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Jane sat quietly in the corner of the stage, her knees held tightly to her chest as she watched the rest of the choir talk and familiarized themselves with their forever home. A warehouse between life and death, the sickest joke had been played on them and now they were trapped.
“Savannah, Are you okay?” Ricky stepped into Jane’s view, worry evident as he got closer. She didn’t want to say she felt useless. She felt alone and like no one wanted to talk to her, but Ricky seemed like he always wanted to speak to her, it would be a lie if she said any of those things.
The name Savannah made her feel warm, but she had not yet started to refer to herself as it. She wanted to, but the pain in her chest was too much to bear when she used it in her head.
“I am… lonely.” she didn’t know what else to say, that was the truth. Loneliness clung to her like a suffocating blanket, eating away at her like moths would fabric.
“Do…do you want to be lonely…together?” Ricky offered to her while stepping closer, his crutches made a soft tapping sound as he approached.
Did she? Ricky was good company, he did not make her feel lonely, how would they be lonely together?
“Yes.” a simple answer that needed no further thought. If she didn’t want him to sit with her it would be as simple as turning away, making it clear she wanted to be alone. Jane didn’t want to be alone, though.
“Cool, thank you!” Ricky carefully sat down, taking extra time to rest his crutches against the wall. He didn’t say anything while he got comfortable, he had a small smile on his face that Jane could tell was only there to make her feel better. Worry stayed in his eyes, making it hard to believe he was happy about anything right then.
“What is everyone doing?” Jane said after a moment of silent sitting, her eyes on the group in front of them. Ocean was waving her arms around, her voice didn’t carry over to them but Jane could tell she was excitedly explaining something.
Constance kept shaking her head, now and then she would throw her head back and laugh. Misha was squatting, his body language more relaxed than it was when they were competing, his arms crossed but attention on Ocean. Noel was the only one not caring what Ocean was saying, all eye-rolls and sighs that Jane could see from her spot in the corner.
“Ocean’s telling everyone about the time she got carried away by waves and the Blackwoods had to get a lifeguard to save her…that was when we were really little, around the time I got my first pair of crutches.” His voice was gentle. Jane liked the way he spoke to her, with care, like he wanted her to understand his every word. Sometimes, it felt like everyone talked too fast and didn’t think to explain what it was they meant, but never Ricky, he knew just what to say and do to make Jane feel better.
“Lifeguard?” That sounded like something they should have had on the Cyclone, maybe then they wouldn’t be stuck in an abandoned warehouse for all eternity (it felt like that was where things were headed at least, with no true idea about when or if they could move on.)
“Yeah, it’s a job someone has, they watch over bodies of water that others are swimming in and make sure everyone is safe in the water,” Ricky explained while he played with his shoelace. Jane looked at the way he wrapped the string around his thumb and threaded it through to tie it in place.
Jane watched curiously, the description of the job sounded important and she would have listened to him list every job he knew. But the act of tying his shoes, the care he took, and the perfectly practiced maneuvers he did, Jane wanted to learn how he did it.
“How do you do that so well?” her voice echoed, bouncing around in her head as she turned to look at Ricky’s face. His eyes meet hers and it’s so easy for her to get lost in them, seeing all the stars in his light eyes. She didn’t know the color, but she liked it a lot, especially with how the lights in the warehouse made them look.
“I could teach you, my mom’s taught me…it shouldn’t be hard for you to learn,” As he spoke he took off the shoe he had just tied, undoing his work and offering it to Jane.
“Oh…yes please.” She grabbed the shoe, unsure what she was supposed to do. Her shoes didn’t have any laces, but to learn a new skill felt nice and like she knew something.
“Okay so…” Ricky reached forward and gently guided Jane’s hands to the laces. “First you separate the laces, and in one motion cross them so that the aglets (the plastic at the end of the shoe) are on opposite sides of the shoe and pull to tighten” He guided her hands with the laces over each other.
“What next?” Part of Jane found the movements familiar.
“We choose one lace, for this let's go with this one,” he had her grab the left lace, “and make a loop, holding it between your thumb and pointer finger.” She followed along, sometimes looking up to see he was concentrating on teaching her.
“This is the hard part, Wrap the other lace toward you rather than away from you, over the loop.” He made a note to her and she did her best to emulate it. “Good, okay so now pull the lace through this hole (don’t pull it all the way through, we want a loop, not a string), and then lastly, tighten the loops by pulling them away from each other.”
Jane, with Ricky’s help, finished tying the show. It looked rough and like a toddler had done it, but that just meant she would need to practice more.
“Great! To undo the tie just pull on lace and that should unravel everything.” He pulled one lace and sure enough her messy tying was undone.
“Want to try again?”
She did, but that could wait. “No, maybe later…thank you.” Ricky had distracted her from the storm inside her porcelain head, but even he couldn’t completely get rid of the hollow feeling in her chest.
“Alright, well you can keep my shoe until you think you’ve got a hang of tying, not like I’m going outside anyway.” He smiled and chuckled at his joke, turning back to sit against the wall.
Jane looked at his shoe and then at him. It was kind of him and she felt like maybe it was okay to enjoy the warmth of his presence for just a bit longer. She sat back against the wall and slowly inched closer, her head soon coming down to rest on Ricky’s shoulder.
Ricky was like a lifeguard, always there when it felt like she was drowning. She didn’t know about any real lifeguards but Ricky was her favorite.
“Um, Ricky…where is your shoe?” Ocean stared down at Ricky’s foot with only a sock on it. Ocean’s question piqued the interest of the other members and he soon had everyone standing around him.
“Did you lose it? We can help look if you want?” Constance started moving her head, looking around the area from where she stood.
“No, no. Savannah wanted to learn how to tie shoes, so I gave her mine for now…” Ricky wiggled his toes and pointed behind him at the concentrated girl tying and untying his shoe.
“So…why not take off the other shoe then?” Noel pointed out the obvious solution to not having one shoe.
“Didn’t think of that at the moment,” Ricky shrugged and then slowly lowered himself down on his crutches, sitting down before taking off his other shoe and stretching his legs where he sat.
“No point in shoes, we are dead either way.” Misha sat beside Ricky and took off his shoes, “I will give doll mine too.”
Ricky didn’t have the heart to tell him that she wouldn’t need his shoes, it was the thought that counted.
“What, no! Keep your shoes on! We do not need to be removing our shoes just because we’re dead, put those back on right now, Misha!” Ocean covered her nose as if there were going to be some kind of deadly smell.
“Oce… you do realize that we can’t smell anymore?”
“Oh.”
Ricky laughed, turning to look at Jane. With something to occupy her, his worry was lessened. He allowed himself to admire the wonder and concentration on her face.
~end~