Never have i ever, p.16
Never Have I Ever, page 16
“Alex,” she shouted into my ear. “I feel like we haven’t talked all night.”
“I know,” I shouted into her ear.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah! I’m fucking stoked!” I fist-pumped. “Are you excited to get your turn on the stage?” We had paid extra for that; I hoped it was worth it.
She shook her head a vehement no. I laughed. I held one of her curls in my fingers.
“Selena,” I said, and found I did not have the willpower to shout. “Selena, are you going to be happy?”
“What?” She leaned in closer. The music got louder, because the man on the stage was now swinging back and forth in his leopard-print thong, a feverish Tarzan.
“I hope you’ll be happy,” I said, a bit louder.
She pointed to her ear and shook her head. I shouted, “I hope you get a fireman routine!”
She laughed. She mouthed, Thank you.
Then the club exploded.
These days I mostly loved no one, although I had tried a handful of times. I mean, I loved my family, and I loved our group in a special, barnacle-like way, but that was a given. Once upon a time I had loved Natalie differently, and in some scattered moments I could admit that those times were not entirely over, but the few months we were girlfriends had been difficult. We mutually called it quits after a year of breathless kisses and exhausted cuddling, with everyone sort-of-knowingly-but-hesitantly-teasing. Our friendship—and the group—survived the breakup. Sometimes I got this searing, painful certainty that we still loved each other, but holding onto a relationship took a special strength that I didn’t have just then.
After Natalie and I said friendship was what we both wanted, I decided to throw myself into work. Software development was the only career I’d ever considered having, and in between monster-crushing I wrote code for a mid-sized tech firm on the Lower East Side. I gave off enough Vibes that most people in the office didn’t try to learn much about me. Even if I could manage a conversation now, I still preferred a night in with Street Fighter or LOTR. I figured I was just burned out on human interactions, after a spectacularly social college life left me drained and hollow. At least I learned that I did not like the Sex Thing much. (Fun fact: not all magical girls are virgins.)
But maybe loneliness was something we all struggled with. I first realized this when Aiko and I were stuck in a coffee shop by ourselves. She took moody sips of black coffee; I poked at the latte art the barista had drawn in my foam. In the last two weeks there had been three fights. We were tired, and five people was so few. There were probably others, but we were as blind to them as they were to us.
Aiko was a nice person to be upset with. She never judged you for being tired or bitchy, and she never BS’ed her feelings. Over the rim of her cup, she said, “I think what sucks most is how no one else sees, you know? It gets pretty fucking lonely. I don’t even care about the pain or exhaustion anymore, but there are days when I want to walk into walls until I black out.”
“We’re not alone,” I said. She just stared at me. There were starburst scars across her knuckles that made my mouth dry.
I didn’t know how Selena and Rob managed to last this long. I’d never asked, and they’d been going strong for the last four years. I liked Rob well enough. Like everyone else close to us, the goddess magic cast a spell on him. He looked at Selena and saw the Marketing consultant, not the girl holding a giant axe, splattered with guts and grime. He thought of us as her “wild childhood friends.”
A year ago, pre-engagement, Selena sat each of us down, separately, and told us she really loved him, that she was not giving this up. We all said okay. I wasn’t sure if I really agreed, but I cared about Selena and her happiness, so.
Slime splattered everywhere. Debris rained from above. People stampeded. I was thrown back by an invisible force, crashing into the table full of cocktails. Screams, roars, crescendoing with animal keening. Chiseled torsos and flashing sequins, and the ceiling crumbling to reveal Manhattan sky, jeweled lights, and an enormous, slavering blob monster.
There have to be others, I thought, muzzily, standing in the midst of all the broken glasses. Blood and what smelled like Bailey’s dripped from my elbow. How can there be no other girls in this room who can fight? Younger girls, better girls, girls who aren’t yet sick of this. And then—Selena, Selena, oh god I just wanted her to have a good night, we didn’t even get to go fucking dancing yet and now this. I stood and yanked off my heels, anger rising past everything. Selena deserved a good night, “she deserved a break, you big fucking monster, why the fuck did you have to go and ruin it?” I screamed, even as someone seized my arm.
“We gotta go!” Ria’s voice, unutterably calm, though when I looked at her there was dread in her eyes, through the hair tumbled around her face, the dirt on her cheek. She tugged again and we ran while Jello Blob squalled and ejected a hissing stream of acid all over the plush couches. Someone screamed. Server? Tarzan? Twenty-first-birthday-celebrant? All of the above? Flecks of acid got on my shoulder, sizzling through my dress straps, the pain like sharp darts. Holy shit. We lurched out, breathless. Fucking Irish coffee. I retched on our last step, turning my head so that I missed Ria. Where the hell was everyone else?
I grasped my wrist, and my insides turned to ice. “My bracelet,” I said. “Shit. I left it—”
“I know,” Ria said. “Me too,” fuck, sometime during the third drinking game?
“Ria! Alex!”
Aiko, already transformed. Beautiful, dependable, angry Aiko, the necklace now a cannon melded into her arm.
“Natalie’s getting your charms, so get clear! I’ll hold it off!” Aiko shouted, turning to blast a hole in its wobbling orange guts.
Whenever I watched a battle, everything slowed: all detail, all precision. Aiko leapt, landed on top of a subway entrance, and fired shots that streaked through the sky, bright-blue. Screaming everywhere. The crowd running the hell away—great, good. The blob shooting at Aiko so that half her skirt got burned in its wake, and Aiko falling to the ground in a loud string of expletives. She flipped in midair, skirt swishing; cannon fire, then her body getting slapped away by a blobhand. She landed with a crunch, coughing up blood. Ria yelled at me to get to an alley, goddamit, before her voice splintered away as a nearby deli’s glass shattered. I raced towards Aiko, mind numbing, certain she was dead, certain she would be okay. The monster saw me scurrying into its field of vision and pigsquealed, and I wished, not for the first time, that desperation by itself could work magic. That the goddess would come fight her own battles. I held my arms up in a stance, in front of Aiko, and said, “You just try, you big fucking bully!”
A globby hand, heading straight for me, orange and vile and about to crush my windpipe—
Selena in a blaze of pink, hacking it apart. She had a sickening gash on one leg, probably from the exploded stage.
“That’s my bridesmaid, fucker!” She grabbed me and hauled me back. “Alex, what the fuck?”
“Here,” Natalie, this time, suddenly right behind me. “I got her.” When Natalie had her earrings in magic mode, she could teleport. I’d always thought that was unfairly cool.
One gloved hand held my wrist, the other forced my bracelet up to my elbow. White light spiraled around us, melding to fit my body in the dress I was wearing for Selena’s sake. Beside us, our bride-to-be stood, battle-axe lengthening in her hands. Rage lined her face, seethed through her, while tears smudged makeup down her cheeks. She leaped and spun, backlit by the moon, and dove down so that her axe cleaved a chunk of monster. Acid gushed up in globs, and she flicked it off her arms in a furious gesture, slicing, vindictive, even as she spat out red. Classic Selena, radiant and violent as fuck when she wanted to be. Natalie was next to Aiko, helping her up, holding a hand against Aiko’s probably broken ribs.
“Over here, you little bitch!” Ria yelled, beneath a billboard for Chicago, chainsaw roaring.
The white on the peripheries of my vision sparked away to rainbows, to nothing. I pulled my whip taut between my hands. I raised my arm and let it whistle harshly through the night.
“We are never going to be free of this,” Selena said in the aftermath, wearing the tattered remnants of her dress. Tears ran down her face. She looked more mad than sad, just a girl who’d had an awful night. Somehow her sash had survived the fight. The club, unfortunately, had not.
We picked through the remnants of the monster, as Natalie and Ria hurried Aiko to the nearest hospital. Selena found its glass heart: our offering to the goddess, the leftover manifestation of malice. She clutched it to her chest and wept as it dissolved, a swell of white filling her hands then fading. When her palms were empty, she sank to her knees. “I’m tired, Alex. I’m tired. So tired.”
I held her, and rocked her back and forth, whispering, “Things might still change,” and “Shhh, shhh, I’m here.” I stroked her hair, wiped her cheeks. Her tears were warm and heartbreaking. I thought But if this ends, if we do finally become free, will we still be together? I felt selfish and awful and bonetired, and also—for one brief, treacherous moment—glad it wasn’t over.
“It could have been worse.”
“I know.”
“You took it like a trooper, though,” Natalie said, plucking a can of beer from the cooler. We were all set for a chill afternoon. A hard drive of several Netflix series, a DVD copy of Ria’s debut—we were eighteen and had put on the most embarrassing dance number as part of her entourage—and Selena’s oft-played box of Taboo. Aiko was sitting up in bed and clicking through her laptop, deciding what to watch. Injured’s privilege.
Outside the hospital window the sky was dense with clouds. The street was quiet. At least for today, it seemed like the goddess and the forces of evil did not give any shits about us.
“I mean, it could have happened on your wedding day.”
“I know,” Selena said with a shove, so that Ria toppled on the couch we’d dragged next to the bed. “God, it could still happen.”
“It won’t,” I said, knocking on Aiko’s headboard. “No way.”
Selena smiled at me, eyes crinkling. Her arm was in a sling that by now was probably more for show. She’d be out of it in time for the wedding next week. I smiled back. If a monster came then, I would personally crush it to bits, with apologies to the bridesmaid’s gown.
Only Unclench Your Hand
They’re killing chickens again in the backyard. Last time, a headless chicken ran in and danced blood puddles around my feet. I can’t relax, because of a massive thrumming headache, so I grab my textbook to get a few pages in by the river. As I make my way down the rocky path I hear Tito Benjo laugh and Aling Dinday scream for the chickens to stay still. I should be used to noise, from Manila, but here in the province, every sound is amplified. In a village this small, you can hear everything for miles.
It would be good for my review, Mom and Dad said. Why not spend a few weeks there? When you get home, you’ll be all set to pass the entrance exams. So, shortly after New Year’s, they drove me here to stay with Tito Benjo in the old farmhouse. Tito put me up in Mom’s room, with the creepy secretary desk and the miniature Santo Niño on the bookshelf. The house is in worse shape than I remember: floorboards croak if you step on them wrong, and Aling Dinday warned me not to lean against the stair banister. Without my parents and cousins, it’s too quiet and empty, so I spend most of my time outdoors.
My parents were right about the lack of distractions. I can barely get a cellphone signal, let alone a few bars of Wi-Fi; even then I have to work from the village carinderia. I finished my study plan in three weeks, with time to review. Only downside is I’ve been overthinking whether I really want this degree—but I’m heading home at the end of this week, and there’ll be plenty of time to doubt my life choices there.
I reach the stone bench by the river and lift my arm to block out the sun. There’s a mosquito latched onto my elbow, sucking furiously. I swat it, and blood smears across my palm. “Damn bug.”
“Damn bug,” someone echoes behind me, the English exaggerated. I turn, grinning, and seize Edna by the armpits. She shrieks as I lift her into the air. “No, Ate Macky! Bloody hands!”
Laughing, I put her down and wipe my hand on my shorts. Edna is the daughter of Aling Dinday and Manong Edgar, the caretakers of Tito Benjo’s farm. I think she’s nine, though she’s tiny enough to be six. The last time I was here she was so young; she barely spoke, and ran away whenever she saw me. Over the last month, though, she’s become the little sister I never had: leading me on walks through town, and laughing as I help around the farm, ’til Mang Edgar and Aling Dinday shoo me away, horrified by my attempts at labor. Edna’s one of the few people in the village who humor me, who don’t mind the English I mix with fumbling Tagalog, or the short hair and comfy clothes that get me mistaken for a boy. If not for her company, it would have been a lonely visit. I might never even have set foot outside Tito Benjo’s property.
“Whatcha doing? Studying?”
“I want to. But my head hurts.”
Edna grips her chin with one hand and her elbow with the other, striking a “brainiac pose,” which she mostly uses to mock me. “If you have a headache, you should see Mang Okat.”
“Who?”
“Mang Okat,” she repeats, tugging on my arm. “Our healer.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I get these headaches pretty often.” I don’t mention that they’ve gotten worse, or they only started last year, when I decided to try for law school. I don’t mention that I think faith healings are whack, fit only for Rated K and other sensational news.
“He can fix it!” she says, still tugging. Because I like Edna, and my brain hurts, and I don’t think I can concentrate anyway, I let her drag me off.
Edna bounds up the steps to Mang Okat’s house, which to my city-girl sensibilities looks kinda like a hut. “Manong! I brought someone new for you!”
“New?” He peers out. His weathered, wrinkled face eases into a grin. “Ahhh-ahhh! Sir Benjo’s niece, the Manileña!”
“Hello po,” I say, ducking my head as I enter. He gestures for me to sit on a plastic chair by the window. I can’t refuse. Edna perches on a bench across from us.
“What’s the problem?”
“She has a headache,” Edna says.
“Yes po,” I answer, helplessly. Mom got my head checked when I first complained, but the brain scans showed nothing. Their only advice was to take painkillers, but I’ve already had my quota for the day. I decide to go along with the inspection; my headache can’t possibly get worse. Mang Okat slaps his hand on my forehead. It’s greasy and smells of herbs.
“Hmm-hmm.” He turns to his table, which is covered in vegetables and herbs and jars of—potions, I guess, or liquids that are supposedly potions. He turns back, holding a glass filled with water in one hand, and a small bamboo tube in the other. There’s a black stone in the glass. “Stay still,” he instructs, holding the glass against my head. I glance at Edna, who smiles back encouragingly. Mang Okat dips the tube into the glass and starts blowing into it, so that the water bubbles. He hovers the glass back and forth around my head. I feel profoundly weird. To distract myself, I watch the movement of a bug across the floor: it looks like a giant fly, but it has no wings. Some kind of beetle. It skitters from one wooden plank to another, then races up the window ledge and disappears over the edge.
At once, the pain in my head evaporates. The sudden, sweet relief extends from my forehead to my shoulders—I didn’t realize how severe the ache had been, pressing against my skull. “Better?” Mang Okat asks.
I nod. My breath comes languid, easy. I’m filled with a desire to sleep, even if I generally hate naps.
He holds out the glass. The water has turned murky green, with solid particles floating in it. “This was inside you,” he says, before dumping it out in a plastic bucket.
“Thank you,” I say, rather awed.
Edna beams. “Told you so!”
I pull a crumpled fifty-peso bill from my pocket. “Here, Manong.” I hold it out.
He waves it off, brow wrinkling.
“Sige na po,” I say.
“Oh, just take it, Tay,” someone says from the door.
“Ate Senya! I thought you were still in Manila!” Edna launches off the bench and wraps around the legs of the woman entering. She looks a little older than me. Her mouth is curved in a tired smile, and she has severe eyebags. She’s wearing a yellow tank top stained with sweat so that I can see her bra through it, and a sky blue skirt. She wipes her face with the back of her hand while setting down a woven bag of groceries.
“I came back two days ago,” Senya laughs. “Sorry I didn’t go see you. Lots to do.” She pats Edna’s head because Edna is still wrapped around her like a leech. Edna’s face shines with stark adoration, and a jolt of jealousy runs through me.
“Welcome back, anak,” Mang Okat says.
“Tay, you should stop healing for free. Besides, I think the Manileña has some cash to spare, no?” She grins—probably to show she’s only ribbing me—but it stings, even if I’m used to it. After a brief pause, Mang Okat takes the bill from my fingers. He passes Senya, gives her a quick kiss on the cheek, then holds out his hand. She slips him a pack of cigarettes, and he stumps out of the house.
Senya eyes the bucket against the wall, lips quirked.
“Your dad is pretty amazing,” I say, feeling a perverse need to defend him. Quack powers or not, I definitely feel a million times better.
