Chapter Text
Imogen leaves Prom early.
She waits until everyone who would bother to look for her is distracted or occupied and slips outside, exhaling sharply as the cool air hits her. It's sort of embarrassing in a way, how easy it is to slip away. There was a time when she couldn't escape attention no matter how desperately she wanted to, when the very idea of leaving a social event unnoticed would have been laughable. She thinks she can count the number of people who might notice she’s gone tonight on one hand. She doesn’t want to think about how many might actually care. She had always thrived under attention, perhaps a little too much. And wasn’t that just the problem? Hasn't that always been her problem? Attention?
She leans against the brick wall of the old gym, probably getting who knows what filth all over her dress, and she really can’t bring herself to care. It’s a cold night, and she's glad for the shoulder covering her mum insisted on, even if she had been resistant at the time. But the evening air is sort of nice, a welcome antidote to the rush of heat in her cheeks. She doesn’t know if she’s blushing and she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t she doesn’t. But she does. She wants to- no, she needs to know if she's blushing. She needs to know if she's blushing because she needs to know if she saw her blush.
She looks out at the parking lot blankly. It’s full of cars and empty of life, the only sound is the occasional fast driver on the road ahead and the background vibrations of the gym spilling out into the night. She slips her phone from her pocket and checks the time. (Because of course her dress has pockets. She had been unreasonably excited when she’d found them in the store and promptly told absolutely everyone who would listen about them. It was embarrassing to think about now. She doubted anyone had cared. She had just embarrassed herself. Everything is embarrassing now.)
She knows her mum won’t pick her up, not this early. Knows that even if she did all she would get was a lecture about wasting an evening and money and time. Wasting, taking, spending. That's all she ever seems to hear from her.
She tries not to mind. She decides the walk will be good. Her mum will like the burnt calories and her dad will like that she doesn’t bother him. Besides, it might help clear her head. It was a nice night overall, Elle and Tao had a beautiful dance, the photo setup had been a favourite (thanks to Elle), from the brief glance she’d seen of Tara she had looked beautiful (no surprise), and when she’d waved to Nick earlier him and Charlie seemed well, like they always did (perfect). She had no reason to leave in all honesty. She was being silly. Dramatic. Irrational.
She starts walking anyway.
❀❀❀
She meets Sahar a week into year seven, and decides then and there she will be her best friend.
She’d made friends before that of course, but they were both boys. The first was a quiet boy she sat with before school. He seemed shy and unsure, but smiled gratefully at her when she’d sat down next to him and led a random conversation until the bell rang. (She misses that boy sometimes. Other times she wondered if he ever really existed. If the Ben Hope who gave her shy smiles before school and held her hand as a thank you for talking in his place had ever really been there. If she’d lost him. Or if the Ben who insulted Charlie and dated her for social value and held her like his property was all that was ever there to begin with. She's not sure which hurts more.)
The second she’d met after school on the third day of term. He waits for his mum in the same spot she waits for hers. She’s not sure why they haden’t spoken before, only that the silence ends that afternoon. He tells her his name but tells her not to bother saying the whole thing, he tells her the name of his dog and how excited he was when he got to name her. She tells him she’ll definitely bother with the whole thing and then does so for the next long years, she tells him about her dog and how she had to plead with her mum to even let it in the house. It was a silly conversation, with a silly boy with silly, pretty freckles. She remembers thinking she wanted to be his girlfriend. (She didn’t. But Nicholas Nelson ends up being so much more. She thinks she fell in love with him that day. Not in a romantic way, but in the way you know you want this person in your life forever. Although who knows, maybe everyone feels that with Nick. She wouldn’t blame them.)
For some reason boys had always been easier for her to talk to. It wasn’t that she hadn't tried to talk to the girls in her year, she just hadn't had any luck. As difficult as it was to swallow, most girls simply didn’t like her. She was too much. Too chatty, too girly, too bubbly. Too much energy to exist around. Sure some liked her, but it was easier with boys, or maybe just more fun. She got a sort of rush when boys liked her, talked to her, paid attention to her. She used to think she was just prone to crushes. (She’s not so sure now.)
Then she met Sahar.
The first thing that caught her attention was her hair. Sahar had the most beautiful hair Imogen had ever seen. Thick and long and dark, pulled into simple plaits. It was mesmerising. But it wasn’t just that. It was the glitter hair clips she had scattered throughout, it was the music note stickers on all her notebooks, it was the pretty silver necklace she always wore. It was her voice; soft back then, but with a quiet confidence that was almost physically tangible. It was the way she stood; her feet locked together, hands clasped in front of her, as if she was attempting to physically block others from getting closer. After she noticed her, it didn’t take long to become infatuated.
But the other girls noticed her too. They talked about her, usually unkindly, and Imogen heard. She knew Sahar heard as well and she couldn’t understand it. Sahar was beautiful. Maybe not traditionally but in a way that surely couldn’t be argued with. She wasn’t thin, no. But her face was rounded like some sort of moon, her body soft and pretty and like something from a painting.
Nothing was ever enough for girls. Or maybe everything they were was always too much. Imogen too much life, too much voice, too much opinion. Sahar too much mass, too much space. That's what they all thought. Hell maybe that was what the world thought, it was definitely what her mum thought. Well too bad.
Sahar had seemed surprised when she sat down next to her at lunch and started talking. Her voice even higher and faster than normal from nerves, but it didn’t matter. Because Sahar was looking at her. Her eyes were dark brown. Chocolate and rich dirt and expensive rum. They might have been even more beautiful than her hair.
They sat together every day after that, and it was only a week later that Imogen was being invited over for dinner. She screamed when Sahar asked her, lunging across the table and hugging her tight. She felt Sahar hold her breath when her arms went around her, sucking in. Imogen wished she hadn’t, she wanted to hold all of her. But it was fine, it would come in time. Imogen had a new friend. A girl friend. A best friend. She wasn’t too much and neither was Sahar. Not for each other.
And for everyone else, they would just have to be too much together.
❀❀❀
It doesn’t take long before Imogen trusts Sahar more than she trusts herself. She spends every spare moment she can at her house, spending nights breathlessly counting down to Friday when she can finally sleep over. Half her closest migrates into Sahars, absorbing both the scent of her room and of her. And Imogne loves it.
She loves Sahars room in general. It’s bright and electric and colourful, filled with music notes and slashes of light, her actual instruments taking pride of place, carefully displayed and clearly cared for. The whole space is lit by candles and pink neon and her stained glass desk lamp. It’s just so cool. Yet it keeps an air of safety to it somehow, an air of calm. And when it’s just the two of them, Imogen facing Sahar’s back, her arms draped around the dip of her waist; she feels such overwhelming contentment and belonging she sort of wants to cry.
Home has never felt safe for her. It hasn’t really felt like home since she’d found her dad kissing another woman in their living room at age nine. The following conversation marks the longest her dad has even spoken to her in one go. He begs and rants and she listens and promises. It doesn’t matter in the end, mum finds out on her own.
The marriage doesn’t end though. Not on paper at least, but they may as well have signed the divorce papers there and then. She doesn’t know why they didn’t, for her sake? If so then they really should have. The new normal sets in after that. Her dad stops any pretence of caring, turning from a stranger she lives with to a phantom in the wall. Present but entirely unknown. Her mum continues as she always did, tough love, harsh criticism, strict diets, and no concept of positive reinforcement.
She sort of hates being at home, she doesn’t belong there, most days she doesn’t even feel welcome. Sahar never makes her feel like that. Sahar knows everything there is to know about Imogen, and Imogen thinks she knows everything there is to know about Sahar.
She knows her favourite colour, her favourite band, her favourite item of clothing. Imogen knows her shoe size and go to ice cream flavour. She knows that her best subject is music, and her worst is science. She knows she started writing music as soon as she learnt how, that she begged and begged for a guitar before her mum finally relented. She knows she loves her parents but doesn’t really know how to talk to them. That she knows they love her, but wishes they would tell her more. She knows her first song was about a running race and rhymed over with rover. She knows her favourite song is also her most private.
She still shows her though, one Friday night when a phone call from Imogen’s mum prompts tears to gather behind her lashes. She can see why it’s her favourite, it’s beautiful. But she can see why it’s private. Sahar never talks about her body, about what other people seem to love to say about her body. But Imogen knows it gets to her. She knows because it took three months for her to stop sucking in her stomach when they hugged, she knows because the first time Imogen called her beautiful was the first time she saw her cry. The only time.
Imogen cries at everything. She cries at her mum, at her dad, when she fights with Ben or Nick, when a teacher tells her off in class, when she’s late for her bus. Sometimes she cries for no reason at all. She’s never been good at controlling her emotions, at hiding them, and they have a tendency to spill all over the place. (Sahar doesn’t mind though, Sahar loves that about her, she’d said so. That her favourite part of Imogen Heaney was her bleeding, sleeve worn heart. That had made her cry too.) So Imogen crying doesn’t mean all that much.
But Sahar doesn’t cry. Sahar is the calm, the moon, the level head. Sahar is the quiet and the sense. Of course she gets upset, has things to say, but she does it differently. She gets upset though weighted silence and looks to the floor, gets angry through music and scathing remarks for Imogen's ears alone. Sahar and crying just doesn’t make sense.
But it happened. All because someone called her beautiful and meant it. She’d held her close when the tears had started, all comfort and gentleness, but Imogen was livid. Anger did not come easily to her, nor vengeance or violence. She didn’t think so at least, but maybe it did, maybe she had just never cared about someone enough for it to show. Because at that moment, she would have personally torn apart every person who had led to this. Fought her way into their dreams and became something they would run from.
Because Imogen trusts Sahar more than she trusts herself, and Imogen loves her more than she thought it was possible to love someone. In a way that utterly consumes her. Whatever she wants or needs, Imogen will provide. And she knows, she trusts that Sahar would as well. Because she’s Sahar Zahid and that’s more then enough on its own, because she’s Imogen's best friend, because she loves her like that too.
It’s taken over a decade of her life, but it truly feels like she found her soulmate.
❀❀❀
Imogen gets her first boyfriend at thirteen. A Truham boy in the grade above named Jack Dalton. She’s not exactly sure if she likes him exactly, but other girls say he’s handsome so Imogen agrees. He showers at least, a step above most of the boys in her year. She’s not entirely sure why he goes for her at first, she's really nothing special. There are smarter girls, prettier girls, sporter girls, quieter girls. But he doesn’t choose another girl, he choses Imogen. So even though she doesn’t quite know if she likes him, she decides she can learn to, and says yes.
It’s easy really, to convince herself. He’s charming enough, brings her flowers at the school gates and leaves chased kisses on her heated cheeks. He walks her home when her mum doesn’t collect her and holds her hand the whole way, he even offers to carry her bag. Her mum adores him, and if one too many passive aggressive comments about him being able to do better were passed off under her mothers careless laughter, she can ignore it for the sake of ease. It’s perfect really, on paper at least, and the only problem comes from the last place she would expect.
Sahar doesn’t like him.
At first she thought she was joking. Then that she was simply being protective, then that she knew something Imogen didn’t. But she had said nothing, just that she didn’t like him and that didn’t trust him. Imogen doesn’t understand, they still spend the same amount of time together, still text just as much, but Sahar doesn’t explain. It wasn’t a fight exactly, but it was the first time she had left Sahars house feeling anything but joy.
It gets resolved the next day. Because of course it does, they can’t be mad at each other for long, they’re built from each other. After no customary good morning text they make up though passed notes in class that land them both in detention and a tearful lunch time hug. Sahar promises to give him a chance and Imogen promises to be careful and the conflix is over, and Imogen has never been more relieved before in her life. Sahar is her world, her centrefold. She's her best friend, and she means more to her then any boy ever will. It almost scares her, what she’ll do for this girl. What she would give up. But it fills her as well. The almost fight brings up a sort of ache, however, the unwanted knowledge that if this was to ever end, it won’t be Imogen casting the blow.
But Sahar turns out to be right in the end.
Her first relationship ends in a hickey, a spread around photo, and the word ‘slut’ following her around the halls like some sort of brand. She knows why he chose her now, he chose her precisely because she wasn’t smarter, or prettier, or quieter. He chose her because she’s too much. And wherever she tells herself, she knows it's a flaw. A flaw that makes her easy. He never wanted her. He’d wanted easy.
Ben stops talking to her for a few weeks, which hurts more than she expected (And maybe that should have been a sign of things to come, maybe that was when she lost the boy with warm hands and a dimpled smile, maybe the seed had been there from the start. Or maybe they were thirteen and Ben was a boy before he was her friend.)
Sahar doesn’t even say I told you so, just holds her close while she cries, ignoring the mascara stains Imogen leaves on her shirt. They’ve been here before, after a fight with her mum or a comment from a classmate goes too far and they switch, Imogen holding Sahar, comforting someone who isn’t crying the best she knows how. Right now she wants to disappear into her, wants to drown in citrus candles and vanilla soap, wants to fold her body into the palm of Sahar’s hand and be held there forever. She never wants to leave this room, this space, this position. With Sahar’s lips at the back of her neck, whispering comforting they both know aren’t true, strong arms and guitar string calloused finger holding her so close she can’t even remember where they each end and begin. She never wants it to end.
But it does, and Imogen ends up essentially sitting in her lap as the last of her tears subside, hiccups muffled into Sahar’s shoulder. She just strokes her hair gently, whispering softly into her ear.
“Let’s give boy’s a break for a while, yeah?”
If she’d have known what a filthy liar that promise would make her, she never would have said a word. If she’d have known it would put a monumental pause on the best thing Imogen had ever known, she would have followed her mum's advice and not made promises she couldn’t keep. But she didn’t. And in the moment, in Sahar’s arms with her lips at her neck and her finger tips grazing her waist she truly meant it when she’d said-
“Yeah. Good idea.”
❀❀❀
She doesn’t intend to break her promise so soon. She’s not even really sure if it was a promise at all. If she really wanted to, she could argue that it wasn’t (And she had. Many nights spent lying to herself, a futile attempt at starving her guilty conscience. It had always rung hollow, even to her own ears. She would never dare say it out loud.) But it just so happened that male attention soon came to her in spades. Partially because she was sort of considered a slag now? Probably. But still.
Imogen isn't stupid, despite popular belief. She knows her dad had messed her up, and although she deplores the term daddy issues, she can’t argue that it doesn’t fit. She likes when men pay her attention, and really is that so wrong? Nick is sweet and caring, and had remained her friend through everything, but it wasn’t quite enough. Ben is rougher, quieter, more in line with what she knows men to be. But he's not enough either.
She’s not sure when it started but at some point she carved out a place for herself among boys. Imogen wants to call herself a feminist but it’s always felt flat. It feels as if her entire life begins to centre around boys.
She dyes her hair the way of the trends (she never liked the plain brown anyway, and she wants something to distract from just how bright her eyes are. She wishes they were warmer. She wishes they were brown.) She gets herself a skincare routine, seven steps and far too much money. She stops tuning out her mom's lectures and soon enough she takes it to heart. Eating less, moving more. Losing weight.
She feels guilty at the pride she feels as the number drops. She's a hypocrite, years of telling Sahar that she likes her body and that she genuinely, truthfully found her beautiful now feel hollow. Sahar deserves better than that, better then Imogen, Better then the world. (She doubts anyone could ever deserve Sahar Zahid, least of all her. Least of all someone blessed enough to hold her, to be trusted with her completely, only to let her slip through her fingers for cheap male touch.)
And she’s miserable she’ll admit, but it works. Guys flock to her, boys like her. Not because she’s easy, not because they don’t know her well enough yet. Because she's desirable. Because easy slag too much Imogen Heaney is valued now. Because Harry Greene called her ‘proper fit’ and his friends seem to agree. Because it doesn’t take long before another guy is asking her out, and then another, and really she can’t turn all of them down.
She’d be lying if she said it wasn’t nice. She’s growing up, growing up into someone beautiful apparently, someone her mum compliments and who boys want. Who cares if her dad still doesn’t talk to her, if he barely knows her name and forgets her birthday. Imogen doesn’t. Why should she?
She never intends to leave Sahar behind. She turns down boys' offers until she’s truly too weak to keep doing it, telling her immediately and promising he was different. She knows she’s disappointed but really, what can she do? She still calls and texts her, they still have their sleepover nights, Sahar’s room, Sahar’s arms are still more home then anything her parents buy. But something is different. Imogen once thought she knew everything there was to know about Sahar and visa versa.
She doesn’t anymore.
She tries to ask if she has any crushes and is met with deflection, she asks how she spent the weekend without her and gets vague answers. Sahar knows every stupid petty detail about Imogen's life and for the first time it's starting to feel one sided. It gets to a point where she has to ask if she’s mad at her. Their friendship had never felt like this, like eggshells and cracked glass and Imogen hate’s it. She despises the idea of living with regrets, of living with what if’s. She hates running away. That's her father’s game not hers. And okay she's curious, sue her. She wants to know.
It takes some effort, too much effort, before she relents. Apparently, while Imogne was busy with boy tongues and low fat yoghurt lunches, Sahar had found new friends. A boy from Truham named Isaac and two girls from her form class. Tara and Darcy.
It’s not shocking news, not even particularly big. Sahar was funny and intelligent and beautiful, of course she was making more friends than just Imogen. In all honesty it was a mark of how awful everyone else was that it hadn't happened sooner. Imogen should be happy for her, and she was.
But she knows Tara. Tara Jones. She’s beautiful. Absolutely stunning, prettier than Imogen easily, even now. And it shouldn’t matter, Sahar is a beautiful girl, of course she’d have beautiful friends. She's fully aware she has no reason to feel this way, and yet a stained tension blankets the room for the rest of the night. And is it her imagination or does Sahar roll over on purpose so Imogen can’t hold her that night. Either way, Imogen leaves early the next morning.
Neither of them text to plan the next sleepover.
It takes a surprisingly short time for the most important person in Imogen's life to fade into a half remembered memory. No big fight or unforgivable utterance. Simple gone before she even knows what’s happening. But she assumes that's growing up. Boys want her now and Sahar doesn’t.
Okay then. Fine.
Except it’s not fine. She throws herself into beauty and boys, gets broken up with and finds another boyfriend a week later. She gets hit when she won’t sleep with him and ends up single again after two months. She's crying on the floor, her cheek stinging, her clothes ripped and her heart aching as she reaches for her phone. Then stares at it for a full minute before realising she has no one to call. Realising they officially haven’t spoken in two weeks, and it hurts more than any slap.
She cries so hard she throws up that night. It’s the second time she’d cried over a boy (Third. Her dad.) Except this time she has no one to comfort her.
❀❀❀
She can thank Nicholas Nelson for setting her straight, even if it is a whole miserable year too late.
And really who else would it be? She’s not entirely sure when she was so obsessed with Nick. She’d never been the type to chase. She’ll squeal and gush in private, sure. But she always preferred to let the boys come to her. She feels more powerful that way, more valued, more wanted. (And like less of an idiot when they ended up hurting her.)
But it’s different with Nick. Maybe because he’s her friend, and really, after everything she can’t afford to lose any more of those. Maybe it’s because he’s so genuinely kind, so outside the usual boys she goes for she felt safe enough to try. Maybe she was sick of getting hurt and just wanted a good guy to like her for once, maybe because she knew, deep down somewhere that he didn’t see her like that. That he never will.
She can tell he’s uncomfortable when she asks him out, knows she shouldn’t have done it in front of everyone, in front of Harry. Knows somehow that he’ll cancel, because she doesn’t feel the expected joy at his acceptance. Or maybe the day is just cursed. Later that night might have proved that theory.
Whenever she had let herself think about the possibility of her dog dying, the only person she had wanted to tell was Sahar but she can’t exactly do that now can she. And well, it’s sort of pathetic, but Nick is the only person she has left who would care. So she tells him and he’s awkward and he reaffirmed their date and she’s not surprised in the least when she gets his message. Just her luck.
She agrees to meet with him though. She’d never been good at saying no. And she’s never been more glad of anything in her life.
She finally gets to meet Nellie, and it might just be the highlight of her year. She has to stop herself from crying as Nick speaks, the exact details of his little speech go over her head but she knows this much. It’s not a standard copy past rejection, she knows that he’s just voiced something she doesn’t even understand, and she knows that when she goes home, she messages Sahar.
And a day later, she gets a message back.
❀❀❀
The walk home takes longer than she thought. Her heels ache with every step, and with each metre closer to her house she regrets going for the five inch. She was wrong about the walk, it’s doing nothing to clear her head. It’s coulding it if anything, why did she think it was a good idea? Just her and her thoughts alone? Scratch that, why had she left in the first place? Why hadn’t she called someone why-?
What the fuck was she doing?
So Sahar looked pretty playing her stupid (Beautiful) guitar. So what? Sahar had always been pretty, Imogen had always liked to watch her play. It didn’t mean anything. Just because they were friends again, (sort of, she hopes) and just because she knows Sahar is bi, and she doesn’t have a boyfriend it doesn’t mean anything.
She’s straight.
She likes boys and boys only. She’s had boyfriends, she’s kissed boys she chased boy’s and let girls go because they didn’t have the same rush because she likes boys and-
Was that why? Was the rush of male attention feelings? Or was it simply the thrill of being wanted. She’d felt a rush just then hadn’t she? A different kind. A blushy, dizzy head spinning kind, the kind she had always felt with Sahar if she was honest, the kind that apparently leads her to leaving Prom early and walking in five inch heels barely able to breath.
And it’s only when she stops and actually thinks about who she chases and who she lets go that she gets it. Imogen’s spent her life refusing to run away, the idea of loose threads and unsaid regrets tapping into an anxious and nauseated pit inside of her. But really isn’t that exactly what she’s done? Isn’t that why she’s here? A pitibly mess of failed relationships and apathetic boys left behind her and the only persons who she’s ever trusted left unsure of where they stand? It’s only then she realises she has been running, she’s been running her whole life.
From herself, from Sahar, from the very idea that she Imogen Heaney might be-
She’s crying.
She’s crying and her phone is rigging and she doesn’t know what to do anymore she doesn’t know who she is anymore and she’s just a girl and she just wants a mother to love her and her father to care and her friends to notice and she can’t-
It’s Sahar.
She picks up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, everything alright? I noticed you weren't there and I didn’t think you left with the others so-”
She starts sobbing. She can’t help herself. Can’t help the tears or her feelings or her bleeding sleeve worn heart. Because hearing that voice has always been enough to unravel her completely and to stitch her back up line by line. They built each other, and a missing year can’t take away the knowledge of an architect.
“Hey. Can we meet at your place? Please? I don’t- I think I need you right now.”
And even though she has no clue how true that statement is Sahar, beautiful, wonderful Sahar says yes. Yes and questions and worries and Imogen chokes out some answer that must satisfy her because before she knows it the call is over. The call is over but they aren’t
She’d gotten a taste of home in Paris, when her arm had slotted perfectly back in place and for one night, they were thirteen again. But it’s not enough. She yearns for the closeness they had before, the all encompassing ache that made her long to be swallowed. But as she nears Sahar’s front porch she sees her again. Dress reflecting like something sent straight from the heavens, her eyes (Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful) scanning her tear stained cheeks and heaving chest as she runs towards her. Enveloping her. Strong arms and guitar calloused hands returning to wear they belong. A moment of pause from the chaos of her brain.
She never wants this to end.