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MARISELA

“ H e ain’t coming, ya know?”

“Who?” I didn’t bother looking back. I recognized the kid’s voice as much as I recognized the clanking of his wheels and the popping of his chewing gum.

Pop. Clank. Pop. Clank. With the occasional high-pitched squeak that had you shoving a finger into your ear. The kid could use an upgrade, seeing as that chair was likely older than the first layer of lead paint that coated these walls.

He was also the only one who didn’t just barge into my room whenever he was feeling like a creepy little shit.

Though something told me that had more to do with the difficulty of navigating the small space and not because he wasn’t just another creepy little shit in a building chock-full of creepy little shits .

No one gave a damn about manners when you had a grocery list of diagnoses scrawled out under your name or a few letters behind it that somehow gave you a god complex larger than the balls you thought you had.

Not that I cared much for manners to begin with.

Which was exactly why I continued to peer out the window.

Rubbing a thumb over the one person in the room I didn’t recognize.

The girl staring back at me as I traced a broken nail over the growing spider vein in the glass.

Mesmerized by the pretty little cracks that splintered off this way and that, while missing the bite of jagged edge against my skin and feeling nothing thanks to the double pane that kept my fingertips as smooth as the spot where my hair was thinning out and falling off in clumps.

My twin didn’t feel anything either as she returned my vacant stare.

Her eyes sinking into her skull and her lips more cracked and peeling than soft and plump.

She’d been aged nearly a decade at the same time her mind was reduced to the complexity of a toddler.

Her coordination not much better. Itty-bitty baby steps and the shuffling of feet that meant there was no running away.

Feeling as if the world was tipped upside-down or spinning a little too fast so that everything else seemed a million times slower in comparison.

She was still nice to look at though. Like a vintage doll you could bring back to life with a little bit of elbow grease and a touch of paint.

Something to prop up on a shelf or perch behind a piece of protective glass when there wasn’t much else you could do with it.

Like my mother… until even a comb and a bit of makeup wouldn’t help her…

I didn’t know where she was, what happened to her after that night. Just that she wasn’t here. Or there. At the house with my father. And that was better for both of us. I mean, what good was a doll you couldn’t dress up and put on display anymore?

I blinked twice when the little raindrops dotting the glass blurred her image. The girl who’d morphed into a woman who’d morphed back into a version of a girl again, forcing my focus behind me. To the boy in the chair.

“Whoever you’re waiting for. ?Cause you’re definitely waiting for someone.” He seemed to muse to himself before commenting with a tsk of his tongue, “You still got that look in your eyes.”

“What look?”

He shrugged a single shoulder, a small movement that caught my eye and not much else.

Because turning my head took too much effort.

“Hope. Like ya still think someone is gonna come riding up that driveway on a white horse or some shit. Is that who you’re waiting for, princess?

Your knight in shining armor? A hero in a world overrun by villains? ”

“There’s nothing wrong with hope,” I pushed out a reply in one long breath, and another wave of exhaustion settled itself on my shoulders. As if some physical force was weighing me down so that even the air seemed heavier. Thicker. “Don’t you ever hope for something?”

I could see him staring at me through the window, his blonde hair more like a bright-white dot.

His head canted and his mouth kicking up to one side.

A permanent smirk meant to both put you at ease and intimidate you, depending on the day’s objective.

Until another raindrop made his reflection just as invisible as my own.

He didn’t answer. Like the answer should be obvious.

Or maybe it was more ominous . Maybe it was a way of calling me na?ve without ever having to say the words.

Because despite the several years I had on him, I was the one who had trouble facing the reality of my fate.

I was the one who had trouble accepting it.

And the realization that neither one of us was walking out of here. For two very different reasons…

I didn’t believe in old souls. That was something pedos liked to say to excuse their behavior. What I did believe in was trauma, and this kid had more than enough of it to pass around like candy-flavored sedatives.

Honestly, those didn’t sound so bad right now. I’d shove a handful down my own throat if some part of me weren’t put off by the idea of being just another name on the broken crosses I was counting again.

When I glanced from the window, back to the door, the kid was gone. Just the ghost of his bouncy ball echoing down the halls and the squeaking of his rusty wheels.

I was starting to wonder if the blonde boy in the wheelchair was another figment of my imagination, dug up and fleshed out by a mind that was slowly liquifying as time went on. Then again, I wasn’t sure that it mattered. Not when his company was the only thing keeping me sane.

If I could even call myself sane … Wasn’t entirely sure I could…