Plum

Who are you, Astrid Barnes? Are you a Barnes, a born genius? Are you a monster, perhaps, with the way that metal melts around you and armors your heart? Are you a girl? A child?

Who are you?

You are damaged, aren't you? That's what you know. I knew this from the day you were born when you came screaming into the world.

---

Two people meet, and these two people will have two children. They will fall in love; or as close to it as two people who have never felt it before can. Their two children will disappear, one from a cold house at a tender age and the other from an empty house into a city that reeks like ****. One will live a full-life, one to be proud of, and the other will die with their lover, heralding the end to a story that should've never been told.

Back to the two people.

One of them is tall and proud, with ink-black hairs that fall to her back. The air around her sits in a poorly contained state, a consistent whisper of promises told in a tongue unfit for humans. She has cheekbones sharp enough to be considered cruel, a regal nose that casts a shadow across thin, angry lips, and thickly lined eyes that look as if they're torn from a black-and-white photo. The other, a man, is tall and bright and a liar, and he has hair the color of fire and eyes the color of melting chocolate, and he will die. He will die alone, all on his own, in a cage made from metal.

The woman will too, but she deserves it. Die, that is.

The two of them are both too smart, and they realize this, and they have two children to make them geniuses so that they can crow to the world, "Look! Look at how smart our children are! We can place any puzzle in front of them and they will solve it, and we will laugh because this is fun." They are in love, they tell themselves, although if the love is born from their ambitions or personalities or both is unknown.

Two people meet, and three people leave when a knock and two more sound on the door.

The Barnes are a family never known for anything but tragedies.

---

You are damaged, and you know this Astrid, you do.

You are seven, your brother ten, and your family is sitting at this table and you cannot eat the green-beans sitting in front of you because they taste wrong on your tongue and they feel a bit too strong, but come on Astrid, just one bite, only one, you need to eat, please, for me? Please, Astrid, pleads your beautiful, kind mother, please just one bite?

This moment is not the only one like this; it's always you being too picky, but we just don't have the time to change ourselves for you, so please just eat them.

Astrid, you ate some of the vegetables, didn't you? Spat them out, of course, when no one was looking, but you ate them? So then, tell me, please I really want to know Astrid, why didn't they taste the correct way? What would you prefer, Astrid?

What would you prefer?

Wouldn't you prefer green-beans?

---

Astrid is thirteen, and she is hunched over her books reading because her dad will get home soon. Her mother, joyful and happy, hums in the kitchen, and her older brother, Alexine, is calling his friend who really won't be a friend for much longer. They are passing the line of friend and turning more closely to adorer, and they will love each other for too long, oh, much too long. To love is to let your heart be caged, and you will never have the key.

A knock on the door rings.

Two more.

Three knocks to close the deal, she later reads in a book, hunched over a different desk in a different room, still shrouded in low-light. Oh, and isn't that something that just feels so true? When it's only one knock you can ignore it, right, because the universe works like that; if something goes a bit different things will change? Even if all you did was ignore a knock on the door and merely solidify the need for the third. It's a ripple effect. An effect.

An effect cannot change something in the past. An effect changes the future.

Death is the past.

A knock on a door. A knock. Three people will leave, one in death and one in mind and one in fear.

"Is this the Barnes residence?" the knocker asks, and there's nothing said after, because her father is late, isn't he? He's late, and he said he would be coming home so that's why Astrid was reading and he was coming home, why isn't he home, why is he a liar, why is this entire family a bunch of liars? The knocker need not say more, but they do.

"Ma'am," the knocker asks because heralds of change do not always realize they will shape the world with a few words, "Is this the Barnes residence?"

"Of course," replies her mother, cruel cheekbones casting stark shadows on a porcelain face torn from a photo. "I'm assuming this has something to do with my husband."

It does.

The air never sits the same around the family.

---

Astrid, you are made up of iron, of metal. You are. You can change it with a touch, with a flick of your hand. Tell me, is that what you desire? Change? Or...

Or are you damaged, perhaps, because if you were there you could have saved your dad? You know you could have, right? You can take control of metal, you know, and you could have stopped it, liquidated that other car and the driver in moments, and protected your father. A life for a life. No one would know if the other car was put together correctly after you change it, made to look like the aftermath a collision that didn't affect your fire-haired dad. You know that, right? Right? So why do you instead hate your grieving mother, when you are the one who could've done something? Why weren't you in the car, Astrid?

Why wasn't it you in the car?

Eat your vegetables. Do not spit them out. I'll know.

---

How old are you when your mother changes? Oh, you are the age of the day your father died and a night after. Did she really change?

How old are you when your brother changes? Oh, you are the age of the day your father died and a night after. Did he really change?

Your mother is a woman who's gorgeous, and she's always looked a bit cruel and cold, but it's always been melted against the autumnal palette of your father. She says mean things, sometimes, but whose mother doesn't? They only want what's best for you, even if that best is telling you to eat disgusting green vegetables, and merely telling your mother that she's beautiful when truly she's not, her insides are akin to the trash under a broken-down compactor. She tells you this, that she wants what's best for you when you want to scream at her. When you want to plead to some unseen force and ask why couldn't we go back in time, put her in the car and your dad in the house, put your dad in the kitchen smiling and humming instead?

Your brother, Alexine, he's older than you by three years for nine months of the year, and two for the rest. He's pale-skinned and cherub-faced, perfect in the ways you are not; he's kind to the world, he's nice and strong, he eats his vegetables and those ******* green-beans. He has friends and a best friend he's a bit too close to, but you've never been close and you think, sometimes, when he looks at you in those late nights he does not see you, no, but your mother, because he can see you, his little sister, and he knows you are the same in the core. For he has eyes the color of your father's, all brown and perfect and cute, while you look as if you were torn from the same photo your mother was.

How old are you when everyone changes, Astrid? Or did they change, or did they not, and you were just too blind to see it this entire time, so focused on yourself instead of someone else?

How old are you?

Three knocks at the door.

You're fifteen, and you're one of the two people who live in this cold house. Your brother has left, he's gone, and now, you look so much like your mother that when you stare into the mirror all you see is the outline of cruel cheekbones and flashing hands, the metallic lunge of a ring twisting fluidly in the air.

---

My dear, my daughter, you draw away from me. So, so far away; will you leave me just like they did? Your father, he did it on purpose I think, and your brother, oh he just felt the need to run from a responsibility he couldn't hold. Astrid, my dear, I've been so kind to you these years, have I not? Don't you think that I've been so nice?

I've only ever been the one to know you as who you truly are. Alexine thought he did, that you were like me, but no, that's not true. Instead, you're a bit damaged, but that's okay. I'll still love you. You know this.

You can't leave like the rest of them, Astrid, for I know you better than you know yourself. I know what you desire.

---

Astrid has had this... friend. Since she was thirteen.

Astrid has been in love with her since she was fifteen.

Talia is something taken from a dream.

She's got red-hair that's dyed terribly. The bleach frays the hair, and the red is something that hurt to look at in the sun. But something about her cheeks and the way her fringe and locks are cut makes it look gorgeous, serene. It pops against her in a way that is so Talia, that tells of someone who stands against the world. She's warm. No, not warm, she's hot and burning. A fire. A fire you can burn yourself on. You won't feel the fire though, not while her hair is still that stupid color, not while she holds your hands in hers and whispers that this can happen so long as you never fully admit your feelings.

There are these freckles too. They only come out in the Summer, and they mainly span across the girl's back and cheeks. From far away some of them look like scars; she's got to be tan for them to come out, you see, and a few of them are so faded that they're actually lighter than her skin. They look like a puzzle, some sort of teenage love-sick connect-the-dots that you want to trace more than finish, to count more than to finally end your drawing of the line. But by god, Astrid thinks that these freckles are something like an idol, something to write poetry about and trace with your eyes.

And then her eyes.

God, Talia's eyes.

Talia is a person who isn't afraid to be herself. Her mindset attracts. Her eyes are nothing but a flame, a lamp, and Astrid is nothing but a moth who will kill itself just to get a single hand on it. They drag a person in, drown them until the only air in your lungs is Talia and Talia knows this. You don't know what color they are until you see them, and then you forget until you see them again. She's some sort of siren, she has to be, to just be so perfect and attractive -not in the physical sense, but in the mental, in the way that she summons others to her orbit and like gravity, never lets them go until they spend millions to leave- and altogether inhuman.

Astrid is seventeen when Talia leaves. Like everyone in her life does, eventually.

Barnes are nothing if not a tragic type of folk.

---

Who are you, Astrid Barnes?

You are eighteen, and your mother is dead. You were one of five people at her funeral.

Her grave is in a different cemetery than your father's.

You can control metal. You can mold it into anything you want, into any shape. You could change a car if you wanted. You don't.

Who are you?

You are Astrid, you are eighteen, you are selling your childhood home and moving to a city that reeks, and you don't like green beans.

You are damaged, and you know this, but you don't care for damaged things are still functional.

I have known this since you came screaming into the world.