Part II, Chapter IV | Sex & Samira

“When I was fourteen-years-old, my dad cheated on my mother, so they got divorced. I kept my name, but I stayed with my mother… I dunno. Out of pity?” She laughed. “Samira Aryo. ‘It’s a good name,’ my dad says. ‘A strong name.’ Well that used to annoy me, but now I think I agree. I am strong, aren’t I?”

I smiled and chose not to answer that.

As Ms. Lyre had suggested, I formed my own club with her as my advisor. I spent the whole night coming up with what to do with it. What activity would have me interact with lots of people? What would draw eyes to me? What worked with the strengths I had?

In the end, I landed on counseling. Therapy of sorts. And Samira Aryo was my first client.

“I don’t expect you to actually help or anything,” she admitted. “But it’ll be nice to have a safe place to vent.”

At first, when Ms. Lyre had suggested I try and make my own club, I resisted at first. I said I’d try my hand at getting accepted elsewhere first. I spent that afternoon exploring the school and getting rejected over and over again until I returned to the same room, and she smiled as if she hadn’t expected any other outcome.

Samira was one year older than me, with tan skin and frizzly brown hair. Her features were sharp and pointed, with thin brows and a nose that hooked just a little. Her lips were naturally thin and brownish too, but she wore a faint shade of lipstick to hide that. Her voice was a little high-pitched and irritating, although she was a little similar to Sarah in that way. It wasn’t all too unpleasant to me.

Behind the desk of our classroom, Ms. Lyre kept a nice little study room where we could hold counseling sessions. Samira laid on her back on the couch in the back, and I spoke to her and listened.

“My boyfriend and I have been fighting lately,” she said. Then she stopped, sat up, and looked me in the eye. “If you tell anyone this, I’ll kill you.”

“I-I won’t,” I said, smile wavering. “Although, I think I should remind you that this is all being recorded for broadcast.”

“Yeah,” she shrugged, “But my folks don’t watch television, and students aren’t allowed to see anything on Channel 11 except the main screen.”

“This might make it to the main screen,” I said, but she only scoffed.

“In your dreams, maybe. Those eyes are all on Alina.”

“Let’s go back to your boyfriend,” I suggested.

She laughed and laid back down. “Last month, we had sex for the first time since we got together. It didn’t go too well. It was basically… I wasn’t a virgin already by the time we met, and on that night, he somehow could tell. He stopped and said he didn’t like feeling like leftovers or whatever. Some nonsense like that.”

“And how did you respond?”

“I didn’t want the night to end with that weird mood, so I said I’d do it with him as much as he wanted to make up for it.” She glanced at me harshly again. “I’m not a slut. I just felt bad for him, so I said whatever to make him feel better.”

“Did it make him feel better?”

“Of course,” she laughed, almost mockingly. “But after that, he seemed to want it every day. Sometimes more. We don’t ever just hang out anymore. I was getting sick of it, so I told him last week that I wanted a break, but he only slapped me and… It was a lot rougher than usual, but he seemed to be into it, so I let it happen.”

I felt a knot form in my stomach. “Does he hit you a lot?”

She sat up on the couch and smiled at me. Red and black tornadoed out from her. The colors and the threads. They raged in sharp amplitudes, rise and fall in equal measure. The red and the black splattered across the entire study room like sludge and blood, and soaked her in it, still smiling.

“Only in bed,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me, though. My mom used to hit me a lot. It’s basically a sign of affection. Hold on, are you crying?”

I reached up to my touch my cheek, and there it was hot and wet. “Oh, I am. Allergies?” I rubbed the tears off with my sleeve, but they kept coming, so I walked over to the cabinets on the right side and pulled out a small towel. Samira had gotten up with me and hovered over my shoulder, and an idea struck me.

She was still covered all over with that paint and sludge.

“You have a little something on your face,” I said. She reached up to try and rub whatever it was off, but I grabbed her hand and told her to let me.

“Okay weirdo,” she said. I took the towel and gently wiped the sludge off from her skin. From every pore and crease on her face. She resisted a little at first, but I kept a gentle hand on hers, and she eventually sighed and let it happen. I moved onto her hair next, gently scrubbing it off from each strand. Only I could see it, right? But it didn’t feel right to leave her like that, so I scrubbed down the rest of her above the clothes. Wherever I could see that paint splashed onto her. When it was done, she smiled at me again, almost scornfully. “You’re so weird.”

“Do you feel any better, at least?” I said.

She walked on over to the door back to the classroom, but stopped there. “Actually, yeah. I feel… lighter. Thanks, I guess.”

When she crossed the threshold, the paint vanished all at once, but it felt like it remained with me. She felt lighter. That was great. But all that weight was mine now. The knot that formed in my stomach hadn’t gone away. It was worse now. Tighter, like my insides were tearing themselves to bits.

The door knocked. “It’s me,” Sylvia said. This girl’s voice already sounded unmistakable to me. I told her to come in, so she carefully unlatched the door and poked her head inside, hat emerging first of course. “How was Samira?”

“I’m sworn to secrecy.” The words came out fine, but the knot in my stomach turned into a pit, and a blackness that grew darker.

“Right. Of course.” She entered the room entirely now, and scanned the room like it was a museum. “You’re so lucky… Ms. Lyre hardly gives anyone the time of day. Maybe she’ll even let you dorm with her. Just kidding.”

“Maybe she will,” I said. The pain was worsening, so I took a seat on the clients’ couch. Maybe she could tell from the look on my face, because she approached me with a worried look.

“Are you alright?” Her hand reached out, so I caught her by the fingers to stop her.

The pain had left, but the thing that replaced it felt strange. Like a swirling. My senses heightened. My blood coursed quicker, and I was suddenly conscious of every millimeter of Sylvia’s fingers I held, and how cool they were to the touch.

“It looks like you were crying,” she continued on her own. “Did Samira do something?”

I tightened my grip on her, and she winced. “She did nothing to me. Though now I’m wondering what I can do to you.”

“For me, you mean,” she tried to correct. “But no, a witch has no need for counseling.”

“Then why are you here?”

She tried to pull away, but I didn’t let her, so she simply fidgeted and looked away. “I think the two of us got off on the wrong foot. I think we can be—”

“Friends?” I finished for her. She blushed again, and I felt something take control of me. Sylvia shrieked when I pulled her over and across me, and rolled until she was the one on the couch, and I was held over her. Her legs were crumpled to the floor, and her hat floated like a feather beside us until it settled beside them. “Isn’t friendship a bond built between equals? What do you have to offer me?”

“We’re recording,” Sylvia reminded me, but that only ticked me off, so I pulled her face even closer to mine. Close enough for her hot breath to tickle my skin. She turned away, afraid of that closeness. “You make friendship sound like a business.”

“We can’t be friends while I suspect you only want me to use me,” I said. Sylvia flinched as a lock of my hair fell over her ear. I did her a favor and brushed it aside for her, but then I became fixated on the ear itself. It was bright red and warm to the touch. Hot, even. I stroked the lobe, and the way she fidgeted and twisted so slightly gave me a mild rush. “I think you’d look nice with an earring. A hoop or chandelier, maybe. You seem like that kind of girl. Just in one ear. Here, I can pierce it for you.” From the inside of my sleeve, I finessed my sewing needle out with the tips of my fingers and held it close to her cheek. She flinched again against the cool metal touch of it.

I wanted to mark her so badly. I didn’t even know why. Reason was lost to me. I just wanted that beautiful bright red on the inside of her ear to be on the outside too. So I pressed the point of the needle against her earlobe, and she closed her eyes, not even making a sound. I was holding her down with my one free hand, and she gripped onto my wrist there, almost as if to keep me on her.

It was her perfume that stopped me. She must’ve put something on just a little while ago. The top notes of the fragrance that I’d barely noticed at first meshed with the Sylvia here, whose heart raced just enough to get her to sweat. The result was a soft lemon zest with a cinnamon kick and faint floral tones, a combination just shy of cloying, and altogether very pleasant. It helped clear my head. It cleared it enough to ask her an important question. “Why aren’t you trying to stop me?”

That made her open her eyes again, and she finally shoved me off and rushed out of the room, witch hat in tow.

“What in the world was I doing?” I muttered to myself. Across the room, there was an armoire whose doors made a knocking sound then. I sighed, and untied my uniform’s tie. The one that supposedly had a camera and microphone.

With those disabled now, the armoire door opened from the inside, and Ms. Lyre stepped out. “Did you forget I was in there?”

“No, I…” I stopped and slumped onto the couch. “Well, what did you think?”

She undid her ponytail and fluffed her hair up before she answered. “I think you need some counseling for yourself.”

“I mean with Samira. How did I do?”

She smiled. “Same answer. Your conversation with Sylvia did make me think of something, though.” I waited for her to continue, so she did. “You really should stay here with me. At least, until you can find someone else to dorm with.”

“Here?” I said, incredulous. “This place doesn’t even have a bathroom.”

Ms. Lyre laughed as she walked back over to the armoire, and pushed the coats aside to reveal an entire other room, attached to this one by that secret entrance. “So? Willing to spend the night?”

I was struck into awe, and the step through the open armoire door into the other room felt like a step through a magical portal. The air was completely different on the other side. Perhaps it was due to the working HVAC unit in the secret room. Staring back out, it almost felt like we had shrunk to fit inside the armoire itself. “A certain line from a certain sci-fi is coming to mind,” I said. “But I’ll refrain from speaking it in case we get sued.”

Ms. Lyre stepped in after me. “Your tie is already off, though. You can say what you like.”

I ignored her and wandered around the rest of the place. Its floor plan was no different from a normal Midtown steelhouse, although there were no windows to the outside. By the time I made it back to the living room, Ms. Lyre was already lounging on the couch in shorts and a t-shirt. Suddenly, even though she was likely already in her late twenties, it seemed like she was just another girl around my age.

“I think this will be the first time I’ve ever gone to sleep over at a friend’s place,” I said.

Ms. Lyre snorted. “I think this is the first time a student’s ever called me a friend.”