June 2000

Gotta admit, today was hard for me. The kind of day you wish had started out different you know? Like you could have changed everything that happened to you if you’d just taken ten minutes longer getting ready. Or not stayed up till 3 in the morning counting the cracks in the bedroom ceiling and making faces appear in the shadows cast from the glaring street light through your window. Didn’t need a sweep of Sunnydale Memorial last night to bring the demons out, they were in full force running across the walls of my room. Funny thing is they all had the same face chasing them away every time I closed my eyes. The face of the Slayer. Don’t know which was worse, keeping my eyes open to see giant inky black beasts threaten me from the shadows, or closing my eyes and seeing her face looming at me from a distance. A smile on her godamned perfect lips fading each time I tried to get closer to her. Man, the mind is one fucked up piece of machinery. Seems mine has gone into total meltdown ever since I started noticing my skin tingle each time she is near.

So I’m not sleeping right. Last night another long night of laying awake on my back thinking how I was gonna be able to face all the Scooby’s again. How I was gonna explain to Giles my serious non-carrying out of ancient, chosen one duties in the streets of Sunnyhell. Most of all, like all my sleepless nights lately, I was thinking of how I was gonna react the next time I see B, more importantly how she’d react to me. Hell I’ve already had the Buffy Summer’s Special slam into my face once when she wasn’t even trying, what if she decided she’d really pack some of her slayer strength behind it? Its no wonder all I manage is a few hours each night before rushing to conciousness before my dream B hits me with her fists instead of the lips I really want to be smacked with. And I wake up each morning with dark circles under my eyes, we’re talking craters man. Big old ‘park your moon buggy here’ size craters and a strange stinging, salty feeling around the edge of my eyes that I know must be the remains of tears, but I can’t quite remember the sensation of them falling, cos if I could remember the urge to cry I sure as shit wouldn’t have let it happen. I don’t do that. Not me. So waking up this morning, with all the same strange stuff in my head, and the weird tight feeling in my throat as if I’d choked on the tears that I won’t let fall in daylight I decided enough was enough. I think I might have actually said that out loud in the bathroom mirror as I tried to repair some of the damage to my sleep deprived face with make-up so I looked less like the kinda scum me and B dust from time to time, and more like a human being. Yeah I looked at myself and just thought fuck it, enough is enough, grabbed my jacket, pocketed my keys and got outta there. I was headed for the magic shop, and like I said before, things weren’t exactly a walk through the park when I got there.

You know how you get that sinking feeling inside your stomach sometimes, like suddenly the gravity inside you drops to below zero and takes all your insides with it. Like you’ve just become some bottomless pit and your twisting and turning, reaching out to stop yourself from falling any further, thinking that soon you’ve got to reach the end of this rollercoaster ride you never paid to go on, but actually the falling sensation never stops. And the queasy feeling comes soon after it when you have to breathe extra slow incase some big fat chunks of carrot and peas make there way up to the surface, even though you won’t have eaten either since 6th Grade cafeteria food was mandoratory. Its like they’ve been laying in wait all this time to be vommed up and gross you out. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like that today on my way to the magic shop. Being the Slayer doesn’t mean we don’t go through the same shitty feelings as a regular Joe who knows they have some bad shit to face up to, I found that out today.

And can I just add how this all was made worse by the fact that when I walked into the shop, my eyes squinting against the change from bright California sunshine to shady incense laden light inside, I wasn’t just faced with a surprised stare from Giles but the whole damn Scooby gang, including Army Boy, was out in force around the table, and one by one they registered my presence and I theirs like in one of those lame old Westerns they show on cable most nights. The no-good gunslinger in black, moseying back into town like a useless habit that won’t be kicked without a fight. I could even hear that corny music in my head, you know the one from that Clint Eastwood film, The Good The Bad and the Ugly, as I walked the few steps towards the back of the shop, my shoes suddenly sounding like they had a pair of spurs on them. And there was no doubt in anyones eyes when I looked into them who the Bad of this scenario was. She was standing right there infront of them, a neutral expression on her face to hide the rollercoaster ride her stomach had decided it wanted to enjoy again. Hands stuffed into pockets so they wouldn’t start up with some elaborate nervous dance through her hair like they always did as a kid and her slut of a mom had caught her swiping nickels from her purse for a soda pop. A mouth so suddenly dry, the tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth when she tried to open it and say ‘Hey, what’s happening?’ Just like she always says ‘Hey, what’s happening?’ when she comes to the magic shop and the Scooby’s are all there in a row.

I stood there frozen to the spot, ghostly cowboy music echoing away in my head, and the eyes of everyone peering at me from around the table like a panel of judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one convenient package. I was tempted to just return their obvious rage at me with some of my own, something along the lines of ‘Well fuck you guys in your ivory towers with your goddamn perfect lives’ or ‘Like you’ve never gone down the road marked no entry before and wound up in shit creek alley’ (that one I thought of saying to Giles, because of all the faces I was looking at, his was the only one I thought I saw a faint glow of understanding in). I was tempted to say all of this and then some as soon as my tongue removed itself from the top of my mouth when the door opened behind me, hitting the little bell, breaking my body’s inability to move, and cos everyone’s eyes that had been boring into me so much for the past couple of minutes all moved past me at whoever had entered the shop, I did the same thing.

I didn’t realise that she hadn’t been sat with the Scooby’s all this time. I didn’t even notice the lack of her, cos I just expected that if the Scooby’s were out in force then their feerless leader would be there too, wearing the same expression they all had plastered to their faces like it was on special from K-Mart and they decided to buy in bulk. My mind just put her there, off its own back, like it had so many nights lately when I’d finally fallen asleep. And it felt like I was waking from a dream when I saw her with my own eyes walking into the shop, and my mind started to behave itself so I could register that she’d not been here all along.

SWOOSH!! That was my stomach hitting the floor again as our eyes met. ERUUGH!! That was the congealed carrots vomming their way up my throat as she walked closer to me. HUH? That was my mind screaming when she stopped infront of me and spoke.

"Faith. It’s good to see you."

There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm to her tone, not a flash of anger to her pale green eyes. What I heard was relief. What I saw as we became locked in such an intense gaze I’m not sure the gates of hell opening up around us could have swayed us from it was concern. Concern for me? That can’t be right, right? Time out world please!!! HUH was now joined by WHAT THE FUCK? in my head, and instead of vom rushing up inside me, now it was like my blood had been placed on tidal wave alert, and my body started hankering down for a real mean trip along the shoreline.

I tried to open my mouth but my jaws had locked into place, as if they’d come out in sympathy with the dry tongue inside, so nothing happened apart from a weird clenching sensation up high in my cheekbones that hurt the way your jaw hurts after you’ve received a real nice blow to it. A bit like the last time I saw this kinda concern in B’s eyes after she’d slayer-decked me.

"We were worried about you."

For like half a second I got to enjoy hearing that phrase fall from her lips. Got to relish the feeling of having someone who cared enough about me to be worried. And not just someone but B had been worried!!! Infact not only B, but all of them. My mind was like on total overload, and it was just catching up to recognising the feeling inside me now that resembled how you feel when you finally find a place that says in big flashing lights, and perhaps glitter around the edges "Welcome, this is where you belong" when jerkwad farmboy had to open that fucking square jaw of his.....

.... "I wasn’t worried."

I had my back to him but I could see the expression on his stupid arrogant shitty face all the same as he said it. The contempt in his eyes that he always thinks is hidden. The scorn in the set of his jaw when B laughs at one of my jokes. The hate he feels for me, and can’t quite figure out why cos to his lame Army principles it wouldn’t have crossed his mind that I am jonesing for his girlfriend. Rest assured the feelings mutual between us, finally got that messege when I cottoned onto the fact that B is more than my good Slayer half, she is half of me now. I’m not complete without her, and part of the reason I will never have her was sitting behind me, the hatred showing plainly in view for once.

And the bastard thing about it, as much as I hate to think a jerk like Army Boy affects me in the slightest way, it still felt like the welcome mat that had only just been laid out for me had been pulled out from under my feet and I was like those glasses on a magicians table after he’s ripped the table cloth off, only the stunts gone wrong and all the glasses are about to fall and smash into a million pieces on the floor. But I didn’t figure that there was someone in the magic shop that day that had a cure for this, and she caught all the glasses before they even moved an inch.

B

She had a look in her eyes that only I probably saw cos we were so close still, and that look, no word of a lie here, I swear, it was a contempt all of her own for Army Boy and that square jaw of his.

"Well I was worried."

She could have said more. Could have translated that look in her eyes down to her vocal cords and got all defendery (a term I’ve heard her use when she’s talking to Dawn sometimes) on my behalf. And there was a part of me that wished she’d done that. Come on Slayer, defend me for once like you so passionately defend the innocents of this town that don’t even know your name. But I am not innocent. And maybe the reason she didn’t say more than that was because she didn’t understand in the first place why she was so concerned for me of all people. Defender of all things good, thats the Slayer alright. But suddenly the lines of that phrase had gotten blurred. Standing in the magic shop today, I think B finally realised that fact.

In the end, everything’s five by five, but man it’s been a hard day.