Under Her Skin

Chapter 11

At school, Sunny waved to imaginary friends down the hall but got squished as she tried to meet them. At home, there was something cheerless and stiff about her bedroom which had always been so friendly.

Hopelessness brought many tears. It pained me to see such a bright kid be given the anxious labor of a burdened lifetime, to be treated as the most singular spectacle in the human comedy.

I wished to dispel all her negative emotions by being there for her with a level of intimacy and vulnerability as would a friend. I felt so close to her, but it was as if she couldn't hear me, as if there was an invisible blue glass that allowed the light of image to flow, but divided the exchange of voice from permitting.

It was fate that I sat in the seat beside her in every single one of her classes. I observed with a stinging agony her once bubbly expression fade into a permanent state of stillness. Sunny was short and small, without being skinny; she had the prettiest look of innocence on her butter-smooth skin. Her dark hair was never elaborately dressed, and though she was the only girl in the room free of make-up she looked beautifully simple. 

She had a real passion for drawing, and she invented a world of imagination in which she lived with the freedom she couldn't acquire under the eyes of Lyssa and Hiram. It was through her drawings where she had a blistering tongue, that in the enthusiasm of her youth, dared to say anything. Now, though, she rarely spoke and when she did, it was with a shrewd glance and soft voice. Her eyes looked forward at the formula-covered whiteboard, but I could tell she wasn't truly seeing.

Occasionally, Sunny would take a sip from a metal thermos. She squirmed a little when the hot water burned the roof of her mouth. and remembered how miserable it was without Devon. Sunny needed her to geek around her like a moth, be there just to be there. Sunny was an incalculable person with a fever in her blood that desired to live more dangerously. She raised her hand.

"Go quickly," said Mrs. Lennie. Sunny wiped her eyes on her sleeves, then tucked into a bathroom stall. I followed. This had become her only safe haven. She turned around, shut the door. Selena on the toilet seat. The air was filled with the smell of strawberries and a cloud of thick smoke.

"S..sorry I didn't mean to intrude... the door was open so," Sunny said in a prudent voice. She was getting tied in knots trying to explain.

"Woah chill out."

"I'll go. Um, bye. Sorry about—"

"No, Sunny wait." It was the first time Selena had spoken her name in so long. Sunny turned around obediently, clearly wanting to stay; the door shut. "Lock it." Sunny did silently, not knowing how to feel about being in the same stall with the person who caused her so much misery.

"What do you know about Callie and Cole?"

"That's what I wanted to tell you last week--"

"Spill it." Sunny was stunned, unable to think or act. She had a look on her face that reminded me of a sort of violent and desperate SOS. But she also had a look of duty scattered between her features, the duty to maintain the seed of trust to which this friendship once formed upon.

"They kissed," she said. Immediately, anger boiled inside Selena. She took the pot off the heat and opened the lid by kicking the wall as hard as she knew how to. The steam released into the air. Selena was so intoxicated with emotion that the acidity of her stomach was ready to be spat out of her mouth in foul and vulgar words. "That fucking whore!" she screamed. "I'm going to kill her." Sunny was taken back by the seriousness in her voice.