content warning: (fourth one in a row eek sorry guys) verbal fight that discusses suicide details, vague biphobia
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"Hola, Ki! So good to see you! Come in, come in!" Lyra's mother was a joyful ball of energy as she held the door open to Ki, a jangle of beads on her wrist as she held out her hand in the air with excitement.
"Hello Mrs. Meclane. Happy Thanksgiving." Ki smiled warmly as she looked around in the living room behind her for Lyra.
"My husband is coming back from the airport with Cassie and John, they should be here any minute. But Lyra is up in her room, feel free to go upstairs." She waved a spoon in her hand as she scurried across the living room to reach the kitchen, her hair bouncing off the back of her shoulders in an unorganized fashion.
"I'll go find her then." Ki started slipping off her shoes, not bothering to untie her converse as she slid them off the back of her heels.
The fluffy carpet of the Meclane's living room met Ki's feet as she started her trek across the room to the staircase lined with decorative picture frames. With every step she took, she looked around carefully, truly taking in her surroundings for the first time.
Every other time she had been in the house, Lyra had been pulling her behind her, running from room to room, never stopping to take a minute to look around.
The neutral colors of the room reminded her a lot of the house she had lived in with her father and Shori's mom. The walls were a very light beige and the couch was a dark suede brown, accented with tan throw pillows and a white quilted blanket covered in what looked like faded childhood drawings. She made out one of the stick figure drawings on the quilt to be a self portrait, signed by Gabby in block letters at the bottom. Ki smiled as she passed it, bringing out her fingers to touch the rail in front of her that curled upwards towards the stairs. She smelt the aroma of possibly a cinnamon candle as she started walking upstairs, noticing the fake fireplace in front of the couch was on and crackling with a patterned flame.
Along the walls on the staircase, Ki looked at all the pictures of the Meclane's as she passed them.
One was from the parents wedding. What looked to be a small beach gathering, probably along the coast of some Cuban getaway point.
Another was what looked to be a younger Gabrielle, smiling with a gap in her teeth as she held a new born in her arms. Ki assumed from the pink blanket and hovering older sister in the background, it had to be Liana.
There was a picture of Lyra, Gabby, and Cassie dressed up in cheer uniforms, smiling through ridiculous amounts of glittery makeup that Gabby looked way too young to be wearing. They were all standing in front of a senior poster of Cassie from the school they'd attended in Florida. It must've been their last year all doing cheer together.
And as Ki reached the top of the staircase, her eyes landed on the last picture on the wall, a still of Lyra mid-pass on a soccer ball, sticking her hand out beside her to stop the boy coming up on her left. They both looked sweaty and exhausted, but there was a sense of excitement and playfulness in Lyra's smile as she looked to her side to watch him. He returned the same smile, staring at the ball underneath her feet with the same determination. The way his face lit up like hers, the way his eyes traced the space out in front of him, the way his smile traced up to his cheeks with his light freckles hidden under his eyes... he was just like his sister. Or maybe she was just like him.
Ki had to rip her eyes away from the photo, knowing that if she stayed there, she could've analyzed every single thing they shared.
She rose above the last step and as she did, she saw the open door of Lyra's room, fading daylight shining out in the form of the shadows of her belongings. The shadow of Lyra was moving, almost bouncing in a lighthearted way as it mirrored out onto the hallway floor in fluttered movements.
She walked across the hallway floor, taking the few steps necessary to reach Lyra's doorway and once she was there, she couldn't help but smile at what she saw.
Lyra had her back turned away from the door, her curled hair bouncing—just like her mother's—under a set of baby blue headphones that were set over her ears. She was making motions with her hands as she was lightly jumping around, moving with her eyes closed to whatever song was filling her mind.
Ki walked slowly into the room, watching Lyra with an ever growing smile as she started pumping her fists into the air, shaking her head as her hair fell down in front of her face.
Lyra's shadow on the floor became interrupted as Ki's joined in, blurring the difference between the two.
Ki was about to laugh at how oblivious Lyra was to the fact that she was less than two feet behind her, when Lyra spun around, her arms swinging to her sides as she turned to unknowingly smack Ki in the face.
Lyra yelped as her eyes bolted open, shock wearing widely on her expression as her eyes searched out in front of her for answers.
"Ow." Ki laughed as Lyra spring to the realization of who was in front of her, pulling down the headphones to her neck so quickly it could've torn out her hair.
"Oh my god! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to!" Lyra reached out to touch Ki's face, holding her cheeks between her hands with a curiosity as she searched her face for injury.
"Lyra I'm fine." She laughed again through squished cheeks, rolling her eyes as her girlfriend continued to panic.
"I don't want you to..."
"Lyra..."
"Ki, I never..."
"Lyraaaaa..."
Lyra held her head still for a moment, looking into Ki's eyes with a thin line of confusion worn across her lips.
"It's fine." Ki nodded in Lyra's hands, watching the expression on her face resolve to a calmer state.
"Okay." She whispered, letting her lips fall into a frown instead, which fell short of affecting the rest of her features.
"You look nice." Ki looked down at Lyra's outfit in attempt to change the conversation.
Lyra dropped her hands from Ki's face and used them to pull down the sleeves of her warm yellow sweater. It looked a size too big for her, but paired with her favorite black leggings, Ki doubted that Lyra actually minded at all—if anything she probably crafted the look to appear that way.
"So do you." Lyra beamed looking over Ki head to toe.
"Well that's because Andi picked it out." Ki responded with a monotone shrug.
"Kiiiiii..." Lyra rolled her eyes laughing as she bounced across the rug with her matching yellow koala socks. "Come on, I think I just heard the car door." She held out her hand to Ki as she crossed past her.
"Oh no."
Ki grabbed on to her hand, letting her pull them both back into the hallway, linking their fingers together with a pause before they reached the stairs.
"You'll be fineeee."
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It had only been forty minutes since they started dinner, and things were not going fine.
Lyra's father sat awkwardly at the head of table, never really knowing what to say, or how to make conversation with the group in front of him.
From their first encounter, Ki could tell he spoke perfect English, he just apparently didn't know how to talk to a family he hadn't seen since they moved.
Ki figured it would've been the opposite. If it were her she would be asking questions left and right trying to catch up with what had happened with Shori and Andi, but maybe he felt out of place now.
Lyra's mother held most of the conversation with Cassie and John, and in the moment they were laughing over a story of how John had tripped and spilled a coffee on Cassie during their first date.
Lyra sat smiling, intensively listening, but not interacting with the conversation as she leaned her head over onto her hand in front of her empty dinner plate.
Ki just followed her example, letting her hands fall into her lap and laughing at opportune moments even if she knew she didn't actually find it interesting. Gabby seemed to pick up that Ki was completely faking it as she often stared at her from across the table, making stupid faces every time she reacted to something.
Gabrielle was secretly the family shitster. It seemed as if everyone in the family—but Cassie—was oblivious to the things she pulled behind the scenes. She smirked when she picked up on a dirty joke, she teased Lyra on her flaws and mishaps, she tried to make Ki laugh in inopportune moments, and she never had anything to say that wasn't sarcastic. Mrs. Meclane dismissed it as teenage behavior, but it really was a facet of her personality that Ki didn't think was going away anytime soon.
Cassie was the one that Ki was having trouble reading into. She was sophisticated and intelligent, but able to adjust well to normal conversation. She held herself like an established adult, when really she was only 3 years older than Lyra, which made Ki painfully aware that she was probably their prize winning child. But what really confused Ki about her, was her uncharacteristic personality. She was so different from the Meclane's lighthearted and free flowing energy, that as an outsider she wouldn't have known they were related. She was closed minded and abrasive sometimes, probably a fault of her heightened intellect, but overall Ki felt as though she was able to adapt to her family's dynamic and fit in well enough to pass.
"So what are you studying John?" The head of the table spoke up to interject the conversation Ki was zoned out of until now.
"I'm an accounting major." The fair skinned male from beside Cassie looked down to the other end of the table.
"Accounting, that's nice. Isn't that what you're doing Cassandra?" Her father nodded his head towards the eldest daughter now, shifting everyone's gaze to the other head of the table.
"No, papá. I'm in economics and mathematics." She shyly glanced up to her father across the table.
"They are similar, no?"
"Yes, they are a little." John nodded. "Almost the same department, but different areas of specialization."
"Ah, I see, I see." Mr. Meclane leaned forward in his seat, resting his hands on the table. "And what are you going to school for Ki?"
"Marco, I doubt she's even thought about that yet." Lyra's mother gently tapped him on the arm with the back of her hand.
"I'm not sure. My... brother in law... tells me I would be good in an astronomy or physics feild though, so I might consider it." Ki stared at the wall behind Lyra's father the whole time, becoming too anxious to make eye contact, but also wanting to at least look interested.
"You good at math?" He raised his eyebrows. "My Cassie is good at math."
"No sir, well I'm decent, but not good per se. I'm more interested in science."
"They go hand in hand, no?"
"A little bit I suppose." Ki shrugged.
She could feel a gentle heat rising to her cheeks even though she had done nothing embarrassing. The attention alone was getting to her.
"You should take some lessons from Cassie. She will teach you math, she is very, very good at it." He leaned forward, using his hand to motion to his daughter.
"Marco?" Lyra's mom interjected, her accent wearing heavy on the pronunciation of his name.
"Si, mi amor?"
"Can you help me gather the dishes, por favor? Let's let the kids be." She began stacking her fork and knife on top of her white porcelain plate.
"Of course." He replied softly, pushing his seat back and messily grabbing his dishes off of the table, followed by him snatching up Gabrielle's and then Cassie's.
"I'll get ours mamá." Lyra mumbled as she started reaching for Ki's plate, which Ki was already stacking with her silverware.
"Nonsense. Sit down." Her mother smiled, holding out her hand for Lyra to hand her the plates.
"Gracias, mamá." She whispered.
"Yeah, thanks mom." Cassie said handing over John's plate as well.
As Cassie spoke, Ki noticed her accent was almost obsolete. The rest of them held on to signal words, or pronunciations that rolled off their tongues differently than they did for Ki... but Cassie? She sounded like she was born English, which Ki knew from the stories of Cuba—she wasn't. She wondered if maybe her parents thought about it as well, maybe if it made them sad—or perhaps happy that she was able to assimilate so well.
"So..." Gabby awkwardly clicked her tongue as she leaned back in her chair.
Ki looked to her to say something sarcastic to lead the conversation, perhaps to start them all laughing, but they were just locked in a stare of 'I don't know, you talk first.'
Lyra took a deep breath and looked beside her to Ki, and then across to Gabby, finally deciding to glare back to the older two.
"So John, where are you from?" She sighed.
"Um, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, actually." He fumbled with his jacket.
"That explains why you're so white." Gabrielle mumbled under her breath with a slight chuckle.
"Gabby!" Cassie glared at her. "Seriously?"
"Come on! It's not fair that I make fun of Ki all the time, but don't get to make fun of John!" She motioned her hand over to Ki, which made Ki smile a little as Lyra bit her lips together beside her, holding back deserving laughter.
"John is an adult. He's older than you, you don't say things like that."
"So is Ki, but I don't give her special treatment." Gabby smirked, challenging her sister.
"Ki is in high school." Cassie deadpanned.
"Are you saying we aren't relevant because we're still in high school?" Lyra leaned forward, helping Gabby's case with the most serious face she could muster.
"No, you..."
"Cassie..." John interrupted with a laugh, reaching his hand out to place on top of hers. "Chill. They're messing with you."
Cassie sank back from the table, staring at them all with a blank face, holding onto John's hand loosely as the girls all smiled between each other.
"So Ki... where are you from? I haven't heard very much about you, tell me about yourself..." John started the conversation this time, trying to save it from Cassie's intervention.
"Well I live on the other side of town, but I moved here from Texas a few years back."
"Texas! That's cool. I went there once, it was really hot."
"Yeah." Ki laughed. "It's hot for sure. Don't think I ever wore a winter coat in my life before I moved."
"What could've ever persuaded you to come up here?"
"My dad wanted to get away. He liked the job he was offered better up here anyways."
"What does he do?"
Ki swallowed thickly, wishing now that she hadn't given her water glass to Mrs. Meclane for dishes.
"He was a firefighter. Got a be a battalion chief, actually."
"That's ironic... my mom was a dispatcher, I wonder if their paths ever crossed..." He smiled, motioning his free hand out to Ki.
"Maybe." Ki whispered, glancing down at her golden weaved placemat on the table.
"Do you have any siblings?"
"My brother." Ki looked back up to him. "Step-brother actually, he's older than me, but I uh, I live with him and his fiancée. They're uh... really cool." She nodded.
"Oh, that's fun."
"You live with your step-brother?" Cassie mumbled in question, curiously glancing over her way.
"Yeah." Ki looked down into her lap, noticing now that the shade of black on her pants didn't match the shade of black in her jacket.
"That's kinda weird. Why don't you live with your dad?"
"Cass, shut up." Gabby leaned forward to the table, raising her eyes as if to really say 'Cass shut the fuck up.'
"What?" Cassie retorted to Gabby, motioning her hand in a 'I've done nothing wrong manner.'
"It's okay Gabby." Ki sighed, straightening back up in her seat. "I... well, my brother pretty much adopted me."
"Is that even legal?"
"For fucks sake, Cassie, stop talking." Lyra nearly shouted at her sister, her eyebrows weaves together in an angry glare that Ki had only seen once before at a soccer game.
"Don't talk to me like that." Cassie craned her head back as if offended.
"Take a fucking hint then." Lyra leaned forward getting closer to John who was in the seat that separated the two.
There was an obvious tension between the girls. Ki had noticed it as soon as Cassie walked in and Lyra fled straight to the kitchen. She had ignored her all night long, and seemed desperate for an escape with her mother when she knew they would all be left at the table together.
What could possibly make two sisters hate each other as much as these two obviously did?
"Seriously? Grow up Lyra!"
"Here we go again." Gabrielle pushed her seat back and crossed one leg over the other in a dramatic fashion.
Ki glanced to her for an answer, but all she did was roll her eyes and wait for the other shoe to drop.
"Maybe we should just change the topic." John suggested innocently from between the two.
"Doesn't matter if we change the topic, because what ever we talk about, she'll be an oblivious prick." Lyra leaned her head over to stare at her sister.
"This is why I don't come around anymore. You act like you can't stand me all the time."
"Maybe just try having like, I don't know... human emotion sometimes?!"
"I do!" Cassie threw her hand up and then slammed it back down on the table.
"No... you don't. Or you wouldn't say insensitive shit that you know deep down in your high horse intellect, is going to hurt people."
"Oh, so now you want to blame it on the fact that I'm smarter than you?"
"I don't care what your damn ACT score is Cassie! Nobody cares! Just have a little compassion, dear God."
"You know what, someday you'll wish you paid attention in school instead of fucking off with your classmates instead."
"Wow, Cassie dropped an F-bomb." Gabby whispered under her breath, unamused.
"Classmates? You mean friends, Cassie? Are you unfamiliar with the concept?" Lyra smirked.
Low blow Lyra. Ki thought in the back of her mind, although she would never say it out loud. She had never seen Lyra so heated... so angry before. It was a side of her she didn't know existed. Before then, she was convinced Lyra didn't have a mean bone in her body. Now she knew exactly why Lyra was hesitant about family dinner.
"I have friends, actually. At least I don't date the only one I can keep around because I'm so desperate for attention." Cassie fake frowned, glaring at Ki with such a precision that made her both scared and anxious to be the center of attention.
"Cass...?!" John looked to his girlfriend surprised at the remark, obviously just as uncomfortable as Ki.
Lyra took a deep breath and looked away from her sister for a moment. Ki could tell that one really hit her. Being alone was one of Lyra's biggest insecurities—she could barely stand to go a day without seeing one, if not all of her friends.
She knew Cassie was blowing off steam, but this one really started making Ki uncomfortable. What if she was right? What was their relationship if it was only out of desperation? Ki had to take a deep breath as she scratched her knee, absent mindedly trying to take away her energy.
"Fuck you Cassandra." Lyra grumbled angrily as she stared at the table. "She's not like that."
"Isn't she though? She's really not your type... I mean you don't even date girls! There's really no other reason you would even..."
This one hit Ki harder than he thought it would. What did she mean, 'not your type'? Was Ki a pity case? Was it really all desperation? She tried taking another deep breath, but at this point her heart was racing and she couldn't help but pick at the seam of her jeans on her thigh.
"Shut up!" Gabby chimed in, uncrossing her legs with a disgusted look on her face.
"I don't have to justify my relationship or sexuality to you. You're never here, you wouldn't know a damn thing about me!" Lyra turned to Cassie with a serious tone.
"Oh, so I'm right?"
"Would you leave them alone?" Gabrielle tried to intervene again.
Ki could sense the tension that Gabby held, hopelessly hanging on to her last bit of sanity before everything broke. She held the same tension in her as well, clinging on to it with everything she had so she wouldn't crumble in front of Lyra's family. Confrontation was one of Ki's worst fears, now was not the time to get caught up in it.
"You're not right about everything all the time! Jesus, can I live my life without you questioning all my choices?!"
"Guys seriously, stop." Gabby leaned over to rest her hands on the table, anxiously sensing they were going to start brawling any minute.
"Pipe down Gabby, you wouldn't understand."
"She's not five Cass! Stop treating us like children. And stop making assumptions about me, or my sister for that matter, when you haven't even been around for the past two years!"
"Yeah, no offense Cassie... actually, I don't give a shit if you take offense to it—but we've been through some shit these past few years and it sucks that you think you can run away and forget it all and come back and all of us be the same. We're not. None of us are. You actually seem to be the only one who hasn't given a shit about anything..." Gabby looked at her with a serious face as she leaned into the rail of her chair.
"Is this about what happened to Cygnus?" Cassie sighed as she sank down into the back of her chair.
"You mean your fucking brother? The one you left at home alone for a fucking club meeting?" Lyra gripped her hands around the rails of her seat, clearly brewing with frustration.
"It was important!"
That was it. Ki saw it so very clearly now. That was what pushed the two so far apart. It was Cygnus. Or rather, the night of his death. A part of Lyra's soul that could've been saved had her sister not been so careless.
"And I begged you not to leave him, you remember that?!" Lyra practically rose to the edge of her seat, one step away from being in a full yell. "Do you remember how I texted you how worried I was about him... begging you to stay home with him until I got home from my game? Because I do. And you left anyways."
"Lyra, how could you have expected me to know?!" Cassie looked at her with a mimicking anger.
"But I knew!" Lyra pointed to her own chest. "I knew he was in pain, and all I wanted you to do was fucking stay until I got home. But did you? No! No you didn't, you left him."
"I'm going to go use the restroom." John quietly excused himself—Ki almost envied him for such a smooth exit, which everyone knew was just him avoiding the conversation he clearly didn't feel inept in.
Cassie watched him get up, almost begging for him to stay and defend her, but he didn't. He just kept walking right down the hall, away from the chaos, into a peaceful sector of the house that remained unaffected. Ki wished she had slipped away earlier, but perhaps here is where she was needed most. If not for Lyra, for Gabby to still feel important.
"You can't blame me for what happen to him, that's not fair Lyra." Cassie whispered shaking her head.
"You don't even feel bad! You don't even care! If you would've cared at least a little bit about him, you would've seen if he was okay. I had no choice. There was no way I could've been there. I was at a game an hour away with no ride home. But you..." Lyra's voice cracked as she looked down into her lap, her fingers still gripping tightly onto the chair in frustration. "God... you were there, and you still left him..." She whispered, her voice almost shifting into something darker, and deeper, more sincere instead of angry. A scary type of sad.
"It wasn't my fault." Cassie whispered back.
"How was it not?" Lyra looked up, a single tear falling down the half of her face that Ki could see clearly. "Because to me, you're the one who left him there to die."
"Lyra..." Gabrielle's eyes softened and became somewhat empathetic, a trait Ki had never seen in her before. Her voice was caring and serious—gentle as if talking to a preschool child. "Don't."
"Neither of you found him!" She raised her voice, sniffling through the tears that were streaming down her cheeks at a much higher rate now. "I did!"
The tentative expression that Ki was previously holding dropped as soon as the words left her mouth. It was devastating. To be that close to someone, and then be the one to see their lifeless body for the first time... it had to be traumatic. Ki wondered how the poor girl was even still alive. She never would have been able to take that image in her mind every day, hell she couldn't even handle the image she didn't have in her head every day.
"Lyra..."
"I did." She spoke again. "When you left, he was alive. When I got home, he wasn't. That fucking hurts like hell Cassie! Can you even imagine for a second how that felt to find him?"
"No."
"It was the worst pain I have ever felt, and probably will ever feel, in my entire life. It was soul crushing and so freaking terrifying. What are you supposed to do when you come home and find a dead body in your bathroom? Because I sure as hell didn't know. And I sure as hell couldn't even register the fact that he was dead until the damn paramedics got there."
She sniffled again, raising her sweater up to her face to wipe away some of the tears reaching her jaw.
"Lyra, I think you should calm down. I don't want to see you getting worked up over this." Gabby whispered with the expression of a hurt puppy. This obviously wasn't the first time she had dealt with Lyra been ragingly sad, and it just sucked that she had to be the one to tell her sister to stop talking about their dead brother.
Lyra gave a short fake laugh. "It's too late for that."
"Seriously." Her sister frowned. "I don't want you to get hurt again."
Lyra looked across the table to her sister, dropping her sleeves back down to her sides instead of wiping her face. Her mood shifted a little bit back to her normal self—calm and level headed. She gave one small nod to Gabby and then mumbled "Lo siento. You're right."
Cassie tilted her head down to stare into her lap, obviously feeling now wasn't the time to snap back at either one of her sisters. She stayed quiet and motionless as the rest of them exchanged glances of sympathy.
"Hey..." Ki reached out to Lyra's arm as she began standing up, taking ahold of the seam of her sweater by her wrist.
"Sorry." Lyra whispered again, giving Ki a reassuring grimace that couldn't fool either one of them.
"How about we get some air?" Ki suggested softly guiding Lyra away from the table as they both stood to walk away.
"Can we leave?" She whispered, almost inaudibly as she nearly leaned into Ki from the start of their walk.
"And go where?"
The tears kept falling down Lyra's face no matter how hard she may have tried to make them stop. She tried taking deep breaths to calm down her irrational breathing, but everything just made her look like more of unstable mess. She eventually caved to the fact that everything wasn't okay, and mumbled a quiet:
"I don't care... anywhere."