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It's late on a Tuesday when Antonia comes padding into Marlow's room wordlessly. Or maybe it's Thursday—who's to say? She enters the room silently, sweeping over the floorboards with practiced ease as to not alarm Marlow who's buried deep beneath the pile of blankets on her bed. The room is dark, only the light from the window seeping in through cracks in the blinds. Toni settles on the edge of the bed, not bothering to wake Marlow up; it's not like she's been sleeping at all. Mostly she just sits in bed all day and stares at the wall, too wrapped up in her own head, thinking about what should have been. Toni sighs, showing too much wear for someone her age, laying down on the cool pillow and placing her arms around the pile of blankets that held her closest friend. Marlow doesn't make any sounds of acknowledgement, just lies there like always.
"Mar?" She whispers quietly into the darkness. "You know I don't mean to push you... I just hate seeing you like this. You don't sleep, you don't eat... You're not yourself," Toni pauses, sucking in a shallow breath. Jessie is in the other room, anxiously waiting for Toni to come trudging back in to their shared bedroom with the news. But she doesn't focus on this. All Antonia can think about is Marlow who is nothing like herself these days.
It's silent for a moment, the only sounds come from traffic outside. There's not even the gentle hum of the heater that normally fills the silence. Toni thinks that maybe Marlow didn't hear her, or maybe she finally has gone to sleep, but really she's just lying there, feeling her friend's arm weighing heavily down on her. Again, she feels like the mattress is trying to swallow her whole, sinking, falling, vanishing. Gone. It's hard to explain but she feels this often—like every inch of her body is decaying, unraveling, collapsing in on itself like a supernova.
Marlow blinks, glassy eyes darkening with the night sky, a reflection of what she's become. And then in this raspy and foreign voice comes her response. "I don't feel very much like myself."
Toni's heart aches at the way her voice cracks, vacant and broken. It sounds like the edges of shattered glass feels, or maybe something more akin to dried flowers left in the sun for too long without any care, withered and muted, lacking all signs of life. Toni pushes the side of her face deeper into the pillow, trying to no avail to suppress the deep frown forming on her face. "Tell me what I can do. Tell me what I can do to help." At this point she's desperate. She would do anything to get back to where they were before—before Marlow had been sucked into this dark hole of misery, left to reminisce on what could have been and thinking about all the things that she should have done. How too little, too late never felt so fitting.
And then in the same unfamiliar voice: "I'm just tired."
Toni doesn't make a sound, just tucks her chin into the pile of blankets, holding them close like they've been labeled fragile. Marlow doesn't want to think about what it's like outside of her cocoon. She doesn't want to picture the silent tears that build in the corner of her friend's eyes or the way her clock flicks to another minute going by, the world still moving while she is left behind. They stay like this for a while, each trying to savor this feeling—Marlow because warmth is a foreign concept to her now and Toni because she yearns for normalcy spent with her best friend by her side. Then once Toni thinks she's asleep, she whispers the warming charm under her breath, sending a rush of warm air up into Marlow's blankets. She pulls herself from the bed, hovering by the door for a moment before she disappears, shutting the door behind her and leaving Marlow in absolute darkness.
