the first circle is the last circle

[Maraoone]

((At eleven in the evening, June was washing her own dishes.))

The Madison household kitchen was large enough to have multiple sinks, and starting five days ago, her mom had started to separate her and Dad's dishes, always clean, always promptly returned to the cupboards, in one sink, and June's, dirty, piled-up, to the other sink.

For the few days between her return to Salem and the press conference, her parents had at least tried to check on her daily (10 AM each morning) to see if they could get her to eat something (they couldn't). They did not check on her anymore after the press conference.

The Madison household was large enough that they did not have to run into each other if they did not want to. After the press conference, she only saw her parents in fleeting glances. They left when she entered. There was no display of emotion of any sort, just a quick, efficient departure, and then the chill left by their absence.

It was not that they were busy like they usually were; their diner was closed for a few weeks for 'renovations.' Two days after the press conference, a talk show host from Patriot News walked into the kitchen in the middle of dinner service and asked if they were proud to have June as a daughter, and if June really was their daughter.

It was after this dinner service that the diner was closed.

She was washing dishes as all the dishes in the house were now piled up in one sink or another. For a bit, she'd been able to get away with washing a fork or a spoon when she needed it, skulking into the kitchen and out as quickly as possible, but the pile had become so mountainous that she felt compelled to handle it somehow, despite her limited ability. So, here she was.

It was difficult, but surprisingly not impossible, to wash dishes with only one working arm. It involved a lot of the same tricks she'd learned when trying to bandage herself: bracing the object you're washing against the wall, setting things down when possible, and so on.

She had been at this for about ten minutes when footsteps approached her from behind. June tensed, for a moment, imagined drawing a gun.

"June."

It was her mom's voice. Her tension did not ease. June laid the sponge beneath the soap dispenser, pumped it once. It wasn't sudsy anymore, needed some more soap.

"We're re-opening the restaurant again."

A pause followed, waiting for an answer to fill the void. June turned on the faucet, passed the sponge under the stream of water for a second, put down the sponge, turned off the faucet. After ten seconds, she answered.

"That's good."

She started squeezing the sponge, to agitate the soap, make bubbles form.

"I know you can't help as much as you normally would, with your injury and all, but could you help out when we get to opening it?"

She squeezed the sponge harder.

"Help run orders, make sure all the tables are being served and all?" her mom continued.

Anxiety built in her throat. That old, clogging feeling. She began scrubbing the rough, green side against the plate.

"I... uh..."

"June, baby, you can't be in your room all the time. Being on the computer all the time is no life to live."

"I'm not on my computer all the time," she replied immediately.

June did not go online at all, in fact. Someone, Matthew probably, had leaked her Twitter handle, though her account was and had always been private, and so, her feed was filled with tags of her account, mostly videos and screenshots of her, now, edited into various memes. The news had gone from her and her classmates to just her.

She had gone online a bit in the first couple days after the press conference. It was a genuine reflex, something that had to be trained out of her. There was so little to do in her room, after all. Every time she got bored, she instinctively opened Twitter, looking for that same old dopamine rush, only to be hit with another zoomed-in shot of her screaming at Matthew. She would close the tab, but then she would open it a few minutes later.

This reflexive self-harm only ended when, one time, she checked her messages out of curiosity.

It was almost entirely burner accounts calling her obese, a bitch, false flag, grotesque, monstrous, liberal, fat cunt, murderer, paid actress, murderer, murderer, murderer. The last message she saw was a message from an anonymous account with a close-up shot of Medea's slit throat.

She did not open Twitter again after that.

"You don't even talk to your friends?" her mom asked, pitch a bit higher than before.

She shook her head quickly.

She couldn't.

Her phone had been taken by the terrorists, and was likely either destroyed or being held as evidence by Interpol. In either case, she had lost that means of communication. There were ways to recover her phone number, but it involved going outside, talking to people, and, she didn't want to deal with any of that.

There was her Facebook. There, Marshall was trying to get a hold of her, as he had been trying since the press conference. So did her friends that didn't go on the trip. But just, the group chat they were in was the same one that Medea and K had been in. She couldn't really bear to go in there, knowing the group chat was that much emptier. She couldn't really bear to talk to anyone. So, she didn't.

"What do you do all day in that room then?"

She spent her time being angry. She always felt angry.

She didn't really know how to feel anything else anymore. All there was was the constant drone of bitterness in the background, directed at everyone else for simply being.

She hadn't had any new thoughts these past couple of weeks, and that, out of everything, angered her the most. She knew that, before the trip, she had had good grades, she had written good essays, she had made good food, but, that was all beyond her now. Every day she felt angry. Every day she thought about how much she missed Medea, about how much she hated Matthew. Every day she felt a weakness behind her eyes and the tightness of her neck, though it never released, only built up, clogged somewhere within her. Even the ways in which she broke down were derivative, unoriginal; her misery was something shared by the thirteen other survivors of this class, and in sharing this misery, its worth somehow lessened if not its intensity. Because she was doing worse at bearing the same obstacles. Matthew was off doing media interviews, Marshall was back in class, even. Those that had not gone on the trip, those bereaved and those not, were still studying for their classes and applying for their colleges and off to bigger, better lives, and meanwhile, she was stuck at home, stuck in the same old bed in the same old bedroom recycling the same old thoughts paralyzed by the same old grief.

That's what she did all day. But that was not the correct answer to her mom's question.

"I'm just resting, mom. My- my arm still hurts."

Her mom scoffed.

"So, how long do you plan on resting? The rest of your life, perhaps?"

"..."

"Hm? Is that your only plan?"

The only reply that came was the scrubbing of the sponge against the ceramic plate she was washing. At some point in the conversation, her mom's tone had shifted from gentle and inquisitive to demanding. It was the point where her questions were more demands for answers than questions.

"I- I'm washing the dishes already. What else do you want?" she monotoned, barely audible over the hiss of water from the faucet.

"Yes, after five days, bravo June."

"What's your problem?"

"My problem is that we have left you to your own devices for two weeks and, the moment we ask something from you, you shy away. We're- we know that you're having a hard time, of course we know that, we cannot imagine but- you know, your father and I have been so understanding, but between my physical therapy, and the diner, and- and this, June, this, I'm TIRED." Her mom's voice suddenly rose into a crescendo. "I'm SICK OF IT."

"..."

June put down the plate, turned off the faucet, though she did not turn to look at her mom.

"Do you know how embarrassing your little outburst at the press conference was? I never hear the fucking end of it, June. We've had journalists knocking at our door every day since you did that, every day, and did you know that?"

"...'"

"No, of course you didn't, you were holed up in your room. Every day, we have to field off those journalists, and every day, we get calls from unknown phone numbers, every day, we clean up your fucking mess. We take you to therapy, and we ignore your messes, and we try our best to understand, but, every day, we go out to buy groceries and, and- all the whispers and the talking and, sometimes, I'll see my friends, and, they can't even look at me, they all feel just so sorry. And, sometimes, they'll even ask about you, ask how you're doing, and I never, ever have anything to tell them other than 'She's okay,' 'Still at home, resting up,' 'She's trying to get better,' except, and here's the rub, I don't even know if I believe that."

"Do you not?" June asked quietly.

"No I do not, because it's been two weeks, June. Two weeks and, the most I can get out of you is a few dishes."

"..."

"You're hurt, I know you're hurt, but we can't go on like this forever! I can't go on like this forever. You need to get up, get up, and," June heard thumping steps come closer and closer to her, until she felt hot breath on her ear, "and stop being SO FUCKING LAZY."





In a small, tremulous voice, without looking at her mom still, June said, "I'm- I'm sorry. I'm sorry for not doing enough chores, and not helping you enough, and making you take me to therapy. I'm sorry for losing my temper in public, and embarrassing this family. I'm sorry for all my feelings, and all the trouble I've caused. I'm sorry for inconveniencing you."

In a slightly louder voice, she asked.

"If I kill myself, would that make you happy?"

"What?"

Abruptly, June pulled a blade from the knife block on the kitchen sink and, in one swift motion, placed it horizontally across her throat. She placed it so close to her throat that the edge bit into the skin of her neck, drawing blood. She turned, proudly displayed the weeping wound to her mother, eyes wide open, glowering. June's mom took a few steps back.

"June, I-"

"You want this, right?" June asked. "I'm- I'm such a burden to you all, right? An embarrassment, is what you said?"

"That's not what-"

"So if I- if I do it right here, right now, then everything will be better, right?"

"Baby, baby, I-"

Her mother tried to approach.

"Get the FUCK away from me."

In an arcing motion, she swung the blade out.

Her mom yelped, drew her arm back. A long, diagonal slash on her forearm began to bleed.

The world froze, for a moment. June's eyes stayed fixed on her mother, and her mother's eyes stayed fixed on hers.

June looked down at the blade. Looked at her mom, gripping her injured arm. Petrified.

Slowly, June backed away from her mom, and from the kitchen, blade still pointed at her mom, so that she could not approach. After she fully backed out of the kitchen, she turned, and broke into a sprint for the door.

She grabbed the car key hanging from the key holder in the living room, unlocked the front door, and sprinted towards the car.

The last thing she heard before closing the car door was her mom screaming her name, and thuds from the second floor, as her father finally awoke, racing down to the scene. But it was too late.

By the time Mr. and Mrs. Madison made it out the front door, their car was fully out of the driveway, heading off into the horizon.




The difference between a victim and a perpetrator, in cases like June’s, was just the difference between turning your thoughts into actions and not. That was how things worked. So long as she attended her therapy sessions and repented to those around her and apologized for thinking wrong at them and attended her therapy sessions and thought away her bad thoughts and bit her tongue so hard it bled, she would simply be someone struggling with anger issues. She would simply be troubled.

She would be worthy of sympathy.

The moment she had thrown Iris down the stairs, she had thrown all of that goodwill away. And, for a while, she had thought that there might still be a path back. She just needed to say sorry more, she just needed to control herself better, she just needed to feel even worse. Somehow, stupidly, she’d imagined this path to be there even after she beat up Jezzie, even after she screamed at Kai for killing his friend. She realized now that there had never been a path back. She’d just been scared of dying, even as she fantasized about it. She knew what she deserved, she spent and spent and spent the good intentions and energy and efforts of all those around her, but she had not been willing to pay her debt, and so she proved herself perpetrator again and again, and now, there was no more considering how she was to be fixed, how she was to be saved. All she was was a danger, a danger to herself and her friends and her mom, all she was was a danger others needed protecting from.

So there was no other choice left.

There was a heady catharsis as June gripped onto the steering wheel, her one working hand tight on the surface. She stayed steady at 20 over the speed limit, jerky motions as the car swerved across intersections and past red lights, avoided by mere inches coming onto the opposing lane or smashing into other cars.

She had spent her entire life scared of making mistakes. Fingers white-knuckled on the reins of her heart, always this close to complete implosion. And now, as she avoided death again, and again, and again, she could not help but lean her head back and let out a long, violent cackle. For finally, she had achieved freedom. For, finally, there was no lower low to go, no further depths to plunge toward. She had achieved it all.

((The car sped off out the town, into the woods.))