The back hallway smells like old fries and wet cardboard. Lucia pushes through the swinging door, past the mop sink and the dented boxes of cups, into the staff room that calls itself a locker room as if metal doors and a bench could redeem the fluorescent misery.
The air is cooler here but only because it's still. A vending machine coughs to itself in the corner like it chewed a coin wrong in 2009 and never got over it.
She spins the dial on her locker—left, right, back—until the latch gives with a sulk. Inside: her cheap rain shell, fingerless gloves, the bungee cords coiled like patient snakes, the spare visor that fogs if you even think a humid thought.
She hangs the visor on the hook and stares at the uniform she's supposed to take home.
Grease-smiled, salt-flecked, the kind of cloth that learns your shape without ever liking you for it. Today she lets it stay. Let it live here with the other ghosts.
The mirror opposite the lockers is an artifact. Murky, freckled with mercury pox, it smears her into a rumor at the edges. She undoes her buttons without hurry. The shirt falls away, then the polyester pants with their elastic apology. Underneath: black tank top, shorts, the simple armor of someone who needs to move more than she needs to look like she belongs.
She faces herself head-on.
The stitchwork under her collarbone sits neat and swollen, a closed mouth that still remembers what it said.
Around her wrists the tattoos loop like bracelets—dotted line and a deadpan command: cut here.
Whoever inked them aimed for gallows humor and landed somewhere uglier. The script is small, thin, almost tidy, as if order could make a joke safe.
Just below her throat, right over the sternum, the other ink declares its fragile thesis: Still human.
She snorts at it, not kindly.
The letters are straight, measured, the kind of font that wants to be believed.
She has days when the statement feels like a dare and nights when it feels like a counterfeit. Today it's a sticker someone slapped on a machine that won't pass inspection.
She turns sideways, watches the pale plane of her stomach flex with breath.
Across the soft, a dotted line meanders like a bored road map, tagged with a label that reads like an autopsy note: Pig intestines. It started as a joke on a bad night, a dare she gave herself because pain was cheap and permanence felt like proof.
Now it's just a line on a body that keeps outliving her better ideas.
Why did she get them?
The memory isn't a single picture so much as a hallway of overexposed frames:
a buzzing coil, the antiseptic sting, the artist talking about "placement" like he was negotiating real estate, her laugh coming out too bright. Pressure had turned every decision into a coin toss.
The coins kept landing on their edges. She decided anyway. She was good at that—choosing in motion, betting against herself.
She breathes in.
The tank clings to her, damp in the places the night couldn't let go.
She lifts her arms and rotates her wrists, the dotted bracelets flashing their terminal joke under the locker light.
The rings chime when she gathers her hair, bands sliding to the knuckle and back. The pouch in her jacket pocket knocks a small hello against the metal shelf as she moves.
She gears up methodically, not because she loves ritual but because it keeps her from floating off.
The sports bra cinched right. Tank tucked. Knee sleeves rolled and smoothed. Gloves pulled on, fabric rasping over the calluses construction gave her and the kitchen made worse.
Jacket zipped to the sternum, stopping just below the lie that says Still human.
She laces her boots on the bench with one foot propped, the knot taught by muscle memory, tug-tug, wrap, pull.
Her phone buzzes with a spam promise and dies against her thigh without her acknowledgment.
In the locker, the helmet waits with its matte scuffs like constellations of caution.
She wipes the visor with the hem of her tank, then tucks the gray pouch inside the crown again, a quiet passenger.
She checks herself once more in the old mirror, not because she's vain but because confirmation is a kind of fuel.
The girl who looks back is colorless under the fluorescent wash, a contour drawing made of fatigue and intent.
The stitch under her collarbone has stopped shouting. Her eyes have not.
She shuts the locker and the metal rings like a low note.
On her way out she grabs the elastic rain shell, just in case the sky decides to punish punctuality. The staff room's door flaps open on the hinge and the front of the store yawns into view, all beige and beeps and a sun that's decided to be honest.
Marina looks up from the register with both hands braced on the counter like she's steering it.
— "You good?"
— "I'm out for a bit."
— "I'm fine here. Go."
Lucia lifts two fingers in a small wave that's almost gratitude and angles toward the side exit. The automatic doors make that soft, helpless sound as they learn she's leaving.
The morning has shaken off the purple; everything is bleached into day.
She crosses the lot, breath frosting the inside of the visor for a heartbeat as she lowers it.
Keys.
Ignition.
The bike trembles awake, engine note smoothing from rough cough to steady pulse.
She glances through the glass once—Marina's silhouette busying itself with a stack of cups—and then kicks the stand, rolls back, and turns the front wheel toward the street.
The engine warms under her, a familiar animal ready to run.
The throttle answers her wrist like a promise.
The bike surges and the wind rips the edges off the morning.
Highway lights spool past in a gold-dotted ribbon, each one stamping a brief brand on her visor before falling away.
She threads between cars that dream they're asleep, their drivers hunched into donut-breath and talk radio, their blinkers forgetting the difference between intention and accident.
Lucia leans into the lane-shift and the world narrows to a tunnel of speed, a clean, bright corridor where there is no rent and no clock and no girl named Sofia who won't come home on time.
White lines flick under her like stitches across an open road.
The helmet pads cradle her temple with a pressure that feels almost like kindness.
Almost.
The city exhales diesel and salt into her lungs, and she takes it because there's no choice.
The gauge needle climbs; the engine's note thins to a wire. Faster. Then faster again. The wind at her chest makes a sound like a bad laugh. She doesn't smile.
Her hand rolls the throttle farther and something in her head unhooks like a clasp.
The visor becomes a screen.
Light swells, then fractures.
The highway breaks into confetti.
Sound drops its floor and keeps falling.
Music first: bass like a heart with a grudge, lights strobing into her skull until every blink feels like a knife switch.
A room trying to be a galaxy, purple and cyan asteroids spinning from the ceiling.
Bodies moving for reasons they won't understand later.
Cigarette ash making slow snow in the air-conditioning that lies about its competence. Somewhere, a laugh tears itself into three pieces and doesn't reassemble.
Behind her, three unimportant men are suddenly the most important objects in the world because they are not moving. Their throats are bright opened smiles in the disco light; their stomachs tell ugly truths onto the floor, slick maps of bad decisions and worse outcomes.
The room smells like pennies and neon and a citrus cleaner that tried and failed. The bass keeps thumping because nobody ever told it when to stop.
Still human, her chest says, ink declaring itself like a witness no one called. She looks down at the words and hears herself scoff in some other year: as if ink could hold a verdict. As if she ever blended right.
She remembers standing at the edges of school cafeterias and sidewalks, always a half-step out of the choreography, where conversations arrive late and leave early and you end up learning the difference between alone and lonely so well you could teach it.
On the couch in front of her, a big man has folded himself small.
Bald dome shining with nightclub sweat, shoulders crowded by tattoos that don't look so brave under the weather of her attention.
The ink crawls up his neck, saints elbowing devils for space, a bear with bad teeth, a church dome that never learned humility. He shakes in place like a washing machine off-balance.
His chest hiccups.
The voice comes out wrong-sized for his body.
— "Pozhaluysta! Ne nado! Pozhaluysta!"
She knows please in any language.
She knows mercy even better, the way it looks from the outside and the way it looks from inside a person who can't afford it.
He spills more Russian.
She catches none of it except the shape of surrender.
The noise of the room dims; the words become rubber. It doesn't matter what he says. The hotline taught her the grammar: a place, a time, a name. No commentary. No footnotes. No biographies.
The only ethics are arithmetic, and the ledger falls one way.
In her hands: a bat.
Wood that's remembered a thousand summer afternoons and forgot them all at once. Wrapped in barbed wire that turns the familiar into a rumor.
The wire blinks with other people's history, a jewelry of accidents and insistences; a drip threads from the far spike and lands on the carpet, adding to a constellation that's trying to tell a story she refuses to read.
She lifts the bat.
The weight is perfect because nothing is perfect; that's what makes it true.
He brings his hands up in a prayer that doubles as a shield, palms fleshy, fingers nicked with old working days and new bad nights.
He says something else—mother, God, zero, for you—none of it matters.
She thinks the thought that makes her whole: if he were innocent, if he wore baptism water instead of nightclub sweat, if his hands had never closed around a neck that didn't want them, if he were a clerk, a student, a man who plants trees—all the maybes stacked to heaven—she would have done it. She would do it. The line rings; you answer.
That's the only rule, and the rule is a door you learn to walk through without looking sideways.
— "Ne ubivai," he tries. — "Ya… dayu den'gi. Ya—"
She doesn't answer because answers are another world's currency.
The bat moves. The air resists and then forgets to.
The first blow writes a line on the space between them that only she will ever read properly.
The second rearranges his plea into a new grammar.
The third opens the sentence wide.
The beat of the bass and the bat find each other; for a moment the universe is metronomic and obedient.
He fumbles a hand down, a reflex older than language, and metal flashes—a switchblade with a vanity problem, chrome grin popping its little tooth. It's funny: his grip on the knife is neat, like he's signing his name.
Then it's not funny.
He lunges; the room shrinks to a point. Lucia feels the sting at her collarbone like a doorbell she doesn't intend to answer.
The blade bites and then sulks, stuck in the meat for a heartbeat, like even steel can be surprised.
There's no pain.
The body does the trick it does when it wants to keep you moving: it puts the price on layaway.
The world becomes white and close; her lungs forget the part where they plead; her eyes get that bright wideness that opens doors.
The knife's handle glints under the disco ball. She watches her own hands decide the next thing.
The bat arcs.
The wire sings.
The blade leaves her like a bad opinion being withdrawn.
Heat runs down into her shirt, a warmth that registers only as an item on a list: blood.
There will be cleanup.
There is always cleanup.
He says something that might be a name.
Might be a map.
Might be nothing.
The couch groans and gives.
The room breathes out.
The bass, patient, keeps the count.
She looks at what's left of the man and feels the ledger in her head tilt back into balance, its needle vibrating a little before it settles.
She catalogues the bruise that will flower; she catalogues the stain that will not; she catalogues the part of herself that takes notes even now, and she doesn't apologize for it.
People think monsters feel nothing.
They're wrong.
Monsters feel exactly what they need to in order to finish.
Light pops.
Sound tears.
The room unwraps itself like a pack of gum.
The bat is gone; the knife is gone; the disco lights collapse onto the inside of her visor and scatter like startled fish.
She's at the curb in front of her building, brake squealing its small high complaint as she squeezes down.
The bike's idle jitters against her knees. The morning has burned to a cleaner blue than it deserves.
A gull laughs the way gulls do: like it knows the punchline and you don't. The helmet's ear pads are hot. Her collarbone pulses a memory under the fresh stitchwork. The red of the stop sign is polite about it.
She cuts the engine.
The silence that follows has weight, like a wet coat.
Somewhere a bus exhales.
Somewhere a neighbor's door argues with its own hinges.
In the reflection off the apartment's front glass, a girl in a black jacket and a matte-scuffed helmet looks back with a face composed correctly and a heartbeat counting a little too fast for a sidewalk.
She flips the visor up. The air is warmer outside the helmet than in.
She flexes her fingers on the grips, one at a time, until the tremor decides to be a secret again.
The tattoo over her sternum sits quietly, a lie that sometimes means well. She swings off the bike and feels the day take her weight the way a floor does.
Then she pockets the key, shoulders the helmet, and steps toward the door that has not learned, after all this time, how to be kind.
She doesn't go in.
Just stands there under the bleached morning, the front door's scratched glass staring back like a tired eye.
The bike ticks as it cools, little metal pings stitching themselves into the silence.
She leans against the seat, helmet tucked between elbow and hip, and thumbs her phone awake—spiderweb crack across the corner, grease halo on the glass that never quite wipes clean.
Contacts, pinned at the top: SOFIA. The thread is a museum of half-fights and time stamps. She types with those quick, precise motions her jobs taught her.
[ "Where are you." ]
The blue bubble lands and sits.
Nothing happens.
A bus exhales somewhere distant; a gull heckles the roofline. She flicks an ant off the curb with her boot and watches it find a new plan.
The message says Delivered. The word looks smug.
She tries again.
[ "I'm outside." ]
[ "You have class." ]
The phone holds its breath.
The building's hallway coughs; someone's TV upstairs decides to laugh at a joke you had to be there for.
The seconds group into minutes and then a minute that pretends to be ten. Lucia's thumb hovers.
She pockets the phone.
Pulls it out again.
Checks the door.
Checks the sky.
Vibration, at last—an insect caught between glass and palm. Sofia's reply limps into the thread.
[ "where" ]
[ "outside where" ]
[ "Front door." ]
A pause big enough to park in. Then:
[ "why" ]
[ "its early" ]
[ "thought u had work" ]
[ "I did. I'm done." ]
[ "Come down." ]
The three dots do a nervous dance, vanish, return.
Across the street, a man with a grocery sack counts his steps like he's afraid of losing them.
Lucia pinches the bridge of her nose and feels the migraine's ghost move furniture around in the back of her head.
[ "im not ready" ]
[ "can we not today" ]
[ "tell them im sick" ]
[ "Shoes on." ]
[ "Now." ]
The dots stop. The phone watches her with that front-facing camera eye that always feels like a test.
She imagines Sofia tangled in blankets, hair like a storm warning, thumb over keyboard with a face already halfway to a pout.
She imagines the classroom she won't see today if Lucia lets this go.
She doesn't let it go
[ "please" ]
[ "I'm not asking." ]
A beetle flips itself upright on the sidewalk and trundles on like nothing happened. The bike's cooling metal is done talking. The fan in the lobby window works at a piece of lint with the dedication of a surgeon.
Sofia's typing dot reappears and churns like it's chewing a complicated word.
[ "u mad" ]
[ "Just come down." ]
A longer pause, then a white flag.
[ "k" ]
[ "2 min" ]
Lucia exhales like she's been holding a stone in her mouth.
She pockets the phone and stares through her reflection into the lobby's dim, where the mailboxes squat like little metal mouths.
Inside, the elevator number winks red. 7. Then 6. The cable hum threads the building's bones.
A door slams somewhere high, then footsteps tumble into stairwell echo—flip-flops against concrete, too fast, then slower like memory caught up.
The elevator ticks to 3, to 2. The lobby smells like old mop and borrowed cologne. Lucia shifts her weight off the bike and straightens, helmet dangling from her fingers.
The number becomes 1. The light steadies. The doors begin to part.
Sofia steps out of the elevator half-made out of mirror and attitude—hair in a sleep-tangled halo, lipstick too bright for morning, a crop top that lost an argument with gravity, denim that's more suggestion than fabric.
Flip-flops slap time on the lobby tile.
She clocks Lucia, braces for the sermon that usually arrives with the sun.
It doesn't.
Lucia's eyes are two flat coins.
No shine; just value spent.
She turns without commentary, crosses to the bike, opens the tail box.
The spare helmet comes out with a scuffed sigh.
She hands it over, already thumbing the ignition.
The engine clears its throat and learns steady.
Sofia blinks, thrown off-script.
— "You're not gonna say anything?"
Lucia slips her own visor down, voice coming out small through the foam.
— "Get on."
Concern slips into Sofia's face like a draft.
She studies the set of Lucia's shoulders—the kind of forward hunch you get from shouldering a day before it starts.
She fits the helmet. The strap scrapes her jaw; she doesn't complain.
They roll out of the lot and into morning that still smells like last night.
Traffic is light enough to feel temporary. Lucia weaves with an impatience that isn't quite speed, more like a refusal to stay anywhere long.
Her focus is a loose thread—eyes skating, thoughts somewhere else. The city cranes past in sun-washed increments: a pawn shop window, a closed bodega, a bus stop with a person-shaped absence on the bench.
Sofia taps Lucia's shoulder.
— "You good?"
Lucia shrugs, a tight lift that says everything and nothing. The visor hides whether she means it.
— "Did you even sleep?"
Another shrug.
— "You're scaring me a little."
The bike carries them through a stale yellow and then another.
A school zone sign rises like a reminder and slides away like a dare.
Instead of turning toward the campus, Lucia leans left, takes the long straight that runs past a laundromat and a tire place with a mural of a smiling cartoon wrench.
The engine's hum becomes a hallway. At the next corner, a neon diner sign blinks awake—DINER in red, then DIN in deranged rhythm, then whole again.
Sofia turns her head, puzzled behind plastic.
— "Uh… that's not school."
— "Breakfast."
They pull into the gravel bite of a side lot. The diner windows fog with their own heat; inside, a triangle of waitresses moves like a practiced card trick.
A man in a booth floats behind a newspaper like a cheap magic act. The bell over the door is tired but polite when Lucia pushes through. Grease and coffee wrap them in a familiar, tacky hug.
A booth near the window. Vinyl patched in duct tape, table laminated within an inch of its life, sugar pourer sweating under the AC.
Lucia drops into the inside seat so her back hits the wall. Sofia slides across from her, helmet hair standing in faint static rebellion.
They stare at each other over water in thick, chipped glasses.
— "So. Breakfast," Sofia says, slower now, like the word might reveal instructions on the back.
The waiter is a middle-aged man with a pen tucked behind his ear and a smile that's learned to ration itself. He drops two menus and a glass of water that sweats onto a paper coaster. Sofia scans the laminated grid like she's reading tarot.
— "Short stack, extra butter. Side of bacon. Scrambled eggs. Hash browns if they're crispy-crispy. And—chocolate milk."
The waiter's pen flutters, amused. He turns to Lucia. She doesn't lift her head; her cheek rests on the cool of the tabletop, eyes closed, the wood's fake grain printing its quiet into her skin.
— "Nothing for me."
The pen pauses. The waiter chooses the path of least resistance.
— "You got it."
He sails off. Forks clink in the next booth. Someone laughs like a hiccup. The AC drones its monotone until it forgets why.
Lucia keeps her head down, voice going flat and faraway in the diner murmur.
— "How's school."
Sofia brightens like a stage light that just found its mark.
— "Good. It's good. Bio's kinda annoying, but I'm fine. Ms. Carver loves me. Everyone loves me. I'm, like, killing it. You don't have to worry."
Lucia hums without agreement. The sugar pourer sweats.
— "We had this pep rally thing? And I might try for JV cheer. Just for fun. I mean, I'm flexible. You know. And I'm totally keeping up with the reading, even English. We're doing The Crucible and it's, like, so dramatic. I think I could act, maybe. I'd be good at crying on cue. I cried when the bus didn't come this morning. Kidding."
Lucia's fingers fold and unfold against the laminate, a slow, small tide.
— "You sleeping okay?"
— "Like a baby," Sofia says, eyes flitting toward the window.
— "Except when the neighbors play that, like, doom metal at 1 A.M. Oh! And I'm totally passing math. Mr. Ortega said I have 'potential.' He used that word. Potential. Isn't that cute?"
— "Boyfriend."
Sofia snorts, performs offense, then lets it drop like a prop she doesn't need.
— "No. Obviously. I mean. There's Nico. But he's not—he's just a friend. He's dumb in a cute way. He picks me up sometimes, which is sweet. On his scooter. Don't freak out. Helmet and everything. We mostly, like, talk. And listen to music. He's into retro stuff? Like synth? It's fine."
A waitress at the counter hits the bell with the side of her thumb.
The cook slides plates into the pass; steam fogs the heat lamps.
Sofia twirls the straw paper into a tight rope and knots it, then undoes it and knots it again.
— "So yeah. School is… you know. A lot. But I'm handling it."
Lucia lifts her head a fraction—enough to meet the slope of Sofia's gaze. The bruise-green fatigue in her eyes makes her look older in a way that isn't age.
— "Take it seriously."
Sofia leans back, folds her arms, then remembers she's playing the easy version of herself and lets them fall open again.
— "I am. I just—some days, I—look, I'm doing fine. You don't have to—"
— "Might not be able to cover it."
The words land without flourish, heavy and square. Sofia blinks.
— "Cover what."
— "Tuition. Fees. Whatever name they give the same bill."
Sofia blows air up at her bangs like she can float the conversation away.
— "You always cover it."
— "Mom's been calling."
A shadow crosses Sofia's face and passes, but not completely.
— "So don't answer."
— "She wants money."
— "She always wants money."
— "She's asking for more."
Sofia's mouth opens, closes. The straw paper knots itself under her fingers until it snaps. She sets the torn piece aside with angry precision.
— "That's not my problem."
Lucia watches her for a long moment, then lets her forehead find the table again—careful, gentle, as if the wood might bruise.
— "It becomes ours."
Sofia's jaw works; a dozen replies line up and forget their cues. Her eyes dart to the door, to the window, to the menu she no longer needs.
— "I can get a job."
— "School first."
— "I am doing school."
— "Then do it like it matters."
Silence enters the booth and sits down with them, elbows on the table, looking comfortable.
Sofia picks at a chip in the laminate until it lifts and she feels guilty for the damage like it might go on their bill. She softens her voice because the hard one has nowhere to go.
— "Okay."
The waiter returns carrying plates that steam in small private weather systems.
He lands the short stack with a padded thump; butter slides, glistens.
Eggs, yellow and glossy.
Bacon, crisp enough to break into punctuation marks.
Hash browns, lattice-brown and threatening to be perfect.
He sets down the chocolate milk like a trophy.
— "Anything else?"
— "We're good," Sofia says, not looking up.
The butter melts.
The room keeps breathing.
Lucia stays where she is, listening to the food arrive like it's happening in another booth.
The fork taps the rim of a plate, a tiny bell waiting for a prayer.
The pancakes steam into the space between them, the butter melting until it's a shiny lake that keeps trying to drown the edges.
Bacon cools into crisp punctuation.
Chocolate milk fogs its own glass.
Lucia's head stays near the table, cheek resting on wood, eyes pointing at a nothing spot in the laminate.
The tired digs its hooks into bone; the migraine's ghost rearranges chairs in a room no one else can see.
In her jacket, the little gray pouch presses a square truth against her ribs. She swallows around it.
— "Those shoes," she says, voice low, a thread pulled sideways.
— "The ones I promised."
Sofia's fork freezes an inch above syrup, then lowers. She studies Lucia's face the way you study a cracked windshield, trying to see through and not at it.
— "It's fine. I don't need them."
Lucia's mouth goes flat. The lie is gentle on her tongue.
— "I've got the money."
Sofia looks at the chocolate milk like it might tell her how to play this. She shrugs for show, light and air.
— "I said it's fine."
Lucia shifts, the collarbone's stitch tugging like a reminder she doesn't owe.
The engine-sound of the bike still hums somewhere in her blood.
She can see the shoes in a box, white and clean with their new-lace energy; she can see an envelope unsealed by hands that aren't hers; she can feel the phone vibrate with a ring that isn't a ring.
If she has to, she'll answer.
If she has to, she'll count.
She always does.
— "You want them," she says, not asking.
— "I want a lot of things,"
Sofia answers, and tries on a smile that sits wrong on her face.
— "But, like, I'm not a brat."
They eat the silence for a few seconds.
A truck downshifts outside; the diner's bell pipes meekly as someone leaves change on the counter.
Sofia pushes a corner of pancake through syrup and watches it darken, then glances up, drops the act for a second.
— "Are you okay?"
— "Fine."
— "You don't look fine."
— "Didn't sleep."
— "You never sleep."
Lucia lets that one pass.
The pouch ticks in her pocket without moving.
She imagines the names like weather again: sertraline, lamotrigine, bupropion; a forecast she keeps trying to obey.
She won't say it.
Not here.
Not now.
— "Work's rough?"
— "Same."
— "Same how?"
— "Same same."
Sofia's mouth tightens.
The performative sweetness drains; something rawer edges in.
— "You gonna talk to me, or are we doing the robot thing?"
— "Eat."
— "Don't do that."
— "Do what."
— "The wall."
Lucia lifts her head just enough to meet her sister's eyes. Sofia's are glassy with not-quite-anger, a shine that's half worry, half weather front.
— "I'm asking because I care, okay?"
— "I know."
— "Then answer me."
— "I'm tired."
— "No kidding."
Sofia drops the fork; it clinks, jumps, settles. She rubs at the heel of her palm like she's wiping off a thought that stuck.
— "You're scaring me."
— "Don't be scared."
— "Then give me something."
Lucia looks at the table, at the sheen of syrup, at the little islands of butter slowly sinking.
Her mouth opens and chooses the smallest words in the drawer.
— "It's just work."
— "You already said that."
— "And money."
— "You always say that."
— "And… headaches."
Sofia lets out a breath that thinks it's a laugh and isn't.
— "Wow. Three nouns. Big day."
A waitress passes with plates held like records; the bell at the pass rings twice; a coffee pot tilts, glugs, rights itself.
The diner keeps being a diner because that's its only job.
Sofia looks back at Lucia and sees the way she's sitting—shoulders caved forward, hands idle, eyes carrying too much.
— "You don't gotta buy me those shoes."
— "I said I would."
— "I said I don't need them."
— "I'll figure it out."
— "That's what I mean."
Sofia leans in; the makeup that made her look older makes her look younger now.
— "You always 'figure it out.' And then you won't tell me how. And then I'm supposed to pretend that's normal."
Lucia's jaw works once, stops. The diner's AC lifts a paper napkin and lets it fall.
— "You don't have to pretend anything."
— "But I do, because you do."
The sentence lingers, heavy enough to dent the laminate. Sofia pokes a piece of bacon like it insulted her. Her voice quiets, tries again.
— "Just tell me if you're… I don't know. Okay. Like actually okay. Not 'fine.'"
— "I'm here."
— "For how long?"
Lucia doesn't answer. She doesn't know how to. The pouch in her jacket might as well be a siren. She swallows coffee that isn't hers and tastes nothing.
— "You piss me off," Sofia says suddenly, eyes bright with heat she can't use.
— "You act like I'm a child, and then when I try to be a person about it, you go foggy. It's like trying to hug smoke."
— "Eat your eggs."
— "God."
Sofia shoves the plate an inch like movement could change flavor. She drags her palms down her face and then sits still, breathing through her nose until the red in her cheeks fades to a stubborn pink.
When she speaks again, it's a surrender wrapped in barbed wire.
— "Whatever. Fine. Don't tell me."
Lucia looks at the diner window, at the way the morning bleaches the street until everything looks honest whether it is or not.
She feels the minutes yawning open toward the rest of the day—the janitor shift like bleach in her lungs, the site shift like weight in her bones.
She feels Sofia beside her and somewhere very far away at the same time.
The pancakes collapse under their own syrup.
The chocolate milk sweats a ring into the table.
The fork stands up in the eggs and then falls, finally deciding to be a utensil again.