Chapter 6 All Panic, no Disco #2
The scrolling is now a rhythm too. Scroll.
Scratch. Scroll. Scratch. Scratch-scratch-scratch.
It used to be soft and far away, a story happening in the walls I could ignore.
Now it is right behind the plaster as if something folds itself thin and runs the length of the studs, looking for a weak point.
Every time it hits the corner by my closet, the hair along my arms lifts and my skin understands without asking my brain that it is close.
“Honey?” My mother’s voice is outside the door. Maple syrup poured over anxiety.
I snap the laptop shut so fast as I look up. I push my sleeves down to my knuckles, fingers clawing at the sweater cuffs, but the sweater is dangerous. It catches on the new things on my arms and makes me feel like I will scream.
“Yeah,” my voice says, too bright. My throat feels weird, uh, up in the back. Higher? Are the bones wrong there, or have they always been like that I’ve just never felt them? “Just… homework.”
The door opens anyway, and I want to snarl at the bright band of hallway light across my carpet but I smile instead. My mother does the thing with her face where she thinks she is hiding fear. Fresh blowout, a smear of lip gloss that smells like fake vanilla.
She brings a mug that smells like chamomile, honey, lemon.
“Stress tea.” She smiles too hard. “You looked tired again.” She sets the mug on my bedside table next to the laptop.
The steam curls and tickles my nose. I want to sneeze, but sneezing feels like my face might detach.
“You know we’re here for you, right? If it’s… girl things. Or just… kid things.”
She calls me kid even though last week she told me I seem older than some of the teachers at school.
My father stands behind her, hands on the doorframe like it’s holding him up. “We can call Dr. Han in the morning if your skin is still, ah, doing that.” He tries not to look at my wrists. I tucked everything away, but there are always edges you can’t tuck.
“There’s a lot of hair,” I mumble, and the word hair feels stupid in my mouth. This isn’t hair. “It’s not, like, weird. Just… weird.”
“Hormones are a rollercoaster,” my mother says, relieved to have a script. “We can get wax. Threading. Dermaplaning. People remove everything now. It’s trendy. Remember how Gregg’s daughter got her eyebrows laminated? Eyebrows, Briar.”
Briar. My name. It comes like someone calling me from far down a hallway. Why does it sound sharp and leaf-shivery? I nod. Smile. “So trendy.”
“And that noise.” My father tilts his head.
He’s listening, but he isn’t hearing it how I hear it.
To him it probably is a little scratch, like paper on paper.
Not the precise claws dragging at plaster to mark a path.
“I’ll call an exterminator. They get in anywhere there’s warmth, this time of year. ”
Old house. Warmth. The words click in my bones. I imagine the layout of our walls as tunnels. I could draw the studs with my eyes closed. There is a knot in the wood behind my headboard shaped like a narrow eye. I know it’s there without looking.
I want to bite the drywall. I want to sink my teeth into it and feel as the cardboard and plaster gives way.
“Mice,” my mother says, wrinkling her nose while I barely listen to what she’s saying. “We’ll set humane traps. Poor little things…. Did I ever tell you about that mouse doll you got given for your christening? It just appeared one day, like a talisman.”
My stomach flips. Something in me screams out to hide it, to protect it, though there’s nothing secret about that doll.
I casually put my body between her and it.
I can smell the faint dust-sweetness from inside.
It smells like the inside of a piano, like lavender sachets crushed under time. Like something else now too.
Warm skin. Cloth warmed by skin.
“I’m fine,” I say, my words too thick. Maybe she hears it. She looks at my mouth. Her eyes soften. “Briar… you’ve been under a lot of pressure. Queen Bee is a hard job, sometimes you have to show your claws, not just be mean with your words.” She says with a laugh that asks to be laughed at.
I picture Maya by the lockers, fumbling with the combination that first day while I leaned against the metal, watching the way her throat worked when she swallowed.
I said something then to set the tone. I meant it to be a little surgical strike, just deep enough to leave an ache.
What came out of me instead was a hiss around sharpened teeth.
It made her flinch, her hand slipped on the dial, the locker clanged, and a thin joy licked up my spine like a flame.
The memory makes my fingers curl. Nails. No. Not nails.
“I’m not mean.” I say.
She tilts her head. The lie sits in the air, invisible but dense.
“I’m just… efficient.” I want to take the word back as soon as I use it. It’s a word teachers use to compliment me. It makes a shape that’s all wrong.
“We love you,” my father says, seeing something he doesn’t understand and stepping around it like a puddle. He squeezes my shoulder—one, two, three—and then lets go fast, as if my sweater pricked him. “Try the tea. We can watch something stupid tomorrow. Fun stupid.”
They leave, and I hold my breath until the light stripe is gone, and the dark folds over the carpet again.