Suffocating

Insomnia; III

"-and then she was like 'no, we are not talking about this', like, how could she, you know?! How could I act like nothing's wrong- everything's wrong!"

Claire winced, resisting the urge to nod in confirmation, affirming that, indeed, everything was wrong.

It had been bizarre, meeting and getting to know this stranger. After saving her life, she'd profusely hugged and thanked Claire and broke down crying. Claire, knowing that it was impolite of her to leave this girl crying in the sidewalk alone at night, guided her to the back of a small clothing shop, prompting the girl to sit down on the cold, concrete floor before sitting by her side, waiting for her until she composed herself before drifting nowhere yet again.

The only issue was that the girl didn't compose herself.

Sure, she'd stopped crying after ten, perhaps fifteen minutes, though... Claire had thought that this girl had somewhere to go.

It appeared she'd been wrong.

And now, here she was, sitting uncomfortably in the concrete, trying to lean onto the aged brick wall to stop the uncomfortableness - it didn't work, and she was sure her butt would no longer be squishy when she eventually stood - listening to this girl whose name she hadn't even known, who maybe was two, three younger than her, rant about a... conversation she had with her mother.

In a way, this reminded Claire of her first encounter with Roxanne; unexpected, wild, and oddly peaceful.

This girl was loud.

But it was a good kind of loud. An honest one.

This girl. She reminded Claire of Roxanne, only... younger, fresher, without the weight of reality upon her shoulders.

But this girl was far from the anomaly that was Roxanne Brooks.

She was her very own anomaly. An anomaly with chubby cheeks, round and bouncy body, and small bits of acne surrounding her forehead.

This girl was a cute, giant teddy bear.

And a sad one, at that.

"Log- My friend... He might be in trouble, and she might know something, but- she just..." Her words trailed into a sigh of frustration and exhaustion. Claire's hand twitched, wanting to give her comfort. Her hand remained where it was. Unmoving. Claire wasn't good at physical contact. She wasn't Roxanne.

"And all of that's fine, and all, but then she confiscated my phone?!" The girl threw her hands, yelling at the brick wall in front of her, demanding answers. "Like, who does that?!"

The way she'd said it amused Claire. It was as though the real catalyst of it all, the real heart breaking moment, wasn't the talk itself, or what it meant. It was... getting her phone taken away from her.

That brought a sense of warmth to Claire.

It was... normal. She was normal. It was nice to see; normality. 

Normality in the form of a chubby, cute girl with a pixie cut and ruined make-up, wearing a leather jacket with an angel's wings on the back - the sight, at first, had made Claire want to snort and chuckle and wince, all at once - ripped jeans, boots that Roxanne would've called 'awesome'.

Still, normality, nonetheless.

Claire missed it. Greatly so. All she wanted was normality. It was something people took for granted. It was something she'd wanted since her life became anything but normal. Since she became anything but normal.

Things had settled down, in the orphanage. Oh, it was hard. Harder than she ever thought possible. Trying to control, trying to look normal, trying not to hear, to feel, to see more than she should.