suzy's anthology
r // amber/suzy // ~4k w
-- this is the product of lykke li on repeat
and a lot of concentrated feelings during the
hours of 12-6 am.
music: unrequited by lykke li
When you are a girl and you go against the grain, wear old hand me downs from your older brother who is now in the army, have your hair chopped in all the wrong places, and have the coordination and grace that rhyme with awkward, the only friends that you can expect from high school are the lockers.
Why?
You get run into them so much, that bang of shoulder joints and metal is what truly wakes you up in the morning. You can take Amber's word for it.
Permanent bruise on her right arm, book bag strap hanging low by the crook of her elbow, her math homework glued to the dried soda on the marble floor framed by her other belongings, just another Monday morning. The first stop through the cycle of being shoved against under-maintenance school facilities by high and holy rollers from one class to the next-- they all looked the same to her now. Muscle memory worth of four years assists Amber in not glaring as the kids watch her pick up her things while they walk backwards. Because the cool kids have eyes on the back of their heads or something mystical like that.
They cheer for the extra effort Amber has to put in everyday just to get to class, the way she has to peel her papers off the floor, notebooks pressed face down… she rolls her eyes, huffs a breath and stands up.
"Ehem," Oh, great, a follow up.
Amber spins around to face the source of the sound, head already tilted up only to be met with a head of black hair. Amber directs her stare lower, now faced with soft eyes and cheeks, a careful smile blooming across bare lips.
"Is this yours?" She holds out Amber's wallet. She must have missed it.
"Yes." Amber answers back, monotonous. She takes it with one hand; this girl could not possibly be older than her anyway. "Thank you."
"It slipped from your back pocket." She explains further, not that Amber suspected her of attempting to commit theft on school grounds. "Have a nice day."
It is kind of odd, though, how when she dips her wallet back in her pocket, it sinks all the way to the bottom snugly.
∞
The subconscious mind is quite amazing. It makes you realize how you're looking someone by making it directly equivalent to how much you take note of their absence. One does not always have to equal the other, but in Amber's case, it's been a week, and she hasn't seen that girl yet.
∞
Hours always feel like months when it's Friday.
While some prepare themselves for a weekend of liver debauchery by binge drinking, and unprotected, premarital sex, Amber gets comfortable in a squeaky, booger green chair. The cotton of the seat has absorbed more dust than a vacuum, and it's been around for ages from the look and sound of it, just as old as the desk in front of Amber, yet ostensibly the same age as the head librarian. This is all purely empirical, of course.
It's her first day after a dreadfully mind-numbing discussion yesterday with Mrs. Ross, the head librarian, about the card catalog. Amber didn't like learning about it in first year English, she sure as hell didn't like it yesterday.
As expected, Fridays at the library is an uneventful affair, and playing Bejeweled on her cellphone can only entertain her for so long. Amber considers wandering about the books; maybe pick one out to read since it celebrates the basis of the establishment that she works in. Instead, she goes through the curious boxes of lost and found items beneath the desk, digs out a yoyo and conjures the perfect yoyo championship tournament this world has ever seen.
After some minutes of being locked in her head, she's about to propel her yoyo into a victorious, never before done trick, a swift play of string and physics and flashy hand motions when someone taps the bell on the desk.
Amber's concentration is compromised; the yoyo develops a mind of its own and somehow manages to fling itself right between her eyes. "MOTHER FU--"
"Ehem," it's clipped, familiar.
While nursing the spot on her forehead, she regains focus and faces the same girl from a week ago. The pretty thief.
"Hi." She says it informally like they're friends. Like Amber would care enough to correct her. Seeing Amber in such an embarrassing position doesn't allow for instant friendship, though. Especially when there's mirth in the girl's eyes. Amber feels defensive, imagines herself running off a cliff.
She doesn't bother with a reply, just a brief smile that doesn't reach her eyes. Amber goes straight to business, takes the book from the girl's hand… dumbly stares at it.
"Uhm." The girl is smiling now, not bothering to hide it. The nerve. Amber hasn't seen her in days and this is how she chooses to reappear, during Amber's weakest! "I'm returning it."
"Return. Right." Amber scurries for the drawers casing the library cards. What is she looking for? Amber shakes her head, looks back at the girl, smiles, then looks at the book, flips to the back page and finds the card where her name is… "Suzy."
"Yes?" She sounds expectant.
"Oh, oh, no. I just. That's your name." Amber points at the book.
"Yeah?" Even if she didn't say, "So?" it still came off that way.
"Yeah." Amber directs her attention back at the library cards, replaying those two seconds of terrible mismatched conversation, mentally calls herself deficient.
She finally finds Suzy's card, plucks it out, using her elbow to shut the drawer back. Amber takes out the record book, a pen caught between the pages, book spine cracking with old age when she flips it open. "Just sign here."
It's odd. Amber wants the girl-- Suzy-- gone. She counts down the seconds it takes for her to sign, but when Suzy meets Amber's gaze, she stops counting. Suzy has the smile of bunnies, two front teeth prominent in comparison to the others. Her smile screams, "Look! Look at how cute I am!" and look Amber does because she's a complex person who can't even understand herself. But Suzy's smile is simple. Maybe all it really wants is a smile in return.
Amber smiles, but only because it would be rude not to.
Amber borrows the same book home, reads it from cover to cover in bed. It’s a collection of poems, the type that reads easy, about love and the fine line between love and unhealthy fixation. And soon, Amber's attention span favors sleep. She flips through the remaining pages, notices an orange glow in one of them, holds a palm over the book to flatten it down. A paragraph is highlighted in orange:
My clear bones take shape in the mouth of glassblower with asthma
for there is no perfection in me
but maybe clarity.
∞
Cafeteria lunch is terrible on its own. To have mini balls of chewed up tissue propelled from a straw into Amber's synthetically concocted egg during lunch, that's just plain overkill. Courtesy of the group of guys seated a couple of table's down, of course. Amber must admit, the guy's got a good aim.
She plucks out as much of the tissue balls as she can with her chopsticks, when a brown paper bag sits on the table. Amber frowns at the object she suspects has fallen from the ceiling, crawls her stare upward, gets reacquainted with Suzy's soft eyes.
"Can I join you?"
Amber, instead of gracing her with even a typical "I don't know, can you?", finds herself tilting her head to the side to inspect the tissue ball throwing table. They've gone silent; the one guy puts his straw down slowly like a weapon being surrendered during battle.
Suzy doesn't wait for a response. She joins Amber without a moment's notice, already unrolling the crumpled mouth of the paper bag. "He's my step brother. He won't do anything while I'm here. I'm Suzy, by the way."
"I didn't need you to do that."
Suzy only smiles brighter, producing two foiled sandwiches from the bag. "You're welcome." She offers the second sandwich to Amber.
Amber is left dubious.
"It's not rat poison, it's peanut butter and bread." Amber still doesn't respond, goes back to filtering her lunch of spit balls. Suzy sighs, pushing Amber's tray of food to one side, making a show of unwrapping the sandwich she was offering earlier and tearing a piece for her to bite. "See? Still alive."
Suzy lays the sandwich before Amber, concentrates on consuming her own.
"What's your name?" Suzy asks moments later when Amber begins to take a liking to the sandwich. If only Suzy cut the crusts off.
"Amber."
"You work at the library." She concludes more than questions.
"Fridays and Saturdays."
"And you checked out my book."
"What?" Amber sees Suzy through her lashes, blinks.
"Not my book, obviously, I can't write for shit. The book I borrowed. Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife? You borrowed it, too."
Amber does a half-shrug. What says nonchalance more than half-assing a gesture that literally means you don't care? "It's public property."
Suzy nods, doesn't say much else afterwards.
∞
Suzy visits the library during Fridays to not study.
She picks out different books, never borrows them, and instead decides that Amber needs more vocalized literature in her life.
While Amber spins herself around the squeaky booger chair, Suzy perches atop the aged desk, swinging her legs to and fro, and reads aloud conversations, brutal murder scenes, passionate love affairs, and the gaps she fills in with her thoughts. And Amber sits there, begrudgingly inching into Suzy's world, watches closely as the strands of Suzy's hair slide from the tuck behind her ear because she constantly rakes her fingers from forehead to nape. Suzy talks with her hands, reads with emotions playing in her eyes, gasps dramatically at plot twists she has read before.
In the following weeks, Amber has learned that Suzy is only willing to die for two things: Peanut butter and poetry.
Out of curiosity, Amber finds herself asking, "What would you kill for?"
Suzy applies a posh accent, "Love, darling. What else is worth killing for?"
∞
There are times when Suzy can just come off a bit strong. Like when she invites herself to Amber's house, goes through Amber's not so impressive selection of Agatha Christie novels and Japanese Manga that Suzy cannot pronounce the title of even if her precious bunny smile depended on it.
Their third bag of chips has gone stale, soda flat, by the time they start watching Ginger Snaps. Call it delusion, but Amber identifies a lot with embellished representations of the puberty rhetoric. Also, she gets a kick out of fake blood and superficial screams, but her attention span only allows her such amusement for half an hour.
And then she notices… that Suzy breathes really loud. Or was that her?
Or maybe it's just that they're seated thigh to thigh in the suburbs, in Amber's room where all signs outside of her door scream do not disturb to her loving parents. And Amber is aware of how incredibly alone they are. How it should be uncomfortable, but it isn't. Now she's going back to the memory of her first kiss, mentally panics because what the fuck does that mean?
The word dances in her head, taunts her: Kiss, kiss, kiss, playing on loop in her douchebag brain. Her eye roll is cut short by the crunch of the chip bag, Suzy's hand blindly reaching over to Amber's lap where the bag rests.
Amber grinds her teeth together, fails to concentrate on the movie which sucks because this is her favorite part. Suzy's hand cranes chips to her mouth, tilts her head back, munches with tiny coarse crystals of salt sticking to her cheek. Suzy gets the bits off with the back of her hand.
Amber places the bag on Suzy's lap. "I don't want anymore."
Suzy accepts the chips, fixated on the screen. "Would you ever do that?"
"Do what?"
"Cut your own tail?"
"What?"
"Like Ginger." Suzy tears her gaze away from the horrid demonstration on the screen that inspired her question.
Amber notices how even the side of her right leg is pressed to Suzy's, yet she doesn't remember who inched closer to whom. "I don't have a tail."
"Okay." Suzy seems to deflect a DUH in favor of proceeding with the topic. "Let's say you had a tail. Would you cut it off just to be accepted?"
"Accepted by whom? Your step brother?"
"Tsk." She pinches Amber's side, regains the connection of their thighs touching, now they're also joined by the shoulders.
"I don't know. When I was little, I'd pull my own teeth out."
"What." She laughs freely, mouth wide open that Amber can almost smell the hint of preservatives and coke in her breath.
"Yeah. You know. When you can push a loose tooth back and forth? That first sign of weakness, I attack it with my tongue for the first few days. And then when it's good and loose, I pull it out myself."
"With your hands?"
"Yeah." Amber nods, makes a gesture of it, clicks her tongue to sound the removal of her tooth. "Just like that."
Suzy cringes, looks more like a bunny with her nose scrunched up.
"Why? Would you cut off your tail?"
Suzy shakes her hair off her shoulders. "No. I'd wear it proudly. Then I'd stab anyone who called me a freak behind my back." She adds further in case she was unclear earlier. "With my tail. I'd stab them with my tail."
Amber tries to figure out if she's serious. Most times, she can't tell at all. "That's harsh."
Suzy grins. "When in doubt, freak them out." She winks.
∞
Amber gradually realizes that maybe, just maybe, she's the tail that Suzy likes to wear proudly. It sounds ridiculous at first, but why else would she hangout with Amber?
Saturdays, Suzy and Amber wander around town, tire their feet out and get frozen yoghurt from a shop they would like to think is theirs because no one they know ever goes there. Their conversations stir from skin deep to obnoxiously philosophical in a matter of heart beats.
Every week, Suzy reads Amber's palm. She thinks that the lines change as you grow older. Amber's neither superstitious nor stupid. Suzy's making that shit up. Amber doesn't know what she finds more comforting: the fact that Suzy can only say great things about what's to come, or the warmth of Suzy's palm beneath hers.
∞
But then there are days when Suzy doesn't speak at all. She ignores Amber, drifts off in her own world, walks through the halls of school like she doesn't know Amber.
Suzy would disappear for alternating days and then the next time she'd see her, she'd be all bunny smiles and palm reading and telling Amber about how all of Edgar Allan Poe's poems are about death-- "How tedious."
Suzy goes to school one day, circles under her eyes, colorless and expressionless. Amber leans on the locker next to Suzy's, grins at her, "You look like an Edgar Allan Poe poem."
She misses the bunny smile. It's no secret to her and she doesn't plan on keeping it a secret from Suzy. But Suzy looks beaten down, like her heart is broken, like she doesn't believe in anything anymore.
"Suzy?"
Suzy slowly wraps her arms around Amber's waist, in the middle of the hallway, in the midst of students who are giving them side stares. Amber can barely register anything else. This time she drops her bag and her things on her own accord to return Suzy's hug.
∞
"What." Suzy's standing in the threshold of her house, tapping her foot impatiently at Amber who still can't find it in herself to step inside.
"I should go home."
"Shut up." Suzy latches both hands on Amber's wrist and tugs her inside the house.
It's like walking inside a tree. Everything is wood, a gradient of browns and maroons, with the exception of figurines, the carpets, curtains, picture frames of Suzy and her step brother from past to present.
Suzy doesn't let go of Amber's hand when they pass by the living room where she sees Suzy's step brother with his friends, halting what seemed like a heated game of Black Ops to gape at Suzy with her tail.
"Suzy, the fuck are you bringing into my house?"
"Stop talking like you have a mortgage." Suzy mumbles, continuing up the stairs with Amber in tow. "In here." Amber steps in Suzy's room first, all of the walls hidden beneath a collage of magazine clippings and torn up posters.
"Woah."
The moment Suzy shuts the door in place, Cody barges in with a steroid-juiced lemming behind him. Like they need an army.
"Damnit, Cody!"
"What the fuck is that thing doing here?" Cody darts a finger at Amber over Suzy's head, the giant that he is.
Amber thinks that if she's fast enough, which she is, she can duck under Cody's muscular arm, push the lemming over, dash for the door and she'd be out in less than a minute. She's rooted to her spot, though, stands there just sort of transfixed at the spit that flies from Cody's mouth, worries that it'll hit Suzy's hair.
"None of your fucking business, get out of my room!"
"You think you can just waltz in here?"
"Do you want me to call mom?!" Suzy takes out her cellphone from her pocket and begins to dial.
"Suzy, seriously! People are starting to talk!"
Suzy defiantly activates the loud speaker, lets Cody hear the ringing on the other line.
"This is your fucking grave you're digging, remember that." He's already walking back, taking his friend with him.
"Get out!" Suzy slams the door in his face, spins and leans back on it. "Loser."
"I told you I should have gone home."
"And put all that effort to waste?" Suzy's smiling again. She pushes away the pillows and stuffed toys by the headboard of her bed. "Sit down."
Amber lies back, relaxes a bit. She twists around on her stomach while Suzy rummages through her drawers for something. Suzy pulls out a plastic bottle and a toolbox, comes back and hops on the bed, a switch blade caught between her lips.
Mesmerized, Amber rolls to her side, leans up on her elbow and watches as Suzy's brows furrow in concentration. She pulls out the blade, slices the paper wrapped around the bottle, uncaps it, lays the switch blade down on her lap to get a pen from her pocket, extracting the everything from the pen until it's just the plastic casing left.
"What are you doing?" Amber asks, voice low because she doesn't want Suzy to stop.
Suzy doesn't. "You'll see."
She sticks the tip of the blade as far into the plastic mouth of the pen as she can, skins it around to loosen the circumference. She blows the dusted plastic scraped from the plastic mouth of the pen, opens the tool box and holds out the mini funnel of the socket wrench, tests the fit in the plastic pen by joining the two piece, stem in mouth. "Bellissima!"
Amber smirks, moves a bit closer.
Suzy proceeds with the plastic bottle, pulls out a nail from the toolbox and pokes a hole about an inch and half up from the butt of the bottle. She carves the hole wider with the blade, connects the pen casing to it by sticking it in the hole, and wraps a rubber band around and under the pen so it's lifted upward.
"Tada!" Suzy tosses her creation to Amber. It lands and hits Amber's stomach.
"A bottle bong?"
"One of my many talents." She grabs the bottle bong back, stands up and jumps off the bed.
"What did you make the bong for?" Amber asks dumbly.
"So we can smoke baby food." Suzy laughs, skips her way to the bathroom and comes back with the bottle filled with an inch or so of water. She grabs a lighter on the dresser. "Hold these."
Suzy grabs her bag, unzips the pocket in front and produces a ziplock plastic bag of weed.
"Aren't you going to lock the door?" Amber asks as soon as Suzy gets back on the bed, sits down Indian style.
"I don't have a lock." She ties her hair up in a bun, settles the bottle bong on her lap and pinches a ball of weed from the bag, inserting it into the metal socket. She sparks up the lighter, caps the mouth of the makeshift bong with her lips and inhales the same time that she closes the distance between the flame and the socket. The water bubbles up while she sucks in the smoke forming inside the bottle, her eyes half lidded.
Amber can't deny how she is inexplicably enthralled by Suzy's every move, how she can't, even for a second, tear her gaze away from Suzy's actions. She locks her stare on Suzy's lips, watches the smoke take the shape of circles shifting to nothing by the time Suzy starts giggling.
She offers the bottle to Amber wordlessly. Amber sits up, mimics Suzy's actions, keeps her eyes open the entire time because Suzy is watching her now, and she wants to come off as someone who knows what she's doing.
The only other time Amber's ever tried weed was about a year ago in the van of some kid she met through her former best friend. Who owned that van, up to this day, she still doesn't know. She has never taken a hit from a bong before, in front of someone that she direly wants to impress.
Alas, the smoke hits her throat like sandpaper, scratching her esophagus dry. The first cough she takes is followed by an array of heaves. Suzy laughs at her, as expected, sits up and takes the bong from her hands before she spills the weed water everywhere.
"Pussy." Suzy grins over the bong before her second hit. Amber's still trying to survive her first one.
"Burn--" Cough. "Burnout."
"Bitch." Suzy lets the smoke flow easy from her mouth.
"Attention whore." Amber seethes, looking her up and down.
"Cunt."
"Skank."
Suzy narrows her eyes. "Dyke."
They both go silent. Amber feels headless.
Then Suzy is hurriedly getting up on her knees. Amber does the same. She's able to swiftly settle the bong on the floor before Suzy clashes their lips together, urgently tasting Amber's lips, slipping her tongue in, chasing smoke. Suzy's palms are firm against Amber's stomach, sliding up beneath the lapels of Amber's jacket to slip it off her shoulders.
She weighs down on Amber until she has to lie on her back, hands learning the juncture of Suzy's back to her buttocks. "Wait, what if… someone walks in?"
Suzy works a hand inside Amber's shirt. "They won't. Trust me."
Amber pictures the lines on her palm changing.
∞
In class, Amber perches her chin atop her hand to keep her head straight. Gradually, her teacher's voice drawls into white noise. When she loses her grip on her pen and it hits her knuckles, her eyelids shoot up. Now she has a cramp in her neck.
She tilts her head back, alternately shrugging her shoulders to fight the tension in her muscles. Like clockwork, her eyes land on Suzy by the time she's satisfied with her stretching.
Suzy's already looking over her shoulder, seated a couple of seats ahead in the row to Amber's right, a wary smile teasing one corner of her lips.
While the entire class writes down the teacher's dictation, Amber engages in a staring contest with Suzy. The tip of Suzy's tongue peeks from one corner, slowly dragging along her upper lip, Amber's gaze helplessly trailing the motion. Amber can almost taste the seam of her mouth, subconsciously bites her own lower lip.
Suzy smirks in response, Amber does the same, and then she turns back around, sets time back in motion.
Amber likes this secret language. She likes how naturally fluent she is in it. And Suzy is just as beautiful as sin.
Later, Suzy raises her hand, "May I be excused?" while Amber is taking down notes.
She only notices Suzy when the other girl grazes a finger along her forearm as she passes by. Amber's concentration goes haywire.
Amber counts to 16, and then asks to be excused, too.
∞
Cody doesn't go after Amber as much anymore. They've moved on to other victims in school, leaving Amber in peace. His power over Amber has been reduced to a sneer that he often does when Suzy takes her home.
∞
Suzy doesn't come to the library like she promised. After months, Amber's more than used to her inconsistencies.
But then Suzy doesn't show up for weeks. The first time that Suzy tries to contact her through text, "Cody is missing." everything falls into place.
She shows up at Suzy's doorstep anxiously, ringing the doorbell a few more times.
Suzy opens the door, her eyes swollen, a hitch in her breath when she stutters, "I don't… I don't know…"
Amber snatches her by the waist, calms her down by rubbing her back. It helps with the breathing, but she doesn't stop crying.
They share a cigarette by the steps outside, watch the sun slowly being cradled in its descent.
"The police left an hour ago. All I know is that he was out drinking a few days ago and that was the last I saw of him. He would always go out, though. So when he didn't come home for the next few days I didn't think much of it."
Amber takes a puff, bellows smoke out. "What about your mom."
"Tch. She's always in one country or another, busy with work, I don't fucking know anymore. I lost track since 2010."
"But your brother's missing."
"Step brother." Suzy snaps.
Amber lets it go, flicks cigarette ash on the ground. "That's a pretty shitty thing to do."
"She's a pretty shitty parent."
Amber studies Suzy's profile, the anger in her eyes. She finishes off the cigarette and tosses the butt. "Come on. Let's go to bed."
Amber keeps an arm circled around Suzy's waist as they enter the house. She makes sure to lock the door before proceeding up the stairs.
"I'm gonna take a shower first." Amber kicks her shoes off when he follows Suzy inside the room. She acknowledges Amber with a nod, drops on her bed like deadweight.
Amber walks into bathroom, almost slips on the wet tiles. She grabs the rim of the sink for balance, cautiously undressing and then stepping into the shower.
She has her eyes screwed shut while lathering her face with soap, when she hears a dip in the puddle on the tiles. "Suzy?"
Arms wrap around her waist from behind, every swell and curve of Suzy's naked body pressing onto her back.
She's shaking, breath warming up Amber's shoulder blades. "Don't speak.
Amber rinses her face, rubs her eyes and just stands there. Her stomach flips, gaze dropping to Suzy's hands locked against her stomach.
"He broke my lock. He would come in at night. He would tell me he loved me."
Amber blinks as the water runs down her lashes.
"It didn't matter at first. Until I you."
Amber's breathing struggles to keep up with the riot in her chest. "Suzy…"
"I wanna show you something."
∞
"You'd be surprised…" Suzy explains while pulling the chain of the backdoor of the library apart. "at how easy it is to break in here."
A chill drifts down Amber's spine. She never thought she had intuition or anything remotely ESP, but tonight all of her senses were awake as she trekked after Suzy in the darkened backroom. She takes out a flashlight, twists it on and clamps it in her mouth as she releases a bobby pin from her hair, shaking her fringe away from her eyes. She picks the lock.
And only then does it occur to Amber how terrifyingly dexterous Suzy is. When the lock comes apart, Suzy opens the door to the main library. She keeps her flashlight on because even with the shine from the streetlights outside, it's still fairly dark with the looming shelves.
She stops at the poetry section, something that Amber somehow predicted. Suzy turns to face Amber, her bunny smile shining through the dark, while walking backwards to the middle of the aisle.
She shines the light on Amber's knees, the light glowing enough for both of them to be seen. Amber focuses her stare on Suzy so hard that it's only her that she sees.
"Do you love me, Amber?"
Bile crawls up Amber's throat. She gulps it down. "Yes."
Suzy smiles, shyly nibbling on her bottom lip. "Then don't look up."
Amber frowns in confusion when a drop of bright red falls on Suzy's cheek. Suzy doesn't make an effort to wipe it off. She allows it to trickle down to her jaw, her smile not as simple as Amber thought it was.
"Don't look up."
*masterficlist | tumblr | *new* twitter | comment here to be added
-- i don't even know how to apologize
for posting something so pathetic after
an unexpected hiatus. regardless, i am
just glad to be writing again and retracking
old fics. tbh, when i first started writing
this months ago, i had very little in store
for the progression of it. and this is
how it turned out. :|
-- this is the product of lykke li on repeat
and a lot of concentrated feelings during the
hours of 12-6 am.
music: unrequited by lykke li
When you are a girl and you go against the grain, wear old hand me downs from your older brother who is now in the army, have your hair chopped in all the wrong places, and have the coordination and grace that rhyme with awkward, the only friends that you can expect from high school are the lockers.
Why?
You get run into them so much, that bang of shoulder joints and metal is what truly wakes you up in the morning. You can take Amber's word for it.
Permanent bruise on her right arm, book bag strap hanging low by the crook of her elbow, her math homework glued to the dried soda on the marble floor framed by her other belongings, just another Monday morning. The first stop through the cycle of being shoved against under-maintenance school facilities by high and holy rollers from one class to the next-- they all looked the same to her now. Muscle memory worth of four years assists Amber in not glaring as the kids watch her pick up her things while they walk backwards. Because the cool kids have eyes on the back of their heads or something mystical like that.
They cheer for the extra effort Amber has to put in everyday just to get to class, the way she has to peel her papers off the floor, notebooks pressed face down… she rolls her eyes, huffs a breath and stands up.
"Ehem," Oh, great, a follow up.
Amber spins around to face the source of the sound, head already tilted up only to be met with a head of black hair. Amber directs her stare lower, now faced with soft eyes and cheeks, a careful smile blooming across bare lips.
"Is this yours?" She holds out Amber's wallet. She must have missed it.
"Yes." Amber answers back, monotonous. She takes it with one hand; this girl could not possibly be older than her anyway. "Thank you."
"It slipped from your back pocket." She explains further, not that Amber suspected her of attempting to commit theft on school grounds. "Have a nice day."
It is kind of odd, though, how when she dips her wallet back in her pocket, it sinks all the way to the bottom snugly.
∞
The subconscious mind is quite amazing. It makes you realize how you're looking someone by making it directly equivalent to how much you take note of their absence. One does not always have to equal the other, but in Amber's case, it's been a week, and she hasn't seen that girl yet.
∞
Hours always feel like months when it's Friday.
While some prepare themselves for a weekend of liver debauchery by binge drinking, and unprotected, premarital sex, Amber gets comfortable in a squeaky, booger green chair. The cotton of the seat has absorbed more dust than a vacuum, and it's been around for ages from the look and sound of it, just as old as the desk in front of Amber, yet ostensibly the same age as the head librarian. This is all purely empirical, of course.
It's her first day after a dreadfully mind-numbing discussion yesterday with Mrs. Ross, the head librarian, about the card catalog. Amber didn't like learning about it in first year English, she sure as hell didn't like it yesterday.
As expected, Fridays at the library is an uneventful affair, and playing Bejeweled on her cellphone can only entertain her for so long. Amber considers wandering about the books; maybe pick one out to read since it celebrates the basis of the establishment that she works in. Instead, she goes through the curious boxes of lost and found items beneath the desk, digs out a yoyo and conjures the perfect yoyo championship tournament this world has ever seen.
After some minutes of being locked in her head, she's about to propel her yoyo into a victorious, never before done trick, a swift play of string and physics and flashy hand motions when someone taps the bell on the desk.
Amber's concentration is compromised; the yoyo develops a mind of its own and somehow manages to fling itself right between her eyes. "MOTHER FU--"
"Ehem," it's clipped, familiar.
While nursing the spot on her forehead, she regains focus and faces the same girl from a week ago. The pretty thief.
"Hi." She says it informally like they're friends. Like Amber would care enough to correct her. Seeing Amber in such an embarrassing position doesn't allow for instant friendship, though. Especially when there's mirth in the girl's eyes. Amber feels defensive, imagines herself running off a cliff.
She doesn't bother with a reply, just a brief smile that doesn't reach her eyes. Amber goes straight to business, takes the book from the girl's hand… dumbly stares at it.
"Uhm." The girl is smiling now, not bothering to hide it. The nerve. Amber hasn't seen her in days and this is how she chooses to reappear, during Amber's weakest! "I'm returning it."
"Return. Right." Amber scurries for the drawers casing the library cards. What is she looking for? Amber shakes her head, looks back at the girl, smiles, then looks at the book, flips to the back page and finds the card where her name is… "Suzy."
"Yes?" She sounds expectant.
"Oh, oh, no. I just. That's your name." Amber points at the book.
"Yeah?" Even if she didn't say, "So?" it still came off that way.
"Yeah." Amber directs her attention back at the library cards, replaying those two seconds of terrible mismatched conversation, mentally calls herself deficient.
She finally finds Suzy's card, plucks it out, using her elbow to shut the drawer back. Amber takes out the record book, a pen caught between the pages, book spine cracking with old age when she flips it open. "Just sign here."
It's odd. Amber wants the girl-- Suzy-- gone. She counts down the seconds it takes for her to sign, but when Suzy meets Amber's gaze, she stops counting. Suzy has the smile of bunnies, two front teeth prominent in comparison to the others. Her smile screams, "Look! Look at how cute I am!" and look Amber does because she's a complex person who can't even understand herself. But Suzy's smile is simple. Maybe all it really wants is a smile in return.
Amber smiles, but only because it would be rude not to.
Amber borrows the same book home, reads it from cover to cover in bed. It’s a collection of poems, the type that reads easy, about love and the fine line between love and unhealthy fixation. And soon, Amber's attention span favors sleep. She flips through the remaining pages, notices an orange glow in one of them, holds a palm over the book to flatten it down. A paragraph is highlighted in orange:
My clear bones take shape in the mouth of glassblower with asthma
for there is no perfection in me
but maybe clarity.
∞
Cafeteria lunch is terrible on its own. To have mini balls of chewed up tissue propelled from a straw into Amber's synthetically concocted egg during lunch, that's just plain overkill. Courtesy of the group of guys seated a couple of table's down, of course. Amber must admit, the guy's got a good aim.
She plucks out as much of the tissue balls as she can with her chopsticks, when a brown paper bag sits on the table. Amber frowns at the object she suspects has fallen from the ceiling, crawls her stare upward, gets reacquainted with Suzy's soft eyes.
"Can I join you?"
Amber, instead of gracing her with even a typical "I don't know, can you?", finds herself tilting her head to the side to inspect the tissue ball throwing table. They've gone silent; the one guy puts his straw down slowly like a weapon being surrendered during battle.
Suzy doesn't wait for a response. She joins Amber without a moment's notice, already unrolling the crumpled mouth of the paper bag. "He's my step brother. He won't do anything while I'm here. I'm Suzy, by the way."
"I didn't need you to do that."
Suzy only smiles brighter, producing two foiled sandwiches from the bag. "You're welcome." She offers the second sandwich to Amber.
Amber is left dubious.
"It's not rat poison, it's peanut butter and bread." Amber still doesn't respond, goes back to filtering her lunch of spit balls. Suzy sighs, pushing Amber's tray of food to one side, making a show of unwrapping the sandwich she was offering earlier and tearing a piece for her to bite. "See? Still alive."
Suzy lays the sandwich before Amber, concentrates on consuming her own.
"What's your name?" Suzy asks moments later when Amber begins to take a liking to the sandwich. If only Suzy cut the crusts off.
"Amber."
"You work at the library." She concludes more than questions.
"Fridays and Saturdays."
"And you checked out my book."
"What?" Amber sees Suzy through her lashes, blinks.
"Not my book, obviously, I can't write for shit. The book I borrowed. Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife? You borrowed it, too."
Amber does a half-shrug. What says nonchalance more than half-assing a gesture that literally means you don't care? "It's public property."
Suzy nods, doesn't say much else afterwards.
∞
Suzy visits the library during Fridays to not study.
She picks out different books, never borrows them, and instead decides that Amber needs more vocalized literature in her life.
While Amber spins herself around the squeaky booger chair, Suzy perches atop the aged desk, swinging her legs to and fro, and reads aloud conversations, brutal murder scenes, passionate love affairs, and the gaps she fills in with her thoughts. And Amber sits there, begrudgingly inching into Suzy's world, watches closely as the strands of Suzy's hair slide from the tuck behind her ear because she constantly rakes her fingers from forehead to nape. Suzy talks with her hands, reads with emotions playing in her eyes, gasps dramatically at plot twists she has read before.
In the following weeks, Amber has learned that Suzy is only willing to die for two things: Peanut butter and poetry.
Out of curiosity, Amber finds herself asking, "What would you kill for?"
Suzy applies a posh accent, "Love, darling. What else is worth killing for?"
∞
There are times when Suzy can just come off a bit strong. Like when she invites herself to Amber's house, goes through Amber's not so impressive selection of Agatha Christie novels and Japanese Manga that Suzy cannot pronounce the title of even if her precious bunny smile depended on it.
Their third bag of chips has gone stale, soda flat, by the time they start watching Ginger Snaps. Call it delusion, but Amber identifies a lot with embellished representations of the puberty rhetoric. Also, she gets a kick out of fake blood and superficial screams, but her attention span only allows her such amusement for half an hour.
And then she notices… that Suzy breathes really loud. Or was that her?
Or maybe it's just that they're seated thigh to thigh in the suburbs, in Amber's room where all signs outside of her door scream do not disturb to her loving parents. And Amber is aware of how incredibly alone they are. How it should be uncomfortable, but it isn't. Now she's going back to the memory of her first kiss, mentally panics because what the fuck does that mean?
The word dances in her head, taunts her: Kiss, kiss, kiss, playing on loop in her douchebag brain. Her eye roll is cut short by the crunch of the chip bag, Suzy's hand blindly reaching over to Amber's lap where the bag rests.
Amber grinds her teeth together, fails to concentrate on the movie which sucks because this is her favorite part. Suzy's hand cranes chips to her mouth, tilts her head back, munches with tiny coarse crystals of salt sticking to her cheek. Suzy gets the bits off with the back of her hand.
Amber places the bag on Suzy's lap. "I don't want anymore."
Suzy accepts the chips, fixated on the screen. "Would you ever do that?"
"Do what?"
"Cut your own tail?"
"What?"
"Like Ginger." Suzy tears her gaze away from the horrid demonstration on the screen that inspired her question.
Amber notices how even the side of her right leg is pressed to Suzy's, yet she doesn't remember who inched closer to whom. "I don't have a tail."
"Okay." Suzy seems to deflect a DUH in favor of proceeding with the topic. "Let's say you had a tail. Would you cut it off just to be accepted?"
"Accepted by whom? Your step brother?"
"Tsk." She pinches Amber's side, regains the connection of their thighs touching, now they're also joined by the shoulders.
"I don't know. When I was little, I'd pull my own teeth out."
"What." She laughs freely, mouth wide open that Amber can almost smell the hint of preservatives and coke in her breath.
"Yeah. You know. When you can push a loose tooth back and forth? That first sign of weakness, I attack it with my tongue for the first few days. And then when it's good and loose, I pull it out myself."
"With your hands?"
"Yeah." Amber nods, makes a gesture of it, clicks her tongue to sound the removal of her tooth. "Just like that."
Suzy cringes, looks more like a bunny with her nose scrunched up.
"Why? Would you cut off your tail?"
Suzy shakes her hair off her shoulders. "No. I'd wear it proudly. Then I'd stab anyone who called me a freak behind my back." She adds further in case she was unclear earlier. "With my tail. I'd stab them with my tail."
Amber tries to figure out if she's serious. Most times, she can't tell at all. "That's harsh."
Suzy grins. "When in doubt, freak them out." She winks.
∞
Amber gradually realizes that maybe, just maybe, she's the tail that Suzy likes to wear proudly. It sounds ridiculous at first, but why else would she hangout with Amber?
Saturdays, Suzy and Amber wander around town, tire their feet out and get frozen yoghurt from a shop they would like to think is theirs because no one they know ever goes there. Their conversations stir from skin deep to obnoxiously philosophical in a matter of heart beats.
Every week, Suzy reads Amber's palm. She thinks that the lines change as you grow older. Amber's neither superstitious nor stupid. Suzy's making that shit up. Amber doesn't know what she finds more comforting: the fact that Suzy can only say great things about what's to come, or the warmth of Suzy's palm beneath hers.
∞
But then there are days when Suzy doesn't speak at all. She ignores Amber, drifts off in her own world, walks through the halls of school like she doesn't know Amber.
Suzy would disappear for alternating days and then the next time she'd see her, she'd be all bunny smiles and palm reading and telling Amber about how all of Edgar Allan Poe's poems are about death-- "How tedious."
Suzy goes to school one day, circles under her eyes, colorless and expressionless. Amber leans on the locker next to Suzy's, grins at her, "You look like an Edgar Allan Poe poem."
She misses the bunny smile. It's no secret to her and she doesn't plan on keeping it a secret from Suzy. But Suzy looks beaten down, like her heart is broken, like she doesn't believe in anything anymore.
"Suzy?"
Suzy slowly wraps her arms around Amber's waist, in the middle of the hallway, in the midst of students who are giving them side stares. Amber can barely register anything else. This time she drops her bag and her things on her own accord to return Suzy's hug.
∞
"What." Suzy's standing in the threshold of her house, tapping her foot impatiently at Amber who still can't find it in herself to step inside.
"I should go home."
"Shut up." Suzy latches both hands on Amber's wrist and tugs her inside the house.
It's like walking inside a tree. Everything is wood, a gradient of browns and maroons, with the exception of figurines, the carpets, curtains, picture frames of Suzy and her step brother from past to present.
Suzy doesn't let go of Amber's hand when they pass by the living room where she sees Suzy's step brother with his friends, halting what seemed like a heated game of Black Ops to gape at Suzy with her tail.
"Suzy, the fuck are you bringing into my house?"
"Stop talking like you have a mortgage." Suzy mumbles, continuing up the stairs with Amber in tow. "In here." Amber steps in Suzy's room first, all of the walls hidden beneath a collage of magazine clippings and torn up posters.
"Woah."
The moment Suzy shuts the door in place, Cody barges in with a steroid-juiced lemming behind him. Like they need an army.
"Damnit, Cody!"
"What the fuck is that thing doing here?" Cody darts a finger at Amber over Suzy's head, the giant that he is.
Amber thinks that if she's fast enough, which she is, she can duck under Cody's muscular arm, push the lemming over, dash for the door and she'd be out in less than a minute. She's rooted to her spot, though, stands there just sort of transfixed at the spit that flies from Cody's mouth, worries that it'll hit Suzy's hair.
"None of your fucking business, get out of my room!"
"You think you can just waltz in here?"
"Do you want me to call mom?!" Suzy takes out her cellphone from her pocket and begins to dial.
"Suzy, seriously! People are starting to talk!"
Suzy defiantly activates the loud speaker, lets Cody hear the ringing on the other line.
"This is your fucking grave you're digging, remember that." He's already walking back, taking his friend with him.
"Get out!" Suzy slams the door in his face, spins and leans back on it. "Loser."
"I told you I should have gone home."
"And put all that effort to waste?" Suzy's smiling again. She pushes away the pillows and stuffed toys by the headboard of her bed. "Sit down."
Amber lies back, relaxes a bit. She twists around on her stomach while Suzy rummages through her drawers for something. Suzy pulls out a plastic bottle and a toolbox, comes back and hops on the bed, a switch blade caught between her lips.
Mesmerized, Amber rolls to her side, leans up on her elbow and watches as Suzy's brows furrow in concentration. She pulls out the blade, slices the paper wrapped around the bottle, uncaps it, lays the switch blade down on her lap to get a pen from her pocket, extracting the everything from the pen until it's just the plastic casing left.
"What are you doing?" Amber asks, voice low because she doesn't want Suzy to stop.
Suzy doesn't. "You'll see."
She sticks the tip of the blade as far into the plastic mouth of the pen as she can, skins it around to loosen the circumference. She blows the dusted plastic scraped from the plastic mouth of the pen, opens the tool box and holds out the mini funnel of the socket wrench, tests the fit in the plastic pen by joining the two piece, stem in mouth. "Bellissima!"
Amber smirks, moves a bit closer.
Suzy proceeds with the plastic bottle, pulls out a nail from the toolbox and pokes a hole about an inch and half up from the butt of the bottle. She carves the hole wider with the blade, connects the pen casing to it by sticking it in the hole, and wraps a rubber band around and under the pen so it's lifted upward.
"Tada!" Suzy tosses her creation to Amber. It lands and hits Amber's stomach.
"A bottle bong?"
"One of my many talents." She grabs the bottle bong back, stands up and jumps off the bed.
"What did you make the bong for?" Amber asks dumbly.
"So we can smoke baby food." Suzy laughs, skips her way to the bathroom and comes back with the bottle filled with an inch or so of water. She grabs a lighter on the dresser. "Hold these."
Suzy grabs her bag, unzips the pocket in front and produces a ziplock plastic bag of weed.
"Aren't you going to lock the door?" Amber asks as soon as Suzy gets back on the bed, sits down Indian style.
"I don't have a lock." She ties her hair up in a bun, settles the bottle bong on her lap and pinches a ball of weed from the bag, inserting it into the metal socket. She sparks up the lighter, caps the mouth of the makeshift bong with her lips and inhales the same time that she closes the distance between the flame and the socket. The water bubbles up while she sucks in the smoke forming inside the bottle, her eyes half lidded.
Amber can't deny how she is inexplicably enthralled by Suzy's every move, how she can't, even for a second, tear her gaze away from Suzy's actions. She locks her stare on Suzy's lips, watches the smoke take the shape of circles shifting to nothing by the time Suzy starts giggling.
She offers the bottle to Amber wordlessly. Amber sits up, mimics Suzy's actions, keeps her eyes open the entire time because Suzy is watching her now, and she wants to come off as someone who knows what she's doing.
The only other time Amber's ever tried weed was about a year ago in the van of some kid she met through her former best friend. Who owned that van, up to this day, she still doesn't know. She has never taken a hit from a bong before, in front of someone that she direly wants to impress.
Alas, the smoke hits her throat like sandpaper, scratching her esophagus dry. The first cough she takes is followed by an array of heaves. Suzy laughs at her, as expected, sits up and takes the bong from her hands before she spills the weed water everywhere.
"Pussy." Suzy grins over the bong before her second hit. Amber's still trying to survive her first one.
"Burn--" Cough. "Burnout."
"Bitch." Suzy lets the smoke flow easy from her mouth.
"Attention whore." Amber seethes, looking her up and down.
"Cunt."
"Skank."
Suzy narrows her eyes. "Dyke."
They both go silent. Amber feels headless.
Then Suzy is hurriedly getting up on her knees. Amber does the same. She's able to swiftly settle the bong on the floor before Suzy clashes their lips together, urgently tasting Amber's lips, slipping her tongue in, chasing smoke. Suzy's palms are firm against Amber's stomach, sliding up beneath the lapels of Amber's jacket to slip it off her shoulders.
She weighs down on Amber until she has to lie on her back, hands learning the juncture of Suzy's back to her buttocks. "Wait, what if… someone walks in?"
Suzy works a hand inside Amber's shirt. "They won't. Trust me."
Amber pictures the lines on her palm changing.
∞
In class, Amber perches her chin atop her hand to keep her head straight. Gradually, her teacher's voice drawls into white noise. When she loses her grip on her pen and it hits her knuckles, her eyelids shoot up. Now she has a cramp in her neck.
She tilts her head back, alternately shrugging her shoulders to fight the tension in her muscles. Like clockwork, her eyes land on Suzy by the time she's satisfied with her stretching.
Suzy's already looking over her shoulder, seated a couple of seats ahead in the row to Amber's right, a wary smile teasing one corner of her lips.
While the entire class writes down the teacher's dictation, Amber engages in a staring contest with Suzy. The tip of Suzy's tongue peeks from one corner, slowly dragging along her upper lip, Amber's gaze helplessly trailing the motion. Amber can almost taste the seam of her mouth, subconsciously bites her own lower lip.
Suzy smirks in response, Amber does the same, and then she turns back around, sets time back in motion.
Amber likes this secret language. She likes how naturally fluent she is in it. And Suzy is just as beautiful as sin.
Later, Suzy raises her hand, "May I be excused?" while Amber is taking down notes.
She only notices Suzy when the other girl grazes a finger along her forearm as she passes by. Amber's concentration goes haywire.
Amber counts to 16, and then asks to be excused, too.
∞
Cody doesn't go after Amber as much anymore. They've moved on to other victims in school, leaving Amber in peace. His power over Amber has been reduced to a sneer that he often does when Suzy takes her home.
∞
Suzy doesn't come to the library like she promised. After months, Amber's more than used to her inconsistencies.
But then Suzy doesn't show up for weeks. The first time that Suzy tries to contact her through text, "Cody is missing." everything falls into place.
She shows up at Suzy's doorstep anxiously, ringing the doorbell a few more times.
Suzy opens the door, her eyes swollen, a hitch in her breath when she stutters, "I don't… I don't know…"
Amber snatches her by the waist, calms her down by rubbing her back. It helps with the breathing, but she doesn't stop crying.
They share a cigarette by the steps outside, watch the sun slowly being cradled in its descent.
"The police left an hour ago. All I know is that he was out drinking a few days ago and that was the last I saw of him. He would always go out, though. So when he didn't come home for the next few days I didn't think much of it."
Amber takes a puff, bellows smoke out. "What about your mom."
"Tch. She's always in one country or another, busy with work, I don't fucking know anymore. I lost track since 2010."
"But your brother's missing."
"Step brother." Suzy snaps.
Amber lets it go, flicks cigarette ash on the ground. "That's a pretty shitty thing to do."
"She's a pretty shitty parent."
Amber studies Suzy's profile, the anger in her eyes. She finishes off the cigarette and tosses the butt. "Come on. Let's go to bed."
Amber keeps an arm circled around Suzy's waist as they enter the house. She makes sure to lock the door before proceeding up the stairs.
"I'm gonna take a shower first." Amber kicks her shoes off when he follows Suzy inside the room. She acknowledges Amber with a nod, drops on her bed like deadweight.
Amber walks into bathroom, almost slips on the wet tiles. She grabs the rim of the sink for balance, cautiously undressing and then stepping into the shower.
She has her eyes screwed shut while lathering her face with soap, when she hears a dip in the puddle on the tiles. "Suzy?"
Arms wrap around her waist from behind, every swell and curve of Suzy's naked body pressing onto her back.
She's shaking, breath warming up Amber's shoulder blades. "Don't speak.
Amber rinses her face, rubs her eyes and just stands there. Her stomach flips, gaze dropping to Suzy's hands locked against her stomach.
"He broke my lock. He would come in at night. He would tell me he loved me."
Amber blinks as the water runs down her lashes.
"It didn't matter at first. Until I you."
Amber's breathing struggles to keep up with the riot in her chest. "Suzy…"
"I wanna show you something."
∞
"You'd be surprised…" Suzy explains while pulling the chain of the backdoor of the library apart. "at how easy it is to break in here."
A chill drifts down Amber's spine. She never thought she had intuition or anything remotely ESP, but tonight all of her senses were awake as she trekked after Suzy in the darkened backroom. She takes out a flashlight, twists it on and clamps it in her mouth as she releases a bobby pin from her hair, shaking her fringe away from her eyes. She picks the lock.
And only then does it occur to Amber how terrifyingly dexterous Suzy is. When the lock comes apart, Suzy opens the door to the main library. She keeps her flashlight on because even with the shine from the streetlights outside, it's still fairly dark with the looming shelves.
She stops at the poetry section, something that Amber somehow predicted. Suzy turns to face Amber, her bunny smile shining through the dark, while walking backwards to the middle of the aisle.
She shines the light on Amber's knees, the light glowing enough for both of them to be seen. Amber focuses her stare on Suzy so hard that it's only her that she sees.
"Do you love me, Amber?"
Bile crawls up Amber's throat. She gulps it down. "Yes."
Suzy smiles, shyly nibbling on her bottom lip. "Then don't look up."
Amber frowns in confusion when a drop of bright red falls on Suzy's cheek. Suzy doesn't make an effort to wipe it off. She allows it to trickle down to her jaw, her smile not as simple as Amber thought it was.
"Don't look up."
*masterficlist | tumblr | *new* twitter | comment here to be added
-- i don't even know how to apologize
for posting something so pathetic after
an unexpected hiatus. regardless, i am
just glad to be writing again and retracking
old fics. tbh, when i first started writing
this months ago, i had very little in store
for the progression of it. and this is
how it turned out. :|