Through Her Eyes (JenLisa)

Unusually Ordinary

"Jennie, I love you," Lisa declared in a squeaky voice.

Jennie stared at her hands.

Lisa cleared her throat and tried again.

"Jennie," she called, brandishing the bent spatula that had once been known as Ariana. She spoke out of the side of her mouth, waving the spatula back and forth like it was speaking. "Jennie, I love you! Why won't you talk to me anymore? It makes me sad." The spatula drooped in Lisa's hand, doing a convincing impression of a very depressed kitchen utensil. "Lisa can't dance. Who will dance with me now?"

Not Jennie, it seemed. She stayed seated at the table, staring at her hands with dull disinterest.

Lisa spun around the kitchen once, leaning over to dip the spatula in a strange imitation of a ballroom dance. Jennie didn't look up and finally Lisa sighed and set Ariana on the table, giving her a consoling pat.

After Jennie had stopped speaking to her inanimate friends, Lisa had started to feel like she had to. Jennie had been so fond of them, her affection contagious, and now they were all being abandoned. Lisa was being abandoned.

"You're not going to talk to any of them?" She asked, not really expecting a response. Lisa knew Jennie wouldn't and she knew why. She just didn't know how to fix it without taking everything she'd said back.

If she took everything back it might make Jennie happy again – her heart clenched at the thought – but it would make Jennie think they were going to be together, too. Lisa couldn't do that only to have to take it away again.

Lisa couldn't be with Jennie because Jennie was... so strange, but she didn't want Jennie to stop being strange, either. Lisa wasn't sure how that worked exactly, how it was going to work. Not very well, at the moment.

"Not even to me, huh?" Lisa kicked lightly at the foot of Jennie's chair imploringly. Jennie bit her lip. The only sound piercing the silence was of toast popping up.

"Yeah," Lisa said. "I didn't think so."

Picking up her burnt toast, Lisa greeted the toaster anyway. It seemed like it would have been strange not to.

——-

The harder Jennie tried for normalcy the stranger she seemed. Jennie was not made to be average. Maybe she never had been. Lisa couldn't imagine it. Maybe Jennie had spent her whole life creating a world of magic and delight around herself like a storybook.

The paintings had names even when Jennie wasn't speaking to them, the walls were more than walls even when Jennie wasn't acknowledging it. Jennie couldn't change those things. Jennie couldn't change herself. She could only try to suppress it, hide under suffocating layers of expectation.

Lisa wouldn't let her.

Jennie was sitting by the window in a dark room when Lisa plopped down beside her, pressing herself into Jennie's space like it was still their space, like Lisa was still welcome. Jennie wasn't looking out the window but down, a heavy book balanced on her knees. It was an old history textbook – Lisa could easily tell as the title was right side up.

"Your book is upside down," Lisa pointed out, leaning closer. "How can it speak to you like that?"

Jennie made a frustrated noise, looking a bit like she wanted to throw the book at Lisa. Really, Lisa wouldn't have minded a book in the face as long as it meant Jennie was listening. A reaction, any reaction.

Abruptly, Lisa yanked the book from Jennie's fingertips. Jennie jerked back, wide-eyed and startled, and Lisa grinned at her.

"You be quiet," she instructed, even though Jennie had said and would have said nothing. "I'm going to read this book. I'm an awesome book-reader. It's one of my many hidden talents. You just listen."