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Adaine hadn’t felt small in a long time.
Sure, half of the Bad Kids were taller than her, but Fig and Gorgug and Fabian had never truly made her feel small.
No, the last time she felt utterly and wholly small was a year ago, realizing that her parents had left her in the dust. Yet again. They had pulled the wool over her eyes; they had gotten one up on her; they had managed one more bitter victory even as they fled.
Now, looking at the clouded night sky and endless black expanse of the Celestine Sea all around them, under them, she felt that overwhelming smallness creep back in.
The world was so, so large and she was so, so minuscule. She always had been. Why did she delude herself into thinking she meant something? She was just a foolish, naive little girl. Forever and eternally.
Beside her, Gorgug and Kristen were chatting aimlessly. Their voices filled the night around them, a warm bubble of laughter and friendship, but outside of it they were nothing. Nameless. Maybe they didn't know it, but Adaine did. The world was so, so large, and they were so, so insignificant. Outside of their bubble, no one knew or even began to care about who they were.
Boggy ribbited softly from Gorgug’s loose grip. Things weren’t going well with Gorgug and Zelda; Gorgug deserved to have Boggy for a little bit. Adaine didn’t need to hold a fucking frog every second of every day.
So what if the burn of panic was spreading through her chest, her lungs? Up her throat? In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter. Her anxiety meant nothing to the world. Who cared? Certainly not the night sky. Certainly not the ocean, or the creatures in it. Certainly not the stars, or the sun, or the moon.
Boggy croaked again. Kristen offered him an ice cream sandwich from her pouch. Gorgug swatted her hand away incredulously.
“Familiars can’t eat!” He said in his most scolding tone, which was honestly not very scolding at all. “Or, well, I don’t think so. But even if they could, I don’t think ice cream is good for them.”
“You don’t know that!” Kristen crowed, silly in the way that humans tended to get when they were overly tired. “Maybe he likes it! Maybe, maybe frogs don’t even like bugs! Have you ever thought of that, Gorgug? Huh? Maybe he’s tired of everyone telling him he has to eat bugs. What about that?”
Gorgug made his ‘deeply pondering’ face. “Hey, Boggy? Do you want an ice cream sandwich?”
Gorgug was quiet. He was always quiet, even when he got in a goofy mood like this. Kristen, however, was hyper and rowdy and borderline hysterical, and entirely too loud for the people in the van trying to sleep. Something in Adaine urged to shush them, to tell them to let their poor friends below their feet sleep in peace and stop making such a ruckus. But what did it matter?
The logical part of Adaine’s brain was screaming at her that of course it mattered, they matter! Better yet, the whole world matters, and they are on a quest to save it! Without them, the world would be destroyed, or worse!
That logical voice was drowned out by the pressing silence of the vast, uncaring ocean, sucked away like the deadly vacuum of space.
They were nothing but a speck of dust on the infinite underbelly of existence, and she had never been more agonizingly aware of it.
“Shh, shh, shush,” Kristen giggled madly, egging on Gorgug in his attempt to rappel Boggy through the open top hatch of the van to plop directly onto a snoring Fabian’s face. A thin rope was tied around the frog’s rotund torso- Kristen or Gorgug must have pulled it from her jacket pocket without her noticing, which was frankly shocking given both of her friends’ unfortunate clumsiness.
Fabian spluttered, but didn’t awaken, even as Boggy settled squarely on his face. Somewhere from the depths of the van, though, Sandra Lynn hissed a groggy, “Knock it off!”
Gorgug all but slammed the top hatch closed and Kristen clutched his hoodie tightly, both of them wracked with delirious giggles.
“Boggy!” Gorgug gasped between wheezing laughter. “We left Boggy in there! Oh no!”
“Boggy!” Kristen lamented dramatically to the sky.
A loving hand on her shoulder pulled Adaine from the odd half-present consciousness she had fallen into. Gorgug looked solemnly into her eyes, hunching slightly to be closer to her level. The sleeves of his hoodie partially covered his hands, giving him ‘sweater paws’, as Fig liked to call them.
He was such a comforting presence; steadfast and strong, quick to love and slow to anger. He never judged, or mocked, or put himself above anyone. Everything about him was gentle and soft and welcoming. An ever-present ear to listen and shoulder to cry on.
“Adaine,” He started in that tone of voice he got when he discovered something of great significance. “Your frog is smothering Fabian. We forgot to reel him up.”
Adaine blinked at him. He blinked back. Behind him, Kristen was positively losing her mind, muffling wild cackling into an annoyed Baxter’s feathery back.
Right. As much of a sentient hug as he was, Gorgug was also a teenager. A teenager staying up late with his friends, at that. His humor may be more subtle and harder to discern than most people’s, but he still liked to joke around. After a good while of being his friend, Adaine knew that about half of what people perceived as ‘dumb’ from him was actually just him messing around.
“He’s a magic frog,” She responded. She still felt weird- her brain felt foggy and she couldn’t shake the sensation that she was being eyed through some cosmic microscope- but getting out of her head had helped a little bit. “He’s made of water vapor and spells. He can disappear and reform wherever he wants.”
“Right, right.” Gorgug nodded sagely.
Through a mouthful of ice cream sandwich, Kristen raised her hand as if she was in a classroom. “Do you think Fabian can breathe with Mr. Frogariel covering his mouth and nose?”
The corner of Gorgug’s mouth twitched at Mr. Frogariel, but he managed to keep a serious face. “Eh, he’ll be fine.”
A giggle escaped Adaine before she could even register it. Kristen turned to her with a grin full of awe and tinged with amusement, her eyes practically sparkling. Like Adaine never laughed. Come on. It wasn’t like it was rare to get her to laugh. Seriously, Kristen. Really.
Someone suggested they play a game. They passed quite a bit of time with a deck of Uno cards, courtesy of her jacket. It was fun, it really was, but Adaine found herself slipping back into her hazy thoughts. This was fun now, but it would end. Everything did. This moment of happiness, of being with her friends, the love they had for each other, wouldn’t make it past the roof of the van. It happened, and that exact moment would never happen again. Similar things might happen, but never this exact moment. It was history already, even as it was happening.
The air a few feet to her left didn’t know about their lives. The waves below the van didn’t care about their bond. The clouds above their heads would never learn of the Bad Kids. They were trees, falling in a forest, and the rest of the universe wouldn’t hear them.
Lost in her head, she didn’t notice Kristen and Gorgug exchange glances and put their cards down.
“Hey, Addie?” She was suddenly aware of presences sitting directly to either side of her. She hadn’t even heard them move. Kristen took her hand gently. “What’s up?”
“Nothing, Kris. Everything’s fine! Why’d we stop the game?” Where was Boggy? She should have Boggy, probably.
“I don’t think everything is fine. With you, I mean. You’re not fine.” Gorgug interjected with a gentle sort of finality. She couldn’t bullshit her way out of this.
“I… don’t know.” She sighed at length. “I don’t know what’s up. I’m scared, I think. I don’t know.”
“What are you scared of?” Kristen grabs her other hand, now holding them both.
“I don’t… it’s just, like, the world is this huge all-encompassing thing, and we’re, like, nothing in comparison. Like, the Great Wheel doesn’t care about some random group of children. We’re just deluding ourselves into thinking it does.”
Gorgug’s hoodie is worn soft. It makes her feel safe, so she nestles snug into his side and presses her face to the fabric.
Kristen is silent for a long moment. In the meanwhile, Gorgug wraps his arms around Adaine and holds her in a way that makes her feel like she’s under a weighted blanket. The weight feels like it’s pressing her soul back into her body, a little bit.
When Kristen speaks again, her voice is unusually heavy. “Do you remember when I died?”
“We died.” Gorgug corrects absentmindedly.
“No, no, I mean at prom. When I died again.”
“Oh, right, yeah. Yeah, I remember.”
“I was asking Adaine if she remembered.”
Adaine nodded against Gorgug, humming affirmatively.
“I didn’t really tell you guys what happened, cause like, Kalvaxus and principal Aguefort were there and we were fighting and shit was going on and I got distracted. I’m gonna tell you what I saw, okay?”
“Okay.” Adaine felt like an asshole, realizing that no one had bothered to ask Kristen about that second death. She was desperately curious to know what happened, now.
“Well, first I went to Sol’s office and found out that Aguefort had kept him unconscious and tied up and was impersonating him and running heaven. But that’s a story for another time.”
“You better tell us that story later, though,” Gorgug said. Adaine felt the vibrations of his voice through his hoodie fabric. It wasn’t unpleasant, she found.
“I will. No more interruptions, please. Thank you. Where was I…?”
Gorgug and Adaine shared a fond eye roll at Kristen’s antics as she continued.
“I walked through this weird grey door in Sol’s office, and then I was inside the void itself. The universe talked to me.” She said this with a deep reverence that was normally kept masked.
“It told me as above, so below. We, mortals, shape the heavens. Not the other way around. It said to me- it told me this: if we care, then the universe cares. If we don’t, it doesn’t. It’s our choice. Does that make sense? It’s up to us whether the world knows who we are or not. The universe told me that we are how it shows its love. It cares through us. Do you… do you get it?”
Her voice was raw with an overwhelming mess of emotions she couldn’t make sense of. “The world will care if I decide I want it to.”
“It’s more like, the world will care if you care as well. Like, you have to open the gate for it to, or else it won’t. As above, so below. Care for care.”
“I don’t want the world to forget us after we die. Kris, I don’t want our friendship to stop existing once we’re not here to remind the world. Our bond- you’re all so special to me. You’re my whole world, you guys. When we’re gone, I don’t want that to go away. If it’s forgotten, it’s like it never existed at all. I can’t- it’s too important to me. It can’t be forgotten. It can't.”
“Ads…”
She had felt too numb, too panicked out of her senses to cry earlier. Now, her eyes well up and she sniffles and then it’s all let loose. She shudders and sobs into Gorgug’s chest, and reaches out blindly for Kristen, and then they’re all crying together.
“I’m sorry, guys,” She finds herself saying after they’ve all cried their share. “I totally brought the mood down.”
“Are you kidding?” Kristen snorts wetly. “This is pretty on par for a Bad Kids sleepover.”
“Yeah,” Gorgug chimes in, “Like, half of our sleepovers end like this. One-third, maybe.”
“Gods. We need work, don’t we?” Adaine can’t help but chuckle. “I love you guys.”
“Love you too, Addie.” Kristen plants a sloppy kiss on the top of her head, and she can’t even pretend to be grossed out.
“I love you guys, too.” Gorgug snuffles and wipes his eyes on his sleeve. A tiny yelp escapes him as Kristen does a pretty decent job of wriggling into his hoodie with him, though the fabric does stretch out a bit.
“You hear that?” She yells and Gorgug scrambles to clamp a hand over her mouth. When he removes it once he’s sure she won’t yell any more, she pouts. “I was gonna announce to the world that the Bad Kids care and we always will! It was gonna be really dramatic!”
“That’s sweet, Kristen, but it’s the middle of the night and everyone else is sleeping. But I appreciate the thought.” Adaine informs her. “And… thank you. For telling us about your second death. I’m sorry I never asked.”
“You’re all good,” Kristen waves dismissively. “I forgot it happened, to be honest.”
Gorgug jackknifes up suddenly, startling the girls. “Wait, shit, is Boggy still suffocating Fabian?”
There’s a pause as Kristen rushes to go check, and all Adaine can do is laugh.
She laughs, and she’s so small but it feels so big, bigger than the worry and bigger than her fear. Bigger than the sun beginning to rise in the distance. She is small, but her love is big, and maybe that’s what Kristen meant. Either way, Adaine cares.
And the world cares.