Tales of MU

In Which Mackenzie Doesn’t Climax In Public

“Is she coming this way?” I asked.

“No,” Nicki said. “She’s not even looking… do we need to vanish?”

I looked around, sparing only a quick glance behind me at where Twyla was talking to a couple friends, rather animatedly from the way she was waving her hands around. I supposed that might mean she was in a good mood, but on the other hand it could mean she was ranting. The Twyla I barely knew wasn’t usually that animated.

The pre-dance crowd was spread out widely enough that it was only a crowd by numbers rather than density. Short of leaving or heading inside the union for a while, there weren’t a whole lot of options… ducking out until things got a little darker and a little busier in the vicinity of the dance wouldn’t exactly be a terrible thing. I’d still be talking to Nicki, so it wouldn’t be like going to hide alone in a dark corner… in fact, it might make it easier to get to know her if we went somewhere more quiet.

That sounded reasonable inside my head, but it felt like an excuse… a way of taking my desire to not face Twyla and spin it around into something where I was actually being confident and sociable.

The conflict left me standing there frozen for a second, during which I fully expected Twyla to turn a bit, catch a glimpse of me, and take the decision out of my hands. She didn’t, though. She just kept talking to her friends. It was weirdly reassuring to realize that I wasn’t the center of her world. Whatever she blamed me for, she wasn’t invested enough in her anger to be seeking me out everywhere she went. If she did see me, maybe she would just feel frustrated for a second and then brush it off.

As thoughts went, “maybe we can coexist” wasn’t as nice as “maybe we could be friends” but it was better than having another self-proclaimed enemy.

On the other hand, maybe it would be better to know for sure than to dwell forever on maybes.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, and it was only after I had done so that I realized that I probably should have felt self-conscious about doing that in front of Nicki.

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Do you want to bug out? Because I can try to stand between you, or cover you… or make up a cover story. Oh, but that would only matter if she sees you… I could…”

“Actually, I can’t believe I’m saying this,” I said, “but I might as well go over and ask how she’s doing… I mean, if we don’t bump into each other on the dance floor, we’re going to see each other in class, right?”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can’t do anything if she’s going to flat out hate me, but just ignoring her now doesn’t give her any reason not to. You can only live your life as a soap opera for so long before it starts to feel ridiculous.”

She kind of smiled faintly at that, and I wondered if it sounded corny to her… probably. I had no idea where I’d pulled that line out of. It was the sort of thing I usually thought but kept to myself. That seemed like the better move. Something about being around Nicki was making me kind of… I don’t know, careless.

“Do… do you want moral support?” she asked me. The way she hesitated, I thought it was possible that she’d rather stay out of my drama, but I couldn’t help clinging to the offer like a lifeline anyway.

“If you don’t mind,” I said. I smiled weakly. “This way it’s like we’re all classmates.”

“Um, we are all classmates,” Nicki said.

“I mean, it’s not just me going up to talk to her because of the awkward misunderstanding,” I said. “I mean, I am doing that, but it’ll seem less like it’s just that.”

“Is it possible that you overthink these things?” Nicki said.

“Excuse me, but what were you saying about using Professor Stone’s class as an excuse to talk to me?” I asked.

“That wasn’t thought, that was action… seeing an opportunity, and seizing on it,” Nicki said. “Um, and on a related subject… I think your mark is on the move.”

Twyla and her friends were heading across the plaza towards the entrance to the union. In fact, they were almost to it.

“Um… should we go after her?” Nicki asked.

“…no,” I said. “It’s hard to be casual and discreet when you’re shouting across an open lot, and running… never ends well. I’m not going to chase after her. If I see her again, I’ll go up and say hi… that’s all.”

“After a suitable period of reflection?” Nicki said.

“At the first opportunity,” I said. “The first good one, anyway… halfway good, at least. I won’t be too picky.”

“Let the fates decide,” Nicki said. “That’s what I usually do.”

“That works better if the fates like you,” I said.

“Maybe it does for some people,” Nicki said. “Mostly it’s what I call it when I put off something until it’s too late to do anything about.”

“Why do you do it if it doesn’t work?” I asked.

“Because I hate worrying about things,” Nicki said. “The alternative is… not worrying about them. Though that never really works out, because I’m still worrying about it most of the time.”

“Why do you do it, then?” I asked, aware that I sounded like an echo.

“I don’t know, I’m talking about ingrained tendencies… not something I’ve ever like sat down and done an analysis on the effectiveness of,” Nicki said. “And even when I’m sitting there telling myself that I’m just making things worse by not facing up to what’s going on, it still seems… well… easier than facing up.”

I nodded. It seemed like the better move than questioning her more or pointing out how wrong that was.

“I’m sorry,” Nicki said.

“What for?”

“I distracted you,” she said.

“Oh, Nicki, no,” I said. “The only thing that happened differently than if you hadn’t been here is that I was saying more stuff out loud. Seriously, you have no idea what it’s like inside my head.”

“Are you sure? I was just worried that I got you talking and threw you off your stride.”

“I don’t have a stride,” I said. “My stride throws me off my stride. Do you know how many times I fell down the stairs in Harlowe? I’m just glad I’m in a building with lifts now… at least this way it’ll be impressive when I fall down one of them.”

It was such a lame, forced joke. Nicki rewarded it with a forced laugh.

“So… what if you don’t see Twyla again?” she asked.

“What, ever?” I said. “We’re in the same class.”

“I mean tonight.”

“I’ll still see her on Tuesday,” I said.

“It’s just… it kind of seemed like you were building up to something,” Nicki said. “Like your mind was made up, and it was all… I don’t know, momentous or something.”

“Yeah, I don’t really do momentous,” I said. “I try sometimes, but honestly… my life is… it’s like a study in perpetual anti-climax. Which sounds boring, but it’s not… sometimes it’s downright exciting, but it never leads anywhere. It’s like having all the stresses of a big build-up and never having the pay off. That probably makes no sense.”

“It actually sounds like really bad sex,” Nicki said.

“That’s actually the part that’s pretty good,” I said. I was about to add that apparently I climaxed pretty easily, but that seemed like more than enough information for someone I’d barely met… and anyway, it seemed like there was a better than even chance that she already knew it. I laughed. “You know, I can’t remember the last time I talked to someone like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like… I don’t know,” I said. “You’re really easy to talk to.”

“I am?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Has nobody ever told you that before?”

“No,” she said. “Most people… don’t really talk to me. Oh, I do have friends!” She didn’t sound defensive so much as… okay, she did sound defensive, but it was less like she thought she was under attack and more like she was afraid of losing my interest. “I just… I hang out with them. I like them. They like me. We do things for each other. But I’m always… I guess I’m the quiet one? I mean, usually.”

“I can sympathize,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But you’re… you’re clever,” she said.

I laughed.

“And… you’re laughing at me,” she said.

“Nicki… I’m not. I’m laughing at the idea of me being clever,” I said. “Okay, I like to think of myself as clever in the gets-an-A kind of way, or the solves-tricky-problems kind of way, but I’m… I’m not the… I’m just someone whose head is full of things she doesn’t know how to articulate.”

“See? That. That’s great,” she said.

“It’s not!”

“The way you said it,” she said. “Mack, I watch you…”

“You shouldn’t,” I said. “I’m not that interesting, I promise.”

“Not like all the time. I mean, I have seen you, and your life just seems so…”

“Well, it’s not,” I said. I tried to sound earnest, but I think it just came out forceful, verging on harsh. I wasn’t trying to lecture her or yell at her, I just wanted to… correct the record. What kind of person would see a life like mine and be so desperate to get inside it? “Not so. It isn’t at all so. Okay? My life is just… a series of events. Stuff happens. Sometimes I do it. Most of the time it’s done to me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She was smiling when she said it, but there was a brightness in her eyes. “I… I’m screwing this up, aren’t I? I’m not… I’m seriously not a creep. Kosh, you probably get people all the time trying…”

“Nicki… I’m sorry,” I said, and just like that something fell into place. It would have been one of those glorious moments of epiphany that are the closest things to a flash of pure divinity that a demonblood can experience, but the fact that she’d stood there and told me the truth that now stood revealed before me kind of muted all that.

She was lonely.

Practically everything she’d been telling me had been about that.

She had friends. She was active in campus groups, or had been. She played stone soldiers. But she felt lost on her own, and it seemed like she never felt sure if anyone really liked her. When people talked about feeling alone in a crowd, I always assumed that they meant someone who was ignored or overlooked, if not outright shunned… I’d been alone for half my life, no matter how many people were around me. Nicki seemed like everything I wasn’t… well, some things I wasn’t, and one of them was sociable. But something was missing there, and she was looking to me for it.

I didn’t really know why she’d latched onto me of all people, but… well, it didn’t really matter. She was here. She was fun to talk to. If someone had made a chart of our personalities and interests and asked me if I thought I would get along with her based on that, I probably would have said no… but here we were.

“Let’s get something to drink,” I said.

“I don’t drink,” she said, really quickly and with an air of bracing herself and getting something over with.

“I don’t, either,” I said. “I meant punch or soda or whatever it is the activity council put in those bowls. Let’s just forget about Twyla and everything else and just… have fun.” I had a thought that I was pretty sure Amaranth would approve of. “We can see if your friend Tasha wants some refreshment before the whole gig thing gets busy. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and that seemed to be that.

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Tales of MU is presented this month by Amy Amethyst.

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Characters: Mackenzie, Nicki, Twyla