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Two weeks.
It’s been two weeks since Amber saw Kimbra, and the scene still plays in her head on repeat, always snagging on the gory details: how Kimbra’s limbs dragged behind her like dead weight, how her shirt clung to the painfully clear contour of her ribs, how the dark grime under her jagged nails could have just as easily been blood as dirt or shit.
And that stare. God, that fucking stare. It’s probably burned into her eyelids forever. That might be a problem, if she was planning on getting some sleep anytime soon.
She looked, in the beginning. All she did in those first few days was look. Couldn’t call herself much of a friend if she didn’t. She checked the obvious places, and then the not-so-obvious ones. She asked around, knocked on doors, overturned stones. She exhausted every option at her sorely limited disposal.
She didn’t find much.
In a way, it's for the best. She might not like what turns up.
(That doesn’t stop her from glancing over her shoulder every now and then — just in case she’s missed a pair of beady black eyes in the shadows, watching, waiting.)
Her search meets an unceremonious end at the edge of the water, down by the pier. There aren’t many ships out this late. Just the insomniacs and the stragglers, drifting lazily with the tides. The day’s warmth still lingers in the air, though a cool breeze brings the promise of worse cold yet to come. And above it all, the sky is awash with stars — the damn thing’s just rotten with them, untold numbers split across the heavens in a mess of distant, glimmering lights.
It’s all so devastatingly normal. Like nobody got the memo that things have changed forever, and the world should kindly stop spinning to reflect this new truth. Or maybe it’s just her.
On memory, muscle or otherwise, Amber traces the path to their spot. There’s a big chunk of driftwood on the eastern side of the shore, up where the grass gives way to the beach proper. It’s long and fat and comfortably fits three. Good for late nights of hushed laughter and long chats about nothing at all. Good for being alone.
And then, as gently as the murmuring waves, the thought presents itself: Kimbra’s gone. Really, truly gone. There’s no new wave of anguish to follow this somber epiphany. Just a total awareness of truth. The sky is full of stars, and Amber will never see Kimbra again.
That’s the funny thing about losing someone — you don’t just lose them once. You lose them again each time that you look to your side and you find they’re not there to return the favor with warm, crinkled eyes and a little lopsided grin. And some dumb, wounded part of you wonders: where did they go? And you realize: they’re gone. And you realize again. And again.
Amber is plumb sick of realizing when the snap of a twig prompts a new realization: she’s not alone. Every fiber of her being goes rigid. For one painstaking moment, her heart soars with the sheer, aching beauty of impossibility.
Until a rasping voice reassures her: “Just me, Bambi.”
Her heart drops straight down to hell. Only two people still call her that. (One, now.) She fights the screaming urge to turn around. She can’t be held responsible for what happens if she does.
“Not now, Kibble,” she says, greeting and warning in one. She can’t stop herself from using the pet name, even now. Habit’s a bitch.
It comes as no surprise when Shret sits down next to her anyway. Amber allows the intrusion the way one might allow the approach of a wild animal — sudden movement would only make things worse.
Her gaze stays locked straight ahead, but she catches Shret in profile: the silhouette of her nose, lips, jaw, all strong and sharp in the soft moonlight. Amber can’t see a joint, but the scent of one lingers on her palate. It tastes of clove: sweet and gently spicy, with a bitter aftertaste.
“Felt like stopping by,” Shret says airly. “The fresh air helps clear my head.”
Amber says nothing. If she sticks to her guns, Shret might take the hint.
But Shret doesn’t notice the silent treatment, or doesn’t care. “Real nice out,” she remarks.
It was nicer before Shret got here. Amber makes a half-hearted sound between a hum and a grunt, between dismissal and stubborn acknowledgement. She digs her nails into the meat of her legs, etching little crescents across her thighs. She watches the skin flash white, then fade to red. Maybe all pain fades with time. Amber doubts it.
“Hey, earth to Gris? You hearing me?” Shret has a mighty fine knack for walking Amber’s nerves like a tightrope.
“Loud and clear,” she says, keeping her tone as level as she can manage. Her jaw hasn’t yet unclenched.
Shret leans in real close, and Amber can smell the smoke on her hair, on her skin (on her lips). In a precious and perilous tone, she says, “So how about you act like it?”
She’s just playing. It’s what friends do — they push each other. Sometimes they push each other clean over the edge.
With undue effort, Amber makes a show of turning to look her friend in the eyes. These two weeks have taken lifetimes from Amber, but they haven’t changed Shret one bit. She’s still got the same broad, sturdy features. The same subtle tilt to her chin. The same superior gleam in her eyes while she savors the confirmation that she can still make Amber obey.
“Was that so hard?” she asks, her voice so thick and sweet with satisfaction that Amber could hurl.
She faces forward and says, “Not at all.”
They fall into a silence that couldn’t be called comfortable by any means, but it’s more bearable than the alternative. Talk is trouble. Words are crowded, messy, ugly. Not saying anything, by contrast, is the easiest thing in the world.
So of course Shret has to come along and break the peace. “Remember when we used to cut class?” she says. “Come down here, swim all day?”
It’s an olive branch, and Amber hates her for it — mostly because the answer makes her that much harder to hate.
“‘Course I remember,” she mutters. And she’s telling the truth, because Amber is a pretty shit liar, but also because she’s talking to the last person alive who could say the same. That’s a bridge she’d rather not burn just yet.
And then, just so Shret doesn’t think she’s gone totally soft on her, she tacks on: “And if I do recall, you’d always get sunburnt something fierce. Yep… I remember now. You looked like a fuckin’ lobster.”
Shret laughs and says, “Coming from your pasty ass!”
Despite herself, despite everything, Amber laughs. How long has it been since she laughed? Her laugh makes Shret laugh, which makes her laugh more, which makes them both laugh a truly stupid amount, in the tradition of positive feedback loops and jokes that are more familiar than they are funny. And for a beat, it’s like nothing’s changed at all. Like Kibbles and Bambi could still be a pair.
Then the laughter stops.
“Yeah,” Amber says soberly. “We had some good times.”
Shret shoots her a bullish grin that makes her heart and stomach ache. “Who says the good times have to stop?”
Amber is aware of new warmth as Shret’s thigh brushes against her own. And it occurs to her: Kimbra usually sat between them. Now there’s no one to fill that yawning chasm. The whole damn thing’s been thrown out of whack.
“Kibble,” Amber starts, but the protest wilts on her tongue. She’s so unbelievably tired. She hasn’t let herself dwell on that fact, but it’s damn near impossible to ignore now that she’s no longer in motion. She’s tired down to the bone, down to the pit of her soul, to the point where it might be almost funny if she weren’t so tired of being so tired. She hasn’t slept in — who cares. Sleep isn’t what she needs. What she needs (or would like very, very badly) is her friend. Tough fucking luck, huh?
“Hey, I got you,” says Shret, because Shret is also her friend, as if she would ever let Amber forget it. The hand on her back serves to remind her, just in case. (The hand on her inner thigh has its own agenda, which Amber can’t think about just yet.)
An aborted, half-wounded sound sparks from the back of Amber’s throat. She should be furious, give Shret a piece of her mind, show her who’s got who. Here she is instead, begging for scraps from a hand that only ever takes.
There’s a wet trail down on her cheeks — tears, probably — and a matching wet spot on her brow — probably a kiss, from Shret. Whether she brings her head to rest on Shret’s chest, or if Shret guides her there, Amber couldn’t say. She couldn’t tell jack from shit. It’s all just heat mixing with heat, pain blending with pain, until the world is one big ocean of garbage, and there’s only one person gracious enough to pull her ashore.
Hands go wandering. Friends go missing. Maybe that’s how life goes.
Amber is just about ready to acquaint herself with this new truth when Shret volunteers three little words that bring everything crashing down.
“I miss her.”
Three words. That’s all it takes split the chasm right down its bleeding-raw center, for Amber to wrench herself out of Shret’s arms and say, “What gives you the fucking right?”
All the sugary warmth in Shret’s gaze is snuffed out in an instant. “I beg your pardon?”
Amber could stop. She could still walk away, and they could keep on playing pretend. Too bad she’s never been good at charades.
“You heard me,” she says, spitting the words like venom. “What gives you the right to come out here and act all buddy-buddy after what you did?”
And then, and then, Shret has the sheer fucking nerve to look actually fucking offended. (If Amber’s vision wasn’t going fuzzy with tears at the edges, she might even think she looked really, truly upset.) “Hey,” Shret says, “I came here to talk, not point fingers.”
Amber laughs, or maybe it’s more like a bark, the way the air punches its way out of her lungs, and she says, “Are you kidding me?” Her fists flex with wild abandon, all the chemical energy racing through her veins just aching for somewhere to go — and Shret’s jaw is looking awfully tempting.
She watches the muscles in that beautiful, horrible jaw flex as Shret eyes her in stony silence. Maybe she’s running her own calculations on whether the shot is worth the ricochet. It always comes down to the math with Shret. How much she can get away with. How much she can take and take and take.
Her words are slow, cold, and deliberate, like tides in the dead of night: “No, actually, I'm not.”
“Yeah? Oh, you’re not kidding around, huh?” Amber knows she’s acting like a complete and total ass, but it’s the damnedest thing: she can’t bring herself to care. “Yeah, you’re dead fuckin’ serious. Just like you were serious when you swore up and down that you were gonna play it straight, never hurt anybody. Or is that deal just for the first one too?”
“I never hurt anybody,” Shret fires back. Now she’s lying straight through her goddamn teeth, because nobody can dig a grave lower than Shret will voluntarily choose to go.
Like that’ll stop Amber from grabbing the shovel.
“You wanna tell that to Kimbra?”
Shret’s eyes flash, narrow. (That fucking stare…) “Don’t you dare bring her into this.”
“You brought her into this when you sold her that snake oil bullshit and called it a cure.”
“Hey, Kimbra’s my friend too. I don’t remember when you got to claim her as your fucking martyr.”
That does it.
“Fuck you,” Amber says. “Kimbra’s—” The name catches hot and thick in her throat. “Kimbra would still be here if it weren’t for you. I’m not saying all the shit luck in her life was your fault. But you sent her down a real dark path. She might’ve had a fighting chance if you hadn’t finished her off.”
The words scald her mouth like acid, searing her from the inside out, but she can’t stop — not now, maybe not ever again. All the hurt and the hate and the heartache she’s been storing up for god only knows how long all floods out of her in one fluid, furious stream, falling to the ground at Shret’s feet and making Amber look like an absolute fucking fool. Letting it out didn’t clear the rot inside of her — just made it clear for all to see.
When she’s done, she expects Shret to return the favor — get loud, get ugly, get even. But Shret doesn’t do any of that. She just stands, eerily calm, like the sky after the storm has already passed.
“I can see we’re not gonna come to an agreement here,” is all she says.
Because that’s how it goes with Shret. Never the bad guy, never to blame, never getting her hands dirty when someone else could take the fall. And Amber fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
“Hey, hey, hey,” she starts, a fresh wave of bile rising in her throat. “You don’t get to walk away from this.”
But it’s too late. She’s already lost her.
She lost her a long time ago.
“See you around,” Shret calls out, not bothering to look back. Then she’s gone.
Amber doesn’t chase after her, no matter how badly it burns, because there’d be no point.
It’s not bringing Kimbra back.