Insight

Chapter Ten: Piercings and Intrigue

The boys ended up returning to our cabin despite Moxy's best efforts and we all ate quickly. Lucy, Izzy, and Lacy got in their bunks to sleep. Raven also got in xyr bunk, but observed us all tiredly as opposed to sleeping. Aiden fell asleep curled up halfway under Lacy and Raven's bunk, and John left in a wheelchair he obtained outside someone elses' cabin. Iggy leaned back against the wall in between two dressers. Brandon sat against the wall next to the bathroom door talking quietly to Roxanne who was facing him. I climbed into my bunk intending to sleep, but found that I could not. Moxy, who'd been leaning against our bunk, started rummaging around in her dresser.

"Syany!" She whispered up to me. "You awake?"

"Yeah, sort of." I responded.

"Great, then you can help me with something!" She'd stopped whispering but was still being quiet as not to wake those who'd managed to fall asleep. I jumped off the top of the bunk, which I had thought would be a good idea as it would save my legs from having to climb down from the bunk, but instead it put more pressure on my knees from taking the impact of the fall and I collapsed onto the floor.

"Fuck."

Moxy snickered and helped me up, a bag in the hand she wasn't offering me. She led me into the bathroom and emptied the contents of the bag on the edges of the sink. At first I didn't understand what was going on; she had dumped the sewing needle I'd bought for her on the sink, and set a box of alcohol wipes next to it. She opened the box and removed a few, opening the square packets and lining the right side of the sink. She placed the sewing needle on top of one of the wipes. Then she started methodically moving her hands through her pockets. This went on for a good minute before she made a annoyed noise in the back of her throat and turned all of her pockets out. A small piece of metal clattered to the floor from her left front pocket and she knelt down and picked it up carefully, examining it. When she placed it on the sink next to the sewing needle, I finally understood.

"Oh gods, I don't think I can help with that."

"I don't expect you to do much. I might need you to hand me things and make sure everything is aligned. But other than that, you're mostly here for moral support." she replied. "Besides, I was a licensed piercer in my dreamscape. Maybe I can do some piercings for you!"

I hesitated. "Well, let's see you do yours first." I was actually considering letting Moxy pierce me. I hadn't obtained any in my dreamscape as far as I was aware of, not that that meant much, but I felt I strange need to get both my eyebrows pierced.

Moxy started cleaning the sewing needle with an alcohol wipe with a concentration I'd yet to see from her. "I should've bought a clamp. That would make this so much easier." she murmured to herself before cleaning the in and around where the piercing would be with the alcohol wipes as well.

"I don't think they even sell those." I said.

"True. Ah, I don't have a marker either!"

"A marker? Why?"

"So I can mark the entrance and exit points so that they're better aligned than if I just stabbed a needle through my nose." She left the bathroom and I heard her whisper to Roxanne, asking for a marker. A few moments later, she reentered and held up a black, felt-tipped marker. "Score!"

"What?" I said, not understanding what she meant.

"Iggy had some of his art supplies with him." she said, assuming I was surprised that she'd obtained a marker. She then leaned over the sink and got as close as she possibly could to the mirror. She turned her head back and forth, examining her nose before making two, small black dots, one on each side of the piece of skin separating her nostrils. She stuck her fingers in her nostrils and pulled on it, feeling the skin and checked the dots in the mirror again.

"Alright, it's on the sweet spot, is it even?" she asked me, lifting her head so that I could see inside of her nose and rocked her head back and forth so that I could see each side of the septum.

"Uh, yeah, I think so." I said uncertainly. I felt somewhat uncomfortable the entire time she was putting her fingers in her nose and suspected it would get worse. "Gods, this is so weird."

"Eh, it shouldn't take too long." She used yet another alcohol wipe to clean the jewelry, then placed it carefully on a clean part of the sink and dropped the wrapper in the trash can. "If you could do me a favor and clean up the other wrappers from the alcohol swabs, I'd appreciate it."

I threw her a joking glare, but picked up the wrappers that she'd left lying in the sink and on the floor. She washed her hands thoroughly as soon as I had cleaned out the sink, and re-"sterilized" the sewing needle.

"I should really have gloves on for this but oh well." Then, leaning into the mirror again, she shoved the needle into her nose and I heard a series of quiet pops and winced. She winced as well, checking the placement of the needle. "That went well." Her eyes were suddenly watery and she looked as if she were about to cry.

"Are you okay?" I asked, concerned.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Her facial expression was one of confusion. "Why?"

"You look like you're about to cry."

She laughed. "Oh, no. It always happens. You try shoving something sharp through your nose and see if your eyes don't water. Could you-" she unscrewed a piece at the end of the jewelry and handed it to me. "Hold onto that for a second." I took the tiny piece she handed me and winced as she threaded the jewelry in behind the needle as she pulled it out. She then held her hand out to take the tiny, ball-like structure from me and screwed it onto the end she'd pushed through her nose.

"Alright." She said to herself, and cleaned around the piercing with yet another alcohol wipe. "That should do it. Thanks Syany."

"I mean, I didn't really do anything." I protested.

"Well you stayed in here, that's more than I would expect from most people."

I nodded at her, wondering why I stayed and not mentioning that I was intrigued by the thought of piercings. Again I found myself wondering if I'd had some in my dreamscape. I got a flash of an image. A young girl with an eyebrow piercing and a bar through the top of the bridge of her nose, in between her eyes. Was that me? I was about to ask what kind of piercing the second one was, but Moxy had turned away from me.

"I'm going to try and nap now." she said, leaving the bathroom. I followed her and got back into my own bed and found that I drifted off to sleep easily this time.