Agnes groans, hiding her face behind a lanky arm. “You guys are the worst,” she says.

“Yeah,” Grace agrees. “Love you.”

“So much it hurts,” Ximena adds.

Agnes bites her lip. It’ll scab and bleed and heal, like she always does. Like she always has. When Grace looks at Agnes, she does not see a monster. She sees hurt and anger and the scarred remains of fear turned survival.

“I was actually going to call you tonight, start giving you shit about your birthday and becoming old and decrepit this month,” Agnes says. “It’s not even—”

“Relax,” Ximena murmurs, rubbing Agnes’s stomach beneath the heavy sweatshirt. “It’s a big deal for you, so it’s a big deal for us.”

A trembling breath. It does not sound like Agnes, who Grace has always known as fierce and utterly composed, even at the height of her shrieking, furious anger. “I got a new diagnosis,” she says, looking up into the camera to meet Grace’s eyes. “Borderline personality disorder. It’s not even that big of a deal, you know?” Grace holds her breath. “It’s not like I wasn’t already living my life as a major depressive with clinical anxiety with a lovely little sprinkle of self-harm, right? So, what’s the big fucking deal?”

There are a lot of words Grace could say. I’m sorry. I’m glad you told me. It’ll get better.

They all aren’t enough.

Instead she says, “You know I love you, right?”

“I’m painfully aware,” Agnes replies. She pulls two small pill bottles from her hoodie pocket. “Anyway, I have two new prescriptions to turn me into a semi-functioning person,” she says. “They’ve just been making me sick so far.” She smiles, a bitter thing. “Guess you guys are stuck with me. No one else would take in a late-blooming nutjob.”

“Hey,” Grace says. “As a fellow late-blooming nutjob, I take offense to that.” She presses her hand to the screen, like that will help. “Give us a little more credit,” she teases softly. “I mean, we liked you well enough when we thought you were just depressed and mean. Especially Ximena, right?”

“Fuck off,” they both say.

Agnes sends her an awful glare. “Anyway. That’s enough emotional vulnerability for a lifetime. I’ll deal with it. Whatever.”

Grace snorts. “You’re already doing better than me,” she confesses. “Don’t think I’ve reached the ‘deal with it’ stage of anything yet.”

“That’s because you’re not as well-adjusted as me,” Agnes says. “I’m going to therapy twice a week, but my therapist is driving me crazy. She says she’s absolutely positive I’ll adapt beautifully to this. Old hag.”

Grace laughs. “You can’t say that.”

Agnes makes a nasty noise. “‘Beautifully,’ she said, Porter. Beautifully borderline. Maybe I’ll write a book.”

Ximena hides a smile behind Agnes’s serrated, angular body. “I’d buy it,” Grace says. “I’d—” She cannot understand this, what Agnes is going through, but she can understand loneliness so deep you can’t reach it, and sadness that consumes everything. She can understand wanting to let your limbs go weak as you sink underwater. “I’d get it,” Grace says, and she trusts that Agnes will understand that, too.

Lonely creatures, she has learned, will always find each other.

“Yeah.” Agnes sighs. “Your phone is lighting up, by the way. Since when do you have friends we don’t know about?”

Ximena lets out a fake cry. “We’re being replaced. Maybe Porter was the hip-hop SoulCycle type all along.”

Grace ignores their increasing dramatics to grab her phone.

Yuki
11:59 p.m.
are you there?
are you listening?
where are you, grace porter?
“Oh my God,” Ximena says, and Grace looks up, feeling caught. “I have never seen you look so lovesick. Is this what married life does to you? You’re glowing.”

“I’m not lovesick,” Grace mutters. “And I’m not glowing. It’s just—I’m just—”

“Uh-huh.” Ximena hooks her chin over Agnes’s shoulder. “Don’t get your heart broken, Grace Porter, okay? I’ll put you back together, but I won’t be nice about it.”

Grace doesn’t meet her eyes. She fiddles with her phone, navigating to Yuki’s webpage.

“I won’t. I’ll be fine,” she says. “Things are good here. Promise.”

“Okay,” Ximena says. “We’ll let you go. Love you.”

“So much it hurts,” Grace says.

“Gross.” Agnes sticks out her tongue and the call disconnects.

She clicks the Listen Live link flashing on her phone and is immediately transported into the world Yuki builds up, each word like a brick in the foundation. She settles in and pretends half her heart hasn’t been left in Portland, unable to find its rhythm when the people it’s connected to are hurting. She settles in and inhales embers and crushed herbs and wonders if she will remember the smell clearly once she has to leave.

“Tonight, we are talking about the Akashita,” Yuki says over the radio. “It’s another yokai I’m sharing with you. I think my mom would be livid if she knew this is what I’ve shared from our culture. But, it’s interesting, isn’t it?”