“Yeah. Well.” My nose is running badly now. “Thanks for your time.”
“Sure.” The creak of her chair, the shush of arms sliding into coat sleeves. Dr. Bastille’s voice softens very slightly when she says, “I’d be happy to read it, when it’s done.”
“Read what?”
“The… never mind. Good luck, Zinnia.” She hangs up.
I set Charm’s phone back on the card table and sink slowly to my knees. My eyes are too full of tears to see much beyond fractal green, but I search the grass with my hands, crawling in circles. All I find are beer caps, a few waterlogged roaches, the sharp tops of acorns.There are no shards of magic mirror in Charm’s backyard. Which means Dr. Bastille was right. I’m screwed, and so is Eva.
IPACE THEyard for a while, inventing and dismissing a dozen unlikely schemes. It occurs to me eventually that I’m doing what my therapist would callbargaining,and that bargaining is a stage of grief.
Charm and Prim are in the kitchen, speaking in tense, low voices. They stop when the screen door shuts behind me. Charm gives me a searching stare, which I return blankly until she turns back to the dishes. Prim looks fretfully between the two of us for a moment, but there’s no real question which side she’ll pick. She unfolds a dish towel and dries a mixing bowl at Charm’s side.
I walk down the hall to the bedroom that is supposedly mine but which actually functions as a walk-in closet. I pick my way through yoga mats and wrapping paper, trash bags of winter clothes, a laundry basket filled with velvet gowns, pewter goblets, all the crap I hadn’t sold at the Ren faire before I disappeared. The futon is buried, so I sit on a box of unassembled furniture withTHREE IN ONE!written across the side in bubbly, childish letters.
I stare at the wall and test the words on my tongue:The end.It’s not such a bad ending, I guess. It’s a sort of cosmic compromise with the universe. I don’t get to magically cure my disease and con my way out of my own plot, but at least I didn’t drop dead at twenty-one; Eva doesn’t get to live as a hero, but at least she didn’t die a villain.
It’s not exactly happily ever after, but that’s a pretty bullshit concept anyway. Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m crying.
Later, long after the clink of dishes has faded and the tears have left my cheeks stiff and dry, the door inches open. I assume it’s Charmcoming back for round two, but it’s Prim. She steps easily through the detritus and clears a space on the futon. Neither of us say anything for a while. She just sits there with her perfect posture and her perfect hair, and I notice the fine lines at the corners of her mouth, the slight pucker of skin beneath her eyes.
She doesn’t look old or anything, just ordinary. Like any other girl who wakes up every morning and makes coffee a little stronger than she prefers because that’s how her wife likes it, who shops at the farmer’s market every Saturday, who will look in the mirror in ten years and start googling eye creams even though her wife insists she’s always had a thing for crow’s feet. Maybe happily ever after isn’t a totally bullshit concept, after all; maybe, if I can’t have my own, I can at least find the decency not to ruin this one.
I inhale. “I know I’ve been a shitty friend. And a lackwit, and all those other things Charm called me.”
“Well, actually.” Prim gives a small, embarrassed cough. “I sent that text.”
I don’t say anything, relishing the rare feeling of having the moral high ground. Prim squirms for a minute before adding, in a rush, “I was upset because Charm was hurt—again—and she was just going to keep giving you chances to hurt her, and I didn’t want to watch.”
Okay, maybe I’m not on the high ground after all. “I know. It’s just… I guess I wasn’t ready to talk about appointments and treatment plans and all that stuff. I didn’t want to beworriedover, you know? I wanted to make my own choices, choose my own consequences, live my own—”
“Zinnia,” Prim interrupts, softly and gravely. Her gaze is very sober. “We want to adopt.”
“Um, that’s good? Does this place allow pets?”
She blinks at me, and an expression of great pity crosses her face.“No. It doesn’t.” Her eyes move to the box of furniture I’m sitting on. I look down and notice for the first time that there is a picture of a blissful-looking baby on the front. The small print explains that the contents of the box can be used as a bassinet, crib, and toddler bed as your “little one” grows.
I feel suddenly very, very young and very, very stupid. “Oh,” I say weakly.
“That start-up offered Charm a full-time position last year, and she took it. So the timing feels right, and it turns out I want children very much, once I realized they could be obtained outside of heteronormative and patriarchal conceptions of marriage.” I remember Charm telling me last year that Prim signed up to audit some classes at UW; apparently she liked them.
“Wow, I’m so…” Happy? Terrified? Abruptly conscious of the passage of time and fearful of my changing position in what was, until recently, a trio of friends? My voice shrinks. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, you wouldn’t.” Prim doesn’t sound especially sympathetic. “You left when Charm tried to tell you. She wanted to ask about using this bedroom, once the paperwork was filed.”
“Oh,” I say again, even more weakly. I dampen my lips. “So… how’s it going? I heard it can take a while.”
Prim’s cool composure slips. She looks away and swallows twice. “We never filed the paperwork, actually. Charm hasn’t signed it.”
A chill settles in the pit of my stomach, a premonition of guilt. “Why not?”
Prim’s posture is imperfect now, her shoulders bent. “She says it’s because she’s not ready to give up beer, but I think she’s scared.”
“Of what?”
Prim rarely snaps—you can take the princess out of the royal court,but you can’t take the royal court out of the princess, or something—but now she snaps, “Of doing it without her best friend, maybe.”
The guilt arrives, cold and heavy as a swallowed stone. “Look, I’m really,really—”
