your mouth's a smoking gun

“Just, you know…” Alina gestures to her half full cup of coffee. She doesn’t sleep very well any more, every car driving by her little house is an alarm. People shouting in the street, even if it’s done with happiness makes it impossible for her to rest. It isn’t insomnia, on quiet nights she’s fine. Last night hadn’t been a particularly good time for sleeping, a car drove by every time she was about to drift off. “I don’t have any jobs today, so I thought I would have breakfast.” She wasn’t going to admit to coming to the diner because Drea was the only person in town she thinks it would be okay to seek out. That kind of neediness could result in nothing good. “No one told me it was such a faux pas.”

While quick once-overs are usually more Ea’s speed, she hasn’t quite memorized Alina’s face yet. It means her eyes slow in their journey down the other girl’s countenance, taking in the subtle rings under her eyes that speak of sleepless nights. She looks like she could use more than a little coffee. Ea wonders what’s keeping her up, but it’s not her place to ask. Not yet.

“You mean you don’t eat on the mornings you do have jobs?” There’s a smirk tugging at her lips, one that flags her as teasing rather than vapid. “That can’t be healthy.” She could let the last remark go, but Alina is so shy Ea half thinks she’ll actually take it to heart that she really has misstepped somehow if she doesn’t say something. Never a good way to start the morning. “Not necessarily wrong, but…” She trails off, reaches a hand out to brush imaginary dust from Alina’s shoulder. “Soon you’ll be just as bored of this place as the rest of us, I assure you.” The smile that brightens her face is in direct contrast to her little doom and gloom prophecy. “What can I get you?”

this role is closed ANDRA ZELENKO // sladko TWENTY ONE SHE/HER DIANNA AGRON

biography //  

Amra Zelenko had her fourth child and disappeared into the wind. Where Peter’s first and only daughter should have been a gift, he blamed her for sending his wife running. That resentment might have dissipated had Peter not been host to a slew of problems: anger, drinking, gambling. His sons learned to steer clear lest they end up with bruises they’d be forced to find ways to hide. Yet despite the embers of old disdain for his daughter that the years continued to prod, the only girl in the house was often the sole child Peter wouldn’t see as a direct challenge to his authority. Consistently being forced into the lion’s den to calm their father instilled a sort of fearlessness in Ea from a young age, fierce enough that life has never managed to take it back from her.

No one actually calls Andra Zelenko by her birth name. She’s Drea to acquaintances, Ea to her friends. She likes it that way. Her life is segregated into the series of masks she dons: she’s Andra, angel-turned-outcast, to her family; Drea, the smiling whore, to the people she lets crawl on top of her in the dark. And Ea? She’s not completely sure who Ea is just yet. Despite the frequency the name is uttered, Ea only exists in the most private of spaces. Sometimes it’s thrilling to know that everyone thinks she’s so pure, with no idea of the truth. Other days she could peel off her skin from just how trapped she feels inside her own body.

As far as the rest of the town of concerned, Ea grew up a model child with a poor excuse for a father. One might even have used the word ’angelic’ before whispers of her hellish temper began to trail out into the world. Had she inherited it from her father, or was the girl always meant to be a firestorm? Yet the ugliness inside her only showed itself when it felt threatened. And so for the most part, she thrived at Zanuda’s local high school, making friends and keeping them as easily as she earned top marks. Those grades, and her involvement in Zanuda’s concert band, took her to university on a full scholarship for a music degree.

She would be the first of Peter’s children to even set foot on a college campus. Her brothers had gone straight into the mines, where she was deemed too fragile to work. Without her scholarship she would have been destined to remain in Zanuda forever, and so she clung to her freedom, to the city’s wonders. She took up a job as a waitress, and over the course of two years crafted a lovely savings account. She had it all planned out: after graduation, she’d put down a deposit on an apartment somewhere in the city, and finally get away from that dusty town for good. But fate forced her hand, and Ea saw the better portion of her funds go down the drain, spent on an abortion after an accidental pregnancy. The hookup had been at a party; had she gone through with the pregnancy, she wouldn’t even have known her baby’s father’s name.

She began selling drugs on campus to quickly make up for the extra cash, though she’d vowed to never indulge in them after a new friend of hers overdosed freshman year. The situation had been unfortunate, but she could still recover. Yet before long, her father, always nosy about his children’s finances, looking to take back what they ‘owed’ to cover his gambling debts, discovered his daughter’s latest expense, and demanded to know what it was. Ea held firm, but eventually, he broke her. And when Peter discovered what his daughter had done, he pulled her out of school so quickly many students forgot she was ever there at all.

Her father has not been kind about her little secret. He calls her a whore to her face. She was born last; now she’s last in everything. The last to eat, the last to shower, yet the first the dreaded family curfew drags home every night. That doesn’t stop her from crawling out her window the second the sound of her father’s snores enter the hall, but the added risk of him finding her out—or word reaching him of her after-dark exploits—is greatly unwanted.

Now, though she is barely home, her father makes her pay rent. Ea works part time at a local restaurant; although not lazy, she detests work that does not feel challenging. As such she is very guarded with her time, and hesitant to ever take more hours than strictly necessary at said place of business. It’s nowhere near enough money to cover her portion of the rent, rebuild her savings, and support her drinking habit. And so, though she’s back in Zanuda, she’s continued to sell, occasionally traversing the miles by car back into the city to restock. She’s got a reputation for having the purest products in Zanuda, and saying she’s proud would be an understatement. You want to have a good time, you come to her. Eventually, they all come to her.

connections //

Alexei Sirko; neither would like to admit they’re attached at the hip, but it’s not something you can easily deny when it’s so heart-throbbingly true.