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How she got there wasn't important. It was essentially the usual sordid tale:
- Anna fell into an intense and uncomfortable crush on The Worst kind of guy she could possibly pick
- guy proved to be The Worst after far too long (exactly one week and fifteen hours) and far too much time spent toying with her poor, impressionable heart
- which ended in him inviting her to her first ever Cool People party and promptly ditching her
So, nothing out of the ordinary.
But what was sad, what was really, truly sad, was that he wasn't even the reason she was crying on the front porch. No, the reason for that was entirely because she'd just witnessed one of the most horrific fanfictions her phone had ever had the audacity to curse her with. Like, forget The Conjuring, now she'll never think about peeing the same way again.
So there she sat, under the dingy, flickering yellow light, bawling her eyes out and bemoaning her lost innocence, when behind her the door creaked open. Music blasted through, before the door shut again.
A shadow fell over her. Anna turned. She looked up…and up…and up…
Before her stood the towering figure of a bear fresh out of Five Nights At Freddies.
“Um.”
One thing to be said about Creepy Bear Dude: he got uncreepy real fast.
As soon as that first half sound was out of his mouth, he did a little head tilt that somehow made his giant bear head topple off to reveal a much smaller, human looking head underneath.
This shocked Anna so much that she started laughing, and when he went running after his giant bear head careening over the lawn like one of those prize winning pumpkins on TV it sent her into a laughing fit.
But then her night swung right back to horrible awful bad bad bad and she threw herself off the porch and into the bushes to vomit her dinner.
It was really bad. It tasted nasty, first of all. And why did it have to be so forceful? Literally squeezing her stomach for what it was worth, and not just her stomach. It also twisted the muscles surrounding her stomach so it felt like the center of a dish rag. It made it so she couldn’t breathe while the chunks came out, and her lower intestines got squeezed too, like it was trying to evacuate her from both exits, which–stressed her out a bit. Like, what if she'd had poop down there? Her costume didn't have a back flap for that kind of thing.
Tears dribbled down her face as she coughed and hacked. At some point a big, fuzzy mitt had pulled her braids back, and another had started rubbing between her shoulder blades, like that was supposed to help. Her chin was a mess, and whoever it was stank like sweat and alcohol. Anna spit out the last of it and curled up sideways in the grass.
“Noo…nooo…”
“It’s okay, it’s okay…” the other person said. A nasally, voice-cracky person, who’d been saying such things since she’d started throwing up but she’d been too stressed to pay attention to that. His fuzzy bear mitt sat heavy and uncomfortably warm on her shoulder. “I know your head hurts and you feel dizzy, but it’ll go away.”
“ No, you don’t understand.” Anna groaned. Her arm flopped dramatically over her head. “I’m not drunk. I didn’t drink anything. This was because I had microwave lasagna for dinner, and it tasted good, okay? And I knew it had this giant list of preservatives but also microwave lasagna. But now I’ve thrown up at my first ever cool people party with zero alcohol in me, and this is so sad. I’m going to die of sadness.”
“Oh…” The mitt withdrew. Anna spread out onto her belly and star-fished in the grass.
“…Yeah, that…that makes sense. I can see how you’d feel that way. If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t get to have any either. Alcohol, I mean.”
Anna twisted her head sideways. She just barely saw the edge of his knee. “Why?”
“Uh…they didn’t, um, let me. Because I’m dressed like this, you know?” He made a pair of jazz hands with his fake paws.
“Well, why’re you dressed like that?”
“It was part of the invite. If I wanted to come, I had to dress in my mascot suit, and then they were, you know, being themselves in there. So. Thought I might as well leave. And here you are.”
Anna finally lifted herself up a little. She squinted at him. “Wait, so–do you think I’m dressed like this because someone dared me to? Like they told me I couldn’t come if I didn’t?”
“Did they?”
“No. It’s like,” she sat up properly and crossed her legs. “It’s like, I chose this. I didn’t tell anyone. See, the senior who’d invited me is a jerk and I didn’t know that until yesterday, and he was going to ditch me at this party anyways so I was like, “you can’t fire me, I quit!” you know? My costume is based on Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
“Who?”
“The blueberry girl after she became a blueberry.”
“Ah. Okay, I see.”
Anna rolled her eyes because no he didn’t. Her costume was too deflated; instead of a round blueberry it had become a lumpy, bruise-coloured raisin. And her hair was still red and tied in pigtails, and she was pretty sure the dye she’d put on her skin wasn’t going to wash out before school on Monday.
Bear boy scratched the back of his head. “…Well, I guess this is a suck-ish night for both of us. Are you okay going home by yourself or do you want someone to help you? Since you were sick earlier?”
Anna thought about it. “Actually, I think I’m feeling a little bit better after that. I think what I ate was making my stomach really queasy, earlier, but now that it’s out then maybe I could walk it off. I might even feel hungry later.”
“Oh, okay. That’s good, that’s good–wait,” he paused. “That reminds me. There’s this waffle house I know that’s a mile or two out from here. If you’re up for a walk, we could go there, if you want? I’ll pay, don’t worry. Only if you’re okay with it.”
Anna stared. There were barely any features she could make out, what with the porch light being the nearest light and him being at a weird angle to it. The most she could see was him slouched in his bulky, smelly suit, the bear head in his lap, making his head look pinball sized.
And she? She looked like an oompa loompa but with hair so red it glowed in the dark and done up like Pippi Longstocking. He’d literally sat there and watched her throw up , and yet somehow his first response was, ‘yikes homie, wanna get waffles about it?’
Well she wasn’t about to say no.
The boy’s name was Henrick Haddock, but when he was little he’d pronounced it like Hiccup. He also said that according to the college football team he was on and half of his classmates he was most commonly referred to as some variation of Chicken or Fish. “Because of the Hen in Henrick and the surname, you see. Which could lead to other jokes, but don’t worry, most of my classmates aren’t that smart.” And of course Anna snorted.
He was pretty funny, when it came down to it, in a deadpan, sarcastic kind of way. He also read old timey sci-fi books for fun, and was part of an after school mechanics workshop when the football mascot life wasn’t getting in the way, so he was clearly some kind of smart. Anna introduced herself as Anna Runeardsen and made a point to properly shake his sweat smelling glove hand, because if he could be not grossed out by her throwing up incident and be this chill with her then so could she. Chill, thoughtful, and interesting, easy peasy.
Their walking took them through the suburbs in search of the nearest highway. Anna filled that time by talking about her hobbies, the movies she’d seen, the things she knew about art and cinematography, her stint of going through her local library’s crime and thriller section twice.
“So now I’m not phased at all by the things that go bump in the night.” She hopped on a log that creaked dangerously under her and then hopped off. “Viola!”
He obligingly clapped. “Impressive.”
“I know. I think that’s part of why I got interested in law. Since I read about all that investigation work and was like, ‘wait, but what if I could do that,’ and then I got to reading these books on logical reasoning and debate and moral frameworks, and it turned out it’s actually really interesting and fun to read about and get involved in. What about you?”
“What?”
“Have you thought about what you want to do later? What kind of place you want to go when you graduate?”
Hiccup sighed. A lock of his shaggy, overgrown hair blew out and fell back on his forehead. “Eh, it depends, I guess. I’m already on a college football team.”
“As the mascot.”
“Yes, but my cousin’s already going there, so I think my dad is hoping…”
“Oh no,” Anna put a hand on her face. “Oh no, that doesn’t sound good.”
“The college is okay–”
“But it’s not what you want to do, is it?”
For the first time, Hiccup seemed to get defensive. She’d hit a nerve. “So what if it isn’t? At least my dad will leave me alone if I at least try for what he wants—”
“ No. No, listen to me.” They both stopped. Above them, the trees shivered, raining leaves on the bicycle path they stood on, “Listen, I know how this goes, okay? You go into this thinking you’re doing it for your family, because they want what’s best for you and they care about you, so you do it, right? And you think maybe if you keep going along with it, then they’ll be so proud of you. They’ll appreciate you and think you’re wonderful and then you’ll be happy because you’ll finally be good enough. But that’s–that’s not what’ll happen.”
Her voice hitched. She was going to cry, she knew she was, but this felt too important. She had to make him understand.
“You’ll do all the things that they want you to do, and act the way they want you to act, and try and try and try, and be there and be forgiving and kind and good. But it will never be good. And you think that you’re doing it wrong, that there’s something wrong with you, that maybe you’re stupid or weird or, or just not good enough, and you never will be and that’s why they pay more attention to your sister than they do to you, and it’s just going to suck forever because you’re constantly in someone else’s shadow and you have to be like them but it turns out they don’t care about you. And then they abandon you and you’re all by yourself and you have no dreams of your own because what was the point when you couldn’t even get people to care about you and don’t do that to yourself.”
Anna had to stop then. Not because she was done, but because she’d said all that in one breath and had to take a second. In the dark, a fuzzy, slightly sticky mit wrapped around her hand. It felt like it was more for her sake than for his.
She sniffled, and tried to look at where his eyes were supposed to be. “No one deserves that happening to them. I promise. So…so please don’t do that to yourself, okay?”
He didn’t say anything at first. The longer the silence stretched, the more Anna had time to think. She might’ve gone off the rails a little bit. Maybe she should’ve planned the speech out more before she’d started it, but then again it had been an impulse thing. She hadn’t meant to dump her problems on him.
She opened her mouth to say so but he beat her to it.
“How do you know it’ll get better?” he asked, his voice bitter. “How do you know that this isn’t it? If the people in school treat me like this then why should I expect I’ll be treated differently anywhere else?”
“…Well, first of all, do you know that teenagers are immature?” she said, mock serious. And there it was—her trying to lighten the situation with humor. After being the one who’d made it bad.
Hiccup didn’t laugh, though. “But we’re both teenagers.”
“So? Some teenagers suck.” Her hand was still in his, so she tugged them into a walk. “Okay, but seriously, how do they treat you? Is it like one of those movies where they, like, beat you up every day? Flush your homework down the toilet?”
That made him snort. Score one for Anna. “They’re not that dramatic. They just…ignore me, mostly. No one sits with me or wants to be seen with me, or when there’s a class where we have to make teams, I don’t usually get included in the groups. The worst that’s happened was like at the party. They just called me a few names and threw empty red cups at me if I got too close to the booze table and that’s it, really.”
“After making you come as the mascot.”
“After making me come as the mascot, yup.”
“That still sounds horrible.”
“Eh, it’s just…the way of things, I guess,” he shrugged. They’d reached the highway by then, and the road opened up far wider. Streetlamps stretched on beyond them, lighting the path they walked.
“It’s not like everyone treats me like that. But it probably doesn’t help that uh…there was this girl I’d crushed on back in eighth grade. Well, she rejected me, and that’s fine, but for some reason a bunch of kids got it into their heads after that that if you can’t hook up with at least one person then you’re a terminal loser, and they made an example out of me–”
“I’m sorry, they did what–”
“–So it’s basically reverse STDs, where instead of avoiding me because I have sex germs it’s because I have sex-repellant germs.”
“ What— and I cannot stress this enough— what in the name of common sense is that. ”
Hiccup shrugged again, like this was a shrugging matter. “It is what it is.”
“It’s completely stupid is what it is!” said Anna, puffing up like an indignant Smurfett. “How dare they! What got it into their heads that it was okay to do? And what a stupid reason to do it for! Have they even met you? You’re a total catch.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say–”
“No you are, shut up. You’re smart, you’re funny, you’ve got these interesting hobbies that you put lots of effort into. You literally sat there while I was throwing up and you’ve been nothing but thoughtful and caring and nice to me ever since you met me, and do you know how much that could mean to some people?”
“I’m sure there’re lots of people who would’ve–”
“What, are your classmates so brain-dead from social media and sexism that they think relationships or experience or sex is that important? And why is it that it’s boys who have to deal with this specifically? Why does your worth as a human being have to be decided on whether or not you’ve seen a teenage girl’s vagina? Like, what, is your worth supposed to be stored in there? In a vagina? And that’s the only place you’ll get it? Why would anyone put their worth as a human being in a teenage girl’s vagina?”
“Oh my god, will you stop saying that?” At some point, Hiccup had gotten his mit back while Anna used both of her hands to gesticulate, so he covered his face with both of his. Anna rolled her eyes.
“Calm down, will you? If people are going to make such a big deal out of it, then they can stand to use the proper terminology. Anyways, I’m not done.” She turned on her heel and stuck out her hand. “Hand.”
“…What.”
“Your hand. Give it.”
He cautiously held his out. She grabbed it and gave it a firm shake. “There.” And then she turned again and pulled him along, this time their hands joined.
“…Okay? What just happened?”
“Now we’re dating.” She stated, ignoring his stumble and continuing to walk. “And you can tell your brain-dead classmates that you now have a cool, awesome girlfriend who’s ten times more amazing than all of them and when I come to visit I’m going to beat them up.”
In between his sputtering, Hiccup laughed incredulously. “Wait, no, I don’t think—are you sure? Because that would be amazing to watch, but that’s a lot of people and some of them are on the football team and stuff—”
“Nonononono, you don’t understand. When I was growing up, I used to take kick-boxing. I have won awards for it. I will find your classmates and I will donkey kick them into outer space.”
That got him laughing for real, and Anna grinned to herself because that’s right her new friend should be laughing, he absolutely deserved to be happy.
Walking under streetlights, she could finally get a good look at his appearance. On a factual level, she could see why he’d been singled out. Beneath his shaggy hair, his eyebrows were huge, his eyes drooped at the corners, and his nose was a blob. One of his cheeks had a mountain range of pimples growing on it that crawled all the way under his non-existent jawline. He looked like he could be the textbook entry for ‘nerd’.
But, honestly? He just looked like a normal-ish teenager. A run-of-the-mill squishy, sweaty kid same as the ones she’d gone to school with and befriended and had fun with. And there was nothing about him that Anna hadn’t liked yet.
“What are you staring at?”
Anna grinned wider. “I was just admiring you. I think you look really nice.”
“Oh, wow, I didn’t know ‘eau de bearsuit’ was in fashion these days,” he said, and Anna sniggered. “Wanna get a better sniff?”
“Only if you want to get real familiar with ‘eau de microwave lasagna’.” She pinched her nose and purposefully made her voice tinny. When she looked back, his brows had gone slightly furrowed, like something about her was making him think really hard. “And what are you staring at?”
“Oh, uh. I wanted to, I’ve been meaning to ask…is your hair dyed? Since, well, with your features, I’d kind of assumed…”
He trailed off, and Anna picked up the unspoken thread. “Because my face looks kind of Asian, right? With the monolid eyes and all?” He nodded. “My mum’s part of a local ethnicity in Norway. I’ve met her family, and they look a lot like this: the eyes, the nose, the face shape, but with light hair and light eyes, just like me. I learnt a lot of things from them, too. It’s really interesting.”
And she told him all about it as they continued down the highway. All things considered, it was a good night for a walk—probably jacket weather for it being mid autumn, but there was no wind and it felt good through the baggy material of her costume. Occasionally, a car would drive past, breaking into their conversation with a loud whoosh and flash of headlights, but they left as quickly as they came, fading into the background.
One minute the road was a never–ending line of street lamps and shadowy background that existed outside the yellow puddles of light, and then suddenly a neon flickering building stood in the distance. It felt almost uncanny how quickly the time went.
“I’m telling you, Hiccup, moving out was the best thing that happened to me. As soon as I’d had enough I just packed up a suitcase, hopped on a bus, and got a place with this girl who was also looking for a roommate. And since I didn’t have anyone I needed to listen to, I could do whatever I wanted, so I took the entrance exam for the school I wanted to go to and I got in! I even got a job to help support myself. And while this was happening, I got new experiences, and I met more people, until I slowly found friends. People who liked me for me, you know? If it can happen to me, then it’ll happen to you.”
Hiccup looked suitably impressed. “You said you ran away when you were fifteen?”
“That’s right.”
“And you did this all by yourself?”
At this, Anna deflated slightly. “Well…not exactly. The thing was, I’d taken my phone with me, so my parents were still able to call me. And it’s not…they weren’t mistreating me, exactly, it’s just that I couldn’t stay there anymore. I felt trapped there, and then later abandoned, and it felt like if I didn’t leave right then then I never would. And they were worried when that happened. So they ended up paying my share of the rent, and, um…”
The next part was hard to say, but Anna mentally smacked herself and did it. If she was going to talk about herself, then she at least owed it to him to be honest.
“…And it actually took me three tries to get into my school, and they paid for that, too—but! I did get a job, at some point, and they wouldn’t accept me paying back, but at least they didn’t have to keep supporting me. Like, they’d always wanted what was best for me, it’s just that their idea of that kinda sucked, you know?”
“Yeah,” Hiccup sighed, “I know.” Anna squeezed his gloved hand and hoped he felt it.
“Look, if there’s one thing I need to tell you, it’s this: you have to be on your own team, okay? You gotta cheer for yourself, and be there for yourself, because no one else will. And I say that not because you will never ever find someone who believes in you—because I believe in you, okay? Right now, I believe in you—but if the voice in your head is putting you down, then no one outside of you can make that stop unless you do that yourself.”
The diner had come much closer. She didn’t know if he was listening or not, but he didn’t interrupt her so she kept going.
“I know it’s hard and I know it’s unfair, but I promise it’s worth it. You don’t just wish for a happy life for yourself, but you stand up for yourself and make that happy life real. Because it will be real, see, you—you haven’t read all the books you want to read, right? What if your next favorite book is out there? Or your next favorite movie? There are so many experiences that you haven’t had yet, but you can have them someday. And what if you get a pet in the future? Your new best friend is waiting for you in the future, and you haven’t met them yet, or hung out with them, or watched the sunsets with them. And people, too! There’s this whole big world of people, and you haven’t met all the people who’ll love you yet. So keep going for that, okay? At least then you can meet them and know what they’re like.”
They weren’t close enough to the diner for the light of it to catch his face and tell Anna what he was thinking. She was left wondering if she’d pushed it too far again. Who was she to give out ‘life advice’ like she knew anything? The one thing she’d really learnt about adulthood was that almost every adult was faking it.
But he’d trusted her with his family issues, or at least a part of them. If there was something, anything, she could tell him that didn’t echo the hopelessness that the rest of the people in his life seemed to be full of, then she wanted him to hear it. To show him that at least one person thought they were full of it, too, and that he wasn’t alone in thinking that.
And he hadn’t ripped his hand out of hers, yet. Which reminded Anna of why they were here.
“You know, since I’m assuming this is our first date, how about we get something really nice to commemorate our relationship? We’ll get the good stuff and find a nice, secluded nook to drink out of the same glass like they do in the movies—wait, are we getting drinks, too? How much money do you have?”
That seemed to startle him enough into answering. “…Oh. Were we…did you want to get drinks?”
“I don’t know. Did you?”
“I’d just assumed with the waffles…”
Anna nodded. “Then waffles we shall get. Let’s go, new boyfriend!”
The sound of the door opening was drowned out by the music that hummed from the speakers, and a warm, sugary envelope of air met them as soon as they entered. Even the inside was outfitted like a thing out of a movie, with red booths, checkered floors, and a karaoke machine at the far wall. Anna felt like she was getting some details wrong, but she nevertheless skipped up to the counter and took her time with the giant menu board that shined brightly from above.
It was a good thing that it was late enough—or early enough?—for there to be no one else in the diner. She took so long thinking out her choice of waffle flavor and the ice cream that’d go into her waffle sandwich that by the time she came to Hiccup had already ordered his. “You do remember what I said, right? Since this is a date, you gotta share a little bit of yours with me.”
“Ehh…I get the feeling you may or may not want it.” Hiccup scratched his head. Which, since his hands were covered in faux fur, made his sweaty hair stick up more.
“I told you that we’re both getting good ones, didn’t I? Because this is a special occasion and all.”
“Yeah, I know, and I think what I got is nice, I just don’t know about you.”
“Well if you like it then I’ll like it.”
They both got their orders. Anna took one look and burst out laughing. “What is that?”
“I told you it might be weird,” he said.
“No, it’s not weird. It’s boring is what it is. Like, what is it?” In his mitts, Hiccup held a paper envelope supporting two slabs of pale green waffle encasing a chunk of plain white ice cream. No sprinkles, no textures, no nothing.
“Well, the waffles are matcha flavored, because I like green. And the ice cream is vanilla because I’m a basic white boy.”
Anna cackled where she stood. To the credit of the guy behind the counter, he kept right on minding his own business, despite the fact that between the two teenagers, one was in a headless fursuit, the other had a face painted purple, and both of them probably stank like booze and vomit.
Hiccup gusted out a put-upon sigh. “…So whenever you’re done, do you want to eat here or somewhere else, mademoiselle?”
“Wait wait wait, hang on.” Anna got a few more giggles in, then took a deep breath. “Okay yeah, I’m done. Let’s go outside. It feels cooler out there, less stuffy.” Because his skin had been looking shiny and pinkish for at least a few minutes now, so whatever was a good temperature for the diner was probably uncomfortably warm for him.
When they went out, Anna beelined directly for the vending machine she’d seen before entering. “One sec. Could you hold this for me?”
Hiccup obligingly held her waffle sandwich and she stuck her hand down the front of her costume and pulled a paper bill out of her bra. “Don’t worry, this one’s on me. You paid for the food so I’ll pay for this.”
Carefully smoothing out the bill on the glass, she inserted it into the slot and punched in her options. Two cans dropped into the receiving bin and she fished them out.
“That’s one classy iced tea for me and one vanilla flavored coke for the basic white boy.” She tapped his drink to his shoulder and giggled when he rolled his eyes.
“Since you’re so classy, why don’t you explain your classy choice of waffle to me?” he said.
“Gladly!” They settled on a wooden bench and she grandly gestured to her order of choice. “This is what I would like to call the taste of an art connoisseur. What you observe here is a marbled waffle. Not just charming in its appearance, but also combining chocolate and vanilla without muddying either one. The best of both worlds. And not only am I an art connoisseur, I am also a chocolate connoisseur. This treat where waffles are used to create an ice cream makes them Belgian Waffles, so naturally I wanted Belgian chocolate to fill its interior. But the thing about Belgian chocolates is that they are characterized by their dark chocolate outsides but when filled they have creamy, hazelnut centers, so I recreated that flavor profile here.”
“And what are the chocolate sprinkles for?”
“For crunchy texture and also aesthetic.”
“I see.”
They ate their waffles first, their drinks unopened between them. Hiccup had shimmied out of half of his suit so he could hold his waffles properly and not drop them. As promised, Anna shared a bite of her food. Hiccup called it “too rich”, while she got a bite of his and considered it “nice but kind of boring”.
When it came to dealing with her sticky hands, Anna used the condensation from her can and the tissue the waffles came wrapped in to wipe off the worst of it.
“…Does it ever get better?”
“Hm?” Anna paused in rubbing her face to look over to him. He’d cracked his drink open but it lay in his hands.
“You said you’d left your family, and that it helped you. Is there any way to…reconcile with them, after everything?”
Anna thought about what she’d experienced, the ways she’d dealt with them. How things had unfolded from there.
She took a deep breath, then sighed. “Honestly? I don’t know, at this point. I wish I could say it gets better, and that time heals. I know I’m doing better with my parents, but that’s because I had more time to figure myself out away from them and build up an actual support system. And I don’t think I’ve reconciled with my sister at all. She’s just—it’s like everything I did always got on her nerves. I’d say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, or be the wrong way, and then suddenly I was crossing boundaries and she’d push everyone out and isolate herself. And I grew up constantly thinking that I’m always invasive, needy, sensitive, emotional, difficult, all of it.”
“But then—you know what I learnt? After years and years of my worth as a human being getting destroyed? That it was actually her who is even more sensitive and more difficult than me and it turned out I wasn’t being “too much” and she’s the one who doesn’t know how to deal with anyone.”
“Like imagine that, for a second. Imagine a kid growing up that way, and seeing my sister as the gold standard for humanity. And she thinks how my sister treats her is how she should expect every other person to treat her, and that that’s how a normal person would react to her. And then this kid, she wants—she needed someone, anyone to love her so badly, and she tried so hard to make my sister love her because she looked up to her and measured her self worth by her and, and, and then she thought that what little love she got was the only type of love that exists in the world. And then that sister abandoned her, and both her parents abandoned her, and I…I didn’t know it could be any different. I’d grown up thinking I deserved it.”
“Do you know what that does to a person? Do you know what it was like, meeting normal people for the first time? They feel like aliens. And then you actually realize what normal is for people and that none of the people you grew up with were normal. And it turns out you…hadn’t done anything wrong, and you did nothing to actually deserve your family doing that to you. Just… why? Why did I…why did I spend so many years making this one person, this one messed up human being, as the person I measured my self worth to?”
Her voice scratched. Her throat was tight. Anna snapped open her drink and gulped down half of it.
That…had veered wildly off topic, hadn’t it? It was a lot to dump on a person. Her guilt was starting to wake up, and she wanted to say sorry. But Hiccup hadn’t snapped at her when she’d done it earlier. He hadn’t cut her off or interrupted her yet, either. Plus she’d answered his question the best she could, so that probably meant something.
But her thoughts—those were only half of them. The rest of them swirled in her head, knocking against her skull. She didn’t know how many times she’d talked about this with her friends, her therapist, it felt like she was repeating herself at this point. The worst part of having issues was that they were always the same issues. It felt redundant, like, ‘Aren’t you done with that problem yet? Why is it still there? At least let it be a different problem?’
Though it felt like if she didn’t get the rest of it out, they’d find their way to her heart and claw it out. There were tears brimming in her eyes.
“Actually, you know what? I’m not done,” she blurted out, wiping impatiently at her eyelids. Screw it. “The thing is, after she left and ran off to who knows where and abandoned me for years, my sister contacted me—this was after I gave up on her ever coming back and ran away myself.”
“And we talked on and off, but what I found out was that she wasn’t ignorant to what was going on in our house. Like, it took me years and years to realize even half of it, but she said she’d already known, that she could just see it there and knew what was up all along. And then after she left she didn’t know what to do, but she met these nice people, and then she shared herself with this one, perfect, amazing person and that person is now her boyfriend.”
“That first time we talked she said she’s in a much better place, and that everything is cured now but you know what that means for me? That all this time she’d known everything because she’s sooo perceptive and sooo smart but she decided it was easier to treat me like I’m constantly bothering her and hurting her, and that it was only when she found someone else that she decided to grow. All this time she could have done that but I was never a good enough reason for her to do it.”
“And I wanted—I have wanted her to grow and be happier and not be so miserable and get better since forever, but now that it’s happened I feel so…so abandoned. I felt so hurt and worthless when she told me that and she doesn’t know. She’s the one who gets to be healthy and I’m the one with the disorders and the issues. She’s the one who got her life together and fixed herself and I’m the one still stuck in the past.”
“The real problem was that I still felt like such a brat when I talked to her. And after that first time I was the one who was always reaching out, because I thought things would be better now, right? Right? Nope! It wasn’t better at all! She’s still the same! Every time she’d just pick up the phone and sound annoyed like I’m bothering her and she’s just trying to put up with me to make me go away faster. So I stopped doing that, too—if she doesn’t want to talk to me then why should I keep trying? And she hasn’t called me back.”
“Well, fine then! Why should I care? Why—why am I still talking about her? She’s not important. She doesn’t treat me like I’m important so why should I care what she thinks? I’m not part of her life and I owe her nothing. I’ve done so many things to be proud of! I have grown and I deserve to be happy! I’ve made some amazing friends who treat me right! I worked hard and I got into the best university of law in the entire country, and I can balance a part time job too! I know what I care about and I know where I’m going! I have so much to be proud of…”
Anna shook her head, tears still falling. She pressed the now slightly cold can of ice tea to her temple and tried to breathe, tried to resist going into a monologue of apologies. That wouldn’t help either of them.
“…That was a lot. I don’t know what to say, either,” said she who’d put herself in that situation in the first place. Yay her, blurting her life story to a stranger.
“…Did you say university? As in, college?”
Anna sniffled and glanced up. Hiccup looked confused, rather than the grumpy, uncomfortable face she’d expected. She shrugged. “Oh, well, yeah. That’s where I’m going.”
Hiccup looked even more confused. “But you’re the same age as me, right? You can’t be that much older.”
“Sure I can. I mean, technically doesn’t this feel a little…liminal? You know the word?” She waved a hand around at the surroundings, the one holding her can. “This night time place that feels like it’s in between events? Going from a party to this weird little diner place? It feels like one of those American movies.”
“But you’re literally talking like—”
“No no no, I’m not talking actual English right now–okay, well, I kind of am. But like, that’s because I’ve watched plenty of these things so it just fits the aesthetic. All of this is in the context of whatever my brain made up.”
Including him. And whatever little rant she’d gone on was really just her talking to herself. She didn’t need to feel sorry about monologuing in her own head. Because what chance did she even have of meeting a boy who called himself Hiccup?
Something like recognition slowly dawned on Hiccup’s face.
“…Are you saying that you think you’re dreaming?”
“Well…yeah? Why wouldn’t I be?” She tilted her head. The light had gone strange, bending oddly. “…This is a dream…right…?”
Her hearing had gone strange, too. She couldn’t pinpoint what exactly it…the edges were blurring a bit. Huh. That was weird…
The air stirred. It felt especially cold against her arm and both her legs, which was funny since they had stockings on them…but there was darkness and these flashes of light, twirling in-between each other. Except she wasn’t moving anywhere. A steady, whirring sound reached her ears…how long had it been there…?
Anna opened her eyes to darkness.
Anna, age twenty six, opened her eyes again.
The darkness felt like a blanket. Pinpricks of light filtered through its dips and folds. Anna sucked in a breath and suddenly got a mouthful of cloth.
She kicked and flailed until the blanket tumbled off. Cold air met her dry, tacky face—semi dry, she must’ve been crying in the night. Dried drool stuck to her cheek.
Anna rubbed it. She rolled over to squint at the clock on her nightstand. Its cutesy, yellow arms pointed to just before eleven. Plenty of time before she needed to figure out lunch and go to her afternoon classes. Her phone lit up. Anna slowly sat and swiped it open—a dangerous thing to do, at the start of the day.
There were three notifications: spam text, spam mail, and a string of messages from her mother. She opened the messages. Her mother had sent them at six, wishing her good morning. Her parents were doing well. She asked how Anna was. She’d also heard from Elsa recently, who seemed to be doing fine. The weather was growing unusually cold for autumn.
Anna mentally flinched at the mention of Elsa. She’d told her parents not to mention her. They knew that wasn’t a good topic for her. Anna felt the old urge to message Elsa right then and there and immediately crushed it.
See, what was funny, in a depressing and ironic way, was that despite having never been in love or in a serious relationship, Anna felt like she was recovering from some kind of breakup. She knew that nothing good would come of contacting her sister when said sister had made her feelings about Anna perfectly clear. Anna didn’t want to be that ex. The one who’d drunkenly wail into her phone, ‘Why won’t you love meeeeee,’ and get nothing but disappointment back.
The clock read eleven fifteen. She needed to go pee. She should eat something, and also take her meds, and then maybe she’d feel better. Her meds might make the sinking, drowning, gut–wrenching misery that rooted her to her bed go away. She kind of wanted to cry. She really needed to pee.
Anna sucked in a deep breath. Then she threw back her head and unleashed a banshee screech.
She slammed her hand onto the giant button on top of her clock and immediately the radio started playing a pop number.
Go to the bathroom, brush her teeth, before the song ended—up, up, up! Beat the song! Anna stumbled off the bed and did just that. Then she took care of the rest of her. When she came back out the song had switched. Anna ran around her room like a headless chicken and then dashed out the door. Then she dashed back in, pressed the radio off, and dashed away again.
Anna tapped out her pills on the way to the kitchen before placing the pill jar in its designated bowl (shaped like a frog) on the table and picked up the giant bottle of peach juice placed beside it. It wasn’t until after she finished drinking that she noticed the covered plate. Beneath the thin cloth was a pile of muffins and a note filled with Rapunzel’s loopy handwriting.
‘Sending you good luck and joy. I hope this day is kind to you!
I love you!!! <3333
–Rapunzel’
Anna read and reread it. The words began to blur together. The muffins…they were chocolate chip and banana, one of her favorites. She didn’t know how long she stood there, but eventually she pressed the note to her forehead, silently willing the love in it to filter into her brain. Until her brain eventually switched into gear and Anna set to work.
She started up the coffee maker. It was old and reliable, and she touched its handle. “I love you,” she told it. The fridge hadn’t been there long, but long enough for its front to be covered in colorful magnets. “I love you.” The shelves held all her favorite mugs and bowls and the plate she’d painted just for her pet rabbit Olaf. “I love you.”
Anna went to where Olaf slept in the living room. She let him out of his cage and watched him eat and then leaned in and pressed her forehead to his. “I love you!”
Slinging her bag over her shoulder, Anna tapped out an ‘I love you’ as she went out of the apartment and down the stairs. Then she turned around, went back up, grabbed the apartment keys, locked the front door, and left again. The sky outside was clear, and the air she breathed in was also clear. I love you. Her college was within walking distance and the view was pretty. I love you. A few people walked their dogs, and in a nearby park a little girl waved to her. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Anna's life was hers, and it was a good one. Maybe she wasn’t in the happiest place she could be but that didn’t mean she hadn’t gotten better. It was leagues better than where she’d once been, especially when she finally had friends—speaking of which. Anna opened the group chat and sent a string of heart emojis to it.
Jack responded almost immediately, sending a bunch of hearts right back, followed by Merida replying with a single green heart and a question. Anna spent the rest of her walk to college chatting with them. It ended up turning into a debate that kept going even as she entered the building and walked up the stairs.
She was so caught up in it that she didn’t look up from her phone as she rounded the corner, nor did she see the wet floor sign. Neither she nor the person rushing in her direction noticed each other until it was too late.
“AH!”
Anna’s boot slipped on tile and the floor became the ceiling, and then a sharp pain hit the back of her head and the ceiling multiplied. “Ow!”
“…sorry…’m sorry, are you okay?”
Anna blinked her eyes open (when had she closed them?) and at first saw a blurred blob of a face. Slowly, the face solidified. It wasn’t one of the prettier ones. The boy—man, kind of—seemed around her age. His overgrown brown hair fell into drooping eyes, set on either side of a blobbish nose that was all but covered in freckles. A crop of pimple scars covered one of his cheeks, trailing beneath a soft, rounded jaw, and if Anna hadn’t known any better she’d almost swear she recognised—
Anna shot upright.
“You!”
Hiccup, crouched before her, went from looking worried to surprised. “…You remember me?”
Anna couldn’t speak for a moment, too busy trying to process what her eyes were telling her. It was him! The boy from her dream! Her impulse boyfriend! Her waffle buddy! Mr. Weirdo With The Acne Beard–o!
“It’s you! Oh my god, how did—when did you—what are you doing here?” And how did he escape from the dream dimension?
Hiccup rubbed the back of his neck. “I, uh, I’m going to school here. I will be, I mean. For the next semester.”
“Me too! I mean, I’m already studying here, not going to be, you know?” And there she goes mimicking how he talks, good grief. “What’ll you be studying? Wait, are we in the same department?” She asked, changing the subject.
“No, I wanted to do…” Hiccup started to say. Then his face went pale. He swallowed. “…I want…I think I’m going to throw up now.”
To her credit, Anna did not hesitate.
She reached for the closest thing—a janitor’s cart. She grabbed the back of Hiccup’s head and shoved it at the bucket part of the cart just in time for Hiccup to vomit into it.
As he let it out, Anna shifted her hold to wrap around his shoulders. Past experience reminded her that rubbing the back hadn’t done much to help, so she politely stared at the mop slowly rolling away from them. She sent a mental apology to whoever would have to deal with the janitor cart she’d conveniently borrowed.
“…Quick question, which you don’t have to answer right now, but I want to know—did you feel like throwing up because you saw me or…?”
Hiccup drew in a shuddering gasp. Then he heaved one more round before he sat back, breathing heavily. Anna waited another second before nudging the cart away with her foot.
“Eugh,” he mumbled. He cleared his throat. “I think I ate something weird earlier.”
“Ah, that’d do it. Do you still feel sick?”
“I don’t know? It could be food poisoning.” Hiccup looked over at her. She was close enough that she could smell his breath if she breathed through her nose (she didn’t dare). “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? You have a little…” He waved in the direction of his neck and shoulder area.
Anna reached her hand up. “What do you mean I…?” Her fingers met something warm and wet. She reached further up, until she found a part of the back of her head that hurt, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. Anna pulled her fingers back to see them covered in red.
“Oh.”
Hiccup started to say something else, but a ringing had begun to fill her ears. It was followed by a sound like a rushing wave, growing louder until suddenly the red of her fingers spread to the rest of her sight.
Anna awoke in a cold sweat. Yellow, buttery sunlight shone on the ceiling. Her body felt numb, and she only distantly realized that she lay in a bed. It took a few more seconds to realize that something wrapped her head.
“Hey, you’re awake.”
A chair shifted to her right. She looked to see Hiccup smile crookedly down at her. Hadn’t he been sick earlier? He still looked kind of sick. “What happened?”
“You got a bump on the back of your head, but luckily it wasn’t a concussion.”
“Oh. So did you get food poisoning?”
“Yeah. I…I have a question for you,” he said, looking nervous.
Anna slowly sat up. Her legs swung over the side of the bed, opposite him, and she braced her hands on either side of her knees. “Yes?”
“Remember how the first time we met you called it a date? Could I take you out on another date? A real one this time?”
That.
Well.
That was the last question Anna had seen coming.
She was so surprised she nearly laughed, but she resisted it. Something told her now wasn’t the time. “That’s unexpected.”
“Is it? Didn’t you declare yourself my girlfriend?” he joked.
“To make you feel better, you goober.” Anna lightly kicked her foot. It knocked into his pant leg. “You barely know me.”
“I know enough to know that you tried to help someone like me. I know you spoke Norwegian, so I learnt to speak it, too.”
Anna crossed her arms. She tilted her head at him, studying him. “…Did you really come all the way out here on the off chance of finding me?”
“Well, I didn’t just—”
“Suffer through the rest of high school. Graduate high school. Learn a whole new language. Move to an entire new continent and leave behind everything you know, all for a girl you met years and years ago who thought she’d dreamed the whole thing up. Really?”
Hiccup sputtered, waving his hands to get her to stop but still smiling. “—Wait, hang on, let me finish—” Anna opened her mouth to do no such thing but his hands closed around hers. “I moved here because I figured out my dream and I worked really hard and I got the scholarship, okay? I wanted to find you and say thank you, but I did this for me, too.”
“Well, here I am. You found me and now you’ve said thank you.”
“Yes, but—okay, first of all, that sounds like a bad excuse for a thank you, just saying it like that. The least I can do is take you somewhere. But even then, even aside from that, I just…I want to spend time with you. I’d like to get to know you.”
Oh. He was serious about this. Anna ducked her head. Her hands pulled out of his, and she wrapped them around herself.
“…You know what I remember from that night? I remember crying a lot. I…told you a lot of things that I shouldn’t have been telling—as in, I dumped a lot of my problems on you. I know to you that it feels like all that happened years ago, but…that’s not what it’s like for me. I still cry about those things. I’m still messed up over them.”
Anna took a deep breath, and willed herself to look up. “…I don’t know if I’m the best person to date. That’s a serious commitment, you know? What if I ruin it somehow? What if I make those memories bad for you?”
Hiccup was silent. Around them, background noise filtered in, but from outside of the room. Inside the walls of the college infirmary it was just them. With the way the light came in through the windows, it must have been nearing evening. There went her afternoon classes. At least she didn’t have to work that day.
“…I think it’s less a matter of you being the perfect one to date as it is both of our messed up–ness being compatible, you know? Because if you think I don’t have issues, well,” he snorted, “you’ll want to think again. Unless you actually thought I’ve become perfect by now?”
Anna rolled her eyes. “Of course not. But this is still a pretty big step.”
“Does it have to be? Couldn’t it be like…friendship, but next level? I’ve heard that the best relationships are based on friendship. And—no, I see you want to interrupt me. But I’m not done. Okay? Just wait.” Anna shut her mouth and pouted. “Anyways, what was I saying? Right. Whatever you might say, I think that when you tried to help me, a complete stranger, out of the goodness of your heart, it was a really good way of knowing that I want you in my life. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell you just how much you talking to me helped me when I needed it most. You changed the direction of my life. And I think, I think that based on that, you don’t just…wait around to get better before you decide to get close to someone. I think that people get better when other people care about them. Isn’t it like that with your friends?”
Anna swallowed thickly. What he said was true. She didn’t know where she’d be without her friends. They’d been with her even when she hadn’t wanted to be with herself, and they were the best family she’d ever had. She didn’t think her voice would work right then, so she nodded.
Hiccup held his hand out, palm up. Not reaching for her, but hovering between them. An open invitation. An offering.
“I would like to care about you for as long as I know you. Is that okay?”
Anna sniffled, then giggled as a thought hit her. Both the times they’d met, they hadn’t looked remotely like their best, and yet there she was getting asked out of all things. Her with gauze on her head, him with food poisoning. It should’ve been a nightmare.
But her dream hadn’t ended that way, not by a long shot. If nothing else, then going on a date with this boy would certainly be interesting. Except this time she wouldn’t be dreaming.
Anna placed her hand and trust in his palm, letting his fingers wrap around both.
“Yes, it is.”