Of Smoke and Dust 🖋

Chapter Nine: a reflection, blind loyalty, and a girl not healed

CHAPTER NINE

Present

June 4th 2021

8:03 AM

Maia stands in front of the bathroom mirror and stares at her reflection.

It is, she realizes, a terrifying thing. If she had seen herself out on the street Before the fire (before the screams and the shouts and the Leonie Leonie Leonie), she would have avoided herself. With tangled brown hair framing a sharp looking face, dressed in an old sweatshirt only, gazing out at the world with grey-blue eyes sunk deep into dark hollows, she looks wild and almost feral, a thing to be kept behind locked doors and curtained windows.

Before the fire Maia wouldn't have stood for it. She'd have covered the bags on her eyes with heavy concealer, have run a brush through her knotted hair with single-minded ferocity, have dressed in something nice and gone out to face the world.

Before the fire Maia is dead, though.

(She died alongside her best friend, listening to a symphony of screams)

Before the fire Maia is dead, and with her fled the will to go to school (a place of liars), the will to oblige her parents (they don't care, they don't care, they don't care), the will to be who she is supposed to be.

(Because Maia wasn't close enough to the flames for them to touch her, but they smoulder, dark and sullen, inside her to this day)

It was the promise of those flames that had Maia fleeing to the bathroom attached to her bedroom at seven in the morning, as soon as she noticed her mother standing in the shadows in the corner; it was the promise of those flames that had her locking the door behind her. She brought the broken clock, too, just as a reminder that she isn't crazy.

(Because she isn't, else it would be working, wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it?)

It is Leonie's shade that keeps her there. It is Leonie's shade that sits beside her when Maia slides down onto the cold tile, sweatshirt bunched over her knees, rocking back and forth under the glare of artificial lights.

It is Leonie's shade that keeps her from responding when her mother pounds on the door, the wood splintering beneath her fists, the frame shaking.

(Maia, you're going to be late! You're going to be late. Maia, you have to come out, you can't hide forever-)

It is Leonie's shade that keeps her still. It is Leonie's shade that comforts her when she cries into the fabric of the sweatshirt.

(It is Leonie's shade that is there for her, more than anybody else ever was)

__________

Maia doesn't go to school that day.

(By the time her mother finds a way to open the door, it is already too late)

Instead, she hides among the dresses in her closet, pale face peeking through the assortment of fabrics. Leonie's shade comes and goes like the waves on a beach, flickering the longer she stays. Eventually, Maia waves her away, hurting and alone and-

(And maybe she is crazy, after all, because no one is there)

(Ghosts don't exist. Leonie isn't a ghost, she's dead)

(Right?)

The plastic alarm clock becomes a lifeline in her hands. She cradles it like she would a child, staring down at the blank face and thinking, this is proof.

Proof.

Isn't it?

Isn't it?

She curls up on the floor, alonealonealone and lets her thoughts wander to days at the park. Days of ice cream and laughter and linked elbows.