The grassy incline leading up to Sophie’s house between the blossoming flower beds and whirling neon pink pinwheels appears even more arduous than the last time you were staring up at that brick fortress of a place. Of course, it probably has something to do with the fact that the last time you got a real good look at the outside was when you still stood at more than six feet tall, but that’s neither here nor there. Now, as you gaze up at the dappled walls and curtained panes, technically not much different from your own home, it’s somehow far more intimidating than you could’ve imagined. Assuredly, it’s not just because there’s a veritable jungle of domestic garden wildlife between you and the front door that could so easily strand you for days if you happened to find yourself on the ground now. You’ve only just emerged from the tangle of belts and foam pads comprising your specialized seat in your cousin’s car at the curb of the residence, and already your stomach is starting to babble in ways that suggest your entire consciousness might not be fully in support of this operation.
“Jack, are… are you sure you’re ready for this?” Sophie questions tenderly as you perch cross-legged in the center of her warm palm. It’s almost as if she read your mind. Half the time, you’re pretty sure she’s able to do just that, judging by how often she guesses your exact needs before a word can even leave your embarrassed little lips.
Having taken a few steps up the slope already, padding through the leafy greenery in her strappy maroon sandals, she pauses in the grass for a moment, clearly intent on remaining as a statue here until she’s more than one hundred percent certain she can’t convince you not to let her turn around and drive you straight back home.
“Nobody would blame you if you wanted to put this off. Or… not do it at all!” she suggests none too subtly.
“Uh…”
Your cousin bites her lip, clearly far more uneasy about this than you are. The past month has seen you make several important strides in your time with the psychologist, though, and much of this success has come from your willingness to face what once would’ve scared the daylights out of you. And what you’re about to do scares the daylights out of you like little else, so it’s the obvious choice. You have to do this, as much for yourself as anyone else.
“Yes,” you say at last after a healthy pause that probably does nothing to assuage Sophie’s concerns, nodding resolutely. You blink in the blaring sunlight, bowing your head into the shade created under the arch of your cousin’s soft fingers.
“It’s just that you already have your appointment in a few hours with Dr. Felton. I don’t want you to feel… overwhelmed today,” she says. “There’s no need to take on too much at a time. You know?”
“I’m fine. Seriously. I promise,” you assure repeatedly, knowing a full three resounding rounds are required to temporarily convince your adoring cousin that you aren’t made of papier-mâché. You give her a pat on her thumb just to completely sell your contentedness.
“Okay…” she sighs as she moves beyond the yard, taking the final steps up the cobblestone stoop. Passing by your mother’s van, already parked in the driveway, her knees sweep by some drooping lilies as she ducks under the branches of a lemon tree and grasps the front door’s brass knob.
It’s been well over a year since you first met at this size, after all, and ever since you first began relaying your experience back to Sophie in those early days after your rescue, she’s dedicated a great deal of attention to ensuring this particular scenario never had cause to play out: something your parents and aunt were fully on board with. As it happens, though, you’ve now requested it yourself, against your mother’s wishes, and as your cousin tends to do her best to accommodate you within reason, she’s begrudgingly allowed the both of you into this situation as she steps across the carpeted threshold and into the house, where Chloe is waiting to see you again.
You haven’t had a need to be here in quite a while. It’s always so much easier for Sophie to come to you, especially given the fact that she’s tall enough to work the gas pedals of an actual car, but there are other reasons to have stayed in the sanctity of your own home. The last time you visited this place, things didn’t exactly go your way.
Sophie turns the corner into the well-lit kitchen, passing by the brush of a couple violet-blooming flower pots and approaches the breakfast nook, where both of your mothers are seated, hands folded neatly together. Immediately your parent’s gaze falls to you, a little alarmed and filled with concern steep enough that you imagine she might be on the verge of tears if she hadn’t already dried her ducts out from all the crying of the past year. Her lips part as though to say something, perhaps a final protest against this meeting, but the words seem to have become stuck in her throat, so instead she just runs a palm down the side of her face. Of course, it’s tough to focus on your mom at all given the remaining occupant of the room who still has yet to raise her eyes to you.
Next to your aunt sits none other than Chloe, Sophie’s sister and your fourteen-year-old cousin who, through a course of insidiously unlucky circumstances, attempted to keep you as her personal pet two Christmases ago and then swallow you alive to cover up the evidence. Her blonde hair, lighter than her sibling’s, has grown out further than her shoulders, a little wavier than you remember it. Her lime-green skirt with the straps laced loosely over her tanned shoulders already draws enough attention, and even from this distance, those inquisitive baby blues of hers dance in the kitchen’s effulgent glow. Though you can’t be sure, they seem to glisten, almost twinkling as they square to you at last. Her cheeks suck inward at the sight of your casually seated form in her sister’s hand. She chews her lower lip thoughtfully but makes no further move.
A shiver spurts along each link of your spine at the sight of the girl who very nearly made you her lunch eighteen months ago, but there’s no turning back now, not with the promises you’ve made to your mother, your doctor, Sophie, and perhaps most vitally, yourself.
Still, it’s damned difficult to keep your eyes off those lips of hers. You’ll never be able to look another person in the mouth quite the same way for perhaps the rest of your life, given how many times your sister forced you inside of hers for some roiling tongue-wrestling and near-drownings in strawberry-flavored saliva, but being able to see the only other person in the world to have passed you between her teeth certainly delivers a more potent gash to your trauma-addled brain.
“Well, we’re… here,” Sophie mutters nervously, approaching the counter and taking a seat steadily enough on a leather bar stool that you aren’t jostled in her palm. She rests her elbow against the surface to ensure you have a steady base.
“Hello, Jack,” your Aunt Selina says sweetly, gratitude evident in her tone. She grimaces in that way that reminds you of your dad’s face when he’s at one of his frequent shortages on conversation; the woman’s obviously harboring a great deal of blame for something that isn’t even her fault. It must be something hereditary she shares with her brother, you suppose. “How are you?”
“I’m okay.”
“Thank you so much for coming.” From the way her eyes dart to your still-silent mother, you can tell you’re not the only one present to whom she’s attempting to offer remorse.
“S-Sure,” you manage.
Your watchful cousin’s fingers curve in even closer to your legs, shielding you from her stock-still sister, and you can’t help but wrap an arm around her pinky, hugging it to your body for security. She obliges you, of course, squeezing it comfortably against your chest, promising to keep you right where you are. You trust the feeling, swallowing hard, and make full eye contact with Chloe.
“H-Hi,” you say simply, lifting your free hand and giving your adolescent cousin the slightest of waves.
For a moment, you can’t read the young teen’s blank expression as she fixes on you. Her lip quivers, crimson in the corner where she apparently bit too hard while observing you. Blinking, she slaps her hands palms-down on the tabletop, at first sending your heart into overdrive at the thought that she might reach out and snatch you from the protective embrace of Sophie’s loving fingers, but the thought quickly fades as hers digits halt their progression across the glossy surface.
And then she bursts into catastrophic tears.
You freeze, unable to react as you watch this girl who once tried to digest you now melting into a puddle of emotions and salt. It’s as though Chloe had been employing every muscle in her body to withhold the deluge of tragic, moist melancholy up until this moment, and finally lost the strength to keep up the dam. Quivering over nearly every inch of her body, she bows her head to the tabletop, sobbing from the back of her throat as her rosy cheeks are soon stained. Your aunt lays an arm around her, supportively rubbing her back and massaging her neck. Clearly, this has been building up for some time, and your physical presence just unleashed it.
No one speaks for several minutes. Your mother shifts closer in her chair to lean in your direction, but she doesn’t appear to know where to look. Her thumb rises to her earlobe, fidgeting with the gemstone stud of her earring.
Sophie, clearly not as surprised as you over this dismal display, sinks further back into her chair, but keeps her fingers locked securely around your shoulders as you look on, unable to keep your jaw from hanging slack.
With the benefit of hindsight and explanation from your highly apologetic eighteen-year-old cousin, you were able to ascertain that Chloe had been undergoing a personality crisis of some kind in the months before your existence first came to be known. In the oddest of ways with this girl who so nearly ended your life inside the spit-clogged depths of her esophagus, you feel a sense of solidarity to know she, too, required some therapeutic reconstruction, and never more so than after you appeared, severely damaging her perception of reality and throwing her from merely off-kilter into a state of emotional breakdown, leading to her extreme reaction to your discovery. This, at least, is how the story was related to you by Sophie in the intervening months as Chloe underwent varying forms of mental healing under psychiatric supervision, culminating in this opportunity for the pair of you to meet at last. Still, none of that information could’ve prepared you for seeing her before you now: not the terrifyingly carefree and playfully selfish kid she was not so long ago, but a vulnerable, hurting young girl who just happened to cross your path at the worst of times in both of your lives.
You open your mouth, wondering if you should say something but knowing you couldn’t possibly summon the correct words to rectify this mess, when Chloe lifts her face up towards you instead.
“J-Jack?” she whimpers, sniffling hard and wiping a soft knuckle across her tear-splattered chin, her neck still damp with trickled excess.
“Chloe? It’s… okay,” you say as calmly as you can, finding yourself even trying to soothe her, against all odds.
“I’m s-s-so… s-so…” she croaks, choking through the words coherently enough to be heard, before laying her cheek back against the table, where a miniature reservoir of her soggy dejection has pooled. Those frosty blue eyes narrow, looking directly inside of you, and you know you can trust that glaze of anguish if not her words. “…so SORRY!”