( running away )
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"HEY, SARAH?"
Lucy's voice was little more than a whisper, the question hanging in midair. Sarah murmured in response, neither one of their five a.m. brains quite ready to compute a conversation.
"D'you ever think about running away?" The other girl rolled over onto her side, facing Lucy, propping her head up on her hand, supporting herself on one tanned elbow. The hum of the air conditioner kept them company, the moonlight filtering in through the windows to cast shadows on their faces. Lucy had always thought five a.m. was the ideal time for sharing secrets.
"You only just got back," Sarah said, distinctly more awake, "And you already wanna go?" Lucy shrugged, letting her body fall back onto the pillows they had piled up high around them.
"I don't know." She exhaled, almost a sigh, but not quite. "I think about it sometimes, though. What it'd be like without all this." Lucy lifted a hand from her chest and waved it in the air, a broad gesture to all that she and Sarah had. Everyone always said they were lucky. Lucy didn't know if she agreed with that.
"Without the bubblewrap?"
"Yeah."
"Where would you go?" Sarah's voice had an excitement to it, the same kind they'd always shared as children, when they'd tell each other ghost stories under the light of the stars, or when they'd chase butterflies around the Tannyhill garden for hours on end.
"That's the fun part," Lucy said with a laugh, and Sarah smiled that big, wide smile of hers, "I could go anywhere. We could go anywhere."
"Anywhere?"
"Anywhere."
Their words, loud in the silence of the room, were a sort of whispered promise.
Lucy rolled back over, facing Sarah once again. Sarah's eyes were open wide, a silent question. Lucy knew that Sarah was all too familiar with the reasons Lucy wanted to run away. Lucy also knew that Sarah was just as aware that running away could never have been a possibility for either of them.
Kook royalty.
"I couldn't do it," Sarah spoke up again, "I love it here too much." Lucy smiled sadly. She had always loved it too.
"Paradise on earth," Lucy said, and Sarah nodded, a smile on her lips, "Why?" Sarah shrugged.
"Why do I love it?" Lucy nodded. "Oh, you know," she answered, "The crushing weight of my family name, the easy access to alcohol—" Lucy cut her off, raising a hand and hitting her on the stomach. "Ow!" She could tell Sarah wasn't really hurt. If anything, she was laughing more. "You bitch." Lucy gasped in fake hurt.
Sarah reached over in response, trying to hit Lucy back, and on instinct, she flinched. The flash of emotion in Sarah's eyes would've been imperceptible to anyone else, but Lucy knew what it meant.
"Fuck, Luce, sorry," Sarah said, and Lucy just shook her head, forcing a small smile as she looked over at her best friend, "I—"
"Don't," she cut her off, her voice soft, "Just talk. Tell me why you love it." Sarah still had that familiar look of worry in her eyes, but she knew to drop it. They had been dancing round and round this same subject for years, and Lucy would be damned if they brought it up now. She reached over and took Sarah's hand in her own, squeezing it. They'd be okay, Lucy knew that much.
Sarah scooted over closer to her, their faces barely three inches from each other, their hands tightly clasped.
"You know I always bail, right?" Lucy shook her head. "Part of me wishes I could leave here too, leave all this Kook and Pogue shit behind, but this place, it's home. And it's stupid, I know, but I don't wanna bail on it. I don't want to fuck this up too."
Her words tumbled out one on top of the other, and when she finished speaking, Sarah let out a long breath, as though some weight had been lifted.
"It's not stupid, Sar," Lucy said, and Sarah's eyes softened, "I wish I loved it that much."
The girls lay in silence for a little while, their breathing slow. Every so often, one of them would squeeze the other's hand, a silent comfort. When they were little, they had tried to learn morse code to communicate. Sadly, morse code was not created to be learned by seven year olds.
"Have you ever thought about leaving, though?" Lucy let her head fall to the side, looking at Sarah, her face in profile against the moonlight.
"Always."
Sarah's voice was a whisper, as though she was confessing some grave sin.
"Sometimes I feel bad for thinking about it," Sarah said, her tone hushed, "And then I think about how we already know what our lives'll look like in ten years, and twenty, and thirty. Like, my dad busted his ass to get us where we are. He busted his ass so he could be certain we'd have a future. So then I feel bad, and I feel fucking ungrateful, because I don't want something dad worked so hard for. A luxury, you know?" Lucy knew.
"Is it a luxury?"
Both of them knew the answer.
"I just feel selfish," Sarah replied, "All the time. Selfish. Because we've got something others don't, and if I had the choice to give it up, I probably would. Even though I love it here. I'd leave." Lucy watched as Sarah ran a hand over her face. "I told you, I always bail. I can't stop myself."
"You don't always bail." Sarah moved to speak, but Lucy gave a shake of her head. "You've never bailed on me." The other girl smiled.
"That's because I only bail on people who actually like me," Sarah said, and Lucy laughed indignantly.
"Yeah, because I hate you with a passion," Lucy answered, "Always have."
"Mm." Sarah replied with a noise of assent, the smile still plain on her face.
"Still," Lucy said after a moment, "You've never once bailed on me."
"And I never will."
"Promise?" Lucy held up her other hand, pinky extended. Sarah lifted her hand in a similar fashion, linking the pair together.
"Promise."
The two girls leaned in, pressing a kiss to each other's fingers, sealing their little vow.
"You're not ungrateful or selfish for wanting what you don't have, Sar. I'd say that makes you normal." Sarah met her eyes, the girls smiling at each other.
Normal. What a word.
As fucked up as their families were, Lucinda Cavendish and Sarah Cameron made it work.
"Luce?" Sarah spoke up after a good ten minutes of silence, the two girls still lying on their sides facing each other, hands entwined. Lucy was asleep, and all Sarah wanted to do was let her stay that way, but she knew she couldn't. Gently, Sarah reached a hand out, breaking their contact to shake Lucy lightly. The other girl stirred. She had barely been asleep, but waking up was always a challenge. "You gotta go."
Lucy's mouth set itself into a firm line, and she pushed herself up into a seated position, letting the thin sheet that covered both of them fall off her shoulders. She stretched up, wincing as her arms lengthened out above her head. Sarah watched her, her eyes unreadable.
"Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"That." Sarah's expression didn't really change, but she seemed to understand.
Those were the last words they spoke to each other, before Sarah pulled her best friend into her arms, albeit softly. The hug said everything words couldn't.
And so, the night ended as it always did. As the sun started to rise, Lucy crept out of Sarah's room, Sarah's eyes filled with all the words she wished she could say and all the ways that her best friend deserved so much more than what life had dealt her. Lucy padded silently through the house to Rafe's bed, and climbed in as if she had never even left.
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me? having no self-control and starting a new book? who would've thought!