She scooted through and faked it well enough, kept it together as long as she could every day until the aching turned to fire, until her stomach swelled with heat and rocks, weighing her down into the couch or the bed or the floor. She managed for the audience, for onlookers when she had to function for a class period or two. Then she’d slip into a closet and cry for a spell, and then she’d march on. So, yes, she got by. Mostly.
The incident that hospitalized her had shaken something deep in her core: she knew that something was wrong, that she was deeply, truly, and medically damaged, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to admit it, or to do anything to mend herself. Maybe Isis had convinced herself that she just didn’t deserve it. Maybe she thought she could not be helped. Who was to say? So her only solution was to press on.
In the summer, Nevaeh visited. Isis was glad, but also terrified of the prospect. She had spent so many years longing to be able to form a relationship with her child, but even when the opportunity arose, she had failed at every turn. She didn’t know what to be: mother, friend, mentor, something different, or something in between.
Nor did Nevaeh know what she wanted her to be. The hole in her life where a mother belonged had always been filled - the Reeds were her family, biological or not - but there was something so oddly enticing about blood relatives. Nevaeh never knew what she wanted Isis to do, but she always managed to disappoint. So really, when she agreed to visit, it was to see Nathan, her favorite former professor and now step-father, and Theodora.
And it was in conversation with Nathan when Nevaeh let her frustrations out, not knowing that Isis was a moment from rounding the corner. “Good god,” said the Aladren alumna. “Can that woman please just be a mother to somebody?”
Isis stopped short and did not round the corner, but the others were alerted to her presence as the plate of snacks she was carrying fell through stunned-dumb fingers and shattered at her feet. The sound that followed was Disapparation, and then she was gone.