Herring

Desperate

~

We're gonna pick up the pace from here on out. And it's not gonna slow down. In fact, it's only gonna get faster, harder, worse.

Because that's what you want isn't it.

Fucking psycho.

~

The first day back, I learned that being dead—even temporarily, even technically—makes you a celebrity. Not the good kind.

I walked through the campus gates and felt the eyes before I saw them. A shift in the air. A ripple of attention that followed me like a f*****g shadow. Whispers I couldn't quite catch but understood perfectly.

That's her. The one from the news. The bridge girl. Fish girl. Dead girl walking.

I'm not dead, you absolute f*****g dickheads. I'm right here. Breathing. Bleeding internally, maybe, but breathing.

My ribs ached with every step. My ankle protested the weight. My hand, still wrapped in a lighter bandage now, throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I was a walking medical chart, and everyone was reading it.

I kept my eyes forward. The middle distance. That safe altitude where you're technically looking at the world without inviting it to look back. It had worked before. Before the fish. Before the bridge. Before I became a headline.

It wasn't working now.

The main building loomed. I aimed for it like a ship aiming for harbor in a storm. Halfway there, they materialized. The decorative one—the girl with the face that suggested she'd been pretty her whole life and found it sufficient—and her two satellites. They stepped into my path like they'd rehearsed it. Maybe they had. Maybe they'd been waiting.

Decorative Girl: "Oh my god. You're actually alive."

Her voice was sweet. Poisonously sweet. The kind of sweet that rots your teeth just hearing it.

Deia: "Observant."

Decorative Girl: "We saw you on the news. Like, everyone saw you. You were in that truck. The one that went off the bridge. What the f**k was that about?"

Satellite One: "Were you, like, dating a criminal or something?"

Satellite Two: "My mom said you probably were one. A criminal, I mean. She said normal people don't end up in police chases."

I stared at them. My hand throbbed. My ribs ached. The ring on my finger—Varietta's ring, my ring now—felt suddenly heavy.

Deia: "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's it. That's the whole story."

Decorative Girl: "That's boring. There has to be more. Did you see anyone die? Was there blood? My cousin said there was blood everywhere."

There was water. There was cold. There was a woman with dead eyes pushing me down into the dark so she could save herself. There was my own voice, somewhere deep in the black, screaming that I wouldn't die, I wouldn't, I f*****g wouldn't—

Deia: "I don't remember much."

Lie. I remembered everything. Every second. Every sensation. The water. The pressure. The face. The hands on my shoulders shoving me down. The ring coming off in my grip. The slow, cold drift toward nothing. I remembered all of it. I just wasn't going to give it to her. She hadn't earned it.

Fuckass decorative girl opened her mouth to ask something else—something worse, something designed to cut—and a voice cut through instead.

Boy: "Hey. Leave her alone."

We all turned. He was standing a few feet away, bag slung over one shoulder, expression caught between irritation and something softer. Brown hair, slightly too long. Brown eyes, slightly too kind. The kind of face you'd trust with a secret and regret it later. He wasn't tall enough to be imposing, but he stood like he didn't care. Like he'd decided he was taking up this space and everyone else could deal with it.

Decorative Girl: "We were just talking."

Boy: "You were being a d**k. There's a difference. You should learn it."

Satellite One: "Who even are you?"

Boy: "Someone who watched the same news and has basic human decency. Which apparently puts me in the minority."

Decorative Girl looked at him. Looked at me. Made a calculation behind those pretty, empty eyes and decided whatever social capital she'd gain from tormenting me wasn't worth the friction.

Decorative Girl: "Whatever. She's not that interesting anyway."

They left. The air shifted again. The boy looked at me.

Boy: "You okay?"

Deia: "Fine."

Boy: "You don't look fine."

Deia: "I look how I look. Fine is a spectrum."

He almost smiled. Almost. It flickered at the corner of his mouth and then vanished, like he'd thought better of it.

Boy: "I'm Casith. We have Aldaine's class together. You sit in the fourth row. I sit in the back. You've never noticed me, which is fine. Most people don't."

Casith. Fourth row. Back of the class. I had noticed him. He was right. I never noticed anyone. I was too busy trying not to be noticed myself.

Deia: "Deia."

Casith: "I know. Everyone knows."

Right. Of course they do. Fish girl. Bridge girl. Dead girl. I'm famous for all the wrong reasons.

Casith: "If they bother you again, let me know. I'm good at telling people to f**k off. It's my only skill."

Deia: "Noted."

He nodded. Shifted his bag. Seemed like he wanted to say something else, then decided against it. He walked away. I watched him go. He had a nice walk. Unhurried. Like he wasn't afraid of taking up space.

Casith. Huh. What even is a Casith.

I filed it away in the drawer of things I didn't have time to think about, which was already overflowing.

Class was class. Aldaine droned about something—distribution, maybe, or marginal something, or Tuesday, I didn't know, I wasn't listening. I sat in my usual seat, fourth row, and stared at the whiteboard without seeing it. The words blurred. The numbers meant nothing. I was a body in a chair. A pulse in a room. That was all.

The girl beside me—the one who smelled expensive and had made a territorial decision about proximity weeks ago—had apparently upgraded her decision. She sat two seats away now. A buffer zone. Like I was contagious. Like drowning was something you could catch.

Good. Stay there. Stay far away. I don't want your proximity. I don't want anyone's proximity. I want to be left alone in my grey apartment with my cactus and my kettle and my beautiful, lumpy bed.

Class ended. I gathered my things. Left. The hallway swallowed me again, full of eyes and whispers and the particular cruelty of people who had never almost died and didn't know how easy it was.

Home.

The key turned. The door opened. The smell of dust and old tea hit me. Aldy sat on the windowsill, slightly greener than before—the watering had helped—and looked at me with his eternal, impassive judgment.

Deia: "I know. I'm a mess. You don't have to say it."

He didn't. Cacti are good like that.

I sat on the floor. My floor. My beautiful, correctly-textured floor. I pressed my palms to the linoleum and breathed. In. Out. The ribs complained. The hand throbbed. The ankle ached. I was a symphony of damage, and the music was s**t.

Okay. I went back. I survived. Day one, done. Now I just have to do it again. And again. And again. Until I graduate or die, whichever comes first.

Probably die. Statistically. Given recent events.

A knock at the door.

I didn't move. Maybe if I stayed perfectly still, they'd go away. Maybe if I didn't breathe, they'd assume no one was home. Maybe—

Landlord: "Miss Nira. I know you're in there. I heard you come in."

Fuck.

I hauled myself up. Opened the door. He stood there—Mr. Calloway, a thin man with a thinner smile, holding a piece of paper like it was a weapon. Which, functionally, it was.

Landlord: "Rent increase. Effective next month. Five hundred dollars."

The words landed like stones.

Deia: "Five hundred."

Landlord: "Market rates. Property values in this area have gone up. I'm just keeping pace."

Deia: "I can't afford that."

Landlord: "That's not really my problem, Miss Nira."

Deia: "I almost died. Two weeks ago. I was in the hospital. I have medical bills. I have—"

Landlord: "And I'm very sorry to hear that. Truly. But the rent is the rent. You have thirty days to either pay the new amount or find alternative housing."

His voice was flat. Professional. The voice of a man who had said these words so many times they'd lost all meaning. He wasn't cruel. He wasn't kind. He was just... indifferent. A functionary of a system that didn't care whether I lived or died, only whether my checks cleared.

Deia: "Please."

The word came out smaller than I intended. Smaller than I wanted. It hung in the air between us, naked and pathetic.

Landlord: "I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do."

He handed me the paper. I took it. He left. The door closed. I stood there, holding the rent increase, and something inside me cracked.

Not dramatically. Not with tears or screams or the throwing of objects. Just a quiet, internal fracture. The sound of a structure that had been holding on by threads finally giving way.

I slid down the door. Sat on the floor. My floor. The floor I'd kissed three days ago because I was so grateful to be home. The floor I might lose in thirty days because I couldn't afford to keep it.

I almost died. I almost f*****g died. And for what. For this. For a rent increase and a stack of medical bills and a bike with a snapped chain and a job I walked out of and a life that was barely holding together before any of this happened. I survived the water. I survived Varietta. I survived the cold and the dark and my own lungs filling with river. And now I'm going to lose my home because I can't afford five hundred extra dollars a month.

What was the point. What the f**k was the point of surviving if this is what I survived for.

I didn't cry. I wanted to. The tears were there, somewhere behind my eyes, but they wouldn't come. Maybe I'd used them all up. Maybe I was too tired. Maybe crying was a luxury I couldn't afford anymore, like everything else.

I sat on the floor for a long time. The paper crumpled in my hand. The ring on my finger caught the light—pink and gold and green—and I stared at it without seeing it. Thinking. Not thinking. Existing in the space between thoughts, which was the only space that didn't hurt.

Work.

I went. Not because I wanted to. Because I had to. Because maybe—maybe—if I could pick up more hours, if I could cover extra shifts, if I could do the impossible math of a life that didn't add up, I could make it work. I could keep my floor. My walls. My window. My Aldy. My bed.

The warehouse was cold and loud, same as always. I found my manager—a woman named Denise who looked at me like I was a problem she hadn't solved yet—and asked.

Deia: "I need more hours. Whatever you've got. Nights. Weekends. I'll take anything."

Denise: "You're already at the max I can give you. Union rules. Plus, you're still recovering. Look at you. You can barely walk."

Deia: "I can walk fine."

Denise: "You're limping."

Deia: "Limping is walking. It's just walking with character."

She didn't laugh.

Denise: "I'm sorry. There's nothing available. Everyone's booked solid through the end of the month. If something opens up, I'll let you know. But don't count on it."

Don't count on it. Don't count on anything. Don't count on anyone. The only thing you can count on is the math not adding up and the bills coming due and the world continuing to not give a single solitary s**t whether you make it or not.

I nodded. Turned. Walked out—limped out, fine, limping is just walking with character—and stood in the cold Seattle air, breathing. The rain had started again. Of course it had.

What now? What the f**k now?

My mind went blank. Then, slowly, an image surfaced in my head. Falk Street. The wall. The alley. The two men who had tried to rob me before the police arrived and turned everything into chaos. They had offered me something, in their way. A transaction. Violence for money. I had said no. Or rather, the police had said no for me.

But the police weren't here now.

I need money. I need a lot of money. I need it fast. And the only people I know who have money—real money, the kind that doesn't come from eleven-dollar-an-hour warehouse shifts—are criminals.

Varietta was a criminal. She had money. She had a ring worth more than my entire existence. Anders was a criminal, probably. He had three coats and a train ticket and the calm of someone who'd never worried about rent in his life.

The men in the alley. They were criminals too. Small-time. Desperate. Like me.

I didn't have a plan. I had an impulse. A direction. A vague, stupid, probably suicidal idea that I was going to walk back to the place where I was almost robbed and hope the people who almost robbed me were still there. And then what? Ask them for a job? Ask them to teach me how to be a criminal? Offer myself up as... what? A partner? A pawn? A body to be used and discarded?

I didn't know. I didn't f*****g know.

But I knew I needed money. And I knew the legal world had nothing left to offer me. The legal world had given me a rent increase and a limp and a stack of medical bills and a manager who said don't count on it.

So I started walking.

Falk Street. The wall with my words on it. f*****g TIRED. Still there, maybe. Or maybe painted over. Maybe erased. Maybe I'd be erased too, soon. But not yet. Not f*****g yet.

I walked. The rain fell. The ring on my finger caught the light—pink and gold and green—and I thought about Varietta. About how she'd looked at the bridge barricade like it was a puzzle she'd already solved. About how she'd driven off the edge with the same emotional register as ordering coffee. About how she'd pushed me down into the dark to save herself.

She was a monster. But she was a monster who knew how to survive. And right now, survival was the only thing I had left.

Teach me, I thought, to no one. To her ghost. To the ring. To the universe itself.

Teach me how to be a monster too.