There is a wild, brash sense to her.
There's this tension, rippling off her in waves, practically screaming "I dare you to try." This explosive aura, like a bomb, tense and rigged and ready to go off at the slightest mishandling.
You are fascinated by it, by the apprehension seemingly contained in every pore, every cell.
You're also scared - not of the girl, not of Toni, but of the consequences that will surely follow after that pent-up emotion escapes, bursting from the brunette's wiry body like a volcano erupting.
(The simile makes sense, when you stop to ponder it; that Toni and a volcano are indeed similar, when it comes to the damage and widespread loss that follows an eruption.)
But the anger isn't what you initially notice about the fiery, quick-tempered girl you first catch sight of while boarding that God-forsaken plane. That comes later. The first thing you notice isn't the taut, rigid lines of Toni's face and body, barely hinting at the inner turmoil raging under the surface.
No, the first thing you notice is the foreign feeling of freedom she practically emits - natural, knee-jerk reactions; crude, raw emotion expressed at a joke, a comment, a charged silence; bursts of hilarity or sudden intensity depending on the topic being discussed, the conversation at hand.
Toni says what she wants to whoever she wants to say it to without hesitation or reservation. She doesn't hold back, and so your first impression of her is a wild sort of insensitivity, without malice or the intent to harm but a little rude regardless.
The second impression, and the one that stays with you for the first few days on the island, is that the destructive honesty that Toni exudes stems from a lifelong ability to speak her mind freely and without constraint.
(This particular ability, you know, is taken forgranted by most of your fellow peers - it's something you see often, something you envy, with your upbringing, and you mislabel Toni as another-
You don't know what it is you mistake her for, really, only that you initially think her to be a loud preacher of entitled opinions, set on adding her own senseless noise to the world just because she can.)
This impression turns out to be wrong, which you'll soon learn with no small amount of... of some emotion midway between horror and regret that you can't quite identify. The revelation that shatters that particular impression occurs days later, while Martha heaves and the others watch and Toni screams, broken, "Fuck, I'm not worth it." It hits you, then, that Toni isn't as free as you'd believed - that maybe the two of you had more in common than you'd previously thought.
The thought terrifies you, really, because for the first time you realize that Toni's forward, intense manner doesn't come from assured confidence that she will be heard - no, it comes from a darker place, from a crippling fear that she won't - that is, that she won't be heard, that she will be silenced at any moment so she must make every second, every word, every scoff and joke and witty remark count.
You know all too well the reasoning behind this - you yourself utilize this exact mindset at home, in front of your father, your mother, your God. You know the giddy rush that finally, finally speaking your own opinions, acting on your own wishes, brings. You compare that desperate, exhilarating rush to the first breath of fresh air a trapped animal takes after escaping a life in a cage - that addicting, dizzy energy, a response to sudden freedom, glimpsed through the bars of an open, unlocked door.
So if the cage is your forced mindset, or Toni's... whatever circumstances Toni's in, you suppose that makes the both of you the animals.
It's fitting, you think wryly, remembering the beginning of your days on the island, the ferocity and desperation in every word, every action. Animals indeed, you think, recalling the fights and bitter insults and feuds - now resolved, set aside, but still there, a shadow of the past, emerging again to taunt and haunt and guilt on bad days.
After that particular incident, after some more time on the island, some more time with the girls, with Toni, a third impression takes form: an idea, a concept half-baked and hardly solid but still forming nonetheless during quiet moments around the fire at night, when you can spare the energy to think about it. The concept that you and Toni are so different, laughably different if you feel like being honest (which you surprisingly do, more and more often now) - you're so different, your cages so intricate and complex and unalike... but your state, shackled and beaten and yet furiously, defiantly struggling to break free - that state is more or less the same.
This impression shocks you, but in a warm sort of way - in an unexpected turn of events, this doesn't separate you from Toni - rather, it develops a sort of twisted sense of camaraderie between you: We're the same, you and I, trapped and broken, don't deny it.
You recall the words she'd spat at you, during one of those vicious, heated fights in the tense, rough beginning of your days on the island: I see you. She had, you realize with a surprising amount of pleasure. She'd observed and tested this strange link between you, compared your situations, reached that conclusion. She'd armed herself with that knowledge, masked it in a comment meant to be an offhanded insult but instead read more as a confession: I see you, you see me, I cannot hide my pain from you but you can't hide yours from me either: we are the same but different but the same.
You don't justify her actions, things done and said in sudden bursts of anger, episodes where she snaps and reveals that quiet broken center of her that she usually keeps closely guarded. You don't justify her anger, but you think you understand it. You think, privately, that it makes sense, that you don't know much about Toni's situation (no one does, even Martha herself barely know the full story of Toni's life so far, the full circumstances she lives through on a day to day basis) but you think that whatever has happened to her to inspire that rage must have been pretty freaking bad to make Toni snap, slip, lose control, bare that shattered part of her for those around her to see.
You think that on this island, you're all steadily dissolving, walls and defenses crumbling down, vulnerable and somewhere between delighted and curious and horrified by each other's experiences and scars. You think that Toni is no different, that she is simultaneously fascinated and terrified by her own fractured state.
One would think, you suppose, that the island is another cage, another set of shackles, and maybe some of the girls would agree - but you privately think the opposite, that the island, rather than trapping you, in reality offered you a way out of your old cage, a place to learn and share and accept, a place far away from a blonde pageant queen, from a hateful community, from a family supportive of vile practices and believing of vile stigmas, from a boyfriend and a church and a mentality that didn't quite fit you: a life that was a pretty picture, pleasing on paper but just a mess in reality.
A mess you have to hide, because your existence isn't made of cold iron and chains but it's a cage nonetheless. Maybe that's what others fail to see, maybe that's what needs to change... maybe choices and decisions made by you should be a daily part of your life, of Toni's, of every girl out there who is chained and yet struggling harder, pushing for a better reality, outside of their familiar, despicable cages.
Maybe you deserve better than that.
You think that's why you kiss Toni that first time, because you think the two of you deserve better than what you got. Maybe Toni agrees, a little shocked but then accepting, like-minded, because after a beat she kisses you back.
And for the first time you feel those chains snap, metal links falling to the ground, severed - the cage door swings open, and there is freedom beyond it, all you have to do is gather the courage to step out of the cage and towards it.
And for all your longing and contemplation, it is absolutely jarring: the fear that suddenly rises to the surface.
That sudden freedom is a terrifying feeling, and your cage is familiar, you know your cage, every corner and inch, every boundary of those walls and link of those chains, so you shy away from that open doorway, shrinking from it in your mind as you run away from the implications behind the kiss, beyond that door.
As you run away from Toni, leaving her bewildered and stunned and a little angry, because what the fuck?
Yeah, what the fuck pretty much sums it up.
She chases after you, but you are really good at running from your problems so you make it to camp first - she's only a few seconds behind you but now there are people, other people there so she cannot confront you, ask you why, why did you do that, she cannot tell you to leave her the fuck alone because she hates you, doesn't she, she's made that infinitely clear.
But the lost, confused look on her face doesn't look like hate, and you don't have the heart to tell her that no, you can't explain the kiss to her because you can't explain it to yourself, that you can't answer her questions because you have the same questions and you don't know the answers.