Expo Spork & Mari - Vignettes

Katpride

Katpride

Story Collector


“Hey.”

Spork gently tapped their foot against the side of the beanbag Mari was nestled in. It was free time, and normally that meant they’d be out terrorizing the playground, but today was a rare exception. Mari was one of the few weirdos that stayed inside during recess, and they needed to talk to her, so here they were in the cool, air-conditioned classroom instead of out in the warm sun.

They made a face before plopping into the beanbag beside hers, laying their cane across their feet. “Put the book down, I wanna talk to you.”

They tried to keep their face serious, tapping the side of her sneaker with the butt of their cane to better get their point across. Hehe, butt. The smile caused by their private joke ruined their efforts for a moment, but they settled again quickly, growing solemn.

“Has anyone been bothering you?” Their voice was hushed, and they were leaning in slightly, making it clear their words were for her alone. It was weird to be talking to her like this, but they had to know. Because if it was true, then…

Then they didn’t know what they’d do. But they’d have to start thinking about it.

 
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“Hey.” Mari replied, eyes still moving smoothly across the pages, absorbed in the adventures of Jack and Annie. She knew it was Spork, since anyone else would probably have insulted her in the same breath as their greeting.

Mari didn’t respond, even when they tapped their cane against her sneaker. She considered ignoring them completely, but knew that would make any reading during the rest of the free time impossible. So Mari instead finished her page, made a mental note of which one it was, then set down the library’s copy of Winter of the Ice Wizard before finally looking up at Spork.

That wasn’t right. Spork was supposed to be all smiley and loose, not super serious and talking to her in hushed whispers. They were never quiet.

“I mean, kinda.” Mari shrugged her shoulders. “Gary ripped Summer of the Sea Serpent last week, so Mom had to pay for a new copy.” She glanced at the doorway behind Spork, one hand on her book in case Gary decided to continue his bloody rampage.

“Why?” Why the sudden interest? It wasn’t like they’d cared much about her before. They had their arranged playdates and dinners and ignored each other at school. Why would they reach out now?

 
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A shadow passed over Spork’s face at the confirmation of what they’d suspected. Gary. That jerk. They would have to think of something especially mean to do to him.

But hang on, why were they so angry? It wasn’t like he’d never done anything to them before. They turned their frown to the floor while they mulled it over, not wanting Mari to think they were mad at her.

This was different, they decided. It was different because it was Mari, and she might not be their best friend in the way that Penny and Janine were best friends, sitting together all the time and giggling even when the teacher was talking, but she was… Well, she was their friend. Or maybe they wanted her to be. Or maybe they just didn’t want anyone to pick on her, so that she didn’t get noticed by the teacher, and then they wouldn’t get noticed by the teacher either. Because they were neighbors, and their moms knew each other, and would talk, and that would be bad.

They weren’t really convincing themself with their own reasoning, but it didn’t matter. They had made their decision. Sitting up, they held out their hand for Mari’s. “I’m- no. We’re gonna get back at him. And if anyone bothers you again, I’ll make sure they don’t do it a third time.”

They were glowing with conviction, a smile finally breaking through the uncharacteristic cloudiness on their face. In a visible flash of inspiration, they twisted their hand, curling everything but their littlest finger into their palm. “I pinky promise.”

 
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Mari blinked up at them in confusion, processing the words that came out of Spork’s mouth. It wasn’t surprising that they’d made the snap decision, or even that they wanted to get after someone. Spork loved picking fights and causing trouble, especially if they thought they could get away with it. Which was most of the time. When kids came in crying from recess, nobody suspected that the blind one had caused it.

It was that they wanted to get after someone because of her.

Mari felt something settle within her, and she couldn’t help but let out a little laugh at Spork’s declaration. Truth be told she’d been trying to figure out how to get her own revenge on Gary since that fateful day. She just knew that he’d come back and tear every book he could find. But he wouldn’t mess with Spork.

Was this friendship? It didn’t feel like an arranged playdate or something strangers did for each other. Heck, it didn’t even feel like things that adults would do for each other. Whatever it was, Mari smiled back at Spork, reaching out to curl her little finger around theirs, forming an unbreakable bond.

“Pinky promise.”

 


Mari closed her book, chewing on her lip in thought. She’d moved on from the Magic Treehouse books and now was working her way through a series involving different tribes of cats. It seemed a little silly, and she’d already noticed several errors in just the first book alone. She had a little notebook that she kept on hand whenever she read the book, noting page numbers and their errors.

She was in Spork’s room. Spork was there too, of course. It was their room. You wouldn’t have been able to tell just from looking at it though. It was all soft and plush, with little foam bits on the corners of everything. It was a fuzzy sort of room that didn’t really match its owner. Spork was fuzzy in the same way a brick was, and their room felt more suited for an infant than someone who regularly jumped off the playground equipment.

Something had been bugging her, and she wasn’t sure if she should keep it a secret. Technically she didn’t even know if it was a secret. Spork’s disdain for school wasn’t exactly hidden, even if their parents turned a blind eye to it. She let out a huff. She had to.

“You’re failing.” Mari said quietly, glancing in her friend’s direction to see if they heard her. “Ms. Murphy told me.”

 
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Spork hated their room. They hated a lot of things, in a variety of abstract ways that they didn’t always have the words to express, but their hatred for their room was an old gripe, and so they were able to put their finger right on the point of it.

That being, there were no points. There were no sharp edges, no rough or spiky textures, no mess that was allowed to stay for more than a few hours. The bed was plush, and soft, and they sank deeply into it whenever they laid on it. They would’ve preferred to sleep on the floor, truth be told, but they were afraid that their parents might think they had fallen and reinstall the safety railings.

They would do a great many things to avoid the return of the safety railings, so they slept in the bed. Most of the time. When they couldn’t convince their parents to let them sleep over at Mari’s, at least, which meant it happened about thrice as much as they wanted it to. But in times like these, when it was just them and Mari? They were on the floor, picking at threads in the carpet while they listened to a Warrior Cats audiobook through their headphones.

There was just something about the casual descriptions of blood and violence that made them all warm and tingly inside, and the cute cats on the cover were enough to throw their parents off the scent. They’d even gotten Mari into the books, eventually, by using big words like “political intrigue.” See, they’re learning.

Mari’s voice filtered over that of the narrator, and they paused the book, tugging the headphones down around their neck so that they could hear her without their brain jumbling the two threads. Even so, they turned a frown in her direction, unsure if they had heard her right. “I’m what?”

Because it sounded like she said that they were failing, but Spork had never failed at anything. Well, they hadn’t done so hot on their latest vocabulary test, or their math quiz, or the science worksheet from the past week, but those didn’t count. Their parents didn’t know about those, couldn’t know about those, and if their parents didn’t know then they could just pretend that none of those things had ever happened, right? It had gotten them this far.

They turned to frown at her, already reaching for their headphones again. Their hands lingered on the cups, though, perfectly-trimmed fingernails tapping against the smooth plastic without making the commitment of lifting them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t be failing, my parents would’ve pulled me into private tutoring if I was,” they informed her. They weren’t sure what to call the sticky, twisting feeling crawling through their stomach, but they didn’t like it one bit.

 
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Mari knew they wouldn’t take it well. Spork usually tried to coast by on ‘what my parents don't know won’t hurt them’. But that didn’t always work, and the slight edge of panic creeping into their voice was a sign that they knew it. She set down her book properly, remembering her place, and turned to look at them.

“I found an envelope in her desk drawer, addressed to your parents. I read it.” It was really her fault for letting Mari stay in the classroom by herself during recess, while Ms. Murphy was busy trying to keep the rest of the kids from eating dirt and causing trouble. “It said you’re not doing as well as the other kids, and that you might get held back.” Amongst other things, Ms. Murphy had suggested that Spork’s parents not only get them private tutoring, but potentially send them to a special school for blind kids if the situation didn’t improve.

The nearest one of those was ten miles away. Mari had looked on one of the school computers. That wouldn’t do.

She scooted over to her backpack, unzipping the front pouch and pulling out a sealed and stamped envelope, addressed to Mr. & Mrs. Fuchs. Why would you trust a student to take a letter to the mail room, even if they were your favorite? Mari had no idea, sometimes adults just didn't make sense. She set it by them, one of the edges just touching their hand so they knew where it was.

"I have the letter." Mari said, with all the seriousness a fourth-grader could muster. "Your parents aren't going to get it. Not for a little bit, anyways." Of course, Ms. Murphy would eventually bring the letter up to Spork's parents, most likely at the next parent-teacher conference. So she had a deadline to work with.

"We're going to get your grades back up, okay?" She'd give them the answers if she had to.

Mari had only just decided to be friends with them, even though it had been months since Spork had offered to help with her Gary problem. They'd stuck around, even after they'd taken care of the issue. She wasn't going to let them go that easy.

 
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Every word from Mari, spoken in the same cool, controlled manner that Spork sometimes tried to mimic around their parents when they were talking them into something, only made the awful feeling grow. They gave up on the idea of going back to their book, ripping the headphones off and tossing them away when the feeling of them around their neck became too much to bear.

The impact didn’t even make a sound, because there were pillows and plush things everywhere. They hated it here.

When the letter touched their hand, they snatched it up. It was just smooth paper and sharp edges under their fingers, of course, so they had to trust that Mari was telling them the truth about its contents. It should’ve been obvious that Ms. Murphy wouldn’t feel the need to include any braille if Spork was never meant to read it, but the realization sent something white-hot running down their spine, cutting neatly through the knot in their stomach. They found that they were trembling for entirely new reasons, then, glaring daggers at the letter in their hands and grinding their molars together in inarticulate rage.

Of fucking course. Even when grownups were talking about redirecting the course of their entire life, they didn’t feel the need to let Spork in on the conversation. The only reason they knew anything about this was because Mari told them.

Mari. She had come to them, instead of following the whims of their teacher or their parents. She was making them an offer. They didn’t even have to think about it, really. The answer was waiting at the tip of their tongue when they reached past the anger. “Yeah. Yeah, we will.”

Mari was smart. She kept her promises, and didn’t try to hide things from them ‘for their own good.’ They would keep the bullies off her back, and she would help them pass their classes. It wasn’t the kind of friendship Spork’s parents would want them to have, or the kind that they thought they had already. The thought brought a smile to their face, sharp and victorious.

They tore the dumb letter in half, offering one side to Mari before they began to shred their own. Once the proposed future was reduced to scraps on the floor, they put their head against Mari’s and began to plot a course of their own.

 


Spork knew the route to Mari’s house by heart. It was pretty damn easy to remember, considering that she lived right across the street from them, but it was still a relatively new development for them to be able to make the trip on their own. Not because they couldn’t, of course, but because their parents were insane.

Their cane tapped ahead of them as they made their way down the front walk of their own house - all ramps and filled cracks, lest Spork stumble, break their ankles, and have to be put down like a retired racehorse - and past the “BLIND CHILD AREA” sign, giving the pole a passing slap as they stepped right off the curb and into the street.

Yeah, that's right. They were crossing the street without looking both ways. Their poor parents would have dual heart attacks if they saw, but luckily for Spork they seemed to be out of the house. They must have been enjoying their free time, now that they’d stopped hovering around Spork at all hours making sure they didn't get run over or spontaneously kidnapped. Boy had that been a hard sell. Being in high school had its perks, though.

And its downsides, they thought darkly, reaching for the knob on Mari’s front door and letting themself in when it turned easily, already unlocked.

“Hey Ms. Ito, it’s me,” they called, slipping out of their crocs - casual mode, for the win - and leaving them against the wall in the entryway along with their cane. A vague affirmative drifted back to them from somewhere deeper in the house, but they didn’t stick around to chat with Mari’s mom. Not today. They were on a mission, and so they made a beeline up the stairs instead.

The door to Mari’s room was closed. They tried not to sigh. They thought that might be the case. Rather than barging in, they hesitated, then rapped their knuckles against the wood twice. “Mari? You in there?”

 
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Mari kept her desk organized. Everything was always in its place, from the messy homemade and hand-painted mug holding various writing instruments to the Newton’s cradle to the useless box whose sole purpose was to flip off a switch as soon as you turned it on. Mari, too, was in her place, sitting in the desk’s single chair, pencil in hand, calculator to one side. Math homework, pre-calculus to be precise, lay on the desk in front of her. The book was open to a problem set, a reference sheet lay within glancing range, and a spiral notebook was currently flipped to a half-filled page. The numbers in the margin showed that Mari was working on problem 13b.

She had been working on it for the past half hour.

Her pencil had been picked up and set down at least ten times during that span, yet not a single new mark had been added to the page. Mari was distracted. It had almost been a regular day at school. She’d blown through a quiz, gotten some reading done, and met with Jason during the break before lunch. That was their normal time, when they sat in a corner in the quiet library and talked, held hands, and just enjoyed each other’s company. Occasionally he had wanted to spend the time kissing, but she’d always been worried Spork would come barreling through the library to find her. So she deflected, conceding a peck or two but denying the longer, more intense connections he desired.

Today was different. She’d been held up by a group of freshmen fighting in the hallways, so she was a little bit late to their spot. He’d been waiting for her, though. Jason usually got there first, since his class was right across the hall. Mari had smiled softly at him, with a little wave when she spotted him. He met her gaze, but didn’t return her smile.

Four minutes. That was all the time Mari had to process what Jason had said, what he’d done, that he’d ended it, before she had to return to class. She’d gone through the rest of the day half-aware, a ghost drifting through the halls. She’d had lunch with Spork, their chattering filling the voids her already quiet words left. She’d come home, given her mom the typical noncommittal response when she asked Mari's day, and closed her door. She'd gotten her things out and prepared her homework setup as usual, then began to work. Mari jolted a little when the two sharp raps came. Pencil finally touched paper, equations transferred from one page to another, shifted and changed, split to fit her purposes.

“It’s unlocked, Spork.”

 


The door handle lowered slowly, carefully, then hit the lowest point with a sudden jerk. They had misjudged the turning radius, too used to barreling through as soon as the latch gave. Spork nudged the door open and slid through the gap, lingering just beyond the doorway like a blonde smudge. They caught the door with their foot and drew it shut, their heel pressing into the wood until it gave a faint click, but still they just… stood there. For a long moment, they were quiet, head tilted slightly as they listened to the scratch of pencil on paper and breathed the familiar air.

Mari’s room was familiar. Maybe even more so than their own, considering how often they accidentally-on-purpose spent days and nights there instead of their golden cage. They knew where the furniture was and where she usually set her backpack - under her desk, propped against the side with the straps tucked neatly under it. They knew which floorboards were creaky and where to place their feet when they snuck out to grab a midnight snack.

Even with all of this knowledge, they stepped lightly as they made their way over to her.

Their suspicions only grew when their foot softly collided with something on the floor just beside the desk, and they bent to loop their fingers through the backpack’s handle and drag it upright. They were all too aware that they were in uncharted waters, even in this room that they knew like the back of their hand, but still they settled on the floor beside her chair, the edge of the seat digging into their back.

It was a familiar position. They often sat beside her like this if they were going to work on their own homework, only they didn’t pull out the lap desk or their school iPad. They just tilted their head back until they could tap Mari’s leg with the back of it, offering a short sentence like an olive branch. “I know what happened.”

She wouldn’t admit it on her own. She never did. They kept their face turned towards the room, but tilted their ear in her direction. It wasn’t how their parents taught them to talk to people, wasn’t the polite and proper way to engage in conversation, but it was how they showed that they were listening. “You want me to beat him up?”

 


The handle turned jerkily before the door was pushed open. She knew who it was just from the knock. Spork knocked like a dad about to lean on the door frame and ask ‘what’s up, champ?’. It had been years since anyone else had done a fatherly knock on her door. It was also in the way they slipped into the room, opening her door just enough to slide in before pushing it shut again. They could be quiet when they wanted to, which was only really when they were causing some mischief that they couldn’t explain away if they got caught in the process.

They hung by the door, and Mari made no move to acknowledge them any more than she already had. She was focusing on her work, scribbling down numbers and equations, occasionally reaching out to punch a few numbers in her calculator to check her work before scribbling some more. She heard them coming, the gentle rustle of socks on floorboards. Then a jarring sound, deafening in the quiet space, of a kicked bookbag. The contents loudly shifted and Mari cursed silently. She thought she’d put that where it was supposed to go. She’d been too distracted by-

-her homework. She’d just wanted to get it done and hadn’t moved her bag to where it was supposed to go. With a dull thump Spork sat down at her side, their usual place. She waited for them to pull out their own work, then they could both continue in silence. But they didn’t. It would’ve been too easy if they had. She felt their head tap against her leg, and four words filled the silence.

Mari’s pencil stopped moving, the point still against the page. She wondered who told them. Probably nobody she knew, if she was being completely honest with herself. Spork was plugged into the social network of the school, always had been, and she should have guessed they would hear about it sooner rather than later.

Their offer came and Mari just let out a sigh. “It wouldn’t help.” The pencil began moving again, Mari’s focus still on the page. “It wouldn’t undo anything.” Her voice was quiet, measured, as though she had to meticulously plan where each word would go before speaking.

“I just want,” A tremor, smoothed over as quickly as it arose. “I just want to know why.”

 


A sigh, and their head tilted down, leaving her leg. The longer hairs at the front of their pixie cut - chopped short after a brutal war of attrition with their parents that culminated in a pack of chewing gum and the gentle attention of stolen kitchen shears - caught in their eyelashes when they blinked, and they brushed them away with a flick of their hand.

It was easier to focus on rubbing the strands between their fingers than on the catch in Mari’s voice. It was all too obvious that she was hurting. Jason fucking Berker had hurt her, and Spork had just sat by and let it happen, even though they’d heard the whispers and felt the change in the currents. He was a talkative ass, and his friends had loose lips. They had known about that sinking ship, probably better than either of its passengers, and they still hadn’t bailed her out.

“Yeah,” they breathed, almost a mutter as they shook their head. They could’ve at least warned her, but, well, it wasn’t part of the deal. It wasn’t something they’d talked about, or agreed on. It would’ve been overstepping, they had reasoned, and as much as they did that with other people they didn’t want to do that to her.

And they did have a deal. It was the same deal from elementary school, really, and even as they grew it remained a line tethering them together, one that neither of them had felt the need to either cut or reinforce. Why would they need to, when it had only gotten easier and easier to keep their end of the bargain? Spork had a reputation, now, and everyone who went to school with them knew that Mari wasn’t someone to mess with. No one bullied her anymore, and they were happy to play the big bad wolf if it meant she occasionally studied with them. Occasionally. Before tests, and stuff. And they did their homework together, where they could pick her brain if they got stuck. It just worked, okay?

Not to mention that Mari didn’t seem to want Spork anywhere near her relationship, which was… fine. She was tight-lipped about a lot of stuff. She hadn’t even told them when she’d started dating the guy, but it was fine. They didn’t go to her with their dating troubles either, even if they did usually tell her about the interesting parts.

They didn’t need to. She didn’t ask them to. She usually asked them not to, actually, but they both knew that she’d just walk away if she was really bothered by it. And she didn’t, so she must’ve enjoyed the slightly-exaggerated tales at least a little.

But she hadn’t told them anything, hadn’t even given them the opportunity to pull a walk-out of their own on the off chance she started waxing poetic or acting sappy or whatever. And she’d seemed happy, sometimes, and so they’d kept their silence like the precious commodity it was. And if they sought her out more when it started falling apart, crashing meet-ups and pulling her into their orbit instead of his, well, that was just protecting their investment, right? It was being an okay friend, a good neighbor. It was part of the deal. They would’ve done it anyway.

The silence was getting to them. They took a breath, let it out in a woosh, and opened their dumb mouth. For a moment they teetered on the precipice, the thin line between truths that would bite and truths that would soothe, and even they weren’t sure what they were going to say.

“He’s a jerk. It doesn’t matter why he broke it off, he’s a dick for doing that to you. For yanking your chain.” They hid their relief, keeping their face turned away as they tugged one knee to their chest and rested their arm on it. She didn’t need to know the reasons, not really. They sure wished they didn’t. This would work. “You should kick his ass. Or let me kick his ass. I’ll do it for you, free of charge. Offer’s open.”

Finally, they turned, giving her a smile. They could do this. Issuing threats was way easier than navigating around someone else’s emotions. Their hand lifted, and they only hesitated a little before awkwardly patting her shin. She was so tiny, but the bone at the front of her leg was like an iron rod with how stiffly she sat. It seemed like a dream, the days where she used to be taller than them.

 


“Heh.” Mari let a bitter half-formed chuckle fall into the space between them. It would be so easy. She could have agreed with Spork, said that beating up Jason would be a fitting penance. Hell, they could’ve worked together to corner him in some dark alley where Spork hit him while they both ensured that he knew exactly what he’d done to deserve it. They’d done similar things multiple times before, it was an unspoken part of the deal they’d made when they were younger and life was simpler.

That would have been easier. Just agree to the violence and move on with her day. Pretend that she was okay, that this momentary ripple in their pond was just that and let the surface smooth over. Mari could’ve lashed out at Spork, she’d done that before too. Tell them that she’d already refused their offer of beating the shit out of someone because it didn’t really help the situation, did it? Her heart was hanging on by a thread and tearing apart the person who did it might have been cathartic, but would’ve been utterly pointless.

Mari didn’t do either of those things. It took a minute before she realized that she couldn’t see the page anymore, that her pencil was just skittering along the page with no real rhyme or reason. She squeezed her eyes for a moment and set the pencil down. She pushed her chair back, too quickly, too jerkily, probably upsetting Spork. For a moment she just sat there, gaze locked onto the page. Her vision had cleared a bit, and Mari saw the handful of wet splotches that marred the page.

Her homework. She’d have to do it again.

Mari slumped out of the chair, pooling on the floor next to Spork. She felt heavy, like she’d been in the water for the past few hours and was only now coming onto land. She hesitated for a second before leaning against them, letting their larger frame support her. They laid like that in silence for a few moments as the cracks finished spreading throughout the dam, eating away at its structural integrity until it finally began to give.

They came slowly at first, little things that blurred her vision and ran down Mari’s cheeks when she blinked them away. Then her body began to shake and the dam burst properly. Heaving sobs pushed her against Spork, clinging to them like a drowning man as everything she’d bottled up over the past twenty-four hours finally broke free.

Some part of her brain dimly thought that she was embarrassing herself, that she shouldn’t be clinging to them and crying like a baby. That part didn’t matter. Mari needed Spork now, more than she ever had, and it showed in the way she held onto them, shaking like a leaf, babbling incoherently, internally begging them not to let go.

She didn’t know what she’d do if they pulled away.

 


She pulled away, and Spork yanked their hand back, heart suddenly thudding in their throat. Damn. Damn. She was going to walk out, wasn’t she? They had messed up, somehow, and made her more upset, and now Mari was going to give them the silent treatment while she sorted things out on her own. They hated when she did that. It was their fault, though, and they knew it, so they resigned themself to their fate, lips pressed tightly together so they didn’t add even more time to their sentence.

But she didn’t storm out. She sat beside them, and Spork was choking on too many half-formed questions to do more than sit there, silent, tense, and incredibly confused. Her forehead collided awkwardly with their shoulder, her chest brushing lightly against their arm when she took a shaky breath, but it wasn’t until she made a small, snuffly sort of sound that they realized what was happening.

She was crying. Oh, they were going to kill that boy.

“Hey, hey,” they started, soft, awkward, hands hovering around her. Shit, they didn’t know what to do. Mari never cried. Or, at least, she never cried around them. Forget uncharted waters, they might as well have been at the bottom of the Mariana Trench with how out of their depth they were. Should they get her mom?

Then she wailed, a high, pained sound that struck Spork right in the heart, and all of a sudden she was falling into them, and they were pulling her further in, their arms moving to wrap around her without them even making the decision to do that. Their shirt was definitely going to get damp with tears, not to mention crumpled where Mari had it balled up in her fists, but it didn’t even matter. Her pointy elbow was digging into their thigh, and they were pretty sure their quiet cussing was falling more into her hair than her ear, but that didn’t matter either.

“I’ve got you,” they told her, and their voice only shook a little bit. God, they were not the right person to be here, doing this. They were awful at comforting people. But it was Mari, and she was crying, and they had to do something. Their voice caught in their throat when they tried to speak again, but they cleared it with as quiet of a cough as they could manage. “It’s gonna be okay? Um…”

Shit, what were they supposed to say? Without thinking about it, they loosened the grip on one of their hands, making to flick their hair out of their eyes again as they stalled for time, but they stopped when she seemed to start crying harder. Fuck. They put their hand back, hoisting her closer. “It’s okay! I’m not going anywhere!”

That seemed to settle her, at least a little bit, and they breathed a little easier, letting their head rest on hers as they slumped in relief. Was that really it? She thought they would leave?

“I’m not going anywhere,” they repeated, more firmly, pressing their nose into her hair. The statement felt larger than a promise, they thought. It was a deal, maybe, a new branch to the tether. Or maybe it was something else entirely. They didn’t even think about taking it back. They just pressed their chapped lips against the crown of her skull and smiled shakily. “You’re stuck with me.”

 
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Mari found Spork in the third place she looked. In hindsight, it was probably one of the first places she should’ve looked. When checking the bleachers on the soccer fields, she’d found a handful of teens who were…uncomfortably close. When visiting the skate park, she simply found it full of its usual board riders, rollerbladers, and scooter enthusiasts. But Spork hadn’t been one of those teens, making out with some random girl whose name they’d probably already forgotten. And they weren’t enjoying the sound of tinny rock music played from a phone speaker to the backing track of polyurethane wheels on concrete, jeering whenever they heard someone bite it.

So she kept going down her list, heading towards the woods that not many kids ventured towards. The marshy area that separated the white picket fences from their native cousins was the main factor. Most of them weren’t Mari, who had found the pattern of rocks and stones that just barely jutted out from the wetness in less than an hour’s time, making the journey from one grassy edge to the other into a delicate dance rather than a slog. Spork, unlike the rest of their peers, didn’t care if their shoes got soggy with muddy water and simply trudged through the handful of centimeters of stagnation.

Mari had never been particularly graceful, and she would have rather died than admit to fantasies of such while crossing the stones to get to Spork’s hideaway. But there was a certain deftness to it, an elegance in the way she had to turn to keep her feet as dry as possible. None of that was present today. If her prior traversals had been swooping lines and semi-graceful curves, today’s consisted solely of vectors; direct movements that used as little energy as possible. Her thoughts were a turmoil, a cloud of angry butterflies angrily flapping against the inside of her skull. When that happened Mari usually put herself on autopilot, drawing as much of herself into her mind as possible in an attempt to get the nets out and get herself under control. Since this afternoon that was proving quite the challenge, and she’d barely noticed the concrete moving under her feet in her quest to find Spork.

It wasn’t until the familiar scent of cigarette smoke tickled her nose that Mari realized she had found them. She thought smoking was a bad habit, but it was low on the list of questionable things Spork could’ve been doing in the forest so Mari never commented on it. Sure enough they were in their familiar little clearing, back against a gnarled mossy tree. They breathed out a cloud of smoke at her arrival, tapping the ash into a can from one of those fancy sparkling lemonades their parents always kept around. Mari didn’t announce herself as she entered the hidden area that only they two seemed to know about. She just plopped down next to them with a huff, shoving a piece of hair out of her face as it slipped down. She let a moment of silence pass between them before deciding to break it.

“Hey.” The silence swarmed back in to the fill the space, thick and dense. Mari tried to push it out of the way, albeit not as successfully or cleanly as she'd hoped. "I've been looking for you. I checked the skatepark, and the bleachers." Her sentences trailed off, like a half-filled balloon that gently nosedived when released instead of crash landing after a spectacular flight. "Maddie and Veronica were there. Yknow, curly hair and purple dye?" Two of their most recent flings. "Guess you kinda pushed them together, huh?" Mari had never taken an interest in Spork's love life. She'd just listened to them talk about it into the wee hours of the morning, unconsciously mapping out the surprisingly complicated web. Her eyes were glued to the moss and grass that covered the ground in front of her, her fingers twisting and shifting over themselves, always moving, never resting.

"Funny, huh?"

 
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Spork knew that they shouldn’t smoke. They knew it was a bad habit, and that it had the potential to kill them in many slow and hideous ways. They should never have picked it up. They should quit before it ruins their lungs.

Instead, they took another drag, letting the bitter smoke sit in their chest until it burned. Let it ruin them. Let it ruin their parents’ idea of their perfect daughter. They blew the cloud out with a vindictive smile. It smelled terrible. They loved it.

Footsteps. Spork tilted their head, listening to the sound, and found that the pattern of the steps was familiar - measured, sharp, lacking the splashing and stumbling that would alert them to strangers approaching their hideout.

They considered, for a moment, preemptively taking off the hoodie tied around their waist so that Mari wouldn’t have to go through the usual ritual of asking them to clear a seat for her. Then they shrugged, and recrossed their legs instead. Heck if they knew why she was here; maybe she was just dropping by to tell them about something. They didn’t want to sit on the damp ground without their sweater if they didn’t have to, and they still had a good few hours of bumming around to do before they’d have to make their way back to their parents’ house. Better to keep their butt dry for as long as possible.

Surprisingly, Mari didn’t even offer a token complaint before she flopped down beside them. Spork raised an eyebrow, taking a contemplative breath of smoke as they waited for her to explain why she’d sought them out. And maybe she could throw in an extra explanation for why she was getting so closely acquainted with the dirt, after years of sacrificed flannels. If she was feeling generous.

But no, instead of talking about any of those very pressing matters, Mari instead chose to… dish some gossip on their exes? Spork gave her the most incredulous look they’d ever had cause to muster, sighing out their lungful of smoke before they could choke on it. “Uh, I guess? I don’t care what they get up to. Why do you care what Maaai-” shit, they forgot her name already “-y exes get up to?”

Wait, that wasn’t the question they wanted to ask. “Actually, nevermind. Why were you looking for me?”

She was acting weird. They knew that. She knew that. They just didn’t know why. What had changed, recently? Her age? They had celebrated her birthday a few days ago. They’d eaten cake and serenaded her with the dumb birthday song and everything.

“Need advice from your elders already?” The question came out almost confused rather than teasing, but they tried to hide it by holding their cigarette near their face, their hand over their mouth as they took a slow drag. What would Mari possibly need to come to them for advice on?

Oh no. Please let it not be girls, they were not giving her that talk. They didn’t care if they were best friends, there were some things that were between you and the devil.

 
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