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“It’s so cold,” Marcy said, wrapping her blanket tighter around her shoulders as she climbed atop a picnic table. She had to hold both her spoon and her yogurt cup in her mouth to do that maneuver, but she managed to only spill a little. “How are you not freezing?”
Vee blinked. She wasn’t eating, but Marcy had learned not to worry about that. She hadn’t seen Vee eat since they had met—nearly a month ago—so either she was shy, or she couldn’t digest Earth food. (Or at least not summer camp food.)
Not everyone could live off of yogurt and jello for breakfast like Marcy could. She was a girl of many talents.
“It’s the middle of Summer?” Vee tugged at her hair anxiously. “That is the warmest time of year here, isn't it?”
“Exactly! Summer isn’t supposed to be this cold,” Marcy grumbled. “Where are the horrible days that make your insides feel like they’re melting? I hate it here.”
A gust of wind nearly knocked her off of the table, as if to prove her point.
Vee tilted her head as Marcy spoke, in that not-quite-human way she always did.
“I’m used to colder, I guess,” Vee said softly. “I’m just glad we can see the sunlight from here. It’s nice.” She leaned back, pointing her face toward the sky as her voice became slightly rougher. Marcy couldn’t tell if it was from a sore throat, the coldness, or emotion. She’d never been good at that sort of thing.
She’d also never been good at waking up at this time of morning. The sun was barely peeking above the horizon—meaning it wasn’t even 6:00 AM—and yet here she was, outside with the dew and the chill and her new friend.
“Are you excited to plant flowers today?” Vee asked.
Marcy made a noncommittal noise.
“Earth flowers are kind of lame,” she said. “They just kind of… die really fast. Especially for me. It’s mostly just disappointing.”
“Oh.” Vee swallowed. “Okay.”
Marcy’s chest tightened. That had definitely been an emotion-based voice break. Probably.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—If you’re excited, then you should…”
She nearly made a distressed squeaking noise, and tried to cover it with a yawn. Then she ended up yawning for real, because it was truly disgustingly early.
“Don’t worry about it,” Vee said. She gave a warm smile, but there was still something fragile in her tone, something that made Marcy’s chest ache with that same helplessness and awkwardness she always felt when deaing with something far too delicate for her clumsy self to handle.
There was some kind of cruel metaphor in there, she was sure. Being so clumsy she couldn’t even handle the idea of Earth flowers in casual conversation without accidentally squashing someone’s feelings. She had never been good at the cutesy friendship stuff, as much as she craved it. That was more of Anne’s forte. Marcy was just there to be as useful as possible and then bask in any affection she received back.
In Amphibia, flowers weren’t a symbol of love or friendship. Maybe that was why Marcy was so much more comfortable with them there. They were tenacious, resilient, sometimes even murderous. It was awesome.
In Newtopia, flowers were a symbol of well-earned pride, of glory, of victory, and of conquering nature.
She winced, trying really hard not to think about the implications of that last one.
Trying not to think of flower-patterned tapestries, detailing old wars, and secret royal gardens with blooms taller than she was, and science experiments, and weapons, and the rangers she’d commanded. Her heart twinged as she remembered late nights in the royal gardens, taking notes in her journal, poking and prodding at every plant she could get her hands on.
Except, indulging in nostalgia just opened the floodgates for guilt to start creeping in, and…
She sighed. So much for not thinking about it.
Marcy gave up, resting her face flat on the wooden picnic table. She clearly wasn’t ready to cheer Vee up right now, or to reciprocate the attempts at friendship. Thinking herself into a spiral wouldn’t help either of them.
She tried to remember what her therapist had told her. Deep breathing. Controlling her body’s biological responses to stress as best she could. Un-tensing muscles, un-clenching her jaw, relaxing, melting…
One of the recreation leaders found them outside a bit later. How long, Marcy couldn’t be sure. She had definitely fallen asleep, the wood grain temporarily etched into her skin as Vee tapped her awake. In any case, she and Vee were quickly drafted into helping carry boxes from the storerooms to the camp garden—which was a fenced-in area to prevent deer from eating all the plants.
As she started moving again, her body waking up, the discomfort only worsened. As the pins and needles in her legs faded, something else took its place, something itching, crawling. It settled uncomfortably in Marcy’s chest, though she did her best to push it down and focus on any concrete details she could. No matter what her parents said, she was trying to listen to her therapist's advice. She was working to get better. She wanted to break free from cycles of misery.
And it did go away, for a bit. The storehouse had good vibes, she decided, with the smell of sawdust and dirt. And carrying the larger boxes made her feel really good. She loved that she was often “the strong one” now. Who would’ve thought that night guard training would pay off so well? She still wasn’t awake enough to talk, but she was a good kind of tired, immersed in the moment.
There were sixteen large cardboard boxes packed full of geraniums. She counted them several times, slowly, grounding herself as deeply as she could. The flowers themselves were purple and blue and occasionally pink. Some had five petals, some had much more, all pastel colors with dark, saturated veins.
No, don’t think of them as veins, she chided herself. Don’t think about how easily they could be ripped apart, don’t think of skin tearing and burning and being rebuilt, of expansion and empire and tidy plantations feeding blood paved paths and—
She nearly growled, and managed to trip over her own feet as she set the box down. Only Vee’s quick movement—diving in to catch it with inhuman speed—saved the geraniums from flying everywhere.
Why couldn’t she control her own trains of thought? She was in the most serene, grounding place possible, at her parents’ urging, and she was still… whatever this was.
“You okay?” Vee asked, gently, while she set the box down.
Marcy couldn’t quite respond. Yet. She was working on it. She’d get there. There was just an annoying lump in her throat getting in the way.
Vee looked worried, so Marcy gave a thumbs up and a half smile, as a compromise.
Okay. Focus. Be grounded. Real life. The present moment. Friends. Summer camp. Flowers.
They were packaged in flat layers of thin, cracking, green plastic boxes. Each box held about four flowers. Most of them were wilted, probably from being stored in boxes in a shed for who-knew-how-long. Poor things kept out of the sunlight.
As she carefully extracted the first of the cracked plastic boxes, making use of her too-long fingernails, loose petals fluttered to the ground. She bit her cheek, worried against all logic that she’d get in trouble for breaking the flowers. She knew, scientifically, how flowers worked, knew that the falling petals were a product of chemistry and energy starvation, but that didn’t stop her from glancing up at the counselors nervously every time one hit the ground.
They didn’t seem to mind, though. Two women were gossiping about which of their friends had just gotten engaged, and another counselor was sipping on a mug of coffee as he slowly wrote something on a clipboard. So they probably weren’t going to yell at her.
…Unless they just hadn’t noticed yet.
Breath, Marcy, she told herself. You’re being silly.
“Hey, Marcy!” one of them called, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Yep?” she said, weakly, fighting the urge to dig a hole and bury herself alive. Her fingers dug into the ground below her feet, dirt no doubt getting into every crevice of her fingernails.
“Thanks for helping with setup again! We’re so lucky to have you here,” the counselor said, setting another box down in front of her. “Just let me know if you ever need a break. We don’t want you overexerting yourself.”
“Oh. Okay.”
And… that was reassurance, right? That was praise. So why didn’t she feel any better?
She threw herself back into the task. Overanalyzing her own emotions was useless. She didn’t have the EQ for it anyway. She just needed to get out of her head and into a task. Then she’d be better.
That was how it always worked. She was pretty sure.
The geraniums looked sort of like the cicada-wing flowers that grew in the Royal Gardens of Newtopia, except these were much thinner, much more fragile. Back at Newtopia, the flowers had been heartier, more resilient, and had stood up to her incessant need to touch everything. These geraniums, on the other hand, looked like they would shrivel up and die if a slight gust of wind touched them.
And boy, was it windy, today.
She swallowed, as loose strands of her quickly-growing hair blew into her mouth.
They were definitely going to break. She shouldn’t be touching them. She didn’t know how to take care of them. They were going to die. The petals strewn on the ground looked tragically romantic, like a great setting for the type of story she didn’t write, but this wasn’t art or fiction. They were real and they were dying and no one cared.
But that was a stupid thing to be panicking about, so she tried to push it down. Earth had different flora. Duh. So what? She could handle it. She could.
Other students had arrived, and they were getting ready to start the planting. One of the counselors was speaking with a megaphone, but the sounds were distorted to mush in her ears. And oh, oh, she couldn’t stand up right now. Her legs were too wobbly. She knelt back down, jeans already muddy enough that she didn’t really care.
Since it was impossible to pay attention to the immediate task at hand, she settled for reading the label on one of the boxes. That was close enough to paying attention, right?
It read “Geranium Cranesbills,” in large, bold letters. Which was funny, because they were nothing like Amphibian cranesbill plants, though they had the same name. Those were carnivorous and deadly, laden with thorns that could cut through frog skin. These were probably just named after the shape? No, they didn’t look anything like that either…
Then, as she tried to continue unpacking on autopilot, she extricated a flower that was doing particularly poorly. It looked almost slimy. She tapped it gently, despite herself, and the entire flower toppled off of its stem, splatting on the ground, becoming a clump of rot, and she forgot how to breathe, and—bad bad bad no no no.
This wasn’t like a normal panic attack. It was one of the new weird ones that were happening more and more frequently. Instead of wanting to throw up or curl into a ball, she just felt frozen, trembling on the inside, her vocal chords unreachable. Like all of her cells were shaking so rapidly they'd turn invisible.
Then there was a hand against her own and she almost screamed, except she still couldn’t move—couldn’t even hyperventilate or whimper and she was going to die she was going to die she was—
And then she was slapped in the face.
That broke through the spell enough that she was able to shriek.
Okay, actually, in hindsight, it was more of a worried pat against her forehead than a slap, but she was way too out of it to care about details like that in the moment.
Vee—the face tapper—recoiled and started apologizing, and that was the last thing she remembered before she was in the rec room, curled up in a fuzzy chair with a blanket tossed over her lap.
She groaned. Her legs were tingly with pins and needles, and her brain felt foggy. It wasn’t like those times in the past where she’d get a little too passionate about planning a C&C campaign, and forget what she’d been doing, or why she’d walked into a room.
No, this was so much worse. There had been nothing but drowning in the static roar of her mind until she was suddenly lucid. She had no idea how she’d gotten here, or how much time had passed, or, ugh.
She screamed again for good measure, though this one was more frustration than terror.
(The terror was there though, lingering just below the surface, because how could it not be?)
“Oh hey, you’re awake,” a voice drawled.
“Who’re you?” Marcy slurred, still trying to get up.
“It’s Masha. Vee’s here, too.”
Vee hummed in acknowledgement. “Oh, um, they finished planting flowers, sorry. You kind of missed the whole thing.”
Marcy huffed. “Good. I hate gardening.”
“I thought you were into that kind of nerd stuff,” Masha said.
Marcy narrowed her eyes, and Masha raised their hands.
“No judgement. I’m also into a bunch of nerd stuff. Not gardening, specifically, for me. I’m more of the legends and mythology type. But I get it. Just thought you enjoyed botany or whatever.”
“Not anymore,” Marcy said, so quietly that she wasn’t sure if she could be heard. Then, the weight of her words slammed into her full force, and she was gasping for air, even the fuzzy couch cushions feeling abrasive against her.
“What’s wrong?” Vee asked, at the same time as Masha started fumbling for an apology, which was dumb, because they hadn’t done anything wrong, it was just that…
“Science isn’t fun anymore,” she said, with horror. “I can’t even…” she swallowed painfully. “I can’t even think about plant science without feeling all icky inside.”
“Oh.” Vee looked relieved. “Don’t do science, then,” she said, as if Marcy was dumb.
“I can’t just not do science! I- it’s all I have!” Marcy’s voice cracked.
Vee didn’t flinch or back away. She never did. She just leaned closer, eyes impossibly wide. “I don’t think I understand. Can you explain?”
Somehow, that was what it took to give Marcy a moment of clarity, and bring her into the moment. The florescent lights and faint staticky music finally sharpened into something more real. Because Vee really didn’t understand why she was yelling, and maybe Marcy didn’t either, but they could figure it out together.
“I’m… everyone says I have so much potential, and I’m gonna do great things,” Marcy said. “And it’s like. I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I know I’m smart. I know I’m helpful. I know I’m good at following orders and being convenient for everyone else and whatever. But that’s not… mine? That’s just… that’s a character flaw, if anything. That’s not who I want to be. It’s just… who I have to be.”
“Don’t really know what you’re trying to say. But I’m pretty sure whatever it is, is the mental illnes talking,” Masha said.
Marcy growled.
“No, okay. It sounds bad. But it’s like. I’m a terrible judge of character, right? Don’t try to argue on that, I literally…” she gestured wildly in the air.
“...kay”
“And… I’m not a people person. I don’t have any emotional intelligence. I don’t know how to read a room.”
Vee blinked. “So?”
Marcy groaned, rubbing her fingernails against her jeans to ground herself. “And it’s like, I used to be really into writing and everything, but it’s way less fun when everything is real life. And I’m a good writer! But the world is too big, and complicated I can’t write well enough to express… just… anything. It’s all so complicated, I don’t know how to do anything justice. And same with art. None of it conveys anything I want it to.”
Masha cleared their throat.
“Is there a point to this, or do you just need to ramble about hating yourself more? Because, I hate to break it to you, but that’s mental illness.”
“No! I don’t hate myself. I think… I think I like who I am! That’s the thing. Or, maybe, who I was? But! I’m ever better than I was then! I’ve grown. And I’m a way cooler person than I was before, I think. But I learned that I have even less people skills than I thought, and I can’t do art, or writing, or friendship, or making decisions, or like, knowing what’s the right thing. So all that’s left is science! That’s the only thing that can be fun anymore. Because it’s not all wrapped up in the messiness of life! Except, surprise, it’s not actually freeing, because I just had the… what is this.. The third panic attack this week? First it was looking at clouds, then tracking animals, now this? I can’t–” her voice broke. “I can’t lose science! I don’t have anything else to turn to!”
She stopped herself before her ranting turned into tears. She really didn’t need anyone to see that right now. The room was silent for a moment, with only Marcy’s frantic breathing, until Vee sat down next to her. Her skin was always colder than Marcy expected, and she tried not to jump when her chilly hands touched Marcy’s.
“Even if it is really all you have. It doesn’t mean you can’t live without it. I used to have…” Vee swallowed, glancing around suspiciously. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I had… Not very much. But I still had to let go of everything I’d ever known to get here. Maybe it’s hard but—when you’re untethered, you eventually land somewhere, and sometimes its nice? It’s better than being tied to something that’s destroying you, at least. So, maybe it’s okay to have nothing, for a minute. You can just exist. And try to trust. I’ve learned its not nearly as bad as everyone makes it sound.”
Marcy bit her cheek until she could taste blood. This was another delicate situation, one she just wanted to crawl away from, but she couldn’t. She had to be brave. Even if she wanted to throw up. She wasn’t qualified to handle vulnerability.
“I appreciate the advice. And… I don’t know what you’ve been through,” Marcy finally said. “But, I… I’m not that… I haven’t had…”
Vee nodded, looking so patient Marcy could sob. Masha’s full attention was on her, too, resting their head on their hand as they sat at the table.
Even after how much better things had gotten since Amphibia, Marcy still wasn’t used to being listened to like this. Maybe she never would be.
“It’s not ‘destroying me,’” she finally said. “It’s just… I’m being dramatic, I… have a tendency to dramatize things.” She smiled weakly.
Vee waited a long moment, and then spoke quietly,
“Didn’t you literally die?”
Marcy winced.
“I guess. A little bit.”
“So…”
“Okay, done with this conversation,” Marcy said. “Nice talk, thanks.”
“Nope, not yet,” Vee said, gently. “Look at me.”
Marcy squeezed her eyes shut and flopped backwards.
“Hey! Listen to her!” Masha said, throwing a wadded up ball of notebook paper at Marcy.
“Okay, okay, fine. What?”
“You don’t need a safety net,” Vee said. “You don’t need any kind of purpose to justify your existence. You don’t need a place to crawl back to comfort and hide away from everything. And… you usually don’t get those things, anyway. The world is messy and complicated and dangerous. And sometimes it hurts people. But you live here. In this world.”
“Is this supposed to make me feel better?” Marcy said, with a confused, sort-of laugh.
“Yeah, stop closing your eyes. Look at me. Living here is hard enough. It’s okay if that’s your main priority. It’s okay if you need to spend more time learning how to be alive. How to exist. Because it’s hard. Believe me, I know.”
Vee’s voice cracked, and Marcy forgot that she was trying to squirm away. She leaned in closer, letting Vee pull her into a hug.
“It’s hard, but it’s also, like, the best thing ever. This world is so… so everything. It’s overwhelming and full of people but also filled with love and joy and… it’s good. I think. I’m still learning how to exist here, too. So you’re not alone. We can figure it out together.”
“Thanks,” Marcy mumbled, her throat tight again.
“Also, no offense,” Masha added, “but you’re literally at a camp for kids who don’t know how to live in the ‘real world,’ so it’d be weird if you were well-adjusted. We’ve all tried to summon a demon or whatever to get away from it all. You just happen to be the lucky one who succeeded.”
“Okay. I guess.” Marcy took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I feel better or not. I mean, I don’t feel like I’m going to pass out anymore, so that’s probably improvement. But…” she groaned. “I hate emotions. They’re so much.”
“Mood,” Masha said, as Vee squeezed Marcy in a tighter hug.
“They are,” Vee said. “And you’re learning how to handle them. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” Marcy said. A few stray tears fell, and she wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Think this is really my limit, though. I don’t think I can handle being vulnerable any longer. But I don’t think I can do anything else, either, so…”
“You should eat some food, it’s past noon already.”
“Ugh, I don’t wanna,” she groaned, despite herself.
“Too bad,” Vee said. “Your mission is living on this planet, and you have to not starve in order to do that.”
Marcy whimpered as Vee pulled her to her feet.
“Quest to the dining hall!” Vee said. She bumped her shoulder against Marcy’s, who let out a little laugh.
"Unless you're too much of a coward to accept it," Masha added dryly.
“Okay, okay, fine. You win.”
And, maybe it wasn't as exciting of an adventure as the Night Guard or Newtopian Rangers, but it was important to her friends. Important to her own growth too.
Vee linked arms with her, because she was still a bit unsteady on her feet, and Masha grabbed the bookbag that Marcy had almost forgotten, and then they were off.