Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She thinks, sometimes at night when the windows are open and her feet are very cold under the blanket, when her parents are asleep across the hall or maybe not, she thinks how she would die for Nico if she had to.

There are three types of dreams she has in black and white.
They always end with someone holding a gun and sometimes she dies in a puddle of her own blood and sometimes in Nico’s arms and sometimes she survives and then she get’s to keep the bullet and she wears it on a chain around her neck.

sometimes she says these things:

1. “I am sorry.“

2. “Don’t forget me.“

and

3. “Please kiss me.“

She only ever dreams in color when she dreams of them kissing and she never dreams of them kissing.

()()()()

Two things make Karolina’s stomach feel like someone punched her hard.

The first is Chase kissing her and touching her and looking at her with that hopeful, lovesick look on his face and she likes Chase, she really does, but she’d like him a lot more if he’d stop thinking he’s in love with her.
She knows he is not because she knows that a boy like Chase Stein could never be in love with a girl like Karolina Dean, she would never be enough for him in the ways that count.
They may both be a little broken but they are pieces from different puzzles and she thinks deep down he knows this.

His hands are rough even when his eyes are soft but she can’t see the beauty in this.
(She sees how Gert looks at him and knows that she would never be able to look at Chase like that, to understand him like that.
She thinks Gert and her are very similar in the saddest ways: they both want things they think they can never have.)

The second thing is when she forgets to knock on a door that’s open and sees Nico on Alex’s lap with her lips on his and his hands on her hips and when she sees Alex in the limo with his arm around her and when Nico sits so close to him they are always somehow touching.

Sometimes these truths make it hard for Karolina to breathe, her chest gets tight and painful.
She closes her eyes then, imagines a truck crashing into their car, imagines pushing Nico out of the way so Karolina would be in the impact zone, how her heart would stop beating but Nico would hold her hand.
A fair deal, Karolina thinks.
A good way to go.

They never have that accident and Chase smiles at her with all his teeth and keeps looking at her lips while she drinks glass after glass of too expensive champagne.

()()()()

(She keeps thinking of how she would die for Nico if only Nico would give her the chance.)

()()()()

There are other girls that catch her eye, that make her blush and warm. This is how she knows this is a real thing, not just a Nico thing.

One of these other girls kisses her in an upstairs bedroom at a party but afterwards Karolina’s lips still taste like copper, not coal like after Chase kissed her, more like she bit her tongue, like blood is filling her mouth.
She thinks maybe nice things just don’t happen in upstairs bedrooms at parties and maybe nice things just don’t happen to her in general.

She promises herself she won’t go to another party and she cries on the way home because she misses Nico so much, even though she is not hers to miss.

That night in bed she hugs her pillow and imagines it is her friend, but it does not smell right and it does not feel right and it is only a sad comfort.

She dreams of fires then, and of carrying Nico out before the building collapses down on her, and she takes her last breath with the ghost of Nico’s weight still in her arms.
It feels a little like flying, these pieces of debris crushing her lungs while she knows that Nico is outside and safe, and Karolina knows what flying feels like, so she thinks this must be the right thing: her offering herself up so the other one survives.
She wonders: if she’d take her bracelet off now, would she look beautiful?
Would she become one with the flames and would they carry her into the sky, where she belongs?
Maybe Nico would be jealous of the fire, for getting to take her completely, all of her skin and hair and blood and bones.

In this dream Karolina says: “Don’t worry, my heart is still yours.“ but Nico never hears her, she is already smoke and smoke and smoke and smoke.

()()()()

Karolina knows she is weaker than the others because the others don’t stop being able to concentrate in school and the others don’t need to break down in someones arms and the others don’t cry themselves to sleep more often than not and the others probably don’t feel like only half of a whole, they probably don’t dream of dying too many nights.

(Yes, sometimes she survives and then she gets to keep the bullet but sometimes the bullet crumbles in her fist and sometimes she survives and Nico and Alex still kiss and sometimes she survives but no one cares and they all look at her accusingly, like she didn’t play her part right, so she dies more and more often, night after night and it’s okay.)

She thinks, realistically, Chase and Gert and Molly and Nico all have it worse than her, maybe Alex too but she knows Alex the least and she feels that maybe a lot of his problems are his own mistakes.

She can’t fault him for that, he is still her friend even though he reminds her of everything she can’t be and everything she can’t have.

But Chase has his dad and his mom’s affair and Gert has her dinosaur and her feelings for Chase, her anxiety, and Molly her strength and her dead parents and Nico… Nico has a dead sister and a mom full of secrets and a cheating dad and the Staff of One.
What Karolina has is not more than they do, her mom is not the only one murdering kids and at least she still somehow has her dad, at least parts of him, and she may be glowing but she is not the only one with powers and she may be in love with her best friend but so is Gert and she seems to be functioning just fine.

And still, Karolina thinks that none of the others are overwhelmed like her: she is very sad and very tired a lot of the time.

Her mom watches her at the dinner table with concerned eyes, or maybe they are suspicious.
A few months ago Karolina would have maybe gone to her with her problems but now all her secrets are heavy weights upon her chest and somehow the fact that she likes girls is the heaviest of them all.

Her dad knocks on her door and asks if she wants to hike with him and every time she gives a halfhearted excuse his eyes dim a little and his brows furrow.
She tries very hard to be as inconspicuous as she can be, but her heart hurts often and deeply and she still can’t look her parents in the eyes.

They sit her down for a talk on a Wednesday after school, which she had seen coming since they had been very awkward around her that morning, but she is still surprised that her mother took the time, that her dad is looking at her all serious, his back straight.

“You’ve seemed so different.“
they say, and
“We are worried.“
and
“Has something happened? You can talk to us. Did someone hurt you.“

The last one almost makes her laugh: she thinks about the boys from the lacrosse team at the party and what she can’t remember, Chase telling her she didn’t have to worry, how that doesn’t make it better, she thinks about Nico kissing Alex and Chase kissing her and Gert throwing her dirty looks and she thinks about her mom, making her believe in lies for her whole life, murdering kids as old as Karolina behind her back, tucking Karolina’s hair back with the same hands that have led people to their deaths.
She thinks of her dad who is sometimes too naive and too good and who will do anything if her mom asks him to. She is so afraid her mom will ask him.

What she says is:

“I’m fine. School is stressing me out. I just had a fight with a friend. A girl I know got attacked at a party. It’s sad. I’m just being a teenager, dad. I just let myself go, mom. I’m gonna be better now.“

She can see in their eyes and their smiles that they don’t believe her and she wonders if they can see the same in hers.

()()()()

Timely becomes their unspoken hangout.

They spend hours there planning and plotting and looking for a glimmer of hope, for some explanation, for a sign that their parents have their reasons for doing what they’re doing, that that reason is good enough to excuse killing people.
They find none. They also don’t make any plans, all their plots have holes.

What they do do instead is homework and getting to know each other again.
They have all grown so much over the last two years and sometimes Karolina feels like she is meeting strangers and sometimes it feels like no time has passed.
She learns to love them all anew, she had forgotten what having friends felt like, what caring about someone for the most innocent reasons felt like, how you just know when you have a connection to someone.

She feels like that with all of them, but not all of them make her head and her chest and her skin tingle, make her smile even though she doesn’t want to, make her feel alive and free and flying whenever they spend time together and hollow and lonely and in pieces whenever she’s away from them.
Nico holds her heart in her hands, plays ping pong with it, doesn’t even know it.

That Thursday she sits next to Karolina and their arms are always brushing. Karolina can’t focus on anything else.

Nico looks at her the whole day, sends her soft smiles, brushes dust off her shoulder, bites her lip with unsure eyes and Karolina wants to hate her for it, she really does.
Instead she is a giggling, blushing, hopeful mess and she knows it will hurt in the end.
She knows Alex and Nico had a fight, from the way they had arrived, both stomping and glowering and always five feet between them, to the way they sit on opposite ends of the table, knows because she has Nico’s unbidden attention, because Alex is hiding behind his laptop screen and because they both are so loudly trying to ignore each other they are taking up the whole room.

She is not the only one who notices. Gert keeps throwing her looks and lifting her eyebrows questioningly and Molly is looking between the two of them, confused, and even Chase has picked up on the weird mood.

Karolina tries very hard to tell herself this: the fact that Nico is acting like this with her has nothing to do with herself and all to do with Alex. She tries hard not to engage.
She fails.
Her grin is stretching her cheeks wide and she can’t stop looking at Nico and she can’t stop soaking up the attention.
She wants to tell her everything, how she thinks that if she’d take her bracelet off now she’d glow the brightest she’s ever glowed.
How the way Nico is looking at her feels better than flying.
Karolina wants to tell her about the heart Nico is holding and how fragile it is.

She doesn’t, of course. But only because her lips hurt from smiling and because she’s not sure she’d get all the words out right.

Shortly before they leave, when they are all packing their stuff together and it’s dark outside, Nico gets up to take a call from her mom, says she’d step outside for a minute.

Karolina doesn’t notice Alex get up, doesn’t notice Nico finishing her talk, doesn’t notice the two of them meeting in front of the big window, doesn’t see Alex offering Nico his jacket and her shrugging it off.

When she looks up she is still smiling, stuffing her textbook into her backpack and thinking about asking Nico if she wants a ride home, and then she notices them, only as silhouettes illuminated by a streetlight, her dark clothes and his patterned shirt, the way he is leaning down to catch her chin in his hand, tilting her head up, placing the softest kiss on her lips, just like in a movie, and just like in a movie Nico doesn't stop him, she kisses back.

Karolina knows what flying feels like and this is everything else.
This is crashing and burning and loosing control and this is hurt and this is pain.
She looks down at the textbook still in her hand, biting down on her lip hard, and there it is again, copper, and trying to fight back the tears because this is her fault, this was her mistake, she was the stupid one, so so stupid.

She feels Gert sit down next to her and when Karolina glances at her from under her lashes she sees sad eyes and understanding.
Gert doesn’t say anything, but she reaches for Karolina’s purse and places it in her backpack, and then she squeezes her hand, once, without looking at her, which Karolina thinks means that she knows and that it’s okay and that she’s sorry.

These are all things she wouldn’t want to hear, because they would make it real and they would make her something to be pitied, but the way Gert says them, all without words, it’s okay, it helps.
Karolina wants to say thanks, but that would mean they would have to acknowledge the worlds between them, all these unspoken truths they are both keeping about what their hearts want, and so she doesn’t.

She squeezes back, just once, and she thinks Gert understands anyway.

()()()()

Some nights Karolina doesn’t sleep at all, because she is afraid she won’t get to die in her dreams and because sometimes saving Nico makes her hate Nico, makes her remember that when she wakes up Nico will still be kissing Alex and breaking her heart.

(She knows she's being unfair. Nico doesn't know and even if she did, Karolina wouldn't own her, Nico wouldn't owe her and the both of them would still be their own people. And she wants Nico to be happy, first and foremost, she really really does. She just wishes she could be the one making her happy.)

So some nights she doesn’t even start to close her eyes. Instead she lies in her bed and takes off her bracelet and listens to her “very in love with goth girls“ playlist (which features a lot of Hayley Kiyoko songs because, duh, and which she only ever listens to with headphones on.) and watches the way her skin throws rainbows against the wall while she floats six feet off the ground.

The world feels somewhat unreal those nights, like time has stopped, like maybe she's the only person alive.
Her thoughts are slow motion, her body feels more like her own than ever before.

She wishes things could be like this all the time: just her floating above all the drama and problems and her wrists free and weightless, only miles and miles to go up.

But in the end, she still misses Nico, still imagines her laying on her bed, looking up at her, reaching out her hand. The only reason Karolina would come back down.

She wants to open her windows and fly across town, make sure Nico is asleep and safe and dreaming about things other than her own death.
Karolina is a coward though, and so she doesn’t.

Instead she softly sings along to the songs coming from her headphones and stares up at her ceiling, imagines the stars and a universe close enough to touch, balls her hands to fists because she doesn't want to feel how empty they are, wants to forget that there’s no one here to hold them.
Their parents might be murderers and she may have superpowers and she may not even be human, but she is also a teenager and she is very very painfully in love.

()()()()

Gert corners her after school one day and Karolina is not completely surprised; she knows there are circles under her eyes and she keeps staring into nothing during class and she’d been silent during their last hangouts and these are all warning signs, of course, but also: the others don’t look much better.

Alex seems like he hasn't slept in months and Chase is nervous and paranoid and Nico’s been biting her lip (very distracting) and becoming more and more closed off.
Molly sleeps too much and Gert herself keeps using meaner and more sarcastic jokes as a way to cope.
Karolina is ready to defend herself but all Gert does is look at her for a whole ten seconds before she let’s go of her arm.

“Wanna get something to eat?“

she asks, but it’s not really a question, Karolina knows this, it’s a way out, a chance for her to not do this here, in front of the school, with the others waiting for them a few meters away.

“Sure.“

she says, which is the only acceptable answer.

Gert nods, she doesn’t really smile all too often anymore, Karolina noticed, and hikes her bag further up her shoulder.

“Let’s meet at the diner in an hour. I gotta get Molly home first.“

When she goes she doesn’t turn around and Karolina can see Molly ask her something but Gert just shakes her head, gets into her beat up car and leaves without saying goodbye.

Once Karolina reaches the others Nico steps up next to her, their elbows brush on accident and she tries not to shiver from the contact.
Nico looks up at her, eyes shielded by her round sunglasses and one eyebrow raised in question.

“What was that about?“

Karolina shrugs, her hands stuffed into the back-pockets of her jeans to keep them from reaching out for Nico.
(She really wants to tug her soft black hair behind her ear or clasp one of her hands in her own or hold her face in her palms, feel her soft skin.
The things she wants are all so innocent but she still feels dirty for thinking about them, it is not her place.)

“No idea.“

she answers, which is kind of the truth anyway.
Gert made it clear they had to talk but she can only guess what about.

Nico keeps looking at her, eyebrow still raised, and Karolina tries very hard not to react to the attention.
She keeps shifting on her feet, eyes glued to the ground.
Nico must sense something in the way she holds herself, because her shoulders relax and her mouth grows softer around the edges, she smiles the smile that makes Karolina’s heart flutter, the one she likes to imagine is only for her.

“Okay.“

Nico says, nudges her shoulder with her own,

“You’d tell me if something was going on though, right?“

Karolina nods, balls her hands so the nails cut into the flesh of her palms, can’t meet Nico’s eyes.
She keeps forgetting, sometimes, that Nico sees her as a friend, someone to confine in, when for Karolina the other girl is everything and more and all the things in between.

It hurts, the way her feelings have taken this from her: she can not tell Nico her secrets when they are about her.
It is not fair to either of them.

She says a quick goodbye and gets into her car before anyone can ask more questions, tries to ignore Nico’s eyes following her until she’s out of sight.
They feel like needles on the back of her head.

(She wants to tell Nico, is the thing.
Wants to say “I am so in love with you my whole body hurts and I can’t tell anyone and it is choking me.
Can you feel my heartbeat?
It has been like this ever since we’ve become friends again and I am very sorry, I tried so hard to stop.
But whenever I think of you my skin hums like there is something underneath it waiting to be freed. I know what flying feels like and I believe kissing you would be better.“
But can you imagine, all the things she would destroy?)

When Karolina arrives Gert is already waiting in a corner booth at the far end of the diner, away from anyone else.
She is sipping a milkshake and scrolling trough her phone and when Karolina sits down across from her she looks up.
Gert seems almost surprised that she came, which hurts a little.
If there is one thing Karolina is it’s loyal.
She wouldn't stand Gert up.

“Hey!“

Gert straightens up and when the waitress appears she smiles fleetingly at her, which is a thing she always does, Karolina knows.
Gert may be a little krass sometimes but she believes in being nice and polite to people who don’t deserve anything else.
It is one of the things Karolina really likes about her.

Karolina orders a smoothie and her and Gert both decide on a sandwich and Gert waits until their food arrives before she says anything else.
When it does she clears her throat and Karolina focuses extra hard on her plate.

“So I heard Chase kissed you.“

Karolina tries not to flinch at that and really, she knew this moment was coming.
Gert is going to hate her for it and she’s going to loose one of her friends.
Over a boy she doesn’t even like.
She doesn’t answer.

“That sucks. Has he apologized yet?“

Her head flies up too fast, neck snapping and she almost winces.
Gert across from her looks serious and not at all like she wants to bite Karolina’s head off, which is the reaction she had been expecting.
Karolina’s hands flutter like birds, she can’t seem to get them to settle down, they get twisted up in each other and smooth down the collar of her shirt and play with her cutlery before Gert takes them into hers, which is not really a Gert thing to do.

“Apologized?“

her voice is very weak and confused and maybe she is too.

Gert smirks a little but her eyes are still serious, they do not stray from her own.

“Well, yes. He kissed you without checking if that’s okay first, and that’s not cool.“

Karolina is trying hard not to look as stupid as she feels, her hand probably sweaty in Gert’s own, she feels like apologizing.

“I mean, it’s fine. He didn’t know.“

It’s not really fine, but she thinks that is more because of her own problems than because of anything Chase did.
He is very handsome and nice, if she were anybody else she probably would have enjoyed that kiss a lot.
But things being as they are, she hasn’t, and instead she can still taste coal on her tongue and the ghost of his lips on hers.

Karolina wonders if she will ever have a kiss that she’ll enjoy, or maybe she just isn’t meant for these things.

Gert leans back in her seat, letting go of Karolina’s hands to instead cross her arms across her chest.
Karolina feels like she said the wrong thing.
She wipes her palms on her jeans.

“That’s it though. He didn’t know. So he should have asked.“

The way Gert looks at her makes her feel small, she thinks maybe she is very naive for not knowing these things like Gert does.
Karolina just shrugs though, her shoulders feel heavy.

“We’re friends.“

like that explains things.
She knows it doesn’t but she’s run out of things to say, out of ways to protect Chase.
Gert’s eyes soften.

“Consent is important, K. Being friends doesn’t change that.“

Karolina thinks maybe they are not just talking about the Chase thing, and she remembers that while Gert had her own concerns about what happened between Karolina and the Lacrosse guys at the party, she never got that explanation from Chase.
She realizes what the dark circles under her eyes and the long silences and the starring off into nothing could mean to Gert.
She thinks maybe she should stop not knowing what to say and clear some things up.

Karolina straightens her back and folds her hands in her lap.
She looks Gert straight in the eye and for the fist time she sees the fear there, the concern lurking under the surface.
Her heart is suddenly very full for her friend.

“Okay, I know you are right. Chase kissing me like that wasn’t cool, and I didn’t like it. But Gert,“ here she pauses for a second because she wants Gert to really understand: “I really think it was just a mistake. Chase isn’t a bad guy, he isn’t like…“

Karolina takes a deep breath because it still isn’t the easiest thing to talk about; all the possibilities of what could have happened.

“At that party, with those Lacrosse guys? Chase saved me there. If he didn’t come in when he did… He stopped them and he didn’t even have to think about it, didn’t even waste one second contemplating what that could mean for him in school and with the team and everything.
He’s a good person.“

Karolina really means this, really believes it, not in a way that means that Chase’s mistakes are unimportant and that the things he did wrong should be ignored because of the things he did right; but in the end, what it comes down to is this: if she’d told Chase how him kissing her made her feel, how unwelcome that was, he would feel so guilty and he would realize that it was bad, not asking before, ignoring all her signals showing him she’s uninterested.
Also, she needs Gert to know that at that Party, she’d gotten away, that nothing happened, not really, that Gert can stop looking at her with those uncertain eyes, with that concern and worry.
Karolina is fine, would be, if it wasn’t for everything else.

Gert stares at her for a second longer, searches her eyes for something and when she finds what she’d been looking for she smiles, a small little thing, and the relief behind it is palpable.
Karolina remembers all the unspoken things between them, all those feelings they have for people they are sure are not meant for them.
She knows that Gert doesn’t see the way Chase looks at her, all the softness on him that he can’t hide.
Gert does not really belong in their little club of unrequited feelings, and once she notices Karolina will be all alone again.
Good thing she’s already mostly used to it.

They eat the rest of their food in silence, but it’s the easy kind.
Karolina thinks Gert may very well be her best friend at the moment, because of all the ways Nico can not be just her friend anymore, as hard as she tries.
She watches the other girl pluck the pickles from her sandwich and stir the straw of her milkshake.
Her glasses are askew, her hair a little messy and still so pretty, there is a small blob of mustard sticking to her cheek.

Karolina is really glad and very lucky, she knows, to sit here with Gert.
A few weeks back this was something she thought she’d never have again, sandwiches and milkshakes and the absence of expectations: to always be perfect and pretty and exactly what people want and need her to be.
How horrible it is, that she owes all of this to their murderer parents, that she is silently and shamefully glad of the way things turned out; sometimes, when things are dark (the night, her room, her head), she apologizes to Destiny.

She really wants her to be alive, she really wishes they could have stopped their parents, but if she had to choose: Destiny or her friends, Destiny or Alex and Molly and Gert, Chase and Nico, always, most of all, Nico, she is not sure … she never let’s herself think far enough to get an answer.
Every time Nico smiles at her she thinks she may have one already anyway.

Karolina is pretty sure, when she is honest with herself, that she is not a good person, that that makes her very very selfish.
She will learn to live with it. It’s a small price to pay, for having friends like hers.

After Gert pays the bill, something they don’t fight over since both their families have money enough for it to not be an issue, after they shrug their jackets on and gather their stuff, on the way out the door, she doesn’t look at Karolina when she asks her question:

“Do you wanna talk about Nico?“

Karolina stumbles in her steps thanks to all the weight those words hold: Nico means her feelings, her feelings mean her sexuality, her sexuality means church and her mother and not living up to a standard she’d been groomed for ever since her birth.

It is a very heavy question to ask, on a weekday afternoon with their respective car keys in hand, a few meters from saying goodbye.

Maybe that’s the reason Gert asked it: Karolina can clearly see the emergency exit, can easily find an excuse to leave right now, there are no corners she is backed into.
Her hands are shaking but it’s just them, they are all alone in the parking lot and no one is listening.

She thinks, maybe, any other day, any other time, in a universe where she can let her identity crisis be the most important thing right now, where these feelings she’s having are not overtrumped by killing and secrets and real life villains, she would have said yes, would have taken Gert up on her offer.
But with things being as they are:
she shakes her head. It may be a little frantic.

“No. I’m good, no. Thanks, but no.“

Gert nods, and Karolina thinks she probably understands: once she opens this drawer, the one with Nico’s name on it, she won’t be able to close it again, and then it will all be too much.
Things will come crawling up and she’ll drown under them, in them, surrounded by them.
She is not strong enough to deal with everything right now, and everything is Nico.
In Gert’s case, maybe everything is Chase.

Maybe that’s why Gert doesn’t ask again, and instead knocks her shoulder very gently into Karolina’s, and then turns and walks into the direction of her car.

It’s a goodbye that feels fitting for them: these small little touches they share when they can not find words, the affirmation that they are not alone, the promise to be there if needed.
Karolina thinks that as far as personalized handshakes between friends go, this is better.

()()()()

It is the third night in a row that she doesn't sleep, or it would be, if not for the heavy weight her head has become.
Karolina tries to distract herself by doing homework and by ignoring the glowing letters on her alarm clock spelling out 3am.

Up until two hours ago she had been listening to the voices of her parents, screaming at each other in their own special way, which had not much to do with screaming at all.
The cutting, snide remarks of her mother against her dad’s guilt tripping and exhausted scoffs, a fair fight, Karolina thinks, as fas as playing foul goes.

She had tried not to notice her name coming up more and more often, the worry they share over her being turned into ammunition against each other.
Her mother has too many expectations, doesn’t spend enough time with her, her father thinks.
Her dad is smothering her, wrapping her in cotton, doesn’t give Karolina the chance to confide in him regarding anything else than the superficial things, her mom snaps back.
They may both be right, she can imagine, but the thing that is making it hard for her to exist right now is the memory of her mother in a red robe, of the trust in Destiny’s eyes, and then the terror, right before dying.

It’s the tingling of her own skin whenever she’s near Nico, the painful twitches of her heart when she sees her and Alex together, the urgent and ever present need to be close to the other girl, to touch her, the guilt and shame she feels over it.
It’s the lack of sleep she’s getting, making her bones and brain tired, the never ending static noise in her ears, the cotton in her head, the lead behind her eyes.

Right now, she’s loosing consciousness over her physics formulas, all the numbers and signs swimming together and then all she sees are black dots, which turn into a sky full of star constellations.
A pretty sight, Karolina notices, while she’s floating over the city roofs.

The streets below her are mostly empty, except for seldom cars, creating a neon landscape with the streaks of color the stoplights leave behind, making the city look like one of the Elsa Bleda photographs she has hung up in her room.
Very dystopian, very eery, very much reminiscent of the liminal spaces Nico had told her about once.
Karolina herself is a glowing beam of light in the sky, her very own flashlight.
She notices her arms and legs, light as feathers, not being weighted down by everything going on in her head, like they had been for the last weeks.

Her body seems to know the destination even when she does not, and she lets herself be tugged along, the stars winking at her, flirting, almost.
She waves back.
There is a smile on her lips, she can feel it tugging at the corners of her mouth, and warm excitement in her tummy, right next to the claws around her heart, the ones that tell her something dark is coming, even while she feels nothing but pleasant anticipation.
The knowledge is there, in the back of her head: this is not a good dream. She’s not sure she has those anymore.

Slowly and silently she begins to recognize the part of town she’s in, the modern houses, glass walls and automatic gates, and golf courses instead of swimming pools in the backyards, and slowly the color seeps out of everything around her, loses it’s glow, until she is climbing into Nico’s bedroom window and everything is black and white.

Oh. She knows what is going to happen now.

But dream Karolina does not, she stares at dream Nico sitting on her carpet, books lying around her and lips curled to one corner of her mouth, biting the inside of her lips.
Nico, even in her dreams, is so beautiful she makes Karolina’s palms sweat and her heart stutter in it’s steps, but there is always something off about her.
She can never quite get her right.

Nico turns around, once Karolina is stepping out of the shadows of Nicos window, and despite the lack of colors the tear tracks on her cheeks, the red of her lipstick, these are all things Karolina can see, or maybe she just knows they are there.
It is her dream after all.
Nico smiles wobbly, swipes the back of her hand under her eyes, her voice is a quiet gust of wind in the room.
Karolina only now notices the deafening silence surrounding them, pressing down on them until it becomes harder to breathe.

“Hey Kar.“

There is no surprise to Nico’s words, maybe she’d been expecting her.
Karolina suddenly feels sorry for making her wait.

“Hey Nico.“ she says.

Nico pats the space next to her on the carpet and Karolina sits down there, their elbows almost brushing but still too much room between them.
She can see now: all around Nico, the books she’d been looking through, they are family albums, a smiling and happy Amy looking back at her from every single photo.
It hurts in a hidden part of her, wakes something she had shut away.

“Oh.“ she whispers, for lack of anything else to say.

Nico looks at her but she is smiling now, wide and unfamiliar.
Honest, but not Nico.
Her teeth are too white.

“Amy was always the pretty one, don’t you think?“

She doesn’t sound bitter, or sad, or anything else but curious.
She is also not really talking to Karolina, it seems, and more to herself.
Karolina shifts on her place on the floor.

“I think you are very pretty too.“ she says, blushing and quiet and half hoping Nico didn’t hear her.

Nico sighs, her eyes are sorry now, full of pity, it makes Karolina feel very stupid. Her chest aches.

“Of course you do.“

Real Nico, Karolina knows, would never be this cruel. Would never make Karolina feel this way.
But dream Nico changes from one night to another. Sometimes she strokes Karolina’s cheek with affection in her eyes and sometimes she sends mean words and cutting smiles her way and sometimes she ignores her completely.
It never changes the fact that Karolina will die for her, willingly and without remorse.

(Some nights, even, Nico asks her to. Presses a gun in Karolina’s hand and tells her to shoot herself, that it’s the only way to save Nico, even when there is no danger present.
Karolina always pulls the trigger, and it has nothing to do with heroics.)

Here, in this dream, Nico obviously knows about Karolina’s poorly hidden feelings for her, does not reciprocate them and has decided that they make her something to be pitied.
This is how she knows it is a nightmare: it calls upon her darkest fear.

Mrs. Minoru knocks on the door before opening, a smile on her face; what a surreal sight.
She looks at the both of them, sitting on the ground, still not close enough to touch, and Karolina notices the albums in front of them have turned into history and spanish books, pencils in their hands like they are just doing homework.

“I heard voices. I didn't know you’d be coming Karolina. Are you staying for dinner?“

her voice is very pleasant and warm, all things the real Nico’s mom is not, and somehow this version is scarier.
Karolina looks at Nico for an answer: this may be her dream but she is only a minor character in it, Nico holds all the power.
Nico looks back at her, musters her face, and then her shoulders drop a little, she sighs again, slightly condescending.

When she turns to her mom she is smiling.

“She’s not staying, mom. By the time dinner is ready this will all be over.“

Mrs. Minoru leaves and Karolina stares at the palms of her hand, laying turned up on her knees: black and white. She knows what Nico means with over.

As soon as the door closes again there is a loud rustling behind them that makes Karolina flinch before she turns around. Nico just keeps on reading her history books, pencil sticking out of her bun now.

Alex is stumbling out of Nico’s closet, clothes in disarray and hair messy, there is a flush on his cheeks and lipstick on his neck.
Karolina looks away.

“That was close. Your mom almost caught us.“

He sits down next to Nico on her other side, their elbows are brushing and their knees are too.
Nico hums.

“It’s fine. I heard her come up the stairs. You had enough time to hide.“

“You mean you had enough time to make me hide.“

Alex’s grin is crooked and cocky, it’s Karolina’s least favorite of his.
Nico rolls her eyes but Karolina can see she is not irritated. The both of them lean closer into each other, further away from Karolina.
Her heart is beating painfully, her throat feels like sandpaper. She feels so small.
Her lips are moving before she has a chance to stop them:

“Why didn’t I have to hide?“

Nico and Alex turn to her and they look almost surprised that she’s still there.
She wishes she wasn’t.
She can’t leave, there is still something she has to do.

Nico has that look in her eyes again, the pity and second-hand embarrassment, Alex just smirks at her in a way the real Alex never would: his eyes are hard while he does it and there is no warmth behind them.
Nico takes her hand, Karolina almost wishes she wouldn’t.

“Oh Karolina.“

her voice is a little too high, a little too mean, a little too much not the real Nico, but Karolina still can’t stop herself from staring at her lips.

“Don’t you get it. There is nothing between us to hide.“

“Oh.“ says Karolina, and suddenly her hand feels like glass: fragile and cold and easy to shatter.

She doesn’t know if she’s imagining it, but she can almost feel Nico squeeze tighter: trying very hard to break her.

This time it happens like this.
They are still studying when the window behind them shatters, thousand little pieces cutting their skin, raining down on them.
The sound of gunshots is deafening, the walls are littered with holes in a matter of seconds, they don’t stop coming.

Somehow, in between all this, Alex finds shelter under the bed and Karolina rolls to the side to crouch low behind Nico’s desk.
There is blood running down her face from a cut next to her eyebrow, her hands are a battlefield, black and sticky, her knees are not much better.
In the middle of the room is Nico, curled around herself, arms around her head and she looks so small.

Karolina’s breathing is ragged, it feels like fire is running trough her veins.
Her mind is an endless loop of Not Nico Not Nico Not Nico and it still takes her far too long to start moving.
Nico is looking at her from across the room, eyes wide with fear, tears running down her cheeks and Karolina can see her lips forming her name.
She is always most like the real version these few seconds before she may die.

Karolina is up and running the next second, dodging bullets all the way to Nico, which is impossible: she can feel them whizzing by her ear and hitting the wall next to her and grazing her arm.
Nico clings to her, the moment Karolina is close enough to throw her body over hers, she can feel the smaller girl shaking under her.

It doesn’t take long after that: the first bullet slams into her back, shatters her spine, she loses feeling over her legs instantly; it catches her so violently she gets spun around and then the second buries itself in her chest, just over her heart, almost at her throat.
She slides off of Nico slowly, painfully, leaving behind a streak she knows would be red if everything wasn’t still in black and white.

The gunshots stop then, it is silent so suddenly it makes her ears ring.

Karolina is staring at the ceiling and she notices then that she has never died in Nico’s room before; in her kitchen once, in her own home some, many times in a car or at school or at the mall. All public places.
She normally doesn’t get privacy like this.

Nico’s face is leaning over her now, her small hands pressing down on her wound, but Karolina knows: it is useless.
She can feel the warmth under her back widening, can feel the copper creeping up her lungs and filling her mouth, drowning her from the inside out.
It is a feeling she has almost gotten used to.

Nico has tears streaming down her face and Karolina wants nothing more than to lift her arm to swipe them away but she can not feel most of her body.
She coughs, weakly, and it makes Nico sob.
There are hands in her hair, getting caught in knots again and again but it’s a minuscule pain compared to everything else.

What she goes with this time is this:

1. “I’m sorry.“

Nico shakes her head, smiles at her wobbly but her eyes are focused on Karolina’s.

“It’s okay.“ she says.

Her voice is wet, Karolina can not imagine anything more beautiful as the last sound she hears.

“This was always supposed to happen.“

Nico lays a hand on her cheek, her eyes are only black, not dark dark brown like they usually are, and Karolina aches for the real version of her.

“Nico.“ she whispers.

It is only a breath, a gust of air, and afterwards her body is still, her chest doesn’t move.
It is always, in all the versions of her death, the last thing she says.

She wakes up the next morning gasping for air, and for a second she can not feel her legs.
It makes her tear the blankets off of her in a panic, getting caught in them and falling out of bed.
Her alarm is still blaring but she can not make herself get up to turn it off.

She curls her body up in a ball, wraps her arms around herself, tries to ignore the sun streaming in through the blinds, the sound of footsteps on their way to her room.
She can still see the pity in Nico’s eyes, the disgust hidden behind it, can still feel Nico’s palm on her cheek, the blood filling up her chest, all the choking and none of the air.

“this was always supposed to happen.“

the words echo around her head.

Karolina can hear her dad entering her room, can feel him kneel down next to her, his big, heavy hand on top of her hair.
He is asking her questions and she could not answer even if she tried.
She keeps squeezing her eyes shut: all the colors are too bright.

After a while she registers her dad leaving the room, the warmth of his body gone, leaving her shivering in her tank top and shorts.
It is not enough to make her move; she is still so exhausted from a lack of sleep and from dying and after every one of her dreams she finds it harder and harder to recover, her body feels weaker and weaker, heavier.
Her teeth shatter in the California summer.

“this was always supposed to happen.“

Every morning that she wakes up she feels like more and more of a failure.

(Her dad calls the school and says she’s sick.
She pretends to be asleep when he brings her breakfast and locks the door after he’s left: she can hear her mothers voice downstairs.
She can not feel safe with her parents in the house, she knows, and knows not, what they are capable of.)

()()()()

She stays home the day after too, and the day after, and on day four somebody knocks on her door.

Her head is still a little cloudy, she is still a little weak, a little guilty: they don’t really have time for her to be sick, to lay in bed, not with everything going on with their parents and their weird powers.
But it’s not really her fault, is it, that she feels so out of sorts.
Nowadays she is always a little nauseous, always a little on edge, like she is waiting for the inevitable to happen, like it is only a matter of time before she’ll have to do what she was meant to do.
There is a hook just behind her belly button and it is pulling.

Karolina spent those last days trying very hard not to think about any of that, not to think at all, and it has helped, a little bit.
She hasn’t had any of her dreams anymore, not a real one anyway.
Flashes from old ones, sure, and she can still hear dream Nico’s voice whenever she closes her eyes, but nothing like she is used to by now.
Her dad brings her soup and fruit cut into stars and hearts and magazines and he makes it so hard for Karolina to remember that she can not trust him, that he is not really the Frank she knows anymore.
Her mother is mostly absent, and Karolina resignedly imagines all the teenagers that could be on the way to losing their lives while she lays in bed in their seaside villa eating pineapple.

But back to the knock on the door:
The others had texted her, of course they had (she tells herself, is still painfully surprised to see that they care), and had kept her in the loop about everything going on.
Chase, living closest, came over the day before to bring her homework but she had pretended to be asleep then, breathing deep and heavy and eyes closed without clenching them.
She’s gotten good at it, born out of her need to avoid any and all conversation with her father.
So while she hadn’t been completely closed off from the outside, this is the first time she is actually about to be confronted with actual interaction.

She hopes, silently, secretly, that it is Gert or Molly or even Chase.
She hopes, of course, even more privately, that it is Nico, because she always hopes for Nico, even when she knows it will only hurt her now.
When the door opens she sees dark hair and dark clothes and dark lips and asks herself, then, if her prayers have been answered or ignored.

Nico is smiling but her eyes are not necessarily.
It reminds Karolina a lot of dream Nico, which makes her chest squeeze tight, but then again, dream Nico never looks this unsure of herself, standing in her bedroom like she’s never been there before.
Karolina smiles back, tries to ignore the old ratty t shirt she’s wearing and the way her hair is a messy pile on top of her head, her shorts that have holes in them.
Nico looks gorgeous, the way she always does, all cool and collected and stylish, and her hair is open and soft today, her eyes highlighted by dark red eyeshadow.
Karolina has missed her.

“Hey you.“

Nico’s lips twitch while she’s speaking, stepping further into her room and setting her bag down on Karolina’s desk.
The sound is too loud in her room, after days of silence, and it almost makes her flinch.
Nico notices.

“Hey.“

Karolina tries hard not to be weird, but she also can’t look Nico in the eyes while the other girl sits down in her plush desk chair, legs crossed and elbows resting on her knees.
The chair squeaks with every spin.
Karolina’s head spins with every whiff of Nico’s perfume that’s coming her way.
She feels a little bit like an addict reunited with her drug of choice.

Nico stops the chair with her feet, her black platform sneakers cooler than everything about Karolina is, her elbows resting on the armrests with a kind of faked nonchalance that is so unlike her it sets Karolina on edge.
Nico looks at her, all dark dark brown eyes. Karolina lets out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

“So. You’ve been sick.“

It should have been a question but it isn’t. Everything about Nico being here feels very deliberate and Karolina is only waiting for the real reason to make itself known.
Her fingers have a hard time keeping still. They are tapping rhythms to the beating of her heart on her thigh. Too fast too fast too fast.

She nods.

“Yeah. Just your normal flu kinda thing. Knocked me out real good.“

Her voice is flat where it shouldn’t be, too high on other parts.
She is bad at lying mostly always, with Nico the hardest thing is that she wants to be honest.
That’s the complicated thing about being very enamored, very in love: Karolina wants to overshare, wants to tell her everything, knows Nico would be able to make it all better.
She is, in a way, already making it better now.
Her heart may beat a thousand miles a minute, her head may spin in circles, maybe her breath is coming a little short, but - her body feels lighter again, it is easier to move, she notices her grimy hair and sweaty skin, she wants to get up and back to things.
She feels more alive again. What a scary thought. The control Nico has.

Nico is still mustering her. There is no malice in her eyes.
Of course there isn’t, Karolina tells herself, this is not Dream Nico. (not dream nico not dream nico not dream nico. Says it three times so she believes it.)

“Did you lie to me?“ Nico asks.

Karolina is confused but scared.

“What?“

“When you said you’d tell me if something was going on.“

“I…“

“Did you lie then?“

“Nico…“

“Because Amy lied.“

“Oh.“ Oh. Of course.

Karolina feels very selfish and very stupid. There are so many things she keeps forgetting to think about. One of them: Nico lost her sister. Nico’s sister killed herself.
Their parents are murderers, there are superpowers and witchcraft, and kidnappers and dead teenagers but before all that, back when they where still only kids, when life was so so stupid, how she misses it, before everything happened, this happened: Nico found her big sister dead in her room and no one suspected anything and no one helped and there had been nothing Nico could do.
And Karolina is her friend, is supposed to be anyway, and she had forgotten that.

Nico does that thing with her mouth where she tries to keep the corners of it from tugging down, she’s gripping the armrests tightly with her midnight black nails, she’s not looking at Karolina anymore.

“Because Amy lied and then she was dead.“

Karolina stands up, after two seconds of silence (because Nico never talks about this, never mentions Amy, never mentions Amy and death and she looks a little bit like it’s taking a lot for her not to break from the inside out.) and she crosses the room.
Once she’s in front of Nico she sits down, right there in front of her, on the ground, in her ratty shirt and the shorts that have holes in them.
Nico’s hair is a curtain around her face. Karolina wants so bad to tuck it behind her ears, her hands are practically tingling.
There are many things she could say and do, too many mistakes she could make. She knows though, the biggest one would be to do nothing at all.

“I am sorry.“

It’s the first time she’s awake and says the words. Karolina almost expects bullets to come flying from nowhere, can feel her body tensing ready to protect Nico.
No, she tells herself. I am awake. I am so awake I can feel my whole body. The ground is cold, my limbs are still heavy, it is late in the afternoon, Nico came to visit me, Nico is here, Nico is …
She looks up, catches a glimpse of Nico’s face through her curtain of hair. Sees her eyes.
Nico is sad. She thinks. Nico needs me alive. She is not here to have Karolina die for her.
I am awake, she says.

“Maybe I did lie. I’ve just … so many things are going on and I didn’t want to burden you with my personal drama I guess.“

Karolina shrugs, looks down - it’s not the whole truth, she knows. But it may be enough to comfort Nico, to reassure her.
Karolina is not Amy.

Nico looks up a little, pushes her hair to the side in a messy unconscious move that makes Karolina want to smile so so bad, Nico is the loveliest human, really, but she can’t think about this now.

“You’re not …“ Nico rolls her eyes, huffs. Slides down to the floor in one graceful motion, sits across from Karolina.

“You’re a little stupid sometimes.“

“Ouch.“

Nico grimaces:

“No, not like that. Just, obviously you wouldn’t `burden me´. I’m your friend, I am here so you can talk about what’s bothering you. I thought you knew that. I know I can be brash and rude but …“

Karolina is already shaking her head.

“No! No. I do know that. I didn’t… ugh.“ She throws her head back. Nico grins a little. Karolina tries not to brighten too much at that.

“I didn’t not talk about my problems with you because of you, I did not talk about them with you because of me.“

“That sounds kind of unnecessarily complicated.“

“It is. Believe me it is.“

They are looking at each other, both are kind of smiling now, which is a good thing, Karolina believes, and it makes her chest feel lighter already.
Nico is a good friend, she really is, and it does hurt Karolina that she can’t talk about all these things with her.
But it’s like she said: it’s not Nico’s fault. It’s all her own.
Her feelings, her inability to push them aside, to ignore them, the dreams she keeps having that make it so much more complicated to function normally around Nico, around Alex, around all of her friends really - she can’t help but keep thinking “I’m not supposed to be here, this is not my purpose. I do not belong between the rest of you.“
At the same time though, she never feels like belonging somewhere as much as she does when she is with them.
With Gert and Chase and Molly, with Alex and Nico.
It hurts, to love a group of people so much, always believing that she will lose them. That she will have to leave them.

Nico’s eyes are still on hers and they are so soft, the prettiest brown, and Karolina decides to be a little bit brave for a moment longer.

“If I’m being honest, I wasn’t really sick. I was just overwhelmed I think. There is…there are a few things I am not handling my best at the moment, things about me that I have a hard time coming to terms with and I want to talk about them but I’m just not ready yet.“

Nico looks at her, her eyebrow cocked.

“You do know that I’ve seen what you can do, right? The glow thing. That cool rainbow shit.“

Karolina laughs. It sounds a little panicked.

“Yeah. That’s… eh, that’s not what I meant though.“

For a second it looks like Nico is going to ask, but then she takes a deep breath and leans back a little.

“Okay.“

Karolina’s relieved sigh is not even a little inconspicuous.

“I’m sorry if I made you worry. And I promise that I’ll come to you when I’m ready, really, but I think right now I just need to work through this on my own.“

Nico smiles at her again. One day this will be the cause of Karolina’s death.

“Well then. As long as we’re being honest: I guess I overreacted a bit. But …“ - here she inhales long and sharp, like she’s preparing herself for what she will say.
“But the way you’ve been so absent and then the not talking to anybody for longer and longer.
With Amy I didn’t see the signs, any signs really, maybe I was just stupid and too caught up in myself but I never even thought she’d…“

Karolina wants so bad to help with the way Nico’s voice cracks and with the way her eyes get misty. Wants to hold her face in her hands and kiss away the bloody imprints of teeth on her lips.
But she knows she can’t, knows this is nothing she can fix. Nico is grieving, will probably never stop grieving, but if she is talking about it Karolina thinks she may also be healing.
That doesn’t make it hurt any less when Nico’s hands start to shake.

“I didn’t want to make the same mistake again.
One day Amy was there and then the next she wasn't and I kept thinking how I hadn’t seen you for one and then two and then three days and what if the next day would be the one your parents would call my parents and tell them they found you dead in your bed and I would know then, I would know that I’d had a bad feeling but I didn’t do anything about it. So I thought I’d just come over and see how you were because I can’t do that again, Kar.
And I’m sorry if I made it sound like you had to tell me your secrets or something, that’s not it I just want you to know that you can…“

Nico is full on rambling now and her eyes are wet, no tears are falling but Karolina isn’t sure if that makes a difference because she thinks somehow, after all, deep down Nico is crying.
She has never seen Nico, who is usually so cool and collected, like this before but she thinks maybe it was a long time coming, and she thinks maybe somebody should have tried harder to talk to Nico about Amy.
Maybe she should have been that somebody.
But it doesn’t help to think about what could and should have been done.
Karolina is here right now, and here means on the ground in her room with a Nico that is falling apart in front of her, here means awake and alive, and there are no bullets to throw herself in front of and no fire to carry Nico out of and no car crash to save her from.

“Nico.“ she whispers.

Nico sniffs.

“Yeah.“ She whispers back.

“I’m going to hug you now, if that’s okay.“

The room is very quiet, but not quiet like her dreams are, not oppressing and choking. Karolina’s window is open and she can almost smell the sea breeze from here.
The air is hot but not humid.
It is, she notices for the first time, a really beautiful day out.

Nico nods.

Karolina folds her into her arms without worrying if she is touching too much and holding back too little.
This is not about her.
Nico presses her nose into Karolina’s shoulder and winds her arms around her waist.
Karolina turns her face into Nico’s hair, her arms encircling her shoulders.
They fit together so well, it is a tragedy really.

For a minute they just keep breathing like that, clinging to each other.
Karolina knows, without a doubt, that she could stay like this forever.
Karolina knows, without a doubt, that she is in love with Nico, completely and utterly.
She accepts that now. It is a beautiful thing, to love someone so wholeheartedly.
It is painful too, if you know you can not be loved back the same way.

Nico leans back, fixes her hair, smiles a wobbly, weak smile. Her cheeks are a little red.

“Thanks. I needed this. To know that you were not going to… to do the same thing Amy did.“

Karolina brushes a strand of long blonde hair from Nico’s shoulder. Fixes her eyes on Nico’s and can’t really look away then.

“I’m not. I wouldn’t. I’ll be fine Nico. We’ll all be.“

She smiles.

Karolina knows, without a doubt, that she can never tell Nico about her dreams.
Nico would never forgive her.

()()()()

End Part 1

Chapter Text

She wakes up on Sunday the same week and feels her pillow is wet.
She wakes up and it is already late into the day.
The sun is high in the sky, her window is open, her door is locked.
She does not remember locking it.

Her pillow is wet -
her cheeks are too.
She has been crying in her sleep. Her mouth tastes like copper and she licks her lips -, yes, she’d been biting her lip too.
You know that feeling, when you are falling asleep when you shouldn't fall asleep and you wake up and think hours have passed just to see that it’s only been minutes?
Karolina feels like that.
Her head is heavy and clouded and her limbs are slower than they should be. They tingle when she moves them.

She looks around her room and for a moment doesn’t know what day it is.
Her dad is outside her door talking to her, like she’d turned the tv on in the middle of a show.
Karolina gets up and goes into the bathroom, splashes water onto her face.
In the mirror she sees she is still wearing her clothes from yesterday.
She does not remember falling asleep.

Karolina wakes up on Sunday the same week and feels wrong.
Something is different, she thinks. Something is different. She can not put her finger on it.

(She does not remember falling asleep.
She does not remember dreaming either.
She does not know if she ended the night alive or dead.
This is important, somehow.

This will come back, she thinks, to mean something.)

()()()()

The thing about having evil, murderous parents is that it doesn’t make life move any slower.
Karolina and the others still have to go to school and do homework and be ridiculed by stupid lacrosse players.
They still have to survive the heat and the sweat clinging to their backs.
They are still only teenagers and this is still only another summer in California.
The days get hotter and hotter.

They’ve started spending the afternoons they are not hiding in an air-conditioned Timely, lounging around the pool at Karolina’s.
This is only possible because Karolina’s mom has been spending all her time at the church and she isn’t really sure if her father is at another movie shoot or following her mom around like a puppy, but he’s definitely not home.
Their house is a mausoleum, bathed in soft whites and rugs and plants, but still abandoned and quiet.
All the doors are closed and Karolina feels drenched in secrets, her own as much as her parents.

This means she is glad whenever the others come over.
It keeps her from floating around her room (literally floating: a thing she just does now it seems), listening to melancholy music and drowning in her many many thoughts, not many of them healthy or happy.
It also means that she is surrounded by people she feels understood by.
She knows they don’t feel at home in their houses anymore either - the oppressing presence of their parents a mutuality they share.
It is also, at the same time, quite the torture: a pool means swimming and swimming means swim wear, which means, in Nico’s case, the smallest, silkiest black bikini Karolina has ever seen.
The first time Nico came out wearing it she honest to god choked on her drink and Gert couldn’t stop smiling knowingly at her for a whole day.
Karolina is learning to accept that Nico will always make her feel the most of things.

()()()()

The nights are different now.
She’s not scared of falling asleep anymore.
The last five days she woke up not remembering any of her dreams.
Karolina feels better and worse at the same time.
Her chest is still very heavy.
She is confused and it always takes her a few seconds to remember where she is.
Sleep leaves her mind foggy and blank.
Not like there was never anything there, more like someone wiped it clean.
Every morning she feels like she forgot something very important.
Think Karolina, think -
Did you get to die or did you get to live?
Are you dead or alive.

(The last five days she wakes up to an empty house.
No concerned conversations and parental looks.
Her steps sound hollow on the stairs and she always rinses her plates, never puts them in the dishwasher.
She’s the only one using them anyway.)

()()()()

Chase is at her locker, his backpack slung over his shoulder, his hair mussed.
He’d been looking more tired and tired, the bags under his eyes growing.
He’s waiting for her, Karolina knows, and he is nervous in the way his fingers keep playing with her lock, his eyes never settling anywhere for long.

Karolina sees him before he sees her and for a second she thinks about turning around.
School is over for the day, she’s got nothing really important in her locker.
She could just go to her car and drive home and he would be none the wiser.
But she remembers then, Chase is her friend.
Thinks about her talk with Gert: he is a good person.
She will not be afraid, she decides, when there is nothing to be afraid of.
If Chase asks her out, or tries to kiss her again - she will be honest this time.
She knows, deep down, that it would not change their friendship.

When Chase sees her he stands up straight, stroking a hand through his hair.
He tries to smile but it looks like most of their smiles do these days - never quite whole.
Karolina tries to smile back. A pathetic effort.

“Hey.“ He nods at her, eyes still flitting around the hall.

Karolina is painfully aware of the fact that the last time it was just the two of them was the night on the roof.
This, she knows, is not the same. It may not have been so long ago but they both have changed since then.

“Hi.“ she says back and tries not to fidget. When did she get this bad at talking to people?

Chase is still not looking at her but he stops playing with her locker and instead burrows his hands deep deep into the pockets of his jeans.

“I need to apologize to you.“ and when he finally finally looks up and at her his eyes are serious.
Karolina knows what this is about.

“When I kissed you, that … I get how that was uncool. I basically ignored all your signs and stuff that said you were uninterested and totally read the situation wrong. Didn’t even ask you, not even after, if that was okay. That’s not an excuse or anything! But with how you look at Nic…“

“Did Gert put you up to this?“ Karolina has to interrupt. Can not listen to him say everything she was so long too scared to even think about out loud in the middle of the school day.

Chase stops. Stares at her, confused, his brows furrowed.

“What? No.“

Karolina isn’t convinced.

“Because I told her it was fine. I get that you didn’t mean to make me uncomfortable or anything, I told her this, there’s no reason…“

“Karolina, stop, Gert didn’t make me do anything.“

“She didn’t?“

“No. Wait, you talked with Gert about this?“

Karolina blushes but not as much as Chase does.

“I didn’t want to. She kind of … cornered me.“

Chase laughs, a short little thing, but it’s not hard to hear the fondness in it.
He looks down, scruffs his shoe against the ground.

“Yeah, I can see that.“
He looks up again, more sure in himself, the nervousness not so obvious in every move he makes anymore.

“But she didn’t make me apologize or anything. I wanted to talk to you for a while now but I just … chickened out every time.
I feel really bad though, and you deserve to be told I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t make it better or anything…“

“It does, actually.“

Chase looks at her with a lot of hope, some incredulity. With a pang Karolina remembers what goes on in the Stein household behind closed doors, the worst kept secret.
Chase probably isn’t very used to his apologies changing things.
She leans against her locker.

“I’m gonna tell you what I told Gert. Yeah, it wasn’t cool and I didn’t like it and it made me uncomfortable, not just the kiss but the whole…thing. But I still think you’re a good person and you are still my friend.
Because I believed that if you knew how it made me feel you’d realize that you made a mistake.
And you’re here, so, you know, I was right.“

Chase shakes his head.

“I don’t even know why I did it, to be honest. Not that I didn’t like you that way! Because I think I did, at the time!
But also I just always heard my dad telling me about how good we would be together and that it would be important for the Stein name if we would be associated that way with the Dean’s.
And I thought, finally, a way I could make my him proud, you know?“

Karolina does know, in a way. Not like Chase does, her stakes have never been that high, but she understands what it is like to have so many expectations to live up to, knows what it feels like to disappoint your parents.
She can’t think of anything to say.

“It was stupid.“

Karolina shakes her head.
“It’s not stupid that you want to make your dad proud.“

Chase grins at her, the shy, small one that always makes him look 10 years younger.

“Maybe not. But it was definitely stupid to make myself believe I was in love with you and almost ruin our friendship.“
Karolina grins back.

“Yeah, that was a little stupid.“

They grin at each other and Karolina has missed this. Her and Chase had always been close, not just because they only lived five minutes from each other and thus were the first ones the other sought out when they were bored, but also because they always understood each other in a way they didn’t always with others.
Sure, ask ten year old Karolina who her best friend is and she would say Nico and ask ten year old Chase the same question and he’d always answer Gert, but on another level, on a I-love-you-like-a-sibling-and-you-annoy-me-just-as-much level, Chase and Karolina would always choose each other.

It is nice to feel like she may be able to get that back.

The bell is ringing and Chase grabs his backpack again, sends her another smile.
A real one this time. It is so easy to give him one back.

“Alright, I gotta go. But thanks, for forgiving me. You didn’t have to, you know?“

Karolina shrugs.

“I wanted to.“

Chase waves and turns around, and he is almost far enough he’ll be lost among the other students, but Karolina still has one more thing she wants to say, one more thing she feels he should know.

“Chase?“

He turns around, face open and happy.

“Your dad doesn’t deserve you trying to make him proud.“

Chase stops dead, other students stumbling into him a little, his happy smile momentarily slipping.
Karolina almost feels bad. But it’s true.
He looks at the poster next to her, not at her face, and then, after a few seconds, meets her eyes again.
They are conflicted.

He shrugs.

“Maybe.“

and then he’s gone, disappears among their classmates.
Karolina hopes one day he’ll believe her.

()()()()

The next day, after school, when they are trying to ignore the homework that’s waiting to be done and are instead laying around the pool in Karolina’s backyard,
when Alex is at the phone with the pizza place ten minutes away,
when Nico asks Karolina to put sunscreen on her back and Karolina has an honest to god heart attack that leaves her breathless even half an hour later,
when Molly is play fighting the dinosaur in the pool, -
there is Gert, boldly sitting on the same lounger as Chase, getting a book out and inching closer and closer with every page she turns,
and there is Chase, staring at her with shock first and then with the softest look on his face, all honest eyes and bright bright smile.

When the pizza arrives their whole sides are touching, shoulder to ankle, and Karolina wonders what kind of conversation they had, that made them so brave, so unapologetic.

(There’s a corner of her mind that’s itching when she looks at them.
A part of her brain that tells her “you have seen this before.“
Like she has a photo in her room that shows the same thing,
something frozen and acted out and now here is the real deal.
This here is the truth, in front of her eyes, but somewhere before, there was the lie.
The same, same but different.
An itch in her mind.
She ignores it. Must be the sun.)

()()()()

On Friday morning Karolina steps into the kitchen only to regret it immediately.
Her mother is sitting at the counter, tablet in hand, white jeans and white blouse and white white teeth when she smiles at Karolina.
It makes Karolina’s stomach churn.

She’d spend the last week without seeing her parents once, and sure, a part of her will always be the neglected daughter thirsting for some attention, for some sign that they are not indifferent towards her, but also - knowing what she knows: it is so much easier to pretend she does not waste many many hours crying over what her parents could be when she isn’t confronted with them, when she can ignore, all together, that she even has parents, that her family is not just Nico and Gert and Chase and Alex and Molly and the dinosaur.

But now, here, without warning, is Leslie Dean in all her glory.
The perfect hair that magazines obsess over, the freckles that brought freckles back in style, the blue eyes that make everyone trust her, the impeccable outfits that turn neighbors jealous.
That icy smile, the too white teeth, the cold cold look in her eyes, the seldom warmth she is capable of, gifting it onto Karolina whenever she sees fitting only to then withhold it for months without any discernible reason.

(For a long time Karolina felt bad whenever she thought anything bad about her mom: all those articles calling her a saint surely couldn’t be wrong. It had to be her, she was sure, her own fault that she was never good enough of a daughter.
Then, that scene in the basement, like a silent success: I knew it, she thought, even though she did not know and felt like throwing up, like the truth would make her incapable of ever being happy again. I knew it.)

Leslie Dean, a mother, a wife, a murderer, turns around to face her daughter.
Karolina feels all kinds of small.

“Morning honey.“

Her voice hasn’t changed, hasn’t turned into a hissing, a spitting, and that’s what is dangerous:
It is still silky smooth, soft, never too loud, makes Karolina want to melt into her, to be praised and loved the way only a mother can love you.
The way her mother can’t: unconditional.

Karolina smiles back. She is good at this kind of game even though it brings many dark things back, things she’d just started feeling less of.

“Hey mom.“

They do not talk about the week long absence, of course they don’t.
About how a teenaged daughter shouldn’t live in a house like this alone, without explanation.

Her mom musters Karolina, from head to toe, stops at her face.

“You look better. Well rested.“

Ah, yes. Her breakdown, the thing they don’t call a breakdown, the thing that is whispered about only in the walls of this home (house).
Karolina Dean, half catatonic on the floor of her bedroom, almost mute for days, wouldn’t eat wouldn’t sleep.
Such a thing can not reach the public.
“I feel better.“ Karolina says, only reading the words from her script, a family of actors.

Her mom smiles at her and for a second Karolina almost believes it is real, almost falls for the relief in her eyes, the outstretched hand, the offered love.
But then, there, flashes: Destiny, red robes, all the harsh whispers at galas (stand tall Karolina, smile big Karolina, tell that interviewer about how much you love gibborim, such a good girl).
She can not trust this, her, the one mother she ever had.
(She wants too, she never will again.)

“Catherine has told me the kids have been spending a lot of time here.“

Leslie almost sounds glad, almost sounds happy for her daughter.
Karolina only nods.

“Yeah, we decided to use the pool as an escape from the heat. And I was bored alone, so…“

A breath, a silent second. A chance for her mom to react, to maybe apologize…
Her mom is looking down at her tablet, humming to show she listened.

“That sounds like fun, sweetie. Listen I gotta go, I’ve got a meeting at the church.“

Karolina tries not to flinch, not to fall in on herself. So stupid of her to think, to even dare to hope…
She never learns, she never ever learns.
Leslie stands up, brushes past her, the fabric of their shirts touching.
Just a few centimeters away from Karolina she stops, brushes a lock of golden hair out of her daughters face.

“But how about you invite the others over again tonight? Maybe for a sleepover? Me and the parents got another Pride meeting this evening and you know how long those can take.“

Karolina feels her blood freeze in her veins, all the hairs on her skin stand up, a shiver down her back.
Her throat is very dry all of a sudden, but she still makes words come out.

“I thought you only had those once a year?“

She prays her voice doesn’t sound as helpless as she feels, as nauseous.
Her mother steps away from her, gathers her things, doesn’t look back again while she walks in the direction of the door.

“Well, some things have come up and we’ve got a lot of important decisions to make.“

At the door, already half out of it, car keys in hand, she looks at Karolina once more, the light from outside illuminating her, making her look like an angel.
Karolina wants to throw up.

“Things are changing, Karolina. For the better.“

And then she’s gone, leaving only Karolina and the too big house, no cup in the sink, no stains on the counter, no sign she was ever there at all.
Except for the panic in Karolina’s chest, except for the never ending nightmare she seems to be living in.

Karolina remembers, years ago, when she was younger, how her mother would never leave the house or her side without telling her she loved her.
She tries to imagine her saying it now, a kiss on the head, a real smile, an I-love-you that doesn’t sound fake.
Tries to imagine herself saying it back. Knows she would.
Knows she’d mean it, which is the worst thing really, which is the most painful thing.

()()()()

After her mother has left, after the car has roared to live in the driveway, the creaking hinges of their vintage gate: Karolina runs upstairs, grabs her phone, dials a number as fast as she can.
She’d meant to call Gert and she only realizes she didn’t when Nico answers on the other line, voice half sleep drunken, because Nico always sleeps as long as she possibly can.

“Whadsup?“

“Nico?“

“Yeah?“

“Oh! Hi.“

“Kar, you called me.“

Karolina blushes and for a second fears that Nico will be able to tell miles away.

“Right, right. Sorry.“

“Mmmh.“

Nico sounds as good as asleep again and Karolina can’t help but close her eyes, imagine herself laying next to her, listens to Nico’s soft little huffs of breath.
She smiles without really noticing, the silence between them making it feel like they are much closer than they actually are.
Then she remembers:

“Nico!“

“Jesus!“

“Listen, I just talked to my mom…“

“What, so she actually remembered she had a daughter?“

“and she said I should invite all of you over tonight-“

“Like she’d be able to stop you anyway. You could throw the biggest house party of the century and she wouldn’t notice…“

“-because she said they…are you even listening to me?“

Nico keeps muttering about Karolina’s mom, listing all the ways Leslie Dean is not a good mother, and even though it warms Karolina’s whole chest to know that her friend cares, that she even notices, this really isn’t the moment for this.

“Nico. This is important. Please.“

Nico stops talking momentarily. Karolina can almost see her bite her lip, which really isn’t an image she should be thinking about now.
When Nico answers she sounds sheepish, which is not a thing Nico Minoru lets herself sound like often.

“Sorry.“

“No, it’s fine! Really, just….“

“Come one, Kar, you’re kinda making me nervous.“

“My mom said I should invite you over tonight because her and the others parents are having another pride meeting.“

There is silence on the other line and Karolina notices she’s been gripping her iPhone much too hard, is sure another second and it would have cracked in her hand.
She tries to give Nico time, tries to distract herself by counting all the glow-in-the-dark stars on her bedroom ceiling, a present from Molly after Karolina told her she sometimes wishes she could just open the window and fly under the night sky.
She smiles just looking at them.

“They only have those once a year.“

Nico’s voice is hard but unsure, Karolina’s grows softer without noticing.

“I know. That’s what I told her. But my mom just said that, and I quote, they’ve got a lot of important decisions to make and that things are changing for the better.“

“Like that’s not the most ominous thing to say.“

“Yeah…“

“No, I mean like, seriously. What the fuck? That obviously means some other poor kid is gonna die, right?“

Karolina can’t really answer, mostly because she’s been thinking the same thing since her mother talked to her. That doesn’t make it any easier to accept though.

“I can’t believe this. So what? That one sacrifice wasn’t enough? They gotta get themselves another one? Gotta catch’em all!“

Nico’s voice grows louder and louder in volume, in hate, and in, what Karolina thinks might be, fear.
Karolina can only hope Nico's parents are at work already.

“And what’s the most fucked up is that we are even surprised! What even happened to all our plans, to wanting to stop them? We just got used to this, like, oh alright so our parents murdered one kid, whatever. At least they sometimes pay attention to us, right?“

“Nico…“

“No, we should have known! We should have done something much much earlier, we-“

“Nico! Stop it! Don’t you think I know all this?“

Once again Nico is silent, except for the heavy breathing audible over the speakers.
Karolina is gripping the phone again, anxious and panicky from listening to everything she’d already known but had been trying to ignore being spoken out loud.
Her legs are like jello and she sinks down on her bed. By the creaks coming from the other line she thinks Nico has done the same.
The clock on her vanity says it’s half past six in the morning but it feels so much later already, feels like hours have passed since she first woke up thirty minutes ago.
There is the mirror across from her and she stares back at herself, eyes big and helpless, cheeks flushed, lip bitten bloody again. Damn it.

Nico sighs.

“Shit. I know you do, Kar. Sorry, I didn’t even think how that must have been, seeing your mom and then listening to her tell her lies…You okay?“

“I’m good.“ Karolina half smiles, playing with the fraying edges of her jean shorts.

“You sure? I can come over if you want.“

“I’ll see you in school later anyway. It’s fine.“

“Is it like Karolina fine or normal people fine…“

Karolina lets herself fall back on her bed, laying down.

“Nicooo…“

“Because there’s a difference between those two, seeing as one doesn’t mean fine at all.“

“I’m hanging up now, I gotta get ready.“

“You wouldn’t dare.“

“Watch me.“

Nico laughs, mutters something that in any other world may have sounded like “I wish I could.“
and then turns serious again.

“Alright, I see you later. Are you at least going to invite me over for that sleepover?“

“Mmh I’ll think about it.“

“Oh wow.“

“It’ll be pretty full already with Chase and Gert and Molly and Alex. And that dinosaur, you know how much space it takes up.“

“Now I’m the one hanging up.“

“See you in Biology.“

Karolina takes the phone from her ear to the last sounds of Nico’s chuckles, which are not really chuckles at all and more like scoffs.
She can’t get up right away.
Her legs are still weak because of everything that happened this morning, everything it means, and also just because … Nico.
She flips her phone between her hands, tries hard not to smile too bright.
This isn’t really a moment worth smiling about.
Sure, her and Nico have gotten back into the natural groove of their friendship, made easier for Karolina by the absence of her self-sacrificing dreams, and whenever they banter with each other like this she can’t help but be so glad about everything that happened to bring them here.
But Nico was right, they’d gotten too comfortable.
Their parents are still murderers and the six of them have not done anything about it since they found out.
That’s on them.

Karolina doesn’t deserve moments like this.

(This is why, sometimes, when she can’t pretend anymore, she misses her scary, suicidal, too-realistic dreams.
At least in them, there was something she could do.
At least there, her life had a purpose.)

Still, in spite of the morning she’s had, when Karolina arrives at school she is smiling.
Still feeling warm and too happy.
Still replaying every word her and Nico exchanged.

She only stops once she steps out of the car, once she sees that familiar head of black hair, pressed up against printed shirts and cheeky smirks.
Alex and Nico are in their own world, like so often, and Karolina can only watch, from far away, while they forget that anything else (anybody else) exists.

(She sometimes wishes she could forget too. About her own existence.
She has not been given that privilege.)

()()()()

(When she explains to the others-
Nico is standing right next to her, the whole time. Their arms brushing, her face fierce.
A silent mountain of strength, backup should anybody say shit.
Karolina tries not to think to hard about that, about the girl to her right, about her own heart swelling five sizes, about how in love she is.
It would be easier, if only Nico would stay away. If she wouldn’t be such a good friend. So supporting and nice and caring, always knowing when Karolina isn’t alright.
It would hurt more, but it would be easier.
Nico grins at her, at then end, when everybody has shared their thoughts, when they have gotten angry and scared and fought about what to do - Nico smiles at her, crooked and supportive, squeezes her hand when she passes.
Holds Alex’s when they leave, fingers linked, palms pressed together, swinging between them with every step they take.)

()()()()

Karolina waits for the others after school, at home.
They’d be there at six, they said, and it has just turned five.
A whole hour still and the house is swallowing her up.
She’s already cleaned her own room, the living room, the kitchen - the pool area is free of leaves, of left behind cups, of any signs of live.
The tiles scrubbed clean, the walls blank except for posed pictures.

(Her and her father, blonde and grinning with all their teeth, her mother and her red hair, close lipped smile that makes you want to be let in on the joke, the blue eyes shining back from all three of them.
She remembers the photographer, caught up in how photogenic they were as a family, gushing with praise.
Karolina loved this photo once, before, when she didn’t know the lies it was build on.)

Karolina wanders the halls of her own home like a ghost. Her fingers trailing over spotless kitchen counters, her steps echoing back at her.
Through the big glass doors she can see the surface of the pool twinkling, throwing shadows against walls and eating up the early evening sunlight.

In moments like this, she thinks as she sits down outside with her feet in the water, she sometimes doubts her own existence.
Is she even alive right now, is she even awake? Is this real?
The water is cold but her dreams had always been very realistic, she wonders…
Her own reflection looks back at her when she leans her head over the edge, her skin rippling with every gust of wind.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it even make a sound?
If Karolina Dean drowns in her own pool and no one is there to notice, would she even die?
She wonders.

…

“Karolina!“
Gert’s voice from behind her jolts her back, makes her almost loose her balance before she scrambles back from the edge of the pool.
Her knees hurt from kneeling on the cold concrete, her knuckles red from clenching the pools frame.
When had she changed positions, her face only centimeters from the waters surface?
She stands up, ignores the ache in her legs, turns around to see Gert and Molly smiling at her, waving over from the patio door.
She waves back.

“You’re early!“

Molly scrunches up her nose, passes Karolina to give her a fleeting hug, before flopping down in her favorite lounger.

“We said six, I thought!“

“Yeah, we did, it’s …“ Karolina’s eyes stray to the watch on her wrist, the leather darkened slightly where it got wet.
The short hand is on the six, the long one just passed twelve.
Oh.

Gert is looking at her amused and a little sceptic, her eyebrows raised over the frame of her glasses.
“You okay? Did we interrupt an in depth conversation with the pool?“

Karolina blushes, her heart beating fast and her palms sweaty. She feels unanchored, wrong, bottomless.
The laugh she offers up is maybe slightly panicked but Gert doesn’t seem to notice.

“No, no I just…I thought I saw something in it. A bug probably.“

She turns back to the pool, the ripples of the water still hypnotic.
Gert snorts.
“Okay Disney Princess. You spend your day saving insects but I think we’ve got a few more pressing problems here.“

Karolina nods, her eyes still lingering on the water surface, the wet spots her feet left behind already drying in the sun.
She looks at her watch again, at Molly and Gert bickering over lounge chairs, at the dinosaur she’s only noticing now sticking his head in the bushes, at the sun that’s sitting lower than before.
She feels it now, the blank spaces in her memory, the time she’s missing.
It is unsettling, nauseating, makes her skin crawl.
She wants to cry suddenly.

Gert is calling her name, by the look on her face it is not the first time, and Karolina turns to her in what must be slow motion, her limbs heavy.
“By the way, I know you live in like the safest neighborhood of California but leaving your door unlocked is still pretty stupid if you ask me.
Anybody could walk in here!“

That’s not quite true, Karolina knows. Michael at the gate knows who to let in and everyone else doesn’t even get the chance.
But still, Karolina is usually meticulous about locking the door behind her, it is ingrained in her muscle memory and now when she tries to think back she can’t remember anything except flashes of wandering up and down the halls of the house, cleaning rooms and waiting for time to pass and her friends to show up.
Maybe she had forgotten to lock the door…

A hand touches her arm and she almost jumps out of her skin, Nico’s grin fading a little at the look on her face.

“Wow, sorry. I thought you saw me coming, you literally looked right at me…“

Karolina shakes her head, stares dumbly at Nico for a second, the hair up in two buns, the dark sunglasses, dark lipstick, dark dress…
Nico stares back but her eyes are questioning. She raises one black eyebrow.

“Hi! Sorry, yeah! I didn’t…Hi!“

Nico looks past her at Gert and Molly, her sunglasses sliding down the bridge of her nose a little.

“What’s going on?“

Molly doesn’t look up from the comic in her hands.

“Kar is being weird.“

“I’m not being weird!“

Gert musters her inquiring.

“You kind of are.“

Karolina turns back to Nico, her face flushed.

“I’m not! I’m fine! Completely good!“

Nico smiles at her before looking back at the other two.

“I see what you mean.“

Karolina groans.
She knows they are probably just teasing, even though Gert is beginning to look like she’ll start asking questions in a few seconds and Nico seems maybe a little worried under all the snark, but her palms are still sweating and she does feel weird, and not good and pretty confused.
They can’t know that though.
Her head has been kind of messed up these last months and maybe she hasn’t gotten over this whole thing, thing being her dreams for one, like she thought she had.
This is not the time, though, to get hung up on this.
Like Gert said, they all have more pressing problems to attend.

“I just can’t stop thinking about our parents meeting tonight.“

It’s not a lie per se and Gert’s shoulders slump while she nods.
Nico looks at her for a second longer and Karolina tries hard to look innocent, like a girl whose only problems are her murder parents.
Nico accepts this, then, and slumps down into a chair right where she’s standing, her arm brushing Karolina’s on the way.

“Yeah I get that. I’ve been feeling the need to throw up the whole day.“

Gert nods and Molly puts her comic away, sits up on the lounger, tucks her legs underneath her.

“Do you really think they’ll, like, kill another kid tonight?“

The younger girl is looking up at them with big eyes and Karolina wishes she could say no and mean it. Molly deserves to not have to deal with this shit.
She’s already been through so much and she’s still so young.
So she says nothing instead, tries not to clear her throat even though it’s itching and lets her eyes wander everywhere but to Molly.

Nico, still on the lounge next to her, her naked arms almost touching Karolina’s naked legs (so close she can feel the heat from her skin), is doing the same, staring resolutely at her nails.

Molly isn’t stupid.
“Oh. Okay.“

Gert winces, her hand landing on Molly’s back, rubbing slow circles.

“Listen Molls, we don’t know anything. Maybe they are just talking, strategizing.“

Nico looks like she may object to that but Gert throws her a glare so cutting that she just holds up her hands in surrender and sinks lower down on the lounger.

Molly shrugs off Gert’s hand, stands up with her arms crossed, kicks a pebble into the bushes.

“That wouldn’t be any better though, right? They’d still be talking about killing kids. Or about what happens now that they did kill someone. They are still killers.“

No one says anything.
What can they say? Karolina knows exactly how Molly is feeling, the anger and sadness, the grief.
The knowledge that no matter what their parents are or aren't doing this evening, if they’re just playing Jenga or having another satanic ritual, it won’t change what already happened.
They wont just get them back.

When the doorbell rings (because not everybody just invites themselves in, Gert, even if the door is open) all four of them are ripped out of their hopeless daydreams.
Chase and Alex arrive at the same time, already bickering over what Pizza toppings Alex had chosen, Chase already chewing on a piece hanging out of his mouth.
Karolina can see Gert roll her eyes at him but she still walks in his direction and he meets her in the middle, like two magnets pulled to each other.
Chase grins at her, all pepperoni and cheese, and Gert looks disgusted but she still wipes a bit of sauce from his cheek.

Karolina has to look away, it feels too private.
Her eyes meet Nico’s and they smile at each other, both thinking the same.
Finally. And: those idiots.
It feels good to love people like she loves her friends: Chase and Gert never make her jealous, only happy.
Nico looks away again, roped into a welcome from Alex, and Karolina turns to the side, stares at the pool once more. She can not see the ground from where she’s standing.
So enticing.
(Only happy, even though she’ll never have what they have.)

After they’ve eaten, after they’ve ignored the reason they are really having this sleepover for long enough, after conversation has run dry, has made room for the big elephant in the room:
they are all scattered around the pool, it’s only just passed seven and the sun is at it’s most beautiful.
Karolina has been trying very hard for the last hour not to stare at Nico too much, but the sun makes her hair look copper, her skin almost translucent, her eyes bigger and brighter.
They are sitting pretty much opposite from each other, the pool between them, and Karolina likes to pretend that the waves she makes with her feet in the water arrive at Nico’s side and whisper against her legs.
Sometimes she catches herself writing letters into the water, deep enough that no one will notice.
i love you i love you i love you.
Again and again.
Nico never looks up, the water at her side of the pool undisturbed except for the ripples her own legs cause.

Alex is the first to bring it up, because Alex always is, because he is braver than all of them in that aspect.
He comes back outside with a sprite for himself and a coke for Nico (zero, even though she likes light better) and without preamble changes the topic to why they are really here.

“I think we need to spy on them.“

He doesn’t even sit down, stands in the middle of Karolina’s back yard with a determined look in his eyes, one hand wrapped around the can, the other pushed into the pocket of his jeans.
There’s a certain strength about him, one that Karolina can’t find in herself anymore, that she searches for while looking in the mirror.

Chase is the first one to react, hands playing with a napkin, shredding it into little pieces that rain into his lap.

“Oh sure, let’s just get our CIA gear and go at it.“

Alex glares at him, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“I’m serious. Otherwise we’ll never know what they’re doing tonight and speculating will only make us crazy. We need to act!“

Nico is looking at him slightly amused, but with a dark undertone. When she speaks it is mocking, a little belittling.
Karolina tries to not remember her dreams. This is not the time.

“So what? We’ll take Gert’s car, inconspicuous as it is, and play stakeout?“

“Hey, my car is great!“

“So not my point.“

Alex sighs, rubbing his forehead: Karolina feels bad for him, and also, kinda agrees with him.
They can’t just sit around here and not do anything, not again.

“It’s not that complicated! All we need to do is drive to my house.
I know they’re meeting there, I heard mom talking about ordering food.
I go inside, say I forgot my phone or charger or something.
One of you keeps our parents distracted while I plant a bug in the office.“

He says it like it’s nothing, planting a bug, spying on their parents.
Karolina can feel the pain in her chest growing, the one that tells her “this is real. this is your life now. things will never be normal again“.

Chase shakes his head, eyes unbelieving.

“Where do you even get a bug from?“

Alex shrugs.

“I made one, it’s not that complicated. They got youtube videos for it.“

“Oh come on, this is crazy. I mean, I can’t be the only one…“ Chase turns to Gert but stops when he sees her face.
Karolina recognizes the look on her Gert’s face. She feels the way Karolina does, tired of not doing anything, of only siting by, knowing what is happening and ignoring it.
Chase slumps back in the lounger.

“I don’t believe this.“

Gert, for her part, looks a little sheepish but not apologetic.

“It’s not the worst idea! Besides, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have some evidence! Right now, if we decide to go to the police, we’re just some kids saying we saw our parents in a secret basement, in red robes, killing a girl that’s not even officially missing.
No one would believe us.“

Alex nods and Karolina can feel herself agreeing.
She’d never thought about it like that, going to the police not even an option in her mind, but Gert is right.
They have nothing proving what they saw.
And their parents are all rich, influential people. If they are even contemplating telling law enforcement they’ll need hard evidence.

“So this is decided then?“ Alex pushes.
His arms are crossed over his chest, his stare strong.
Karolina remembers, back in third grade, when she’d written her homework with a blue glitter pen and her teacher had failed her for it, Alex had that same look in his eyes then, calmly telling their teacher that nowhere did it say anything about what pen to use, that he had to grade Karolina based on the content of her essay.
She got a B+, her father had framed it and hung it on the fridge.
(That was back when a B+ was still an okay thing to have, when her parents adored her for her individuality, when they still cared about the stories she told about school.)

So, Karolina is the first to stand up and say yes. She’s the one who helps to convince Nico and Chase when they still think it’s a stupid idea.
She’s, also, the one who volunteers to go with Alex, to drive them there, to distract their parents while Alex plants his bug.
They all look at her, sceptic and surprised, no one more so than Alex himself, but she can’t help but smile.
It feels so good, to finally do something.
To be useful for once.

()()()()

(Two days ago Karolina had dreamed about a tall man without a face, wearing a suit and a beam of light.
They had stood at the edge of a cliff, his shoulder almost touching hers, much too close, and when Karolina looked down there was nothing nothing as far as she could see.
He’d turned to her, a bright light where his head should be but Karolina could still tell he was smiling.
“You know, don’t you?“ he’d asked.
Karolina said no and he threw his shooting star head back and laughed.
She couldn’t feel the wind against her skin, sun on her face. It was neither hot nor cold. She’d felt nothing except for the nausea in her stomach, the ominous way he took up space.
The man held out his hand, a big white ring on one finger, and looked out over the cliff.
“Come on. I’ll do it with you.“
Karolina had taken what he’d offered and once they were falling falling down he’d ripped his hand out of hers, wings unfolding from his back while the bracelet around her wrist grew heavier and heavier, taking her all the way down.

This dream could have meant something too, maybe, but once she woke up she had already forgotten all about it.
She never even remembered she had dreamed at all.)

()()()()

The car ride is awkward and Karolina feels bad to say that it’s her fault more than it’s Alex’s.
Has been her fault for a while now.
She’s been trying her best, really, but she knows that she has been nothing less of obvious in her inability to feel comfortable around Alex, and he doesn’t deserve it.
Doesn’t deserve the cold shoulder, forced smiles, the never looking him in the eyes.
The wide spasm she has built between the two of them.
But whenever she feels like maybe she’ll get over it, like she’ll be able to see Alex as her friend again instead of Nico’s boyfriend, he does something as simple as hold Nico’s hand softly, throw his arm around her shoulder and laugh into her hair, hide his face in her neck, love her like she’ll never be able to and Karolina breaks.
Alex notices, of course. He’s not stupid.

There’s a Billie Eilish song playing on the radio, almost too quiet to hear, and Karolina rolls down her window.
Alex has been watching her out of the corner of his eyes for a few minutes now but Karolina keeps ignoring it, eyes fixed on the road, hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel.
Alex turns in his seat a little.

“Thanks for backing me up with the others.“

Karolina shrugs, throws a small smile in his direction.

“No problem.“

It’s quiet again and she curses herself for forgetting how to talk to people, for being this bad at pretending.

“I don’t think Nico would have agreed to this if it wasn’t for you.“

Karolina chokes, almost swerves the car to the middle of the road. She knows even without looking in a mirror that her cheeks are probably a deep red.
Her hands start shaking on the steering wheel a little and she allows herself a glance at Alex.
He’s not looking at her, head turned to his window.
Karolina tries to get her breathing and heartbeat under control, tries to tell herself that Alex doesn’t know, that he’s just making conversation.
Not everything has a deeper meaning.

“I’m sure that’s not true. She trusts you.“

Her voice is steadier than she feels. Outside the sun is setting very slowly and Karolina is not ready to talk about her and Nico, in whatever capacity, to anyone. Alex least of all.

“Yeah, maybe.“

Karolina suddenly feels bad for Alex, for the resigned tone in his voice, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.

“Anyways, it’s a good plan. We can’t just keep doing nothing. You were right about that.“

He turns to her then, little smile on his lips. Karolina almost laughs at the fact that they all crave validation the way they do. They are not getting any from their parents right now, tell themselves they don’t want any from them, and it shows.

“Thanks.“

Karolina hums.
Alex stays turned in her direction but the awkwardness has subsided a little.
Karolina’s hands are still gripping the steering wheel too hard but that’s more because Keaton Henson is singing “and this is the world as I see it now, turns out that nothing is fair“ on the radio and sometimes songs feel like a punch in the gut.
She tries not to listen too intently to the lyrics but the car is otherwise silent again.

They arrive to the Wilder’s part of town, “please do not break my heart, I think it’s had enough pain to last the rest of my life“ playing and Karolina can’t bring herself to change the station.

Alex saves her.

“Can I ask you something?“

She wants to say no but now the words “you don’t have to make any promises, love, I’m afraid I might die for you now“ are eating a hole into her stomach and she wants to press her eyes together against the onslaught of feelings and flashbacks to her dreams, but she can’t because she’s driving.

So she just nods.

“Did I do anything to you?“

It’s not the question she had feared the most (“what’s going on with you and Nico?“) but it’s not much better.
There isn’t really an answer she can give him, after all.

“No of course not. Why would you ask that?“

They both know she’s playing stupid and Alex isn’t shy about it.

“Come on. I’m not blind. I know things have been weird in general but you haven’t even looked in my direction for weeks now.“

What is she supposed to say to that? You’re right, but seeing you with Nico makes me hate you a little bit. I know it’s not your fault, I just love her so much. My heart is hurting whenever you hold hands or kiss or even just look in her direction.
You’re allowed to do that, you can stare at her on her especially pretty days, and tuck her hair behind her ears whenever you feel like it. I can’t even hug her without feeling like everything will fall apart, like I’m destroying everything.

Karolina leans her head to the side so the wind can caress her hair.

“It’s not your fault.“ she says. And: “I’m sorry.“

Alex stares at her, either having expected more of an explanation or no answer at all, but Karolina can’t give him more than this.
He understands after a few seconds, turns back to the front, the Wilder mansion looming at the end of the street like a villains lair. All massive, and white and beautiful.

()()()()

Alex decides to ring the bell, like this isn’t his home, his house, like his key isn’t pressing painfully into his thigh.
Karolina knows: he is scared too. Want’s to give their parents a few seconds to hide whatever they’ve been doing, to play normal parents again.
Karolina is fine with that. She’s not ready to walk in on them in red robes either. Some things are just too real.

It doesn’t take long though, not nearly long enough to change into normal clothes or make the way up from the hidden basement, before Mrs. Wilder opens the door.
There’s a glass of wine in her hand, a smile on her face like she’d just been laughing over something, and her blouse is white and immaculate.
No blood, no robes, only Alex’s mom.

She looks surprised to see them, but not unhappy, and that’s the thing that throws them the most.

“Alex. And Karolina. What are you doing here? Weren’t you having your sleepover?“

Karolina just blinks at her, at the warm eyes and the warmer tone with which she says Alex’s name.
She almost feels bad now, coming here with the plan they have. Like they’re the ones being unfair.

Alex is faster than her in reacting and she realizes that the both of them came here with the same expectations. Prepared for the worst.

“Hi Mom. I forgot my laptop charger. Karolina was nice enough to drive me over.“

Karolina waves like a moron when Mrs. Wilder smiles at her.

“Alright, come on in. You can say hello to the others while you're here.“

Alex and Karolina glance at each other once Mrs. Wilder has her back to them, Alex furrowing his brow and Karolina shrugging her shoulders.

Mrs. Wilder steers them into the living room, a big table full of food stretching along one of the walls and the rest of their parents all with glasses of wine in their hands.

“Look who’s here.“ Mrs. Wilder says and for the first time Karolina thinks she can hear something aside from polite niceness in her voice. She’d say it was fear if she didn’t think Catherine Wilder was incapable of being afraid.

The others all turn to them and Karolina almost flinches when her mothers ice blue eyes meet hers. She tries to smile her perfect Karolina smile, her bodies automatic reaction to being in the presence of Leslie Dean.
Stacie and Dale Yorkes wave at the two of them, hands and mouths full of food, while Mr. Wilder nods at her and comes over to clasp a hand on his sons shoulder.
Janet Stein smiles, the same smile Chase has, his real one, while her husband doesn’t really pay attention to them at all.
Karolina is almost glad about that. She can never quite stop herself from becoming angry whenever she has to interact with him
His cold and stony eyes make her think about the days Chase comes to school with long sleeved shirts even though it’s the middle of summer, or the way he sometimes flinches when someone talks to loud or his lacrosse buddies slap him on the back.
Karolina doesn’t really hate people but she’s pretty sure she hates Victor Stein.

Mr. and Mrs. Minoru have thrown small smiles in their direction when Karolina notices that her Dad is nowhere in sight.
Before she can stop herself she turns in her mothers direction, a confused frown on her face.

“Where’s Dad?“

“Your father had a meeting today and sadly couldn’t make it.“

The voice that answers her isn’t one she knows and she can’t help but notice the way everybody in the room suddenly stands up straighter, doesn’t miss her mother’s eyes lightning up.
Alex and her both turn around to the sound of footsteps behind them and Karolina almost stumbles back.

The man standing in the doorway to the living room is tall, taller than any of the other parents, wearing a suit that looks like it was made for him and a smile that is sharper than a knife.
The second Karolina looks at him theres a sharp pain in the back of her head and she winces.
For a moment her whole body feels numb and she feels uprooted, like her feet are leaving the ground, like something in her brain is tearing, a glistening light behind her eyes.

Then it’s gone, but the nausea in her stomach stays, the alarm bells ringing somewhere far far away.

The man in the suit comes closer, eyes on her before he turns to Alex, who has stepped up to stand closer to her, and offers his hand.
(Something in Karolina is screaming at Alex not to take it.)

“I apologize, how rude of me not to introduce myself.“

He shakes Alex’s hand and then focuses back onto Karolina, the same hand stretched out in her direction.

“My name is Jonah, I’m an … old friend of your parents.“

Karolina doesn’t notice accepting the handshake, only feels the ring on Jonah’s finger pressing painfully cold into her skin.
He is still staring at her, holding her hand captive between his, and Karolina can feel Alex fidget next to her.

“Nice to meet you.“ Karolina says, if only to break the weird silence between them.
Jonah finally lets go of her hand and she tugs it back to her side quickly, hiding it in the pockets of her jeans.
Her skin where he touched it feels like she burned herself. There are shivers running down her back with every second he keeps staring at her.

His eyes take in all of her face, before landing once again on her eyes. His are blue like hers, like her mothers, like her fathers are.
They bore into her until she can’t help but look away, feeling more uncomfortable than she has ever felt.

“Oh believe me.“ Jonah says, and she can feel his eyes still staring holes into the side of her head.
“The pleasure is all mine.“

Her skin is crawling.
She feels Alex step closer to her, his arm almost brushing hers, and she’s suddenly eternally grateful for his presence.

“We are really sorry to interrupt, I just need to grab my charger real quick and we’ll be gone.“

His hand closes around her forearm, softly tugging her with him in the direction of the office, which is just next to the living room.
Karolina is confused for a second, their plan being that she stay behind and distract the others, but once she looks up and into Alex’s eyes, seeing the worry in them and his clenched jaw, she just follows him to the other side of the room.
The skin on her neck prickles and she knows, if she’d turn around Jonah’s eyes would still be on their withdrawing forms.

Before they can reach the doorway though Alex’s mom steps in their way, the smile still on her lips, but forced now, almost painful.

“Here.“ she holds out her hand to Alex and Karolina can see the white cord in it.Alex stares at his mother and then at the charger in her hand.
“It was in the kitchen. You shouldn’t just leave your stuff laying around Alex.“

Alex takes the charger but his movements are slow, almost lethargic.
Karolina understands.
She feels completely overtaken too. Nothing is happening like she thought it would.

“I…thanks but…“ Alex looks around them, at all their parents still staring at them, except for Karolina’s mom who is staring at Jonah, a look on her face Karolina doesn’t want to identify.

Mrs. Wilder puts her arm around Alex’s shoulder and guides him in the direction of the door, Karolina following listlessly since Alex is still gripping her forearm.

They are almost at the entrance when Mrs. Wilder turns her son around, looks him in the eye.
Karolina is standing next to Alex, trying hard not to look back to where they came from and still feeling ice blue, emotionless eyes on her.

“You shouldn't come over unannounced. Those meetings are private.“
Catherine Wilder doesn’t sound angry, not at them, instead there’s that sliver of fear again, a little clearer now, and Karolina shivers.
“This can’t happen again.“

With those words she pushes the two of them the last few meters and out the door, closes it behind her without looking back, and the humid, thick summer air slaps Karolina in the face.

The both of them are still standing in front of Alex’s house a minute later, both of them trying to work out what just happened.

“What the fuck?“ Alex says. His voice more of a spitting than anything else but there’s a shaking to it that Karolina can feel in all her bones.

“Yeah.“ is all she can get out. She’s nauseous, and she’s not sure if it’s because of Jonah’s intimate stares or the ominous air surrounding him or maybe because of the blinding white light flaring up in front of her eyes again and again.
She frees her arm from Alex’s grasp, a soft tug enough, and sinks down onto one of the stairs leading to the door.
Her whole body feels clammy and weak.
Something’s building in her chest, a certain pressure, and she’d love to take off her bracelet for a few minutes. Hopes that would make it better.

She can see Alex’s legs in front of her, shuffling his shoes against the ground.

“You okay?“ he asks.

Karolina nods, but her shoulders drop even lower and her breaths are still not as deep as she’d like them to be. She thinks this time even Alex can tell that she’s lying.

“You wanna get out of here?“
Alex is looking down at her with a smile on his face that’s fake but still comforting, his hand in front of him ready to help her up.
Karolina wants to take back everything bad she ever thought about him, all the times she ignored him because of her own incompetence in overcoming her feelings.
Alex is good and Alex is her friend and Alex didn’t leave her alone with creepy Jonah even if it cost them their plan.
She nods and takes his hand.

When they’re at the car Alex automatically makes his way over to the drivers side and she has no energy left to protest, just throws him the keys and gets in herself.
Once on the road he rolls down the windows again, changes the station to some Taylor Swift songs and turns the volume up loud enough that Karolina can’t hear herself think.

She’s so very grateful.

()()()()

Back at her house the others are waiting out by the pool.
The weather is still too hot, the water still too enticing and the moon is extra bright today, the sky still a little pink, not completely black yet.
Nico is still too pretty, her feet drawing waves into the water.
Just seeing her makes Karolina’s jaw unclench, relaxes her shoulders, gives her back all the air she lost because of Jonah’s cold and unflinching eyes, steals it again because of other reasons. Nico reasons.

Karolina must still look as bad as she felt just a second ago because as soon as Nico sees her her eyebrows draw together and she stands up to go to her side.

“You okay?“ she asks, and there is real concern in her voice, eyes soft and brown, beautiful brown.
Karolina can only smile at her.

“Just a headache.“ she mumbles when it seems that Nico wants a real answer.
She’s not even lying, her head is killing her. Bright lights erupting whenever she moves her eyes.

“How was it?“ Chase asks, and Alex looks in her direction once before he explains, in all detail, the weirdness of what just transpired.
When he gets to the part about Jonah he halts, not quite sure how to formulate his eery energy and the way it felt to be in his presence.
Like a war you’d already lost.

“He was creepily fixated on Karolina.“ he says, eyes going in her direction but Karolina keeps looking at the ground, unwilling to talk about this.
“Like, he couldn’t stop staring at her.“

She can feel the others staring at her, hears the rustle of Nico’s clothes as she moves closer, can almost feel her warm breaths against the side of her neck.

“He was just weird.“ she mumbles, lips pressed into the palm of her hand and eyes still fixed to the ground.
Alex keeps talking, tells the others why they didn’t get to plant the bug, what his mother told him on their way out.
Karolina can hear the others chime in, discussing what they are supposed to do now, but she can’t concentrate on them.
Her mind is still back at the house, and, even earlier, at the pool, when she was still alone. That hour she’d lost.
The things she’s been ignoring. The constant nausea she feels.
Every morning she wakes up, how she’s always missing something.
When she saw Jonah, that first time…she wasn’t surprised.
Shocked, maybe. But not surprised.
Like she’d been expecting him, like she’d known him before.
There was almost something like a memory, she’s sure of it, close enough to grasp, before the blinding light and the pain came and she’d lost it again.

She seems to be losing a lot these days.
Time and things she should remember and her composure.

There’s a shuffling next to her and then something warm and soft gripping her hand.
Karolina looks down and sees Nico’s fingers entwined with hers. Karolina’s slightly tanner skin against Nico’s pale one.
When Karolina raises her head a little their eyes meet and Nico nudges their shoulders together, a silent question.

For a moment Karolina thinks about telling her, about hiding her face in Nico’s neck and whispering “I think there’s something wrong with me“.
Imagines Nico holding her close and helping her breathe.
Karolina isn’t going to do it though, she knows herself good enough for that by now.

Nico shouldn’t have to help her with this, not when all of them have more than enough of their own problems.
Nobody should have to deal with her.
She’s fine, it’s fine.

Nico squeezes her hand once, leans a little closer, and Karolina tries to adapt her breathing to Nico’s. The calm and slow way her chest moves.
She can do this. She can do it.
Everything is gonna be okay.

She squeezes Nico’s hand back. It’s enough for now.

()()()()

End Part 2

Chapter Text

()()()()

Summer is hotter now than it ever was.

Karolina can feel herself melting, at night, in her bed: the sheets stick to her body, her skin feels like fire, an endless burning in her veins.

Also, this may be because of the nightmares she keeps having. The ones she wakes up from panting and crying sometimes, confused always. Never remembers.

She feels herself slipping away, slowly but surely, like watching a car crash happen in slow-motion, knowing she can do nothing to stop it.

There’s a certain desperation in everything she does now, Karolina somehow knows there is not enough time left.

(Some days she spends hours in front of a mirror trying to find herself in the person staring back at her. There are the eyes, blue and tired, the nose, her mothers, her smile and bright teeth and golden hair and everything that has always been there but it’s different now.

She doesn’t know who she is anymore.

She feels like clawing at her skin, the rosy cheeks, the freckles in full bloom.

She feels like throwing her fist through the glass, shards staining her hands red, dripping dripping dripping.

She is, mostly, becoming scared of herself. She doesn't know who she is anymore, so she doesn’t know what she’s capable of either.)

Summer is hotter now than it ever was.

Everything is melting and her mind is too.

()()()()

Sunday evening, two days after they tried to take action against their parents for the first time and failed, finds Nico in her bed.

Karolina tries not to be too obvious in her staring but Nico is, forever, the kind of beautiful that captures her completely. Which only means that Nico is being Nico.

That was always enough to get Karolina’s heart racing.

Karolina’s window is open, the door to the small balcony too, and the air is slowly losing some of it’s oppressing heat, the sky growing pink and purple.

Nico is still only in cotton shorts and a tanktop, both black of course, and her hair is piled on top of her head messily, single strands sticking to the back of her sweaty neck.

She’s starfishing, limbs stretched out to every side of her, schoolbooks strewn around her in a circle long forgotten.

Karolina can’t take her eyes off of her from where she’s sitting on her desk chair, turning left and right, toes toying with the carpet under her bare feet.

(Nico had been the one to call and ask if she could come over to study.

Karolina tried hard not to seem too eager, tried hard to stay cool. Probably did not succeed.

But when Nico had rung the bell downstairs and Karolina had opened the door for her she couldn’t help but smile too bright and wide.

Nico had smiled back and it had seemed honest. Had stolen Karolina’s breath away.)

The both of them gave up trying to concentrate on biology about half an hour ago and since then it’s been silent, the soothing sounds of The XX playing in the background from where Nico had paired her phone with Karolina’s bluetooth speakers.

It always thrills Karolina anew whenever she realizes that they can be comfortable together like this, without talking or doing anything, just existing in the same space.

Nico’s been staring at the glow in the dark stars on Karolina’s ceiling and Karolina has been staring at Nico. Has tried not to and then given up.

She remembers that her and Nico have always been good at this, back when they were younger and friends for the first time, before Amy.

They’d spend many afternoons this way, listening to music and calming each other down just by being together.

A gift, really, that Karolina had taken for granted back then. She doesn’t now.

Cherishes every moment they spend like this, doing nothing, because there was a time she thought she’d never have this again with anybody, much less Nico.

She can feel the seconds ticking by and thanks the stars for every one of them.

For the small noises Nico makes whenever a song she loves comes on, the way she shifts every five minutes, the hairs she blows out of her face when they land on her nose.

Karolina is normally a restless person, has always been, even as a child, too full of energy, but she wouldn’t mind spending days like this.

Nico turns her face to her in a lazy move.

Her eyes are blinking in slow blinks, almost hazy, and Karolina understands why.

The heat has the same effect on her. Turns her softer and languid in everything she does. Makes time move slower, robs her of energy and life in a way that’s not necessarily bad just … tiring.

“We didn’t get anything done today, did we?“ Nico asks and doesn’t sound very sad or surprised about it.

Karolina looks at the schoolbooks on her desk, still open to the same chapter she started on, just as Nico knocks one of her notebooks to the ground while stretching.

They both laugh as their eyes meet.

Karolina is the first one to look away because she’s scared of what Nico will see otherwise.

She throws her head back, sinking deeper into the chair she’s sitting in and stretching her legs out.

“Can you blame us? I can’t even think in this heat.“

Nico only nods, turns her eyes back to the ceiling above her.

Karolina can see her gaze wandering over the different constellations Molly and her put together, her hands twitching at her side like she wants to trace them.

Karolina can relate.

“Do you miss it?“ Nico says, her voice soothing like the music is, curious in a subtle way.

“Miss what?“ Karolina asks, because she has no idea what Nico is talking about, is too enamored by the girl in her bed to pretend she does.

Nico shrugs, lifts her arm to point to the ceiling.

“This. The flying. Being up in the stars.“

Karolina follows Nico’s fingers, slowly sweeps her eyes over the glowing constellations above them. She can’t help but think about some of the dreams she can remember, the ones that had her gliding through the sky. How she had always felt free and light and completely herself.

She sighs.

“Can’t really miss something you never had.“

Nico turns to her, and Karolina feels her breath catch in her chest at the look in her eyes, the intensity, the slight bend of her neck.

They stay like this for a few seconds and Karolina doesn’t breathe once.

Nico turns back then, her eyes lingering on Karolina longer than the rest of her, and Karolina can feel air rush back into her lungs.

“I think you can.“ Nico says. Her fingers twitch on the blankets and Karolina wants to reach out, grab them, hold her hand and never let go.

()()()()

(She wakes up on monday morning, at 3am, choking on sobs.

Her hair is wrapped around her neck and for a second she’s panicking, grabbing at it too rough and flinching a second later.

The oversized t-shirt, the short shorts she wore to bed, are all drenched.

Something heavy is sitting on her chest.

She can see, outside, through the balcony door she left open after Nico went home, the first signs of a sunrise.

Karolina, for a few scary seconds, has no idea where she is.

Has also no idea why she was expecting to find an old and creaky bed underneath her, mold on the walls, moves her arm next to her like she’s about to grab something from a bedside table even though she knows she doesn’t have one on that side.

The stars on her ceiling are making her dizzy.

There is a picture in her mind, of the room she thought she was in, but just as she’s reaching for it…it’s gone.

Then, she’s sitting up, panting, a confused mess the way she almost always is now upon waking up.

Moon shaped cuts upon her palms tell her that she’d been balling her fists again in sleep.

The mess her hair is tells her she’d been tossing and turning.

Once again, Karolina is left feeling shaky and wrong. The dizziness is still there half an hour later when she decides it’s gotten light enough outside to go for a jog.

The stairs don’t creak on her way down, they never did, but she’s still surprised.

The house is still a mausoleum, a ghost town, a museum of lies, and she swears she feels the stares of her and her parents portrait-selves on her back while she walks down the hall.

All of them harsh and judging, screaming in her head.

“You should remember, Karolina. You should remember!

The things you keep forgetting are important, and you’re ruining everything!“

She runs faster than normal that morning and she still feels like she’ll never catch up.)

()()()()

The next week almost passes in a blur.

Heat and hopelessness and the stress of school, so insignificant yet still real, lingering in the background, always.

Teachers try to teach them and don't realize that they are living in a different reality now.

Karolina finds it hard to care about algebra when it feels like the end of the world is near.

There is a spasm between the six of them and the rest of the world.

Something to do with knowing what’s hidden in basements of the houses you live in.

They spend their lunch breaks outside under the big tree, a circle of former misfits turned social recluses, and aside from the music escaping Molly’s headphones they spend them silent.

To Karolina, in her more morbid moments, it feels like they are attending funerals for the old lives they used to live.

On Monday it’s Alex, his nintendo laying forgotten in the grass next to him while he stares at nothing, furrowed brows and set jaw. When the break is over the console disappears deep into the inside of his backpack, never to be seen again.

Tuesday Molly and Gert don’t touch their parent-made lunches. No green juice wets their lips, the whole-bread lettuce sandwiches are left for the birds to pick on. Molly buys herself a soda and sips it without shame, Gert slowly rips the little handwritten note to pieces until only the words “we love yo-“ are winking up at Karolina, a menacing tone to them that she’s maybe imagining.

Wednesday sees Chase completely ignoring the exam papers he’d gotten back, the red A thrown aside, no pride or fear shown on his face. When it starts to rain unexpectedly they are left behind, wilting in a puddle until the marker runs the water red, like blood, while all of them are hurrying inside, bags over their heads.

On the way in Karolina can see a broken lacrosse stick poking out of a trash can, almost like it’s trying to crawl free.

There is Thursday, then, where she arrives at the tree to see a magazine with her Dad’s face on it, the headline talking about the new movie he’ll be starring in, one Karolina has never heard of, had no idea he was auditioning for, and finds she doesn’t care.

When the bell rings she rolls it together and, once no one is looking, folds her book of gibborim copy into it before burying it deep into the dumpster behind school.

On Friday Nico sits down next to them the way she always does, her knee almost brushing Karolina’s. The book she takes out is the same it has been the whole week, and she spends her break no different than she has before. It takes Karolina a while before she realizes, before she understands, that maybe there is nothing for Nico to bury, to say goodbye to.

Their eyes meet, a little too long, and the next time Nico turns a page her fingers brush against Karolina’s for a fraction of a second.

They are all grieving, Karolina thinks, for what they have lost; but maybe some of them have been doing it for longer than others.

(Nico’s touch is warm and lovely and stays with Karolina the rest of the day. A phantom, a could-have-been. A reminder, too: not mine not mine not mine. Never will be.)

()()()()

Nico invites her over for movie night on Saturday. Just the two of them, she had said, like the old times.

Karolina remembers giggling in bed together and looking at magazines and sneaking into Amy’s room to try on her clothes. Nico, so small even then, climbing onto the kitchen counter to steal some of the chocolates hidden there. Karolina, biting her hair nervously, playing lookout while feeling both anxious and excited about their rule breaking.

She’s giddy for the whole day, so much so that her parents, being home for once, look at her weirdly when she hums while making herself a smoothie. So much so that she almost forgets about everything else and smiles at them.

(She feels sick afterwards, almost throws up. How easy it had been for her to ignore what happened to Destiny just because the girl she likes invited her over. How fake she is in her righteousness, in her fight against their parents. The shame she feels, so deserved.)

Her good mood vanishes when Nico opens the door with tear tracks on her cheeks, barely noticeable but Karolina notices everything about her.

The other girls hair is in a bit of a disarray and she's wearing a shirt from drama camp six years ago, a little short at the hem, a little the cause of Karolina’s sweaty palms.

“Hey.“ she says, almost like she’s surprised that Karolina’s here, and isn't it funny, how small a think can be to break Karolina’s heart.

“I can go.“ she answers, because sometimes her mouth is too fast for her brain, a habit that had Leslie Dean always clench her teeth and throw her dirty looks.

(It’s a little comforting, actually, that after 16 years her mothers conditioning hasn't rotted out all of her quirks yet, all of the things that separate Karolina from a very lifelike robot.)

Nico looks at her for a second, the head tilt, the slightly furrowed brow.

“Sorry.“ Karolina says, because she’s always been good at apologizing. “I just meant … if you don’t want company right now.“

Here’s where she learns that she’s completely hopeless when it comes to dealing with a tear-stained Nico, with a has-been-crying Nico.
(She doesn't say sad because Nico is always a little sad, always a little further away from happiness than everyone around her. Has smiles that break Karolina’s heart because while they are honest they are also still exhausted.

She just wants Nico to be happy.)

“No!“ Nico’s voice rips her out of her daydreams, loud and a little panicked, and maybe Karolina has this all wrong, maybe Nico didn’t invite her over and afterwards something happened that made her cry and now she doesn’t actually want Karolina there anymore, maybe Nico invited her over after it happened, because it happened.

Weirder things have happened. She flies. Nico has magic. Gert a dinosaur. This could be entirely in the realm of possibilities.

(She can’t make herself believe. Her skin still itches with the feeling of unwanted unwanted unwanted. She is such a burden.)

Nico grabs her wrist, loose but certain, and tugs her inside, the cool, white walls closing them in, the door shutting and it’s such a contrast, suddenly, from the warm outside, both in temperature and color. The greens and yellows, the sun. In here, the Minoru house with its electric doors and windows, its white and grey and black.

Cold and distant like her own house, but still so different.

(The Deans, they have plants and carpets, water pitchers out of colorful chrystal and windows big enough that they never need to turn on lamps during the day. But there is still a pressure in the halls, a loneliness in the bones of the building that will never leave Karolinas spine.

The plants are watered by strangers, the water pitchers and glasses arranged for photo ops, carpets always pristine. No pictures of a small Karolina with mud on her hands and holes in her jeans, no snapshots. Only a house full of actors, actors, actors.

The Minorus: marble kitchen counters and tablets on the fridge, on the stove, in the alcoves in halls, communication only through texts and robotic voices. There are pictures on the dressers, of a dark-haired girl in pigtails, missing front teeth and dimples, but it’s only ever Nico.

The ghost haunting the house is present in everything, in the absence of things, in the door that’s forever closed opposite of Nico’s room, in the empty places on the mantelpiece where dust is just beginning to settle, where before there were picture frames of a different, smiling, dark haired girl, with science trophies and fencing medals. With hope in her eyes, light and love and innocence.)

Nico looks Karolina in the eyes, dark, soulful wells, and smiles, sheepish.

“Sorry. I’m still looking forward to this. I just lost time, I was napping.“ There is a blush, high on her cheeks, at those words, all the more obvious through the absence of make-up.

Karolina is forever impossibly endeared by the person in front of her, her heart sings of love and love and love.

“I’ll stay.“ she says, and if her voice is a little breathless it’s no ones business but her own.

They hide up in Nico’s room and watch movies for the whole evening, blinds drawn closed, keeping the thick summer air out, AC on high so they can curl up under blankets like it’s not the middle of summer in LA.

Karolina is rigid and on guard for the whole first hour, trying not to touch Nico, trying not to breathe too loud, trying not to think too loud: I love you I love you. (Say it only twice and maybe it won’t be true.)

It is hard, because Karolina’s body and mind are so attuned to Nico, are only ever really comfortable when they are around her, when she sheds all the shapes of her she’s been molded into and remains only herself. The power Nico has.

Then, after the first movie is almost over, Nico slumps lower into the sheets, her head on height with Karolina’s collar bone.

Karolina is only wearing a top with spaghetti straps and so her arms are bare, Nico’s cheek resting on her shoulder, which is freckled and naked and hot to the touch.

She can’t help but lean into it then, all her bones sighing and melting away, leaving her the way she always wants to be around the other girl: happy and thoughtless and just herself.

They watch Les Miserables later, because Nico is still a theater and musical nerd at heart, and by then it’s already dark out, no slivers of light stealing in through the blinds, the two of them only illuminated by the brightness of the tv.

Karolina hasn’t really been able to concentrate on the movie, too distracted by Nico’s hand laying next to her leg, her own arm resting on her thigh, and how easy it would be to reach over, curl around her.

There’s the scene then though, the one she’d forgotten about (because they’ve been here before: watching les mis in Nico’s bedroom), where Eponine is shot, laying in Marius arms.

“I kept it from you.“ she says, and Karolina is already biting her tongue till it bleeds.

She can’t help but look over at Nico, beautiful in the blue light of tv, at the tear trailing down her cheek.

Eponine is singing, and it’s like the words are coming from Karolina herself. She doesn’t know why, has never tried to die for Nico even though she knows she would, but it feels like they’ve been in the exact same position Marius and Eponine are in.

“You’re here, that’s all I need to know.“ and Karolina’s chest seizes up, her breaths coming quick and sharp.

“Just hold me now and let it be.“ Her heart having palpations, a pain at the back of her head, an itch in her brain.

“I’ll sleep in your embrace at last.“ There are flashes and suddenly she’s laying on the cold ground somewhere, pain in her abdomen, Nico hovering over her. She’s in Nico’s bedroom again, then, but there are shards all around and warm blood under her, her legs are numb. Another flash: a gun in her mouth, the trigger under her own finger, and Nico in front of her, nodding, saying something…

Nico, the real one, with her hair tickling Karolina’s neck, moves and she’s back again, in the dark, with a headache and Eponine taking her last breath. A veil over her eyes making everything fuzzy.

“And rain…will make the flowers..“ Karolina lifts her hand and brushes away the tear running down Nico’s cheek, the softest of touches, and she lingers.

It’s like everything is coming into stark focus suddenly, she snaps back to where she is, the sound of rain on the TV, the sheets against her legs, the pounding in her heart.

Nico stiffens and turns around, slowly, looks at Karolina, who still has her hand on her cheek, who can’t make herself move, who is seized by panic, dark, ugly panic that is roaring through her body now. 

Her hand drops, but it’s not a controlled thing it’s just her body shutting down, her muscles seizing up.

Her and Nico are still staring at each other and the musical is just forgotten sounds in the distance.

Karolina can’t speak.

“Alex and I had a fight.“ Nico says. Her eyes are still glued to Karolina’s and they are wide, like Karolina imagines her own to be.

Karolina swallows.

“Oh.“

Did you break up? She wants to ask. Her fingers are twitching against her leg.

“Are you okay?“ comes out instead, which is better, which she is grateful for.

Nico, still in a weird stupor herself, eyes never leaving Karolina’s except to flicker down to the blonde's hand, once, twice, with the three freckles on the knuckles and the little scar at the wrist from where she broke it when she was eleven, tripping over the too high shoes she was made to wear at a Gibborim Event, swallows.

“I am.“

“That’s good.“ It comes out a whisper, far too intimate, and the panic is still a hot, burning thing.

Nico nods. “It’s why I was so, weird, when you got here.“

The tear tracks, Karolina thinks, with a sudden bout of anger at Alex. How dare he make Nico cry.

But that’s unfair, she reminds herself. She doesn’t know what happened, and Alex is her friend too.

“You’re not weird.“ she says, which has nothing to do with what they are talking about, really, but it makes the corners of Nico’s mouth turn up, so she doesn’t regret it.

“Hmmh.“ Nico humms.

They are still staring at each other and the air is strangely charged, full of a static that Karolina can’t explain, and she’s just waiting to wake up, any minute now, this must be some kind of dream, she doesn’t get these moments with Nico…

There is a loud bang, suddenly, that makes the both of them flinch, and when Karolina turns to where it came from she sees the gun.

She’d forgotten about the movie, about the war going on on tv. Someone else died and they are singing again, voices coming together in beautiful harmony, and Karolina doesn’t know why she’d expected pain the second she heard the sound of a gun firing, when it should have been obvious that it was just Les Mis.

Nico turns away from her, watches the tv again, and Karolina does the same, albeit slower, movements robotic.

She still has a headache, she notices, one that’s ebbing and flowing and filling up her head, but it’s unimportant, in relation to everything else that just happened.

The panic in her body is like a growling beast, a dragon, curling its tail around itself and laying down to rest somewhere between Karolina’s ribs, for now. Sharp teeth and claws and spine. 

There was something there, just a minute ago, between her and Nico and the unspoken words in the divide.

Something that is still lingering, in the way Nico is holding herself a little straighter now, playing with the hem of her shirt, in the way Karolina is full of confusion and fear and just coming off of half a panic attack but she still wants to smile, is finding it increasingly hard not to.

They keep watching the movie.

And once it ends, Nico gets up and puts on bridemaids, and they spend two hours laughing until their stomachs hurt.

Somewhere in between, Nico relaxes again, leans closer, until her head is once again resting against Karolina’s upper arm and she can smell the shampoo Nico always uses, can count her lashes when she looks down.

In a moment of dumb bravery, Karolina leans down, puts her cheek against the crown of Nico’s head, scrunches her nose against the hair tickling it, and is so stupidly, completely happy she forgets all about the flashbacks to moments that never happened to her, the warm blood underneath her body that she could taste, the gun in her mouth and her absolute, unflinching willingness to pull the trigger. Her headache remains.

(Karolina dreams of explosions that night, thunderstorms and rain, and no one dying but the sky.

She wakes up to sunlight and black hair tickling her nose, remembers only Nico Nico Nico.

Something in her head is stirring, slowly waking up, full of anger and rage.

Scratching at the walls of her mind.

Waiting to be freed.

She nuzzles her nose into Nico’s shoulder, closes her eyes again, and ignores all the ways in which she's lying to herself.)

()()()()

It happens more and more though.

Sometimes she wakes up with her head splitting from pain, with a black hole where memories should be.

Sometimes she’ll be at school and everything will be fine, and then Molly says something that gives her whiplash only because it feels like it happened before, like she’s living through this moment again, and the headaches will start then too.

Every time she tries to explain or googles it all that she gets back is “Deja-vu“. But Karolina knows what a deja-vu is, what it feels like, and this isn’t it. This is more, sinister in a way she doesn’t understand, important and all encompassing.

There is the day Alex drops his plate at lunch and her hand’s just there, catching it, like she knew it would happen.

Or when she tugs Gert to the side just before Chase tries to push her into the pool.

When Molly tells a story Karolina asks too often if she’s sure she hasn’t told her before, and Molly looks at her confused, a little annoyed. “I’m sure. It just happened this afternoon. This is the first time I’m seeing you today.“

There are bigger things too, tough.

The next time she sees Jonah, Karolina feels sick for the whole three days before. Her heart is beating too fast constantly, her hands are always clammy and she feels continuously on the edge of a panic attack.

It gets bad enough that the others don’t really leave her alone, someone is always walking with her to and from classes, Chase carries her backpack without a word, Gert doesn’t even try to say anything about the weird tension between Nico and her, Alex gives her his notes from all the classes they have together without her having to ask because he notices that she’s not really in any state of mind to write them herself and Nico… Nico just keeps throwing her these looks. Long and concerned and much too heavy for Karolina, who has just decided that she won’t think of Nico as anything more than a friend anymore, that she’s through with that.

She’s done with getting her hopes up because of the smallest, most ridiculous things, with having her heart broken day in day out.

By day three, a Tuesday, her nausea and dizziness and headaches get so bad that she spends the better part of the school day in the nurses office, curled up on a cot with an icepack on her forehead and neck.

By the time last period comes and goes Karolina can’t concentrate on anything for more than thirty seconds before she feels like throwing up and her hands are shaking so bad that she can’t button up her own cardigan.

Gert, who’s picking her up to walk her to Chase’s car so he can drive her home, fastens them for her, brow furrowed deep under the rim of her glasses. She opens her mouth once, twice, to say something but when she sees the way Karolina is kind of swaying on her feet and blinking slow, sluggish blinks, she stops, doesn't say anything in the end.

Chase does though.

Drops her off at home, walks around the side of his car to open the door for her, grabs her elbow to help her stand and then keeps holding it, eyes deep and serious.

“Maybe you should see a doctor, Kar. You’re not getting better.“

And because Karolina feels a little bit like dying, has been feeling that way for three days now, she even means it when she tells him that she will.

On her way to the front door the pounding in her head gets unbearable, it feels like her brain is being shredded to pieces, like sirens are going off in every crevice of her mind.

Karolina thinks maybe she even blacks out there, for a second, because one moment she’s opening the heavy metal gate leading up to their walkway and the next she’s closing their front door behind her, silence embracing her except for a ringing in her ears.

“Something is very wrong.“ she keeps thinking, the ringing growing shriller and shriller with every step she takes, until she steps into the kitchen, her mother at the counter like an angel in white. Everything about her blinding.

“Karolina.“ she says, almost inaudible over the ringing. “You’re home. Good. We have a visitor.“

Karolina follows her hand to where it’s indicating, the black, shining shoes, pressed suit pants, blazer and pristine white shirt. The cufflinks, polished and gleaming G’s, sitting at exactly the right angle. And even higher up, then, the face she still remembers - high cheekbones, strong jaw, thin lips. The second Karolina’s eyes meet those of Jonah every noise in her head stops, leaving only a dull silence, muffled pounds - like someone’s knocking at the back of her mind, waiting to be let in.

“Hello Karolina.“ Jonah says, voice somehow everywhere at the same time. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again.“

Oh. Karolina thinks. Of course.

She should have known.

She remembers, after all, how she felt the first time she saw him - helpless, like a pig at the slaughter house.

The same way she’s been feeling ever since she woke up three days ago.

A little bit like she’s already dead.

(There was also this: the Monday after the sleepover at Nico’s place, Karolina arrives at school only to see Nico step out of Alex’s car, his arm around her shoulders the second they are next to each other, and she doesn’t feel anything.

She already had, after all, experienced all the heartache going along with this the moment she woke up that morning, even if she hadn’t known what it was for then.

She knows now.

Nico glances at her when they pass each other in the halls, almost sheepish, almost sorry, and Karolina decides then and there that she will stop. This is it, she thinks, presses her nails into her palm until blood is pooling between her fingers. She will let go.

She does, and red drops hit the floor where she’s standing, follow her all the way to her first class, almost like a trail: are you looking for a dead girl walking? Take a left here and a right there and you will see her sitting at the desk in the back, sanity running out her ears, eyes empty and cold and blue like her fathers.)

()()()()

Jonah leaves a minute later.

After shaking Karolina’s hand with the same gleam in his eyes that he had last time. After touching her mothers back in passing in a way that made Karolina want to throw up, made all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

After seemingly taking all the comfort and safety that was left for Karolina in this house with him.

“Why was he here?“ Karolina asks the second the door closes behind him, can’t stop herself from putting emphasis on the he.

Her mother is lovingly cradling something in her hands and once Karolina looks closer she sees that it’s a book, thick and leather bound.

“He was bringing something over.“ she says, doesn't even correct Karolina on her rude tone, and there is something in her mothers voice that has chills run down Karolina’s spine: Leslie sounds more than enamored, speaks the words like they are a prayer, her eyes glazed and big.

Karolina is twitchy and creeped out, feels unsafe in ways that have nothing to do with the fact that her mother is a murderer.

“Mom?“ she asks and when Leslie doesn’t react, just keeps her eyes locked on the book, again: “Mom?“

“Yes?“

Karolina waits until Leslie looks up, until their eyes meet, blue on blue.

“Who is he?“

Leslie is staring right through her, a statue made out of marble, a serene smile on her lips.

“An old friend.“ she says, the exact words Jonah used to introduce himself in the Wilder House.

Then, as if something inside of her came back to life, Karolina’s mom straightens, her face falls, her eyes sharpen. She is regal and tall again, cold the way Karolina knows her to be.

“Don’t you have to study? Remember: your grades last semester where far from enough, you said you’d try more from now on.“

It’s a dismissal if Karolina ever heard one, and she’s almost grateful even though her mom’s small taunts still have a way of settling between her ribs, growing branches from there until it feels like Karolina’s lungs are so full she can’t breathe.

She takes it though, swallows down her hurt and hikes her backpack higher up her shoulders before making her way upstairs. She is exhausted.

But she always is these days, waking up in the middle of the night, losing track of moments and memories, blacking out during conversation with the others only to come back ten minutes later to a different topic and moon shaped cuts on her palm.

It’s funny, how just a few weeks ago she’d actually thought she was better, happier, and over whatever this was.

Now…every day she wakes up feeling so inherently wrong it is hard to get out of bed, hard to eat, to speak, to listen and react. Hard to live.

She thinks, sometimes at night, when the windows are open and the air is hot and thick still, when her parents are only ghosts roaming the halls, that she would die for this if she had to.

For all of it to end, for all of them to be safe and happy and young again. For the pain in her head and the scratching at the walls of her mind to stop.

In class, now and again, she imagines a meteor falling from the sky, leaving a crater where she used to sit, leaving everybody else, miraculously, alive.

Or last week, when they had met at timely and she was crossing the street and for a second, just, she’d thought about stopping at exactly the right time for the bus coming down the road to hit her.

(Or once, when they had listened to the radio in Chase’s car and there was a report about some wildfires and Karolina had immediately seen herself crushed under debris while being swallowed by flames, had almost felt them eating at her skin, all the smoke blackening the inside of her lungs, all of her skin and hair and blood and bones becoming one with the fire, and it had almost felt like a memory, the way it sat hot and heavy and blistering in the back of her mind.)

When she’s laying on top of the covers in her room she thinks about calling the others, at first. Telling them about Jonah in her home, about her mothers weird behavior.

But what would she say, exactly? Nothing happened, did it?

She can’t just say “He makes me feel unsafe and creeped out and like something dark is looming much too close“.

She can’t just tell them “I think I’ve known he would be here today and that’s why I was feeling so bad“.

Who would believe her.

So, Karolina decides, she’s not going to tell them. They wouldn’t want to hear it anyway, she’s been enough of a burden this week already.

It’s not even five p.m. but she slips under her covers, doesn’t change, doesn’t clean her face of mascara and concealer, doesn’t free her hair from the tight braid it’s been in.

Her body is useless, heavy and tired with too long limbs and throbbing muscles.

Is this her life now, she keeps thinking. Pain and confusion and one bad thing after another?

Karolina has trouble remembering the last time she really really laughed, even though realistically she knows it wasn’t that long ago.

But all the other stuff just keeps being front and center in her brain and chest.

All the ways she feels like less of a human and more like a robot that’s malfunctioning, like a machine that soon nobody will see a use for anymore.

Short circuiting, as Alex would say. That’s what it feels like in her mind.

She presses a palm to her forehead, which is clammy and hot and aching.

Her mother, downstairs, is humming. Karolina has never heard her do this before and it makes her want to cry, for whatever reason.

“Please.“ she whispers, into the skin of her arm. “Please.“

If someone were to ask she could not tell them what she is begging for. Maybe for help. Maybe for change.

Maybe for the pain to stop, and their parents to not be murderers, and Nico to love her back and all of her friends to be safe and happy and …

Two minutes later she’s asleep.

(That night:

construction sites, tearful goodbyes and prom dresses. Molly as a lion, Chase as a bull. Nico.

Darkness and bright bright lights. Slow music.

Gert holding hands with someone and laughing. The pool out back, her mother in the window. Her father, younger and happier and honest, twirling a five year old Karolina through the air.

Seasons changing. Snow.

A car crash, a fire, walls full of bullet holes. Her body and no air to breathe. Nico.

And in the morning:

She remembers none of it.)

()()()()

Karolina spends more and more days contemplating the necessity of her own existence.

In English, when they are discussing Animal Farm and it is an especially hot day, all the windows open and everybody still sweating at their desks.

Gert, in between heated discussions with a jock from the lacrosse team, keeps softly pinching Karolina’s arm under the table because her mind keeps drifting away from her again and again and it must show on her face.

In algebra, Alex continues sharing his notes with her, slides them over without a word, closes his binder a little louder than necessary when class is over since she wouldn't have noticed the bell ringing otherwise.

Molly, who sees something in her eyes whenever they have lunch together that makes her decide to keep Karolina entertained for the whole hour, with stories and questions and rants about her teachers.

Chase keeps driving her from and to school, Karolina’s own car sitting a little forgotten in the driveway, and he always lets her choose the music, if only so she has something to do.

Three days after the JonahIncident#2, that she still hasn't told anyone about, Karolina turns to him while Band of Horses is playing in the background.

“Do you think we are bad people?“

Chase flinches a little and Karolina feels bad immediately. For a second she had forgotten about his biggest fear. (All the ways in which sons can be like their fathers.)

His hands, big and strong and unsure, clench and unclench around the steering wheel. His eyes don’t leave the road.

“No.“ fast, a reaction. Then: “Why do you ask?“

Karolina shrugs, turns back to stare out the window, sun in her hair and palm trees on the side of the road. All the dreamy paradise surroundings one could hope for. She wishes to be anywhere but here.

“Just feels like it sometimes. Letting our parents keep on killing kids and all.“

Chase doesn’t swerve the car, doesn’t slam the brakes. Karolina can hear the hitch in his breath though. The choking.

She doesn’t feel bad this time but only because she can feel herself drifting again, eyes focused on some point on the horizon she doesn’t really see, mind already miles away, at the place it goes to more and more often now, somewhere the rest of her doesn’t know how to follow yet.

“We don’t let them do it.“ Chase’s voice is sharp, he puts emphasis on the “don't“ like he's trying to convince himself.

“It’s not like there’s much we can do right now! As soon as we have a plan we’re putting a stop to this! We’re not bad people, we’re not like them..“ he keeps going on and Karolina can see that she has triggered something in him, the way his voice gets a little panicky and thin, his hands white and jaw strained.

Karolina has spent a lot of time sitting next to a panicked Chase, telling him that he is nothing like his father, showing him that his hands, while being just as big and strong as Victors, would never be able to inflict the same kind of hurt.

She’d say something here now too, she thinks, if she still knew how to make words leave her mouth. If she was still conscious of her surroundings or herself.

She would say “I didn’t mean you Chase. You are still nothing like him, you never will be.“

She would say “I only ever meant me, actually, and all the dark things that seem to follow me. How ironic it is that I glow bright and beautiful when I only ever feel the opposite. How I believe more and more that my role in all of this is fleeting, a short, passing thing. How I am not meant to make it very far.“

But, alas, she says nothing at all, leaves Chase to the pit in his stomach. Is going, going, gone.

When she comes to she is standing in the kitchen, a glass of water leaving wet circles on the kitchen counter. The sun is almost starting to sink outside.

She is dressed in cotton shorts and a t-shirt, she is makeup less and freshly showered, she remembers none of it.

There are two plates in the sink, a cup of tea on the opposite side of the counter.

Her heart is racing.

Somewhere in the house a faucet is being turned off, a door opening and closing, then, steps.

Karolina is gasping for air now, tears almost gathering behind eyelashes.

She doesn't know how she got here!

It is such a disconcerting, nauseating feeling and even though she should be almost used to it by now she is not!

Someone is rounding the corner and when she looks up she sees violet hair first, the glasses, jeans jacket even though they are inside and it is much too hot.

Gert is drying her hands on the back of her shorts, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose using not one finger like Alex but always two. The things you notice about your friends.

“You ready for that talk now?“ she asks, looks up. She must see something on Karolina’s face then because the slight smile on her lips is gone in an instant, she stops in her tracks.

“Kar?“ careful, like Karolina is an animal she doesn’t want to frighten.

Karolina grips the glass in her hands hard enough that she’s scared it might shatter, wants to think of an excuse real quick, wants to pretend she knows exactly what is going on, what Gert is talking about.

She is fine she is fine she is fine. (Say it three times and it might be true.)

She opens her mouth -

“What are you doing here?“

And then promptly bursts into tears.

()()()()

Gert had just gotten home from school when Chase called her. He had sounded angry, she says, but even more: panicked. Had talked about not being like his dad and that they were trying, weren't they, and that Karolina was wrong. Gert had stopped him then, talked him down from a full-on panic attack, did some of the breathing exercises that always help her with him and then, asked just what the hell was going on?

Chase had explained, more slowly and clearly now, about the talk in the car, and the more he said the less he sounded angry and more and more worried.

“Something is wrong.“ he had seemed sure of that, the kind of sure that came after a sudden, frightening realization.

“After, up until I dropped her off at home, it was like she wasn’t even alive anymore. I looked into her eyes and there was nothing there.“

They had hung up then and Gert had gotten back in her car. Drove here on a whim.

That’s what she tells Karolina while the both of them are sitting on her bed, Karolina with tissues and red eyes, playing with a loose string on her shirt.

“I knew what he meant the second you opened the door. It was freaky, your face was blank. You let me in and I told you that Chase was worried, asked what had been going on the last few weeks because if you think we hadn’t noticed you're really stupid. You said everything was good but like, in a way that implied the total opposite.

I kept asking, you kept giving one word answers or none at all, we got something to drink, I went to the toilet and then when I got back …“

Gert is serious, face drawn, hands twitchy.

Karolina can’t look her in the eyes.

“Yeah.“ she mumbles. She knows what happened afterwards, her meltdown, the crying. Things that get normally ignored in the Dean house and here Gert is, determined to make her talk about it.

“It’s more than just the our parents are murderers-you have some cool glowing powers-there might be some gay panic involved shit, isn't it?“ Gert asks after a pause where they are both a mess of shaking fingers and unsure gazes.

Karolina nods.

“I don’t … I don’t know how to explain it.“

She looks up, finally, and sees Gert try to hide the concern in her eyes, sees her bite her lip. Karolina doesn’t even have the energy to react to Gert knowing about the gay-panic and, consequently, probably all about Nico’s role in it.

There’s so much else going on now, she’s not ready to face the fact that Nico is still the thing she cares about most.

“Okay.“ says Gert. “That’s fine, maybe just…try.“

They both laugh, more little puffs of air than anything else.

“I think there’s something wrong with me.“ Karolina whispers. “Like, something fundamental. With my brain, maybe. I feel like I’m losing my mind.“

Gert nods, says nothing, just keeps her eyes on Karolina. A trust in them, deep and unflinching, that takes her by surprise even though it probably shouldn’t. They grew up together! They are friends! Why is it so hard for Karolina to accept these things?

She takes a deep breath, and then-

———

She tells Gert everything.

About the forgetting and the Jonah thing and how she feels like her brain is broken and full of holes, about her itching skin and (a little bit, in metaphors and half-finished sentences and without ever really saying anything) even about Nico.

Gert takes her hand and squeezes and so Karolina thinks she gets it anyway.

(Little touches and affirmations, a language all between the two of them.)

She tells Gert about the dreams too, or about the apparent lack of them that feels manufactured and like it’s something that was done to her. About her deja-vu’s.

After, once she’s done, Gert is silent for a long time, staring at a point just above Karolina’s shoulders with her brows furrowed.

Karolina can feel her palm, still in Gert’s hand, start sweating and she can’t stop herself from fidgeting, nervous of the other girls reaction, of being called crazy and weak and stupid.

Gert must notice, in some ways, because she focuses on Karolina, blinks herself back to reality, and smiles at her, even though it’s strained and short.

“Shit, Kar.“ her voice a little croaky. Karolina can see her swallow. “That’s like…a lot.“

Karolina almost flinches. She knows, after all. 

“Sorry.“ she says, and wouldn't Leslie be proud?

Gert’s eyes widen: “God, no! Don’t apologize! I’m glad you told me, you’ve been going through all of this alone until now.“

Karolina ducks her head, still not convinced that she did the right thing in telling Gert, still not sure she doesn't regret it.

“I just mean…“ Gert sighs, “that I was hoping for something more along the lines of Leslie being a dick or maybe Eifel being an asshole, you know, normal people problems. Things I could maybe, somehow, help you with.“

Karolina feels like apologizing again, for all the problems she keeps causing. She doesn’t though, only raises her head and asks the question weighing on her chest.

“But you believe me? You don’t think I’m imagining things or just being dramatic?“

“I kinda wish you were.“ Gert says. “I really really do. But with everything that’s happening and things being the way they are…I don’t know why this is happening to you or even what exactly it is, but I do 100% believe you that it is happening.“

Karolina laughs then, loudly and a little unhinged, and promptly after feels tears gathering behind her eyelids again, burrows her face in the palms of her hands. A sob leaves her lips before she can stop it, but she’s just so relieved and exhausted and … Gert believes her!

Somebody else beside herself knows and they believe her! She’s not crazy after all (maybe).

Karolina is overwhelmed.

She feels Gert slip an arm around her shoulders and then she’s slowly pulled forward until she’s resting against a warm collarbone, until she feels Gert’s steady heartbeat under her forehead.

They stay like this for a while and the whole time Karolina just keeps crying, can’t remember how to stop or when the last time was that she shed this many tears.

Maybe when she was younger and it was still acceptable to do so, to be sad and something else than the Karolina Dean with her sunshine smiles and positive attitude and love for live.

When she looks up, finally, it is dark outside and her cheeks feel numb and her eyes burn. Her neck is stiff but Gert is still there, calm and supportive and probably going to have a sore back tomorrow.

Karolina is flooded by a wave of gratitude and appreciation for her and the only way she knows to show it is by sniffling and bumping her forehead against Gert’s shoulder (small touches).

“Thank you.“ she says, and hopes Gert will see it as sincere, because it is.

Gert smiles and uses her sleeve to wipe under Karolina’s eyes. It’s intimate in a way Karolina hasn’t felt for years and it doesn’t even make her panic because there is nothing romantic to it, the love she feels for Gert is so so strong but never in a way that isn’t platonic.

It’s lovely.

“You have to promise me something.“ Gert says and Karolina feels herself nodding already.

“Keep telling me when these things happen, please. You can’t do this on your own and I don’t think you want to either.“

She’s right there, Karolina thinks, even though it’s hard to admit when she’s only ever been alone for the last years.

“I’ll try.“ she croaks, because she’s trying to be more honest to her friends.

Gert looks like she wants to insist but then her shoulders drop and she nods.

“Alright.“

Her hand lands on Karolina’s shoulder and she squeezes.

“We’ll figure this out, Kar. Things will be okay again. And the next time that Jonah guy is anywhere near you just call or text me and I’ll be there in ten minutes to pick you up. Promise.“

Karolina believes her, without having to convince herself. It’s kind of a miracle, really, to trust in people like this: Gert wants to help her and is her friend and doesn’t think she’s a burden.

Those are so many good things. They are more than enough.

(Karolina doesn’t tell Gert about the things she does remember: all those flashes of her own death, the looming pressure that she’s not quite meant to survive, her body a nest of bullet holes, her body eaten by flames, her body not a home anymore, just a body.

She feels too much like horrible things will happen once she does, once she puts this into words.

Maybe she’ll start imagining the others’ death’s too, or Gert will tell her parents she is suicidal (which she isn’t) and she’ll be put away, or worst of all: maybe Gert will try to stop her, once Karolina knows it’s time to play her part.

Once it’s time to do what she is meant to do; her body only a means to an end, a way to save the others, which is already more than she had expected herself to ever be worth.)

()()()()

Over the next days, things become, almost, bearable somehow.

Gert knowing about most of Karolina’s struggles makes her feel safe in a way that she has missed, unknowingly.

Whenever she spaces out, Gert is there to nudge her gently back to reality or to distract the others while Karolina finds her way back to earth.

Just the simple support of one of her friends has resulted in Karolina smiling more again and being able to make it through school without feeling completely overwhelmed half-way through.

She has a biology exam and gets an A and she doesn’t need Alex to write notes for her anymore and her suicidal fantasies or whatever they are lessen a little.

There is still an itch under her skin and she still can’t forget what her body felt like while being devoured by fire. What organs feel like when they are pierced by bullets. Bones crushed by metal.

She manages not to dwell on these things, though, and there’s the difference.

Karolina doesn’t know how she can show Gert how grateful she is, to have her as a friend, but on Thursday the week after, she brings a cake to school, vegan and gluten free and just the way she knows Gert likes it, and it’s ugly and lopsided and the letters spelling out “Thank you“ are running into each other and it took Karolina the whole night to finish but when she gets a big hug and smile from Gert in return she knows it was well worth it.

The others look a little confused but they don’t ask, for which Karolina is thankful, and she guesses that it’s because they have noticed the small change in her too.

Gert cuts the cake into pieces and shares it between the six of them, and in the courtyard under the tallest tree with the most shadow they laugh over melted frosting and feel like teenagers for a little while.

It won't last, which all of them know, but they manage not to dwell on that and there’s the difference.

()()()()

That night, Karolina’s dream is different.

She doesn’t remember most of the others and she won’t remember this one either once she wakes up, but while she’s in it, those few moments, she notices…

The ceiling overhead is dark and moldy, illuminated only by flickering candle light, and the bed she's on isn't her own.

The hand in hers is that little bit smaller, soft, and squeezes every few minutes.

There isn’t any talking.

Karolina never once looks anywhere else than the shadows dancing above her, never turns her head, but she knows without a doubt that Nico is laying next to her.

That the hand she’s holding is hers.

That they are in love, that they are happy, wherever they are.

There is no weight on Karolina’s chest, no tense shoulders or headaches or fuzzy memories.

No waiting for what comes next.

Nico squeezes, she squeezes back.

That’s all there is.

Karolina’s dream is different because it’s a good one and no one dies and she doesn’t even try to, and she is happy here.

It takes her a moment to place that feeling in her chest: happiness. She had forgotten what it felt like, that it was an option, to be anything more than fleetingly content.

She won't remember this once she wakes up and that’s a loss, a tragedy, an unfairness: when she’s awake she’ll have forgotten that it’s possible for things to be this way; that there’s anything else at the end of the tunnel except death and despair and a world that’s better off without her in it.

(Normally she only ever dies in her dreams but isn’t this worse, somehow; to dangle a life like this under her nose, the one potentiality Karolina had deemed impossible for herself, and then take it away again, like it wouldn’t make all of the difference, like it wouldn’t make her consider “surviving" an ending to look forward to.)

()()()()

Nico’s at her door again.

It’s Saturday and Karolina has just gotten back from a run she had forced herself to go on, exhaustion hitting her 15 minutes in and turning her feet to lead, and when she’d stepped through the gates of their driveway there Nico was, a few meters in front of her, making her way up the stairs of the Dean’s front door.

It is still too hot to do anything, sweat making Karolina’s clothes stick to her skin, making her eyes burn and blink.

Nico is wearing cut off leggings and a too big shirt, her hair in buns on each side of her head.

Karolina’s heart melts right out of her chest and she hasn’t even seen Nico’s face yet.

The other girl is knocking, having pressed the bell already and getting no answer, and Karolina knows the house is empty, Leslie being at church and Frank someplace else, so she jogs the last paces until she reaches the stairs herself.

“Nico.“ she says, her voice breathless and exhausted, much like the rest of her.

Nico startles, turns on the spot with a hand to her heart.

“Jesus Kar!“

There is a wild look in her eyes, dark and tired, like a spooked animal.

“Sorry.“ Karolina says, and means it.

She hasn’t really spoken to Nico ever since the sleepover. She hasn’t ignored her either, there have been moments with the group when the two of them have exchanged words and sentences and even smiles but Karolina hasn't … she hasn't tried to find Nicos eyes in the hallways or stared at her in chem class, she hasn't been late to math just so she can walk the few extra minutes with Nico to the other girls spanish class.

Karolina has been avoiding Nico and she’s been successful at it and it had hurt every day.

But she had meant it when she told herself she would let Nico go, that she would stop imagining and hoping and feeling so much, all the time.

It was Nico and Alex, again and again and very obviously, at lunch in school or while studying at Timely’s or even in the mornings, seeing them arrive in the same car. Always Nico and Alex.

Getting over Nico hasn’t really worked, of course, and she has seen the pain in Nico’s eyes whenever Karolina would not quite inconspicuously avoid her and she hates herself for it.

But Karolina hates herself for a lot of things and if this will one day make it possible for her and Nico to be friends without so much pain and pining and secrecy, it will be worth it.

It doesn’t make it better though, that after a few days of this Nico seemed to have taken the hint and stopped talking to Karolina herself.

Which is why Karolina is surprised that two weeks after the sleepover, to the day, Nico is standing at her door, making Karolina face everything she had been trying to ignore.

Once Karolina invites Nico in they end up in the kitchen.

Karolina gets herself a cup of water, her breathing and the running tap the loudest thing in the room, while Nico just stands there, a look on her face that Karolina can’t place.

It makes her uncomfortable, aside from the fact that she always feels a certain level of safe and soft and content around Nico, to be so completely unable to read the other girl.

Karolina is a master when it comes to Nicos facial expressions, to the way she raises her eyebrow and furrows her forehead and lifts the corners of her mouth, bites the inside of her cheek and purses her lips.

She’s spent many hours of class, where she should have been paying attention, sketching Nicos face into he pages of her binder.

But here, now, standing stiffly between polished counters and the dripping of the tap, looking at Karolina, always looking, with her head slightly bend and her eyes open and trusting, Nico feels like some new entity Karolina isn't sure how to approach.

“I’m sorry for just showing up.“

Nico does not, in fact, look particularly sorry, but she does let her eyes sway to the ground for a second, and there it is; the biting of the cheek.

“It’s okay.“ Karolina says, water dripping down her hand and she is suddenly aware of how sweaty she still is, what a mess she must look. “You know you can always come here.“

She had almost said “To me. You can always come to me.“ but then in the last moment got a grip of herself, of her new resolution.

Nico beams at her and Karolina forgets why she ever wanted to let her go.

There is the silence again, then, and Nico is still looking at her, holding her gaze, sweeping her eyes over Karolinas face and she has no idea what it means.

“There’s something I wanted to tell you.“ Nico says, and her voice is quieter now or maybe she is just adapting to her surroundings, the lack of background sounds, the water no longer running and Karolinas breathing slowing down.

It feels a little like they are caught in a vacuum, shut away form the world, just Karolina and Nico and Nicos dark dark eyes, seeing something Karolina can’t.

Nico shuffles closer, an unnoticeable amount if it weren't for Karolina and her keen sense regarding anything Nico does.

Karolina’s heart is beating out of her chest, her skin prickling, and she can’t tear her gaze away from Nico, all of her, the black of her lashes, her hand grazing the counter top, the veins standing out between knuckles, the delicate collar bones and wisps of hair.

The loveliest being.

“What is it?“ Karolina breathes, her voice just as low, maybe more so, and every nerve ending on fire.

Nico takes a step closer, a real one this time, and they are close now, no more than six inches between their chests.

Karolina, by now, is pretty sure she is dreaming, or she would be, if it weren't for every part of Nico being so achingly real.

Her own hand is resting on the counter top too, and Nicos fingers are close enough to touch, she can feel the heat from them. Everything around her is on fire.

Nico looks at her one more time, takes everything in, and then steps back.

The room around them comes into focus again, Karolina takes a shuddering breath, and the tension is broken.

“Can we sit?“ Nico asks, as if Karolina could ever deny her anything again.

————

Karolina decides to take a shower first, for more than one reason, and tells Nico to get comfortable on the couch in the living room and use her netflx.

She needs a second, after Nico showing up out of nowhere and their moment in the kitchen.

Something happened there, between the two of them, that Karolina doesn’t trust herself to decipher.

She will come to conclusions that are unrealistic and pathetic, and her still slumbering hope will make an appearance, whispering lies about chemistry and attraction to her.

Karolina can’t let herself go there, can’t allow herself to fall back on that. She’s a weak person, always has been, and things have been getting a little better those last days with Gert knowing and her feeling not as crazy anymore.

She can’t have the Nico Thing taking up all her energy anymore. There’s no future for her between daydreaming about Nico one day feeling for Karolina just an ounce of what Karolina feels for her and aching every day because of what will realistically never be (there’s no future for Karolina anywhere, is what she also means, but that is another conversation).

So maybe Karolina takes extra long in the shower, layers herself in shampoo twice and stares aimlessly at the white tiles glistering from water and the sun streaming in for ten minutes.

And once she can’t consciously waste any more water she drapes herself in a towel and sits on the toilet seat, fishes her phone out her running shorts and dials the one number she knows by heart.

Gert picks up on the third ring, sounding worried already.

“Kar, what happened?“

Karolina remembers their last talk and grimaces.

“Nothing, sorry. I’m fine.“

Her leg is bouncing up and down and she’s biting her lip again. Nico is downstairs, sitting on their stiff couch and waiting for Karolina to come back down. So they can talk.

Karolinas breath hitches.

“You don't sound fine. You sound panicked. What’s up?“
Karolina realizes then that while she is sure Gert knows and is aware of her Nico Thing, they have never actually talked about it. Karolina has never actually put into words what she is feeling, not to Gert or anyone.

Her lip splits and iron coats her tongue.

“I… Nico is here.“

Karolina can practically see Gert roll her eyes.

“Okay, so? Have the two of you finally stopped acting weird around each other?“ 

Of course Gert had noticed, and the others probably had too. Karolina’s own damn fault for being as bad at acting as she is.

“No, that’s not…“ she tries to run a hand trough her hair but gets immediately tangled in the wet knots.

“I didn’t know she was coming, but that’s not important. She seems different, something’s up, I think.“ Karolina is so bad at explaining herself, she realizes, all the while not even knowing why she called Gert in the first place. What did she expect Gert to do here?

“What do you mean different? And where is your guest, by the way, while you are calling me and hiding?“

Karolina almost bristles at that. She is not hiding. But it has been over half an hour since she left Nico alone and she is panic calling Gert from the toilet seat in only a towel.

“I don’t know Gert! Different! There was this moment in the kitchen and then she said she wanted to tell me something and just…somethings up! What am I supposed to do?“

Gert is silent then, for a few seconds, and then she sighs, long and deep.

“You go down there, Karolina, and you listen to what Nico wants to tell you and you don't panic about things you can’t control, which I get sounds ironic coming from me, and then when the two of you have talked and you don't have a guest waiting in some part of your house, you call me back and you tell me all about your little moment and all the other juicy bits.“

Karolina really hates Gert, sometimes. Mostly when she’s making sense.

Nico is still just where Karolina left her, sitting on the couch, spine straight, with her elbows resting on her knees and a faraway look in her eyes, seemingly not at all interested in the episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine that’s playing.

“Hey.“ Karolina says, self conscious about her t-shirt and shorts even though Nico is basically wearing the same thing. Her hair is still dripping down her back and she can already feel her neck start to sweat under its heavy curtain.

Nicos head snaps up and she smiles a little once she sees Karolina, turning off the tv in the same second.

Karolina almost wishes she hadn't because now they are surrounded by nothing but silence again, and the few bird calls that are coming through the sliding door outside that Nico must have opened, the faint and distant murmur of the sea.

“Hey.“ Nico echoes, and Karolina makes her way over to the couch on bare feet, aware of the fact that Nico is watching her.

They sit sideways, facing each other, but there is space left between them, not like before in the kitchen.

Nico’s arm is resting on the back of the couch, playing with the fabric, and Karolina has her legs gathered underneath her, is drawing circles on her knee with the pad of her thumb.

Both of them are quiet, still not quite accustomed to spending time just one on one, even though it’s not the first time.

But the years between Amy and the reconciliation of their friendship are like an ugly scar sometimes, tainting every moment after. There is a distance that wouldn't be there if they had never stopped being friends, and it’s here now too. Even though Karolina has never felt closer to anybody than she does with Nico.

It doesn't help that it feels like there is something else holding Nico back. It’s in the tension of her shoulders, the intensity of her eyes, the tautness of her jaw.

The softness laying underneath all of it.

Karolina is not a fan of anything that comes between the two of them.

“You wanted to tell me something.“ Her voice is nothing more than another gust of wind, fleeting enough for Nico to ignore should she want to.

But Nico zeroes in on Karolina like she was just waiting for her to say something, to bring them back to where they stopped in the kitchen.

Her fingers are straightening on the back of the couch, almost like they are reaching for something.

(Karolinas fingers twitch in answer.)

“I did, yes.“ Nico’s eyes are on her again and Karolina thinks that no one has ever looked at her the way Nico does now, has seen her the way Nico does, even with all the secrets between them.

It leaves her feeling naked and fragile and vulnerable and she never wants Nico to stop.

But Nico does, pulls her gaze away and focuses instead on the circles Karolina’s been drawing on her knee.

“Alex and I broke up.“ she says, the way she always says these things that leave Karolina breathless and reeling: full of undeserved nonchalance.

“Oh.“ is Karolinas first dumfounded reaction. “Nico, I’m sorry.“

She scoots closer then, for the first time in a long time being the one to initiate the contact. Her fear and feelings are not important here: Nico is hurt. Nothing else matters.

Nico holds her gaze, tilts her head sideways and smiles a little, which is not what Karolina had been expecting.

Her eyes are not sad or full of pain or anything except beautiful, the richest color Karolina has ever seen. The reason a shudder is working its way up her body.

There is no part of Nico that doesn't have an affect on Karolina.

“It’s okay.“ Nico says. “I’m not a fan of being dumped but…“

Karolina interrupts her, her brain stuttering: “Wait, what? He broke up with you?“

Nico lets out a laugh, albeit small and not very joyous, but Karolina is so confused, so bewildered by the fact that anybody would break up with Nico, would decide that she's not exactly what they need and want and love anymore, that she can’t even find it in her to swoon over the dimple showing in Nico’s right cheek.

“Why?“ she whispers, slowly shaking her head and taking in all of the girl before her.

Nico is the one to come closer this time, Karolina’s hand coming up to rest on the back of the couch just opposite hers and the tips of their fingers are almost touching now, only divided by air and an underlying tension and the promise of more.

Nico shrugs, holding Karolinas eyes with her own. They seem to always be looking at each other.

“He said I was distant and apathetic and indifferent and that he understood that I missed Amy but shutting everybody out wouldn't bring her back and-“ her breath hitches for a second, almost unnoticeable-“and that he wasn't the one I wanted to be with anyway…“

She trails of, and Karolina is glad she did, can’t take any more of Nico saying these things about herself even though they aren't her own opinion.

Her chest aches with the thought of Alex, of anyone, telling Nico she was lacking, judging her for the way she handled her grief.

She lifts the hand not resting on the couch to Nicos face, not thinking about what this would mean, not calculating the consequences, and only then notices she's trembling.

There’s a sudden sense of deja-vu then, to the time she slept over at Nicos and they watched Les Mis and Nico told her about the fight she had, the tear Karolina stole from her cheek, the indescribable tension between them.

They keep having these moments, Karolina suddenly realizes, and it hits her like a bullet between the ribs, the realization, the way Nico looked at her in the kitchen, in her bedroom, right now.

Karolina cradles Nicos cheek.

“He’s wrong.“ she says, and her words aren't loud but they are vast and sure. “You are good and honest and warm. You open your heart to so many people Nico, and maybe you don't always show it in ways that are obvious and, and easy, but you do show it.“

Her chest is heaving.

She knows, Karolina knows that she is exposing herself through everything she is and isn't saying right now but she can’t stop. All the walls she build between what she is feeling and what she can say are crumbling, her thumb is stroking along Nico’s cheekbone, her eyes wide and telling.

And Nico… Nico isn’t stopping her. Isn’t moving her face away or telling Karolina to shut up or doing anything to put an end to what is happening between the two of them.

She’s still just looking at Karolina, eyes boring into hers and the softest of smiles on her face.

A certain reverence about her.

“Yeah?“ she breathes, somehow closer again, inches between their shirts touching.

Karolina nods, almost slow motion.

“Yeah.“ she whispers back, conviction heavy in her tone. “Don’t let anyone make you believe otherwise.“

Nico’s fingers brush hers along the fabric of the couch, electricity running up Karolinas arm and she doesn’t know who moves next but then their hands are tangled, fingers brushing over knuckles, and Karolina doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to let go, now that she knows what holding Nico’s hand feels like, the way they fit together, the static between them, the softness of Nico’s skin.

“Kar?“ their breaths are mingling, bodies leaning closer and closer together still, time nothing more than a concept. And Karolina doesn’t understand how this is real, how it’s actually happening, knows that she doesn't deserve it in any way but is too selfish to put a stop to it.

Karolina does not believe that she was made to be happy, to survive this, and she’s still not sure if with “this“ she means their war against their parents or just life in general or the way her mind and brain is wired, but if she’s going to stop existing sometime in the near future she’ll forever have this moment, more than she ever thought she’d get.

“Yeah?“ she hums back. Her hand is still cradling Nico’s face, her fingers moving from the side of her jaw to the back of her neck, Nico’s hair soft under her skin.

“That’s not what I wanted to tell you.“ Nico has never sounded so gentle, her lashes fluttering close, slow blinks.

Their noses are touching now, brushing against each other and Karolina can’t think, has never felt more, her heart has never been this loud before.

“So tell me.“ she whispers and then, being braver than she has ever been, angles her face just slightly to the left, the quietest invitation.

Nico sighs and the warmth of it hits Karolina’s bottom lip.

The thing about being so captivated by another person is that everything else disappears.

The singing of the birds, the rushing of the sea.

The fact that they are in a house Karolina feels nothing but restrained contempt for, surrounded by proof of the emptiness of her life, the staggering indifference of her family.

All the insecurities that haunt her day and night, the conviction that Nico could never love her, that she doesn’t deserve any of this. That there is nothing in life for her but pain and loneliness and the role she was meant to play, collateral damage.

The ticking of the clock, the blowing of the wind.

Karolina is drowning in everything that is Nico, her smell, her little mannerisms, the way their lips are almost touching, not yet.

There is nothing else, only this, everything she ever wanted.

The opening of a door, heels against the floor, and the rustling of a white dress against freckled skin.

A hand that comes to rest on the kitchen counter, from where there is a clear view of the living room, the big, thousand dollar couch being the centerpiece.

Leslie Dean clears her throat and Karolina’s whole being just … stops.

()()()()

Once, when Karolina had been about six, her mom had taken her into Gibborim for a whole day, letting her take part in all the meetings, the prayer groups she would lead, organization for a fundraiser.

Karolina had never seen most of the halls she was lead through, had never been in her mothers office, allowed to touch and look and ask questions.

Leslie introduced her to everybody, a certain pride in her eyes, and Karolina couldn't get enough of the attention back then.

The fawning over her hair, her eyes, her freckles so like her mothers. The way she’d say please and thank you and would obediently sit by her mothers side.

She’d done everything right that day, followed all the rules, smiled wide and happy the whole time.

Later, after Leslie had shown her just how to start a worship, Karolina had tugged at her pant leg, had looked up at her hero and harshest critic.

“Mom.“ she’d asked, in the timid voice she’d used for questions, already half expecting Leslie to reprimand her for being a bother. “Why are you showing me all this?“

But Leslie had just leaned down, put her hands on Karolina’s shoulders and smiled at her.

“One day, when you're older, you’ll be the one these people will look to. They will ask for your hand in prayer and for your voice to lead them and it will be your responsibility not to let them down. Do you think you’ll be able to do that?“

Karolina had nodded, all earnest and awed, her stomach filling with something hot and bubbling, the kind of anxiousness she hadn't known yet then.

Her mother had patted her head and looked pleased, and Karolina had swallowed all the other questions she’d had, about the things she wanted to do and dreamed about and the life a six year old Karolina saw herself lead one day, one that hadn't had much to do with Gibborim at all.

Karolina had looked around her and already felt overwhelmed by the possibility of one day letting all those people down.

On their way out, past all the evening visitors who were leaving church, Leslie had gripped Karolina’s hand, tugged her closer.

“Don’t let go, Karolina.“ she had said, looking down on her with happy eyes, full of pride and promise.

“I don’t want to loose you.“

Karolina had never forgotten that, the way it felt to be appreciated and praised, her mothers hand holding hers tight.

It was all she had worked for every moment after, but she never got as close again.

(Karolina had also never forgotten, when they had gone to get ice cream on their way home that day, how Leslie had looked at her when she’d spilled some of her chocolate ice cream on the white dress she was wearing, all the way down the front.

How Leslie had shaken her head, disappointment and frustration heavy in her eyes.

“I knew I shouldn't have taken you today.“ she’d sighed, dropping the rest of Karolinas ice cream in the trash.

How it had only taken one little mistake to make her mother forget about everything she’d done right.)

()()()()

“Karolina.“ her mom says, the name ringing through the house.

Karolina and Nico snap apart, their hands ripping loose, both of them jumping to opposite ends of the couch.

“Mom!“ Karolina gasps, standing up, tries hard to mask the tremor in her voice, to make it look like she was not just about to kiss a girl, to kiss Nico, on their living room couch.

“Hi! Nico was just…“ but Karolina trails off once she sees the look on her mothers face.

Leslie’s eyes are cold and empty, nothing there, just hard ice that is staring at Karolina like she’s a stranger, and Karolina just knows.

Knows that her mom saw them, that she has been there long enough to figure out what was about to happen, that she would never be okay with it.

Karolina can feel her body freeze, ice running through her veins. Nico, who until now hadn’t left her corner of the couch, stands up too, somehow too far away for Karolina and still too close.

“Hey Mrs. Dean…“ but Leslie interrupts her.

“Nico was just about to go, I believe is what you wanted to say Karolina.“

Nico straightens, unsure, her eyes flitting from Leslie to Karolina, a question in them, but Karolina can’t look at her, can’t feel what she always feels when seeing Nico with her mother in the room, can’t free her eyes from her mom’s face, still empty and expressionless, no raging and screaming.

“Kar…“ Nico tones it like a question, like an invitation. “Just say the words.“ her inflection says. “Just give me a sign and I’ll stay. I’ll help.“

Karolina can’t accept, her hands are shaking, her whole body is numb, she has always been so weak, the weakest.

“Yeah.“ she croaks out. “That’s what I wanted to say.“ 

From the corner of her eye she can see Nico hang her head, fleetingly, and then nod, allowing herself one more look at Karolina and then stepping around the couch.

“Okay.“ she says, quieter than Karolina has ever heard her speak to an adult.

Nico leaves and Karolina can’t watch her go, does not allow herself to feel anything at the sound of the door closing, and it is almost easy, because while her heart is hammering everything else about her is still, a hand pressing down on her chest.

She’s waiting, hoping almost, for Leslie to do something, to start yelling and ask her about what that was, what it means. If Karolina thinks she’s gay now, throwing the words out laughingly and cruel.

Because then Karolina could say yes. Could tell her mother about all the beautiful things Nico makes her feel and how she never liked any of the boys her mother tried to set her up with, never appreciated any of the looks she got at school from the male population, could never again see herself with a boy, not now, not once she let herself think of the alternative, of living a life not repulsed by every touch and kiss.

Her mom doesn’t give her any of this though, and Karolina thinks she wouldn't be brave enough to tell her anyway.

Leslie just keeps looking at Karolina with eyes so careless and neglecting, so closed off, that Karolina knows that the last remains of the relationship that existed between them are gone.

That Leslie has decided to do exactly what Karolina had tried to do with her feelings for Nico: stop.

Her mother gives her one last glance, nothing in it, and then picks up her purse from the counter and leaves, her steps echoing up the stairs, the sound of her bedroom door closing filling the whole house, filling Karolina with an aching coldness, a nauseating dread.

Her mom knows, Leslie knows.

Karolina wants to cry and scream and leave, escape this haunting house that only ever hurts her, took from her her peace and safety and now Nico, the only chance she never thought she’d get of being with her.

Nico.

Who Karolina told to leave, who Leslie didn’t even spare a glance at and still Karolina sided with her.

Nico who has been her friend and then her nothing and then friend again and now, even, maybe something else, something new.

But Karolina hadn’t been able to look at her, had been frozen under the too blue eyes of Leslie Dean, those eyes that have never given her anything only ever taken, and had given up, just like that.

Karolina wants to cry and scream and leave but she does nothing instead.

Becomes nothing.

Does the one thing she’d gotten so good at: vanishes into her mind, where it’s dark and lonely and hopeless, where she belongs.

She’d been so stupid, really, to believe things could ever be different.

()()()()

End chapter 3