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I’m in Ribbit’s room again. I keep getting distracted by all the swirling lights and I can’t remember what we’re talking about. I try to ask her to repeat herself so I can understand but all that comes out of my mouth is gibberish. She starts moving closer and I’m getting scared, scared of her, scared of what I must have said. Suddenly she’s hugging me and my whole body has gone ice cold. I shove her away and she lands on the floor and she’s not moving. She’s not moving. This isn’t real, this place isn’t real, I couldn’tve hut her. But she’s not moving. She’s just lying there just like Mom and I have to go, I have to run, run far away. Not towards help, there’s no help here, just have to run and keep running. I’ll run into the Void and I’ll keep running and maybe this time I’ll get away. I open the door and -
I sit up in my bed, gasping for air. If I had a heart it would be hammering. If I could sweat I’d be drenched. But I don’t have a heart and I can’t sweat because nothing in this world is %$#@ing real, it’s a $%@#ing cartoon. I’m a $%#@%#@ cartoon rabbit and I just had a nightmare, a dream within a dream, oh my God will it ever end. I run my hand over my face to try and calm down. What was I even dreaming -
Ribbit lying on the floor, not moving, she’s not moving.
I shake my head. Everything’s all jumbled up. The dream played out like a memory but it should be my mom lying on the floor, probably dead. But it was Ribbit. Ribbit who I’ve been avoiding ever since -
Cold air. Snow. Shouting voices.
We fought. Up on the mountain, in the snow, we fought. I screamed at her, she screamed at me, and she finally left, and all I wanted her to do was turn around and scream again. I let her walk away just like I ran away that night, just like I ran away all those nights ago when I was still real, when I still had a &^#$ing heart. When that heart was breaking. Was Ribbit’s heart breaking? Was that the look on her face when she walked away?
Am I going to sit around here in the dark waiting to figure it out? #%#@ no, I’ve had enough. I spring from the bed and I’m out the door in two steps, racing down the hall. I get to her door and I raise my fist to knock and -
- and I freeze. Again. This has happened before. Lots of times before. And every time I don’t knock and I run away, because that’s what I’m good at. Running away and making it seem funny, like @#$%$#@% Bugs Bunny, that’s all folks. But this isn’t funny. Move, you stupid rabbit, move.
I knock on the door. Silence. I start to fidget. Everything in my cartoon body screams to turn around, run away, get away before -
“Jax?” The door’s open. She’s looking right at me and I swear it’s like she can see through me. I feel naked and I’m frozen to the spot. What am I supposed to say? I didn’t even think it through, I never do, I just do the $#@%ing thing as soon as I feel like doing it. Run, rabbit, run. But not tonight, for whatever reason tonight I’m running toward her. For whatever -
Ribbit on the floor. Not moving. Mom. Not moving.
I clear my throat. (Isn’t it weird I can do that when there’s no phlegm to cough up, no lungs to breathe, none of that? This #$@%ing place is driving me insane.) My thoughts are going a million miles a minute but I’m just standing here, frozen solid, like an absolute @$$hole.
“Jax? Are you okay?” Am I okay, she asks. What does she think? I’m losing my @#$@#% marbles and she asks if I’m ok.
“Uh,” I say, master of expressing my emotions. “No, I guess not.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she replies. “Do you…want to talk?”
No you stupid #$%@# I want to run, running’s all I’m good at, running is all my fake body wants to do because it’s all my mind wants to do because it’s the only thing that has ever kept me -
“Jax,” she says, a little forcefully. I realize I’ve been staring past her for…I don’t know how long. My eyes refocus on the anthropomorphic frog in front of me, on her face, her eyes that search mine. I try to shake it off, snap out of it. But my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth and I’ve forgotten how to talk.
“Why don’t you come in?” she says. Run, rabbit, run. I swallow down the lump in my throat that isn’t really there. Cartoon physics make it into a big dramatic “GULP” like Elmer @#$%ing Fudd just pulled his shotgun on me. Rabbit season.
“Y-yeah,” I finally manage. Eloquent, Jax, real smooth, you’ve got such a way with the ladies don’t you? She steps aside, swinging the door open wider so I can walk through. I take a few steps in and I’m dazzled by the mood lighting all over again. My nonexistent heart is thundering in my ears. I have no @#$%ing clue what I’m doing but I know, I just know, I’ve got to do something. Before -
Ribbit, on the floor.
- before something happens that can’t unhappen, before I’ve ruined the one good thing I’ve found in this place. I sit down on the bed as she closes the door and in a few moments it’s like I never left, like we’re back in that night, back when I opened my fat mouth and spilled my cartoon guts all over the floor for her. Right back where it started and I’m about to do it again, oh God I’m going to do it again and this time she’ll -
“Jax, what’s wrong? You can talk to me. Please.”
“Last time we talked,” I say, a bit more snippishly than I mean to, “we weren’t talking. We were yelling. I yelled at you, I treated you like dog#@$% and here you are letting me back into your room like nothing happened, what the @#$$ is wrong with you?”
She closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath, holds it. Blows it out in a big whoosh before she opens her eyes again. “Jax, you hurt my feelings, but that doesn’t mean I hate you. I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks. I did something, said something, that made you really upset and I don’t even know what it was, but I’ve been trying to tell you I’m sorry. Whatever I did that has you so #$%#ed up I didn’t mean to, okay? You’re my friend and I want to help you with…with whatever you’re dealing with right now. Friends fight sometimes, it happens, but we can get past it.”
“Can we?” I say, my voice raised. Here we go again, I think, but I can’t stop the vitriol from spilling out. “Are you just too stupid to see all I’m ever going to do is hurt you?”
“That’s not true,” she says quietly. “You make me laugh all the time. You make me feel seen and heard. You keep our spirits up when we’re on another one of Caine’s stupid adventures, you’re so good at playing his game. You matter to me, Jax, and I want to fix…whatever this is between us. Please.”
Run, rabbit, run.
“This is stupid,” I say, getting up and making for the door. “What am I even doing here?”
She grabs my hand. “Jax! Stop!” she shouts. “Stop running from me!”
I stop. I turn around and look at her and I swear it’s like I’m seeing her for the first time. She’s so beautiful. She’s a god@#$% cartoon frog and she’s beautiful.
I look away, feeling my cheeks flush. She lets go of my hand and I sink back onto the bed. I don’t know how long we just sit there in silence. Eventually I manage to speak.
“All I know how to do is run,” I say quietly. “I run and run and I push everybody away because sooner or later they’re going to leave me, so I leave first. It’s just…I don’t know how to do anything else. Nobody ever taught me how to handle…” I gesture back and forth between us “This.”
“But you didn’t run away this time,” she says gently.
“Because you stopped me,” I reply in a small voice. “Nobody’s ever managed that before.” I let out a huffing sigh and lean back onto my hands, staring up at the ceiling where the lights are playing. I take a minute to gather my thoughts. Fine. I’ll just tell her.
“I had this dream, okay?” I say, “And it really @#$%ed me up. And it made me think…it made me want to fix things. Before something bad happens. I don’t know, maybe I’m going coo-coo for cocoa puffs, maybe this @#$%hole has finally gotten to me but I swear I felt like if I didn’t come talk to you right now I’d spend the rest of my life running away and for some reason, for some god@#$% reason I don’t want to. So here I am.”
“Okay,” she says, still gentle, still soft and quiet. “I’m glad you came. I’m glad we’re talking.”
I blow out a breath through pursed lips. “I’m trying to believe you.”
We sit in silence for another little while. I just watch the lights swirling across the room. I like it here, in her room. It feels magical somehow, like a dream but in a good way. I’ve missed it, since…
“Look,” I say, not quite able to look at her. “What I told you before, it…I’ve never talked to anybody about that. None of it. Not about my family, not about my mom, not…” I gesture at her bowtie. “Not about that.” I take a deep breath and go on. “Closest I ever came was that night with my mom and I’m never going to know if she’s okay, if she hates me or loves me, if she’s even alive. But every day I see your face I have to think about what I said and worry what you, what Koufmo, what anybody thinks. Cause my mom, my @#$%ing mom who’s supposed to love me no matter what, all she did when I opened up was cut my heart to ribbons . And I figured well, if that’s how my mom is gonna react, what the hell are the friends I made in this @#$% circus going to do?”
I finally look over at her, searching her face for some sign of how she’s feeling, what she thinks of me. She looks down at her hands. “That…sounds really scary,” she says. “I’m sorry you’ve been feeling that way. And I’m sorry your mom was such a @#$%$.” That manages to drag a laugh out of me. She’s always doing that, making me laugh in spite of myself. Why does a cartoon frog in a technicolor hell make me feel better than my own mother did in the real world?
She takes a deep breath. “I meant it when I said your secret’s safe with me. I’m not going to tell Koufmo or Kinger or anybody else who shows up. And I’m sure as hell not going to tell Caine. As far as what I think about you now…” she turns and looks at me. “I think you’re beautiful.”
I freeze. The whole world seems to be going in slow motion, her words hanging in the air around me. I can’t make sense of them but I want to hear them over and over again for the rest of my life.
“I’m grateful that you trusted me enough to tell me all that,” she goes on. “I know…I know trust is hard to come by when the people who are supposed to love you hurt you instead. But I promise you, Jax, I’m not going to use what you told me to hurt you. That’s the last thing I want to do.”
“Even after I hurt you?” I ask, incredulous.
“Yes. I told you, friends fight sometimes. It happens. Now I know you were just scared. How am I supposed to be mad at someone who’s scared of me? You’re like a feral cat, you know? You lash out cause you’re frightened. The way you’re hurting, the fear you feel - it isn’t your fault.”
The tears come then. I feel them trickling hot down my face, slow at first but then my chest starts heaving and I just start to sob. I bury my hands in my face and my whole body contracts, curling up into a little ball on the edge of the bed, and I just sob and sob. I’m dimly aware of a hand on my back as I start wailing like a baby, tears just pouring out of me in waves.
It’s not my fault. I just keep thinking those words, over and over and over, rocking and crying and it feels like I’m wringing every last drop of water from my cartoon body. I’m wound as tight as I can be and I tremble there for a moment, gasping for air, before it all comes undone and I slump over. Ribbit puts her arm around me and I lay my head on her shoulder, still crying softly. She doesn’t say anything, just holds me. I feel my whole body going warm and fuzzy as I unclench. I feel safe, safer than I ever felt, and for the first time I’m grateful for this new life, this strange hell I’ve wound up in. Because she’s here, and she cares, and it’s real, realer than anything I’ve ever felt.
I’m never running from this again.