Chapter 22: Monday Night, 9:47PM

“Here you go, just like I promised.” Mom held out a ring with a single bronze-colored key on it.

Laura reached out with a trembling hand and took the key. She brought it down in front of herself, holding it cupped in both hands while she stared at it.

Alaina couldn’t smile widely enough. She’d joined the group hug while the older girl cried, now standing behind her with both hands on her sweatshirt-covered shoulders. This fabric has a great texture to it. So cozy. I can see why she likes it. I want to hug her again, but I think I might suffocate her at this rate. It just feels so good knowing I’m doing something to help!

“Thank you,” Laura said quietly, holding the key to her chest. “You ... You don’t know what this means to me.”

Alaina couldn’t stop herself from giving her new housemate a hug around her shoulders.

“Laura,” Mom said, “I’ve got a bunch of old clothes filling up the closet of your new room that I’ve been meaning to donate. It’s your room now, so I’ll clear that out for you. Do you have anything in your car you’d want to bring up? There’s a dresser in there, too, y’know.”

Laura looked up with a brilliant smile. “Really? I do have some stuff, but I don’t—”

“Laura, it’s your room,” Alaina said, her rush of endorphins just starting to wear off but her smile not fading in the slightest. “Come on, I’ll help you carry your stuff.”

“Hold on, girls, give me a few minutes to move my stuff first,” Mom said, a contented smile covering her face. “Why don’t you two do some homework for a little while, and I’ll come get you when I’m done.” She headed towards the stairs.

“Thanks, Mrs. Bishop,” Laura called over her shoulder.

Thanks, Mom! Alaina brought her school bag—still sitting where she’d left it that afternoon by the doorway to the atrium—over to the table and took her new seat at the end of the table. This seat’s not so bad. I’m closer to the stove and the fridge. She pulled her Chemistry textbook out of her bag along with her notebook and a pencil.

“This was really your idea?” Laura said abruptly.

Alaina looked up, having just cracked open her textbook. She caught the older girl’s questioning look and returned it with a grin. “Yup!”

The blonde smiled and looked down for a moment, brushing hair away from the side of her face. “Thanks, Alaina,” she said, looking back up. “You’re, um...” Her eyes glanced towards the table again, then back to the redhead. “No offense, but you’re so much nicer than I thought you were. I...” She hesitated, her smile turning hopeful once more. “If I didn’t ruin it earlier, I’d really like to be friends.”

The redhead nodded. Yesss! “We’ll need to compare notes on making omelets this weekend to make it really official.”

Laura leaned in a little bit. “So you’re interested in my omelets?” She asked, bouncing her eyebrows and showing a wholesome smile.

“I am,” Alaina said nodding again. “Mom seemed pretty positive about the one you made for her, and I don’t make eggs that often.”

“Well,” Laura said, looking around theatrically as if to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “Apparently the secret is to make them as spicy as you can,” she said. “I found a container with some little brown peppers in the back of the fridge—”

Alaina’s eyes widened. “Those are Mom’s chocolate habaneros! You’ll like, die if you eat one of those!”

Laura giggled. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

Alaina goggled, her expression gradually changing to horror. Oh no.

“I love spicy food!” the older girl said, smiling brightly. “Those were so good, too!”

What have I gotten myself into?

“You really don’t like spicy food?” Laura asked.

“Not that much,” Alaina said slowly, shaking her head.

“I guess you’re lucky, then, because I used all of those up tonight,” Laura said.

“All of them?”

Laura frowned. “Well, yeah, there were only a few left. I’ll have to go...” She trailed off, then smiled again. “We’ll have to go shopping together so I can get more!”

Alaina groaned.

“I was thinking about it tonight, and I think I even know the perfect type of pepper for that lobster mac and cheese you made last night...”

“Laura, I feel like you really gave me the wrong impression about how many clothes you brought.” Alaina stared into the older girl’s opened trunk. “I thought you said you had all your clothes in that suitcase?”

Laura reached in and grabbed a suitcase. “I don’t think I ever said that,” she said, tilting her head as she peered down at the shorter girl. “I took two. And then I put the rest of my clothes and shoes into all these garbage bags. I ... I hoped it wouldn’t last, but just in case it did...”

“I honestly don’t even know if you’re going to have enough closet space for all these,” Alaina said. She heaved a giant black garbage bag out of the trunk, staggering slightly under the weight. “This one feels like shoes.”

Alaina passed her new friend another daring cocktail dress from the bag, this one forest green. “Why do you have so many of these, anyway?”

“I wanted to look sexy when I went out with Will,” Laura said, hanging the dress on a hanger, then adjusting it to hang straight. “I spent a lot of the money I earned on sexy dresses and lingerie. Carla helped me pick some of it out.”

“He doesn’t really seem like the kind of guy who would care that much what you were wearing,” Alaina said, handing over a black dress that looked too tight and slinky to ever be worn. “You’d really wear a dress like this?” She smirked. “What happened to being shy?”

“He didn’t, but...” Laura trailed off, looking at the shorter girl but making no move to accept the offered article of clothing. “Is it awkward if I talk about Will with you?”

If it had been yesterday it would have been awkward beyond belief. “Nope, I’m trying to be an understanding kind of girlfriend for him instead of a jealous one.” Alaina winked. It might even be nice having someone else to talk about Will stuff with. Ay cares, but she’s mostly in it for the gossip and to make sure I’m okay. Hearing her talk about Ken too much always drives me crazy, so I imagine it’s the same.

“Okay,” Laura said. “Um, also, you know a lot of the time when I ask you stuff like that I already know how you feel, but I’m trying not to make it too weird for you? It’s not like I can turn my Trait off...” She looked back to the closet and started needlessly adjusting the dress she’d just hung up.

Oh. That’s... Alaina frowned, lowering the dress. “I never really thought about it, but that must make it pretty hard to talk to people.”

“It’s like having two conversations at once,” Laura said without turning back around. “Sometimes it’s hard to keep them separate if they’re too different.”

“What’s it like if you don’t?” Alaina asked.

Laura turned around with a confused expression on her face. “You mean like if I didn’t ask whether you felt comfortable and just kept going? I don’t do that, people would get scared talking to me.”

“Try me,” Alaina said, smiling mischievously. “It might be fun.”

Laura tilted her head and smiled, her brows raised. “If you say so. Back to your questions, then: Will didn’t mind what I wore when we went out, but I liked teasing him and getting him all riled up. Oh, you like to do that, too? Well, what about...” She held out her hands and accepted the black dress at last, turning it around and draping it over her front, then adjusting it to lay as it should. The chest gaped open, and it only came down to slightly below her waist “This isn’t a dress, Alaina.” She smirked a little bit. “It’s a babydoll. You can’t tell in this lighting, but it’s actually just a tiny bit see-through, too.”

Alaina’s face reddened. I was thinking about it as though she was the same height as me. Oh no, she knows I’m embarrassed, too! Her blush deepened. She’s probably laughing at me.

The taller girl turned and started to hang the sexy sleepwear over another hanger. “See?” she said in a kindly voice. “Once you start being more aware of it, you start forming an opinion about what I’m thinking, and then at that point we’re not really even talking to each other, are we?” She turned back around, her brows raised and shoulders slightly hunched. “Please don’t be afraid of me, Alaina.”

Alaina blinked. What am I thinking. Laura doesn’t seem like she has a mean bone in her body. She wouldn’t laugh at me. She’d ... probably tease me a little? “That’s the kind of thing you get photographed in?” she asked. Let’s stop talking about that so I don’t accidentally make her feel bad.

The lingerie model smiled, the tension going out of her shoulders. “Sort of.” She stepped forward and rummaged around in the garbage bag, pulling out another item that she unfolded and draped over her torso. “Usually it would be something more like this.”

The item she was holding was a red babydoll, but it was almost transparent.

I bet she’d look unbelievably sexy in that. Alaina shook her head, then frowned. No, stop it. “That’s pretty bold.”

Laura nodded. “Yeah, it would probably be hard to do a shoot on a day when I wasn’t up. But I’ve always tended to be more up than down, so it hasn’t been much of an issue.” She folded it in half and hung it over the same hanger as the previous babydoll.

“So you only take jobs when you’re ... like that?”

“Nobody wants pictures of a sad lingerie model.”

Alaina passed over the last item from the bag—a textured, off the shoulder sweater dress—and reached for the next bag. “What about on normal days? You, um ... You have those, don’t you?”

The bipolar girl finished hanging and straightening the sweater dress on the hanger. “I do, yeah.”

“Sorry, is ... Should I not ask you about that?”

“No, it’s fine,” Laura said, turning around with a dazzling smile. “It’s ... nice. I can tell you really care.” She accepted a pair of boots and set them on the floor of the closet. “Normal days aren’t that common for me. It was a lot better with the medications—once I finally got to one that worked, that is, and before my Quirk—but those made me sort of, um, irritable? So then my moods were evened out, but I stopped having days where I really felt like me. Like I do now!” She laughed. “When I feel like this I don’t want to work, I just want to enjoy it!”

I hope she gets to have more days like this. Alaina couldn’t help but smile back.

“You’re really flying through those,” Alaina commented as she watched the older girl’s pencil scribble across the page. Somehow I expected her handwriting to be gorgeous, too. It’s ... not.

“I’m getting back into it,” Laura said as she continued to write. “I ... might have been understating it a little bit when I said this was last week’s homework. This is from three weeks ago...”

“Laura,” said Mom, flipping through a purple hardcover book titled Diagnostic And Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition, “would you mind if I talked to the people at school about your situation? I’m sure they’d be happy to give you time to catch up on everything after what you’ve gone through.”

Alaina beamed at her mom.

“I don’t ... want you to have to go to more trouble for me,” said Laura, looking across the table with a small smile. “Having somewhere safe to stay is already way more than I thought I’d have when I woke up this morning.” She sighed happily and went back to her work.

Alaina closed her Chemistry textbook with a frown and was about to speak up.