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Neon’s bedroom was huge and soft and pink, just the way a girl’s should be.
“Who’s this?” said Shizuku, pointing to a pristine purple stuffed rabbit wearing a little sunhat.
Neon giggled. She giggled at most things. Shizuku liked it. “That’s Kaori! She’s best friends with Nanami. Nanami’s a rabbit, too.” She plucked a jar off the shelf. There was a pink bow tied around the lid. Inside, a lump of flesh about the size of Shizuku’s thumb in almost the same color pink as the ribbon. It was tiny and delicate: its little paws were nearly translucent and caught the light. Its two eyes were dark and clouded over, and Shizuku could see tiny blood vessels under the skin, like the pictures of rivers in the school library’s big atlas. Its belly was dark and swollen and its ears were tiny. There was a strange dent right in the middle of its cranium.
“She’s beautiful,” said Shizuku, honest. “How do you remember them all?” Sometimes Shizuku would wake up and find she had no idea why something sitting on the small table next to her bed had any importance to her. Usually she threw it away when that happened. It was easier to pretend she’d never had the information to begin with than to admit she’d forgotten it.
Neon shrugged. “I just love them all so much that it’s easy for me,” she said, waving expansively to her shelf, which took up an entire wall and was tastefully crowded with stuffed animals, wet specimens, taxidermy, statuettes, and stranger things. “I’ve been collecting for a long time, you know. Daddy’s so good to me.”
“Wow,” said Shizuku. There wasn’t even any dust on the shelves.
Neon put her vape to her lips and inhaled audibly. Shizuku watched the LED in the corner light up. “D’you wanna paint my nails?” said Neon, breathing out clouds that smelled like strawberry. It was potent. Shizuku almost felt lightheaded.
“Okay,” she said.
Together, they sat on Neon’s bed, which didn’t creak. Neon silently handed Shizuku three bottles of polish, then spread out her fingers. She had clean, trimmed, oval nails. Some of the cuticles were chapped. Shizuku would never paint her nails in bed, but a girl like Neon probably never spilled or messed up anything in her life. Shizuku didn’t want to disappoint her.
She picked up the base coat first. The two of them were sitting crosslegged across from each other, knees touching, heads bent together— Shizuku balanced the bottle of base coat in the crook of her knee so it wouldn’t fall over, brushed the excess polish off the applicator so it wouldn’t drip. She held out a hand, palm up, for one of Neon’s.
Neon’s skin was soft and moisturized, despite the cuticles; Shizuku could almost feel each individual ridge of her own palm against the smoothness of Neon’s. She fixed Neon in place with a curled thumb and painted. She’d always been good at neatness.
She finished the first hand. The smell was intense, but it felt far away.
“Now we wait,” said Neon, delicately lifting her hand out of Shizuku’s grip. She held her hands carefully as she slipped off the bed, keeping her fingers spread and her nails away from any surfaces. She opened her bedroom door with her palm and stood on her tiptoes as she stuck her head out into the hallway. “Eliza?” she called.
Shizuku carefully screwed the cap back onto the nail polish and put it lined up right at the corner of Neon’s bedside table. She picked up the blue polish and started shaking it. The ball bearing inside rattled.
There was a murmur at the door, to which Neon answered, “Could you pretty please get us some snacks?” More murmuring. “The strawberry roll cake. Two pieces.” Neon stretched up higher onto her toes as she talked to whoever’s outside, rocking forward against the doorframe. Finally: “Okay,” she said. She extricated herself from the doorway and closed it, padding back to the bed. When she turned around, Shizuku was struck by the way her hair fell so nicely around her cheekbones, the way her eyes seemed to take up half the room in her skull.
She held her hands in the air in front of her and flopped backwards onto the bed, sighing. “Why is nail polish such a pain?”
“I don’t know,” said Shizuku. Neon ignored her. Shizuku watched her watching the way her hands moved.
“Do you think it’s dry yet?” Neon said. She was slowly connecting the pad of her thumb with each of her fingers in turn.
Shizuku shrugged.
They waited some more. Shizuku couldn’t say how long; time had always seemed like something that happened to other people.
Neon sat up suddenly and crawled into the middle of the bed, sitting back up in front of Shizuku again. She reached over her to pick up the blue polish from the bed and pressed it into Shizuku’s hands. “That’s long enough,” she said.
“Okay,” said Shizuku. She positioned them again, their heads bent, ears brushing, and opened the bottle to paint.
Neon’s sweat smelled like strawberry chemicals and something else Shizuku couldn’t name, bitter and floral and oily. She took huge lungfuls of it. It mixed with the sour-sweet scent of the nail polish.
“It smells good, right?” said Neon. “I like it too.”
Shizuku was finishing the first careful layer on her tenth finger. She didn’t think she’d need a second. The polish was opaque and even. “Uh huh,” she said.
“Are you done? Do you want to… I have— wait here,” Neon said, and sprang off the bed.
Shizuku yelped and barely caught the bottle in time. “Hey!” she said.
“Oops!” said Neon, disappearing into her closet. She came back with a bundle of plastic grocery bags clutched carefully between her fingertips. Shizuku capped the bottle and put it on the nightstand next to the base coat.
“Open this,” Neon said, sitting on the bed next to Shizuku. Her face was so close. Her cheeks were a little flushed. She dropped the bags in Shizuku’s lap.
Shizuku found the handles and peeled them open, then held the bags up to Neon’s face as she leaned down and inhaled. Shizuku could see her chest moving as her lungs filled and emptied. Her eyelashes fluttered.
When she opened her eyes again, they were red and irritated. She was smiling. “Your turn,” she said.
Shizuku held the bag up to her face and breathed deep. She felt fuzzy, a little staticky. Euphoria felt like lasers through the smoke of her body.
She bundled the bag back into her lap and her gaze caught on Neon’s, right there in front of her. She was so close.
Neon lifted her hand and pressed it to Shizuku’s soft cheek. Shizuku felt it like a static shock. She leaned forward and her lips connected with Neon’s open mouth.
“Oh!” said Eliza, from the doorway. There was a click as she set down the tray, and then another as she hurriedly shut the door and left.
They were apart very suddenly. Neon wouldn’t look at her.
They ate the strawberry roll in silence, with the forks Eliza brought. Shizuku could feel a splitting headache coming on.