Unravel; VIII

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Claire drifted.

She was on the bus. Then she was walking. Then she was sitting on the sidewalk. Then leaning on the brick wall. Walked into a shop, tried and failed to buy a drink because her throat was heavy, and her lips felt like they were glued together, speaking was hard, unnecessary, even when it wasn't.

Claire wandered.

She saw people, girls holding their hands, intertwining them with such vigor and relaxation at the same time, like they knew they would never leave each other and neither of them would ever try to hide anything from the other.

Something she'd long since known was jealousy sparked.

She saw more people, and more, and more, and it became hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to keep moving, so she stopped. She stopped, and she began thinking, and she decided that it was better to keep moving, even with all of the people, and maybe it was better to be surrounded with people this time, because it kept her from thinking.

Claire did things she wasn't sure she wanted to do. Like walking. Or trying to get her voice to make an appearance. And looking at people.

She got an itch, right at her knuckles, right where they'd always collided with skin, meant to hurt. She tried to push them away, not because she didn't want to satisfy the itch, but because she heeded Bella's warnings.

Claire wanted it, needed it, she never tried to question it, she never had the luxury to question it, she just knew. Desperation like no other. Loss like nothing she'd felt before.

Claire had lost the one thing keeping her sane and the one thing keeping her happy on the same day.

Claire found herself standing two feet away from the entrance of where she and Roxanne used to live; her orphanage.

'Betty's Home for Lost Children', the sign at her left said, painted in cheerful red colors for the letters and yellow for the rest, dulled down with age. The colors now looked like gray-ish brown and a darker shade of gray-ish brown.

It brought a smile to Claire's face.

She could see herself, all those years ago, being dragged outside by Roxanne because "the orphanage sucks and I'm bored and there's nothing there to unbore me because the orphanage sucks!"

It was brimming with kids. Positivity, naivety, wonder, mischief.

It was familiar.

Claire stepped into the garden leading up to the front door, looking around, unable to believe that it had only been a year since they moved out of this place.

She looked around, all she could see were memories. Roxanne trying to spray paint the wall but couldn't because she got the spray paint from a junkyard and it was empty. Roxanne wanting to sneak into the older kids' rooms to see if the rumours were true, if there really was a TV and a unicorn for each of the kids - there weren't, and that day, Roxanne had exclaimed, "Being a grown-up sucks! We should stay like this forever! Right, Claire?" and Claire had agreed, even though the prospect of growing up never really looked that scary for her because she never understood it, unlike Roxanne.

Memories, they were bittersweet, and Claire longed and hated them, wondering why things had escalated into this, wondering if the Claire of then would look at her in disgust or run away in fear for what she'd become.

Everyone was looking at her. Maybe they weren't, but Claire felt as though they were.

The garden brimmed with kids, and teens, and people almost her age. She recognized some of them, but couldn't quite remember their names. She was sure most of them didn't remember her names as well, only remembered her as Roxanne's shadow; the other Brooks.

Roxanne would've remembered their names. And they definitely would've remembered the cheerful anomility that was Roxanne Brooks. If she were here, she'd be high-fiving each and every one of them, and bragged about her new adult life and adult job.

Roxanne was socially awkward, at times, but she was social, even if she made friends with the weirdest bunch of kids.

"Oi," Roxanne had said, "hanging out with the popular kids are so old, at this point! All they talk about are diets and school and boys - eugh! They're boring! I don't like boring!"

That was the day Claire had found out that Roxanne had never considered her boring.

Maybe the kids and tweens and teens were looking at her because they were intrigued, not because Claire was walking into the orphanage after never visiting it, but because she was walking into the orphanage without Roxanne, because Claire was always with Roxanne, always following her, through the good times and the bad ones, never leaving her.

Who was she, without Roxanne?

What would she do, when she wasn't allowed to do what she'd been doing for months?

Claire thought of calling Roxanne, more than once, but her phone was abandoned in her apartment and broken, and even if she had it in her hands, she wouldn't know what to say, she wouldn't say anything, she couldn't.

She breathed when she saw one of the few people she was able to trust, then remembered Bella, Bella and her deception, and stopped breathing, thinking that maybe she couldn't trust this person either.

"Claire?"

She was as beautiful as ever, even with the strands of white beginning to color her hair, the crooked nose, and the old, wrinkly pale shirt that was always a size too big for her short, round frame.

The woman readjusted her glasses, which Claire noted still hadn't changed after a year, had never changed during the five years she'd lived here; round, old, bits of dirt covering the sides of the lens, a small crack from when she'd tried to break a fight between two kids on an afternoon.

It was exactly like Roxanne's glasses, because Roxanne wanted her glasses to look like her glasses, because Claire liked those round glasses, they looked so unreal, so vintage-y, like they were from a cartoon.

"Dude, you're such a nerdy hipster!" Roxanne had said with a laugh, upon hearing Claire voicing that thought, before 'accidentally' breaking her glasses, so she'd get a new one.

"Where's Roxanne?"

Claire flinched at the mention of her name, the black clouds that had been hovering above her finally releasing their stress of water down.

And the woman adopted a face of understanding like no other. Claire didn't have to say anything, didn't have to look at her.

Miss Garcia was what the kids called her, and even when she insisted on Claire and Roxanne calling her Betty since they were both adults, none of them could ever do it.

She was and would always be Miss Garcia.

The only woman who'd wanted to take Claire in since the beginning, without a hassle nor an interrogation, back when Roxanne had found her.

The only woman who'd encouraged Roxanne to develop what had been nothing more than a writing hobby, at the time.

The only woman who'd allowed them to take more than one candy because she knew about Roxanne's sweet tooth.

The only woman who hadn't pushed Claire into something she wasn't comfortable with.

The only woman who'd helped them get an apartment on their own, helped settle them down, helped them from utterly screwing up on adult life.

She stepped aside and pushed the door open with one hand, the other stretching out to her in that familiar way. She had a sad smile on her face, like she knew what had happened despite Claire never saying a word. "Come on in, Claire."

...

:D


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