Chapter 19 #2
No, in fact, she showed remarkable restraint, letting the rest of the morning unfold as normally as it could, quietly observing Bella and Aster chatter about trivialities.
Unlike Yasmine, Aster seemed uninterested in pressing Bella for information.
It was a tactic Yasmine had never considered, and somehow it coaxed more out of Bella in a single afternoon than Yasmine had managed in a month.
Aster served them breakfast, and they discussed silly, annoyingly inconsequential things, like their favorite musicians; Aster showed Bella her iPod Nano full of exclusively Joan Jett songs, and Bella told Aster about the Paramore concert she’d seen at Gillette Stadium a few years back.
She even showed them a few pictures, which Yasmine tried not to stare too intently at.
Bella had pink hair then, and she was wearing a Walpole High School crewneck. A few friends were posed next to her, throwing up peace signs.
It was all incredibly late 2000s.
So she did go to high school there? That timeline makes no sense.
Still, Yasmine didn’t dare interrupt. Aster was either the least skeptical person on Earth, or an incredible detective, because the information just kept coming.
“This is Polly, this is Trish, and this is Monica,” Bella said, her gel-tip nail pointing at various teenage faces on her phone screen.
“Polly and Trish are both moms now, and Monica’s this big-time lawyer out in Cali.
I’d love to visit her sometime. We always promised we’d get matching tattoos once we both landed our dream jobs. Guess I have to message her now.”
Yasmine’s stomach turned. The sincerity in her voice made her even more confused. She couldn’t possibly mean that working in Yasmine’s lab had actually been her dream?
“It’s fun you made so many friends,” Aster said, spooning yogurt into her mouth absentmindedly. “I kind of wish I’d gotten to go to human high school. I’ve always wondered what algebra actually is.”
“You still can go, if you want,” Bella said, a genuine look of conviction on her face. “I’d be happy to forge you the papers.”
Aster chuckled. “I think I’ll wait until Rafael’s walking and talking before I consider becoming a teen mom.”
“Okay, I’m sorry, but what the hell am I missing?”
Yasmine popped their dreamy little bubble with a needle. She had tried to restrain herself, she really had, but she couldn’t help it. She needed to know.
Aster frowned. “I don’t know, what are you missing?”
“I don’t know, maybe how Bella, a two-thousand year old woman, went to high school in 2014?”
Bella’s face flushed. Yasmine had never seen it turn that color. She averted her eyes, closing her phone and swirling the small spoon in her yogurt bowl.
“Um, I think that’s quite obvious,” Aster said, eyes sliding from her to Bella, looking concerned. “She went because she wanted to?”
“Why would anyone want to go to human high school? In the United States, of all places? You’re lucky if they teach you about something that transpired before George Washington was born.”
Aster looked at her like she was being tone deaf, and Bella sighed. She stood, and her chair scraped unpleasantly against the floor. It was an antique—1867 from Vienna with steam-bent wood—one that Yasmine had let Sylvia borrow. Here it had been reduced to a kitchen effigy stained with applesauce.
“What? Am I wrong?” Yasmine mumbled, but she was being thoroughly ignored.
“Thank you for the breakfast, Aster,” Bella said. “It was a pleasure meeting you. If you ever feel compelled to murder me in the future, I hope our brief companionship deters you from it, or at least gives you a bit of hesitation. I’ll wash and iron your clothes and get them back to you tomorrow.”
Aster laughed, rising as well to shake her hand.
“Ironing isn’t necessary.”
“Oh, good. Because I don’t own one.”
They shared another laugh and Yasmine felt a brief and furious jealousy. It wasn’t that they couldn’t be friends—Yasmine could share—but why did she feel like she was on the outside of something?
Yasmine said goodbye next, and it all felt so procedural.
Bella grabbed her coat and shucked on a tote bag.
As she was tying her boots, Aster gave Yasmine a withering look that said fix that, but Yasmine had no idea what exactly she was supposed to fix.
They made their way silently down the stairs, each of their footfalls timed one after another, so Bella was always a step too far ahead.
Outside, the air was humid and miserable, and Yasmine’s first instinct was to call a car. Whatever was wrong between them, they could right it at home—or, well, a home. She dug into her pocket for her phone, but before she could ring Rebecca, Bella was already walking.
“Where are you going?” Yasmine called after her.
“Feel free to take the car,” Bella shouted into the wind. “I need some fresh air.”
Yasmine balked. She felt like her stomach was tied on a string, and Bella was tugging it like a carcass along the pavement. There was no other option—of course she was going to follow her.
Bella regarded her decision with nothing but a glance as Yasmine jogged up to her side.
“You consider this fresh?” Yasmine said. “It feels like we’re inside an aquarium.”
Bella didn’t reply. A car rushed past them, spraying the sidewalk with muck, and normally Bella would dodge out of the way, but she just singlemindedly walked forward, letting the water soak into the hem of her jeans.
“Did I offend you?” Yasmine asked, heaving out an exasperated breath. “Well, of course I did. But can you spell it out for me, just this once? I feel like my foot lives in my mouth whenever I’m around you.”
Bella let out a laugh, but it was dry and humorless.
“You didn’t offend me. Really.”
She said it in a completely unreadable tone. Her face didn’t help either. She was only allowing Yasmine to see the side of it, and as usual it was perfectly manicured, her lips not quite a smile or a frown.
Yasmine sighed, feeling woefully unequipped. She hadn’t apologized to anyone in at least seven hundred years. Trying to summon one now, she felt like one of those dogs whose owners taught them to communicate through buttons on the floor.
So instead, she said, “Can you slow down?”
“I’m twice your age, Yasmine. Shouldn’t you be doing laps around me?”
“Bella.”
“Yes?”
Bella allowed Yasmine another sliver of her face. Just a tenth of it, a slight look to the left. But it was enough to urge Yasmine on.
“Look, I’m… I’m sorry if I’ve been abrasive,” she said. “And overbearing. And probably, on the whole, quite unpleasant to be around.”
That tore a short laugh out of her walking companion—and lowered her walking speed by a few seconds. It was enough for Yasmine to catch her breath.
“It’s just—it’s been a very long time since I’ve had a friend,” she continued, throat pinching with embarrassment at such a juvenile confession, and Bella raised an eyebrow; Yasmine read her meaning.
“Sylvia doesn’t count. She’s more like an old purse that I can’t throw away for sentimental reasons. ”
The edge of Bella's lip tugged up, an encouraging sign. Yasmine’s lungs tightened.
She knew what she wanted to say, but it felt so small and fragile in her chest. She hadn’t touched the memory in a long time, and it was still tender.
Bella seemed to read her mind, arching that expectant eyebrow. It was enough.
“After my parents and my brother passed,” Yasmine began shakily. “This human family briefly took me in. They had a girl who was roughly my age, named Tabitha. We both liked cows, and playing in the dirt. That’s pretty much equivalent to being platonic soulmates when you’re small.”
The tug at Bella’s lips had become a full-fledged smile. It was such a contrast to the horrible dread Yasmine felt at dredging up the memory.
“During the summer, Tabitha went off to her grandmother’s.
I wasn’t allowed to come, because her grandmother only had one extra bed.
I hated being left alone. It terrified me, it made me so angry—” Yasmine took a breath in, “—that when Tabitha returned, I gave her a nightmare so bad that she ran into the woods, crying and screaming. She was lost in there for an entire weekend.”
Yasmine glanced at Bella’s face, waiting for it to fall; waiting for the inevitable horror. But her expression remained remarkably unmoved.
“That’s unfortunate,” Bella said. “Did you give her the nightmare on purpose?”
Yasmine blinked. She’d never been asked that before, nor had she considered it.
“I can’t remember,” Yasmine said. “But it feels as if I did. I must have. They kicked me out after that, and I lived by myself for a very long time. I’ve had friends here and there since, but when I lose my temper, I tend to…”
Yasmine hovered her hands an inch from her skull, then mimicked an explosion.
“Do your powers actually kill people?”
“No, not usually,” Yasmine said. “They just slowly drive them insane.”
“Huh. I must be the odd one out, then,” Bella said. “Knowing you has made me feel way more sane than I ever have before.”
Yasmine glanced up at her, startled. Bella was looking to the side, at a lake, where several ducklings were chasing after their darting mother.
Yasmine wasn’t sure when they’d entered Central Park; it was a place she typically avoided at all costs, as it was always so packed with people living lives so apart from her own, but it was different with Bella. They blended in.
“...Really?” Yasmine ventured, hoping she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.
Bella turned toward her, and smiled. It wasn’t forced, or pitiful. “You know when you move to a new city, and suddenly no one knows about that time in first grade when you cried in front of the class?”
Yasmine squinted at her, feeling lost. “Not particularly.”
Bella laughed. “Not that exact scenario. I just mean the feeling of it. Of being brand new.”
They came to the edge of the pond, and Bella knelt down by the ridge of it, silently inviting Yasmine to join her. So she did.
“Like reinventing yourself?” Yasmine asked.