Nicki Kovalsky

“You realize we’re always having a sleepover, technically, right?”

The girl was breathless with laughter as she sat cross-legged on Nicki’s bed, her hands folded in her lap as she looked at the other girl, and then over at Jameson. It was exceedingly rare for him to actually be sticking around overnight, so she decided technically, this was a sleepover.

      “Pizza! Pizza and those sticky cinnamon things. Let’s do it. Don’t tell Seth.”

Getting bored before too long, she hopped back into bed with Kai, leaning on her friend while making ugly faces at the lanky boy on the floor.

Click. ‘Good afternoon, Domino’s pizza, what can I get for you?’

The small girl kicked her legs, alerting everybody that they’d picked up.

“Hi! I’d like a large pizza with everything but anchovies, and another with just cheese.” For a second she’d stopped there, leaning further into Kai. Then, leaning into her friend reminded her of what she’d so carelessly forgotten. “Oh! And those cinnamon things. Two of them, probably.”

Jameson shifted his weight slightly, folding his legs under himself.

“Make it three. Orders, I mean. Not just like three little cinnamon things. Probably boxes of them, or whatever they come in. That’ll be good.”

Jameson laughed, and Nicki grinned without letting out a sound.

‘Alright, miss. That’s a large pizza without anchovies, a large cheese pizza, and three orders of Cinna Sticks. Anything to drink for you, today?’

She nudged Kai frantically, not knowing the answer to his question.

Kailee had already crawled into bed when she heard the pitter patter of Nicki’s feet coming into her bedroom. One eye opened to sleepily peer at the girl, a brief, tired smile crossing her face as she was joined. Kailee shifted a little to allow the other tiny girl some room and get comfortable, not even bothering to question her presence.

Nicki’s whisper was a comforting thing, but her words confused the tired teenager. Kai rolled over so she lay shoulder to shoulder with Nicki, staring at the same ceiling and scrunching her eyebrows together.

“We’re much more than friends, princess. We’re best friends, remember?” Kailee giggled softly, but an idle hand reached and lightly squeezed Nicki’s.

There was a great deal of silence. Kailee briefly wondered if Nicki had fallen asleep and forgotten her statement, but suddenly she had turned and faced her, rambling about space cadets and girlfriends. 

Girlfriends? Like, boyfriend-girlfriend, minus the boyfriend? Kailee’s pause was more out of confusion than anxiety. She was quiet for a few seconds. Her thoughts ran a mile a minute. Her pretty, funny friend who was warm and tiny like her wanted to be more than friends.

 Nicki could come close and Kailee didn’t flinch like she did when others came near. She could make her laugh and let her bring home a kitten and instead of judging her for all the horrible things that happened, she let her pretend to be five again and allowed her to heal. 

In her own way, Nicki had saved Kailee from herself. Most people didn’t understand the girl that lay next to her, but Kai did. A sleepy grin touched her lips as she looked at Nicki’s silhouette in the moonlight that crept through the curtains.

     “Girlfriend space cadets?”

She mused it over, pulling Nicki’s hand and pressing her lips gently to it so she kissed her not quite a friend’s fingers.

Without a word, she climber over the girl, careful only not to knee her in the rib as she somersaulted onto the floor with a THUMP.

Safely out of the range of the witch’s brain-melting touch, she pointed down the stairs, whispering despite all the other noise she’d just made.

         “I’m gonna go make cookies. You wanna come?”

They had run out into the woods. Kailee was covered in mud, her shrieks of joy and laughter now muffled into little huffs of breath as she chose to look into the face of her scared friend instead of at her arm. Her hair, usually shiny and thick with wild curls, hung wet and dirty around her face from the rain and her tumble into the ditch. Her arm, laying crooked and useless, was starting to bruise and swell. 

Ever quiet, she struggled to climb to her feet. Her body language seemed more like that of a startled child who had done something wrong than a teenager with a broken arm in the middle of the woods. Then again, most days she acted more like a six-year-old than a sixteen-year-old.

          “It—it’s not that bad, is it? Don’t tell Seth—”

She wasn’t afraid that he would be angry. It wasn’t him. He got frustrated with her but he would never raise his hand to her. She was afraid of his disappointment, of causing him more anguish and stress. Kailee winced as she walked, her head ducked.

         Her little fingers reached out on more than one occasion to run over the injured arm,          but pulled back every time, scared to make it hurt more than it did.

“I’m sorry I made you come,” she whimpered, feeling even worse upon the realization that she couldn’t fix it, after. Usually, with Jamey, she knew how to fix it, after. “I thought it’d be fun but I didn’t think it’d…” Her legs wriggled her back and forth, squirming around in place of the words she couldn’t come up with.

Kailee had already crawled into bed when she heard the pitter patter of Nicki’s feet coming into her bedroom. One eye opened to sleepily peer at the girl, a brief, tired smile crossing her face as she was joined. Kailee shifted a little to allow the other tiny girl some room and get comfortable, not even bothering to question her presence.

Nicki’s whisper was a comforting thing, but her words confused the tired teenager. Kai rolled over so she lay shoulder to shoulder with Nicki, staring at the same ceiling and scrunching her eyebrows together.

“We’re much more than friends, princess. We’re best friends, remember?” Kailee giggled softly, but an idle hand reached and lightly squeezed Nicki’s.

But, she couldn’t. Because Kailee was holding her hand and her cheeks had already turned redder than Jameson’s on a bad day.

She didn’t even know if she really liked her like that. She didn’t know if she liked anyone like that. She said ‘kinda’. She was sure she said kinda. She really kinda wanted to be more than friends with somebody, and was already kinda sorta more than friends-ish with Jamey, but that didn’t count because they were just friends.

She furrowed her brows and took in a sharp gasp of air, holding it–

        Because she wasn’t really more than friends with Jamey because they weren’t and you         couldn’t be something else if you didn’t agree to be and she didn’t want to anyways         because that seemed dumb but she wanted to with someone and Kailee was pretty         and funny and a princess and they were princesses  together and as far as she         knew neither of them knew how this worked but she knew how it worked less and         even less than that was Jamey but suddenly she wished she’d asked him before she’d         said anything and that maybe she could’ve though this through a little further than         ‘more’ because all she knew was Kailee was nice to her and she wanted to be nice to         Kailee and maybe do that all the time or at least a lot of it and if she really         thought about it she didn’t know what more was, except for what she saw on tv and that         didn’t seem like something either of them would want and the warmth from Kailee’s         hand seeped up her arm and through her shoulders and into her brain and now         everything was cloudy and stupid and didn’t make any sense and there was a         tingling all the way down to her toes that made her want to smile and puke and         run away all at the same time.

–until she figured it out.