Analemma, or A Year in the Sunlight

For the third time this minute, I smooth out my shirt collar. “How do I look?” I ask. “Do I look normal?”

Twilight sighs. “You are normal.”

“But do I look it?” I’m trying to keep quiet, but my voice cracks so badly that half the bookstore glances at me. I hunch down until Twilight’s hair brushes my chin. “Because I’ve had trouble with that before, and I don’t want to come off the wrong way, y’know? I don’t want to look angry or weird or intimidating or—”

“Sunset.” Twi reaches up to take my hand off my collar, which at this point I’ve just started twisting between my fingers. “Take a breath. You sound like me.”

I take the long breath she’s asked for. “You’ve got a nice voice, though.”

“So do you, so stop worrying.” She lets go, but immediately starts using the same hand to fiddle with her hair. “Gosh, listen to me, telling you to just stop, like that helps anything. Sorry.”

Were she talking to anyone else, she’d probably be right about that. But right now, the thought that keeping calm will keep her calm is more effective than any breathing exercise. I close my eyes, run a hand down my face, and try to focus on the dry rustle of pages turning around us. “Okay. I think I’m ready.”

“Good, because” – she motions to the clock hanging on the wall above us – “I don’t mean to stress you out, but you’re running late.”

“Yeah, that’s on purpose.” I play with my collar again. “Well, not, like, purposefully on purpose. It’s an unconscious thing, y’know? Stalling. I’m nervous, so I’m stalling. It’s, y’know, hard to control—”

“Sunset.”

”Right.” I walk down the aisle and start muttering, “Just gotta stick to the script. Be nice and stick to the script. Act normal, don’t freak out, be nice, and stick to the script.”

She follows close behind. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you? You’ll be alright?”

”I’ll be fine,” I say, half-turning back to her. “And you’ve done so much for me already. You’re a dork, not a crutch.”

She straightens her arms and presses them against her sides. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m skinny enough to be one.”

I pull a crumpled fast food receipt from my pocket and toss it at her. It misses her by a foot, but she still holds her head and groans like I just pegged her with a dodgeball. “I’ll be fine,” I repeat, this time through a giggle. “Besides, I don’t want Wallflower to think we’re ganging up on her. It’s gotta be one-on-one.”

“Okay.” She nods, then sits on the floor cross-legged – right next to my fallen receipt, which she furtively slips into her purse for proper disposal later – and pulls a book from the nearest shelf without looking. “I’ll be waiting right here. Text me if you need anything.”

I shoot her a peace sign before stepping out of the aisle, out of the bookstore, and into the open mall hallways.

I know how to waste time. I spend most of my life wasting time. And I’ve lived as a human teenager for long enough to have mastered the art of Wasting Time at the Mall. Sampling every single flavor at the ice cream shop, sifting through racks of designer dresses I’ll never afford, counting all the coins in the center fountain – I can loiter in ways that not even Hoofington High dropouts could manage.

And right now, as I pass boutiques and luxury car giveaways and cheap sunglasses booths, all my instincts are telling me to stop and smell the floor wax. I’m only five minutes late to my meeting with Wallflower, so why not procrastinate for another hour or two?

But I keep marching onwards, hands shoved in my pockets. There’s a folded piece of paper buried beneath my phone, and I trace it with a finger as I walk, pressing my fingertip into the corners until it hurts. I don’t stop until I can see the neon lights of the food court, smell the grease-scented air – and see a shock of scraggly green hair, parked at a table right in the center.

Nausea leaps in my stomach. I slip behind a nearby pillar and press my back against it, forcing myself to take uncomfortably long breaths.

Twilight and I constructed this meeting to be as peaceful, as non-confrontational as possible. The two of us are meeting in a neutral location, one-on-one, with loads of people/witnesses around. I’m wearing a dark gray t-shirt with no words or pictures on it. I’m not wearing any makeup, and I’ve taken off my earrings and spiked bracelets. The only pieces I’ve left on are my amulet – never know when an Equestrian Magic Emergency will strike – and a friendship bracelet Pinkie made me, only because it’s tied so tightly to my wrist that I’d have to rip it in half.

I peek out at her again. She’s taken the exact opposite route, wearing a bright yellow jumper with green swirls all over it. A far cry from the dingy brown sweater I first met her in.

She’s doing so much better. She doesn’t need me to be happy. Yeah? Yeah.

That’s enough assurance to unstick my feet from the ground and propel me forward.

Act normal, don’t freak out, be nice, and stick to the script.

Let’s do this.

I slip through the patrons and chairs, headed for her table. And when I reach it, I put on a big grin. “Hey,” I chirp, stepping into view. “Sorry I’m late!”

Her face lights up with a sickeningly sweet grin. “Sunset! Hey!” She stands, and she moves forward like she’s going to hug me – but before I can even recoil away and ruin this whole charade, she steps back and sits down again. No more eye contact, just looking at the table and fiddling with the ends of her hair. “Hi! And don’t worry, I didn’t even notice. That you were late, I mean. I figured I was early!”

She speaks quickly and excitedly, but her sentences get quieter as she goes. It’s like if Pinkie and Fluttershy shared a mouth.

I pull out my chair and sit. “Damn, really? Y’know, I’m awful with—”

“Okay, I did notice,” she says, adding a laugh at the end that sounds prerecorded. Then her smile snaps away. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt! I just didn’t want to lie. And it’s okay! I got some fries – you can have some if you want – and I was playing on my phone. Playing a game.”

I now realize that Wallflower is Twilight if she were 97% less charming.

Goddess, that’s so mean. Shut up, shut up!

She’s staring at the table, she’s frowning. Dead air, dead air, one second, two seconds. This is going downhill. Four seconds. Abort, abort.

No! Make conversation, dipshit! Be a human being! She’s the shy one, not me!

“So,” I start, just to shank the silence and force my brain into gear. It takes another excruciating second to cough out, “What game was it?”

That gets her to look up again. “It’s called Starsaber Brigade,” she says, brushing the hair out of her eyes. “It’s like a sci-fi deck-building RPG. The story is great too. Have you played it?”

Never heard of it. “I think I saw someone talking about it on SnapGab,” I say, leaning forward. “I meant to check it out but didn’t get around to it. What’s it like?”

“Well, it’s really cool! Basically you create a character and you’re a recruit in this big space military academy. And the more classes you complete, the more cards you can add to your deck. The first few missions aren’t great, they’re all sort of railroad-y, but once you get enough gems and unlock more characters and their unique decks, it really opens up. Like, I main a Sundowner build, which has this special win condition where—”

That’s as far as I get before my attention span starts sputtering. It’s not totally her fault. I’ve just got too much on my mind – the din of the food court, the paper in my pocket, her hands moving as she talks and the jolt of anxiety whenever they pass too near to me – I can’t tell whether it’s her anxiety or mine – I hope it’s mine, I never want to have her in my head ever again – to pay attention and act happy at the same time.

There’s one line I do tune back in for: “Microchips plays too, and we help each other with raids sometimes.”

Microchips. Fluttershy. She has friends. She has nice clothes. She has interests. It’s okay if I abandon her.

I’m not abandoning her. I’m making space. It’s what’s best for both of us.

And I made that decision all on my own. Never asked what she thinks.

This is how it has to be. Twi said it’s okay. Pinkie said it’s okay. The Princess said it’s okay.

That’s what I wanted them to say.

“You do, right?”

My eyes uncross. I lean in an inch farther. “I do…?”

“You play video games a lot? Fluttershy said that you do.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah! All the time.” I chuckle. “Probably too much, to be honest.”

Wallflower laughs again, and this time it sounds real. “Mood,” she says, but then goes quiet. She stares at her food for a long moment before saying, “Thanks, by the way. For inviting me out.”

I shake my head. “No problem. Thanks for coming.”

“Like I’d miss the chance to hang out with you!” Wallflower says way too loudly, spittle on her lips. I guess I can’t hide the shock on my face, because she shrinks back and averts her eyes again. “I just mean, like… I always wanted to be friends with you. Even before, y’know, everything that happened. Really. You’re really cool.”

Funny way of showing it. I fold my hands together so they can’t clench into fists. “Wow. Thank you! That’s really nice.”

She nods. “And then I did all that stuff, and I figured I’d blown my chance. And then you did that stuff at the Summer Sunfest, and I was like, ‘Welp, it’s gonna be awkward forever!’”

She thinks that tearing out all my memories and shoving them back in is the same as me messing up her shirt a little bit?

“But I knew things would turn out okay, because you forgive everyone. And then you texted me, and now we’re here.” She crosses her arms tight against her chest and offers me a faint blush. “So, thank you. You’re awesome.”

She’s radiating a colorful mix of happiness and bashfulness, but it’s all outlined with fear. It stabs into me like a jagged tree branch, digging deep into my organs, twisting and tearing me to shreds.

She’s letting herself be vulnerable because she trusts me. She likes me. And I’m about to shank her right back.

My folded hands are squeezed white. I just chuckle again. “Yeah.”

She giggles, then pushes out her chair and stands up. “So, what do you wanna do? Arcade? Shopping? I’ve always wanted to shop for clothes with another girl. We can have a ‘trying on clothes’ montage moment, like in the movies. Y’know what I mean?”

I’m a horrible person. This is going to kill her.

But I hold out my hand. “Wait a second,” I say. I feel disconnected from my body. “I want to talk about something.”

“Sure.” She sits back down, smiling like a toddler walking into traffic. “What’s up? You want the rest of my fries? They’re a lil’ bit over-salty, but you can probably just brush them off.”

“No, no. Just wait.”

I reach into my back pocket and pull out my script, folded and flattened into wrinkled scrap. When Wallflower sees it, her fear spikes. Shit, shit, she knows something’s wrong. I’m so transparently awful, worth less than the air I wish I wasn’t breathing right now.

And my hands are shaking so bad that I can’t even unfold the paper. My ragged nails can’t catch anything. Demon. Bully. She’s getting more scared, smile wilting. I can’t do it.

The half-unfolded paper slips out of my hands and into a wet spot on the table. I snatch it up and shove it back into my pocket. We’re doing this from memory.

I lay out my hands in front of me. “First off,” I say through a dry mouth, “I wanna apologize again for how I acted at Summer Sunfest. I shouldn’t have grabbed you, even touched you. No excuse for that.”

She waves a hand dismissively, fear receding. “I already said I forgive you for that! And I know you were sick. You ate some bad beans, and it messed with your head.”

Not as bad as she did.

“Exactly. But still, you came all the way out to Hoofington to support us, and you deserved better.”

“You played a banger show! You deserved, like, a billion dollars!” Her flush on her face is back. “But thanks again for apologizing. I appreciate it.”

“No problem,” I say, and I keep my mouth open, but nothing more comes out.

She tilts her head. “Is that it?”

“No.”

I know what I have to say. I read Twilight’s script a hundred times, and she phrased everything so perfectly, so kindly. But I’m blanking. Wallflower keeps moving her hands, and I swear I can feel every twitch, every fidget.

She lets out a tiny laugh, and it’s back to sounding like it came from a computer. “Are you okay? You’re not sick again, right?”

Deep breath. No more time to stall.

“I’m resigning from the Yearbook Committee,” I say, “and leaving the club.”

Wallflower freezes – legit stops, like someone’s pressed pause on her. Even her emotions stop buzzing. “Oh,” she says without moving anything but her lips. “That’s. Oh.”

“I know it’s sudden, and I’m sorry. Really.” I try to put on a smile, and I don’t know if it works. “But I’m leaving it in your very capable hands. You’re an amazing graphic designer, and most of the girls will still be there to help out if you need it.”

“Most of the girls?”

Crap.

“Yeah.” I gesture in the direction of the bookstore, as if that’ll mean anything to her. “Twilight has to leave too. Unfortunately.”

“Okay.” She blinks, opens her mouth, closes it again. The fear I felt on her skin before has faded, but something new is growing inside her – something deep and dark and burning like a Tartarus pit. “Why are you leaving?”

“Y’know. Just busy.”

“You’re busy.”

“Yeah.” She keeps staring, and now I’m the one giving a canned laugh. I turn my head down towards the table. “Twi’s got her AP classes. And I gotta focus on college applications, and all that stuff. So we really don’t have time to help out with the yearbook.”

Quiet. I study a bloody red splotch of dried ketchup.

She breathes through her nose. “Is that why you wanted to meet up today? To tell me that?”

I nod.

“Did you actually want to go do something with me? Or is this it?”

“Sorry,” I say, and force myself to look up again.

I meet her eyes and suddenly a scathing heat washes over me, like someone’s sprayed me with acid. I jerk backwards, chair squeaking, but she doesn’t react. She just keeps her sulfur gaze trained on me, straight through my clothes and onto my skin. I can’t move, can’t escape.

It’s only when she closes her eyes that my body works again. “You know,” she says under her breath, “if you don’t want to be friends with me, you can just say that.”

“No.” I shake my head. “That’s not it.”

“Stop it,” she says. Her voice quivers. “Stop lying. I’m not dumb. You’re leaving yearbook because you don’t like me. I don’t need to read your mind to know that.” There’s a lilt in her voice at the end, like she’s just told the funniest joke in the world.

It’s my turn to breathe through my nose, steady, steady, steady. I need another excuse, but under the heat of Wallflower’s gaze, I can’t muster a thought.

But why do I need an excuse?

Screw it. She wants to get real? We’re getting real.

“Okay, yes, fine,” I say, gripping the table for leverage. “But it has nothing to do with liking you or not. I just think the two of us have too much… I dunno. Baggage, I guess. It’s better for us both if we don’t hang out.”

“‘Baggage?’ What does that mean?”

I grip harder. “You know what I mean.”

She balls up her fists. “You lied to me. You made me think everything was okay between us.”

She’s right. I can’t be trusted.

“I didn’t mean to lie,” I say. “I just thought it’d be easier.”

”For who?”

Me. Always me.

“Okay, I lied, yes, fine. But—”

“Why?”

“Let me finish,” I say, louder than I mean to. It’s instinct, total self-preservation. My skin is burning. I can’t drag my eyes away from her hands. “I’m sorry, but it has to be this way.”

There’s a long, hellish silence. Then, in a shuddering voice, she says, “I just wanted to be friends with you. You’re so cool, and I know I hurt you, I know, but I thought you’d gotten over it.”

My head whips up. Making eye contact feels like touching a hot stove, but I do it anyway.

“‘Gotten over it?’” I spit through gritted teeth. “Do you know what you put me through? How it felt? You tortured me! You took away everyone I love. You tore out all my memories! You made me relive every awful thing I’ve ever done, every shitty moment of my shitty life! I spent days hating myself, hating everything, wanting to die, all because of you!”

The strangers nearby are staring and a cloud of fear is forming above us. Wallflower’s burning anger is gone – she’s cold, pale, shaking. It’s delicious. She deserves every second of this, every bit of pain she inflicted on me.

But then she grips the table too. And grits her teeth. And when she finally looks up again, right into my eyes, a horrible ache cuts across my chest, like she’s shoved a cold iron spike through my ribs. It’s enough to make me heave in shock, crumpling in my chair. And it gets worse when she stands up.

“Do you know what you did to me?” she says. There are tears in her eyes, and her white cheeks are filling with blood. She’s stuttering bad, words barely tumbling past her teeth, but she’s loud, loud, louder than I can handle. “How you looked me in the eye each day and acted like we’d never met? How I did every stupid thing you asked for a year, did anything I could to get your attention, and you never even learned my name? How you made me feel like dirt every second we were together?”

“I’m sorry,” I try to say, but it’s true, I made her life hell, and the air doesn’t make it past my throat.

She’s shouted at me like this before. I deserved it then, too.

“How you slammed doors in my face and threw out my things and kept deleting all my work because you never gave a shit about me?”

Everyone’s staring. Fear and shock and anger and confusion and amusement and sadness and I’m choking.

She slams her hands down and leans across the table, closer and closer until I’m gasping for breath. “How I knew that if I disappeared, no one would care, especially you, the ‘Friendship Chick?’”

No more, no more, no more. I grab my amulet and yank it, once, twice, until the string holding it around my neck snaps. It slips through my fingers and falls to the floor.

My entire body – brain, limbs, lungs – crashes. My ears blow out, my skin tingles, my vision goes starry. I feel like my power cable’s been ripped from its socket.

But when my senses recover, Wallflower is still here.

“You think you’re the only one who hates herself?” she screams. “Who wanted to die?!”

Her voice bounces off the walls. It takes a second to fade, but when it does, the whole food court is silent.

I’m shaking now too. Because without everyone else’s emotions to deal with, I’m finally alone with my own: The anger receding from my fists, the sadness rotting in my chest, and the gaping well of terror in my gut.

Tears spilling down her face, she looks around, sees everyone watching, and goes fully red. Then she sits down again. “I wanted to be friends,” she says through hiccups. “But you’re still an asshole.”

I am. I am. I am.

The pain in my chest subsides. I sit up straight, choke down a few breaths. “I don’t want to fight,” I say after a year. “Let’s just… We shouldn’t be around each other.”

Without any hesitation, Wallflower stands up again. “Fine,” she says, turning away. “Bye.”

And she walks off, head down. The strangers around us watch her go, then all eyes fall on me. Even without my powers, every glance is as heavy as a boulder crashing down on my back and crushing me to death.

But eventually they stop caring. They go back to their lives. And I’m left with mine.

I don’t know how long I sit there, studying the ketchup stains on the table. Listening to the idle chatter. Replaying Wallflower’s words. My words.

At some point I reach down and scoop my amulet off the ground. The necklace is torn, but the stone still prickles my palm. Unfamiliar emotions flicker through my veins, pulsing in time with the flow of the crowd around me. Those faint flashes are all I feel. That and nausea, a curdling sickness in my intestines.

This is what I wanted, right? To never see her again?

Yeah, it is. But it’s not the only thing I wanted. It’s not what I wanted deep down in the basest dregs of my soul.

I wanted to hurt her.

That’s why I snapped at her. That’s why seeing her scared made me so happy. That’s why all this happened in the first place, isn’t it? I never really wanted to settle things between us, did I? My texts, my fake kindness – I built up her hope, made her think I actually liked her, then stepped on her throat.

My big plan, the script in my pocket, all worthless. Because this is how it was always destined to go. Hurting her was the plan all along because that’s what I do. I can’t let anything go. Every scrap of evil, every bit of hatred I tried to leave behind; it’s still there, bound to my blood.

And this time there’s no do-over, no third chance to be Wallflower’s friend. She’ll never forgive me.

She hates me. I’m hated. No different than a year ago.

This is what I wanted.

There’s a tickle of annoyance on the back of my neck, and a buzz in my ear. I glance up. A security guard is talking. To me. She says I’m loitering. She says if I’m not eating I need to leave.

I’m still disconnected from my limbs, I still feel like I’m wandering somewhere far out of my mind, but I stand up. She leads me out of the food court. And when she stops walking, I keep going.

Down the hall, up the escalator, around the corner. Past the clothing stores, past the ice cream parlors. Past the arcade, past the sunglasses booths. Past the crowd of CHS students whose names I don’t know, waving when they see me, smiling and calling out when I glance at them, and going silent when I move on without stopping.

Eventually I reach the bookstore again. An employee greets me when I trudge inside – I head straight for the aisle I left Twilight in along the store’s back wall.

For some reason, I’m expecting her to have left. But she’s still there, smiling, sitting cross-legged in the aisle, holding a book in one hand and rolling my old receipt around in the other. And I barely have to take a step towards her before she looks up and smiles even wider.

“Hi,” she says, but I must look as dead as I feel, because her face falls. “Whoa, hey. Are you alright?”

Her voice echoes down the aisle. And, as I clutch my amulet, her voice comes with something else: A feeling, warm and soft and smooth, running along the hair on my arms like heat from a bonfire on a frozen night.

Love.

A horrible, shuddering sound leaps from my throat. I clench my teeth, but it’s not enough to stop it.

I start crying.

Not just crying but sobbing, gasping for breath as my vision melts to mush. Something’s flipped a switch in me, and now every bit of fatigue, every bit of fear, every bit of rage is escaping, pounding my ribcage with a thousand fists. I need to keep this demon down, shackled and hidden like it always is, but I’m doubled over in pain, and I don’t know whether to cover my mouth or my eyes, and there’s no going back from this.

This is what I am. I hurt people and start crying like I’m the victim. It’s like I’m still a foal. It’s like nothing has changed.

Twi is just a purple blur as she leaps up and runs over to me. But she’s a lit hearth as she wraps her arms around me. As she leads me down to the floor, lets me lay across the scratchy carpet. As she cradles my head in her lap, strokes my back, whispers that it’s okay, that I’m going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. I’m going to be okay.