Sister Cities

Part 55: Caitlyn

I cut my tongue on the rust of a silver spoon

I bet my billionth bottom dollar on a hopeless case

And now the devil on my shoulder has a knife to my face

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 I sleep and don't think about any of it until morning.

She didn't say it, and I most certainly didn't either, but I think this is the day I was dreading: the day where my star-crossed schoolgirl fantasy closes and I return to my real life.

Her gall to tell me what I should and shouldn't ask for, what I do and don't need— as though she can read something in my mind that I can't. As though I'm a pet or a child that she needs to protect from itself. It has me slamming the bathroom cupboards and wrenching the curtains open so hard that I hear a seam split.

And to be angry with me for rescuing her sister, when that was her single-minded goal until she fell ill? And to then suggest that I don't care about Jinx? She's wounded, yes, in a way I could never claim to comprehend, and I shouldn't have been so harsh— I saw that it hurt her. But everything I said, she needed to hear.

Perhaps I was correct, however, to worry for her future if she were to remain alongside me. Perhaps her wounds mean she could never fully settle in with a Piltovian. Perhaps she could find someone safer to love if I set her free.

Caitlyn, I love you.

Well, I told myself I would trust it when she said it coherently, and nothing in the night sounded like love, nor affection, nor even neutrality. It sounded like resentment and fury and insurmountable fear.

Just being around me must fucking exhaust you.

I had been doing all I could to prove the opposite. How do you pull someone out of a cage like that? I'm just one person. If she can't break the bars, neither can I.

But I want her to stay.

When I've run out of ways to extend my morning routine, I go down and listen at Vi's door to make sure she's breathing, then knock on Jinx's. "Password?" she sing-songs.

"I don't have time for this, Jinx."

"Correct!"

The door opens. Jinx stands behind it on one foot, the other pulled back by the length of the chain, which is locked to the bedside table as I left it— except there's a suspicious imperfection in the paint finish that wasn't there yesterday. I tug on the lower half of the leg and it pops off easily, having been broken and fit back in place like a puzzle piece.

"What happened here?" I ask.

"I don't see anything," says Jinx.

Both of us look to the air vent, whose cover lies on the floor.

"What's for breakfast?" she asks. "Do I get to sit at that big ol' table?"

"Did you want to? I have to. Jayce and Viktor are speaking at the Council meeting today, so they're coming to eat with us. But my mum and dad will be there, and they aren't exactly— fond of you. Nor am I particularly fond of them at the moment."

Jinx plops down on the carpet, the soles of her socked feet pressed together. She's materialized Innovation from some nook or cranny and he's on his back in front of her, her name scrawled in orange across his belly, letting her poke each of his toes. "You're my cutie patootie little angel baby boy. Big toe. Little toe. Middle toe. Why not?"

The last bit is directed at me. "Mum spent the first days being extremely hostile toward Vi, and now she's gone and called her by her full name, even though I explicitly told her not to. Vi hates that."