Page 104 of She’s a Doll

Motherfuckers.

Nicola snickered. Ginger stirred but did not wake. The people on the TV began running as the zombies attacked.

Tea party, I snapped. Tea. Party. Who typed that and didn’t stop to think, huh, isn’t that odd? What would Willy Wonka be doing at a tea party?

“Chocolate,” Nicola whispered. “Tea. Pretty much the same.”

I don’t even know how to begin with you.

“There’s still a chance that this is one very long, elaborate mental breakdown,” Nicola said. “In which case, hallucination, you begin and end with me.”

Her tone was light and playful, but the words still send a sting of unease through me. You don’t really still think I could be a hallucination, do you?

For a split second the subtitles on the screen changed. Square bracketed screams replaced with two words in glitchy, pixelated text. Do you?

“Nah.” Nicola gently scrubbed her fingers across my bristles of blonde hair and yawned. “You’re way too fucked up to be fake. Besides, if you’re a dream, that means all of this is a dream, and . . .” She glanced at Ginger sprawled out on the sofa beside her, yellow curls and flushed full cheeks, like a woman in one of those old paintings.

I knew it, I said.

“Shut up. Nothing’s happened.”

Yet, I added.

She didn’t argue.

Have you forgiven her? I asked. For not believing you?

“No,” Nicola admitted. “A part of me probably won’t ever forgive her for that. And maybe . . . maybe that will make us impossible. I don’t know. But I’ve loved her for a long time, Lu. Probably as long as you have. Ever since high school.”

You knew her, I said. You were her friend. I was . . . not that. Actually, I was pretty much the opposite of that. I was too caught up in my own bullshit, too scared, so I loved her from a distance. You loved her close up. I’m glad you’re the one getting the girl.

It was a soppy sort of thing to say, but what made it even soppier was that it was true. Nicola and Ginger made sense, they fit, they fit so well that even if I’d had a heart that beat, and lungs that breathed, I wouldn’t have wanted to come between them. The thing that hurt wasn’t the idea of them together, but me alone.

Except I wasn’t alone. Not really.

“Not sure I’d be able to compete if your boobs were still a factor,” Nicola said with a yawn.

I studied my scratched metal crab claws thoughtfully. My boobs were pretty great.

“That’s what they should’ve written on your tombstone. Lucy May McQuinn. Her boobs were pretty great.”

It was a stupid joke, but hearing it made me feel warmer, more centered, the darkness just that little bit further away.

Nic, can I tell you something?

“Oh no. Serious voice. What is it?”

Nothing. I just . . . You’re the most ride-or-die bitch I know, Nic. By miles. I reckon there’s a good chance you’re the most ride-or-die bitch on planet Earth.

She huffed out a low laugh. “Is that a compliment?”

Oh yes. Of the highest order. That’s what my grandma would say.

“Right. Just making sure.”

And you deserve to be happy. You do. And I . . . I looked back down at Ginger then, at the chaotic spill of her curly blonde hair, at the pinched rosiness of her cheeks, the full shape of her, slumped and sleeping. I don’t think you should forgive her, I said softly. But I don’t think you should stop loving her either.

“I don’t think I have much of a choice about either of those things,” Nicola admitted.