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sun’s gone, but you always liked this time of day, no words left to play on. how many chances does it take? now with my eyes wide open, i’m nothing but a fake.
-luke hemmings, place in me, when facing the things we turn away from
Thursday, December 1st, 1983
“So you just want another boyfriend,” he says after a lull, tiny arms crossed, gray crewneck looking puffy overtop the multiple layers he has on beneath it.
It’s a judgy conclusion to draw, one that makes her rage creep gingerly up its intensity meter.
“Do you always have to cram words in my mouth?” she mutters.
“Weren’t they in your head?”
She’s made wings from the pale yellow post-it in her hand. She folds each of them down and examines her creation. It does look avian. Avian enough, anyway.
It joins the others.
For all the weight that’s on her shoulders these days, there’s nothing to blame. No definite cause for this tender tension in her neck and these glimmers of nausea and the scary, blurry voices she’s hearing. They’re soft but they’re hissing at her—think of a litter of feral kittens (if said kittens had the desire to torture depressed girls, for whatever reason). En masse the noise sounds like an otherworldly synth, so awful it’s going to rupture her eardrum soon. It really is. What is she even listening to?
These feelings are too much. Whoever is their rightful owner is very very sensitive. Must be a mercurial mess, day and night.
If this works…
If the only Soulmate summoning ritual she could find at the library, in print, isn’t bogus…
She’s going to need a hug. They both will, obviously.
She’s currently grounded and has been grounded ever since Will came back to life, but if there were any substances to abuse in this house besides Pink Champale and wine, she’d be sneakily abusing them. There’s just nothing. Nothing to make this tolerable.
Well. There is her twelve-year-old cellmate.
They’ve always gone down together, haven’t they? Always in trouble at the same time it seems.
“Here,” says Mike. His small hands present a bottle of ibuprofen and a glass of apple juice, on ice. Shock of sugar won’t fix anything, but she has to admit, the thought of it is thoroughly appealing. Taking his offerings, she regulates the tremble of her lower lip and blinks away the tears that have sprung up in the corners of her tired eyes. He’s seen a lot lately, and the last thing he needs now is to witness his big sister going over the edge of an emotional precipice.
Four pills sit on her tongue and go down with the cold, tart liquid.
“Are you supposed to take that many?” he wonders. His face is open and innocent.
“Don’t worry about it. I have before.” The basement is quiet for a moment. “You know, for cramps.”
“Gross,” he murmurs. Less heart behind it than usual, though. He curls up on the couch with his comic book, the distance between them seeming colossal again. He looks so small over there. (He’s getting so big.) Just as she expects the silence to stretch out and distend above them, Mike shifts on the couch. “What do you even think is gonna happen? This is such a weird idea.”
Very weird, she thinks. Paper cranes already cover the surface of the rug beneath her.
That’s the thing with them and house arrest, it never does a lot of good, they always end up going a little off the rails. When she was thirteen and they got grounded for their sibling-directed short film featuring a Maple Street tenth grader’s cigarette, he built a Lego tower so tall its collapse was audible from upstairs. (And yes, he did cry after the fall.)
She was only trying to follow her artistic vision, how could she have known the consequences would render her baby brother unstable. But these paper cranes? These paper cranes are her Lego tower.
She feels just like a little kid.
“Have no clue,” she sighs. “Maybe nothing.”
“Cause you’re not in coincidence with Steve Harrington.”
“It’s Consonance, dummy, not coincidence. And no, I don’t think I am.”
“Yeah. So it’s not him, but it’s not anyone else you can name, and that means it’s some rando you met in passing who doesn’t know shit about—”
“Don’t say shit—”
“Doesn’t know jackshit about the Upside Down. If he’s gotten clips of your dreams or your feelings have already transferred over, how are you gonna explain all that? You’re not that good a liar.”
She lays her head down on the coffee table, fond (for the first time in her life) of that whine in her brother’s voice when he’s trying to wrap his head around a convoluted situation. The cream cashmere of her sleeve warms her cheek. “My Soulmate isn’t some rando,” she whispers, “I think my Soulmate’s dead.”
“What?!”
Offended, she looks up at him from her spot on the floor with scrunched brows. “Keep your voice down. My head hurts. I know it makes no sense, okay, I know that. But assuming that the average partner receptors are even half as active as the ones in our textbooks, it has to be true that mine are at work right now. Why else would I feel like this? And your Soulmate can still be anyone. A friend or someone in your family or whoever.”
“Okay, so…?”
“So,” she squeaks out, tears at the ready, “Barbara Holland is the only real friend I’ve ever had.” The admission is awkward and sad, imbued with the shame of not having enough and the shame of wanting more. She’s not unpopular, she’s not. She just knows nothing of support systems. She can’t pick up the phone and call Ally at any time. She could never cry in front of her or in front of Kristin.
If she went missing, there would be no party fighting for her. No paladin, no ranger, no bard of her own.
“How would her feelings be getting to you from the grave?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know. I’m starting to think that when an alternate dimension is involved, the rhyme and reason of all the Soulmate bullshit just…glitches out, maybe.”
He winces. “Isn’t it part of our biology?”
She only shrugs.
It is. It is part of human biology. In fact, that’s almost all it is now. All it’s seen as: an aspect of human health.
Because your match isn’t necessarily your match. More often than not, they don’t want to kiss you, you don’t want to kiss them. It’s not about romance. If you know who yours is, try and spend time with them. It’s good for you and your body. This is the quiet wellness tip, something burnished and oversimplified, surviving as both an afterthought and a casual suggestion (but never anything more), like two thousand calories or eight hours of sleep or ten thousand footsteps.
No one she knows puts much stock in any of it. “Soulmate” was as filthy as any swear word growing up in her house. Their parents don’t talk about it. Her teachers don’t go into depth. It’s not meant to influence you, in her town. Shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t change things.
Let the night watchman of innermost self mean nothing. Let the participant of dreams and panic attacks and migraines press themselves down into the borderline, avoiding your eyes, their filaments brushing against only the edges of your life. Especially if they go to a different church than you.
Hawkins Methodist, really. All her mom’s friends hate the ladies from the Methodist who are, in theory, cold as ice.
Now. She’s a practical girl (used to be). If practicality were a gem, she’d find her reflection in every sparkling facet, she would—saves her money, manages her time wisely, skips her horoscope, sanitizes and reuses old mascara wands—but she is very very sad. And if her dead best friend is just completely gone, spirit having thinned out as mist and disappeared from the universe and beyond…new boyfriend wouldn’t hurt, of the Soulmate variety.
Preferably patient.
Preferably a good hugger.
Has preferably got a nice voice that won’t annoy her whenever he goes on talking and talking and talking about himself without remembering to let her speak, because that’s what teenage boys tend to do when they like you.
Most of them.
What she knows of the Divine Soulmate Bullshit:
- that not everyone has one
- that no one has more than one
A singular holder of your soul, or nix. This is how she knows her plan is worth carrying out. Worth a shot. If nobody shows, she’ll have her answer, and if somebody shows, she’ll have her answer then, too. You can divvy up and give out as much love as you want of course, to all the rotational characters throughout your life, no doubt. And someday she would like to be that kind of girl. The kind who is remembered fondly from onetime interactions, spoken of highly, and viewed as a light by each ephemeral college friend, store clerk, banker, cab driver. (She wants to have it all together, to please the masses.)
Go and represent love for all those people. But there’s a holder of your soul. A holder. The simplicity, she can try to appreciate.
- your Soulmate’s emotions become a real part of your limbic system, as identifiable as thirst and hunger and sexual need
- physical sensations sometimes transfer, but not usually
- human partner receptors have evolved for the worse overtime (it’s sometimes hard to determine what stuff is yours and what is theirs)
- there is no scientific way to confirm your Soulmate, because all partner receptors look the same under a microscope
Sketchy ritual is her best bet, and apart from that, her only bet. It’s this first, then—depending on the results—a consultation with a doctor. Something is going on in her body. She can hear her mom now. Hello, this is her, this is my Nancy. Yes, I spoke on the phone with your nurse earlier. Basically, my daughter had a bit of a psychotic break after one of her girlfriends went missing, and now she thinks her nonexistent Soulmate is talking to her through sneezes, leg cramps, and snack cravings. Can you help us?
The doctor will agree that, yes, she does have a psychosomatic illness. He’ll throw out some medical terminology and then dumb down that terminology for them. But Pennhurst buys their pillows from the same soft pillow suppliers as everyone else, right?
- Consonance, the state of experiencing what your match is experiencing, can begin whenever so long as you’ve met the person once
Which is why she must introduce a magnet to the equation, a thing that can pull.
It could be anybody, and she’s not going to humiliate herself by tracking down potential candidates. Expert fishermen don’t dive in and blindly grab. They get their pole ready, they wait for a bite, then they reel in their trout.
What she knows of her current predicament:
- that someone has been expanding their dominion over her heart for the last two weeks
- that she absolutely has a Soulmate
- that this mess is theirs
So. The cranes. In Japanese folklore, folding paper cranes draws in your Soulmate. Could be a thousand. A hundred. Whatever. It’s a practice that calls out, that summons. It’s about the inviting scent of your patience, the élan of fast fingers, bending, tucking, creasing, and the tactility of the intention, that conscious effort to cast out a lonely line and make the first move, so to speak. All of these are carried out through pieces of craftsmanship—the cranes—birds of grace and protection and lifelong love, a collective lure for your other half. There’s no actual way to find your person, no proven way, but this is what she learned from the book of legends in the library’s Just for Fun section.
The girl from the shitty poem folded 99 paper cranes and met her match. The girl from the shitty poem was the happiest girl in Japan. Her new husband taught her to make fire, they constructed a bed on top of that fire, and a school of carp was mystically flung from the ocean into the flames. With that they could feed themselves and everyone in the surrounding regions. They were blessed for the rest of time. Okay, it’s a weird story. But very effective. (It’d make a great movie, actually, or a ballet.)
And Nancy is desperate, her match is harming her. Whoever they are they’ve not had it easy.
What’s weird is that Mike is almost right. At this point, she does want a replacement boyfriend, doesn’t she? Since taking on a second dose of emotions, she finds herself fantasizing about simply being comforted. Because everything kind of hurts.
Finish the sentence had stung, but this aches. Go to Hell, Nancy had stung, but this aches. There was the ostracization in homeroom when she came back to school after the marquee thing, and it sucked, and there’s the sharp sharp ache nestled in her ribs now, which does a lot more than suck. She can take credit for the loneliness, that’s all her, but the rest of this hurt? Foreign, stormy, and bitter with triggers that don’t click for her, with flashpoints that make no sense. She doesn’t know why her father’s yelling is now unbearable instead of annoying, why the uncooperative TV antennae (as provocations of yelling) are no longer funny. She doesn’t know.
All she wants is a hug.
She was…waiting, on someone.
Waiting for someone, waist deep in a thick bath of grief and foamy delusion, riding the strange high of defeating an undiscovered evil, or half-riding it actually, stuck squarely between that wave’s trough and its crest because the victory wasn’t nearly as sweet as it should have been for her.
With this whole Consonance thing happening, though, it’s hard to think about that someone.
The Jonathan subject demands as much mental and emotional energy as her Soulmate is anonymously demanding of her now. And if one has vanished on her while the other has shown up in a big way, she probably owes her attention to the latter. The former is a ghost. The former is an immature magician, one who has perfected his disappearing act. His only act.
She started folding at 4:30. It’s been half an hour. Outside, beyond windows slick with snowmelt, it’s golden. In here, in this basement she previously avoided, it’s dark and sad and strange.
Crane #22 ends up with a misshapen tail. She strokes the tail, looking down at her dumb little bird until she gets dangerously close to a full zoneout. She drops the creation and pushes her hair back. She wants to cut her hair soon. She’s going to cut it. “Hey Mike?”
“Shh.” The flip of a comic book page. Luke Cage, whoever he may be.
“I know, I know, it’s just. Was school…okay today?”
Translation: was Will mauled on his first day back?
“Since when do you care?”
The boys have been bullied for what feels like forever. It’s that levity about them, that cluelessness, the state of being so prone to theatrics, the trait of finding joy in even the stupidest things. And they’re so unaware. Unaware of why their behavior throws people off, unaware of how fluffy and incomplete their perspectives are. It’s their nerdy interests, too. Will is particularly innocent and interested.
He wasn’t at school any of the days before Thanksgiving. Break was coming up so that was good timing. Break’s over now.
She just hopes their heads haven’t been anywhere near brick walls. Or tree trunks. Or toilet cisterns.
“I don’t know,” he finally answers.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Everything’s fine, okay?”
She takes a sweet sip from the glass he brought her. Toys with the lettuce trim and ribbing of her soft black socks. “Everything is?”
He huffs.
“Nevermind,” she mumbles, “sorry I asked.” And goes right back to the desperate task at hand.
Over forty baby cranes, born in under two hours. She’s getting good.
It’s not fun. Satisfying might be a better word. Each step and fold now committed to memory, she can make these super quick. Perfection has always been a drug for her, she’s so after it, and the closer she gets the harder she goes.
But she’s run out of post-its. There are more somewhere.
“Mike.”
Nothing.
“Mike.”
She picks up her head and finds him dead asleep on the couch, walkie wedged between his shoulder and a throw pillow. Luke Cage is on his chest. Upon attempting to stand, she feels a buzz in her calves, in her thighs. Maybe not moving for an hour wasn’t the brightest idea.
Cool white noise whirs in her ears, humming, soothing, then stops. No, come back. I think I like this song.
It’s gone. The presence of her Soulmate, temporarily gone. She stands up. Comic book goes to the side table. Walkie talkie to his backpack. She throws a quilt over him. Almost suffers a heart attack when—
Someone knocks at the door.
Loud knock. Demanding knock. Real knock, not something she could have imagined. It’s a fluke, right? She hasn’t gotten to the thousandth tiny fledgling. She hasn’t even gotten to #99. But who would come to the basement door instead of the front without being lured? They would have had to find her house, trudge through her yard against the wind, come around the side, search for the hidden glow of an inhabited room.
They’re here for her, they really are. It’s a great time for her little brother to stay knocked out. If it is Barb’s wraith out there, he won’t have to see anything terrifying. If it’s not, if her parents lied to her and Soulmates are calibrated by the powers of love and attraction, she’ll have some much needed privacy with Mystery Bachelor. She can figure out what’s wrong with him and explain to him that all those flower-headed faceless men from her nightmares are totally not real. Whatsoever. I watch a lot of horror movies! I love horror movies. Horror movies, horror movies, horror movies. It’s all I can talk about. What’s my favorite horror movie? Attack of the Demogorgon. No, Luke, I don’t think you have seen it.
His name probably isn’t Luke. She keeps forgetting that her Soulmate is a real person, not some element of fiction, some comic hero outlined in India ink. This visitor is hers, all hers, and regardless of their identity she ought to be gentle with their human weaknesses.
She opens the door.
“Oh! Hey Nance.”
Holding a bicycle. Twisting in place. He’s got curly hair, haloed in the gold of the back patio’s Christmas lights.
“Dustin?”
“Happy to see me?”
“Uhh…”
Dustin Henderson. Dustin Henderson is her soul match? Dustin Henderson is night watchman of her innermost self, is participant of each dream and panic attack and headache, is pressing himself down into her borderline, filaments brushing against the frayed edges of her heart? Jesus. This couldn’t be weirder if it wanted to but—
Explains his longtime crush on her.
She can feel the strain of her tense expression, her narrowed eyes. Mouth hung open in the most groggy, goldfishy way. This isn’t fair. This isn’t logical.
And now she’s worried. Becoming increasingly worried, not for herself but for him, as her disappointment settles like flour in water, swirling beneath the layers of pity and remorse. How could she be sorry for herself when he’s the rightful owner of all the sadness that’s been choking her. That messy, mature headspace, all his? Her paranoia probably hasn’t been that fun to deal with on his end either. You have to wonder if he caught her fear of the dark, her bloodthick survivor’s guilt. She won’t pretend she’s not a wreck. Is she not the totaled car to his little red wagon? Poor kid shouldn’t have to share with her.
“Something the matter?” It’s a question, but it doesn’t sound like one. Sounds pretty smug.
“Uh…I…” she stammers.
His hand is warm and forceful under her chin as he physically shuts her jaw for her. “There you go.”
She counteracts his grin with a frown. “Dustin…”
She looks down, down at this kid in his I’m All Ears shirt with an elephantine alien printed on the front. Her palms come down on each of his shoulders, stern yet sisterly. “Look, I’m okay but…are you okay?”
His dopey giggling builds. “I am now.”
Weird night. Weird. Night.
Though her back is turned, she knows her brother is stirring. He’s not the heavy sleeper that he used to be. She hears him break free from his blanket cocoon and zip up his hoodie, stumbling noisily over some strewn toys—action figures—on the ground. (They’re not toys, they’re action figures.)
“Ew, Nancy, nooo!” Mike groans. “He’s not who you’re looking for.”
The short boy in her doorway goes in for a hug, one she fails to dodge. “I might be!” he says, and with the growing tightness of his arms around her middle, it becomes a bit of a challenge to breathe. She squirms uncomfortably, contends with the instantaneous disintegration of her many Soulmate fantasies, all of which have proven to be stupid. Unbelievably, wildly stupid.
This whole migraine treatment thing isn’t going so well. But she doesn’t have the will to resist—you can’t shove the seventh grader you’re in Consonance with. Can you?
“Guys, stop! Dustin!”
“Let me have this!” Dustin shouts.
“Seriously, Nancy—”
“Wha-at?” she whines. If he cares so much, he should get over here and break it up for her.
“I invited him,” Mike says.
She reels back, gripping Dustin’s sloped shoulders so hard it could bruise him, maybe. “Is that true?”
“Huh?”
“He invited you over? You didn’t feel, like, summoned here? Spiritually? Not even a little bit?”
“Well, I don’t know, not exactly—”
“Oh, my God,” she shoves him off her, “I need more ibuprofen.”
Twelve-year-old genius isn’t her twin flame (duh). He didn’t wander desperately along Dearborn in a cloak of fog, called on, sent for, the snow his cascading obstructor, the streetlights his guides, persistent as he sought out the presence sensed, pulled further down, further down, further down toward the house and the backyard and the basement.
He just came to see his grounded buddy (double duh).
She should be relieved.
But this means she has to keep folding cranes.
She leaves the boys to their imminent trading card exchange. As they cross the room, as they sneak up the stairs, they mutter about this psychopathic art project of hers and how it’s taken over the rug.
But baby bird army is her only friend at the moment. Or it sure feels that way.
She stands motionless with unfocused eyes and an urge to cry. She tucks her chin into her shoulder, trying to chase away a phantom prickling beneath her skin with her fuzzy sweater. It could be that this hurt inside her is all Nancy, all the way through. That in lieu of accepting frailty, she’s fallen back on the hope of an entwined soul worse off than her own. Someone who really needs her, who can barely stand on their own. What a severe distraction that would be, to have to hold someone up in her arms and her arms only. Severity is what she craves.
The cold is still rushing in through the open door. Without shoes, without a coat—without thinking—she goes to it, desperate for fresh air and snow and the reality check that’s sure to come.
Reality check not found; a car is out front, its headlights on.
Sun’s long gone, though. Maybe the dark is making her see things.
The silver wonderland that is her yard shifts gently around her, and she’s left to keep her balance in damp socks on the slippy patio. No matter how much she’d like to not keep her balance, how much she’d like to enjoy a dizzy spell and avoid this whole confrontation via a trip to the hospital.
Because she knows that car. Everyone knows that car. It’s a little bit of a pathetic excuse for a car (peers’ words, not hers). Nevermind that he was the first in their class to actually get his license.
Why have you come to me? When you’re obviously not ready?
She goes inside, and she waits for her trout.
Jonathan Byers, right there in her doorway.
Okay yeah, that’s…yeah.
He’s panting, and he’s wet, and he’s so wet that she’s more alarmed than she is confused because conditions are polar today and they’ll soon be under a blizzard advisory and he’s soaking wet, like water is dripping down from the ends of his hair, soaking through his shirt, glittering on his neck, greasing the shell of his ear. There’s some soap, too, high on his cheekbone.
What, did he drive through a carwash with his windows down on the way here? This is an unusual case of hypothermia waiting to happen.
She had expected to be thrown into an inadvertent little staredown upon opening that door for him, expected a good five or ten seconds of awkward silence to stretch out before his quiet, throaty Hey came, a greeting whose innocent informality could disentitle her to finally bitch at him about his stupid disappearing act. But that’s not what happens. He doesn’t even give her the Hey.
Pushing himself off the wall he’d been slumped against, he immediately invites himself in, such a faraway look in his eye and a slack-jawed sadness—no, lovesickness—about him. It seems like he might brush right past her until it doesn’t and he instead sidles up to her, taking her bandaged hand in both of his and caressing it with a weird, reverent sense of devotion. Makes her feel like she’s a tragic burn victim or a baby animal or some rich oil heiress or someone who only has two weeks left to live. Why does his hand fall on me like I’m the most delicate thing he’s ever felt?
Why is his hand on me at all?
“Uhh...” She doesn’t recognize the awe in her own voice. “What are you…what are you doing here?”
He starts to unwrap her cotton gauze ever so slowly. A shiver runs down her spine as a few droplets of water hit her wrist, and with a delayed surge of awareness she jerks her hand away. “Jonathan, no, don’t—”
That gauze protects a marred palm, one that hurts more this week than it did when the kitchen knife dipped into it. Why would he try to take that protection away from her? Why would he want to do that? He stops and sighs raggedly, the beginnings of a whiny groan escaping.
Shyer now, he murmurs some unintelligible things to himself.
Suddenly she’s worried.
And apologetic. It hits her that there are few weights worse to carry than being the cause of this person’s disappointment. His spirit is quick to annoy but slow to dissatisfy (after all, what satisfaction was there to begin with?). The sorrowful set of his mouth was more easily appreciated when she wasn’t the one responsible for it. She wishes she knew what bliss looked like on him.
It’s possible that the light of bliss has never crossed his face, unless it did the morning Will Byers was born.
So very gentle, she extends her left arm which she had been protectively cradling with her right and holds out her hand to him. He takes it like you would take back a stolen item of comfort, seeming weary. But not weary with physical weakness, no, it’s as if he needs the kind of rest that sleep can’t give. Surely she needs the same.
Having learned his lesson, he does not disturb her bandage.
They stay still like that, and her anxieties run wild. What has she done to him? Did she do something screwy with the ritual?
“Are you…y-you’re mad at me? I can’t touch you?” he ekes out, pitiful and vulnerable and needy. This is unlike any emotion she’s seen on him. It’s also everything she’s ever seen on him, though, all that lostness and whispery compassion. It’s every bit Jonathan, even if he’s forgotten that friends don’t touch that way. Even if he’s forgotten his cautious ways.
“No, no, not mad at you,” she rushes to say, “I’m not. I didn’t want you to touch the bandage. Our cuts, remember? They need to stay covered?”
His reaction is nothing profound. How could their scars not be on his mind? Does the line that halves his palm not constantly feel like it’s emitting a candy red steam, daring him to forget their unforgettable blood oath, to forget their week of sludge and death and monsters? She tilts her head, sleepy eyes trained on him and his flushed complexion. The weight of the situation is far and above her repressing abilities. Her Soulmate may be here, here and now, real and ready. Her Soulmate may be under an amnesiac Japanese love spell. And it may be Jonathan, who has admittedly become her…distant dream. Her type. She wants nothing more than to claim him now while he’s willing to actually breathe her air.
She never planned on any of this. Or on him.
His bottom lip curls upward a little and she imagines him biting down on his tongue, trying hard to contain himself. Contain the big feelings. Self-control is his game on any normal day. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he can’t even think straight because of her slender hand in his. His sense of reason is off on Saturn, and she can almost see how much he wants to physically be closer to her, a thought so upsetting and lush she could throw something. She could scream.
She’ll do neither; he scares easily when it comes to girls.
She prepares the same tone that you’d use on a wounded animal cowering in the bushes. Voice careful and low, she says, “You don’t know why you’re here, do you?” His answer—if she can coax it out of him—could confirm the connection of their partner receptors.
He shakes his head no.
You are mine. I did bring you here.
Her chest lifts with the knowledge. Puzzling, perfect knowledge. Mentally she parses out her next words, letting him stroke her wrapped palm in the meantime. The peripheral sound of Mike and Dustin’s footsteps echoes. Privacy is crucial for the conversation she covets.
“Hey, come with me for a sec.”
She tugs him toward the closet and they slip into darkness. She locks them in. Instinctively finds the pull cord and yanks down on it so that he would see her, so that the warm light would ground them.
From what she can hear the boys have plopped down at the bottom of the stairs with some cards or comics. So she can talk, but she can’t get too loud. Certainly can’t yell at him (not that she wants to anymore). The urge to whinge is pale next to her urge to help him. She moves away from the thick closet door and finds Jonathan leaning his head on the wall and hugging himself. He works his jaw, tries a few cattish nudges against that wall with the tip of his nose like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s cute when he’s having a bizarre Consonance crisis.
She’s still worried.
“Can you tell me how you got here? What were you doing on the roads?” It’s a miracle he didn’t slide off into a ditch, or worse.
He takes broken, heavy breaths. “I can’t, it’s—it doesn’t make sense.”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t know what happened.”
“You’re having trouble remembering?”
“Well yeah, I’m having trouble,” he mumbles, “the memory’s not there.” She bites back a laugh at his sarcastic tone, those sort of fried vocals, edgy yet mellow. Surprisingly nice to listen to. Surprisingly attractive.
He turns around to face her, and she gets this mental picture of a warning light coming on as he does, this image of a switch flipping. That which was sadness and confusion has been replaced with plain yearning in a snap. His focus is a laser, and that laser is pointed right at her. The beam is soft but precise—it’s going to make her self-conscious. “And what does it matter? It doesn’t. That doesn’t even matter,” he says, winding the end of one of her curls around his finger. She makes her best effort not to blush. “My memories are useless, I want yours. Yours and ours.”
Just how touchy is the spell going to make him? She may not survive long enough to find out; her heart feels like it’s thrashing around. Violently.
“Ours,” she mouths, vocal chords ineffective.
He nods, heavy eyelids carrying the weight of want. His pupils are dilated. “My life should just be you. I want to do everything for you, wanna work for you. And never stop.”
She clears her throat. “Work for me?”
“I’ll carry you around, and you won’t ever have to walk, and I can wash all your clothes, and I can turn pages for you when you read—”
“For how long will you do all this exactly?”
“Forever and ever.”
Forever? That’s not quite right. He tapped out of their friendship after a week.
She steps back, her movement a soft rejection, her hair a revoked privilege. Numbly, she murmurs, “Barking up the wrong tree,” despite the fact that he’s not barking, and she is the right tree. Beyond the right tree. She is a tree grown from seeds labeled These Seeds Love Boys Named Jonathan.
He ignores her comment. “I would wash your sheets, too, and your pillowcases. If that wasn’t clear. But it probably was, you always—”
“Nope, nope, stop it. Please stop.” This is the most hurtful thing he’s ever done, and he’s doing it against his will. Then again, it’s because it’s against his will that it hurts. (Is it fully against his will? She has no idea.) With the week she’s had, with the rawness of her soul, his forced declarations are lemons on wounds. We get it, the only time you pursue me is when I hex you.
She takes his noticeable alarm as a good sign, a sign to press on. “Want to know something? I don’t care about the pillowcases. I don’t care about the sheets. We’re not talking about any of that. I asked you a question, I have some more, and if you don’t want to answer them for me, you should leave.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Do you wanna leave?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Okay, let’s just…think back.” She hops up onto the drawer chest in the corner, settling on top. “What do you last remember?”
She does mean business, ultimately. (She’s about to cry.) There is no room for any more emotion. (She’s about to have a meltdown.)
It’s all impossible; the mere idea of this scenario would have been sufficient fantasy material for the majority of Thanksgiving break. The two of them, locked in a closet together, his palpable infatuation, his heaving chest and trembling arms, her adrenaline plus a dozen other hormones as an intravenous fluid inside him, coursing through his veins alongside heartbound blood. They’re sharing. Sharing everything right now.
“I remember I was…making breakfast.”
Her eyes go saucer wide. “Jonathan, breakfast?” she squeaks nervously. “You zoned out that long ago?”
“No, I mean dinner. We were having breakfast. Breakfast for dinner.”
Relief washes over her. “Okay, okay, and then—”
“There were pancakes, hash browns. I was chopping bell peppers.”
“Bell peppers?”
“Yeah, you know, I didn’t want them to go bad so…omelettes. Sorry for being confusing, it won’t happen again. I would never purposely confuse you on purpose.”
Empty promise. Redundant promise.
She purses her lips and pushes back against the force of her crush on him, a crush that’s getting harder and harder to deny. It’s its own entity at this point: self-governing, loud, bossy. Can’t you just kiss him? This is taking you ages. All the other girls have no trouble expressing themselves. Listen to me, I know better. Are you really gonna let him go on about breakfast food? He’s miserable.
“You put them in the omelettes?”
“Will says he doesn’t like his like that, but he finished it, so…how do you like yours?”
Hm, forward. But a typical line from Mr. I Will Work For You For The Rest Of My Life.
“You seem hungry,” he continues, justifying his question, “I could make you something else if that’s not what you want, I just—I hate the thought of you being hungry. Can we go look in your fridge?”
The pads of her fingers glide over the cool wood of the dresser, and she basks in the humor of the moment (the romance of it) before reminding herself that she put a nice, good boy in danger. This is no laughing matter. She has really missed him, though. She would love to hear him talk about his cooking endeavors some more. Attention fixed on his equally frustrated and flirtatious mannerisms, she lets a cord of serenity wind itself around her ankle and tempt her with relaxation. It could be fun to sit back and watch this unfold. Could be fun, allowing him room to ramble until he ends up professing his crane-induced desire. Maybe there’s a time limit on this, and the birds’ effects will wear off shortly, so she doesn’t have to worry. Maybe if he just said the three words she wants him to say, it would feel real enough that it didn’t hurt.
It’s like the new him is filling gaps where the old him’s cowardice could not reach.
Problem is. She misses the timidity. It hasn’t gone away completely, but something is off. Majorly. She can’t enjoy his company until she figures out if he’s okay or not. She won’t let herself. “Let’s maybe move onto something else,” she says, “I don’t need you to make me anything.”
“Ever? But Nancy…”
So sad. So pleading. He makes her name sound like the last lifeboat on the Titanic.
That tugs on her, it does. She attempts to reroute her heart by thinking about their fight in the woods, the photos he took of her, the radio silence she received from him for the past seventeen days or so. None of it is enough to generate anger she can weaponize. No, above all, she feels very soft inside, aware of his true character, and aware of how much they both need a hug after what they went through last month.
She doesn’t want to be the type of soul that pushes away its mate. Especially when his one request is to make her a snack. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
“Tomorrow maybe, okay? We can have…French toast or something.”
“If that would make you happy.”
“It would,” she promises, for his sake. He ducks his head. It dawns on her that the uncharacteristic boldness only comes when she denies him the opportunity to love on her. He remains perfectly shy whenever she’s being accepting of his care. She has so many questions about the magic she played with. Does it act as a truth serum or a heart changer? A stimulant or a depressant? And why is he so disoriented?
“So, um,” she begins, and he peeks up, lifting his head, “let’s get you back on track. You were making dinner…then what? What came after?”
Her resolve gives him pause. “I don’t know. I’m sorry it’s not there, but it’s not. It’s nice of you to want to help me—hey, how was your day? What did you do? Do you like to help with dinner? Do you always flip your pancakes too early like me? I feel like you don’t, you’re so good at everything you do—”
“Jonathan. You have to focus.”
He huffs, shivering in wet clothes.
“I’m getting upset,” she adds, delighted by the reaction she knows it will get. She watches as he predictably curls in on himself. His arms are crossed tight, and his floppy hair hangs over lowered brows.
“Then you lied,” he mutters, “you are mad at me.”
God, this again.
Her impulse is to comfort, but what good will that do her? If she’s such a princess to him, the best course of action here may be acting like one. And what do princesses do? They don’t exert themselves comforting sensitive kitchen boys. They give orders.
“Yeah, only because you’re not working with me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Please just concentrate.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Good. So after you ate—”
“What’s your middle name?”
She slides her tongue over her back teeth, eyes watery, patience thin. If this were a normal conversation between them, he would have shut up long ago. Can you help someone who is this far removed from their own rhetoric?
“That’s all I need. Just give me the first letter, then I can focus. I can give you your answers.”
“E,” she snaps, “it’s Elizabeth. Don’t interrupt me.”
“I’m sorry, Nancy Elizabeth.”
Guilt is crushing her, guilt is an industrial-strength hydraulic press. He’s doing his best and being so sweet. She’s unsettled, not offended, but showing anger is the only way to keep him in check.
None of that stops her from getting butterflies, though. He called me Nancy Elizabeth. Regaining her composure, she prompts, “After you ate?”
“After we ate, I…don’t know. I don’t know what I did. I can make something up for you. Would that make you feel better?” The worst part is it’s not a smartass answer. He’s being genuine. He will make something up for her if he needs to.
Suddenly she notices suds in his hair. The light bulb goes off for her. “Any chance a shower might have been involved?”
Spark flares in sharp, narrow eyes. “Wait, you’re—yeah, I think. You’re right, I was. I was showering. Dinner, then dishes, then shower. H-how did you know that?”
“You’re kind of…raining,” she laughs, affection thickening deep in her chest. (Don’t picture him in the shower, don’t picture him in the shower, don’t picture him in the shower.) “And you’re still soapy. That’s probably why you’re freezing.”
“Oh,” he pouts, “I am freezing. You’re so smart, Nancy.”
“Thanks—”
“Sometimes it feels like no one is as smart as you are. It must get annoying, being the smartest girl in school. Everyone asking to be your lab partner. It bothers me, so it has to bother you. They’re using you.”
“Doesn’t bother me at all,” she lies, reaching down and pulling an old beach towel from the drawer below her. “Here. Dry.”
Sheepishly he accepts and shakes out the water in his hair. He looks younger, once he’s all tousled. Next she gifts the teal rain jacket that was hanging on a hook on the wall. A little snug on him, but something’s better than nothing.
As her gaze lingers there, her skin grows warmer beneath the cashmere. The undertone of jealousy in his smart girl spiel sticks with her. If he wanted to talk to her in class, he should have. It is validating, though, to have it said that it’s brilliance which defines her instead of bookishness. She’s working incredibly hard to shed that image. When you’re thought of as bookish and brainy, boys ask you to do their homework because they know you can’t say no, and you think they’re flirting, and you do their homework, and you become a joke. Worse, a virgin and a joke. (Freshman year Nancy.) (In her defense, Caleb never made it clear that she wouldn’t be getting a Homecoming invite for doing his algebra.) When you’re simply intelligent, boys ask you to be their lab partner because they really do need you to be their lab partner. They’ll pay you. You’re more of a helpful resource than a puppet. You are in high demand, you’re esteemed.
If you’re her, you also happen to be a slut. But, again, the intelligence still holds value. Monetary value.
Jonathan wraps the striped towel around himself to use as a blanket. He had dried off quickly, intently. He obeyed like her words were law. Maybe they were, to him. Talk about esteem.
“Do you remember seeing the snow? It’s snowing now. You didn’t rinse off, didn’t dry off, and you drove in the snow.”
“Mhm.”
“But you don’t know what was going through your mind.”
He thumbs the band of his watch. It must be ruined, thanks to her. Does Timex offer refunds for boys experiencing insanity? “You were,” he says.
“I was?”
“I think about you a lot. A lot, a lot.”
“W-what about me? When you were driving, what were you thinking?”
“I don’t know, can’t remember. Probably the usual. How perfect you are, how great you are with a gun, the way you dress, how much I want to—”
“But you don’t actually remember?”
“No,” he says, in an I’m sad that you didn’t let me finish lilt.
“No?”
“No…it’s been a weird day.”
“Yeah? Weird how? Are there other gaps in your memory?”
“No. No other gaps besides getting to your house.”
She nods. Her socks feel tingly on her feet, and the room is slowly closing in on her. Whatever she did to him is yet another guilty brick on her shoulder. “It must have been a rough drive,” she sighs, fearful. “It’s slippery out there.”
“Who cares, I made it. And I’m in good hands with you. You’ve been an angel. You gave me this towel, you’re giving me your help.”
In good hands. In good hands. She pours over his language, looking for clues. Angel is an awfully strange word to use. Angel. Angels have wings. Wings. Birds. Birds have wings, even if you have to make them with your own two hands.
“I’m glad I’m here,” he concludes.
Legs hanging down, she shifts on the dresser. "Yeah, so am I.”
It’s the rarest delicacy, a talk like this with him. Though it’s brought so much to the surface: loneliness, for example, the biggest most heaviest blanket of loneliness, the same one that’s been spread over her like a tarp for a while, from way before her one true friend died and her boyfriend told her to burn in Hell. It’s heavier than her current cabin fever, heavier than her guilt, much heavier than the hyperarousal that’s been wrecking her sleep schedule lately. Grief takes on peculiar forms, she knows that now.
He can’t fix all her problems. She definitely can’t fix his. But she sure would like to try him out. Needs to, at this point. Needs to pour everything—everything—out on him with her tongue and teeth and fingertips, lest those fireworks under her ribs go off while still inside of her, shooting out dahlias and brocades and comets to pulverize her from the center.
She doesn’t mean to be dramatic.
This is just how it is. Plus, he is her Soulmate. That calls for some drama.
“So, origami.”
Her head snaps up. She responds with silence and fluttering lashes.
“Apparently you’re really into it. I like that you do weird things like that. It kind of makes you more perfect. I wish I knew how to make a swan, I want to make you a swan. I’ll figure it out later.” He takes two steps forward and unsticks a stray yellow bird from the fibers of her sweater, pulling on its tail to make the wings flap up and down. “You should get this one back to his family. How many of those did you make?”
Jesus, how many of these did you make? When it was her flashcards for Chem, and it was someone else, there was this quality of judgment and disbelief. When it’s her birds, and it’s Jonathan, the absence of judgment is glaring. She finds herself flustered anyway.
“I was…bored. And he’s not a swan.”
“I’m so sorry.” He holds the crane out. “You want him back?”
“I want to change the subject,” she whispers shyly. When she touches his hand to take back her bird, the magnetic pull stuns her. Just like earlier, when he pawed at her bandage, the touch seems to satisfy his senses (and hers). He stands before her, brushing down her arm. With a deliberate movement he steals her ring right off her index finger. She emits an involuntary noise of protest, then goes mute as he…as he slides that familiar gold loop onto her wedding finger.
The ring settles into its new position, glinting, but not like a diamond. A downturned smile plays over him and his supremely emotional self. She supposes she’s getting stirred up, too.
This isn’t him. He doesn’t go around proposing to girls. He blows off her lunch invitations, for God’s sake. Commitment to lunch plans is surely a prereq for husbandry.
“That’s so much better,” he says. “You’re so pretty.”
Where has this version of him been all this time?
Her brain goes a little muzzy, and she tries to find rationale but pulls him closer, her body several steps ahead of her mind.
He hugs her. It’s everything she’s wanted, to be wrapped up like that. The comfort abstracts the moment, which is no longer an event or an exchange but a contextless feeling, unbound and billowy. She’s got no idea why they shouldn’t be hugging. This tiny space, this heated basement, the hardness of his chest, the way his waist fits between the bracket of her knees. These are all solid blessings, all factors that build upon her sense of security. A security so consuming it is ironically frightening. Lost and desperate, she hangs around his neck, burrowing into its curve.
“Hi,” he whispers, like their interaction has restarted.
“Hi,” she breathes in the scent of his cheap conditioner, “I’ve missed you.”
Beyond the closet door her brother is making a racket, so she melds into Jonathan’s embrace, sheltered from surrounding noise and chaos. Her headache has subsided, the crackling in her ears no louder than the sounds found in a bowl of rice cereal. Her textbooks were right about one thing; Consonance cycles have spikes, and Consonance cycles have dips.
But reading about it all is of no interest anymore. She’s found a guinea pig. And experimenting is in her nature.
She debates sliding her lips open. The debate hasn’t yet begun when her lips jump the gun and push a soft, tender kiss into his pulse point. The closeness, addictive. The wait for his response, pleasantly painful. Reply, reply, reply. Reciprocate, so we can go on like this forever. The reality of his role has unfortunately slipped away from her. She can think of his name, of course. She can think of the fact that he’s the keeper of her soul. That’s kind of it.
Impatient, she presses her lips against his skin to deliver a second kiss plusher than the first.
He gives a short, squeaky hum at the show of affection, tilting his head the slightest bit so as to allow her some freedom of movement. She mouths at everything that’s been made available for her.
“Oh,” he murmurs, “you even kiss like an angel.”
Something clicks into place with his bold, flattering words.
As it registers that she has to call this off, she bites back a tiny sob. It’s not right. No one’s confessed anything. We haven’t had our first real kiss, why have I tasted his collarbone?
“Oh my God,” she whispers, pushing him far away. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. Unbelievable that I did—please forget it, okay? Something’s wrong with me.”
He retrieves his towel from the floor. “How could anything be wrong with you? You’re what I’m living for, I need you.”
“No, okay, no! Stop saying things like that. You don’t understand how stressful it is.”
He’s quiet for a moment, suffering in silence, brooding. It’s what he does best. She has a headrush from what she just did. That she forgot her place so easily is a matter of concern.
No wonder he can’t control himself. She barely can, and she’s unhexed. She’s awake.
Unhexed and awake. She turns those concepts over in her mind. Technically, there is an element of magic to the Soulmate science, isn’t there? Consonance. She studied the etymology. There’s the Latin consonare, formed from the prefix “con-” (meaning together) and “sonare” (meaning to sound). Sound together. Sounding with. What’s more magical than hearing the hiss of mixtapes you’ve never touched?
So. If Consonance is a spell that promotes communication from afar, and the crane ritual is a spell that promotes nearness—
She double-crossed his senses, by choosing to make cranes after the point of Consonance. Holy shit.
“It’s such a mess.”
His abrupt statement startles her.
“What is?” she demands, wide-eyed. Her heart is pounding.
“This. Us. It’s like it’s in my ears, the truth of how much you want to be touched, and the second I do it’s all wrong, and we have to stop.”
Her spit is thick when she swallows it down.
“Well. We’re not together,” she says, face screwed up. “You don’t talk to me. You ran away from me.”
“We’re not together?”
“Have you forgotten everything?” Her pitch is high and incredulous. As if she didn’t just forget that exact same fact, not two minutes ago, all because he gave her a hug.
“No. I…” He dares to approach her again, put his hand on her again. His bandaged one. “I wasn’t sure if we were different here. Like a dream.”
Here. A dream?
In folding the birds, she apparently folded him up, too, in an unstable reality where all that matters is getting as close to Nancy Wheeler as possible, blizzards be damned.
She’s realizing that as long as he doesn’t know about the summoning, he’ll stay in that broken world. It’s time to fix this. It’s time to try.
“You’re not dreaming,” she says, and it comes out as a hushed, hoarse purr. “I need to tell you something.” Tenderly, cautiously, she removes his fingertips that stroke the seam along the side of her pants. She wishes she could let it happen. Let spellbound Jonathan off his leash and see just how irresistible she really is to him. She has to say goodbye, sooner rather than later. “I know why the past few hours went blurry for you, and I know why we can’t stop ourselves from touch. Why you can’t stop yourself. As it turns out, it’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, nothing in this world could ever be your fault—”
“Except that I summoned you here.”
His brow quirks before it furrows. He keeps tipping toward her, reaching up to her cheek and then dropping his arm. The neediness on his face, it comes straight from a hijacked limbic system. She tries to keep her composure amid his choppy advances. He starts to touch her earring and she gently stops him, the bend in her wrist hitting his. A breathy giggle escapes her despite everything.
She has to explain herself. He deserves honesty.
“The paper cranes that I made?” she begins, soft as she can manage. “They did something to you.” Think of someone on the verge of tears, attempting speech while being forced to walk across a bed of nails; that’s pretty much how she sounds. “I found out about them in a book of Japanese folklore from the library. An ancient ritual for calling on your Soulmate? I wasn’t sure about it, but I did it anyway, and then it messed with your brain and…you came to me. You actually came.” The room, once a dull, unremarkable space stocked with spillover toys and clothes, buzzes with an electric charge. She watches intently as his demeanor changes, as he starts to come into himself, transient magic falling away until it’s gone and there’s only him. She could cry, but she won’t. “I think I’m your Soulmate, and I know that you’re mine, and I know this because I’ve been Consonant with you for weeks, I just didn’t know it was you until tonight.”
Jonathan's expression clips through a range of emotions, none of them positive, none of them easy to digest. His blown-out pupils shrink, and he takes a shaky step back, face marked by a deep deep blush. His fingers twitch as if trying to pull away from an invisible grip. He blinks rapidly, too rapidly, unable to anchor himself to truth. But really it just seems like he has an eyelash in his eye.
This is like a car crash. Poor thing is going to hyperventilate.
“Shit, you’re, you’re—” he stammers. “R-really your house.”
“Can you breathe—”
“This is really your house.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, terrified. There’s nothing else to say.
He hits the wall with a thud and slumps against it. A minute ago, when he said this felt like a dream, he might not have been exaggerating in the slightest. She combs through poorly retained details from the carp couple’s poem, which she definitely should have read more than once. The girl from Awaji had to stop her Soulmate from hurting himself because he thought he was invincible, thought he was all mirage and no flesh.
The ritual was never said to be a love spell. It can’t be a love spell, it doesn’t make love from nothingness. What does? It’s not a truth serum, either, since the boy lied to the girl from Awaji about his heroic feats, hoping to impress her. It summons a match, and it distorts their reality. That’s it. That’s what the story gave her. (Perhaps there’s a minor memory wipe involved, covering only the time it takes to get your match from where they were to where you are.)
Jonathan’s extreme behavior didn’t result from pressure, did it? It resulted from the lack of pressure. Why hold back. Why hold back if you are fake, and Nancy is fake, and everything is flat like paper, and you figure you’re smack dab in the middle of REM sleep because there’s a sea of birds in the Wheelers’ basement, soap in your hair, hissy voices in your head.
She locks onto him, unwilling to let him out of her sight. This is the donor of her second set of cell receptors. This is the person whose misery she’s been chewing on. For someone so sad, he comes off as Switzerland most days, just neutral and independent and self-protective. She wasn’t stupid enough to assume he was left untraumatized by November. But he’s more fragile than she ever imagined.
The horrified deer-in-headlights look makes sense. She’s been in many dreams with him, many, and she’s done plenty of odd things in them, things arguably odder than decorating his wedding finger, but—she’s never woken up to the news that everything that happened, happened in real life.
“Jonathan—”
“Everything I did—” He swallows hard, his throat tight. “We erase it at the end, they said so. They told me so.” There is no escape, no escape from the crushing weight of his own vulnerability, and that’s likely killing him.
“They? Who?”
“The voices,” he croaks.
“No. We can’t erase it. That’s not real. But you are my Soulmate.”
“It's not fair, I didn’t mean for any of that to be permanent. I didn’t want it to—”
The shame and confusion are evident in each of his micromovements. “Didn’t want it to be forced,” he mutters. “It was forced.”
Oh, no. Oh, God. “The voices forced you?”
“No, I did.”
“What? You forced yourself? Why?”
“It seemed safe. It was gonna be erased after.”
A few moments pass, then his rough, thick admissions continue. He was making much more sense when he was hexed.
“I don’t like it this way, that I did it like this. I never meant to put you in a bad position.”
Is he saying he was planning on sharing his feelings? Eventually? But not so brazenly?
“I put you in a bad position,” she says. “And I'm so sorry.”
Her watch ticks and ticks, a tiny irritant, a tension amplifier. Pure silence would almost be better.
As the next minute creeps along, though, it changes her mind. Please say something, Jonathan. Talk to me.
“I didn’t know it was you, either,” he says, referring to their point of Consonance. “The frequency, it was so. Staticky.”
“I know,” she whimpers, thumb under the pendant of her necklace in a nervous habit. “I thought since you were avoiding me, there was no way we could be connected like that. Like you were too far away for us to share anything.”
“I’m sorry,” he crosses his arms around his waist in an attempt to shrink, avoiding her gaze, “I got distracted. Work and Will and…everything’s been overwhelming.”
Soon, her eyes get heavy with the weight of the trouble she caused. “Do you think you’re gonna be okay?” she worries.
“Sure. Considering I’m not harassing you anymore.” It’s then that she stops and appraises the value of stable realities. Living and trusting and loving, they are a lot harder to do when your true north has been purposely distorted by someone. She would hate to be in his shoes right now (and not just because he's wearing two different ones).
“Hey, don’t. Okay, I kissed you, I did that. You don’t get to take all the blame here. You’re not selfish.”
“Fine.” He leans to the side against their old bookshelf, depleted. He is the type you get sucked in for because he’s gone without many nice things, and been so quiet about it, and you want to be the one thing he indulges in. She would pay trillions to be his nice thing. “Why did you…do that.” Why did you put your mouth on me?
Great question. She could act shy, or she could get the hell over herself.
“I think I just,” she says, shrugging, “forgot that I couldn’t.” She studies the floor, momentarily. Purses her lips. “I almost wonder if I got a taste of my own medicine? Before our Consonance current slowed? Bird spell’s pretty powerful.”
“It is, yeah.”
She scrounges for courage scraps, straight from the bottom of the barrel. “Makes us want each other.”
He shifts. He’s very squirmy, when he’s uncomfortable. She presses on.
“Or. Maybe if we weren’t Soulmates, and there were no birds, we’d still want each other—”
“Nancy, I can go home—”
“But I don’t want you to go. Can’t you stay right here? With me?”
“Why would...why are you saying that,” he breathes out.
She lets him have her sad eyes, her sick, wounded puppy eyes, lets it show on her face that she’s exhausted and that he means the world to her and that she’d trade anything for a kiss. “You know why I’m saying it.” Her confession’s preface ends up as a pathetic little mew. “I like you. I like you, and all you wanna do is ignore me.”
His head drops, and he huffs out a sigh.
When he comes up again, he’s coming to her, arm suddenly drawn tight around her elevated hips on the dresser, lips tricking her mouth into action before she can see it coming or have the foresight to get excited. Now? Our first kiss now!
A shiver runs down her spine as the dam holding her back finally gives way, causing her to slump.
Her lips are panicky, needy, messy as they slip against his, already sucking softly at the unforeseen treat of warmth and wetness and toothpaste. She’d tuck the fun fact into her mental file (Jonathan Byers brushes his teeth in the shower), but her head is spinning. The nervousness inside her is all his, and the confusion, all emotion mail zapped from his mailbox to hers. Does she always make him this anxious? Forget butterflies in the stomach, these are albatrosses with wide, sweeping wings, and she’s wondering if the emotion is from long before the kiss. Is there a Consonance delay?
In less than the space of a breath, their kiss has begun and ended.
It’s over.
So fast she hardly processed it.
She blinks open big eyes, searches nervous gaze, heart thumping with such force she worries it’s bad for her health. She scratches lightly at the nape of Jonathan’s neck under her little brother’s rain jacket. A flush washes over her while she peers at him. Something about this is embarrassing; he didn’t even give her the chance to play temptress, to be fabulous or decent or even memorable. I kiss better than that, she should state, on oath. I do.
His pout relaxes when she leans in again, head tipped to the side, and reintroduces herself. His mouth is warmer than anything she’s felt, more sensitive than anything, more workable and obedient as it’s spread by her half-shy tongue. She pauses very briefly when his shoulders tense, then soothes him in every way she can think of: a pass through his hair, a nudge to the tip of his nose, a peck on his mouth’s sweet corner to ease him away from that impulse to recoil and make himself alone as soon as possible. Between his lips there is this illusion of a delicate membrane or film—this thin, easily broken layer waiting to be popped again and again. She’s never wanted to be so careful with something and ruin it at the same time. Her management of him is natural, coming from somewhere deep inside her, as she effortlessly controls the silken spit that coats her teeth, the yelps caught in her throat. She knows this is how animals love, needy and primal but aware.
All it takes is for her inner thigh to brush his hip as she shifts closer to the dresser’s edge, and he is animated with a hunger for more. Whoever said the Soulmate thing had nothing to do with attraction? It was a lie. His arm tightens more around her waist, and she curbs a squeal.
Her brain has nearly shut off, and what a luxury that feeling is after the week she’s had. She is overheated and brimming with energy; on its own authority, that energy begins to convert itself into a fantasy’s fragments, psychological more than they are visual. There are the abstract brushes of a jungle, or some other, harsher place, and young love, and the idea of covering each other instinctually, wet-skinned, afraid. There is the idea of desertion, and being fully alone together, and sex that combines ownership with worship. She likes that, she wants that. Wants to be no more than one step above weary, unsocialized lions, exiled from their pride. Such a weird, fuzzy feeling. All she can think is I want to feed on his neck all night.
(In reality she’d be less than happy if they were in a plane crash and found themselves on a deserted island. But, also, islands are warmer than alternate dimensions, and the teenage psyche is a mystery.)
“Jonathan,” she manages, not strong enough to resist parting her lips immediately after she says it. “I’ve wanted this.”
He responds by releasing a stuttered breath onto her skin. Kisses her jaw, faintly trembling.
“But is it real?”
“It doesn’t feel real?” he murmurs, frustrated maybe. His inexperienced lips graze her neck, novices in love, politically, but not fundamentally.
She wiggles in his tight embrace, rolls her neck back to expose it to him better. A humble offering to her Soulmate. “It does. But do you think you’ve been…changed somehow?”
“Changed,” he sighs.
“Yeah, you know, changed. Like I brainwashed you. Hypnotized you.”
He comes out from where he’d smothered himself in her neck and bumps his nose against hers (by accident), making both their heads wobble softly. She latches onto his bottom lip, getting a little bitey, a little aggressive. She’s kissing to stay with him, kissing to be remembered after he disappears again—which he will.
“Hypnotized?”
Her unbent arms settle on each of his shoulders, her wrists are limp and crossed. She lowers her chin. “Bewitched,” she clarifies, and scrunches her nose afterward.
“What, like Samantha Stephens?”
“Who?”
“From Bewitched,” he laughs.
For a second there, she thought he might have been talking about a girl from school. She takes a deep breath, heart picking up speed. “Jonathan…”
“It’s okay. No one brainwashed me.”
“Promise? You swear?”
“Yeah, swear. Yes.”
She waits.
“I didn’t need birds to…fall, for you,” he says, embarrassed. Displeased with the implications of his word choice.
The grin breaks across her face, and her eyes close.
“Sorry.”
“You shouldn’t be,” she murmurs, forehead to his. She familiarizes herself with his features up close. His brows are soft, and his nose is small, and his head is hard. “You don’t need to be sorry for anything, ever, for the rest of your life.”
They stay like that in the closet for a few minutes more, during which she redeems herself from their first kiss, when he had sneak-attacked her and all she could give him was the clumsy effort of a girl with strep, desperately sucking on a cough drop, seeking quick relief for her throat. She can do a little better than that. Not that she has extensive practice, but she has some.
Then again, her newfound kissing buddy is not being all that assertive, is proving to be submissive, actually. He seems to wordlessly insist on her leadership; does she even have to try with him?
She’s never had this much control or freedom before.
They always used to be funny, apparently, her attempts to take over in the middle of makeouts. She’s not sure why. Jonathan didn’t even make fun of me about the biting. He didn’t even laugh.
She tries to get out of her head, her silly head, carefully piping the edge of his tongue with spit.
As she fights to keep from falling off the dresser, her knees and thighs grow sore. He makes this soft, throaty sound of gratefulness. Oh, she must have pressed her hips against his when she shifted.
“You had a nightmare,” Jonathan suddenly mumbles. “Are you okay? Did you get any sleep?”
“Um…I—who said…what?”
“Last night, the ballet class. Your sister.”
“Holy shit,” she breathes, “you were there?”
A baby dance class. Holly’s class. Monster blood everywhere. The ceiling, the mirrors, the tutus, the itty-bitty ballet slippers. Nancy had gone Godzilla on the place, with all the preschoolers watching. And then, after she’d killed the intruder, she took it a few steps further. Beat the dead horse, and beat the dead horse, and beat the dead horse some more (Demohorse). She was furious.
Still, Holly was nowhere to be found.
“Yeah,” Jonathan says apologetically, “I was. Couldn’t eat this morning.”
Jesus. Now she’s thinking about it. She wishes he hadn’t brought it up. Maybe he’s just worried about her.
This doesn’t feel like a weird, fun game of Seven Minutes in Heaven anymore.
“Fuck.” She compels the tears in her eyes to stand down. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“No, no, it’s okay. It’s okay, look, I have them, too. All the time. How often do yours—”
“Where else have you been with me?” she cuts him off.
“Um. Panic attack. Couple days ago.”
“I thought that was yours?”
“I thought that was yours.”
“God,” she sniffles, “we are Soulmates.”
As the closet falls silent, their shared experiences hang between them. Nancy glances at him, stirred by his lingering concern.
“Thanks for being there,” she says. “Even if it was...unintentional.”
He bites the inside of his cheek. “No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t there for you. I haven’t been. But I want to try now, okay?”
She smiles. “Okay. I mean, I’ve been waiting, so…”
He shrugs off Mike’s rain jacket, the nylon of it producing a few swishy, scratchy noises. He’s left in his black shirt, his damp shirt, with long sleeves that she wants to push up. He touches the doorknob.
“Hey. Where are we going?”
He turns back to her. Approaches her, asking a question with upturned palms rather than words. Let me help you down? His arms encircle her waist, his hands press against her back. She maintains her straight posture and lets herself slide into his arms, weight supported as he lifts her off the dresser, easing her down from it. She lands softly, happy to have been removed from her semi-high perch.
“I have an idea,” he says.
They go, and they sit down on the rug. For a long stretch they work on unfolding the birds together, disassembling her army until they both feel they’ve left the ritual behind them.
Somehow. She winds up chest to chest with him later, nestled under a big pink blanket, clothed in her jewelry and her socks and…that’s it.
I don’t feel well, she’d told Mom when dinner was ready, I’m gonna go ahead and go to bed.
Then snuck him right in.
New chapter, just like that.
Delirious, she nuzzles the side of his nose, feeling sick with pleasure.
“So that’s what the fuss was about,” a flushed Jonathan mumbles. He’s warm. Feverish, really. His hair is strewn across his forehead, and he is so red. Red everywhere. From his face down to the tip of his—
She giggles. “Well it’s not usually like that.”
Though her sense of what is “usual” may be inaccurately calibrated. Before today (and contrary to popular belief), she had one sexual encounter to her name.
Comparing her first time to her second time would be like comparing oil and water. So it’s no use. (Her first: a combination of things. Exciting, painful, provocative, humbling, sexy, disappointing. Socially advantageous, but only in theory. Her second: an astral projection, maybe. She doesn’t even want to tell you. She doesn’t want to share.) (She does want to share. She’s been crawling around in the astral plane for a while, and listen, it’s very neat. Very special. You’ll feel awkward in the beginning, you will, but then something will happen. And all that goes away. She was weightless, she was unstoppable. There are coffee carts out there, and a gravity deficiency, and free souvenirs. Personally, she’s going to be taking a new relationship home with her. A snow globe, too, if she remembers to grab it.)
“It’s not?”
Takes her a second to register Jonathan’s question. Is it not always that good?
“I don’t know,” she says, licking into his mouth, “I don’t know anything. I’m just here.” She’s been increasingly incoherent since the SOS—Second Orgasm Situation. They’ve been in here for ten minutes, twelve tops, but when Consonant people take to bed, lasting long is a challenge.
Admittedly, Nancy and Jonathan are just moving way too fast.
“We are so sweaty,” she comments in a wispy, high pitch. The small of her back is slippery and his stomach is slick, especially where she’s intermittently rocking against him. She is on top of him, humping sleepily; it’s not a ploy to start something up again, she simply can’t help herself, is all.
“Sweaty’s better than freezing. Our heater just”—he’s about to moan but catches himself—“went out at my house.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah, yikes. I should probably get home, Nancy.”
She hugs him, getting comfortable despite his announcement. “That’s one option. Need help brainstorming some lies?”
“I’m thinking I’ll tell them I went to get firewood.”
“Oh, I like that.”
“And so now I have to go get firewood.”
“You do,” she says and squirms. The roads are getting worse by the minute. They’ll for sure get the day off from school tomorrow.
“If I could, I would just stay here. With you. And your pink blanket.”
She pecks the underside of his jaw. “I have been known to host great slumber parties.”
The thickest tension continues to hold them down in her dark bedroom, a product of their complicated connection and their even more complicated Thursday evening. They’ve hardly sorted through anything. (And yet they’ve sorted through everything.)
“Hey, Jonathan?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I tell you something?”
“What is it?”
Noticeably emotional, she curls up in his embrace. “If things had turned out differently, and you weren’t my Soulmate,” a deep, contemplative crease forms on her brow, “I think…I think I would have willed you to be.”
“I really would have,” she continues. “I would have burned the world to the ground. The thought of someone else’s receptors, connected to yours forever? It makes me so mad. You’re just…you’re for me. You’re what I want.”
She grapples with a heavy heart that isn’t entirely her own. His emotions have settled in her. The burden is acute, as though his sadness has become an inextricable part of her being.
By embracing his pain, could she somehow lighten the load he carries? She feels a sense of responsibility. His battles are hers. Her battles are theirs. The concept satisfies her, strangely.
“I know how sad you are,” is her whimper. “I know how alone you feel, cause I feel it. You’re not alone, okay? Not anymore. You’ll always have a place in me.” The tenderness in her voice turns diplomatic and level: “Soulmate or not, boyfriend or not. Do you get it?”
“Y-yeah.” His delivery is shaky. “I get it. You have one in me, too.” He doesn’t know how they’ll ever bridge the gap between their screwed-up past and the future. But he doesn’t care. “I love you.”
There aren’t any words left to play on, not after that. He should say more. He’s never been good at using his words. Instead, he buries his hand in her hair and clutches, unsure of what he did to deserve someone like this in his corner, in his Soul.
“I love you more,” she asserts.
He almost believes her.