The layers of the memory shimmered like charcoal on a cream-coloured page, the stark lines and soft smudges shifting back and forth to render Gwenh’s laughter as they leaned shoulder-to-shoulder in Mal’s bedroom, taking turns wearing the glasses that suited them both. The memory skipped and jumped like the scratched record they were listening to, or maybe like an old movie reel with jarring cuts and missing pieces, the camera desperately seeking out the perfect angle as Mal — fifteen years old, love-struck, certain that this was not enough and worth risking for more — screwed up her courage and kissed Gwenh on the corner of her mouth.
In a matter of seconds, Gwenh was on the other side of the room, dragging her sleeve across her mouth. “You don’t have time for that,” she said peevishly, her whole face almost the colour of her birthmark, a plain display of embarrassment, humiliation, shame. “You’ve got a baby to worry about. Two, if you count Tai.”
Even though Mal had no idea what she was talking about — had they been talking about kids? — she could see just how badly she had complicated things: the unwanted kiss was a wrong step, a trip in their waltz that threw off the rhythm of their entire friendship. The horror of rejection felt immense in her teenaged mind, dawning for hours and hours after Gwenh had left, taking up all the space in her brain as she laid in her bed and tried not to cry.
By the time Mal was properly awake, she was sitting upright with her back pressed against the cold wall, staring into the darkness with her ears pricked, certain that someone was standing over her bed. The longer she squinted at the gloom, illuminated only by the bathroom's cold light spilling along the edges of the closed door, the more clear it became that she had only been dreaming: it was too dark to actually see anything, and there was nothing to hear besides the sleeping breaths of her bunk-mates. She rubbed her eyes, pressing her fist against her chest to steady her fast, shallow breathing — she was used to nightmares and well-practised in dismissing them, but it was a different thing entirely when the dream was so vivid, when she couldn’t be sure that there was no danger.
“Go back to sleep,” a low, raspy voice hissed — one she hadn't heard before, with even the briefest of words curling with an accent she was too tired to identify — as soft footsteps crept away.