The Escapist

Jaded: Do they buy into the “happily ever after” ideal? What’s their standard?

“Eh,” Zara shrugs, tilting her head a little as she rests her chin on top of her hand. “A little, I guess. I never really had any desire for it, nor did I believe in it at all, ‘once upon a time.’” Wow...she’s becoming a fucking nerd. Who’s making her like this? Which one of those Grid fuckers? Zara rolls her eyes, “I guess when I started seeing my current boyfriend, things changed a little. No, I’m not picturing us ‘riding off into the sunset,’ like some gross Disney film,” the DJ clarifies with a narrow of her eyes. Never in her life did she care or want to be a part of a ‘Disney princess fantasy.’ “But I do see us being happy together, having space, being there for one another when we need it. We’re doing what makes us both happy and we’re happy with that.....happy?” 

Question: How often do they feel doubt? What topics are they defensive about?

The breath of air the DJ lets out when asked this question makes her hair fly back behind her ears. It’s not that she’s defensive about the question, which would be ironic; but rather is defensive about what she’s defensive about. So...maybe she is being defensive over the question. This causes her to sigh deeply. “Good grief. Uh, I mean yeah, I feel doubt. I feel doubt about anything I do, especially creatively. My music is really important to me, and if it goes wrong, everything’s fucked.” Of course she’d worry over something like that, this is her passion! Anything important is worth worrying over. “And defensive? Who’s defensive?” She jokes, obviously trying to avoid the question. “I mean the normal stuff. My emotions, how I’m feeling, my family, any of my problems...” Maybe she just gets defensive about everything...

Co-Habitate: Do they live with anyone? What’s “need to know” before moving in?

“I technically live by myself now. I used to have a roommate but he...uh. Passed away,” Zara says with an uncomfortable shrug, suddenly feeling a little vulnerable. “But normally I’m either at my place, or my boyfriend, Javier’s. So I guess we sort of live with each other...just in two places.” Does that even make sense? Anyway... “I don’t know if there’s a ‘need to know’....maybe that I’m a bit messy and leave things around the house? Oh, I also can’t cook. I burn a lot of things I put in ovens,” the DJ chuckles, though more in spite of herself. 

Grudge: How bad does an insult go over? Do they hold a grudge long?

“Oh, they don’t go well. I definitely hold grudges,” Zara begins with a snort, thinking of a grudge she still has against a nine-year-old boy named Alfie from her fourth grade class. What? He put gum in her hair, that’s a reasonable grudge to hold against someone for nearly twenty years! “They can go as long as ten, maybe fifteen years sometimes. My oldest grudge is of this three year old girl named Tonya who pushed me down in preschool. I scraped my knee and cried all the way home, I looked like an idiot!” Zara shakes her head, “I don’t know where Tonya is now, but I hope her knees are wobbly and ashy. Fuck her.” 

Insomnia: What’s their sleeping schedule like? Snorer? Sound sleeper?

“Sleeping? I love sleeping. There’s rarely a time I can’t sleep and it’s even harder to wake me up,” Zara chuckles. “Good luck when I’m in a deep sleep or I’ve taken pills. I’m never waking up...and I do snore. A little. I’ll admit that...” The DJ trails off before specifying again, “A little.”

June almost rolled her eyes when the DJ came up with the idea of having a friendiversary… “Why don’t we not” she stated with a forced smile “I’ll buy you a beer and let’s call it a day”. They were friends, their friendship had already lasted longer than anyone would have anticipated taking into account their personalities, but there was no need to make a big deal out of it. People didn’t actually celebrate the anniversary of their friendships, did they? The hacker had never heard of such a thing. June couldn’t help but laugh a little when Zara herself mentioned how extraordinary it was that she was still with Javier, considering how their relationship with each other -if hating another person could be called a relationship- had started out. “That is still the greatest mystery of our lifetime” he hacker said with a teasing tone, picking up her glass to finish her water. “One day you were talking about the stick up his ass and the next you were making out with him on your birthday”. June didn’t remember in detail how that all had played out but she definitely remembered that she’d suddenly found her friend kissing Silva outside the bar where they were celebrating Zara’s birthday.

June could understand that what had happened with Zara’s father still plagued her thoughts. It was usual, she supposed. It was never easy when the idealized image of a family figure -especially a parent- shattered beyond repair. Rationality and sentimentality had a way of clashing with each other, sending mixed messages about it. “Wait. Why does it feel like a betrayal?” she asked, somewhat puzzled that Zara had phrased it like that. “Your father broke your trust and stole from you, and somehow you think you are the one who did the betraying?” she asked with a frown. That didn’t make sense to June, and if it had been anyone else, the hacker would have just called the person an idiot, but in Zara’s case, she actually wanted to understand where her friend was coming from. “I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m not going back to Providence, that’s for sure. I’ve seriously been considering staying in Boston. I’ve had some job offers already, but I don’t know- I’m not really drawn into any of it. And for a while I thought I’d like to get into cognitive science…” she trailed off, pursing her lips. Cognitive science was the perfect multidisciplinary area that merged both of her fields of study, but it wasn’t really a passion of hers. “And I can’t really go, anyway”. She had to fix the G.A.I.A. situation. She had to continue charging through The Grid levels to find the AI’s weakness in there. And she was still needed here, in some way.

Zara chuckles with a shake of her head, “you’re absolutely no fun. But I’ll take that beer! Or soda. I should just stick to that.” Hey, she’ll chalk it up as a win in her book that June’s even acknowledging they have a friendship to ‘weirdly fawn over’ in the first place. Normally they don’t talk about these types of things, not that Zara minds much either. She too isn’t the sentimental type and had mostly just been kidding when she brought up having a friendiversary. Where sentiment did not lie with friends, however, it did with her boyfriend.  “God,” the DJ chuckles, taking a sip of her soda, “that guy did get under my skin, didn’t he?” Zara sighs, “now he just gets under my clothes.” For a moment she lets the joke go unnoticed, but the small smirk on her lips and the shake of her shoulders from laughter don’t hold for long. But her laughter dies out when the subject shifts to her dad. Zara didn’t expect people to understand where she was coming from. “I don’t expect you or anyone else to ‘get’ it. It’s complicated. It’s not just about him stealing or what he stole. It’s about why he did it.” 

The dynamic she has with her parents and even her siblings is a bit...strange. Living in the public eye changes things, and it makes a person constantly feel like everything they do and say is under scrutiny. No matter where she goes, Zara feels as though someone is watching her, even if they’re not. In her head they are, and everyone is always talking about her. Maybe that’s why she gets so defensive all the time, and the walls go up. She tries to keep them down now. “I don’t think it’s a secret that I’m an addict. I didn’t just get my talent from him, I also got the bad shit too, specially his addiction,” the DJ explains, awkwardly fiddling with an onion ring. “So it’s kind of hard for me to be mad at someone who fucks up as badly as I know I have in the past. I’ve been him.” Maybe she’s not like that anymore, but once upon a time, Zara used to be the type to do anything to chase a good high. Anything to escape reality, she’d take. The only difference is, she decided to stop chasing it. “Well,” the DJ chuckles, “I don’t know what the hell ‘cognitive science’ is, but I’m proud of you, nerd. Look at you, getting all the job offers! Not that anyone’s shocked.” Everyone expected someone like June to succeed, come on. “Whoever or whatever you choose is lucky to have your big ass brain,” Zara jokes, judging her friend’s shoulder before she stuffs half of a ranch dipped onion ring in her mouth. 

Bailey stood there just thinking about what it would be like to go back in. Seeing Kishan in there had shaken her, and she hadn’t turned back. It had been ages since she’d last seen Zara, maybe she’d been avoiding her or just busy. Looking at her now the pang of missing Kishan came up again. She and Zara had never really spoken about the loss. They had both been close to him.  She hadn’t meant to surprise Zara, Bailey held her hands up to show innocence. “Sorry, Zara.” Bailey answered. “Can’t stay away either.”

The sight of Bailey doesn’t exactly relieve her, if anything, it makes her want to jump right back in. The DJ lets out a soft sigh, shaking her head a little as she reaches for the pack of band aids sitting next to her. “It’s fine, I get it,” she says with a wave of her hand. It’s not that she’s upset with Bailey, or that she dislikes her, it’s just that well...they were both very close to Kishan. Seeing her is like this weird reminder of that, and so she can’t imagine how Bailey must be feeling right now seeing her. Neither of them have even spoken since his passing, come to think of it. Fuck. Maybe it’s time to...

Zara shrugs off the nerves she gets, pressing one of the band aids over the needle mark left in her arm. “It’s uh...it’s weird seeing him in there. I hadn’t...uh. It’s hard,” she nods, looking away from her head. Talking about it is still hard. So, she mildly changes the subject. “I’m actually looking for apartments, something a little bigger for a studio space, something... well, new.” The DJ pauses before she adds, “and you’re graduating, right? Or have graduated? Honestly, I’m losing track of time these days, I still have a year left.” 

June narrowed her eyes a little and scrunched her nose a little “‘Love’ is a strong word”. Zara’s mac and cheese could have been worse, that was for sure. The hacker nodded thoughtfully because yes, things had a way of moving fast when you looked at them in retrospect. “It doesn’t feel like it’s been three years since I moved here” she said. Somehow it felt like she’d been living in Boston much longer while also feeling like it hadn’t been too long ago that was she was accepted into Turing for her master’s degree and left Providence to start a new chapter of her life in this city. And what a chapter. “Damn, a year already?” she asked with a scoff. She never expected her friend to actually last with Silva, mainly because the DJ hadn’t been much of the relationship type before and also because the two of them had deeply hated each other once. June was sure they had only gotten carried by some weird passion and that everything would fizzle out eventually. But no, they were actually pretty stable, it seemed, and also very lovey-dovey and domestic and all that shit. June could barely stand Javier Silva but she was happy her friend was happy, even if it was with such a stick in the mud as the writer.

June squatted Zara’s hand away as the DJ waved the onion ring in front of her. It wasn’t that she thought onion rings were disgusting in any capacity, they were just a crap meal accurately placed in the junk food group. “It must not have been easy for you, but he’s where he belongs” she stated plainly before taking another sip of her water. June understood a thing or two about family members not necessarily being the epitome of ethical behavior and all that was in the world. Even family could hurt you. Especially family could hurt. Shared history and emotional bonds gave them all the ammunition to tear you apart and manipulate you emotionally into giving them a free pass. “You did the right thing” she said, and everything in her tone and expression made it clear that she didn’t even mean the ‘right thing’ socially and before the law, she meant that Zara had done the right thing for herself to avoid getting screwed over by her dad again.

Zara rolls her eyes. Yeah, she’s not well known for her cooking, but she can put on a damn good show and that’s more important. With the money she has, she can just order takeout anyway, no need to cook. “Three years, fuck...that means we’ve been friends for a couple of those right? Why don’t we have like a friendiversary?” They’ve never had one of those, though neither of them are really the type of make a big deal out of something like that. But things have changed, Zara feels good about life, and she feels like celebrating. Maybe things with her dad weren’t so great but...well, other things were going well. Minus G.A.I.A. as well, she supposes...fuck. Zara chuckles, “damn, don’t sound too excited, people may stare.” It’s no secret June isn’t Javier’s biggest fan, or even vice versa. But, they’ve been civil enough since the two of them started dating. June’s been supportive, at least, and that’s all Zara cares about. The DJ chuckles again and gives a little nod, “we came up on our year anniversary a few months back. Hard to believe I’m in love with the same guy I once disliked so, so much.” 

Zara rolls her eyes when her hand is swatted away, though she can’t help the smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. ‘Always a child at heart,’ her mother would say with a sneer. It didn’t matter much now what her mother thought. Zara stopped needing her money months ago, and she hasn’t gotten below a ‘C’ since mathematics last year. Of course that topic is much easier to talk about than her father. That relationship is well...severed, badly. “I don’t know if you’re right. Or if what Jav and I did was, I still think about it a lot,” the DJ admits, looking down at the onion rings she’d now fiddling with. Sending her father to jail is probably one of the hardest things she’s had to do. Javier kept saying it’s what’s right; that he stole from her, and he has to have repercussions for his actions. But deep down in the pit of her stomach, her heart is knots. It just feels wrong. “It doesn’t feel right. It feels...gross. It feels like a fucking betrayal, quite honestly,” she says with a sigh, frowning down at her food. “There’s nothing I can do about it now, though. It’s done. He did what he did, I did this,” Zara shrugs and straights up, finally eating the onion ring she’s been fiddling with in her hands. “Anyway. What the fuck are you gonna do after you graduate, nerd?”