The Tiff Singularity (A Collection of Lake Wonder Fiction)

It Doesn't Hurt

Denny flips on the light in her room, glad that she remembered to tidy up a little before work on the day she went down into the tunnel. She may enjoy getting things out of the trash and getting her hands dirty, but that doesn't mean her room has to be a pigsty. No, that would be insane.

Jessie tries to slide in, but completely fails at that. Well, of course she does. The floor is carpeted and, anyway, it's more of a reprise of an old joke that Denny had forgotten until this point. She can't help but laugh when it comes up again-- and when Jessie loses her balance in all her haste and has to brace herself on the doorframe.

"Jessie, it's... it's carpeted," she whispers, fulfilling her part of the bit.

"Yeah, yeah." Jessie flaps her hand and heads into the room. She doesn't need to take it all in. She has been here so many times that even Denny knows it's not necessary. The only thing that has really changed recently is Denny's bed since (as Denny loves to remind people) her mother sold her bedframe when she figured that Denny wasn't going to be coming home-- or, at the very least, wouldn't be living here when she inevitably moved back to Lake Wonder. Well, neither of them planned for the reality of the situation and how Denny eventually had to buy herself a new bed and stop sleeping on a stack of soup cans topped with a yoga mat. Now the soup goes under the bed, and in the linen closet.

Jessie helped her set it up when she finally got a new one and topped it with an old mattress her uncle Elmer didn't need anymore and dropped off on his way to deliver another shipment of something or other to the Max-Mart on the other side of town. Jessie knows all this because Jessie was there. Jessie is always there.

And Denny is glad for it.

Denny sits on the edge of her bed, then flops back on it until her head nearly touches the wall. She's tired. She wants to sleep. But she is also-- unsurprisingly-- trying to avoid recognizing the pain that is making her feel so exhausted.

It shouldn't hurt so much. She's been through worse. She put herself back together on her way back from Tennessee. Hell, she's been through worse with Jessie-- that time she tore open her arm on some rocks when she jumped from a tree into a river, which hurt like a bitch-- and heaven knows Jessie has been hurt enough times to know pain. Splitting her lip on a broken reed, getting hit in the face with a color guard rifle, breaking her ankle in the woods that one time. Small injuries, big ones: Jessie should be familiar. Hell, that was why they started to be friends in the first place, instead of continuing their weird elementary school enemy-hood. That was when Jessie broke her ankle in the woods because she tripped on an improperly-covered bathroom hole and Denny had to carry her back to where the rest of the camp was.

They are both familiar with injury. It's just that Denny may or may not be a little more injured than usual right now.

That might be her own fault. She wasn't really ready to fight that giant shadow grudge-creature, and it showed in the way she went down so quickly. At least nobody was dead. She almost was, though. The way Jessie put it, there was blood everywhere when she woke up in that sunken place and saw Denny. Denny doesn't want to think about what Jessie almost saw (fur, teeth, claws, a monster where Good Old Denny should have been) any more than she wants to think about what Jessie really did see (all the blood and the sludge and the horror of what happened after Denny's head hit the wall and she couldn't do anything).

But, well, she's alive, isn't she?

Denny didn't think she would be. She never thinks she will. Anything could happen. She knows that better than anyone.

Denny sighs, runs her hands through her hair, and smiles. That's right. She is alive. That's a good thing.

One day, she might not be, though, so she makes a mental note to start writing letters later, writing down all the things she has found that she can not say to anyone.