(no subject)
Chapter 20:
“You should’ve seen Rachel! She was so fierce.”
At home Quinn tells me what I missed while I was, you know, dying and she jumps and twirls around and re-enacts every single move. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this enthusiastic before. I’m laughing practically the entire time during her little performance for me and it seems to encourage her and she’s grinning like a fool herself.
“And then Brittany jumped and turned around and cut off its leg. It was spectacular.”
After that the enemy’s fate was sealed. Apparently it was Mike who got to finish it off, though and he received ten points. Everyone else got a few points for the fledglings they killed.
When she’s finished, Quinn plops down opposite of me. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are wide and she’s got a big smile on her face. It’s adorable and I hope I’ll get to see her like this more often from now on.
“Seems like I missed a really good fight,” I state. She nods, but the smile on her face fades and is replaced by her usual half-worried half-cool expression.
“It was so bad,” she says, quietly. “After Rachel had dragged you to the side and ripped your suit open we could literally see the infection spread. I was so scared; we all were. And then you just stopped breathing. We had beaten the fiend and when we came to check on you, you were gone… or so we thought.” She pulls her knees up to her chin and clutches them tight. “When the transport began I thought I’d never see you again.”
“I was sure I’d come back,” I tell her. “I don’t know why, but I somehow didn’t feel like I was dying. But wait, did you say Rachel dragged me to the side?”
Quinn nods. “Yea, she stayed with you for quite a while. She said she had to wake you several times. But eventually she figured her only chance to really help you was to help us end the battle.”
“That’s weird. I was convinced that all this time Brittany was talking to me.”
Quinn looks confused for a second, but then winks at me. “Well, that must have been wishful thinking.”
This time I punch her. “Ow!” She squeals with an expression stuck between a frown and a grin.
“But why the hell would Rachel kiss me?” I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it earns me a wholehearted laugh from Quinn.
“Nope. That was definitely Brittany,” she manages to say between giggles. “She kissed you right before we were transported back.”
So apparently my mind must have been mixing up the order of events a little.
“I didn’t think you’d remember that. Well, now at least you know what it’s like to be kiss-attacked. Although I suspect this is a little different, huh?”
I blush and stare at a spot on the ground. Yea, it kind of is different.
After a moment of awkwardness, I look back up at Quinn. “I didn’t know you were such a good story teller,” I grin at her.
“Well,” she responds “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.” It comes out a lot more serious than either of us expected.
She attempts to get up, but I hold her back. “Then tell me,” I say. “I want to know everything about you.”
Her eyes become glassy for a second and the smile she gives me is different from every other smile I've seen on her. It's warm; it's the start of something new. And then she tells me everything. She tells me how she was one of the popular girls at school, a cheerleader with a straight A record. She tells me how hard she worked every day to keep up that image, how she never had a moment to stop and think and how she was never allowed to live her life on her own terms. She wasn’t allowed any future plans, because everything had been planned for her already. She’d marry after high school and become the perfect wife, just like her mom; her mom, who had become a life-less ragdoll a long time ago.
It was really her dad who expected her to be nothing less than the best. She was raised to be a doll, a Christian porcelain doll without a soul. She was supposed to be perfect in everything she did and every little failure would be punished right away. Her dad would hit her. Never in the face, of course; that would have been too obvious. He’d lock her in her room and yell through the door what a disgrace she really was. “If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all,” he’d say.
At some point his voice turned into her own and it would haunt her every night, telling her she’d never succeed at anything. That was the beginning of the end.
“It’s still there sometimes,” she says, with a little sadness in her voice. “But the pressure’s gone. Right now all I have to do is survive and I’ll see about the rest. I guess it also helps not being beaten up every other day for literally nothing. I’m more angry than sad these days and I’ve learned to be angry at my dad instead of myself. And I’m angry at my mom, too, because she always supported my dad like the co-dependent fuck she is.”
I gulp and launch forward into her arms.
“Whoa, easy,” she laughs. She almost falls back and after a moment of apparent shock she wraps herself around me just the same.
“You’re my best friend,” I tell her, because I mean it. She sighs and suddenly feels a lot softer in my arms, as if she’d been wearing a shell this whole time and it’s finally fallen off and now I get to feel the real Quinn instead.
She clears her throat and says: “I love you, too.”
---
I’m brushing my teeth when there’s a soft knock on the door. “Just a second,” I call out, but the door opens and in comes Brittany. She’s already wearing her night shorts and a t-shirt with a little cartoon duck printed on the front and she let her hair down so it falls around her face like a golden frame. I can’t wait to crawl into bed and feel her arms around me. Tonight -- more than ever -- I really need her next to me. I need her safety and her warmth.
She closes the door slowly and gives me a shy smile as I quickly rinse and spit before turning to her.
“I thought I asked you to wait.”
But I’m not mad; not at all. She’s fumbling with the hem of her shirt and it’s beyond adorable so all I can do is stand there and stare.
“I know I said I’d wait,” she starts, and I’m pretty sure she’s not talking about waiting outside the bathroom. “But you almost…just how long do think you’ll need? Because I’ve never been a very patient person; I’ve always just taken what I wanted from life and I didn’t do that with you, because I thought it might scare you off, so I’ve been waiting. And now…I don’t know how long I can wait anymore and I know you said we’d make it together, but there's no guarantee and maybe I won’t get another chance to...”
She bites her lower lip and she’s tearing up. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life…and death.
“I don’t know what you’re so scared of.” She pauses, and her eyes wander around, searching the room until they find my face again and root me in place. Except that it now feels like I’m binding her to me instead; like I’m actually her anchor for once. “But I’m not scared. And I think that what we could have….that’s not scary. What’s out there - what’s waiting for us in the missions? That’s scary, and it’s even scarier to face that without you.”
I still haven’t said a word, and after a moment, she starts to panic a little. “Or am I just making things up? Maybe you really just want to be friends? I’d be fine with that, but…”
Wait, what?
I take a step forward so that I’m now standing directly in front of her. I’m so close that I can hear her heart racing and we both have goose bumps on our arms. I’m not going to be that distant idiot any longer; I’m not going to waste any more time; I’m not going to wait until she’s given up on me.
I lift my arms to rest them on her shoulders. I look into her eyes and pull her down to me.
The moment our lips touch, I’m lost. If I ever thought her eyes worked some kind of magic on me it’s nothing compared to her hands on my waist and her lips against mine; it’s nothing compared to feeling strands of her hair slide through my fingers; it’s nothing compared to her tongue dipping against my lower lip. When I crack my lips to let her in, she sighs and her hands start to wander. I feel her fingertips dance along my rib cage, grazing along my sides until they find the hem of my shirt. She tugs at it and I stiffen.
I didn’t mean to. It’s just a reflex.
“I’ve never...” I whisper.
She nods and kisses me again until I relax back into her touch. Then, slowly, she starts lifting my shirt. She peels it off my body like I was wrapped in band-aid and I swear it feels just like I had suffered burns and she was examining the wounds. She’s so careful, so gentle that being naked -- exposed to her -- is actually only a little bit frightening.
Taking a step back she looks at me. She must see the anxiety in my eyes, because she doesn’t stare. Instead she just pulls her own shirt over her head and wraps her arms around me again and - god - I almost faint, because her breasts are flush against mine and my skin burns and I have no idea what to do.
“Hey.”
When I open my eyes she’s smiling at me.
“Are you ok?”
I nod. “Yea, I just… “
“Nervous?”
I nod again. This is really embarrassing. I can fight and I can kill. I can tear people down. But this? Completely new terrain.
“Maybe this will be a little better,” she says and pulls down her shorts and tosses them to the side. “Now I’m naked and you’re still wearing shorts and socks. You have an advantage.”
I’m actually not so sure about that, especially when she kisses me again and takes my hands and places them on her ass. But she grins playfully and it’s so sweet that I can’t help but grin along.
One of her hands snakes around my back and pulls me even closer. My arms are back around her neck. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to move at all, but I can offer myself to her. I can let her do whatever it is she wants to do. I can let myself melt into her touch.
She presses me against the wall and cups me through my shorts. “Is this ok?” she whispers and I feel like such a loser, because I can only gulp and nod. It’s actually way more than just ok and she shouldn’t feel the need to ask. But she obviously doesn’t mind; she kisses my cheek and my neck and pushes her hand into my shorts and suddenly everything else is gone.
She’s everywhere.
All fear has left me and all I want is feel her, too, so I reach down and copy her movements. We both gasp and her kisses become quicker and a little sloppy as they wander from my lips along my jaw and down my neck. I start to burn from the inside - flames rushing through my veins, licking my skin, cracking me open and unleashing a wildfire that traps Brittany and me alike. She must feel it, too, because she’s breathing just as hard as I am and her breath is hot on my neck. And then something else takes over and the heat reaches a whole new level as it spreads and rushes through my brain and settles against her hand. She tightens her grip and shudders and I pull her closer and bury my face in her shoulder as my fingers press hard into her shoulder blades and
- oh god -
It takes a moment before I realize we’ve both stopped moving. The fire that threatened to consume me just moments ago has escaped my body and left behind a limp mess. My legs feel weak, and I’m unable to do anything but to wrap myself around Brittany. Luckily she doesn’t seem to have any intention of moving.
After a few seconds - or is it a few minutes? - she removes her hand from my shorts and holds me up with both her arms. She kisses my cheek and pecks my lips a couple of times until I start to laugh.
It’s not even funny, and yet, it’s hilarious. I was such a fool for shutting her out. I was so determined to speed through Gantz’ game that I slowed everything down with Brittany.
I guess we’ve caught up now.
But most of all, it’s a relief. It feels like this whole time there had been a rock tied to my heart and now that it’s been cut off, like a balloon freed from its weight I can rise into the sky.
Or some shit like that.
Brittany smiles at me with dark eyes and rosy cheeks and hands me my shirt. “We should probably go to bed,” she says in a voice barely above a whisper.
I agree and watch her step back into her shorts. There’s something delicate in how she moves. She barely stretches the material of her clothes before slipping in. and her head and her hands don’t get caught in the cloth before finding the opening like mine do. Every one of her movements seems light and easy, as if she were dancing the entire time. In comparison to her, I feel clumsy and crude.
When she turns around I’m still standing there with my shirt in my hand. I was so enthralled by her that I forgot that I’m half naked. She grins and her eyes are twinkling when she approaches me. She takes the shirt out of my hand and pulls it over my head, but only partway so I’m actually stuck and trapped in her grip as she clutches my waist. I hear myself laugh and she giggles and finally pulls the shirt down.
“Hey there,” she says and pecks my nose.
It’s unbelievable how comfortable I feel around her. I’ve only known her for such a short time and it’s like she’s always been there. We’ve always been taking our lunch breaks together at school and we’ve always been giggling over nonsense and we’ve always been fighting together, against aliens and for a future. She’s always been by my side.
“Britt…”
She tilts her head and takes my hands. “Yes?”
“This isn’t a coincidence. You and me meeting here, I mean.” It just doesn’t feel that way. “It’s weird, but I think we were meant to find each other; all four of us, I mean. I think we were meant to do something or… I don’t know. Does that sound silly to you? I sound silly, right?”
She shakes her head and kisses me again, slowly, with all the tenderness that seems to live in every one of her cells. “No,” she finally answers. “That doesn’t sound silly at all.”
There’s something buried somewhere deep within me, like a song I should remember or a name I can’t find the matching face to. It creates a spot in my mind, but I can’t tell what it is.
“Then, what is it? What brought us here?”
She furrows her eyebrows and chews on her lip. “I don’t know. We did, probably.”
It’s not the answer I was hoping for, but for now it’s the best I can get. All I can do right now is take Brittany’s hand and lie down with her on our mattress.
Tonight for the first night ever I fall asleep with my face buried in Britt’s chest and her arms wrapped tightly around my back. And for the first time ever I’m actually looking forward to the moment I wake up, still trapped in her embrace.
---
The next day I spend most of the time sitting outside with Brittany. She tells me about her older sister, who she always looked up to. Ann used to protect Britt from the bullies until she went off to college. Apparently she was really smart and strong, too. She was one of the popular girls, pretty and desired. It’s what people say about their relatives once they’re dead. Suddenly all their flaws don’t matter anymore and so Brittany is convinced her sister was a superhero.
She only very briefly mentions the times when Ann locked her in the closet because she didn’t want to deal with her. She left her there for hours until Brittany had cried herself to sleep. “I could be really annoying sometimes,” Britt explains and although I highly doubt that I don’t want to ruin the image she has of her sister. She clearly loved her more than anything else in this world. Why take that away from her when she’ll never see her sister again?
“After she left, my parents seemed so sad all the time,” she says in a tiny voice. “Everything changed after that. They’d yell at each other more and more often and they’d talk about how I’d never make it into college. I wasn’t meant to hear it, but I did.”
I put my arm around her and kiss her temple softly. “Let’s not go to college together,” I say, which actually makes her smile. It’s amazing what a cheery person she’s become considering everything she’s been through. “You’re amazing, Britt.” She takes my hand and pulls it into her lap and fumbles with my fingertips.
“Sometimes I think that death was a relief. I mean, I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t always want to be alive, either. And looking back it’s like this new life I have is scary, but it’s still better than the one I had sometimes.” And looking at her I can’t help but agree.
“Santana?”
I look up and her eyes are a piercing blue that seemed such a threat to me when I first saw it. Now I’m watching the process - how her cheeks turn pink and her hair seems to glow, like her mere presence could scare all of our all darkness away. Maybe that’s what I was so afraid of all along.
“When we get out of here I want us to be together. All four of us.”
I smile at her words, and feel something click inside of me. She saved me once, twice… she’s saving me every single day and now she’s planning a future for me, for us. And I think that, yea, together we might make it.
“Me, too.”
She kisses my cheek and gets up. “I want to help Quinn prepare dinner tonight. You coming?” But I shake my head. I want to enjoy the fresh air a little longer.
I watch the sky go from blue to orange to purple to black and the whole time Brittany’s words spin in my head: “I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to be alive, either.” We’re our own little suicide pact, even though technically Britt didn’t kill herself. And we didn’t even need a website to find each other. I’ve gained more than I’ve lost after my death, but it’s time to move on. It’s time to escape Gantz. It’s time to take back control. Not just for Brittany, but for myself.
It’s about time.
“Hey, are you alright?” Rachel’s standing in the open door. “Yea,” I smile at her. “Come sit with me for a bit.” I pat the space next to me and she hesitantly accepts my offer.
She looks at me with a questioning expression and I can’t blame her at all. I’ve never invited her to spend time with me before. “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you.” I start. “And I’m sorry for yelling.”
Her expression doesn’t change. Her confusion is so palpable it makes me wonder how scared of me she really is. I put my arm around her shoulders and she tenses, but only for a second. “I want you to know that you can tell me anything. I know I haven’t made it easy for you to like me, but…you’re no less of a friend to me than the others.”
Her mouth falls open, but she doesn’t say anything. I’ve managed to render her speechless. It’s a miracle.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I murmur. It’s a little embarrassing and I feel my face start to burn. When I look at her again she’s beaming.
“Thank you,” she says. “I really appreciate that.”
I suppress the urge to tell her not get a big head about it. It’s not the right time to push her away. Then I suddenly remember the other Rachel looked like, so hollow, as if she’d never seen anything good in her life. And I pull her - my Rachel - closer to me and say: “I didn’t know you could sing.”
“Oh my god.” It’s Rachel’s time to blush. “Yes, actually I love to sing. I used to upload videos of myself to MySpace and it’s always been my dream to one day go to New York and sing at Broadway.” She lowers her voice and adds: “Well, I guess that’s out of the question now.” It breaks my heart to see her like this. And yet, there’s something else that needs to be said.
“The Rachel I saw had a really pretty voice, but I don’t think she’ll ever be a star.”
Rachel furrows her eyebrows. “What? Why would you say that?”
“Because,” I kiss her head. “She looked a lot more dead to me than you do. That wasn’t ‘Cakes I saw the other day; that wasn’t you.”
“Oh.”
She turns her head and stares at her feet. She sucks in some air and slowly releases it. “That night you let me in… I would have slept with you.”
What? Where’s that coming from all of a sudden?
“I would’ve done it, although I didn’t really want to. But even though you seemed so harsh and cruel you didn’t take advantage of me. Truth is,” she bites her lip. “You’re the very first friend I ever had.”
I wrap both my arms around her and rest my chin on her head. I know exactly how she feels. I know that, because of Quinn. She silently sobs into my chest and I let her cry for a bit. She pulls me as close as possible and grips the fabric of my shirt tightly and I bury one hand in her hair and just hold her like that. I hated her when I first saw her; or so I thought. Right now I can’t believe I ever felt that way.
This hug was long overdue.
“Guys! Guys!!!” Quinn and Brittany come crashing through the door, laptop in Quinn’s hands. “We got an email! The website… we… we got an email!!!”
They practically leap in our direction and before I can process Quinn’s words, I have the computer on my lap and three girls screaming into my ear.
I inhale sharply. It’s an anonymous sender with an obviously fake address. What if this message holds a vital clue? What if the sender knows what Gantz is? What if this is our ticket out?
What if it’s not?
“Oh my god! Open the fucking email!” Rachel yells and out of pure shock that she just cursed, I click on the message.
I read it over and over again, but it just won’t make sense.
“Fuck,” Quinn finally says.
“It might be a riddle,” Brittany suggests.
But really, it just sounds like some of those cards they sell to tourists at souvenir shops:
“When our guilt holds us back we rely on the mercy of others
When we’re brave we have all options in our hands
We’re soldiers in the war we started”
<<-- -->>