by Sarah Gailey
“Wow, nice!” I sit beside Marcelina and admire her handiwork. As usual, she wastes no time preening—she starts carefully placing wood, building a pyre that looks like a little house for fire to live in. She directs careful loops of magic to the fire, twisting threads around the kindling like she’s twirling a lasso.
“Paulie taught me this,” she says without being prompted. “I have no idea how it works, but it always makes the fire hotter.” Sure enough, it’s not long before the fire is so powerful that we both have to back away from it. Sweat soaks Marcelina’s black tank top, and she lifts the hem to wipe at her streaming face.
“Where did you get all this wood?” I ask. Marcelina’s house doesn’t have a fireplace, and I’ve never seen a woodpile around her place.
“I did it this week,” she says, and she sounds breathless but proud. “I asked a few trees to drop any branches they didn’t need, and then I directed the water out of the wood and into the roots to dry it out.”
“You can do that?” I ask, impressed.
“I guess so,” she says. “This was my first time trying it and it seems like it worked okay. Remind me to tell Iris so she can add it to her research?”
“Yeah,” I say. “There’s a lot she should probably add, at this point.”
We sit and watch the fire grow. Marcelina is really good at tending to it—holdover Girl Scout skills, I guess, plus whatever experiments Paulie has been sharing. She blows on glowing embers to make them blossom into flames, and she nurtures those tiny petals of fire until they engulf whole logs. The woodsmoke smell mingles with the turned earth and summer air. The grass is soft and thick and the woods are quiet and everything feels as perfect as it possibly can. I breathe it in, try to hang on to the feeling of peace and contentment. I try to capture the moment in my mind, so that later, when I remember how much I’ve ruined everything, I can come back to it. One peaceful minute.
When she’s satisfied with the size of the fire—or at least satisfied enough to trust me alone with it—Marcelina pushes herself upright and walks to the house. I stay behind to watch the fire. When she opens the door, Handsome and Fritz come barreling out to see me. They race across the grass, ears flapping, going fast for no reason other than that running is fun. Fritz gets to me first, skidding to a stop and slamming into my legs with nearly enough force to knock me over. I brace myself on his back, fingers buried in his fur, and wait for Handsome to knock into us both. When he does, I’m overwhelmed by the two of them. Good outside good hot??? Good friend yes smells good smells.
I sit on the ground and let them wash over me, all wagging tails and musty farm-dog smell. They tell me about the thing they found to roll in, and the mole that’s burrowing underneath us right now that they can never seem to dig to, and the pig ears that Uncle Trev brought home for them. By the time Marcelina comes back, carrying the backpack with Josh’s liver in it, I’m lying on the ground with a dog on either side of me, their noses next to my ears.
She laughs when she sees me. “You look like you just had a spa weekend.”
“These guys always know what to say,” I respond without lifting my head. Handsome boofs in my ear. “Also, Handsome needs the water warmer when you give him a bath tonight. It makes his hips hurt more when it’s cold.”
“I’m not giving him a bath—”
“Yeah, sorry, but you are. He’s been rolling on a dead toad,” I say. Marcelina glares at Handsome. “So has Fritz, but I think Handsome got to it first. He got the squishiest bits on him.”
“You guys are gross,” she says, patting Handsome on the rump. He wags his tail at her. “That’s not a compliment,” she mutters, and Fritz lifts his nose to see if he can get a pat too.
“I think the fire is ready,” I say, pushing myself up onto my elbows. “I didn’t touch it.”
“Okay.” She eyes the fire in the pit, which is high and bright and loud. She throws a few more pieces of wood into it, and there’s a series of loud pops. The smell of burning pinesap fills the air, tinny and acrid. “Do you want to do this, or should I?”
“I think you,” I say cautiously. “I think it’ll be worse if I do it. Worse for you, I mean.”
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. Okay.” She blows out a long stream of air. “Okay.” She opens the backpack and pulls out the liver. It’s shiny and taut, darker than I would have expected. Almost purple. She holds it in both hands and looks from it to me. “I’m scared,” she whispers. “Like, really scared. I’m freaked out, Alexis.” Her brown eyes are wide, and I can see her trying to be brave.
“I’m here,” I say. It’s the only thing I can say. It’s the only comfort I can offer, and I know it isn’t enough. “It’ll be okay.”
Marcelina looks back down at the liver. “What if I lose something really big?” she asks it. “What if I don’t lose anything and someone else loses something instead? What if it’s not okay?”
“Then we’ll all be not-okay with you,” I tell her. Her mouth twitches into the briefest of smiles.
“It’s not fair when you use my own lines back at me,” she says. Then she takes in a gulp of air like she’s about to jump into a swimming pool, and she throws the liver onto the fire.
Nothing crazy happens. The fire doesn’t change color, and a chill wind doesn’t rustle through the trees. The liver sizzles and smokes, and a smell that’s uncomfortably reminiscent of barbecue fills the air. Handsome and Fritz both lift their noses to take in the aroma.
“Okay,” Marcelina says again. She takes her hair down and runs her fingers through it nervously.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Fine, I think. Maybe it’s not done yet.”
She sits in the grass, leaning back on her hands and watching the fire. I sit next to her. Handsome and Fritz attempt to drape themselves across our laps, and there’s a brief moment of chaos as we simultaneously try to push the two wriggling dogs off us. “You’re too big,” I tell them both, but they just wag their tails and pretend not to understand.
“So, you also told your dads that you’re …” She waves her hands vaguely. “Whatever? What did you tell them? Bisexual?”
“Um, kind of. I told them that I’m still figuring out where I land, and I guess bisexual is the closest thing to true?”
She nods. “You’ve never really said it out loud before. It’s okay if things change later, you know?”
“Yeah, that’s what they said. And they both also said that they already knew and they thought I knew they knew? So it wasn’t really a big deal, I guess.”
“It’s still a big deal, even if it wasn’t a big deal,” she says, scratching under Fritz’s collar.
“Pop said something weird,” I say as casually as I can. “I think he was just trying to be supportive or whatever, but he said that he thinks I should ask Roya out.” I catch Marcelina rolling her eyes. “What?”
“What?”
“Why are you rolling your eyes at that?”
She does it again. I use a little spark of magic to tell Fritz to lick her in retaliation, and she tries to shove him away, but he nails her right in the ear. She makes an euuuaaaghh noise. “Gross, Fritz, you have toad-breath.”
“Good boy, Fritz,” I say, rubbing the hard-to-reach spot under his ear.
Not to be outdone, Handsome tries to shove his nose into her other ear. “Call off your goons, Alexis!” she cries, shoving at the big shaggy dog.
I grab Handsome by the collar and he settles for shoving his nose into my ear, which isn’t my favorite sensation, but which isn’t nearly so bad as getting licked. “You don’t have toad-breath,” I whisper, even though he kind of does.
“Look, I just think that it’s sort of obvious that you should ask Roya out, isn’t it?” Marcelina grabs a long, forked stick and pushes the black lump of liver deeper into the fire. “We all thought you were going to ask her to prom, but—”
“She wanted to go with Tall Matt,” I say bitterly.
“Um
, no,” she says. “She wanted to go with you, but then you never asked her and Tall Matt did. They were there as friends.”
“She was just saying that because she’s afraid of commitment,” I snap. Marcelina gives me an oh hell no, how did you just try to talk to me? look and I grimace. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snipe.”
“Damn right you didn’t,” she mutters. “And you need to give Roya more credit than that. She wouldn’t lie about not being into Tall Matt. She likes him as a friend. Did you even see them dancing at prom, or were you too busy getting groped by Josh? Who, I am delighted to remind you, you don’t even like?”
“Didn’t,” I murmur. Her face softens.
“What were you doing with him, Lex?” She combs her fingers through Fritz’s fur. His eyes close in contentment and he does some tiny tail-wags that tap against my thigh. “I know everyone’s been asking you and you’re super grumpy about it, but … it just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why not?” I purse my lips, trying not to get snappy with her again. “I’ve dated guys too. What, just because I’m”—vague hand waving—“whatever kind of queer I am, I can’t still hook up with dudes?”
“You’re full of shit,” Marcelina says mildly, still dragging her fingers through the long, coarse fur on Fritz’s head. “You know that’s not what I mean. And don’t try to play it like you’ve ever slept with a guy before. We both know that would have been your first time.” She shakes her head. “And it would have been with Josh Harper.”
She’s right. I am full of shit. I’m so full of shit that, even though I know the answer, I say, “Well what do you mean, then? Because it sounds an awful lot like you’re trying to tell me who I’m allowed to sleep with.”
Marcelina gives me another oh you’re really going to try this crap glare. “What do I mean? What I mean is, it doesn’t make any sense because you’re clearly crazy about Roya. And you didn’t know the difference between Josh Harper and Short Matt until you were dancing with Josh at prom. What I mean is, it seems an “awful lot” like you were going to sleep with a guy you’ve barely exchanged two words with for no discernible reason. What I mean is, you’re usually pretty smart and you almost did something so monumentally stupid that it made me wonder if you’d fallen and hit your head when I wasn’t looking.”
“I was going to sleep with him because Roya went to prom with Tall Matt!” I say it too loud, just on the threshold of shouting. Handsome startles and looks up at me with concern. I should probably reassure him, but I can’t right now. I’m tired of feeling so many damn feelings all the time, and I’m tired of trying to calm myself down when I’m angry, and I’m tired of telling dogs that it’s not them I’m upset with. “I was going to sleep with him because Roya went to prom with Tall Matt and she went to Homecoming with Kevin Ng and she made out with Karen Carter over the summer and I’m tired of waiting for her!”
I dig my fingers into the grass and yell. I yell with my voice, letting my exhaustion and frustration rip through my throat; and I yell with my magic, pushing all the wasted patience and lingering hurt into the ground, probably shocking the hell out of that poor mole. Handsome and Fritz jump up and run in panicked circles, trying to figure out why they can hear me yelling in two voices at the same time.
After a minute, warmth floods my face. I open my eyes and there’s Marcelina’s eyes, a few inches from mine. Her hands are cupping my cheeks, and she’s whispering something in a low, steady stream that I can’t hear but that I can feel lapping at me in steady waves. The warmth spreads into my throat and chest, and I feel like I’ve been dipped in honey. “Are you done?” she says softly, and I nod, taking a hiccuping breath. “Good.”
She takes her hands away and sits back in her place in the grass. Handsome and Fritz slink over with their noses low and their tails tucked under their bellies. “Sorry I scared you, fellas,” I say, stroking their heads and silently telling them that it wasn’t their fault I yelled.
“I’m going to say something,” Marcelina says. “And you aren’t allowed to yell.”
“I’m sorry I—”
“Shut up,” she says mildly. “I didn’t say ‘You shouldn’t have yelled.’ I don’t want your apology. I just want you to listen for a minute.” I nod. She crosses her legs and rests her elbows on her knees, steepling her fingers. “First: I cannot believe you were going to do something so stupid as to sleep with Josh Damn Harper in order to make Roya jealous.” I start to object, but she holds up her hand. “Nope,” she says. “I’m talking right now, you’re listening. Don’t try to tell me that you weren’t hoping you’d sleep with Josh and make Roya feel as jealous as you were feeling about Tall Matt, because that’s a lie. And you can lie to yourself all you want, but you do not lie to me.”
I bite my lip and wait for her to continue, even though I have a sinking feeling that it’s only going to get worse from here.
“I cannot believe that you would do something so monumentally, staggeringly foolish as to put Josh Harper’s penis inside you in order to hurt Roya’s feelings,” she says, ramping up fast. “I can’t believe that you, of all the people in the whole world, would decide to fuck a boy over something as petty and messy as Roya going to prom with Tall Matt and making out with Karen Carter, who makes out with everybody and you know it!”
She hasn’t moved an inch, but her eyes are blazing. I feel about an inch tall. When she puts it that way … I can’t really believe that I was going to do that either. I knew I was making the wrong choice the second Josh’s dick exploded, but I’ve been trying really hard not to think about it too much in the last week. Both because it’s really awful to think about, and because I knew that if I looked too closely at what I almost did, I would be just as disappointed in myself as Marcelina is now.
“That was the first thing I needed to tell you,” she says. Her eyes are glassy now—she’s still glaring at me fiercely, but there’s sadness there too. “The second thing I need to tell you is that the liver is done. It’s gone.”
I peer into the fire, but I can’t tell one lump of black char from another. “How can you tell?” I ask.
“Because,” Marcelina says in a whisper, “I lost the color green.”
“What?” I look back at her. Her mouth lifts into a very small, very sad smile.
“That’s what I lost,” she says. She sounds terribly calm. “I can’t see it.” She runs her hand across the grass.
“What does it look like?” I whisper. She shakes her head.
“Gray.” She swallows the word.
“Oh, Marcelina—”
“It’s fine.” She says it through clenched teeth. “Lots of people can’t see green. I’ll get used to it.” Next to her, Fritz whines and rubs at his muzzle with a paw.
“God, I’m so sorry,” I say, reaching out a hand to rest on hers. “But hey, there are only a few pieces left to go, and then we’ll bring him back, right? And then you’ll get to see green again, just like normal.” She jerks her hand away.
“Sorry,” she says. “I don’t want to be touched right now. I just—I need a few minutes.” She gets up and walks back into the house, carrying the empty backpack with her. I wait outside with Handsome and Fritz, watching the fire die and thinking about what she said. What she said about getting used to it, and what she said about me being an idiot. The dogs doze in the sun. After a while, I hear footsteps in the grass behind me. I look up, ready to do whatever Marcelina needs—but it’s not her. It’s Uncle Trev.
“Mind if I join you?” he asks, waiting a few steps away until I nod. He never sits with me unless I say yes.
“What’s up?” I ask, watching the embers in the little pit we dug.
“I smelled smoke and wanted to see what was going on.” He picks up Marcelina’s forked stick and pushes a glowing log around. “It’s awful hot for a fire.”
“We had some stuff to burn,” I tell him. It’s out of my mouth before it occurs to me that I should have an answer ready in case he asks what needed burning,
but he just nods.
“So, Marcelina’s in the house crying her eyes out,” he says mildly. “What’s going on?”
“Um.” I flip Handsome’s floppy ear back and forth. “Nothing I can really share.”
“Hmph.” Uncle Trev chews on this for a minute, then shakes his head. “Look, I’m not going to get into her business. I just need to know that she’s okay. She’s crying like she just found out her best friend died. But I know that’s not the case, because you’re out here, and you’re alive.”
“I’m her best friend?” I blurt. I regret asking immediately.
“Far as I can tell,” he says. “Are you still her best friend? You guys didn’t just have a big blow-up or anything, right?”
“No, we’re good,” I say. “I mean, she gave me some real talk today, but nothing bad. She’s just, um. She’s going through a hard time right now.”
“She’s not hurting herself or anything, though, right?” He says it fast, so fast that I almost don’t catch it. He pokes the crumbling log in the fire a couple more times, not looking at me. His face is set.
“No,” I say softly. “She’s not hurting herself.”
“Can you promise me that you’d tell me if she was?” He looks at me and there’s the feeling again, the one I had with my dads last night. Uncle Trev isn’t talking to me like a kid right now. He’s not asking me if I’m lying to him. He’s trusting me to take care of someone he cares about.
“I promise,” I say, and I lift my hand to hold out a pinky finger. But then I think twice, and I hold out my whole hand.
We shake on it.
He stands up, brushing grass off his butt. “I’m going to go back in and check on her,” he says.
“She actually said that she wants space,” I tell him. “She needs to be alone for a little while.”
“Okay,” he says. “I won’t bother her or get into her space or anything. But I gotta make sure she’s okay, you know? I’ll leave her alone, but I can’t leave her alone.” He musses the back of his hair, frowning. “I’m the only adult around right now and I gotta make sure she’s safe. Do you want to come with?”
