The Comfort in Being Sad
'Don't you tell me now that I don't want it.'
- Grimes, Delete Forever
What else was there to do, she had figured at the time. It was a little weird, and it was way awkward, but it was also kind of natural, right? I mean, they'd seen some shit, people had died, they were allowed to blow off steam, that was how she reasoned it.
It had started in a series of dingy hotels, motels, holiday inns, the process of trying to understand what had happened to them, what they had been through. She pulled her legs up under her arms, disturbing the sheets of the bed as she did. Hard to think that everyone had died, that everyone had turned out to be a soldier.
No, Roxy, not hard to think at all. It had been a frickin' army base in the middle of the desert run by a couple of psychos, of course everyone had been a soldier.
After that, after the base had blown up and their ride home had been swept up in the shockwave, no sign of that Lynch guy in the wreckage, the three of them—herself, Caitlin, and Grunge—had gone on the run, which had led them…
"Here," she said aloud, gesturing as if talking to someone.
Hotel, motel, holiday inn.
As if responding to the sound of her voice, in the bed beside her, Caitlin turned, lips parted seductively in her sleep.
She felt a stab of resentment.
Anyone would be jealous, Rox, she told herself. When Caitlin's powers had manifested, they had given her a killer bod, what had she got? The power to float, that was what.
She stole another glance at Caitlin, the fullness of her figure beneath the twisted Boston Bruins hockey shirt she now slept in, a recent find at a thrift store, a concession to normality, to just being normal teenagers despite the threshold they had now all stepped over—no pun intended.
Grunge and her had been pretty steady since first meeting on the base, both of them buying what the National Security Council had been selling. He was kind of a doofus, but she liked that about him. He was sweet, not like the other men in her life, her first few boyfriends, her teachers, her stepfather.
It had been a good thing when it had been just the two of them, sneaking out for smokes and snacks, fondling one another in the one blind spot where the cameras couldn't see them.
Grunge had never treated her like the other men she had slept with, he had never roughed her up for fun, had never gone cold on her once the deed was done. He was cute, a little dumb, but cute nonetheless, a puppy that would follow her about once he had got a whiff of coochie after that first time together.
"Don't think you can change a man though, Roxanne," she said quietly.
Although she had spoken the words, she still heard her mother's voice, the shape of her gesturing from the kitchen towards her stepfather, half-asleep in the La-z-boy, a brown bottle of beer held precariously in his grasp.
She wouldn't have admitted it upon their first meeting, but perhaps she had liked Grunge because she had thought she could change him.
Furtively, she looked down at Caitlin again, the swell of her chest, her arms up above her head, the red of her hair every which way upon the pillow.
"You changed all that, didn't you, babe?"
It had been clear from day one that Grunge had been into Caitlin. Of course, who wouldn't have been? She was bodacious now! It had seemed to Roxy that it would have been harder to keep her new boyfriend on the leash rather than cut him a little slack. After all, she could see it too, right? So, if she was seeing it when she looked Caitlin's way, then who knew what those boy hormones were doing to Grunge? He'd probably been stewing in there.
"Controlled explosion," she said, reaching for the paper packet of her smokes on the bedside table, red and white, crumpled plastic, silver foil.
The flame struck the dark strip of a book of matches, a hand hovering near her lips, the contrast between the blue smoke of paper turning to ash and the grey clouds of poison exhaled.
One night, out of boredom, because of a dare when they had drunk a little too much to keep the demons at bay, one of them—Grunge with his eagerness, her with her big mouth—had decided it was about time someone taught Caitlin what to do with such a bodacious bod. That had been how it started, the three of them in the heat, sweating it out in roach infested motels, getting bit in places they had never shown anyone else, spending long, hot days on silver Greyhound buses sitting uncomfortably, scratching and hoping no one noticed.
It had been a good time; but good times evened out, they find a natural tempo.
Smoke curled before her hazel eyes.
They began to side-line Grunge. Boy must have known he was being side-lined, but he remained awful good about it.
Caitlin had bled the first time, freaked out about it too. Honey, everyone bleeds the first time, Roxy told her. Sometimes the second, and third, and fourth times too, she didn't say. Sometimes the body is weird, sometimes it can't keep up with intent. Still, Caitlin had been like a cat on a hot tin roof, and, as such, they had needed to get clever to stave off the boredom.
What Grunge had got out of their whole ordeal, the whole kids of Team 7 shit, was the ability to turn his body into any material he touched. It had been Roxy's bright idea to turn him into rubber, translucent purple through and through, a boy reduced to a giant dildo. It had been easier on Caitlin that way, turning him into a giant sex toy, and she had been on hand to ease him in, like the girl in the middle who always made eye contact with the camera during pornos, the whole nine yards of what-am-I-doing-here?
She had still bled, but it had been easier.
The course of true love never did run smooth, so they said.
Easier though it was, it hadn't been what Caitlin wanted. Oh, it had got her there, she had been fine with that, but the only time she had come alive were in those moments when it was Roxy between her legs, when she was bent before her, fingers and tongue, or when their legs were entwined, pulling into each other with enough friction to power one of those dinky toy cars kids had always played with when she was young.
Now, Grunge was mostly relegated to beer runs when the going was good.
She exhaled, smoke drifting towards the open window. Maybe he had found some lonely waitress in some lonely dinner to work through his frustrations with. It was no secret that he was butthurt, cowed as he was to the will of a pretty girl when she asked him to do something, and Caitlin wasn't just a pretty girl, she was the real deal.
Drifting clouds.
She had been such a turbo virgin when first they met, and now she was the boss of them all.
At her side, Caitlin stirred amidst the sheets and the heat, coughing quietly, turning away, still in the arms of sleep.
Hastily, Roxy ground the cigarette out in the overfilled ash tray on the bedside table. Anything to please the queene bee, right?
A pang of resentment in her naked breast revealed itself to be jealousy, and, as she watched Caitlin sleep, jealousy revealed itself to be want. How long before Grunge got back with breakfast she wondered.
Playfully, no good answer in mind, she slid back down in bed and reached out for the other girl.