#reshopgoufa

1. 

Alicia is five and she can’t sleep because the tree outside her window creaks its branches against the glass and she just heard a story at preschool about witches long claw fingernails scratching their way into little girl’s bedroom in the middle of the night. 

She’s got her bear in one hand and the thumb of the other in her mouth against her tongue and she’s wearing the fluff socks her father gave her for Christmas so her feet don’t make noise against the hardwood floors and she todders down the hall towards her parents bedroom, the light glowing beneath the crack of the closed door. She stops outside it and looks up at the doorknob. 

it’s what the doctors say we should do, maddie.

Alicia reaches up for the handle, going on her tiptoes.

she’s fine. nick tested high intelligence, why--

She drops her bear and squeaks in apology, scooping him up and dusting him off, spit wet thumb matting his fuzz down. 

nick has nothing to do with this--

She kisses his bead nose and his plastic button eyes and tucks him up safe under her arm. 

attachment disorder--

She sucks at her thumb until the bear taste has faded and then wipes it off on the leg of her jammies, clumsy and not all the way clean when she stops. She thinks vaguely of the witch again and is reminded of her mother’s fingernails, the sheen of them and how they bite when they grip her tiny wrist.

--swear, it’s like you really love her less.

“Licia,” Nick whispers from behind her. She turns with a chubby grin and lifts her arms. He kneels down and his ear to the door and his face does something funny before he lifts her up and tucks her against his chest. “C’mon Leesh. You don’t need this.”

She snuggles under his sheets and he kisses her forehead and adjusts her bear against her side and he keeps her warm and safe until the sun’s up too high for the witch to catch her.

2. 

Alicia goes to her DARE class with her pigtails and her gel pens and her purple glitter notebook with the tiny lock and the flimsy aluminum key and takes notes on what the powerpoint says while her classmates chew gum and blow bubbles and pass notes, because she’s practicing for Berkeley; Nicky already bought her the pennant.

They show pictures on the projector and Alicia tries to draw them in her notes. Nick bought her a piggybank for christmas and she’s saving for a camera--it’ll be so much easier to take pictures of the presentations instead of drawing the image slides by hand. They put up another picture and say it’s a pipe and that smoking is bad and then start talking about lungs and nicotine and cancer but her fingers are frozen on her pen.

She goes home and walks through the whole house, opening the closets and the cabinets and even the laundry machines to make sure she’s alone before she goes into Nick’s room and crawls under his bed to find the little black case. She opens it and sees the pipe, just like on the slide, and sits on the edge of the bed and cries without quite knowing why. 

She falls asleep curled up into a ball with her face pressed into his pillow, and wakes when she hears the front door open shut.

just let me grab my stash--don’t eat those, that’s for my sister’s lunch. 

she’s just managed to sit up when he comes in and stops short at the sight of her, before his eyes drop to her lap and his face goes tight and furious. she looks down and freezes, his case in her hands, open and the hint of curved glass. he advances on her before she can protest and snatches it away and shoves her back with a hand to her shoulder--surprised, she flops back onto the bed and struggles back upright. “Nicky--”

“This is mine,” he says, grabbing her by the front of her shirt and dragging her to her feet. “You can’t just come in here and take my stuff, Alicia!”

Alicia struggles not to cry. She’s never seen him like this, not even when she reached up to the stove and burned her hand because she wanted mac and cheese and didn’t wait for him to fix her a bowl and he shouted at her until she sobbed and crawled under her bed and refused to come out even though he brought ice cream and apologized until his voice went out. She yelps when he shakes her, her teeth clicking together painfully. “I’m sorry,” she says, half bewildered and almost scared, “I didn’t mean--”

He shoves her away again and she falls to the floor, scrambling to keep her feet under her as he grabs her jacket, catching some of her hair in his grip, and drags her out to push her back into the hall. “If you ever,” he threatens, “touch this again--” he stops. Looks at her sprawled out on the carpet with her fresh rug burn knees and her big wet eyes and betrayed hitch breathing. He reaches out again and stops when she flinches. “It could hurt you,” he says, picking her up gently and curling his arms around her when she burrows into him, hurt and confused and missing him so sharply even though he’s pressed all against her. “Promise me?”

“Okay,” she promises. She stays there, frozen, while he walks back out and greets his friend, heading for the door. 

let’s go---no one, just my stupid kid sister

3.

Alicia packs her backpack. First aid kit and the emergency satellite radio with fresh batteries and three bottles of water, anti-vomiting syrup and vitamin bottles and over the counter painkillers. She takes the boxcutter from the garage and tucks it into her hoodie pocket where she can curl her fingers around the metal handle and rest her thumb on the plastic slider that presses the blade out. 

She finds him in the third place she checks. It’s a house like any other and she thinks sometimes the movies really get it wrong as she smiles her way past the middle aged couple who answers the door and pretends she’s there for the party in the back guesthouse. She asks around and heads upstairs and hears him, behind a closed door to her left.

--just until my sister’s eighteen. then i’m out of here, forever. and im never coming back.

Alicia goes home. She walks the whole way and there’s a dull ache in the balls of her feet where she wore her converse down to thin rubber. she flips her lock and throws the backpack across the room and shatters every last one of the porcelain horses her father bought to decorate her dresser and walks on the shards until she leaves bloody footprints down the hall to the kitchen. Her mother keeps vodka in the freezer and she drinks it out by the pool with the chlorine sting a good excuse for her tears.

4.

Alicia is cutting class because why the fuck not, her attendance is nearly perfect anyway. she goes home and sees a car she doesn’t know parked on the curb outside. it’s a shitty honda and there’s a roach in the cup tray between the seats and she sighs as she unlocks the door. there’s vomit in the kitchen sink, all liquid, and she can hear a girl giggling down the hall.

nicks heavy breathing and the creak of the mattress and a girl moaning like alicia’s only ever heard in the porn she watched with her blanket over her head and her earphones turned way down low and she’s frozen outside his door, hand outstretched for the knob.

yes plea-se nicky

her lip curls up. she snarls, soundless, and is one second from turning to stomp away and slam her door real loud and hope they think it’s madison come home early--

licia. licia, god, leeshy

5. 

The boat rocks her to sleep and everything is still sort of awful but it’s been awful for so long it’s more of a background feeling than anything that affects her mood. She’s mostly clean and the ocean is calm and she loves the sky spread overhead and she doesn’t even mind waking up every so often to listen to the wood creak and the waves lap against the hull.

she swims up from sleep into a vaguely drowsy half-consciousness and she smells him before she realizes he’s bent over her. end of the world and blood and tepid recycled ocean water and none of their soaps from home and she still knows him instantly. he touches her wrist and tucks the blanket up around her chin and kisses her temple, barely there. his voice is hoarse and broken and she wonders vaguely when the last time it was that he was clean this long.