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Fiction Main
notes: gen, angst. Written for an English class.
untitled Virgin Suicides (book) fic
by Frostfire
It's three in the morning. Their parents are in bed, the boys across the street have just given up spying, and Lux is in the bathroom, smoking a cigarette.
"Lung cancer," says Bonnie, from the floor. "Heart disease. Infanticide."
"The window's open."
"They're still going to smell it tomorrow. In here, on your clothes. Your skin."
"Shut up," says Mary, without opening her eyes. "Shut up. Shut up." She continues, maybe, but since her face is shoved into a pillow, they can't tell if she's repeating herself or not.
Lux inhales. Thinks of lung cancer, slow death. Pictures the spike through Cecilia's chest and flinches, concentrates on blowing a perfect smoke ring.
In the hallway, the light is on. It shines faintly through the small space where the bathroom door is open, sending a line of light across the pillows on the floor, the cracked tiles, Bonnie's pale thigh. She stares at the ceiling, fingering the hem of her nightgown and thinking about school, parents, lung cancer, fish flies, and the bread they had with dinner tonight. Quick, quick, not letting one topic stay in her head too long before she bounces to another one. Bread. Cheese. Cows. Barns. Hay. Grass. Lying outside on the grass, spread-eagled, staring at the sky and Cecilia comes tumbling down--
"I can't do it," says Lux, watching another amorphous cloud float out the window.
"You know what," says Bonnie when she gets her voice back, "I think you should practice more. I think that would be a great idea, don't you, Therese?"
The tall figure just outside the door pushes it open, steps inside, resolves itself as Therese in a long shirt and nice shoes, polished and ready for visiting elderly relatives. She stops just inside, and stands.
Mary's still muttering into the pillow.
"I can't do it," says Lux again.
"Did you hear what I said?"
But Lux is watching the smoke float out the window and wishing she could blow a smoke ring. Wishing very, very hard.
Therese has a book. She sits down very precisely on one of the pillows, panties showing underneath the long shirt as she crosses her legs, Indian style, and opens it. After a few seconds, she notices that she has it upside-down, and reverses it.
"Do you think the cheese we had with the bread at dinner had gone off?" asks Bonnie, still staring at the ceiling.
"If you're going to throw up, get away from that pillow," says Lux, inhaling again. "That's mine."
"I'm not going to throw up. I was thinking about the cheese."
"Don't think if you're going to be as bad at it as that," says Lux, and turns back to look out the window. She leans forward, breathing in the night air. Freezes. Pulls herself back in very, very slowly, as Bonnie watches her with wide eyes and Mary curls up more tightly in her corner of the bathtub.
Therese turns a page.
There's a pause, and then Lux steps deliberately back toward the window and resumes her original position, smoking and looking out. Bonnie relaxes slowly, bit by bit, thinking about every single body part and letting its tension bleed away. By the time she reaches her stomach muscles, her shoulderblades have tensed up again.
Lux's pillow is too soft underneath her head. She can feel the floor through the down, and it hurts, just a little.
"For God's sake, Mary, quit that tribal chanting or whatever it is you're doing," says Lux abruptly, spinning from her spot at the window. "What are you saying, anyhow?"
Mary doesn't move for a long minute. When she finally raises her head from the pillow, she's stopped talking, and she stares at the wall directly across from her, blank. She can't remember the last time she slept for more than an hour. She can feel her eyes burning holes toward the back of her head, where eventually, she thinks, they'll catch her hair on fire. She saw herself in the mirror earlier this evening, and for a second she thought she might see the burning, but instead her eyes look like black holes in her face. Worse in the dark, she knows, and she wonders how it can be so dark when she feels so bright inside, like she's made of light and not flesh--
"Say something, Mary," says Lux.
"Light," she says. "Lux."
Lux looks at Bonnie. Bonnie's too busy staring up at the ceiling to look back, to help decide whether they need to do something drastic, like fill the bathtub with ice water and dump Mary in until she's shocked out of this.
But Bonnie's staring at the ceiling, and Lux can't blow a smoke ring, and maybe they just aren't going to help Mary, because it isn't like they can help themselves.
Therese turns another page.
"What are you reading?" asks Lux after a second.
"Demian," says Therese. "Don't tell them."
"Why not?" asks Lux, interested.
"Read it if you want to know."
She almost considers it, but Mary chooses that moment to throw a pillow out the window.
There's a frozen second while they watch it tumble down, down, down--"Mary!" Lux is--furious? Terrified?
"Shh!" hisses Therese. "They'll hear you."
"That was my pillow!"
"Three-quarters of these are yours. One more or less isn't going to make a difference. Go out and get it if you want."
"It's dirty."
"Tomorrow it'll be wet," says Bonnie, having temporarily come back from the fascination of the ceiling.
Lux makes a face. "Mary..."
But Mary's gone back to communing with the bathtub pillows. She's lying across a line of bed pillows, Bonnie's and Therese's and one of Lux's, and her head is on a throw pillow from the couch. She can feel the lines it's left on her face, red impressions of where she's been, what she did. The pillow that's now on the ground was lying across the small of her back, and it was another one of Lux's, too.
She knows all this. She remembers.
None of Cecilia's pillows are in here with them.
Mary shoves her face back into the throw pillow. She doesn't talk this time, but starts trying to see how long she can go without breathing. At school, once, some kids had a contest, to see who could hold their breath the longest. Mary was afraid to try; she thought about waiting too long and never being able to breathe again. Later, she looked back and knew she'd been stupid. Now, she doesn't think she was stupid at all.
Cecilia, she thinks, will win this contest. Which is good. Cecilia always liked to win, but she was the youngest, so usually didn't--
Usually wasn't the first--
Mary shoves her head deeper into the pillow and concentrates on the burning in her lungs.
Lux's cigarette is almost gone. She stares at the butt between her fingers, the little glowing point of light on the end--it falls. Out the window, down and down until it lands on the grass, and now it isn't a cigarette butt anymore, isn't anything but a point of light. She waits to see if it'll catch the grass on fire, but it rained yesterday, and the point just lingers for a few minutes before winking out. She wonders what would have happened if it had landed on her pillow instead.
She's leaning forward again, too far. No one's noticed yet. She pulls herself back. It's hard to do.
Therese turns another page, and then slams the book shut and throws it against the wall.
And Cecilia's ghost sits on the windowsill, watching them.
=end=
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