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She can’t hear you, dipshit. She ran off towards the violence in a way you’d never before seen, and you didn’t chase her, and now’s she’s dead, and she definitely cannot hear you.
It’s impossible to snap yourself out of these thoughts, your head leaned against the walls that have a voice, hands that haven’t stopped shaking in hours, a voice that cracks with every word you never said to her. Maybe she knows what you’re saying. You feel it in your bones, in the blood that courses through your veins, in the imaginary fluid taking up space in your lungs—she’s gone. You think that maybe this is what Laura felt last semester, but no, this is different. Carmilla is a vampire, and Carmilla is undead, so she came back to Laura, and even if Laura has nothing right now, she still has Carmilla.
You?
You’ve lost everything, and this time, you’ve lost Perry too.
The walls talk back to you, but it’s all meaningless. Nothing resonates because it isn’t her. You tell the walls the stories the way you’d tell her, the way you’d planned to tell her the night you’d all returned to campus—plans you made before every single thing in the world began to go terribly wrong. You’d thought everything through—the setup of the room, the words, all of it. Now it’s all meaningless because she’s gone and she does not know and she will never know. You will never talk to her again, never feel her arms wrapped around you, never be in the place where you feel the safest. For you, Perry is home, and you will never be home again.
The walls talk back.
The walls talk back.
The walls say nothing.
You’re five, and you’ve never met anyone with the same color hair as you except for your mommy, but the girl sitting on the bench has the brightest hair in the whole wide world. It’s curly, and she plays with it while her feet swing because she isn’t tall enough to touch the ground where she’s sitting. Your sneakers are Velcro, but hers are tied, and you wonder if she knows how to do that herself. You want to know her name, so you glance back to your mom from where you are picking flowers, and you point to the bench where the girl is sitting. Your mom sends you a thumbs up and a smile. So you swallow hard because making friends makes you nervous and you walk over, hands clasping the flower behind your back.
“Hello.” She says when you stop to stand in front of her, hands still behind your back. She’s got really light pretty eyes and a really pretty face, and you decide in that moment that she is the prettiest girl in the whole wide world. “My name’s Lola. Lola Perry.” She holds out a hand, and you stare at it for a moment, unsure of what to do. You look back up to meet her eyes, and she smiles and giggles. “You’re supposed to shake it, silly.”
“Oh!” You say quietly, and you reach one of your hands out from behind your back, holding Lola Perry’s hand to shake it. It’s a little hand, like yours, but it’s softer, and you feel like a grown up until you realize that you’re crushing the stem of the flower you’re holding between your hand and hers. “I’m Susan LaFontaine. The flower was for you. I didn’t mean to squish it.”
Lola Perry smiles and pulls her hand away, keeping the daisy in her own hand, bringing her free hand up to touch the pedals just lightly, like the knows just how delicate flowers really are. None of your other friends are that nice to flowers. You like this very much. You ask her if she wants to pick flowers with you after a moment of quiet, and she tilts her head just a little when she smiles, her curly hair falling back in her face for a second. She hops down from the bench, and she’s holding your flower in her right hand—but maybe it’s her left, since you don’t know your lefts from your rights—and reaches for your hand with the other one. None of your other friends like to hold hands. You like the way her hand feels in yours.
You walk off towards to patch of flowers, holding her hand, and she tells you she really does not want to get dirty, which makes you smile.
You tell the wall this story in the same way you might have told Perry, only you mumble at this stupid talking wall when you would’ve whispered gently to her. The walls don’t sound like her. They do not smile the way she did. They do not call you “sweetie” or thread fingers through your hair and massage your scalp when they realize that you are upset.
They do not hold your hand.
You’re 8 years old, and you love your hair. Cutting it so short was your most genius idea yet, and you have all kinds of genius thoughts, like the plants you grew with music when you won the science fair last year. Lola was shocked when you showed up to school this morning with all that hair gone, but she smiled and held your hand for a moment and said that it was perfect for you. Your cheeks felt hot, and you smiled at her.
It’s the boys who don’t like your hair.
They push your shoulders when it’s time to get in lines to pick teams for kickball at recess. (Lola’s sitting on the pavement because she just likes to watch you play.) Tommy laughs with Daniel, who gives Marcus a high five, and you feel your shoulders slump. There’s no hair to push behind your ear, which you used to do when you got nervous, so you don’t know what to do.
“Only boys cut their hair that short.”
“You look stupid!”
“What are you? A boy or a girl?”
You don’t know what to say to them, because sometimes you don’t feel like a girl, and sometimes you don’t feel like a boy either. You just feel a little sad, and they keep laughing at you, so you focus on the one untied lace on your left shoe. You don’t even notice when Lola marches over, looking even madder than you’ve ever seen her.
“What were you saying to Susan?” She says, crossing her arms across her chest with a bit of a hmph. The boys scoff at her and look at each other, laughing even more.
“Are you still gonna be friends with it?” Tommy laughs, and before the other boys can laugh, Lola’s fist hits Tommy square in the mouth, and he falls down while his friends are shocked, staring at Lola. You’re shocked too. You’ve never seen her so mad, and she has definitely never hit anyone in her whole entire life. Your teacher, Ms. Fitzpatrick, is running over towards the group of you in her high heeled shoes. You’re very scared for Lola because you don’t want her to get in trouble. Lola never gets in any kind of trouble. That’s usually your job.
“Thank you.” You say when you turn towards her, and she grabs onto your hand and smiles shakily. It’s like she’s confident and terrified all at the same time. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“You’re my best friend, Susan.” She squeezes your hand as the teacher comes closer.
It was the first and last detention that Lola Perry ever received, and she got it for you. No one ever went so far out of their way to protect you. Not like her. She’s the other half of you, of this you are entirely completely wholeheartedly certain. You’d throw yourself in front of a train for that girl because nothing in the world is the same without her. You know she would do the same for you—if she ever got the chance to again.
You know she won’t.
You’re writing down ideas for your science fair project at the Perrys’ kitchen table, hoping to keep up your three year long winning streak. Lola’s reading her book while you share a bowl of peanut M&Ms. You can’t decide between the great ideas scrawled out in your marble composition book, and Lola clears her throat, pulling you from your concentration. She elbows you lightly, and you look up with a smile. You don’t smile with most of your other friends, at least not as much as you do with Lola Perry.
“What’s up?” You ask, and she blushes and looks back down at her book. You elbow her back in retaliation from her previous attack, and she grins before she looks back at you. The smile falls away, and she looks like she has a million questions for you.
“Have you…eh…” You narrow your eyes at her like you’re telling her to just spit it out already. “Haveyouhadyourfirstkissyet?” She speaks so quickly that the shock of the question doesn’t hit you for a moment. When it does, you laugh nervously because no, you have not. You’ve never wanted to kiss anybody, except for maybe Lola, but you don’t really know about that. She’s your best friend in the world. You shake your head at her.
“No, I haven’t. Have you?” She shakes her head. “How come you ask?”
She shrugs, but you know she’s just a big liar because Lola Perry never asks questions she doesn’t want an answer to, especially because she always knows what she wants, and she always goes out and gets it.
“No reason.”
“I wanna know why you asked, Control Freak.” You jab at her ribs, and she recoils and giggles. You’re a big fan of the sound of her laugh, but you’ve never really told her that. You’ve been thinking about it since you met at the park five years ago because Lola really only ever laughs when she’s with you, and you’re together all the time. She tries to tuck her chin in her chest, but you poke her again, and she gives in to you while she’s cackling.
“Okay, weirdo! Quit it!” She swats your hands away from her. She settles in from her laughter, and your cheeks hurt from smiling at her. “I asked for a reason. I always have a reason.”
You wait again—this time in silence—as she works her way up to whatever she’s going to say to you. She squeezes her hands the way she always does when she’s nervous. You want to reach out and hold her hand the way she likes to reach out and hold yours, but you decide against it when she turns to you, hands firmly placed in her lap and shoulders back. She’s very much ready to speak.
“I want you to be my first kiss, Susan.” Your mouth dries up like a desert, and you can’t help the “What?” that spills from your lips when she speaks to you. Her shoulders slump, and you realize that you’ve hurt her feelings, so this time, you work up the courage to reach out for her hand.
“Nononono, I didn’t mean it like that!” You say, squeezing the hand tightly wrapped in your own. “I was just surprised. I don’t know why you would want it to be me, I guess…”
“You don’t know why?” Lola shakes her head and smiles at you. “You’re funny and nice to me and you’re very good at science and you are my best friend in the whole wide world. I think your first kiss should be with somebody important, and you’re the most important.”
“You’re my best friend in the whole world too.” You tell her, and this time, she squeezes your hand instead, and you nod because the two of you can basically read each other’s minds, and she leans in towards you and presses her lips against yours. You count the seconds.
One. You remember to close your eyes.
Two. You’re still holding hands.
Three. Her lips are very very soft, just the way they looked.
Four. Her hair must have spilt over from behind her ear because it’s tickling your cheek and it smells good.
Five. This is really nice. You really really like kissing. You really like kissing Lola Perry.
She pulls away from your lips and smiles brightly at you, her face still close enough to yours that you can feel her breath. Her eyes are super sparkly, and you want to tell her that she looks pretty, but words don’t want to leave your mouth.
“See?” She giggles a little bit. “That wasn’t so bad.”
No, you think, it certainly was not. It wasn’t bad at all.
Right now, you ache in your chest for her, for her touch, to relive the moment of your first kiss. You miss the soft pink of her lips and the way she held her hand when she kissed you. You miss her, you miss her, you miss her. The pain in your chest says that she’s gone and gone for good, and you want to run a thousand miles if that means that you can find her.
Your legs are too heavy to move, and you know that there is no way that you would find her even if you could.
She looks, like, beyond beautiful on the night of your senior prom. She’d claimed to be unsure about her dress, the way it hugs her curves in all of the right places but modestly covers her chest. The deep shiny green exists in a perfect contrast to her hair, and her eyes shine like stars. It was only obvious that the two of you would be each other’s dates, and you felt the color rush to your cheeks in the deepest sort of way when she pinned the little white rose to the lapel of your jacket, whispering to say “You look wonderful.” You’d danced the night away with a few of your friends and each other, and you couldn’t ask for a better night.
When the two of you pull up to your house post-post-prom night of board games at your friend Janine’s, the two of you head up to your room because your parents were smart enough not to wait up for you. You help Perry—since high school started, you’d met another Lola, so your Lola decided “Perry” would work just fine—unzip her dress from behind, and she lets her hair down from its up-do, curls bouncing over her shoulders. You undress too, grabbing the pair of boxer shorts draped over the back of your desk chair and a Bio League t-shirt from sophomore year. You smile to yourself when you hear a drawer on the other side of the room open and close. Her drawer. You have one in her room too, which makes sense after thirteen years of friendship and what feels like it could be a thousand sleepovers.
Perry settles down in your bed before you do, red flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt to match. Normally it’d be a matching flannel pajama top, but it’s mid-May and getting to be a little too warm for that. There are no words exchanged—only the easiest and most comfortable of smiles—when you climb into bed, and she wraps her arms around you and tucks her head into your chest. Your hand finds its way into her hair just like it always does. You scratch at her scalp lightly, and she lets out a quiet and satisfied hmm.
“I had a really great time tonight.” She says quietly, even though it’s just the two of you. In times like this, it feels like it’s only the two of you in the entire world. Like nothing exists but her. You don’t tell her this type of stuff though. You don’t know if you ever could. You nod easily and smile again sleepily.
“I had the best night with you, as was to be expected. We make a great team, Perr.” You feel her shift upwards and press a kiss close to your cheek, near your jaw. “The best team really.”
“You’re definitely right about that, sweetie.” She finds your eyes and smiles at you again. You just watch each other for a moment before she places her hands on the bed next to you, propping herself up. She looks down at you from her position a few inches above you, and you nod, just like the first time. She leans down and kisses you softly. You kiss her back obviously because you want to kiss her legitimately all of the time. The two of you so rarely do this. She kisses your cheek often in what you assume is a friendly way, but the last time you kissed like this was during a game of spin the bottle that she had been so horribly reluctant to play at Janine’s birthday party when you were 14. The group told you that the kiss “wouldn’t count if you don’t at least use your tongues.”
You’d say that was the night that you began to fall in love with her, but you’ve been falling hard and slow since the moment you’d laid eyes on her when you were five years old.
The hand on the back of her head pulls her closer to you so you can deepen the kiss, and she hums in agreement with you against your mouth. It feels like hours but also like it hasn’t even been a moment when she pulls back from you. Your foreheads rest together for a moment as the two of you catch your breath together. Her hot breath mingles with yours in the tight space between you. You laugh breathily, noticing that she’s yet to collapse against your chest the way you’ve been expecting, still propped up on her hands above you.
“What are we doing, Perr?” You push the piece of her hair that’s tickling your cheeks behind her ear, though it spills over again.
“I…” She stops for a moment, eyes closed tightly. You massage her scalp again, driving her to open her eyes and lock gazes with you. Her voice drops to the quietest of whispers, and she seems both wholly unsure and totally sure all at once. “I want you to be my first because you’re the most important thing in my world and I can’t imagine giving myself to anyone else.”
She very rarely makes you want to cry, but this is one of those times.
She’s blunt and scared and sure and terrified, which you can read in her eyes even in the dark. You want this. You want this so badly, so you nod, and you kiss her again without more than a single “yeah” because you cannot say the words you want to say. When she pulls away to take off your shirt, the words run through your mind horribly quickly, and the tears spring through your eyes.
You love her.
You love her.
You can never tell her.
Carmilla leaves some weird vending machine food and a bottle of water near you. She probably thinks you didn’t hear her because she used her vampire speed to come over to you, but she waits for a moment when you turn to face her for a moment because you really don’t have anything to hide anymore. You sniffle when your own body betrays you. There’s a hand on your shoulder, but you can’t say anything to her. She squeezes hard, and you only nod because there are invisible hands wrapped around your throat. You stay that way for a moment, and part of you wants to scream in her face because you do not want her pity, but the other part of you wants to just thank her for being around.
You do your best to say this with your eyes. She answers with a half sad smile and curt nod before speeding off again, leaving you alone once more.
The night that the four of you accidentally return to the disaster-stricken Silas University campus, you decide that enough is enough. You are going to tell Lola Perry that you are desperately, painfully, wholeheartedly in love with her.
You figure Laura’s making another video downstairs, and you know that Perry’s gone off to see if the Voice of Silas kids know anything about what’s going on, so you tell JP of your plans when you get him hooked up to the smart TV in your kickass new cribs. He’s really excited for you, which makes you grin, though you tell him that he’ll have to be unplugged for the occasion. He’d figured, he tells you, and you’re thankful to have such a wonderful friend in him.
Whatever people used to live here had a knack for candles, you think, as you gather them up from their various places around the house. You don’t take too many because you know that Perry’s immediate response to anything you say will be “LaFontaine! This is a fire hazard! You cannot have this many candles lit at once!” You make a quick stop in the living room when you finish setting up your room and reading over the list of things you plan on telling her that you’d been keeping since you came back from the violence at the pit last semester.
“I love you.” makes a disgustingly large number of appearances.
You end up interrupting one of Carmilla’s weird vampire courtship rituals, and those two idiots are disgustingly cute but all too much for you sometimes, so you head back to your room and light the candles. You sit on the bed, hands folded, listening to the thunder crack outside knowing that Perry is not the biggest fan of thunderstorms. You hope she isn’t too scared out there, and you pray that she’s coming back soon because you are beyond ready to tell her how you feel and you are entirely sure that you can’t hold it in anymore.
“I love you, Perr. I always have, and I never want to stop.”
You feel like you’ve been waiting for her for forever when you hear a horrible crack of thunder and the front door open.
“Perry?” You hear this from Laura, but there’s fear in her voice and a fist wrapped around your heart, clenching.
When you catch sight of Perry as you return to the living room, everything in the world stops, and the tears and terror that consume her eyes take over your world.
It can wait, you think, as you place your hands on her shoulders while she shakes. She reaches for one of your hands with her own, slick and cold and covered in blood. You have time.
You have no more time. She’s gone, and you have no time left with her. The air in the library is stale and wet and terrible, and you’re choking. It’s all over, and Lola Perry is gone, and it can’t wait anymore.
“I love you.” You whisper through tears, though the words feel like fire on your lips. “I loved you. I’m sorry.”
She can’t hear you, dipshit. She’ll never hear you again.