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Clarke doesn’t really understand the soulmates thing until she’s six years old, and he writes on his arm for the first time.
She’s in the daycare center of her father’s work, older than the rest of the kids there but too young to go upstairs with her dad. He was supposed to be done half an hour ago, so they could stop by the Dairy Queen on the way home. Clarke’s recently begun an obsession with the vanilla ice cream trapped in a hard chocolate shell.
But her dad’s running late, and the younger kids are down for their afternoon nap, so she’s in the corner with a Pocahontas coloring book and the markers that smell like chemicals and strawberries.
The words Prometheus means Forethought appear letter by scrawling letter on the back of her hand, in blue ink. Some of the letters are darker than the others, like the pen is pressed down too hard there, and Clarke watches the message come into existence, hardly even daring to breathe.
Soulmates aren’t very rare, but they aren’t exactly common. Aesop wrote fables about them, and there are a few Hans Christian Andersen stories that were subsequently turned into cartoons. School kids spend about half a semester on the history of soulmates, but are careful to circumnavigate all talk of Gods or religions that might play a part. The lessons are all fairly perfunctory; soulmates exist, and have always existed as far as they know. There are records dating back to the Ancient Egyptians, and an endless amount of creation myths that mention the matching skin marks. Nobody quite understands them, the same way no one really understands the Bermuda Triangle, or spontaneous combustion.
There was an incest scare, for a period of time, where everyone was convinced the marks had something to do with genetics, and so each pair of soulmates must somehow be related—but a wave of quick DNA tests shot that theory down soon enough, and they were all back at square one.
Clarke spends the rest of the afternoon tracing each letter on her hand, over and over again. She can’t feel the ink, and it doesn’t smudge against her finger, but it’s there and she tries to imagine what they might mean. Her father shows up eventually, and they manage to make it to the Dairy Queen before it’s closed.
“What’s that?” he asks, pointing to Clarke’s hand, as she tries to catch each drip of ice cream before they melt onto their table.
Clarke has never lied to her parents before. She’s never really wanted to. But for the first time, she feels the words catch in her throat, unwilling to come out. She just got the words—they’re hers. She doesn’t want anyone else to have them.
So she lies.
“I saw it in a book,” she says, and he nods, expectant. Clarke’s been going through a phase where she finds words she likes the look of, and says them over and over again, wherever she goes, until a different one takes their place.
“Prometheus was a god, you know,” her father tells her, when he’s helping her into the car. He taps the name on her skin and smiles. “A Titan, actually. He gave mankind the gift of fire.”
“What happened to him?”
Her father shrugged and started the car, glancing over the seat to look at her. “He got in trouble for it,” he admits. “And he was punished.”
Clarke frowns. “But he didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Sometimes people do the wrong thing for the right reasons,” her father offered her a sad smile. “And sometimes people don’t do anything wrong, but they still get in trouble.”
Clarke’s frown deepened. “That doesn’t sound very fair.”
“It isn’t. All we can do is try to do the right thing, and hope for the best. That’s what makes you a good person.”
“Was Prometheus a bad person?”
“No, he just made a mistake. Mistakes don’t make you a bad person.”
“Did he try saying sorry?” Clarke asks, and her dad laughs.
“Sometimes saying sorry just isn’t enough, kiddo. Did you finish all your homework?”
Clarke knows that means the conversation is over, and so she nods, and looks back down at her hand, trying to picture Prometheus—a man who made a mistake, and was punished. She wonders if he was just grounded, like she is whenever she draws on her walls, or if it was something worse. She wonders who the person is on the other end of her skin, with the blue ballpoint pen.
She checks the message again first thing the next morning, and finds it’s faded, like someone washed it away with no soap.
It’s fairly common after that, for Clarke to glance down and find some sort of message on her hand. It’s always the right one, which means her soulmate must be left-handed, and the message never makes any sense. She’s not sure what they’re writing it for, as a reminder to themselves or simply to carry it around with them. It’s usually a name—Gaia means Earth, or Pontus means Sea—but sometimes she wakes up to find the spot where her thumb becomes her wrist has turned into a galaxy, with tiny five-point stars etched across the skin.
Sometimes she thinks about trying to find the person who carries gods and stars around on their hands. Sometimes she thinks about sending a message of her own; she’s always been pretty good at drawing. Maybe a flower, or a tiny Saturn to fit into the universe on her thumb.
But a part of her is worried that if she did, her soulmate would stop writing altogether. So she keeps her ink on paper and waits for the new message to appear.
She means to keep herself contained, to keep her soulmate a secret—even from herself in a way. And for three years she does; she doesn’t write back, or doodle any flowers or stick figures or jot down any of the names from her textbooks.
But, like so many things about life, something happens to get in the way of her plan.
In the end, she blames the party.
Clarke is twelve when she gets invited to Glass’s birthday party. Clarke’s school is the kind of school that comes with starched Oxford uniforms and real hardwood floors. Her father works for the government, so her mom pays the tuition with the money she gets as the kind of surgeon who’s flown across the country in a helicopter when important people get hurt.
To be honest, Clarke doesn’t really understand most of what her parents’ jobs entail, but regardless, her school is big and echo-y and filled with expensive things.
Glass is arguably one of the most popular girls there, if not the most popular, at least in the 6-8 wing. She’s pretty and tall for her age, much taller than Clarke, and thinner too. She’s starred in a half dozen commercials, and sometimes her face will pop up in an insurance ad while Clarke’s eating breakfast and watching cartoons.
Each year, Glass throws a birthday sleepover at her enormous townhouse up on the hill, and it’s the biggest event until summer vacation. Anyone who’s anyone is invited, and anyone who’s not, isn’t.
Which isn’t really a very fair system, since Clarke’s never shared a class or even spoken to Glass until this year, so it’s not like Glass knew she existed. But now she does, because they sit at the same table in history, and they’ve worked on a few Civil War projects together, and they get along pretty well.
So the Friday before Glass’s birthday, she drops a rose-scented pink invitation on Clarke’s desk with a smile.
Clarke grins as she opens it, and a handful of glitter floats out, like fairy dust. “Can I bring my friend Wells?”
Glass looks surprised, but nods. “Yeah, of course. But boys have to sleep in the den.”
Clarke collects Wells after class and he’s predictably wary of the party. Wells doesn’t really like anything that involves large crowds—especially crowds of people their age.
If Glass is the most popular kid in their wing, Wells is the least popular. Having the headmaster for a father hasn’t really done him any favors. He’s never been invited to anything before, and he’s clearly very anxious about it.
Glass lives up on the hill right outside city limits, the one that gives off an air of importance, even though it’s not even that tall, it’s just the rest of Arcadia is so flat and sunken, with grass that’s still soggy from last hurricane season. Her house is the biggest Clarke’s ever seen, even bigger than her great-grandfather’s estate up in Maine. Glass’ house has pillars, big enormous white ones that remind Clarke of the Greek mythology books her father keeps in the study. She can’t even wrap both her arms around the width of them.
Glass’ parents are nice enough; they greet the kids as their parents drop them off in the main hall. Clarke’s dad drives her and Wells over in his special car, the one with solar panels on the roof, that her mom refuses to ride in. There are little cloth bags filled with chocolate covered cranberries and perfume bracelets, lined up along the table, one for each guest.
The party goes about as well as expected; mostly Clarke and Wells just stick to themselves, and the handful of other kids that they recognize. Glass’ parents ordered a bunch of pasta from Olive Garden, because they don’t believe in pizza. Clarke doesn’t really see the point in it; pasta and pizza are basically made up of all the same things.
Around ten o’clock, Glass’s mom comes downstairs to tell them it’s time for bed, and herds all the girls up to Glass’s bedroom, while the boys change into their pajamas and roll out their sleeping bags on the living room floor.
Clarke’s expecting to switch into her nightgown and lay down in her own bag, and maybe spend the next hour whispering to Thalia in the dark—but just a half hour later, Glass turns on the light, grinning as the girls start to squint and sit up.
“Come on,” she whispers, and they each follow her down the stairs, taking care to walk on the balls of their feet because it’s quieter that way.
They find the boys playing Digimon in the middle of the floor, having moved the coffee tables over to make room.
Well, they find all of the boys playing except for Wells, who’s trying to sleep in his bag in the corner. Clarke goes over to fetch him, while the others pretend not to see.
“They didn’t have enough cards,” he shrugs, following her back to the others, who have managed to form a loose, mangled circle on the hardwood floor.
“They had enough cards for everyone but you?” Clarke asks, but he just shrugs again as they fit themselves into the group.
“Alright,” Glass says in her most proper speech-voice, the one she uses when she gives reports to the class. She holds out a fan of markers, the narrow, pointy-tipped kind that smell like chemical fruits. “Tonight we’re going to play telegram.”
Clarke freezes without really meaning to, and pulls her sleeve farther down than it already is. Her soulmate had doodled another burst of stars on their—and Clarke’s—hand that morning. They were still a dull blue, only slightly faded from washing.
Telegram is a fairly common sleepover game, like Bloody Mary and Spin the Bottle, and Clarke’s seen it on TV, in episodes of Full House and Soul Nine Yards. In those shows, it always causes something dramatic—either two of the kids find out they’re each other’s soulmates, or someone has to hide the existence of their soulmate from everyone else. It’s always intense until the very last moment, which ends with the soulmates finally meeting, or going on their first date. The soulmates on TV are always romantic, even though Clarke knows for a fact that platonic soulmates exist, like her aunt who doesn’t believe in romance, and lives happily with her best friend.
In the game, everyone has to take a marker, and write something on their own arm—usually just a question, like how are you? Or what’s your name? Then once they’ve all taken their turn, they have to show off their skin to the rest of the group, so they can see if there’s an answer.
If there is, everyone else gets a turn writing messages on your arm, trying to confuse your soulmate. Clarke’s never really understood the point; surely the different handwriting would give them all away. But regardless, she doesn’t want to play. She’s spent the last six years of her life not sharing her soulmate, and she’s not about to start now.
“Everyone, pick a color,” Glass orders, waving her collection of fancy roseart markers around. Clarke takes a green so neon it’s offensive, while Wells chooses a pretty lavender that shows up nicely on his skin.
“Alright,” Glass says, authoritative as she uncaps her own blood red marker. “Now write a message to your soulmate.” Immediately, they all start to scribble on their skin.
Clarke’s marker smells like artificial grape juice, and she wrinkles her nose at it, but doesn’t write anything down, instead clenching it tight in her fist, so her nails leave half-moons dug into the skin of her palm. Beside her, Wells seems hesitant, marker hovering just over his arm. When she raises a brow, he makes a face.
“I don’t know what to say,” he sighs. “What if they don’t even speak English?”
Wells has always been more interested in soulmates than Clarke. His dad collects encyclopedias, and Wells has been working his way through a set dedicated to the phenomenon. He’s always liked the soulmate movies more than she does, too. He likes the happy endings.
Clarke mostly just thinks they’re dull.
She shrugs. “Then they won’t know what you’re saying anyway, so don’t worry about it.”
He makes another face at her, but writes something down in the neat cursive he’s been perfecting. Glass calls the group to order, telling them to set down their markers and roll up their sleeves. They all obey, showing off their colorful skin.
All except for Clarke.
They notice immediately of course, and Glass scowls over at her in betrayal.
“Where’s your message?”
Clarke shrugs. “I didn’t write one.”
“Why not?”
“Because this game is stupid.” It’s obviously the wrong thing to say, and the crowd collectively holds their breath. But then Glass gives a slow, sickly sweet smile that makes Clarke’s stomach twist. It’s the kind of smile that means something mean is hiding behind her lips.
“You don’t have a soulmate,” Glass guesses, and Clarke frowns. “And you’re embarrassed about it.”
“I do too have a soulmate,” Clarke snaps, and can’t even bring herself to regret it. Because now she’s annoyed. She refuses to be called a liar, especially when she isn’t one.
“Do not,” Glass goads, and Clarke falls for it, hook, line and sinker. She’s honestly the worst when it comes to competitions; she always takes field days way too seriously.
“Do too,” she grits out. She can feel Wells tugging on her elbow, trying to get her to stop, but she just shakes him off.
“Prove it.” But as soon as Glass says the words, Thalia lets out a gasp, and they all turn to see her holding up her left hand, turning steadily darker as someone scrawls lines all over the skin, between each knuckle and up and around her fingers like some sort of maze.
After that, it was easy for them to forget about Clarke, as they all waited for their own soulmates to respond. Some of them didn’t, but most did, and the kids started to crowd around each other, sending each one cryptic messages until their arms looked like an art project with seven different colors.
“It’s fine if you don’t have one, you know,” Wells says, and Clarke glances over to see him looking down at his own message. There isn’t a response. He’s clearly trying very hard not to look put out by it.
Clarke thumbs at the stars on her hand, still hidden by her sleeve, and thinks about the person who might have drawn them. What if they’ve been waiting for her to write back? What if they’ve sat in a room like this one with all their classmates, and wrote one of those long mythical names, hoping she might respond? What if they think they’re all alone, with no soulmate? No one in the world that truly fits them, like a missing piece?
Clarke has spent the last six years comfortable in keeping her soulmate to herself because—she knew she had one. But her soulmate doesn’t.
She imagines them lying in bed, staring up at the stars on their hand, tracing the faded lines, wondering why everyone else gets an other half except them.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she mumbles, but it’s really just for Wells’ benefit, since no one else is listening. She takes the marker with her.
The hall bath is as nice as every other inch of the house, but Clarke hardly notices as she slips inside. She locks the door and sits on the closed toilet lid like a chair. She feels nervous, which she knows is dumb. They’re her soulmate. Whatever she decides to write, they’ll understand. They’ll probably just be happy to get something.
In the end, she chooses something easy. Simple. She draws three little green stars on her opposite hand, and then holds her breath and waits.
The reply comes sooner than she’s expecting, with how late it is. Clarke knows there isn’t an age limit when it comes to soulmates—some people go twenty years thinking they don’t have one, just because theirs hasn’t been born—but she’s always imagined they’re her age. Maybe a little bit older, since she hadn’t known the word Prometheus when she was six.
They’ve written it’s about time on her wrist, near her thumb, and Clarke bristles at the tone.
I’ve been a little busy, she writes down her forearm. Her cursive isn’t as good as Wells’, but her handwriting is definitely prettier than her soulmate’s jagged, hasty letters.
But what he writes next helps her anger deflate, and she just stares at the words for a moment, feeling guilty. i’ve been waiting
I’m here now
His next word appears on her finger. good
Clarke falls asleep in the bathroom writing messages to her soulmate, and wakes up with her hands and arms covered in blue and green ink. She scrubs them in the sink as best she can with the rosemary-scented hand soap, and then creeps out to collect Wells from the living room floor.
He’s asleep in the corner again, clearly set away from the group, and her heart hurts a little to see it. Her dad picks them up in his solar panel car, and she sits with Wells in the backseat, even though her dad would totally let her sit up front if she wanted to.
“I’m sorry you don’t have a soulmate,” she whispers, taking his hand. Wells gives a small smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“I’m good with it,” he says, and then makes a face. “I’m telling myself it means I can choose my own.”
“That’s a good thing,” Clarke agrees, but it feels like a lie, because what’s left of her soulmate’s words are still tingling under her sweater.
After that night, chatting with her soulmate becomes a regular thing. Three weeks in, she wakes up to find what’s your name? in bleeding purple ink in the crook of her elbow.
She grabs the pen she’s started to keep by her bed, and writes Clarke.
They write back instantly, like always. She’s started to think they just never sleeps. i’m bellamy, shows up on her wrist, followed quickly by what kind of name is clarke?
She frowns. What kind of name is Bellamy?
french. are you a boy or a girl?
Clarke hesitates. She knows there are people who aren’t like her, who don’t like boys and girls. And she knows there are people who might hate her for it. Does it matter?
i’d like to be able to stop calling you they. unless you prefer they, which is fine.
Clarke smiles without really meaning to. She already likes them so much, but she hardly knows anything about them. Girl. You?
boy
It didn’t matter to her, not really; she would have been happy either way. But it just makes so much sense that he’s a boy. She can nearly picture him. Are you from France?
no way. i’m from socal
Socal?
southern california. where do you live?
Clarke closes her eyes, tries to imagine his home, based on all the films she’s seen set on the west coast. It’s probably hot there, shorts and flip flops weather. Maybe he knows how to surf.
Maryland. Near DC.
ever met the president?
She grins. No. Ever met a celebrity?
yeah, a few times. they’re basically a dime a dozen.
And so it goes. Clarke learns Bellamy slowly, over time. They try to send a message daily, just to check in, and it feels—nice. Comforting. To know that no matter what, she has a person.
They don’t address the romance of it all, what it means that they’re soulmates. She’s pretty sure he’s just waiting for her to bring it up, which is convenient because she’s waiting for him to, which means hopefully it won’t be brought up at all. Clarke’s never had a boyfriend, let alone one on the opposite side of the country, and to be honest it sounds like far more trouble than it’s worth.
She learns that he’s three years older than her, which makes him weird for a couple of days after he finds out her age.
Why are you so surprised? There’s no age limits with soulmates.
you just have really good grammar
After that, he takes to teasing her about it, she’s pretty sure as a constant reminder to himself. It gets old after the first half dozen cracks about being a Disney princess.
Wells starts watching a lot of Madame Soulstress, a TV fortune teller who talks a lot about “making your own destiny” and “choosing your own path.” She’s very popular with people who don’t have soulmates, and Wells starts buying her books.
“I’m just curious about the science behind it,” he shrugs, when Clarke finally asks him about it. “There are a lot of new studies about soul mysticism, and how it fits in with astrology and maybe even magnetic fields.”
“What do soulmates have to do with magnetic fields?”
“They’re not sure,” he admits. “No one really knows how soulmates work, but no one knows how magnetic fields work, either, so. It’s anyone’s guess.”
Clarke must still look skeptical, because he sighs.
“I know you’re worried I’m going to end up alone forever,” he placates. They’re recently thirteen, and ever since Clarke first told him about Bellamy, he’s been a lot more distant, like he’s worried just sitting near her when a new word appears on her skin, might make him into a third wheel somehow. “But I’m not. And even if I do, so what? My dad never remarried after my mom died, and he’s perfectly fine.”
“Because he has you,” Clarke points out, leaning her head on his shoulder, so he’ll get the message and start petting her hair.
“Your soulmate has a sister,” Wells says. “Maybe she and I will end up dating because you two are so nauseating, and the four of us will all live in a huge house together, like in Soul Nine Yards.”
“There are nine of them in Soul Nine Yards,” Clarke argues. “And only six of them are actual soulmates—I just want you to know, it’s not the end of the world. Not having one.”
“Spoken like someone who’s always had one,” he says, only a tiny bit bitter, and Clarke winces. Soulmates aren’t necessarily common, but they’re still considered the default. There’s a sort of stigma that comes with not having one—that maybe there might be something wrong with you, or that you’re not capable of the kind of love that comes with having an other half.
It’s all bullshit, as far as Clarke’s concerned, and she tells him as much.
Wells laughs. “I know,” he says, but she can tell he doesn’t, not really. He still thinks he might be broken, and Clarke doesn’t know how to tell him that there’s nothing to fix. “I thought it might be you, you know,” he says, quiet, like it’s a secret, and Clarke’s voice catches in her throat.
“What?”
He grins a little ruefully. “Not—you know I never felt like that, but. Like your aunt, maybe. Like we were so good at being best friends, even the universe thought so.”
“Oh,” Clarke says, voice small. “Yeah, I can see that.” She pauses. “But maybe we’re so good at being best friends, that the universe didn’t bother showing us. Because we already knew.”
“Yeah,” Wells agrees, letting his head fall against hers. “Maybe.”
When Clarke is fourteen, she’s invited to another party. She’s been to a few since Glass’s, but none like Thalia’s last-weekend-of-summer bash. Thalia’s parents are on a couple’s retreat, so her older brother is chaperoning. He’s a junior at State, which means a good third of the party goers are college frat guys, with those mini Heineken kegs in tow. Everything is loud, and crowded, and Clarke’s covered in other people’s sweat by the end of the first hour. Wells couldn’t come, so she showed up with some girls from her class, but she’s lost track of them by now, along with how many drinks she’s had. She’s pretty sure it was just one and a half beers, but she remembers drinking a little capri sun margarita at some point.
She can only take so many guys leering down the front of her shirt or, in one memorable case, grinding up against her ass in some pretense of getting to the stairs. She was sort of hoping to find a cute girl to make out with, like Niylah from her gym class, but honestly at this point she’s feeling too gross, and the world is starting to spin a lot.
She was supposed to catch a ride home with one of the girls, but when she steps outside, she can’t find the car she arrived in. She pulls out her cellphone, only to find the battery’s dead.
She pulls a ballpoint pen from her bag. Hey are you up?
yeah why
my phones dead and im at a party
Clarke knows Bellamy pretty well by now. They still talk every day—started texting once she got her own cellphone, although he only has a certain number of minutes each month so he very rarely texts back. She still has no idea what he looks or sounds like, but she knows he’s probably about to lecture her on drinking from open containers.
fuck what’s the address? i’ll order you an uber
Clarke has to look back at the house number, and then walk down to the end of the street to get the name, and then Bellamy still has to google the zipcode of her town because she can’t remember it.
they said it’ll be there in 20 mins. keep talking to me so i know you’re not dead
im ok harbly even drunk
seriously how did you write a typo on your arm? make sure you drink a lot of water so you won’t have a hangover tomorrow
She sits down and hugs her knees to her chest, watching the words start to form across her arm. They’re a little blurrier than normal, but she’s fairly sure that’s the alcohol. Even so, she never gets tired of watching it happen. Knowing that somewhere across the country, a boy with star-covered hands is putting them there.
thanks mom
you’d be lucky to have me as your mom. don’t be such a brat
The uber shows up right on time, and Bellamy makes her write down the license plate, in case the driver turns out to be a serial killer that wants to turn her skin into perfume, like on Criminal Minds.
seriously bell im fine now go to sleep ok? thanks for looking out for me
anytime, princess.
Her parents give her the soulmate talk the next day.
i’m surprised they waited this long, Bellamy says, when she writes about it on the back of her hand.
I think they knew about you in a roundabout way, but I never really talked about you until last night, so now I think they’re concerned we’re going to elope or something.
elopement sounds cool. i can steal your dowry and leave you at the altar before running off to vegas
Yeah that sounds like something you’d do. Clarke rolls her eyes, even though he can’t see her, and then doodles herself strangling a stick figure, labeled BELL.
rude.
Rudest, she agrees. They want to know your intentions when it comes to me.
It’s a lie. They’d only warned her of what his intentions might be—namely that he might not want anything romantic at all and that even if he did, things might fall through. There had been a lot of talk about how soulmates don’t just effortlessly happen without putting in the work, and how a lot of couples break up even though they’re supposed to be together for ever. There was some other stuff too, about sex, but Clarke stopped tuning in at that point.
clearly it’s to steal your dowry and leave you at the altar
She’s not really surprised; jokes are Bellamy’s default and anyway, she’s pretty sure he’s still not comfortable with how young she is. His seventeenth birthday was last month.
Oh right, how could I forget. Loser.
yeah well, you’re soulmates with a loser, so what does that make you?
Unlucky.
When Clarke is fifteen years old, in the middle of a biology exam, her father is killed.
There was a bank robbery. He was standing in line to take money out of his account, planning to buy a graduation gift for his niece. The robber was going to shoot the bank guard, but Jake stepped in front of him. The security camera footage makes the six o’clock news.
Clarke finds out all of this information very clinically, in the Ark City Police Department lobby with her mom. She doesn’t hear any of it, not after the words your father was killed.
Depression is a funny thing. It doesn’t feel the way she thinks it should, the way the health textbooks described it. It doesn’t feel like anything. Not like sadness or grief. She doesn’t want to kill herself—she just doesn’t really want to be alive. Everything seems to take too much effort, energy that she doesn’t have to give. So she just lies in her bed, and waits for it to be over.
That’s how it always happens, in the stories. There’s a time of mourning, of feeling like she can’t even move, and then one day she wakes up and she’s better. She keeps waiting to feel better.
Her mom gives her time. She goes to work at dawn every morning, and then comes home as the sun starts to set. She spoon-feeds Clarke chicken broth for dinner, which Clarke would feel embarrassed about, if she could.
The worst was when she had to peel off Clarke’s pajamas and bathe her with a sponge, putting lotion on her side where she’d begun to develop a rash, from laying still for so long.
She can’t even bring herself to talk to Bellamy. The first few days, he was frantic, leaving scrawling messages up and down both her arms, her knees, anywhere he could fit them, in thick blotchy marker and thin nearly-invisible highlighter and the sharp lines of Bic pens. what’s going on? where have you been? are you okay? clarke please talk to me. did something happen? was it something i did? are you hurt? clarke clarke clarke clarke
Eventually, she just stops checking for new ones. Her mom just washes them off without a word.
Two weeks after her father’s funeral, Clarke wakes up to find a poem on her arm. Lines and lines of red ink, less like blood and more like sewing thread, stacked down her blue-white skin.
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
Clarke spends the morning reading and rereading the words until she has them memorized, tracing the letters so hard that she expects the ink to smudge, but of course it doesn’t. It isn’t until noon that she finally writes back.
Who told you?
He replies instantly, just like he always does. wells called. i’m sorry about your dad.
He was Prometheus. She writes it without really registering the thought, but she knows immediately that it’s true. It seems funny now, the same way that depression seems funny. In that neither of them are really funny at all. Punished for doing the right thing.
She’s expecting him to ask what she’s getting at, or maybe just say sorry again. That’s the only word she’s heard lately, and she’s sick of it. Words lose their meaning when they’re spoken too much. Sorry must have lost it centuries ago.
what do you need?
Clarke has loved Bellamy in the same sort of quiet way that she loves her mother, or Wells. Without really thinking about it, without really meaning to. It’s just been there, just beneath her skin, since that day at her father’s work, when she found a name on the back of her hand, that she didn’t put there.
She’s wondered, more than a few times, what he looks like. What his voice sounds like. If he’s taller than her, or tanner. If he has a funny-looking nose, or green eyes, or glasses. If he has braces, or if his hands feel rough like sandpaper. She’s wondered, idly, what it might be like to kiss him, her soulmate. If he would know exactly what to do, because they belong together.
But she’s never ached quite like this before. She’s never wanted him so badly—not just the faceless boy on the other end of their words, but him, wrapped around her under the blankets, anchoring her down to earth. She feels so small and she’s worried that if she’s not careful, she’ll simply float away.
Just this, she writes. Just you.
you have me, appears in blooming red petals on the heel of her palm. And then, always.
Things are different after that. Clarke goes back to school and starts working overtime to make up all the class she’s missed. Wells helps catch her up on the notes, but she’s pretty sure she only passes at the end of the year because of her teachers’ pity. She’ll take it, just as long as she doesn’t have to repeat tenth grade.
Junior year goes about as well as can be expected. She and her mom are still a staggering a little, trying to figure out how to be a family without her dad. They’re trying, but it’s hard, and it’s hard to be around each other, because the air between them feels so uneven. Her mom still sets an extra plate out for dinner, on reflex. Clarke can hear her crying in the night. Sometimes she’ll crawl into bed with her, so she can sleep.
Things are different with Bellamy, too. He seems to have decided she’s old enough to unload on, and so she finds out about his shitty home life, and his shitty mom. About the cycle of drug dealing boyfriends that go through his house, so that he stays up half the night outside his sister’s bedroom, just in case. About how hard he has to work in school, because only three kids from his county are awarded scholarships each year. About how he pays for his phone’s minutes with the change he finds in the couch cushion.
She finds out that he bought the phone for her, in case she needed him.
On Halloween night, Clarke’s mom and Wells’ dad go to the adults-only party down at the Town Hall, leaving them home alone to watch the classic Halloween movie marathon on AMC, and eat all the fun-sized snickers from the bags of candy.
(And to drink the bottle of flavored schnapps in the Griffins’ liquor cabinet.)
Wells passes out on the couch around midnight, because alcohol always makes him sleepy, and so Clarke carries what’s left of the bottle up to her room.
you up? she writes, but it takes a while to get the question mark right, because she’s seeing just slightly less than double. More like one and a half.
what do you need?
That’s how he always responds these days, and it’s as endearing as it is frustrating. Clarke doesn’t want him to think of her as some needy, grief-stricken teenager from the East Coast. She wants him to think of her like she thinks of him. His soulmate.
company. im too drunk to write so im gonna call you
jesus you’re turning into a lush
Clarke draws her best attempt at a hand flicking him off, and then dials his number. He picks up halfway through the first ring, voice hushed, like he doesn’t want anyone to hear him. Which doesn’t really make sense; she looked up the time difference, and California is three hours behind DC. It’s only nine o’clock, where he is.
“Clarke?”
It’s stupid, how much of a reaction she has to his voice. But she’s imagined it in so many ways, for so long, and now that she finally knows what it sounds like, she can’t help a shiver. It’s different from what she expected, but somehow fits him exactly. She’s not sure how she could have imagined it differently.
“Yeah,” she says, low, because of Wells. “Bellamy?”
He gives a laugh that’s mostly air, disbelieving. She gets it. “Yeah, uh—yeah. It’s good to hear you.”
“You too.” She grins up at her ceiling. “Happy Halloween.”
“Happy Halloween. Get any tricks?”
“No,” Clarke hums a little, feeling pleasantly warm, mind nice and fuzzy. Just clear enough for her to remember why it was she wanted to call him in the first place. “I’m kind of hoping to get a treat.”
There’s a breath of silence where she starts to get nervous, and then she hears him let out a sigh. “Yeah? What kind?”
“Any kind you want,” she says, practical. “I’m assuming you have more experience in this sort of thing than I do.”
It’s clearly the wrong thing to say. “Clarke, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” she demands, hand stilling where she’s unbuttoned her jeans already.
“You’re sixteen.”
“Which is also the age of consent,” she points out. “Conveniently.”
“Clarke—”
“You don’t have to,” she cuts him off. “I’m not going to make you, or anything. I just—I want you. You don’t have to want me back, we don’t have to—”
“Clarke,” Bellamy’s voice goes harsh, and her mouth snaps shut. ”I have wanted you for years.” He swears, low and rough, and then, “What do you want?”
She grins into her pillow, sliding her jeans down and off. She really wasn’t going to make him, she just thought it might be fun. And she’d really wanted to finally know what he sounds like. “Just keep talking,” she says, sliding her underwear off too. “I love your voice. Tell me what you look like.”
“What I look like?”
“I want to know.”
He laughs a little, like he can’t really believe this is happening. She doesn’t blame him. They’ve gone from a five years of text-only, straight to phone sex in one night. It’s a little surreal. Or maybe that’s the schnapps.
“I’m 5’10,” he says, obliging. “Uh, brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin. Lots of freckles. I’m wearing my glasses but I usually have contacts.”
“What else are you wearing?” she asks, only whining a little. She hears him swear again, and her breath hitches.
“Uh, boxers, t-shirt. I’m about to lose the shirt now.”
“Good,” she laughs, a little breathless, and she hears the grin in his voice.
“Your turn.”
“5’4,” she says. “5’5 on a good day. Blonde hair, blue eyes, really fucking pale. Hang on, does your phone accept pictures?”
“Yeah,” he says, and she pulls hers back to take one, naked except for her bra, free hand still between her thighs as she smiles. She hears his phone beep when it receives it.
“Fuck,” Bellamy hisses. “Fuck you’re gorgeous.”
Clarke feels herself start to flush. “Your turn.” Her phone chirps ridiculously loud when his text comes in, and she sees a grainy picture of a really hot guy. Seriously, he’s all tan skin and freckles and abs. She can just barely see his dick, because of how he’s angled it—probably purposefully—but he’s still better than she could have ever made up on her own. All of her fantasies fall short, it seems. She’s not especially disappointed about it.
“I’m hoping you’re rendered speechless because you find me gorgeous too,” he says, mild, once she’s been quiet for a few moments. Clarke laughs.
“Basically, yeah. Sorry, did you want the same treatment? Fuck, you’re gorgeous.”
“Thanks.”
“You really are, though. I like the glasses.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d focus on. Are you still touching yourself?”
“I’ve been touching myself this whole time.”
“What are you thinking about?” His breathing is starting to sound off, so she’s assuming he’s jerking off.
“You,” she says, easy, and he groans. “I’m just imagining my hand is yours. Your fingers inside me. Kissing you. What are you thinking about?”
“I want to go down on you,” he says, sounding desperate, and she whimpers. “God, Clarke, I want to put my mouth all over you. For hours, fuck.”
“I like it when you swear.”
“Good, you’re about to hear a lot more of it.” He curses again. “Fuck, Clarke, tell me you’re close.”
“I’m—” she gasps, right on the edge, and she’s been here before, thinking abstract thoughts, mouths and fingers, girls and boys, but it’s never been like this. It’s never been Bellamy. And she’s never felt this desperate. “Bellamy, I need—”
“What? Tell me what you need, baby. My voice? More swearing?”
“Yes,” she says, because she wants all of it. She wants everything he has to offer.
“When I see you, first I’m going to fuck you with my fingers, and then I’ll fuck you with my tongue. I want you to ride my face until your legs don’t work anymore.”
“Bellamy,” she says, and that’s really all it takes before her mind goes blank and she blacks out for a few seconds. “Holy shit.”
Bellamy laughs, and she can hear his breathing starting to even out, so he must have come too while she wasn’t paying attention. She rolls over, tucking the phone against her ear, and muffles a yawn with her shoulder. “So I’m guessing you’ve done that before?”
“What, phone sex?” he asks, and she makes a noise of agreement. “Does that bother you?”
Clarke thinks about it. She’s not upset, but—she is a little jealous. That someone else has probably gotten to kiss him, and touch him, while she’s three time zones away. “Not really. I didn’t expect you to stay celibate, or anything.”
“Me neither. So, have you--?” He sounds awkward about it, which makes her grin.
“This is officially the farthest I’ve gone with anyone. I’ve made out a few times; a few boys, but mostly girls. I’ve been the bi-curious phase for a lot of girls at my school.”
“That sucks,” he says, mild, but she shrugs.
“Not really. I get to make out with a bunch of hot girls, and they get to figure out their sexualities. Everybody wins.”
“Is that how you figured out you were bi?”
Clarke hums. The only person she’s really talked about this with is Wells, and even then, they never really talked about it. He just knew she liked boys and girls, the same way she knew he didn’t like anyone. They never felt the need for a conversation, but now that that’s an option, and someone’s actually interested in hearing what she has to say, Clarke realizes she’s sort of desperate to talk about it.
“No, I’ve pretty much always known, since I was a little kid. My best friend Wells—”
“You know I know who Wells is, right?” Bellamy interrupts, sounding amused. “We’ve had whole conversations without you.”
Clarke makes a face. “Anyway, my best friend Wells, he doesn’t like anyone like that. Never has.”
“Do you think that’s why he doesn’t have a soulmate?”
“I don’t know. There are platonic soulmates. He thought he and I would be platonic soulmates, actually.”
“Wow, so I’m kind of like the bad guy. I stole you.”
“Technically the universe gave me to you,” Clarke argues. “Just like it gave you to me.”
“Yeah,” Bellamy agrees. “I know.” There’s a muffled banging from his end of the line and then he swears, and he must cover the phone before he starts shouting at someone. He’s a freshman at USC, and could have moved into a dorm on campus, but he refused to leave his sister alone in that house.
“Hey,” he breathes, after a moment of quiet. “You still there?”
“Yeah, what’s going on?” She can practically hear him rolling his eyes, irritated.
“Boyfriend of the week is being a dickhead. I guess I should be grateful he’s less of a dickhead than the last one, right?”
“Which one’s the one that put his cigarettes out on the neighborhood dogs?”
Bellamy huffs a wry laugh. “Emerson, god, what a tool.”
Clarke bites her lip, but she can’t really help herself. “I wish I could just take you and your sister, and keep you guys here.”
“Yeah, isn’t Maryland one of those states with snow? No thanks.” But then he adds, quiet, “Me too.”
“Is it shitty that I’m sort of glad your life isn’t perfect?” she asks, and he lets out a surprised laugh.
“I guess it depends on why you’re glad I have a shitty home life.”
Clarke makes a face. “I’m not—I definitely wish it was way less shitty. It’s just. I always thought you had some perfect life in California, and you just saw me as, I don’t know, some fatherless little girl that you’d have to rescue.”
“Oh,” he says, soft. “No, that’s not how I see you.”
“Yeah, now I get to rescue you,” she teases, and he laughs.
“I’ve always wanted to be a damsel in distress.”
She grins. “Don’t worry, that’s not how I see you either.”
“Yeah? How do you see me?”
Clarke glances down to the ink on her hand, smudged and a little faded, but still there. The handwriting she’s gotten so used to. She could probably make a perfect forgery of it, by now. “You’re my soulmate.”
“Yeah,” Bellamy sighs. “Me too.”
Two weeks from Prom, Wells sits across from Clarke in the cafeteria and says “Have you found a date, yet?”
She glances up at him stupidly, pen still dangling from her mouth, art history textbook open so she can get some last-minute cramming in before the AP exam. “A date for what?”
Wells gives her his most unimpressed look. “For Prom.”
Clarke makes a face. “Oh, that. I figured we’d just go together, like always.”
Wells looks a little pitying at that, which is her first clue. “Actually, I already asked someone. Fox, from my Chem Lab.”
Clarke blinks at him, as the words start to register. “Oh,” she says. “Oh. I didn’t know you were—interested. In her. In anyone.”
Wells is blushing by now, which is always a great sign. “I’m starting to think maybe I’m just really picky,” he admits, clearing his throat. “But yeah, I uh. I like her. You should start thinking about who you want to go with.”
“I will,” she promises, and then pretends she has to pee.
It just feels strange, writing to Bellamy where anyone might see. It feels too intimate, and so she locks herself in the handicapped stall before uncapping her pen.
Wells has a date to Prom.
She’s not sure if she should expect a quick response. Bellamy’s in college now, and his schedule’s a little weirder than usual. He takes a lot of night classes, and he also works part time at a coffee shop, so she never really knows where he’ll be at any given time.
tell him i said congratulations
I can’t decide if I should also get a date, or if I’m confident enough to go Stag.
Okay, so she’s hoping he’ll tell her not to get a date. They’ve been inching towards something slowly, since Halloween, but neither of them want to bring it up, and so they haven’t really discussed it. They’ve had phone sex a few more times, and Clarke’s gotten herself off to those memories more than she’d like to admit, but it’s not like they’re actually dating. Dating would imply one of them has asked the other out, or that they call each other boyfriend and girlfriend, and a lot of other things that haven’t happened yet. But she’s hopeful. She’s pretty sure that he wants it, too.
you’re confident enough for anything clarke, don’t sell yourself short. but you should definitely get a date for prom; the odds of getting laid after are higher
Clarke stares at the words for longer than she probably should. She just—she was so sure that he wanted it, too. Right, obviously. Can’t believe I didn’t consider that. Thanks!
As far as responses go, it’s both stupid and obvious, and Clarke hates herself for the rest of the day. She refuses to peek under her sleeves, to see if he’s responded.
She’s sat next to Lexa in AP Art History for the past two semesters, and seeing as Lexa is both, the only outed lesbian she knows, and one of the girls she made out with back in eighth grade, Clarke’s fairly sure she has a shot with her.
“Are you going to Prom?” she asks, and Lexa studies her for a moment before responding.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
Lexa’s eyes slide over her, and she grins a little wickedly. “Are you going to make it worth my while?”
“I have a date,” Clarke announces, when she meets Wells out in the parking lot. She got her dad’s solar panel car in the will.
Wells looks less than impressed, and glances at her arms, where he knows Bellamy’s words are sitting, even if they’re covered by her uniform sleeves. Because she is painfully obvious. “Mhm.”
“Lexa Woods, you know her,” Clarke says, turning the key in the ignition as Wells buckles his belt.
“And is she aware that you’re not looking for more than just a Prom date?” he asks. Clarke rolls her eyes.
“Maybe I am looking for more.”
“What about Bellamy?”
“Apparently Bellamy is not looking for more,” Clarke says, petulant, and Wells hums knowingly, but he doesn’t say anything because he is fundamentally a better person than she is.
But Clarke is not a better person, so she carefully writes Thanks for the advice! Going to Prom with a hot girl, who knows what to do with her hands. She doodles little ivy vines and hearts around the letters, just to really get the point across.
awesome, congrats
Clarke scrubs her arms until the skin is irritated and pink, and she goes to bed angry.
The Prom theme is under the sea, which is so ridiculous it’s actually kind of endearing. It’s being held in an actual ballroom at a hotel, and there are lots of balloon fish floating up along the ceiling, and dry ice in all the punch bowls, which is always fun. Plus everyone gets a little bottle of blowing bubbles when they walk in the door, so Clarke and Wells make a game out of blowing soap in each other’s faces. Their dates aren’t quite as impressed.
Clarke’s dress is backless, the kind of shiny blue-green color that changes in the light, which she was hoping would give a sort of watery effect. She’s pretty proud of it.
The back of her hand reads happy prom night, princess. have fun, because it showed up during the limo ride over and she hasn’t had a chance to wash it off, yet.
Lexa looks dangerous in a shiny black dress that looks like it’s made out of a million flattened needles, with her hair pulled back into braids that look like chains.
Lady Gaga starts up over the speakers, and Clarke grins over at her. “Want to dance?”
“Not really,” Lexa says, voice short, and Clarke deflates.
It goes like that for the rest of the night—Clarke trying to coax Lexa out to the dance floor, or to the punch bowl where some girls she knows from class are hanging out, or even to the hotel lobby so they can sit on the expensive-looking lounge chairs and chat, or something.
But Lexa isn’t interested in any of it, and eventually Clarke gives up and heads out to dance the Electric Slide with everyone else. At the end, Wells tips his chin over towards the table where Lexa’s sitting.
“I think your date’s waiting for you.”
“She’s not being much of a date,” Clarke sighs, but she heads over anyway. She sits down, ready to try and get her out there one last time, but Lexa doesn’t give her a chance.
She leans over, until her lips brush Clarke’s ear as she speaks, wet with her lipgloss. “I’d like to get out of here. With you.”
She pulls back, giving Clarke a raised brow in challenge, and that’s really all she needs to follow Lexa out into the lobby, towards the powder room down the hall. Her heart flips over in her chest, with anticipation.
This is what she wanted, after all, right? Prom sex is popular for a reason; it must be great. And Lexa seems like the type of person who knows what she’s doing, so. Really, Clarke couldn’t ask for a better partner.
She lets Lexa shove her back against the door, once they’ve locked it, teeth rough on the skin of her neck. She picks up Clarke’s hand and pulls back to read it.
“I have a soulmate,” Clarke admits, in the spirit of being honest. And, if she’s being honest, she wants to see how Lexa reacts. “He’s in California.”
“Mine’s in Serbia,” Lexa says, pulling the neckline of her dress down a little, to show a heart drawn in ink on her breast. “Costia.” She says the name with care, and Clarke realizes with a little jolt that it’s exactly how she says Bellamy.
“So, one-time thing?” she asks, just to be sure, and Lexa leans in to press a soft kiss against her jawline.
“One-time thing,” she agrees, and slips her hand under Clarke’s skirt.
She takes a shower when she gets home, washing off the soap residue and her eyeliner and the smudge of Lexa’s lip gloss. She washes off Bellamy’s message until it’s nothing but a faint blur, and then she takes a pen to her skin.
I’m home.
how was the party? did you get laid?
Yeah, she writes, and when there’s no response, she says “Fuck it,” and adds, It sucked. I don’t want Prom sex or any other kind of sex unless it’s with you.
She waits, holding her breath, until oh thank god shows up on her wrist bone, and she lets out a laugh in relief.
me neither, obviously, he adds. you’re it for me. i’m so gone over you, clarke, seriously
It feels stupid, to be blinking back tears at the words, but. She’s been wanting to see them since she was fourteen and sitting drunk at her classmate’s party, and the only thing in the world that mattered to her was Bellamy Blake.
I graduate in a year, she writes. 1 more year until California.
i’ve been waiting for 6 years, clarke. 1 more is nothing
She writes I love you on her kneecap, because there’s a fifty-fifty shot that he’s wearing pants right now, so he won’t see until the morning.
But to her surprise, right beneath it, he writes i love you too
Clarke can’t swallow her smile the next morning, and Wells eyes her a little suspiciously. It’s the last day of school, but she’s probably never looked quite this happy. “What’s going on?”
In answer, she shows him her palm, i love you scrawled in big, messy letters. Wells mouths ahh, in understanding.
“So I take it, this means you two are done being stupid about each other?”
Clarke shrugs, because she doesn’t feel confident in making that promise, and instead glances around. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
Wells makes a face. “We broke up.”
“What? Why? You guys looked fine when I left.”
“Apparently you weren’t the only one looking to get laid on Prom night. Fox isn’t a fan of the whole abstinence thing.”
Clarke frowns. “But it’s not abstinence, it’s—are you serious? She broke up with you for that?” She looks around the courtyard, searching for the familiar brunette. “Where is she?”
“Clarke,” Wells squeezes her elbow, looking amused. “As much fun as it would be for me to watch you defend my honor, I’m honestly fine. Some people want sex; I don’t. I’d rather date someone who’s fine with it, anyway.”
“Okay,” she follows him down the hallway. “But if you need someone to defend your honor, you know I’m your girl.”
Wells grins, swinging an arm around her shoulders. “I know.”
Clarke’s senior year of high school, Bellamy’s sister gets a soulmate. Or, rather, Bellamy finds out she has one.
“Apparently she’s known about him for months, Clarke,” he whines, voice going tinny over the phone line. Clarke just hums, going over her last bit of physics homework. “Months! He’s a grown man, and he lives in Las Vegas!”
“Didn’t you want us to elope in Vegas?”
“No, we were going to elope and then I was going to steal your money and run away to Vegas,” he says, like he can’t believe she got that wrong. “Are you even listening? A grown man is soulmates with my baby sister.”
“You’re a grown man,” Clarke points out. “And you’re soulmates with me. I’m only a year older than Octavia.”
“This guy is three years older than me,” Bellamy says, not amused in the slightest.
“Okay, yeah, that’s a lot,” Clarke concedes. “But I mean, they aren’t doing anything, right? All he does is doodle flowers.”
“And how long until doodling flowers turns into statutory rape?”
“Wow, slow down, who said anything about statutory rape? I thought Octavia doesn’t even know his name? They’ve never even spoken. The only reason she knows he lives in Las Vegas is because of that tattoo.”
The tattoos were how Bellamy figured it out; apparently Octavia’s soulmate is a tattoo artist. Or at least, that’s what they’re guessing, since she now has an entire sleeve of tattoos which she didn’t pay for, and a few more along her body. Apparently she’s pretty happy with them, since she didn’t have to go through any of the painful sittings, to get the pretty ink.
“Yeah but I know my sister, and it won’t be long before she decides to hitchhike down to Nevada, and go door-to-door at all the tattoo parlors, looking for this guy.”
“How do you even know it’s a guy? Maybe she’s a woman. I mean, they are doodling flowers all day.”
“Brother’s intuition,” Bellamy sighs. “I don’t like this. At all.”
“Really? Are you sure? Because you haven’t made that abundantly clear, yet,” Clarke teases, flopping back on her bed. “Now do you want to keep telling me about how you hate your sister’s soulmate, whom you’ve never met, or do you want to tell me all the different positions you’d like to fuck me in?”
Bellamy gives a high pitched wine, making her grin. “The second one, definitely,” he swears. “But don’t think this conversation’s over.”
“Believe me, I know I’m not that lucky.”
Octavia calls her on Christmas Eve.
Clarke’s in the middle of a formal party that her mother’s hosting, where ninety percent of the guests are stuffy financial backers for the hospital she works at. Clarke’s wearing a dress with the texture of saran wrap, which makes her feel like a Christmas present.
Her phone starts to ring right as one of the other surgeons is describing the heart they’d just carved into that morning, while Clarke simultaneously tried to suppress the conversation with a bunch of pink champagne.
“Sorry, this is important,” she cuts the doctor off, shuffling back towards the kitchen to take the call. BELL <3 blinks up at her in bright letters, so she’s grinning when she answers. “Hey, did you feel some sort of psychic SOS coming from me or—”
“Clarke?” a frantic girl’s voice cuts her off, and Clarke pauses. “This is Octavia, Bell’s sister. I’m looking for Clarke Griffin?”
“Yeah, Octavia, hi. It’s Clarke, what’s going on?”
“It’s Bellamy,” Octavia says, voice wobbly, and Clarke feels her heart stop. It’s her dad, all over again. “Our mom left and he went after her, but—he isn’t back yet, and he doesn’t have his phone, and I didn’t know who else to call, and—”
“Okay,” Clarke interrupts her. “Okay. I’m going to write to him, alright? I’ll find out where he is, and call you back.”
“Okay.” She sounds small, and scared, on the verge of tears, and Clarke swallows thickly.
“Everything’s going to be alright,” she lies, because that’s what you’re supposed to do in these situations. You’re supposed to lie. Everything’s going to be fine. Your father’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine. I’m sorry.
She barricades herself in the upstairs bathroom, sinking down into the bathtub, dry erase marker shaky in her hand. The tub is still wet from her morning shower, but she doesn’t even notice as it starts to soak through in patches of her dress.
Where are you? she writes, large and clear across her arm. She waits for over a minute.
don’t worry about it
Clarke sighs, leaning her head back against the tile, squeezing her eyes shut so the tears won’t fall. He’s alive, that’s all that matters. She can kick his ass later, because he’s alive.
But right now she needs to know where.
Too late. Your sister called. She’s scared. She thinks you’re in trouble.
tell her i’m fine
Tell her yourself. Go home, Bell.
i don’t have your phone # memorized what is it
Why do you need my phone #?
because i’m at a pay phone will you just write it please
Clarke scrawls the number down and then waits for her phone to ring. She picks it up after the first chirp. “Where are you? I didn’t even know pay phones still exist.”
“Of course they still exist,” Bellamy says, but his voice is hoarse, like he’s been screaming. Or crying. Maybe both. “I’m downtown. You don’t even know anything about LA, how would you know where I am?”
“I know some things—there’s a boardwalk, right? And the Hollywood sign.”
“Jesus,” he laughs, which she takes to be a good sign. “I’m guessing O told you our mom left?”
“Yeah,” Clarke says, soft. “Bell, I’m so sorry.” She hates that she has to use that word.
He scoffs. “It’s no real loss.”
There’s a pause where neither of them say anything. Clarke isn’t sure how long these phone calls tend to last, or how much change he has in his pockets. “Bell, where’d you go?”
“She took the egg,” he says, and Clarke frowns.
“What egg?”
“There was this—it’s like an ornamental, giant egg. The size of, I don’t know, a kid’s head, basically. It had this mural painted on it, really expensive-looking, and mom used to make up stories about how she got it. Like, she ran into Johnny Depp on the Boulevard, and he gave it to her because he liked her eyes. Or she got it from a traveling gypsy, or some Russian prince, or something. But then when she got into the drugs, she forgot about it, and O and I started stashing all our money in it, you know, saving up for our own place. I hid it down behind the book shelves. I don’t even know how she found it.”
“And so now you guys have no money,” Clarke finishes, and he sighs.
“I couldn’t find her. I checked all her favorite haunts, but she’s just. Gone.”
Clarke worries her lip until she feels the skin peel. She knows Bellamy hates sympathy, hates hand-outs of any kind, and only even took his scholarship because he had to, but. She has to try. “Bell, if you need money, I can—”
“I don’t need your money, Clarke,” he says, firm. And then, a little softer, he adds “Seriously, we’ll be okay. My buddy Miller’s letting us move in with him, and I have my job at the coffee shop. I’ll just pick up more shifts. O’s bagging for tips down at the farmer’s market too, so. We’ll be okay.”
“Fine,” Clarke swallows. She knows she has no right to be upset, because this is Bellamy’s pain, and it should be about him, and it is, but. She just wishes he didn’t have to go through it. She wishes she could make things better for him. “Now go home, seriously. Your sister’s worried sick. I love you.”
“I will. I love you too.” He hangs up first.
Clarke spends the rest of the night in the bathtub, texting Wells, who’s downstairs hiding from Miss Jemima, one of the elderly backers, who seems to be convinced that Wells is her dead husband Gerald.
She’s on the couch in her pajamas, eating frosted animal crackers from the box and watching the reality show Soul Estate—where seven people with no soulmates are forced to live in a house together with seven people who do, and guess which is which. It’s a fairly mindless show, with a lot of unnecessary nudity and drunken screaming matches at three AM—when her mom decides to ask her about California.
Specifically, she decides to ask her about the USC application she found in Clarke’s room, and about Bellamy.
“You’re not changing my mind on this,” Clarke warns, but her mom just looks amused.
“I just want you to consider all your options. After all, you and Bellamy have been doing long-distance for years, now. What’s four more?”
Clarke knows why her mom is worried. She never really had friends, outside of Wells’ parents. She hadn’t needed any; she’d had Jake. And now that he’s gone, she’s lonely, because she doesn’t know how to be alone, and she’s worried that Clarke will make the same mistake, putting all her eggs in one basket, and then that basket will get run over by a truck.
“Four more years is a lifetime,” Clarke says, shuffling over so she can settle into her mom’s arms. Growing up, her dad had always been the more tactile one, but it’s almost like her mom’s trying to work double-time with the affection. “You remember how it was, right? Being away from each other?”
“Not great,” her mom admits, and sighs, stroking the hair from Clarke’s face. “California’s a pretty drastic move, though. You’re sure?”
Without really meaning to, Clarke thumbs at her wrist, where Bellamy’s drawn a bunch of little five-pointed stars, like he used to when they were younger. She’s pretty sure he does it without thinking, which makes her like them even more.
“Positive,” she says, turning back to the television. Two of the girls are having a highlighter battle, marking each other’s skin to try and prove which of them has a soulmate. So far, neither of them is winning.
“This show is idiotic,” her mom decides, but she’s still staring at the screen.
“That’s what makes it great,” Clarke explains, shaking the bag of animal crackers at her. She pulls out a lopsided hippo covered in white frosting and sprinkles.
“You know these rot your teeth.”
Clarke grins, tossing a handful into her mouth. “C’mon mom, it’s Christmas. Live a little.”
She gets her acceptance letter in April, and texts a picture of it to Bellamy that day. His response is a bunch of random emoji’s, because Octavia is trying to teach him how to text, and Clarke assumes that’s a generally positive reaction.
Then she sees the stars start appearing all over her arms and shoulders, like freckles—he even draws some on her neck, disappearing down under her shirt, and one huge one around her left nipple, because he’s an idiot.
Wells gets his letter the next day, and they celebrate by mixing together all of the weird obscure alcohols his dad probably won’t miss, and drinking them in his backyard while their parents are at work. Wells even adds a bunch of mini umbrellas to their cups, because he can never choose just one.
“You know you don’t have to follow me to California, right?” she asks, when they’re on their third drink. She’s pretty sure it’s their third, anyway. It’s lime green and awful, which just means they have to drink it fast. “You’re not, like—obligated, or anything.”
Wells burps, which sets her off giggling, which in turn sets him off giggling, so by the time they’re done, he asks “What was the question, again?”
She opens her mouth to answer, but he waves her away. “No, wait, I remember. I’m not, you know, just following you because I think you need a babysitter,” he explains, scrunching his nose up in thought. “Where else would I even go? I don’t mind California. I mean, I’ve never been there, but I think I’ll like it. I like the sun. I could like the beach, I think. Plus, I have a way better chance of meeting Anne Hathaway in Los Angeles, than in Cambridge.”
“I don’t know,” Clarke muses. “Anne Hathaway is pretty classy. I feel like Cambridge is more her vibe.” Wells throws one of his tiny umbrellas at her.
“You don’t mind that I’m going with you, right?” he asks later, after at least drink number five. She’s pretty sure. Counting is hard when she’s thinking in doubles.
Clarke swings the arm not holding her cup around him, and smacks a sloppy kiss to his cheek. “I want you to go with me everywhere,” she declares. “When I get married, you’re gonna be holding my wedding dress while I pee.”
“Good to know,” he says, dry, but she can tell he’s secretly pleased about it. Wells loves weddings. He’s seen 27 Dresses like thirteen times.
They graduate in May and board the plane in June, in what her mom refers to as The Great Ark City Escape! because she still thinks they’re moving too fast. She wanted Clarke to stay in town until the beginning of August, but Clarke’s been itching to leave until basically New Year’s Eve.
Her mom doesn’t get it, not completely—Clarke’s not trying to escape Ark. She’s trying to start her own story, the one where she and Bellamy are together, the one where she and Wells get to live outside the shadow of their childhood home, the one where she doesn’t feel the empty ache of her father’s ghost every time she passes his bedroom.
She looks down at the bright red 2 on her hand. Bellamy’s been marking a countdown to her arrival in LA since she got her acceptance letter.
She might have lied to him about the arrival date, so she could surprise him, but. She’s sure he’ll forgive her relatively quickly, once she can apologize and make it up to him in person.
Traveling with Wells has always been convenient because he takes it upon himself to plan everything in very precise detail, from packing checklists to a rented car and driver picking them up in arrivals. Clarke just has to remember to bring a book.
Her phone goes off right as they settle into their seats. “Who’s that?” Wells asks, looking panicked. He always panics right before the plane takes off, because he read somewhere that statistically, most airplane failures happen during the five-minute take off, than any other part of the trip.
“Relax, it’s just my roommate. Raven, remember?” Clarke shoots her a quick reply and then turns her phone off. They’ve texted a few times back and forth, to figure out what furniture they both have between them, and what they might need to buy new.
Wells sighs, slipping on his neck pillow. It’s shaped like a wiener dog, and he got it at one of those travel stop gas stations, the kind with wifi you have to pay for, and a Cinnabon outlet up front. “Ready to see how the other half lives?”
Clarke grins and squeezes his hand tight. “For a few years, now.”
She settles back into her seat, gives some finishing touches to the anatomical heart she’s drawn on her hand, and closes her eyes.
When she opens them, she’ll be home.