NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY |

61: how (not) to respond to a burglary

            I wake up to Joe stirring. 'I'm only getting some water,' she explains. 'Don't worry.'

Eyelids glued shut with sleep, I catch only a sliver of movement before I sink. My dream resumes though I'm still conscious of my body and when voices emerge, it takes a moment for me to tell if they're real or in the dream.

Joe isn't back for a time that in my sleep feels like ages. I should go check. My woollen socks have slid off my feet in my sleep and the carpet is icy but I force myself out of bed.

'You alright?' I ask halfway down the stairs.

'Um...'

I turn into the dark kitchen and freeze. Joe is arrested at the threshold, her back to me and with her hands raised. Cece glowers in a fight stance, the plastic handle of a broom brandished like a sword. 

They flick to me for only a second. 'Nicolás, there's someone in your house.'

'I know that.' I squeeze past Joe to twist the broom out of their grip. Cece don't resist but neither does their laser focus stray from Joe. 'She's my guest,' I say, hooking the broom onto the dustpan in the corner of the kitchen.

'Why d'ya have guests in the middle of the n–? Oh.' They bury their hands into their hoodie pocket.

Dressed in black with a hood over his head and eyes smeared with enough makeup that it could function as a mask, they're the one you could be afraid to find unannounced in your house in the dark morning hours. A smirk twists their mouth, grillz flashing from between lips to join the steel gleam of their piercings.

'Don't let me interrupt ya.'

I watch him, unamused. 'We were sleeping. It's three am.'

I move back to Joe, caressing the length of her arm to coax her gaze to me. Understanding my silent question, she nods that yes, she's alright. I grab her a glass from the cupboard, assuming she has forgotten about getting the water.

'What're you doing here?' I ask Cece who still has a barbed grin stitched to their face.

I instinctively go to dig out my phone to check my planner. Have I misremembered half-term being next week? But I've obviously left it upstairs. What are they doing here on a Tuesday? 

'You've got school, haven't ya?'

Cece shrugs, hands still in his pocket. Despite the blasé attitude, a rhythmic clicking gives away their fidgeting.

'I might've kinda gotten suspended.'

The words are coughed with attempted laughter. They smile wide but the F-U-C-K their grillz spell across their teeth makes it a right task to find any remorse in the gesture.

I manage to swallow my groan but it's too late in the night for me to bleach the impatience from my voice. 'What happened?'

'I convinced the whole year I could see dead people and that their relatives were sending subliminal warnings about the apocalypse.

'Apparently, it were "insensitive" and "triggering"–' Cece draws inverted commas into the air '–but I reckon it were dead hilarious—pun intended. It's not my fault they believed me.'

At the end of the performance, they beam until they realise there'll be no applause and humour decays into a scowl. Their stare moths across my features, seeking a crack in the window to escape through.

'It's just for a week. Relax.'

His focus ricochets just a tad to the left, looming somewhere over my shoulder. They've gotten good at hiding it but I know their eyes turn sharper from fear than any anger they wield; I know what it means.

'Now we get to hang out an extra week.' Their excitement dulls as they look at Joe. 'Though I guess you don't need the company.'

The remark has barely untangled from his teeth before Cece's brow furrows. They peer at her through the dark. 'Wait... I know you.'

'Yeah, you got her sacked last summer,' I cut in before Joe can speak only to grimace at the irritation in my voice. Cece is among the only people I can reveal my anger around because they won't use it to condemn me to genetic savagery but that don't mean he deserves all of it.

They shuffle on their feet, a blush rising to their cheeks in the dark; she has seen them paranoid, she can see the crack in their act. 'Sorry about that.'

'It's okay. I have a much nicer job now.' Joe looks at me with a smile. My arm still wrapped around her shoulders, I pull her closer.

Cece's stare knots on us like burdocks. Summat uncoils behind their pupils that I've not seen there before, summat slimy and snake-like.

'Where's Esther?'

'Left her at Bobbi's.' Alert: He's not gone anywhere without her for the past year. Even tying her up outside to go to the shops flares up separation anxiety. 'She's a bit annoying sometimes, innit.'

'Wouldn't know what that's like.'

The writhing in their stare congeals. 'Right, I'm off to bed.'

He grabs his phone which I only now recognise on the floor where they must've dropped it when Joe ambushed them. Squeezing past us, they snatch their backpack from the entrance and start up the stairs.

'Cece, wait.'

I duplicate their footsteps onto the second step and look up at them. I search his eyes for a notch that'll unravel to reveal the phantoms underneath but — though the partition between us is as obvious as it would be if an acrylic screen had spontaneously dropped from the ceiling — it's a visor more than it is a filter.

I ask anyway: 'Are you alright?'

'I'm fine.'

Venom is still dripping from the canines of their grillz when their focus strays from my face and onto summat behind me. The derision irons from their features. Their lips part, a tremble racing up his spine.

'What is it?' I glance though, obviously, find nowt. 'Are you... seeing things?'

'There's– It's– um– it's...' They lift a quivering hand to point at the entrance, too terrified to blink. 'It's a My Little Pony. All I'm seeing is your ugly mug, innit.'

He bounds up the stairs and, within seconds, their door slams.

I watch the darkness seep down the stairs as the weeds infesting my skeleton grip me in their clutch. Point A: It's just one suspension. Point B: It's just one week. Don't: Overreact. I shouldn't've been such a dick.

In my defence, it is three in the morning. My brain isn't exactly at peak functioning. 

Sighing, I return to the kitchen where Joe is sipping at her water. 'Are you alright?'

I cup her face to tilt her gaze up to mine. She leans into the touch. 'I'm okay.'

'They didn't hurt you, did he?'

'No. I mean they bloody startled me but I'm okay.'

Tracing her cheekbone with my thumb, I inspect her but Joe's face, thankfully, has no mask to unlace. There's never a need to perform intensive surgery to understand her; she lets me right in. When she smiles, it's an invitation rather than a "WARNING: DO NOT ENTER" sign.

She takes my hand. 'Let's go back to sleep.'

But when we're in the bedroom, I can't find my phone. It isn't plugged into the charger like I thought, nor can I find it in my trouser pockets. 'Maybe you left it in the car,' Joe suggests.

I find it in the cup holder, the battery nearly depleted. It stays alive just long enough to show me the three missed calls from Bobbi and a text to let me know that Cece left. She signs off with: "Ring me when you get the chance".