Honey Girl(44)

“Something touched me,” Dhorian whines, and Sani laughs, jumping off the top of the car. “There were cold spots all over that place, and something touched my leg. I’m Black, I don’t do ghosts.”

“You felt a presence?” Grace asks, curious as she leans against the car. “You really felt something?”

Yuki raises her eyebrows, a satisfied smirk pulling at the edges of her mouth. “You sound intrigued,” she points out. “Maybe there’s more to these stories than you thought, huh?”

The ride back is sleepy and hushed. Yuki hunches over her phone as she tries to format a script for the next episode of her show. Dhorian goes back to sleep, pillowed once more in Sani’s lap, his hoodie under his head.

Sani and Grace watch slime videos on his phone. “I watch these after a match,” he says quietly. “Too much adrenaline gets in my system, so this weird shit helps me calm down. I tried ASMR, but I don’t like strangers whispering in my ear, you know?”

Grace smiles, eyes locked on lime-green slime that gets molded and folded and poked and prodded. “Yuki says you’re good,” she says, “at the MMA fighting thing.”

He shrugs, but his eyes crinkle, pleased. “I found this trans-inclusive gym in Brooklyn,” he says. “It’s been good. You should come watch me fight. Sometimes you just need to punch shit out, you know?”

“Seems healthy,” Grace says. But she thinks she sees the appeal. She can’t punch the uncertainty or the guilt or the fear folded inside her. But she would like to. God, would she like to. “But yeah, I want to come.”

Sani makes a satisfied noise and looks back at his screen. “Good.”

She goes quiet, working up the courage to ask the question that’s been growing in her.

“Do you think,” she starts, voice low to ride under the sound of the car and the radio, “Yuki really believes in this stuff?”

Sani turns his head to squint at her. “Believe what?”

She makes a frustrated noise. “This. The show, the—we drove five hours in the middle of the night to watch a lake. There’s no—even if there was, it wouldn’t come out if it knew we were watching, right?”

“Ah.” He nods. “You asked her, didn’t you?”

“Asked her what?”

With one foot he kicks the back of Fletcher’s seat, and the car lurches. “Turn the music up,” he demands. “We’re trying to have a private conversation back here.”

“We genuinely could have died,” Fletcher says, but he hovers over the radio. “Any requests?”

Sani passes his phone up. “Turn on NAO,” Sani says. “The Saturn album, in honor of our very own space girl.”

Fletcher grumbles but obeys, and music plays through the speakers. Sani waits until it’s loud enough that they can whisper without the threat of being overheard. In the front seat, Yuki remains engrossed in her show draft. “You asked her if she really believes in this shit.”

Grace shrugs. “I didn’t think she’d get so—”

His eyebrows rise. “She read you the riot act, huh?”

“She made me feel very ridiculous for asking, yes.”

“Poor baby. Listen,” he says, “I’m going to tell you something about our feral leader, okay? And it’s weird and disgusting, so don’t think any differently of her for it, okay?”

Grace sits up, alarmed. “Maybe this is something I should be hearing from—”

“Nope,” Sani says somberly. “I’ve let it go on long enough without stepping in and saying something.” He inhales and leans close. “Yuki,” he says, “she cares about people.” There’s a pause as he watches Grace. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

There’s a moment where Grace’s brain goes off-line, before she elbows Sani hard enough that he falls onto a sleeping Dhorian. “I thought you were being serious,” she hisses.

He cackles, hands covering his face. “Shit, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. You looked so distressed. God. Okay.”

“Can you be serious now?”

“I am, I am,” he says, laughter fading into a wide, but sincere smile. “I am. Really. She believes in people. That’s what this whole thing is really about. She’ll never say that, though, but you learn a lot being friends with someone for as long as we have.”

“But what does that mean?” Grace asks, frustration boiling over. “What does that have to do with sitting on a lake dock for hours?”

Sani shrugs. “I don’t know how to explain it, exactly. It’s just—there are people who write into her show with bullshit. She knows it. But sometimes there are ones that—” He looks out the window, eyebrows furrowing. “I think the people who find comfort in her show, real comfort, are just really, really lonely. Have you ever felt loneliness like that?” he asks. “When more than anything, you want someone to hear, really hear, what you’re saying? Even if it’s a stranger on the radio?”

Yes, Grace thinks. I’m that lonely now, stuck inside my own head. This fading image of my future, folding in on itself from too much weight. Do you hear that? Do you hear me?

Grace wonders at the girl in the front seat. Have you ever been that lonely? Have you ever been so lonely you ask every show if someone is there, if they’re listening?