Voice Like a Hyacinth

by Mallory Pearson

We talked about loving each other, and loving other people, and loving all the ways we showed it.

All the things that made us an us. All the things that made us real to each other. All the things that made it impossible to forget and move on, even after we lost it, even when we knew the end to come.

Is this book going to make me sad? I can't handle if it is.

Now I would love to get very drunk and very reckless.” “I’m not sure . . . ,” I said, laughing, flushing red. Amrita cocked her head as her smile spread wide, coaxing. “Friends don’t let other friends go to parties alone. We’re friends now, aren’t we?” I could have never said no. I was always such a sucker for a pretty girl.

Actually this is so real Jo

“I said, are you excited to get to work?” “Sure,” I answered immediately. “Of course I am.” It was the truth. But beneath the excitement lived a pit-dark hunger—dread that coiled and waited for my joy to wear off, and contention to encroach in its stead.

She shared a conspiratorial smile and wriggled her empty hand at me before she disappeared. Heat in my cheeks again. A sudden prickling of emotion behind my eyes. I lacked the words for the way it made me feel when she looked at me like that, as if she were so pleased to see me. Such a wordless feeling. Like learning to speak all over again.

Crusshhhh

You need to be capable of selling yourself to someone who doesn’t give a shit about you. And the only way you’re going to accomplish that is by knowing what you stand for and how to make someone else believe in it, too.”

Did that make me terrible too?

Oh I'm sure you're terrible too, sweetheart.

the first time I’d ever felt entirely unencumbered by a friendship to that degree—upon first sight, I was immediately enamored with and intimidated by Jodie Finchard. Pretty was the wrong word for her, but it was a repeating thought I couldn’t banish. Charming was a better fit. Irreplicable. Entrancing. She was only an inch taller than me, but I always pictured her bigger, louder, gave her more space in my head than she truly took up. She was always fidgeting, warm no matter who was on the other end of a greeting. Attention from Finch made me feel cooler than I actually was, like some of her magnetism rubbed off with a hello. She was enigmatic. Unassuming and flawed—faint spots suggesting teenage acne on her cheeks, a scar in her eyebrow from an old piercing, the skin around her knuckles red where they dried and cracked every winter. Her hair was overgrown in a forgetful, masculine way, fine and dark and swept behind the ears as if she wanted to pretend it wasn’t present. Sometimes while working, she would knot it at the nape of her neck with a rubber band, thin strands framing the lines of her face. She made it easy to understand why everyone said Rotham was such a competitive school. I looked at her and instantly wanted to be prettier, smarter, clever enough to make her laugh. And when I did for the first time—in such an inane way, by holding a stapler up beside my mouth and clicking it together to make it talk in an imitation of Kirsten’s voice—her resulting grin made m...

Love.

In my studio I put on headphones and started a playlist Caroline made me consisting mostly of sad folk songs, offensively titled JO’S TORTURED LESBIAN TUNES,

This is so real of caroline, i agree

Was there a term for learning you hadn’t been as complete as you might have once imagined? For discovering shards of yourself? For seeing these people and knowing it at once, like the slow acknowledgment of a finger falling asleep. For learning the things that constructed their desires and their personalities and all the ways they fit with you, like interlocking fragments of a machine.

“Do you have to be such a dyke all the time?”

Gurl whhat T^T

I only have two settings,” Finch said around a full mouth. “Bitch and cunt.”

Real

But all I’d ever wanted was to be like them.

“What the hell happened, Jo?” All I could think was—we killed him, we killed him, we killed him, I killed him.

Damn! Ths took a turn!

“I look beautiful,” I whispered obediently. “Better,” she said, smile growing. “I almost believed you.”

If growth was an endless repetition of leaving them behind, I wanted stagnancy. We could stay like this no matter what time dropped in our laps. They weren’t afraid of Survey, of the coming selection, of the possibility of some of us moving forward while the others did not. So what did I have to be scared of?

“In Greek mythology, hyacinths are supposed to represent devotion beyond death.”

I was so afraid to be the last one missing them—terrified that I might be the only one who remembered who we had been and the pacts we made. If they forgot me, how could I show my face? How could I deal with the idea that maybe I loved them more than they loved me, that this mattered most to me, that they were okay with letting it dissolve? I wanted to be free of all that fear.

I could tell that she wished she hadn’t hurt me. I could tell that she would do it again.

I always thought they’d made me softer, kinder. Now I felt like a girl that would have killed for them. I wanted to fill with fury, or obsession, or some brutal intertwining of the two. I was afraid that my desire was different. That hunger came out of me like a transfigured heart. I could see the cracks splintering between us—those awful tendrils spiking away from the dissolution of our perfect five. The poison had to be cut out. But I was nearly sure that the poison was me.

!! WARNING: 10% Sanity !!

“We let her die.” And then—“You saw it too.” Finch’s face fell open, like I’d let her down, like she’d hoped to find someone better inside of me. Her fingertips dug down into the meat of my arms. Left bruising impressions of her grasp. “Yeah, I saw it too,” she whispered.

I whispered, “You didn’t let me help her.”

I wanted to go back in time. It was all I could think about. I want to go back. Give her back to me. I want her to live. Those words, said aloud, could have been a spell. I could dig my thumbnail into that old, healed wound on my hand and rip it open again. I could bite down on my cheek until I drew blood. I could spit three times onto the promenade, tear out a hank of my hair, pluck eyelashes from their raw lids. There was possibility in ritual. The hopeless idea of forever. But I kept my mouth shut and followed them home.

“Do you love me?” I asked Amrita, tugging at the strings of her hoodie. “Of course.” “Will you love me forever? Even if I’m worse one day?” Amrita smiled. “Even then.” “Would you find me in the next life?” Her palm was hot against my scalp as she leaned closer. “Anywhere,” she said. “Anytime.”

Anywhere. Anytime.

The origin of a cryptid makes sense when I can imagine myself standing on Rotham’s campus again, staring into the dark pockets of trees. I picture myself a few years older, crushing foliage beneath my feet. Somewhere along the line, I transform from a frightened kid to the crone herself. I haunt my own forest.

I look at the horror I’ve made, and I say, “May you wake.” And then, a beat later, “Don’t break up with me, asshole.” Simple, like she would have liked.