Frogs

“Ugh, gross. How many frogs am I going to have to kiss?” Jasmine comes flouncing in at three in the morning, kicking her shoes off in different directions, and tossing her bag onto a chair.

We look up from the couch, from where we've been eating doughnuts and watching horror movies.

“Date didn't go well?” I ask.

Jasmine shakes her head. “Creep!”

“Oh?”

“Where do I begin?”

“Beginning?” I suggest.

Jade shifts beside me, reaching for another doughnuts, eyebrows raised.

“Okay, so he doesn't open the door for me. Doesn't even wait for me, I mean I'm running to catch up. In those heels.” And she throws a gesture at the corner where one of them has landed. “At dinner, he frowns at me when I order the steak, says he finds it mannish, then tries to laugh that off with the most horrible laugh. He makes some joke about ordering a roast cat.”

“Ugh.” Jade shudders.

I suggest: “Was he just nervous?”

“He didn't sound nervous. He noted that my hem is frayed.”

Jasmine, in a black and silver sparkly, pleated number; skirt fluttering to just above her knees. Looking goddess-gorgeous and deliberately sexy; diamante clips in her plush, raisin-apricot hair.

“And,” she flops down beside me, “his hands had a mind of their own. A dirty one. I wanted to crush one between my thighs, break it into little bones.”

A raised eyebrow.

“It had no business there, not on a first date. Not after I slapped it away the first time.”

Jade was the one to ask: “And his kiss?”

“Nothing.”

“Sorry.”

“Just as well. I don't even know what I'd do if a guy like that was the one.”

“Dougnut?”

“Sure thing. What are we watching?”

“Into the Nightmare.”

“Huh. Sign me up then.”

#

We watch until almost dawn. And then we crawl into bed. One big, soft bed, full of cushions, and faux-fur blankets. We crawl in, piled up like kittens, holding each other against the cold currents of the world – both literal and figurative. The way we always have. Covers pulled over our heads – a rich amber darkness to replace the morning light.

It's a relief to sink into the warmth, to finally shed my skin. I feel my second skin stretch out, exhale. I feel the quality of the air change, becoming moist and musky. We snuggle into each other, suckers reaching and gulping, my hair soaks. Tentacles reach around my sisters, tying us into a safe, soft knot. The back of my neck opens wide.

And we float into Dreamland together.

In Dreamland the world is remade. It's an ocean, where the colours are like jewels. A crisp algae floats along the surface. Red worms live in it – they squirm and wriggle, ducking as the sun ascends – purple and blood red, dyeing the ocean. Red-blue beneath. We can dive forever. We can hit the sandy bottom, bounce of it and kick back up. It flows through our skin, healing and electrifying. Shadows in the water could be others like us. Coloured glass dots are so many fish.

The sky above us is a dark, burnt gold.

#

Until morning.

Until the sky returns to a washed-out blue, until the world turns dry and grey and cold. There's pale golden sunlight rising over a patchwork of roofs.

It's always hard to get up.

Jasmine is first. We feel her leave, snuggle tighter, but we all know duty calls.

She's sitting in the kitchen drinking her coffee, looking out the window as the streets begin to busy.

“Has he called?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“And you?”

“Hell, no. What's a polite way of telling a guy you never want to see him again?”

“Maybe the next one?” I pour myself a coffee.

“Here's hoping.”

Jasmine's the first to go out. She's an advertising executive, and a sophisticate. She's dressed in a sharp suit, with a ruffly silk blouse underneath it. Her shoes are still glossy and towering – daytime or nightime. Her make-up is pitch-perfect. No flies on her. Never ever.

Jade, the quiet one. The one I keep thinking might one day swim into the ocean and turn herself into a mermaid. She's a nurse. She's soft-spoken, shy. There are times, when we're all out, and somebody's rough with her, hostile: I want to open my mouth wide and show all my teeth. I want to bite. Times when I fear I really might do it; when a look from Jasmine is all that reins me in.

She holds us together.

It's scary in a way. If she did find Mr Right...

Me: I blend in. An ordinary job in an ordinary office. I get coffees, I file documents. Answer a few phones. Jasmine tells me I could be more than this, she tells me I have a fantastic brain. And I'm a beautiful artist. You should sell your paintings. You should display them. There's a gallery down town. But I don't think I'd like the attention. I don't really like being looked at.

#

Piled up in the bushes, as cute as stray kittens.

They found us that way.

That was us: three little orphaned girls, strangely abandoned, and clinging to each other. About a year old...? Maybe sisters: we looked so much alike.

The authorities weren't too clear on what to do with us. Nobody claimed us. No-one came forward with information. And the way we clung and clung, the way we howled for each other. Even the hardest hearted couldn't quite bring themselves to split us apart.

And if we weren't always raised gently, at least we were raised together. We always had that. Always had each other's back.

“It really is us against this world,” said Jasmine, who always likes to pretend she understands us, “we have to stick together, no matter what. And keep our heads down. What do you think would happen if anybody knew?”

#

Well, I think I'm luckier than the other two.

At least I've found Todd.

We met at work. Todd's in IT. He was called in to help fix a network problem, and there was just something about the way he glanced at me. Something that melted me inside. That's not to say that I believe in love at first sight, because I don't, I'm a grown-up and I know that's dumb. But there was something, there was some instinct that drew me to him, that made me walk past him and drop my folder, to smile shyly when he stopped to help pick it all up. Some instinct that flirted with him as best I knew how, that sparked in me the courage to say yes to him when he asked me out.

The three of us, at home, tossing my wardrobe around, looking for the perfect outfit. Jasmine checking off bullet points, things to say and not to say, the right way to walk, how to touch my hair, my lips, how far to lean forward. She put a vial of sparkly foundation in my bag – to keep your skin bright – and a small, curvy knife. We never go anywhere, anytime, without something we can defend ourselves with. Better that than having to use our teeth.

But Todd. I would never need that with him. He was gentle, he was gentlemanly, he showed me a kindness I have never yet learned to expect from the world. He got my chair for me, waited for me to sit down, took my jacket, hung my bag over the back of my seat.

He seemed to actually like me. Nothing I said irritated him, nothing provoked him or brought out a dark seam. He was goodness through and through.

He still is.

I fell on my feet there.

Jasmine comes to see me sometimes, maybe in the window seat, she sits down and gently takes my hand. “This thing with Todd...”

“I like Todd. I love Todd.”

“But he isn't the one.”

“How do you know?”

“I don't need to know. You know.”

“I don't.”

“Enid, you need someone stronger. He's a good guy, I get that. You have fun with him, he's nice. But he's not strong enough. You know you couldn't lean on him.”

“I've never tried.”

“Enid, don't. You'd consume him.”

The answers all die trying to stagger out of my mouth. Weak as kittens. And they know it.

“He'd do his best for you, but he'd fall, and you'd fall with him.”

“So I won't lean on him.”

“And what happens when you get sick?”

#

We all remember when Jade got sick. It's a scary memory.

We had no map to follow for this, nobody to go to for advice. Jasmine whispering urgently: No you can't tell anyone. Not anyone. We can't take her anywhere near a hospital and you know it!

What could they do about it anyway?

She came home from work one day tired, struggling to even get up the stairs, her feet tripping over each other. Her hair was wet and sticky.

Over the hours and days, we watched her skin turn blue-grey, stripes of colour creased into it, wet and rich at first, but shrivelling away, tightening around her. She tumbled into violent hallucinations, screaming at times for somebody who wasn't either of us. Maybe for him. But we'd only ever had frogs.

We tried her on vitamins, on fish oil, kelp tablets, iron. We put her in the bath, filled it up with warm water. Me and Jasmine climbed in, we put away our skins, wrapped her up in our real selves, kissing her all over with suckers, bandaging her in tentacles, breathing in time, matching our heartbeats, trying to become one organism.

I think she never fully healed from that. Frustrating, we sisters, knowing we can't be enough. And this could happen to any of us, at any time.

#

People aren't always nice to us. More often than not they aren't. And we don't know what it is that might set them off. Even people we know, and have known for ages.

Jasmine lost two jobs that way.

Jade had her nose and two fingers broken.

We had to get used to harsh foster homes, to families who were nice one minute and who turned on us the next.

Jasmine declared it to be pheromones – “or something like that” - “they recognise the otherness. They don't even know they're doing it, but they sense it, and they react.”

I was young enough to say: “That isn't fair.”

And she was the big sister – even if maybe she isn't any older: “Life isn't fair. It's not like they can help it.”

“And life is just going to be like this for us?”

“Pretty much. That's why we can't ever let them split us up.”

“What if they do?”

“Then we find each other.”

Jade, whispering: “What if we can't?”

“We can.” Jasmine seemed sure. But something in the way she looked at me when she said it made me hear her voice in my head: if we don't, we'll die.

And so we weather harsh bosses, a spark or two of street violence, a rude waitress or an impatient salesperson. Well, we have to, don't we? People are just like that.

#

Except for Todd.

And I know I'm biased. I know I have all the reasons of wish-fulfillment to want to insist he's not like other men. At first I told myself that he must be the one, how else to explain the way he is with me, the way other men never have been. How else?

But I don't need Jasmine to tell me by now that that's not how it works.

I know what I'm waiting for in a kiss. I know I should feel almost dizzy, that my lips should go numb, that some sort of strange heat will come flowing down through my veins: almost painful, but also energizing, something that fills me with bursts of colour, something that makes me feel – physically – as if I could lift mountains.

It's cherry-sweet, soft, deeply touching with Todd. But it's only that.

“He might not be kind,” Jasmine warns me sometimes, “and you might not even like him that much. Maybe he's a necessary evil, who knows?”

So is Todd an unnecessary good?

I meet him after work in our favourite cafe. It's raining, and he love how I like to walk in the rain, he'll come out to meet me in the downpour, with his folio over his head, delighting in how I just want to stand there and let the rain soak my skin. We sit dripping at our table, while he tells me about his day, about the tech support calls that make him want to tear his hair out. He imitates these people. He buys us both a whiskey sour, we order spicy chips, bread and dips. He reaches under the table and holds my hand. There's always laughter coming from our table, always the two of us looking at each other, hearts melted by some expression on the other one's face.

Jasmine and Jade might come and join us. He welcomes them. We chat and joke, order more food and more drink. Our table becomes a microcosm of warmth and generosity, against a world which is so light on either.

And he may be a frog. Maybe he is. But he's a good one. If not the best. And I can't pretend I know how to make it work: our situation is somewhat unprecedented, unmapped, for all four of us. But with rain beating against the window, the lights reflecting in glass, catching in his eyes: I'm 100% certain I'm going to give it a shot.