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Something is wrong with her emotions.
That has always been true about her. If feelings are a liquid and the body a vessel to hold them in, then hers came defective out of its box; covered in cracks and chips and hastily taped back together multiple times over. Patched up just enough to hold some of it in sometimes—if you looked at it just right, held it up at a precise angle on a rare good day—but never enough to stop the inevitable spillover from eventually happening.
A broken teacup trying to carry an entire ocean inside it.
She’s had that problem for her entire life. It’s not a problem she enjoys having to deal with, but it’s at least familiar at this point.
The way things are now, however…
“…daine? Hey, Adaine!”
“Hm?” She startles at the sudden sound of Riz’s voice and snaps her head up to find him squinting strangely at her from his seat across the table. A small part of her is tempted to ask if he needs glasses if he’s struggling to see someone so close by to him. But the words sit heavy in her throat, impossible to force out, and the idea falls back into the void it came from. A quiet, “I’m sorry, what was that?” is what comes out instead.
Riz opens his mouth to answer, then closes it again, brow furrowing deeper. “You seem… kinda out of it today,” he eventually says, more statement than question.
“Yeah,” Fig suddenly chimes in from her right. Adaine jumps. Only now does she notice the chatter usually surrounding their lunch table has gone eerily quiet as attention has shifted to her. When did that happen? “I didn’t wanna say anything, but you’ve kinda been staring daggers into your sandwich for like, five minutes now.”
She blinks, glances back down at the sandwich Jawbone had made for her to take with her to school this morning sitting untouched in front of her.
“Is there something wrong with it?” Gorgug wonders. “The sandwich, I mean?”
Fabian scoffs. “How would she know? She hasn’t even had it yet.”
“Oh, maybe she got like, a vision about it,” Kristen offers.
“Why would she have a vision about a sandwich? It’s a sandwich. ”
“Well, yeah. But maybe if it’s like a bad sandwich-”
“The sandwich is fine,” Adaine huffs out flatly, interrupting them both. The sound of Fabian’s voice pitching upwards the way it always does when he starts squabbling with one of them is piercing and hurts her ears. And she frankly doesn’t want to listen to whatever inane ideas Kristen has about the way her visions work (not that she has much of an idea herself at this point). She should say as much to them. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Something about the idea of speaking the words out loud though settles like a ten ton weight in her chest.
Instead, before the ridiculous argument has another chance to take a foothold, she picks the sandwich up off the table and forces herself to take a bite out of it.
In spite of the fact that it’s filled with ingredients she knows she likes, it tastes of sawdust to her tongue.
She doesn’t say a word about it. She looks over at Kristen carefully with a brow raised, a silent question. Satisfied? Kristen, in return, puts her hands up in mock surrender. Fine, ok, whatever then. Fabian rolls his eye, muttering something about the absolute absurdity of the idea as he goes back to poking at his own lunch, and slowly the collective attention seems to slide off of her. For a moment, she thinks she’s successfully managed to avoid their suspicion.
But then she glances forward again, and Riz is still staring at her.
There’s a look in his eye—piercing and analytical—that she’s seen from him before, but only ever aimed at his mystery board. It’s the face he makes when he’s trying to break down the defenses of a particularly perplexing clue, searching for that chink in the armor that will lead him to the answer he’s searching for. It’s trained squarely on her now, and the thought of it being aimed at her, like she’s some new puzzle of the week for him to solve, should make her at least a bit annoyed.
And maybe it does. A little bit. Possibly.
“Are you sure you’re feeling ok, Adaine?”
And on another day she might laugh. Because that's the question, isn’t it? How she feels. Because how she feels is…
She feels…
It’s kind of like…
Once, early on in their friendship, alone and with no idea of what else to do, Fig had cast Calm Emotions on her while she was deep in the throes of a vicious panic attack. A very well meaning move, Adaine recognizes, but not one she looks back on fondly.
A bolt of placidity had suddenly surged through her spine. Her tense limbs went limp, her curled up posture sat up straighter. The vice-like grip surrounding her lungs was forcibly pried open, and her breathing abruptly went from fast and shallow gasps to slow, deep wheezes. Her heart still thumped heavy in her chest, but her breaths were no longer her own, controlled by something else. They stayed steady. She couldn’t fight it.
The tornado of thoughts swirling through her head—every abstract worry, all the panic and fear racing inside her—became fuzzy around their edges. Impossible to focus on. If she tried, something clouded her mind until the idea was lost to an impenetrable blank haze.
In an instant a tidal wave of foreign emotion slammed into her and smothered the wills of her own. In spite of the name of the spell, it wasn’t so much a feeling of calm that overwhelmed her as it was a feeling of being utterly depleted. Her own feelings were zapped of their energy, leaving her with nothing left to give. Nothing left to feel. Any attempt at feeling something new—surprise at the sensation of the spell, a jolt of anger at Fig for casting it, shame in herself for making Fig feel like she had to cast it—all met a similar fate: snuffed out like a weak flame on a flickering candle. When she tried to speak, ask what was going on (an enormous task in and of itself), her voice came out monotone, with no hint of emotion able to well up inside her to fuel it in any direction.
An emotional battery drained dry.
It’s something kind of like that.
Only Fig isn’t casting Calm Emotions on her right now—she promised never to do it again unless it was a true emergency. And she’s fairly certain sitting in the cafeteria with her friends during a perfectly normal lunch period doesn’t count as such.
But she can’t possibly begin to verbalize any of that.
“I’m fine,” she insists. She tries to sound reassuring, to pull something light out of her and give Riz something to latch onto and tell him she’s truly ok, but despite her efforts her tone comes out dull and sounds distant to her ears. Like it’s not her speaking, just a facsimile of her own voice. She swallows hard and turns her gaze over to the others before Riz gets a chance to respond. “What were we talking about?”
A wide grin stretches across Fig’s face as she tips her chair back. “Summer plans!” She leans over to her right and wraps an arm around Gorgug’s shoulders, much to his surprise. The fork he’s holding clatters onto his tray and he lets out a startled sound as she pulls him closer to her. “Me and Gorgug are startin’ a band, for real! Gonna be busy practicing all summer. We’re totally gonna shred, isn’t that right?”
“I uh, don’t think you can shred on drums.” He pauses, looking thoughtful. “Or at least, I don’t think you’re supposed to? …Can you?”
“Not with that attitude!” Fig responds, giving him a wink. He chuckles sheepishly and she lets him sit back up.
The others share their own plans easily as well: Fabian proudly tells them about the new sword training he’s going to start under the tutelage of his mother. A slightly red-faced Kristen mutters out her plans to use the break to spend more time with Tracker. Even Riz, though still eyeing her suspiciously, eventually relents and talks about some cases he wants to look into with his new official license. She listens quietly to it all, nodding along, thankful none of it requires her to give any kind of meaningful spoken response.
Then there’s a nudge against her shoulder. “What about you, girl?” Fig asks.
“What about me?”
“You got any fun plans for the summer?”
Somewhere, deep in her chest, a thread of embarrassment perks up and tries to coil its way up her spine. It’s weak and frayed, it won’t last long, but it’s just enough to heat her face up—because of course it is, of fucking course that’s what gets through in her right now. She stares back down at the table, fingers running absently over some faded name carved into the glossy surface. “No,” she forces out just as the thread snaps and dissolves back into the nothingness.
It’s absence doesn’t make her feel any better.
“Really?” Fabian’s tone is borderline incredulous. “You’ve got nothing?”
Summer plans have never been a thing for her before. She’s not sure where she would start with them now, let alone ‘fun’ ones.
She can’t say that.
She gives a half shrug.
“Well, that won’t do,” Fabian tuts. “We have to come up with something to do then.” She’s surprised at how easily the others agree to that.
“My parents used to take us out to the lake at the edge of town every summer. Do like, a whole cookout and everything,” Kristen suggests after a moment, briefly looking wistful. “Could do something like that.” There’s another quiet murmur of agreement around the table, then their focus is back on Adaine again.
The thought of going swimming makes her skin prickle. But at the same time, the idea of having friends who actually want to spend time with her outside of school, outside of the obligation that comes from them being in an adventuring party together, is… nice. Much nicer than her previous summers have ever gone: cooped up inside, forced to study until school came back around to occupy her time again. A break in that cycle… It makes her want to smile.
She really does try to. It’s an immense effort, but eventually her lips do manage to twitch upwards just the slightest bit. “That sounds nice,” she says, and she hopes it sounds sincere in spite of the low volume it comes out in.
Based on the look the others give her though, she doesn’t think she’s succeeded.
“I mean, we can do something else instead, that’s fine too. Was just an idea,” Kristen says, shrugging.
Wait. Fuck. No, she fucked this up.
“No, I-” Adaine shakes her head. She doesn’t want that. She likes the idea. Can she just fucking express that, please? “Really, it’s fine. I meant it.” She did. Truly.
Why can’t she sound like it then?
“Are ou sure?” Gorgug asks, head tilted. “Cause, I mean, you don’t seem super into it. Which is cool,” he adds hastily. “You can speak up if you don’t like it, or whatever.”
Adaine grunts—a spark of frustration caught in her throat. It quickly fades, leaving her nothing to work with again. Nothing to guide her into putting into words… whatever this all is. She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a breath. Her hands flex into fists and press against her lap. Why is this so hard?
Why can’t she just be normal for once?
“I'm trying. Really, I am." She’s not sure if she’s saying that in response to Gorgug or to herself.
Riz’s eyes narrow inquisitively again. “What does that mean?”
“It’s… That I’m having… I can’t…” The words lock up. Too difficult to say, not enough energy in her to say them, so her brain shuts them down. The numb feeling with its fuzzy haze threatens to creep in. Take her over.
She can’t do this.
A strangled sound escapes her—meant to be an apology but hardly recognizable as such—as she abruptly stands up from her seat, grabs her bag, and rushes out the door, ignoring the frantic calls of her name from the others.
The barely eaten sandwich winds up in the trash. There’s another thing to feel guilty about. Great.
She hugs her arms tightly as she walks hurriedly through the hallway. This is all just so fucking stupid . They’re her friends, she likes talking with them. And amazingly enough, they actually like hearing from her too. She knows that! Expressing herself shouldn’t be this fucking hard with them.
It didn’t used to be. Sometimes she’d become too overwhelmed with emotion to speak, but this…
It’s the exact opposite of the problem she’s always had:
A teacup, still horribly cracked and chipped and irreparably broken, but now with nothing to fill it with. The faucet’s been shut off, little more than the occasional drip coming out to spiral into the drain below.
From one extreme to another.
She pushes the door to the library open with her shoulder and all but collapses against one of the tables in the back corner. The place is deserted, just as it almost always is, and she has never been more grateful for it. Her crystal buzzes repeatedly in her pocket. She ignores it, letting her head sink into her hands as she sighs. Tries to focus on her breathing the way Jawbone taught her.
Jawbone…
This is because of the meds he gave to her. It has to be. This has only become a problem in the last few weeks since prom. Vaguely, she remembers him mentioning something to her about the possibility of side effects with the medication, and that they could be disorienting. Is this what he meant?
Should she… tell him about this? He’d want to know about this kind of thing, right? But… he’s been so kind to her, and she doesn’t want to be any more of a bother. It’s not that the medication isn’t technically working; she has had fewer panic attacks these last few weeks since she started taking them.
Maybe that’s because it’s harder to panic when you don’t feel much of anything.
Her crystal keeps buzzing in her pocket. Without looking at the screen she flicks the switch on the side to silence it completely. She drops her head onto the table with a soft thud, relishing in the cool texture of it. She doesn’t think she can manage talking anymore today. Not with the others, or with Jawbone. She doubts this will be the end of it though.
She sighs, blowing out an eight breath count. She has time to figure something out not to worry them. She hopes.
Maybe by then she’ll manage to feel something again too.