I laid in bed in hopes of building up the energy to actually do something.
We can’t stay in bed all day.
I stretched out as far as my body let me.
Then you get up and do something. I’m too tired right now.
Unfortunately we share the same body, so we can’t.
There’s plenty we could do though.
We still have to build that new table with the hidden compartment.
That’ll be there when I’m ready.
We can try and make us get up if we’d prefer that.
What do you mean by ‘make us’?
If we could find a way to control the body.
Then we can take turns moving it.
Can you seriously do something like that?
Probably.
There’s so much stuff in here that it’s hard to dig through.
We’re still figuring out how stuff works.
We’ll experiment and see what we come up with.
I’d really rather you not try to find out how to do that…
Don’t worry.
We won't do anything we wouldn’t like.
You just completely missed the point.
The point was ignored, not missed.
Not needing to move around on our own sounds lovely, and we know it.
So we’ll spend time figuring this out.
“Kendall,” Emma said, knocking on my door. “Someone already got back to me saying they want to buy one of your desks.”
I shot up and swung open the door as that energy I was waiting for finally came. “Already? Are you serious?”
“Yup, one of my older employees is into smaller woodworking projects. He said he’d like one of the small desks you made.”
“Which one?” I asked, walking past her to the front door.
“I'll show you.” She followed right behind me as we went outside and slid open the garage door. The one she talked about sat on the middle table, and my energy dropped like a rock.
“Seriously? This one’s not that good…”
“What are you talking about?” She asked as she walked up to it. “It’s a good desk. The guy even said so himself from what he saw of it.”
She’s right.
It’s true it’s not as good as what we can make now.
That doesn’t mean it’s bad.
It’s a good, solid desk.
My arms went limp. “It’s not even made using the same type of wood. I just used whatever scrap I had, and I could have put the legs on better.”
“You don’t need to use the same materials if you find a way to make everything work, and you definitely made it work. I got better news though” Emma said, peeking my way.
I slumped down on my stool, waiting for her to tell me whatever it was.
“I sold it to him for seventy-five.”
+++
Seriously?
This table isn’t even worth five.
The guy has to be an idiot.
That’s the only reason he’d want to buy it.
+++
“What’s wrong?” Emma asked as it all pushed down on my chest.
“Nothing. I just- he really wants to pay that much for it? It's a lot cheaper than that...”
She stood up straight and looked down at me. “I want you to come with me to give it to him.”
I slumped down onto the table, “I’m not going to some old guy’s house.”
She crossed her arms in her disapproving ‘you’re going to do this’ way that always freaking worked.
“I know you don’t like talking with people, but if you want to sell your work, then you need to meet your customers. And trust me when I say the sooner you get used to it, the easier it’ll be.”
She has a very good point.
We should go with her.
“But what if- I don’t need- I have you so why do I need to talk to anyone?”
“Because I’m not going to always be there for you your entire life. One day you’re going to need to stand on your own two feet.”
We also want to be able to stand on our own.
It’s going to be hard, but we’re strong enough.
We won’t be alone, either.
Emma is here to help get us started.
We can do this.
They stood there side by side to gang up on me. Maybe I could talk one of them out of making me go if I got lucky, but both at once? I was screwed.
“Fine, I’ll go, but can we at least go tomorrow?”
“Sorry, but I already told him I could take it over there today, and if you want to run a business, then being on time is one of the most important things.”
That’s hardly considerate of her.
She does have a point though.
Are you guys seriously not going to let me build up to it?
We’re looking at things in here.
This anxiety of talking to people doesn’t seem to be connected to our problem.
If it was, then we’d tell her we’d need more time.
Since it’s not, then it’s best we jump in.
I don’t have-
A problem, we know.
Problem, situation, condition.
What it’s called doesn’t matter.
We have it.
We also have other matters to focus on right now.
We're going to go with Emma.
Sweat covered my forehead, so Emma had to have one hundred percent known I was freaking out, but she kept silent. With one last deep breath as I rubbed my face, “Fine. But I am not going into his house. I’m going there to give it to him. Saying hi. And leaving. Got it?”
With an exaggerated salute, “Got it. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you, but I'm proud of you. And don’t you worry. I’ll do everything to make sure it’ll be as smooth as possible. Alright?”
“Yeah. Thanks. Can we just get this done? I want this over with,” I said as I held onto that burst of energy for dear life.
“Of course. I’ll just go tell mom. Do you think you can pack the chair with how your hands are, or do you need help?”
“I got it,” I said in the middle of lifting it up.
We should be proud we’re taking this step.
Even if it’s a small step, every little bit helps us.
I packed the desk into the back of the car and went to sit in the front. Emma got in a few minutes later and we pulled out.
Nothing was said the entire way there, and that awkward silence made my urge to jump out of the car that much stronger.
Deep breath in-
It’s going to be fine. Emma’s here with me.
-big breath out.
Deep breath in-
It won’t take long. I’m going to be fine.
-and a big breath out.
Another deep breath in, and Esmer climbed up front and crawled into me.
What the hell are you doing?
Don’t mind this.
One moment, we think…
A tingling feeling ran down my arm.
Feel that on our arm?
...Yeah? What the hell are you doing?
Alright, we're just testing something
We appear to be able to make us feel stuff.
It makes sense.
If we can take away feelings, then we’d be able to give them.
Not what we wanted though.
Wait, are you seriously trying to find out how to control my body?
We’re sitting here doing nothing.
We may as well put this time to use.
Fine. Not like you're going to be able to anyway. Just don’t do anything creepy.
There doesn’t seem to be anything creepy we can do.
At least as far as we’re seeing.
Whatever.
Esmer did whatever the hell she was up to until we pulled up to a pretty good looking house. Right off the bat the biggest thing was that wood chips covered his entire front yard. Seriously, there wasn’t a blade of grass to be seen on his property. It was actually pretty cool.
“I’ll go and tell him we’re here,” Emma said with her foot already out the door. “You get the desk out.”
I climbed out of the car without saying a word. Once the desk was out and on the ground, I made a note of every person in sight.
Three people talking two doors down to my right.
Two people walking their dogs towards my left.
Two people doing yard work to my left.
They kept their distance, but nothing stopped them from changing that in a heartbeat
Both of them walked out less than a minute later. He was an older guy with greying hair and a thick, chest long beard. His tired eyes met mine as he walked to the desk.
“Nice to meetcha,” he said to me as he held out his hand. “The name’s Jack.”
I stood there frozen solid.
Shake his hand.
“Sorry. She’s really shy,” Emma said as she walked up next to us.
He put his hand down with a laugh, “Don’t worry ‘bout it. If there’s anything I know, it’s wantin' to keep to yourself.” He knelt down, judging every inch of the desk. “You made this all on your own? How old are you?”
+++
He’s about to rip it apart because it’s terrible.
+++
Mumbling, “I’m fif…”
Calm down.
Say it again, but clear this time.
“Fifteen, sir. And yes, I made it myself.”
Another round of laughing made me flinch. “Shouldn’t be surprised you’re startin’ young. Bein' Emma’s sister an’ all. I hadn’t known you were this good though ‘til I saw those pictures. And how you had rows of projects. I knew Emma said you covered the walls with your work, but I didn’t know she was serious.”
How much about us did she tell this guy?
My eyes shot to my loud mouth sister.
“And that’s just one reason I’m proud of her,” Emma said as she leaned against the car with a big fat grin.
“Anyways, I don’t wish to keep ya.” He pulled out his wallet, dug through it, and pulled out two fifties. “Boss, I know you said you wanted this to help with the down period, but I’ll be damned if I don’t encourage work like this from a young craftswoman.” He held out both fifties to me. "And I'll throw in a little extra for ya."
Staring at the money, my mouth hung open until Esmer walked out of my body and grabbed my wrist.
What are you-
She lifted up, and my arm raised up with her.
Did you really just…
He put the money in my hands as I pulled the best acting ever to hide my freak out.
Was it really as simple as that?
We’d been trying to move our body that entire time.
Turns out we only had to physically move us.
Though we didn’t really take over our arm.
It’s hard to explain, and we’re not sure how it works yet.
“That’s all good with me,” Emma said. “And I’m sure she’s happy too.”
“Oh- yeah-” I stared at the money in my hands. “Thank you...”
He picked up the desk, “This is much appreciated. I’ll make sure it has a good home.”
“You need any help with that?” Emma asked, pushing herself off the car.
“I’m all good. You guys go on and get outta here. I can tell Kendall’s probably had enough of me.” He picked it up and brought it back to his door, waving us off the best he could as he disappeared inside.
Emma came up and nudged me in the arm with her elbow, “How’d it feel getting paid to do what you love?”
I actually got paid for my work…
Indeed we did.
Let’s make this the first of many times.
And that wasn’t as bad as I was thinking! Like holy hell I can get so much wood with this! Or maybe that power sander I been wanting. Would sure as hell would have made Robbie’s chair a lot easier.
“Kendall?” She waved her hand in front of me. “You alright?”
Say something to Emma.
“Yeah I-” I looked down at the money.
I got a better idea.
I handed Emma both of the fifties.
She pushed the money back at me right away. “No. That’s your money, so keep it.”
“But I want to help you.”
“If you want to help, then use that money on something that you love. It’ll make me happier knowing you got something you want with it.” Emma opened the car door. “Besides, Jack’s right. You worked hard on that, so you should get the reward.”
She really does love us a lot.
No kidding. But I still can’t imagine I got a hundred dollars just for a desk like that!
We should save it for something we love like Emma suggested.
Yeah, that sounds good. But right now I wanna go back home and crash again.
We can work on the chair after we rest up.
Alright.
I stuffed the two fifties in my pocket and climbed into the front seat. As we pulled out, Emma asked, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.”
“That’s fine,” Emma said. “What matters is that you did it. Now next time it’s going to be easier. Keep on doing it and one day it won’t be a problem for you.”
“I hope you’re right.” I folded my arms, slumped down and closed my eyes to shut down for the ride back.
###
“We’re home,” Emma said as we pulled into our driveway.
“I know.” With a yawn and half closed eyes, I opened up the door and dragged my feet on the way back inside.
“How’d it go?” Mom asked, still sitting in front of the TV.
“Tired, ma’am,” I said, making my way to my bedroom.
“Let us know if you need anything,” Emma said behind me. I waved my hand up to let her know I heard her and locked myself in my room.
Working out might be a good idea right now.
We doubt we’ll get much sleep, so we should try to wake ourselves up.
Waking myself up isn’t the problem. I just don’t have the energy for that right now.
I flopped down onto my bed.
We’re going to be meeting with people a lot when we sell our stuff.
We need to make sure we’re in top form.
If we’re not, then it’s an unacceptable risk.
It will also make us feel better.
Go work out.
She was right, but that didn’t stop me from groaning. I just got comfortable and everything.
Fiiine, you got a point.
Pushing myself up from the bed, I walked over to my closet. When the door swung open, it revealed my workout room. A small room with just enough space for my weight set and myself. Emma could come into my room if she asked, but this place was off limits to everyone. My own little world inside a world. I walked in and closed the door behind me.
The next hour passed with me doing all kinds of workouts. Legs, arms, chest, back, abs, shoulders. And I was really going hard on them. I knew it was stupid to do this much for my entire body in one go, but I didn’t know when I was going to have to do that again. I had to be as ready as possible.
Call it here.
It won’t do much good if we can barely move when we need to.
Taking Esmer's advice, I put down my dumbbells and sat down against the wall. The pressure on my shoulders relaxed as much as they could as I let out a deep breath.
Thanks. That did make me feel kinda better.
Forget about the chair for now.
Let’s take it easy and rest.
We’ve earned it.
You’re just full of great ideas today.
I walked out of my weight room with a hint of ‘feel good’ energy and fell down backwards onto my bed.
After that, nothing really interesting went on for the rest of the weekend. I either hid out in my room, did some touch ups on the chair, or talked with Emma about whatever random things came up until I fell asleep Sunday night.
---
“This will happen as long as you live.”
His lips pressed against my neck.
“As long as you live...”
His hand-
---
I’m startled awake when my body hit the floor mid scream.
A frantic knocking at my door moments later as I laid face down on my floor. My hands wrapped over the top of my head with eyes shut tight.
“It’s Emma. I know it’s a nighterror but I need to be sure. Are you alright?”
The knocking continued.
“Kendall I need to know-”
“I’m fine!” I rolled over onto my back and dried my face.
“Alright…” she said as everything went dead silent. “I’m sorry for waking you.”
We shouldn’t shout at Emma like that.
I took out my phone to check the time.
One in the morning.
It wasn’t Emma that woke up.
We flailed ourselves out of bed.
That doesn’t make me feel any better.
Well complaining isn’t going to get us to sleep any faster.
Get back into bed and try to go to sleep.
Not like I ever get any sleep after that
I sat up and crawled back into bed.
That doesn't matter.
We should still try to get some more sleep.
Even if I wouldn't get any sleep, she was right. I wasn’t going to handle everything with Robbie with only an hour of sleep.
It took rolling around on my bed way too many times, but eventually I fell back asleep.
###
My eyes cracked open, and as if to make up for earlier, I didn’t have any bad dreams for once. But even better than that? I looked out the window and it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It was kind of light outside!
Please tell me there’s a reason I slept until it was light out for once.
We’re sorry, but it doesn’t look like anything’s changed in here.
It’s more likely dumb luck that we didn’t have dreams.
It may also have to do with that night terror from earlier.
We don’t know.
Either way, it was as perfect a night as I could have hoped for. I pulled myself out of bed easier than usual thanks to this wonderful start to the morning.
Things are going to change. I can feel it! Even if you say that nothing’s changed.
Just don’t get our hopes up for something that we can’t fix yet.
We don’t want ourselves to be disappointed.
I won’t. Don’t worry.
Even if I said that, I knew my anxiety was going to go through the roof when facing Robbie after everything. At least my hands were just about healed by now, so that was something.
We haven’t heard anything major about him since Friday.
We’ll choose to take that as a good sign.
Let’s figure out how we’re going to go about this.
When I see him, I’ll go up, say sorry and give him the chair. And if I don’t see him then I’ll bring it to shop class first and tell him later.
And then?
How should I know? I’ll just wing it and hope it goes well.
We suppose that’s good enough for now.
Let’s get ready to go.
It might be best if we leave early today.
Beats sitting around here worrying.
I went through the motions a lot faster today. After getting everything ready, I headed out to the kitchen to eat. That’s when I saw Emma was already up and eating.
“You’re up early,” I said, looking at the clock to see it was five-thirty.
“I couldn’t sleep. And I wanted to say sorry that I woke you up. You started screaming and we had to make sure you were okay.”
“You didn’t wake me. I fell out of bed, so don’t worry about that.”
“Oh, well I’m glad I didn’t wake you then.” Emma said as I stood there in an unusually awkward silence. Normally I’d be more than happy to just be with her, but something about this made me uneasy.
“There was also something I needed to talk to you about,” Emma said, “but you seemed more tired than usual since all that with Robbie happened. I didn’t want to pile it up on you.”
And there it was.
That’s not good.
‘We need to talk’ is never good.
“Alright...” I sat next to her at the table, while Esmer sat next to me. “What did you want?”
“I know you’re not good with opening up to people, but I wanted to tell you that if you want to make it up to him, then you might need to tell him why you went that far.”
Oh, dear.
“He’s the first person that’s come across as your friend to me, and you seem to care about him. What are you going to do if he asks why you did it?”
My heart sank for more reasons than I could count.
“I’ll figure it out if he asks. But I don’t want to think about that right now...” Followed by more long drawn out silence.
I really hate this. How the hell do I just get things to go back to normal?
Give her a hug.
That’s always a good way to brighten the mood.
So, that’s exactly what I did. I leaned over and gave her a nice big hug. She thankfully returned it. “It’s good you’re trying to make up for it, but you really do need to think about what you’re going to tell him.”
“I’ll figure something out,” I said as I stood up to get breakfast. “And do you think you could give me a ride to school early today?” I don’t want to worry about this anymore, and it’ll be annoying to bring the chair with me on the bus.” Digging through the fridge, I grabbed some leftover french toast.
“Yeah, that’s fine. How’d it come out by the way?”
Tell her we learned from it.
“It was really annoying,” I said, putting the food in the microwave.
But we learned from it.
“But I learned from it I guess.”
Emma sat up straight, “You serious?”
“Maybe? I don’t even know anymore. It was so bad that I couldn’t even find out how he put it together.”
Emma pressed her hand to her mouth for a moment as she smiled to herself. “That kind of learning,” Emma said as she utterly failed to keep her smile down. “I gotcha. You know those job fairs I go to to recruit? I know it’s kind of mean, but we used to have unofficial ‘best worst project’ awards. Usually it was the person who’s project that was so bad that we couldn’t even figure out how it was put together that won. So, was his really that bad?”
The food dingged and I took it out to go sit back next to Emma.
“It was the worst thing I think I ever seen. I want you to guess why he sanded down almost every two-by-four on the seat by a half an inch.”
She was doing everything to not break down laughing as she said, “The boards weren’t sitting right.”
I did a double take at her. “How’d you figure it out that fast?”
“Because I’ve seen it before,” she said, not bothering to hold back her laugh anymore. “Okay okay, so-” Emma damn near choked from laughing so much. “So he sanded it down until it sat flat. A half an inch though?” She teared up as she slouched over the table. “Holy hell. I wish I could’ve seen your face when you realized it.”
Our face was quite amusing.
“He made the frame out of the seat out of two different pieces, and both of them were sticking up in the middle. I spent most of that time trying to sand the lumps out of it because no way was I going to put new boards in and fix all that.”
A short, but loud burst of laughing snuck up on her. “That’s-” she said, trying to calm herself down. “That’s really sweet of you to try and help him like that. I know how hard it can be at times, but I kinda like working with a bad project. It’s something different and makes you think, ya know?”
“I don’t. I got a massive headache from it.”
Admit it.
We had fun.
I’ll admit I had fun when you say Robbie’s good at woodworking and mean it.
Then we better teach him how to work with wood.
You might as well ask me to jump to the moon.
Emma and I made small talk after that until it was ready to head out the door and leave for school, while Mom was busy doing Mom stuff. The car ride there was silent, but she did have some words for me when we pulled into the parking lot.
“Before you go in there. Do more than just say sorry, alright? Buy him some food or something. Help him with whatever you can. Anything extra to show you’re sorry.”
“Buy him food and help him with other stuff. Thanks. I’ll let you know how it goes after school. And can you pick me up again so I can bring my own project home?”
“Sure, just let me know if you suddenly don’t need me or something, and good luck with your apology.”
“I will, and thanks.”
With that, I pulled myself out with Robbie’s chair and walked towards the front doors with a weird kind of hype mixed with a desire to run away.
We’re strong enough to do this.
Don’t ever forget that.
With one deep breath, I stepped inside school.
“You bitch!”
Barely inside school, I turned to see Sophie’s fist ram into my eye.
Staggering back, I kept hold of the chair to keep it safe.
“Careful! I deserved that but you’re going to break-”
She tackled me to the ground, but I still held onto the chair to keep it safe.
“Shut the fuck up!” Her voice broke up as she screamed. She swung her fist again, knocking my head to the side.
---
Him crawling on top of me.
---
“Wait!” I yelled, letting go of the chair to cover my head as my fingers went numb. “I’m trying to make it up-”
She grabbed my wrists and pinned them to the ground in a show of strength that shattered my confidence.
---
Being pushed down against the bed.
---
It was the first time I got a look at her, and her face was covered in tears.
A second later, she moved to pin one of my arms under her knees. With her free hand, she gave blow after blow that crushed my face with each hit.
Thump thump thump thump
I strained to pull my hands free.
Thump thump thump thump
My vision blurred as a terrible sting spread through my face.
Thump thump thump thump
Blood smeared on my face as I went limp.
Thump thump thump thump thump thump
Someone yelled as they pulled her off me.
What just...
Everything faded to black for a few seconds.
Sophie screamed something at me that I didn’t hear.
My vision darkened again for another couple seconds.
The school nurse knelt down next to me.
“We need an ambulance at…”
One more time, I blacked out. Still only for seconds at a time.
My head slowly rolled to the side. My ears rang as everything merged into a blurry blob. I only made out where Sophie was because she was still struggling to get to me. All while shouting her head off. Her screaming and the ringing in my ears made it hard to hear, but one part made it through that twisted my gut inside out.
“You put Robbie in the fucking hospital!”
Author's Notes:
Thank you for reading this chapter!
We know that this is quite a ways in at around 25K words, but this more or less is the main hook of the series. As mentioned, this will be a slow burn, but that's the only way that this story can be properly told.
This was something of a focal point for the story. It had originally been a time loop type situation, but much more development happened before we actually got to this point than we expected, and we added more in later drafts. Because of that, we eventually scrapped it. It was for the best we feel as well as restraining ourselves with going wild often makes better work. This holds true as looking at this chapter before and after the big change makes it clear to see that we made the right choice. Not to mention messing with time is just a hell of a lot more pain than it's worth. Mark it down as a lesson learned.
There's plenty more to come after this, so we hope that you all enjoy reading this!
