a study in shackles

initially,

There is a wild, brash sense to her.

There's this tension, rippling off her in waves, practically screaming "I dare you to try." This explosive aura, like a bomb, tense and rigged and ready to go off at the slightest mishandling.

You are fascinated by it, by the apprehension seemingly contained in every pore, every cell.

You're also scared - not of the girl, not of Toni, but of the consequences that will surely follow after that pent-up emotion escapes, bursting from the brunette's wiry body like a volcano erupting.

(The simile makes sense, when you stop to ponder it; that Toni and a volcano are indeed similar, when it comes to the damage and widespread loss that follows an eruption.)

But the anger isn't what you initially notice about the fiery, quick-tempered girl you first catch sight of while boarding that God-forsaken plane. That comes later. The first thing you notice isn't the taut, rigid lines of Toni's face and body, barely hinting at the inner turmoil raging under the surface.

No, the first thing you notice is the foreign feeling of freedom she practically emits - natural, knee-jerk reactions; crude, raw emotion expressed at a joke, a comment, a charged silence; bursts of hilarity or sudden intensity depending on the topic being discussed, the conversation at hand.

Toni says what she wants to whoever she wants to say it to without hesitation or reservation. She doesn't hold back, and so your first impression of her is a wild sort of insensitivity, without malice or the intent to harm but a little rude regardless.

The second impression, and the one that stays with you for the first few days on the island, is that the destructive honesty that Toni exudes stems from a lifelong ability to speak her mind freely and without constraint.

(This particular ability, you know, is taken forgranted by most of your fellow peers - it's something you see often, something you envy, with your upbringing, and you mislabel Toni as another-

You don't know what it is you mistake her for, really, only that you initially think her to be a loud preacher of entitled opinions, set on adding her own senseless noise to the world just because she can.)

This impression turns out to be wrong, which you'll soon learn with no small amount of... of some emotion midway between horror and regret that you can't quite identify. The revelation that shatters that particular impression occurs days later, while Martha heaves and the others watch and Toni screams, broken, "Fuck, I'm not worth it." It hits you, then, that Toni isn't as free as you'd believed - that maybe the two of you had more in common than you'd previously thought.

The thought terrifies you, really, because for the first time you realize that Toni's forward, intense manner doesn't come from assured confidence that she will be heard - no, it comes from a darker place, from a crippling fear that she won't - that is, that she won't be heard, that she will be silenced at any moment so she must make every second, every word, every scoff and joke and witty remark count.

You know all too well the reasoning behind this - you yourself utilize this exact mindset at home, in front of your father, your mother, your God. You know the giddy rush that finally, finally speaking your own opinions, acting on your own wishes, brings. You compare that desperate, exhilarating rush to the first breath of fresh air a trapped animal takes after escaping a life in a cage - that addicting, dizzy energy, a response to sudden freedom, glimpsed through the bars of an open, unlocked door.

So if the cage is your forced mindset, or Toni's... whatever circumstances Toni's in, you suppose that makes the both of you the animals.

It's fitting, you think wryly, remembering the beginning of your days on the island, the ferocity and desperation in every word, every action. Animals indeed, you think, recalling the fights and bitter insults and feuds - now resolved, set aside, but still there, a shadow of the past, emerging again to taunt and haunt and guilt on bad days.