18
NMC Magazine
iv. We have a Christmas party, a “Galentine’s Day” party, laughter buoying us through blizzard season. For my seventeenth birthday, Aspen gives me Doctor Who socks from Hot Topic, and we all put on a pair. I love these three so much, I want to tuck them inside my chest. I must be graced by Tyche, Greek goddess of luck. But that night, I feel small and hollow, like all their laughter washes over me, their jokes, superficial. It is not a new feeling, but it’s new with them. I cry to Linnea, because my fatal flaw is loyalty, or maybe it’s hanging on to things that hurt me. Linnea wonders if I’m depressed. I don’t believe her. I share her confusion: why would such a thing be present in me? Depression is for Nico, for Katniss after the war. But Nico sits in the corner and stares Stygian iron swords at me. “There are so many quotes from that space show that make you feel worth something,” Nico says. “So what’s in the absence of that? What about how you feel when you can’t sleep and read hurt/comfort fics about Percy and Annabeth or me and Will so your mind doesn’t eat itself alive?” Nico doesn’t mention the fics I write about him, the depths of the shadows that claw at his insides. “But — ” I’m at a loss for words. He chuckles. “Do you still have the coin?” “I’ve kept it on my bookshelf.” We’ve buffered Kai from her siblings’ bullying, but we don’t know the depths of the dysfunction. Kai sewed an entire Peggy Carter costume for Aspen, but Linnea didn’t talk about breaking up with her boyfriend. Duality. Maybe I see it now.
“There’s a lot of things you need to know to get across the universe.”
v. It’s only at Percy’s birthday party right before my first day of college that I see Nico again. There’s been many more cosplays, pizzas, cucumber slices. The Hunger Games movies are over, but somehow we’ve hung on. Despite the ways we’ve each grown up, despite the melancholy that clings ever tighter to me. Despite the ways Linnea has made it even clearer how little ranking we hold for her. We’re walking through Aspen’s neighborhood past midnight, making up silly word games and befriending the cat that emerges from the manicured bushes to follow us. There’s a dirt road that snakes out of the polished suburb and into a patch of woods that once served as photoshoot backgrounds. Someone stands there. No, two someones. Nico, and Ten. David Tennant. The Tenth Doctor. The Waffle. Nico nods at me. “Janus is the god of endings. He could be the god of The Fellowship of the Waffle, too.”
