. She looks to the side, inwardly, squinting at nothing. Then she looks at me, as if trying to use my own tricks against me. I don't answer the bait, staring her down until she looks away, and then turn my book over to keep reading.

"What do you think?" she asks quietly.

"It's very book-y," I say.

"Hm?"

"The dialog," I say, turning it over to her. "Erryone speak like they in print and know it. The main character is supposed to be panicking here, see? But every sentence is crisp, formed correctly. She even uses semicolons; who does that?"

"Is that important to you?" she asks, expression more focused.

I pretend to think while counting the visible blood vessels in her eyes. I get to a quick twenty before I give up and speak. "Yeah. English a big language. Trick ain't using 'em all. Trick's to say what you mean. You can leave a lot left to implication we're hardwired to understand without spelling it out."

She arches an eyebrow. "And I suppose your poem will reflect that?"

I waggle a finger. "Spoilers, Yuri..."

She folds her arms on the table between us. "There's nothing wrong with phrasing it like that. In a sense, we agree. Being precise should be the goal when writing."

"Why does writing need to have a goal?" I ask quickly.

Yuri inches her head back, mouth like she can't quit bite the right words. "I'm sorry?"

"Yuri, if you apologize to me one more time, I'm just going to get up and leave."

She inhales. "No, no, no, I'm—" She sucks on her lips. Looks around. Does that hand-to-chest thing again. "I don't follow your logic."

"Neither do I," I say. "That's the point. It's all vague feelings instead of any hardcore facts or justifications. We perceive the world through feelings and emotions, then trick ourselves into seeing some hidden logic beyond it all. Speech is the same way. The job of the tongue is to translate electrical impulses into vibrations in the air we've all agreed has some meaning. I don't ascribe meaning to meaning itself; that's tautological."

She's thoughtful for a minute. "I can't tell if that's profound or, more likely, iconoclastic. It's distressingly post-modern. I can't say I agree or even like it. And also it's the most I think I've ever heard you talk. You're far more well-spoken than I would have thought. I'm surprised. No offense."

"None taken," I say, arching a brow. "Till you said 'no offense.'"

"Oh." She fidgets with her hair. Swallows.

"Whatever. Don't get used to it," I say, shaking my head. "I get verbose whenever we talkin' body."

"Why's that?" she asks slowly.

"It's my major, more or less," I say. "Medical. I have a soft spot for the sentient, all-terrain aquarium that is the human body. Things click." I tap my temples.

"Is that why you're still reading A Portrait of Markov even if you disagree with the prose?" she asks. "There's a lot of medical stuff in there. Cutting people up. Stitching them together like Frankenstein."

Rather than reply, I open the book back up and flip through the pages. When I find the right one, I show it to her. Yuri leans in and gasps.

"You write in your books?" she asks, but with a hopeful look. "This is so exciting! Most people think trying to talk back to the text is some kind of sin. Like books are stale, dead objects in a tomb instead of living, breathing works."

I tap the page again.

"Oh, right, sorry." Yuri squints. "'Bro fell asleep first at the sleepover,' 'rookie mistake,' and… 'This is not how Eden-Leng procedure works'. Did you draw a little picture of back surgery?"

I take the book from her. "Eden-Leng is a procedure to repair the trapezius muscle." I reach out to touch her, between neck and shoulder, the taut muscle. She gasps and looks like she might faint. "You surgically take these muscles." I stand up, reaching behind to touch her upper back. She's stock still. "And move them up here to restore functions."

I sit back down. "The character in the book is trying to stitch together their little monster to fix the arm after someone bit through her trapezius, but the procedure they're using is wrong."

"I-I see," Yuri says, clutching her hand to her chest. "Uh, how, y'know, how long have you been studying this?"

I shake my head. "Not long. But I have a passion for the body and how it works. I was born without an owner's manual to the corps mortel, and I've been trying to figure it out ever since. Like I said, it just clicks."

She tries to say something, but just stutters out a mess.

I sigh. "I know. I'm a fucking weirdo. Just say it."

"No!" she says sharply. "I mean, no. You're passionate. You have something that interests you. Something that will help people and save lives one day, even. I respect that. It's very, very respectable. Did you become interested in it because of your stay in the hospital?"

I make a face. "What?"

"Ah!" She shakes her head, grimacing. "I was talking to Sayori yesterday. She said you had a scar that must have been treated in a hospital. Well, not in so many words."

I try not to scowl. "What'd she say?"

"Um. Well." She tugs on her collar. "Is it true you have a bullet wound?"

"Yes."

"Ah."

She stares at me.

I'm silent.

"…can I see it?"

"No."

"Oh. Okay. Right." Yuri blinks. Sucks on her lips. "Um. Sorry. That was a weird thing to—wait, wait, where are you going?!"

I put my stuff into my bag, standing. "I told ya girl I were finna leave if you apologized to me again. I'm a lot of things, but a liar ain't one."

Yuri stands up with me, waving an arm as if to grab me. "I'm sorry, I didn't—I mean, I'm not sorry. I was trying to be a creep. Y-yeah, that was it. It was calculated and weird of me on purpose, and I'm not sorry." She tries her best smile. "Please don't just run away!"

"I'm glad you can be honest with yourself, but no." I sling the bag over my shoulder. "Finna run to class early. See you in the club later. Same time and place?"

She just kind of sits back down, looking horrified.

"Yuri."

She nods slowly, fidgeting with her hair. And babbling some nonsense.

"Right. Well. Hope ya finish Blood Meridian. Deuces."

I just leave her like that. Much like the two opposums in the couch, there's nothing anyone can do about it.

— 16 —

"You just headin' out in silence, doc?" Keith asks, rubbing the towel over the back of his neck. He's still wet from the post-practice shower. "Not even a goodbye slap on the ass? I'm starting to think you don't love me anymore."

I go back to tying my shoes. "I see why you're so popular with the ladies. But for real, I gotta run somewhere."

Keith rubs the side of his jaw. "But for double real, you good? You were awake when I got home Saturday and been silent since then."

"Comme ci, comme ça." I make a so-so gesture.

"Deadass, you know I gotcha back if you need me."

"I don't. Thanks."

He looks at me for a long moment. I put on my shirt in silence. He goes to his bag with all his football gear.

"What time you planning on being home?" he asks.

"What are you, my wife?"

Keith strikes a pose, like a little teapot. "All you gotta do is put a ring on it."

I snort. "Get the fuck out of here, Keith. Probably be home same time I was last week. Depends on this club I been drug into."

"Drugged or dragged?" he asks.

I roll my eyes. "Seeya, man."

"Yeah."

I cinch my hoodie and leave for the Mulholland building. I have a little fresh water for the hallway plant, too. It deserves it.

Same hallways. Same dying light. I swat my hand through the sunbeam coming in through the windows, watching the shadows. Little more than an idle curiosity before I turn my attention to the classroom door. I don't really have many thoughts at the moment. Mostly because if I let my mind's eyes go places, it just thinks back to Saturday night.

I shake my head. Run my hand down my face.

I gently open the door.

All four other members of the literature club are there. Yuri, who was sitting against the wall with a book, looks up at me, and then aggressively stares into her thermos of tea. Natsuki sits on a desk, bouncing a leg as she talks to Sayori, the latter of whom gives me a meek wave. And then there's Monika, organizing paper and books from her backpack and the box I helped her get Thursday.

"Welcome back!" Monika says happily. "Make yourself at home. I've got to do something real quick. Then we can finally see that poem you wrote. Sound good?"

The air tastes of stale cyanide and fresh almonds.

I grunt and find somewhere to sit near Sayori. "Hey."

"Hey," Sayori says. She fidgets with her fingers again, just grinning at me in otherwise utter silence. Until the inevitable happens, and one finger bends slightly sideways and makes a little popping noise. "Ow!" she hisses, shaking her hand. "Hate when that happens!"

"You good?"

"No!" she whines, massages her index' knuckle. "I just popped my joint and I'm not even about to fistfight someone. Ouch."

I look her in the eyes and pull on my thumb until it cracks. "There. Now we're even. Better?"

Sayori cringes. "Dude, no. I hate that sound. You know if you keep doing that you'll get arthritis?"

Natsuki scoffs. "No, you don't. That's an old wives' tale."

"Who's wife?" Sayori asks with a scowl. "She seems wise."

"Oh my god," Natsuki says in a low voice. She turns to me. "Little help here?"

"No, I'm good," I say. "Consider me just a ghost. I still don't even know what y'all usually do here till the end of the day."

"This and that," Sayori says with a shrug.

Natsuki holds up a finger. "Sayori, quiet. The adults are talking."

Sayori pouts. "Alright, be a meanie. I'm gonna steal some of Yuri's tea." She hops up, gives us both a scathing look, and goes to bother Yuri. I briefly watch Yuri startle as Sayori looms over her, and realize I'm fidgeting with my palm. Sayori is acting normal, at least.

Part of me had worried. Between Saturday night, the missed calls, and texts, something felt off. But another part of me was sure it'd just blow over with some time, like all things do. Seems I was right.

I feel Natsuki's eyes.

"What?" I ask.

"What'd you do?" Her voice is low.

I stay silent.

"Ugh, c'mon, dude." She shakes her head. "To Yuri and Sayori. They're acting weird."

Seems I was wrong.

"Told Yuri if she apologized one more time, I'd ditch her today. She said sorry. I vamoosed."

She puffs out her cheek, pretending not to look at Sayori. "Y'know, I've fantasized about doing that. Sometimes you're talking to her, and you know what she's trying to say, but she can't get it out and sputters and repeats herself. Now I'm kinda glad I never had the balls." She stares me down. "Or was enough of a jerk."

I shrug silently.

Natsuki frowns. "And Sayori?"

"Hm?"

"She's extra Sayori today and it's giving me weird vibes. Told us you hung out this weekend."

I shake my head. Another shrug.

"Ugh. And I thought Yuri could be a brick wall."

"Funny. She said about the same thing to me today."

"Why am I not surprised?"

"Speaking of surprises, I think Dustin is hungry. You should feed him again. If you ever bring some more food in, I'll deliver it for you."

She blinks, then folds her arms with displeasure. "That morning cursed me."

"Hm?"

"Words, dude. Use your big boy words."

"Hm."

"Now you're just screwing with me." She folds her arms tightly. "Look, whatever, I'm not playing this game with you. Speak like a normal functioning person or I'm just—no. Hard pass. Not in the mood."

I let it be for a moment, before I lean in. "What does someone who belongs to the literature club look like, Natsuki?"

"Oh my god!" she shouts, throwing her hands up. I smile, focusing on her as she looks around in a panic. All eyes on her. She huffs out a breath, mouth wide open as she tugs on her collar. And then is glaring at me.

"Don't you smile at me!" she hisses.

I don't alter my expression.

She lets out a low groan and stands. "I was trying to be nice and talk to you, but then you do this. I'm going to bother someone who can actually talk, like Yuri."

"Alright, that was always allowed."

One last glare before she tries to get away.

She can't get far before Monika announces herself. "Okay, everyone! Sorry it took me so long. How about we share our poems and see what we think?"

Natsuki glowers at me, shaking her head. I'll save her for later.

So the first person I hit up is Sayori.

She happily says my name, leaning against a desk. Then she sort of just looks at me expectantly. "How, uh, how's it hanging?"

"You still saw the one I wrote," I say.

"Ah. Well." She looks around. Quieter, she says, "Sorry, by the way."

"For?"

"For?" she repeats, shaking her head. "Y'know. Ruining your weekend. Dragged you out and then all I did was make it weird and awkward. You didn't answer your phone, so, y'know." She licks her lips. "Figured you were really pissed. Sorry."

"It's fine."

"Is fine the best it'll ever be?"

"Meaning?"

She hesitates. "Nevermind."

"Alright."

Sayori kind of just keeps that posture. Her head slightly sways like there's a breeze only she can feel.

Eventually, I just say, "I like the imagery in your poem you have just shown me. It says a lot while saying very little."

"Hey, wait a minute!" She pouts. "Don't be—look, can I make it up to you?"

I cock an eyebrow.

She sighs. "Please?"

"Will you ask beforehand?"

"I do not know," she says slowly, with emphasis. "You never check your phone."

I laugh once. "Alright, that's fair. I deserved that one."

"And a couple more, if we're being honest," she says, clutching her arm. Her eyes shift to Monika, and I don't follow her gaze. I just put a hand on her shoulder, give her a little squeeze, and move on to play show-and-tell with the next person.

"Gimme," I tell Yuri.

"Oh, hello!" she says, expression more like just baring fangs than anything. "Hold on. I just had it—here."

It's a lot like that one I saw the first day. Flowing penmanship like Arab calligraphy rendered into Latin characters. Half the battle is trying to read the script. It's like nightsight: you need to look at the edges of the thing you want to see what you're most interested in. A story about a ghost and a lighthouse, vaguely at least.

She shifts in place like she doesn't know how to stand, where her legs are supposed to be.

I hand it back. "Why do you flicker back?"

"Excuse me?

"The ghost flickers, and you flicker back. Why?"

"Oh, the poem!" she says. "Um. Well. It's metaphorical. I don't, I mean, I don't really like explaining them. It's like dissecting a frog in class, you know? You don't want to do it, I don't want to, and in both cases the frog dies. The system just implies that's the fate of the frog, but you don't really have to do that. I might find different organs and meaning in the frog that you won't."

"Or if it's something more profound?" I ask, holding out to her my folded poem. "You say the lungs are in the frog, and I insist on an extremely technical level your lungs are on the outside of your body?"

She looks up at me, pausing halfway on unfolding my piece of paper. "You're saying it's a matter of outlook? Yes, I suppose. How are lungs outside my body?"

"Now we're dissecting the frog."

"Right," she says quietly, unhappily. She looks down at my poems and says nothing. Her eyes rove it. She reaches to take a sip of tea and keeps reading. Starts at the top and goes through it again. Something dismayed crosses her expression, and she looks back up at me.

"Yeah?" I prompt.

Yuri swallows. "I think Monika would like it?"

"You don't."

Her eyes widen. "No, no, that's not—dissection, remember? I didn't." She just stops herself. "It's very technical. Anatomical. Very tactile and fleshy."

I take the poem back from her and she doesn't resist me. "Like I said, it clicks."

"Mhm."

I leave her to find Natsuki, who's now alone.

"No," she says flatly. "You ruined YouTube for me."

"How?"

Natsuki sighs. "Because after we fed Dustin, I started looking up possums. Now the algorithm is onto me in a weird way. I thought, 'no way he was correct.' And then I got recc'd a video about possum babies, and I ended up watching a video with a dead possum while a woman was telling me to always check their pouches. The mama was dead and this lady reaches into her stomach and started pulling out babies. Live babies!" Her voice cracks. "Now whenever I see a dead possum I'll want to touch it to make sure her babies are okay, and that's gross, and that's horrible. I used to be able to not think about them but now I can't and it's all your fault!"

"Okay."

"Stop just okaying me!" she says sharply. "It's really disrespectful."

"So no to poems today?"

"No!" she says. "I'm out here traumatized and people want to talk about poems. I keep seeing video reccs for dead animals and now I need to make a new YouTube account."

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Not with you," she huffs. "Go talk with someone else. Yuri's poem was all about dead things and I'm just not feeling poems right now."

"Right. Wasn't my intention."

"Yeah, well." She tucks away a bang. "Your actions have consequences."

She gives me an expectant look. It's to back away and be done with her.

I'm about to put my paper away when I feel it. Gooseflesh is an evolutionary response. Puff up the skin and raise the hairs to make yourself look that much bigger, that much scarier. But like the opossum's hiss, it's harmless. All for show. And anything can set it off.

I feel it behind my left eye, tugging on the optic nerve. Trying to hold my eyes steady so I won't be tempted to move them. To risk seeing the thing staring at me from behind. I feel extra saliva in my mouth, drowning my tongue in the only thing hot and warm left in my body.

Monika is behind me, arms behind her back. "A little birdie told me you'd have a poem I might like?"

I say nothing. She gestures for me to come over and take a seat. I feel like I'm about to be disciplined by a school teacher, or a nun with a paddle. She has a piece of paper on the desk and steeples her fingers before her face.

"I never really understood goodbyes," she says. "I saw you the other day and you barely even said that much to me."

"I'm aware. I was there."

"Mhm," she hums. "Until you weren't. But it doesn't matter too much, I suppose. I'm just glad I showed up in time to see you. Before you left."

"Yeah. Same."

She holds up a finger, smiling. Her teeth are packed together tightly, fitting her mouth to a T. "But I'm serious about goodbyes. Not that I can't understand them. See ya, au revoir, arrivederci, sayonara, auf wiedersehen. There's a common thread between the phrases that reveals the true meaning. Goodbyes aren't meant to be forever. They just mean 'we'll see each other again.' Somewhere different, somewhere new. Maybe we'll be different people in a way. In this life or the next. But always, we'll see each other again."

I realize my arm is on the desk between us. "I came back, didn't I? To the literature club, I mean."

"You did, yes."

"So there you have it."

She puts her fingers over her chin, like a squid searching the darkness for prey. "You have a nasty habit of getting up and leaving. You did it Saturday. Yuri said you did it today. It's like you don't like or understand goodbyes either. But the problem is, saying nothing is the only way not to say see you again."

I'm silent.

"Just stick around next time, okay?" She bites her lip, then slowly adds, "Sayori seemed upset you left."

"I hadn't noticed."

"Hm, well, she doesn't really matter," Monika says, eyes towards the window. "She always bounces back. No matter what you do to her, she's all smiles next time you see her. I think she understands suffering more than some that way." I see myself reflected in her green eyes. "We often notice the bad things that happen to us more than the good. It's confirmation bias at work. Yet, a gambler will play the same number and fail again and again without noticing it because he got lucky once, and that's all he can bother to remember. Everything else fades into the background noise of memory. Why is that?"

"Just human nature," I say. "We obsess over the bad. We often fail to notice the good because all we can remember is things going bad. We wouldn't have survived this long as a species if we were all optimistic. But we press on, because we're a determined little mammal. Until eventually something proves all the pain was worth it."

She gestures to her neck. "You're religious, right?"

Slowly, as if moving too fast will break something, I reach under my shirt and pull out my necklace. "A man must be in tune with his flesh as he is his God."

She looks at me for a long time, at the little crucifix. "Suffering begets happiness, right? That's the point of your religion. Something horrible—truly despicable and disgusting—happened to someone once. We focus more on the suffering, the pain, because the message is that it was worth it. That if you bear with it and remain true to something you love, you'll be reborn in a new world, with a new future."

I nod, neck joints creaking. "Until that happens, all we have is blood and grass."

"Hm? Why those two things?" With a mildly confused look, she mimes smoking something, and I shake my head at her.

"All flesh is grass."

She sits up slightly. "From the Old Testament, right? That our lives are fleeting and perishing."

I shrug. "Maybe. Look here." I lift my arm and pull back my sleeve, tracing my vein with a finger. She watches intently. "Grass and blood are the only two things that really matter, Monika. All of this meat, this carbon, came from grass. Wheat, rice, corn, all just a type of grass a couple yards down the selective evolutionary tree. Every calorie came from grass, be it a plant or the animals that eat the grass. That's all people are made of. The rest is blood."

"Pain and suffering, right?"

I shake my head, pulling down at my eyelid. "No. Blood. Every fluid you leak and spew, it's all just diluted blood. It's how the lymph system works. We use blood to keep our cells alive, to dissipate heat, to feed our young until they're big enough to eat grass on their own. A perpetually moving, slightly salty fluid kept at ninety-nine-point-five degrees no matter where we are or what we're doing. Usually, at least. Humans are very wet."

Monika sits there, hand up by her mouth. Her thumb makes little circular motions at the corners of her lip, exposing and rubbing her canine. "Maybe that's your reality. I feel dry."

"Sorry my mere presence doesn't turn you on," I say.

She blinks. Moves her head back. Looks at me. And then covers her mouth as she starts laughing. It's so genuine and real my spine straightens. My fingernails feel firmly entrenched. She's making a sound I could really get to like.

Like a cobra striking in slow motion, she reaches out to take my hand, and I can't move. I feel her smooth fingers rub against the veins like she's searching for the perfect place to dig in and pull them out.

"Thank you," she says, smiling. "I needed that. And I am sorry I missed you for dinner Saturday night. Let me make it up to you."

I look at her hand, seeing the slight length of the nails. Manicured, but not professionally. Smooth flesh between the knuckles, none of the damage I've caused myself from boxing. Slender and room temperature to the touch.

"Monika," I say, and sigh. Shake my head. "Are you trying to ask me out?"

She snorts and laughs again. Almost unladylike. A slight flush on her cheeks I want to prick open and let spill over. Her fingers dig into me, leaving furrows atop the veins. "You do not mince words, do you? I've always liked that about you."

I say nothing. I can't move with her nails in me.

"Don't think about it too hard, okay?" she asks warmly. "Just keep your phone on you. Else I'll just have to hope I get lucky and run into you. But I suppose the random chance makes it all the sweeter, hm?"

I wait in silence. Until she seems to realize she's touching me. Almost reluctantly she pulls back, and I rub my hand. She's left ugly little marks. "Isn't this the part where we share our poems now?"

Monika looks at the paper on the desk and shrugs. "Maybe. But I feel we've already said and done everything there is to say right now."

"Your vocabulary these days leaves much to be desired."

Another laugh. "What can I say? You leave me tongue-tied."

I rub at the little dents in my hand. "Don't overdo yourself, Lewinsky."

Monika rolls her eyes and stands. "Okay, everyone! I think we're running short of time today. Sorry about that. I got carried away with some stuff."

I don't really listen to her. She seems to be doing some sort of wrap-up, talking about future plans. In one ear and out the other. I just sit there, rubbing my hand, waiting for the marks to go away. At this point, I'm not sure if they're real or not.

I'm ridiculous and I know it. So, I suppose I should just leave. Maybe work on another sub-par poem. Head out and give it a think while they're all busy.

Until I notice Sayori looking at me. Frowns look ugly on her face. She's holding a hand up at a slight angle.

I don't just leave and dip on people without saying anything, right?

I wait for Monika's spiel to end so I can get a moment with Sayori. I drum my finger on the table, playing to some invisible beat in my head until I get my chance.

"What's up?" she asks, packing her things.

"Looking for some company?"

She cocks an eyebrow. "Save that line for your escort business." And laughs.

I roll my eyes. "I mean it. It's a cold, boring night, and we don't live too far apart. How about it?"

Sayori considers it for a long, long moment. Grimaces slightly as she looks away. "Monika and I were, actually. Unless you wanted to come with us."

I eye the back of my hand. "Nah, you got company. I'd bike ya, but I won't third wheel on you two. See you around, yeah?"

"Yeah," she says, brows furrowing. "And answer your dang phone!"

I wave Sayori off as I put in my earbuds. "Right, right. I'll take it off mute."

"You better."

And I leave into the lonesome night.

At least Monika isn't there.