Honey Girl Read online

  Grace, who is going over her notes after class as usual, fights back a smile, huddled on Ximena’s ratty couch.

  “Important people, huh,” she says, and Ximena looks up and meets her eyes. “I could see that, yeah.”

  Meanwhile, Colonel’s leg starts to heal. He gets fitted for a titanium contraption that he hates. He grips her hand as it sets into place, showing pain that Grace wonders if she will ever see from him again. There is sweat on his forehead, dripping down his temples, when he attempts to stand on it for the first time. Afterward, Ximena sits next to Grace until she stops shaking, and Raj comes to pick her up.

  Ximena and Grace move in together, pooling their meager funds to rent a two bedroom with a shitty balcony and an ugly cactus. Grace comes home to face masks in the kitchen over cheap wine. She comes home to review her notes cross-legged on the toilet seat while Ximena soaks her aching feet in the tub and makes Grace read the passages out loud. Grace builds her own contented universe away from Colonel and Sharone and that big, quiet house.

  And then, they meet Agnes.

  Ximena comes home late. Her eyes are swollen and red and her arms have red scratches on them. She collapses on their ratty, terrible couch, and Grace presses close.

  She says, “They put me with a new patient today. I was in the psychiatric ward.” She grabs Grace’s hand and one of them, maybe both of them, are shaking. “Her name is Agnes. Agnes Ivanova.” She breathes out the name like it’s important, like Agnes is important.

  “Hey,” Grace says softly, pushing into the little V-crook of Ximena’s legs. “Hey, I’m here. I’m here, okay?”

  “I know,” Ximena says, like it’s something that will always be true. Planets will form, and life will bloom and die, and stars will fold in on themselves, and Grace will be right here. “I knew it that first day we talked, you remember? You were so stressed and scared, and I just wanted to make you feel better. Like, some part of my brain said mine. And that was it.”

  Grace presses her face into Ximena’s stomach. Soft and warm and trembling with each breath. “I know,” she says quietly. “You’re mine, too. I know. I love you so much it hurts.” That’s what they said to each other, because that’s how it felt, the connection that blossomed.

  “Love you so much it hurts,” Ximena says, like the words were waiting. She takes a breath. “She tried to—I mean she has these—” She holds out her wrists, and Grace can imagine all the life that pulses blue underneath them. How easily it bleeds out. “I mean they’re bandaged, but that doesn’t mean they just go away, you know? And she has the same look on her face. The same—you know, Porter.”

  They don’t talk about it. It is buried in the hollow of Grace’s ribs, in the back corners of her mind, the dark, anxious pit of her stomach. Ximena doesn’t ask why Grace claws at her skin, scratching until she is settled by the sting. Grace wonders, during school and work and the future-in-flux looming ahead, how long she can withstand the sting before it just—stops. How long she can burn before there’s nothing left. How long a thing can be buried before it combusts.

  Sometimes she hears sickly sweet voices that tell her she will never make her family proud, that she’s wasted years chasing something she will never get to reach. The ones that curl and sour in her stomach when she stares at the ceiling in the middle of the night.

  They ask, Why are you here? Why do you deserve good?

  “Yeah,” Grace says, finally answering Ximena. “I know.”

  “None of the other companions will stay with her,” Ximena says. “She’s mean, and she’s sharp, and she knows how to make you hurt, just like she does.” She looks at Grace. “She’s mine, Porter. Just like you. I just know.”

  The thing is, it is Grace and Ximena against the world. Things may get very big and very dark, and they are very small in front of them. But even on the worst days, Grace likes their odds together. The way she sees it, another person, a girl with teeth and claws and hurt, can only make them stronger.

  “Okay,” Grace says. “Tell me about her.”

  Ximena does. Three is a good number against the world, it turns out.

  Five

  Grace can’t sleep.

  It’s four in the morning, and she stares at the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. She wonders if somewhere else, a girl with rosebud cheeks and a trail of spell herbs clinging to her, is staring at a ceiling, too. Unsure of her place in the world but reassured, somehow, by the weight of a warm key against her chest.

  There is someone, Ximena or Agnes or both, on the balcony. Grace thinks about telling them about the secret she holds. I did more than just hang out, she could say. I danced under lights and swore solemn vows to a rosebud girl I don’t know, but I think I want to.

  Her career and the gatekeepers she has to face fill her with dread, but these, a gold ring and a calling card she keeps under pillow, do not.

  The balcony creaks, and she makes a decision. There is only so much you can hold until you are holding too much. Grace can let this go. This one thing.

  She gets up.

  The apartment is dark. Grace navigates it with no lights, not wanting to disturb the fragile peace. If she turns on the lights, it will all be real, and she will have to say it and not just whisper it under the quiet beam of streetlights.

  She climbs out the small door. The balcony isn’t really a balcony. It’s a black steel contraption, just sturdy enough to hold all three of them snugly.

  “Hi,” she says, climbing out and seeing Agnes. “I didn’t know who I was going to find out here.”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” Agnes says. She’s at the edge, legs swinging against the creaky metal. “Still want some company?”

  “I guess you’ll do.” Grace sits down. Agnes smells like smoke and chamomile, and the shadowed half-moons under her eyes speak of nightmares. “Want to talk about it?”

  Agnes shrugs. “Not really? My therapist would say that’s not productive, but I did actually think about sharing for a moment, so I’m counting it as a goddamn success.”

  Grace laughs and moves closer. “If you count it as a success, then it’s a goddamn success.”

  They bump fists, and Agnes’s face peeks out from under the comforter around her shoulders. “What about you?” she asks. “Anything you want to share with the class?”

  The universe says, This is it, places, everyone. The universe says, This is your time. Grace says, “I got married in Vegas,” and the world doesn’t end.

  Agnes blinks. “Whoa,” she says. “Are we really doing this now? Shit, I thought we were going to actually have to stage an intervention to get you to talk.”

  “Agnes,” Grace says, staring down at the empty streets.

  Agnes leans in. She is small, too-skinny. Her bleach-blond hair in its sharp, blunt cut doesn’t make her look soft or approachable. She is neither, but she moves closer, and Grace takes it. She takes her edges and her sharpness and turns them into things that feel safe.

  “You’re being serious?”

  “Do I look serious?”

  “I can’t tell if you’re being serious,” Agnes shoots back. “I saw the picture in your hotel room, okay? You know that. But, like, you didn’t, right? You didn’t.”

  Grace pulls out her necklace. The gold ring glints under the moonlight. “I got married,” she says. She lets out a disbelieving, hysterical laugh. “I spent eleven years proving that I was the perfect daughter. I worked day and night to prove myself to everyone. Because that was my perfect, clear-cut plan. And then one night I got drunk-married in Las Vegas to a total stranger, and here I am.”

  Agnes stares like she is looking at an impostor. “Ximena!” she yells suddenly, and the alley cats start to scatter. The distant sound of dogs barking echoes up to them. Lights flicker on, and someone from the complex across from them raps on their window.

  “You cannot scream,” Grace
says. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Had to,” Agnes says. “This requires backup.”

  Ximena sticks her head out the sliding door. Half her face is wrinkled with sleep. “What the hell are you doing?” she asks. “You need tea?”

  Agnes holds up her mug.

  “Alcohol?”

  Agnes pulls a flask from underneath her covers, and Ximena laughs. “Okay,” she says, “so we’re covered on both fronts. Why are you screaming?”

  She shoves between the two of them, their solid and steady person. They lean on her, and she lets them.

  “Hey,” she says quietly. “Who’s having the crisis?”

  “For once,” Agnes says, “it’s not me.” She sticks her tongue out at Grace. “Go ahead, Porter. Tell Mom what you did.”

  Grace blinks. “You know,” she starts, “for someone who follows Ximena around like a lovesick, useless bisexual, you sure do have the weirdest pet names for her.”

  Ximena moves as if she expected Agnes to lash out, claws formed. Agnes squirms in her grip, and Ximena giggles as Grace leans away. “Calm down, Aggie,” she says, voice gentle and soft and open, like it was the first few months Agnes started living with them, eyes haunted and wary. “God, I think you scratched me.”

  Agnes huffs. She makes a show of covering herself back up until only her ice-blue eyes are showing. She glares at Grace. “Fine,” she says. “I was trying to be a supportive friend, but that’s canceled now. Grace got drunk-married in Vegas.”

  “Asshole,” Grace hisses, and Agnes grins with all her teeth.

  Grace looks at Ximena. She is Grace’s steady thing, her roots digging into the earth like an orange grove tree. Grace waits and Ximena’s fingers tangle in her own. I’m here, they say. Give me a minute, I’m here.

  Grace folds up and digs nails into her palm. “Please don’t be mad. I know it was stupid.”

  Ximena pulls Grace in. Tucked into her tight, unrelenting grip, Grace tries to calm herself, desperate and trembling. “Hey, you’re fine.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Grace gasps out. The words tumble into Ximena’s pajamas. All their fear and fright embedded into cotton fabric. “I fucked up so bad. Colonel’s gonna kill me. I’m supposed to—I’m supposed to—”

  “Shut up for a second,” Ximena says. She hums, this hushed, calming sound. Grace has heard it before. She hears it when she catches Ximena at work humming a tune to her last, sleeping patient. She hears it in the mornings, while Ximena peters around the kitchen, and they both pretend to ignore Agnes staring angrily at her meds before she takes them in a fit of spite.

  Grace trembles and Grace shakes and Ximena hums, sings this lullaby that they have come to recognize as safe. Agnes reaches out, gently scratches at Grace’s back. The sensation makes her shiver.

  “You good?” Ximena asks, and Grace nods. “Positive? You don’t have to be good yet.” She taps a finger four times against Grace’s pulse. Love. You. So. Much. Love you so much it hurts.

  “I’m good,” she croaks out, but she doesn’t move from her spot. Ximena is warm; her steadiness comes with roots that are old and ancient and long. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Ximena says. “Just tell us how you went from drunk to married and didn’t say anything.”

  It’s been weeks of staring at the ceiling, counting the stars instead of sleeping. In between searching open job positions and fruitlessly closing the tabs, she memorizes the words that were written on the hotel’s stationery. She memorizes them with her fingers until their ink starts to stain her own hands.

  She says, “It was the girl from the bar. The girl that bought me a drink. Nobody’s ever—” Been so into me. Leaned in close, but not too close. Asked if it was okay, like Grace could decide and not have to follow a plan for the night. “She was pretty. She was funny. We danced, and I was so fucking drunk, but it wasn’t bad, you know?”

  “She was nice,” Ximena says absently, like she has the night playing out in her head, too. “She seemed nice. We tried to make sure.”

  “We did,” Agnes murmurs. “Ximena even let me put my knife in my pocket and not my boot.”

  “Absolutely not the point,” Ximena says. “We’re listening right now.”

  “What about me?” Agnes whines. “What about my problems? I don’t get married in Vegas, and suddenly I don’t matter?”

  “Are you done?”

  “Yeah.” Agnes sighs. “We’re listening, Porter,” she says, nails returning to gently scratch down Grace’s spine.

  Grace shrugs. “We danced. We talked. She was a little mean, but like, in a good way.”

  She gets lost in the memory. “There were people everywhere. Street performers and food vendors and tourists. We bought some flowers and tucked them behind our ears. We were so drunk.”

  Ximena and Agnes are quiet, and Grace tries to paint it, the hazy dream of it all.

  “She kissed me, or maybe I kissed her. We didn’t want it to end, so—we made it forever, I guess. I woke up, and it felt like I had dreamed her up.”

  “I believe you,” Ximena says, hushed, as if she can see Grace’s memories. They are fragile. Grace worries they might fade if she looks at them too long.

  “Me, too,” Agnes says, voice rough and low.

  Grace traces the gold wedding band.

  She puts her knees up and curls up small. “I’ve had my whole life planned out for so long. What school I was going to, what I was going to study, what job I was going to get. I feel like I don’t know how to make my own choices anymore,” she confesses. “But I met a girl, and I had fun, and I felt good. I chose that. And she chose me.”

  It was easy to miss someone you don’t really remember. Maybe not the filled-in parts of them: their name, if they kicked in their sleep, if they really kissed you before they disappeared out of the hotel room. But, it was easy to miss the outline of them: their laughter and their sea-salt skin and the traces of magic they left.

  “Fuck,” Agnes says eventually. They laugh, the three of them, in disbelief and awe of the tale that has been spun. It feels like a fairy tale, a Cinderella story, but instead of a shoe, Grace has been left with a note and a radio frequency she has been too afraid to tune into. “You really don’t do things by halves.”

  “I know,” Grace says. “I’m terrible. I’m the worst. Who just gets married? Who does that?”

  Ximena waves her hands. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, existential crisis later. You’re married,” she stresses, “and you have no idea who this girl is or how to get in touch with her?”

  Grace moves out of their embrace. The note and business card are plucked out of her hoodie, and Agnes snatches them away and holds them between her and Ximena like a treasure map. Her mouth moves along to the words that Grace knows by heart.

  “Holy shit,” Agnes breathes out. “It’s so romantic. I feel sick.”

  Ximena rereads it. “Do you have your phone, Porter?” she asks slowly.

  “Yeah? Here.”

  Ximena’s fingers tap rapidly as she reads off the front of the card.

  “Wait,” Grace says. “You’re not really—you’re not looking up her radio show?”

  “Yes, I am,” is the answer that comes. “I want to know everything about this girl.” She puts the phone down. “How the hell haven’t you looked her up yet?”

  “I don’t know,” Grace says. “What if—” What if reality is not like the champagne-pink dream? What if this, too, does not turn out how I planned? What if I am once again too brown and too gold and not the right fit? “What if she regrets it?”

  Ximena moves closer, close enough that their knees touch. “Baby,” she says, playing with the coils of Grace’s Bantu knots. “What if she doesn’t?”

  “Found her,” Agnes cuts in, still curled up under her blanket. “She wasn’t lying. The radio show has a dot net domain.
That’s downright spooky.”

  “Fine.” Grace leans over. “Fine, let me see.”

  ARE YOU THERE?

  brooklyn’s late-night show for lonely creatures

  & the supernatural. sometimes both.

  99.7 FM

  There’s a picture of the host. Yuki Yamamoto, it says. The sea-salt girl. The girl that left traces of bitter herbs in the hotel bed before she sneaked out. She has weird circular glasses and short black hair and a jeweled septum piercing. Your conduit to community, her caption reads.

  “Question,” Agnes says, scrolling up and down the page. “Did you marry a fucking ghost hunter? Does she, like, perform exorcisms when normal people in Brooklyn would do hip-hop yoga?”

  Grace laughs. There she is: the rosebud girl.

  “Slow down,” Ximena complains. “How can we read if you’re flying through the pages like that?”

  “There’s not much to look at,” Agnes says. “Bio page, an About Us, ooh, look, past episodes.”

  “We can’t,” Grace says.

  “Oh, babe,” Ximena says, linking their fingers. “We totally can.”

  “Yes,” Agnes hisses. “Can we listen to one now?”

  Ximena looks at Grace. “I think we should,” she says carefully. “I think you should. But it’s your wife, your life, your decision.”

  Agnes huffs. “Why would you read Porter her rights like that?”

  Grace gives in. “Oh my God, just do it.”

  “Doing it.” Agnes presses Play on the most recent episode.

  “Are you there?”

  It’s Yuki’s voice, as clear as Grace remembers. Not sweetened by alcohol or swallowed in a laugh. It’s just her, Yuki, coming through the tinny speaker of Grace’s phone.

  “Are you there?” she asks. “It’s me, Yuki, and for the next hour, you are not alone.”

  It’s intimate and quiet and if Grace closes her eyes, Yuki could be right beside her.

  “Tonight, I want to talk about the sea,” she says. “Is that okay?” She pauses, as if waiting for someone, anyone, maybe even Grace, to answer. “Good. I want to talk about the sea and its dark depths and foaming, white tides and its swelling, hungry waves. The sea isn’t inherently supernatural, or even scary. But it holds many unknowns.” Her voice quiets. “Sometimes unknowns are the scariest things of all, aren’t they?”