Chapter 2 : (⌯˃̶᷄ ﹏ ˂̶᷄⌯)ﾟ

So tour begins in a big whirlwind as usual. You're still a girl, didn't you know?

That's your latest album: Still Ur Girl. Littlefinger calls it one big birthday celebration. You’ve come of age at last! She’s legal ;-) But don't worry! She's still your bluebird. That's your whole thing, being very sweet, very chaste, very All American.

But okay, the album is pretty cute and you’re proud of it. You start as a school girl with Twinkle Twinkle, and then you grow. There’s Ow, My Heart!, then Cootie Catcher, Kiss Kiss Crush, Teacher’s Pet, Seven Minutes, Party Fun Now, Detention, Prom Princess, Yours, and lastly, a throwback to the worst time in your life, Forever Rainbow. That's when you put on your taffeta Ralph Lauren and sing like a bluebird, give the entire world hope for a better tomorrow.

The thing is, tomorrow has been okay. Like, the war against the terrorists is still happening but it's been years since the towers fell. You already sang a cover of Somewhere over the Rainbow on your debut album, Bluebird, and then a remix called Rainbows and Sunshine on your second album, Taking Flight. You're not stupid. You know what the haters (the Spider, ugh!) have to say about you: boring, played out, sell-out gimmick. Other haters call you a slut because your skirts are short and you did a photoshoot in your bikini.

The worst part is that album sales were down. Littlefinger won't stop reminding you: you have to kill this tour. It's already sold out, yes, but you need the public to talk about you nicely. You need to win a Grammy.

You need Joffrey to stay with you forever.

He will—it’s non-negotiable.

Bluebird's Beauties love Still Ur Girl. That's the best website, your official fanpage, where your most loyal fans post pretty pictures on forums and make drawings for you and remind each other how absolutely perfect your music is. Which it is. Everyone knows Marillion is the most groundbreaking producer out there, he's Swedish! You're on the cutting edge of pop. Bluebird's Boys love the album even better. You're not really supposed to hang out on that website, and it kinda freaks you out sometimes. Those are your man-fans. They ran a countdown to your eighteenth birthday. They like your bikini pictures the best and talk about your body like you're made of meat (fair enough). Get a look at those scrumptious gams. I'd gobble those boobies up.

Yummiest tootsies in the biz.

(How did they even get those close-ups of your feet? Well, they are cute...)

The best song on the album is Yours. That’s the only one you wrote. You play it on piano when your shimmery blue gown is in shreds, silk puff sleeves weeping from your shoulders. Joff thinks it’s about him, Littlefinger does too, but it’s actually about Daddy.

It makes you cry every show. The fans love it. They expect it.

You travel with twenty seven trucks blazoned with your image: you, the baby girl bird, in your blue dolly dress. You’ll be on the road for five months, through Halloween and Christmas, all the way to Valentine’s day! It’s up and down the east coast, out through the south, up the midwest, and at long last, the true west. You’ll end up in Los Angeles, on V-Day, at the Hollywood bowl! So romantic <3_<3 (And after the tour, you’ll be free to spend a month in Joff’s Calabasas mansion while you gear up for the Grammys! All on your own! Wow!)

Mostly, you spend your days on the bus. It's state of the art, black leather, glossy fake wood panelling, pink backlights, sleek stainless steel kitchenette, big-ish table, a couple couches, and four bunks. You have a king-sized bed in the back, if you need it. It's you, Wylla, and Randa. Who knows when Brienne sleeps. She has a tour to manage. She sits up with Dontos the driver and frets over her Blackberry as bland stretches of highway play on an endless loop.

There are ways to pass the time: first, talking. The girls love to talk. You can boost the chatter with some coke, then text a bunch or throw a little dance party. You know all the best pop songs! (And guess what—they're not from America! Yeah, you're cultured!) When that gets boring, you hide in your bed alone or puppy-piled and text some more. Sometimes snuggle your beloved Jigglypuff plush and you listen to music on your iPod Nano. Sometimes Wylla snuggles into your armpit and watches you play Emerald. She asks dumb questions especially when she's high and you have nothing better to do than to answer: No, a Charizard. He's like, a big Charmander. No he won’t fight Starmie he's a fire type, see there are his stats, ugh, shut up I'm losing focus!

When the games get old, Wylla wants to kiss. She's had a little crush on you forever—she only likes girls. She's pretty even though her hair is garish green because she's tall and skinny like a model, which she is. She's a semi-popular singer (your opening act), but when she's done with tour, she goes to Japan. They love her there. She stays for like a month each year to pose for as many brands as possible, weird ones that don't even sell in America but want her face, the face of a doll. (Are you ready to admit you're jealous yet? That you nearly steam out your skin when she comes back dripping kawaii, absolutely sweating it, in pastel dresses and platform shoes and clips and charms and stickers and pens and bags and the shoes, O M G!)

(She doesn't even play Pokemon! She hasn't seen every episode of Sailor Moon or Fruits Basket or Cardcaptor Sakura and she definitely doesn’t read the manga but of course she gets to go! Littlefinger won't let you go. The contract, he says, has nothing to do with Japan. You're much too busy!)

(But at least she brought you back the cutest dress last time, frilly pink with a strawberry pattern skirt, lolita, have you heard of it? She brought back piles of magazines, too. FRUiTS. And that's not to mention your Cinnamoroll slippers, and phone charm, and lipgloss, and camera, and plushies, of course. Japan has the best stuff! And it is like, so hard to find online. But you're trying!)

(Ugh!)

So OK, Wylla is kawaii and a good kisser, better than all the Kings combined, plus Littlefinger and for sure the Walders. None of them have ever made you come, either. Learning to come was fun. You taught yourself at fourteen in the corner bathtub while Littlefinger made angry phone calls on the floor below (no shouting, just his prickly calm, words charged like icy razorblades). (Ironically (maybe) this is also where you first misused a razorblade. And who's to say if water or metal was more satisfying where it shouldn't be.) So you spent a good few hours under the swan-necked golden faucet, feeling your blood beat against your bath, cherishing the skin that separated one fluid from the next, thinking of combining them, thinking the bath is the best place in the world, a place where no one else is, a place where my weight doesn't exist, a place where my pulse screams, for once, louder than my head.

There's no tub on the bus. There's a sleek black shower stall, with an extendable head. It's nice.

Wylla is nice too. She was your first kiss, if you don't count Littlefinger. She was always trying to kiss at parties for practice and fine, you wanted to practice too. You definitely impressed Joffrey when you finally had your first boy kiss! Eventually kisses led to touches, and yes you wanted to learn, and yes she knew about your body because her parts were the same and she wasn't embarrassed to talk about how much she liked her faucet and her fingers or how she stole copies of Playboy to look at naked, spread open, women. Once, on your Macbook, she even searched for them on the internet. This didn't occur to you as possible before. You found some things there, on the internet, some very probably not good things. Scary!

So when the urge strikes, when it's midafternoon in bed, the curtain is drawn, your thong is sticky between your legs and your Juicy sweatsuit living up to its name, you let her touch. She slides a hand to meet your pulse. Her fingers are somehow better than yours. Sometimes you don't stop playing Pokemon.

You nap.

Usually, by the time you wake, you're in a city. Hands get you where you need to go. If you're lucky, you get to rest in your hotel first, relish the entire floors cleared in your name, the top floor suites that have you, a star, aptly positioned in the sky. Most times you land at the venue, or, more precisely, the stadium. It's always stadiums these days: football fields or baseball diamonds or hockey rinks, converted to concert halls for America's Bluebird. None of their industrial guts are pretty. Your escort takes you through dark back channels, with sterile concrete floors and low-hanging pipes sheathed in black plastic stuffing. More pipes line the walls. It's tubes, everywhere, tubes. Steam hisses in the fluorescent underbelly. These places are alive.

Tonight you're playing Heinz Field. "Where is that?" you ask Brienne for the fifth time. "Pittsburgh," she replies with a straight (albeit ugly) face. "You're in Pittsburgh."

Here's the reason you're sad to be at the stadium already:

No wait—guess!

He's big, he's ugly, he made you pee yourself a little (you think) and he definitely shouted at you and maybe threatened your life (your life, the precious life of Sansa Stark!)

Did you guess Sandor Clegane?

Winner!!!

This is how it goes: you arrive at the stadium. The stage is set up already, like, hundreds of people do it for you beforehand. That’s what your trucks are carrying. You show up for a little rehearsal with your pretty boy dancers (Serwyn, Galladon, Aemon, Gerold, Arthur, Symeon, and Ryam), and then it's time for soundcheck. That’s when you have to face Sandor.

See, he controls what you hear in your earbuds, like vocals, and instruments, whatever you need to sing. He lives in monitor world, a cavernous booth set below your sprawling, U-shaped stage. He’s a dark beast from the depths. And he’s stupidly good at making your mix, you can’t even complain, you just sing your songs and nod to him as he works, twisting knobs, flipping switches, whatever it is those giant black sound machines do.

And guess what? He's actually called the Hound. Isn't that funny? It's because he's a rabid beast with a nasty bite. Also, he killed a lot of people in Iraq. Admittedly, you gathered intel. You had Osmund do it mostly, and got some backup deets from Hyle and Brienne, little snippets here and there. Sandor was a marine like Daddy—this can be confirmed by the giant Globe and Anchor on the inside of his right bicep. You watch it surface from his sleeve and distend as he plays with his machines. It can get huge.

So he's definitely gunned down a lot of terrorists, but he can't anymore because of a bad leg. This too is watchable and more-so fascinating. It stiffens sometimes when he walks. He grimaces when he pulls up from a squat. He doesn't want anyone to notice, but you have, and he's caught you staring more than you care to admit. The thing is, that also means he's watching you, which he is. That’s his job. And it's sad, because you know you're the sun, a beautiful dangerous treasure for men to behold, to willingly scald into their eyes. But now you have a sun. You're pulled in. Your eyes want to feast on darkness, to surrender themselves to a cruel yet sumptuous burn.

You try not to get too close. You don’t really have to talk to him, and you try not to, but today during soundcheck he totally fails and a terrible screech rips across the stage and tears up your poor ear drums!

And get this: he tries to blame it on his baby-faced assistant, Podrick!

You see it unfold. He starts yelling in his booth, even takes Podrick by the collar, carries him out to the floor, and shakes him, for all the world to see! You intervene, of course!

You scramble down from the stage on the nearest rickety makeshift stair, flip-flop over to the Hound, and stick a hand on his barrel chest. “Put him down!” you cry.

He puts Podrick down, and glares at your hand on his shirt instead.

Slowly, you withdraw.

He steps closer. "You want a pretty show or not, little bird?" His deodorant smells like balsam and black spruce (his stinky armpits hover at face level) and he throws down dragon breath that reeks of club floor, half-gelatinized beer and cigarette butts. It’s an annoying question, like, the answer is obvious. So you say, "I think you should learn to be nice."

He runs a big thick tongue over his pointed fangs, then spits out, "Likewise."

As ever, Brienne comes to fritter you away. You're tempted to tell her to have him fired. You're obviously the sweetest girl in the whole dang world. But the command sticks in your throat like decent-sized cock. You think of cock for ten seconds too long; you glance over your shoulder to see Sandor pat Pod on the back, offer him a sip of water, share a quick smile. Your eyes cloud.

Stupid sun.

The worst part is you don't know what to say to Wylla or Randa or Jeyne or anyone. After you texted Wylla to spill Sandor's secret, you backpedaled. In the morning you woke to a frantic stream of texts, to which you answered omg i was just high last night team magma was beating me sooo bad. She sent back: lol ok. Because the thing is, Sandor isn't supposed to take up space in your brain. Joffrey is the golden one. He sparkles. He draws girls in like piranhas on bloody meat. Oh crap, that makes you a piranha, and him dead. But fair enough, you like the taste of his blood, his strawberry jam insides. He's a teacake and you're Marie Antionette. Now you're doomed to die. Ugh.

One more time: Sandor is NOT pretty. He's not a boy. He's an old, full-grown man, who's grumpy, and probably poor, and smells like, IDK: man. He's muscled not like a statue, but like a big burly ox. A horrorshow kaiju. He's rude and huge and so unimportant it hurts.

You shouldn't be thinking of him.

But after the show is done and you've sweated yourself through to crystallized salt skin, after you smile and strip your many layers and redress in a different sweatsuit, after you fight camera fire and arrive at your Hilton penthouse suite, and you take Littlefinger's bedtime call and Miranda gives you a bedtime pill and tucks you safely in bed, you have but one thing on your mind.

It's either the Hound or you're hungry, which you almost always are. There's that dull ache below your ribs. Put something in me. But what? You mash your tummy through your blue silk nightie and curl to a tight ball beneath the covers. You picture a monster’s hand on your face, full coverage. You have another hollow, another void, lacking. You're empty holes at midnight. One of them leaks.

—

It's probably time to talk about food. See, you’ve gotten very good at distractions (people, pills, flashy screens, being a world famous popstar on her third mega tour, etc.) but you’re still on a diet. Grief got you started and Littlefinger carried the torch. You forgot to eat for a week straight after daddy died, except for the strawberry cream frappuccinos you sometimes drank at the news stations. Littlefinger loved the results; he said, “Your diet is working. Keep up the good work.” What he meant was, by the next week he would be in control of your regimented eating schedule. Oatmeal here, a yogurt there, a cheese stick if you’re lucky, celery sticks and whitefish for dinner. He watches every morsel pass your lips. If you perform well, you earn a frappuccino: nonfat sugar free mocha, hold the whip. No more berry :-(

Tours are the best and the worst. Littlefinger isn't here to watch you (he’s busy sealing the deal ), so Brienne takes over. She coordinates your catered meals and makes sure you stick to your diet. The minifridge is full of clear plastic containers of salad and sad cups of soup. There are cardboard granola bars in the cupboards alongside dried fruit and powdered meal replacement, chocolate-chalk flavor (like, did they not have anything fruity?) Brienne parses these out at the appropriate times. Randa gives her narrowed eyes and sneaks you her Reeses, or her Ruffles, or best yet, her McDonald's fries. Once she gave you a whole bite of her JBC. She tried to give you a chicken nugget, but she got caught. Brienne said next time she'd be fired.

It's for the best. Randa is chubby. She's like, a size ten with huge boobs and a jiggly behind. She has a fun enough personality though, and Littlefinger let you choose her as your assistant. She speaks her dirty mind. She isn't afraid of eating. She does it out in the open, parading her calories like hard-earned kills. She came to her interview, huffing from her walk up Madison Avenue, a trenta iced caramel macchiato in her pudgy grip. You eyed it, and she asked, "Do you want a sip?"

Um, yes please. You stole it from her lipstick-stained straw before Littlefinger could come down to discover you. These bites don't count, somehow. They're food gifted from fate.

Randa does the eating for all of you. Wylla also wants to be skinny, of course. So mealtimes are weird. Mostly, you hope you're busy enough to forget. Otherwise, Randa will prod. "Let's stop here," or "Have this." She'll go to town on her sandwich, her chips, her gummy worms, her soda pop. She's not a predator, she's a prize-winning pig. Brienne will tell you, "You need your afternoon shake," or "Tuesday's yogurt is still in here." Does she want you to be skinny or not?

You wouldn’t have a weight issue if you hadn’t started getting those shots, depo, a no-baby shot for naughty girls who have premarital sex. Well, you weren’t planning on it, but Joffrey wanted to bang you like two months into dating! It’s pretty fun and it makes him really happy, so it's fine, it also makes you a grown woman, but it has to be a secret from the whole dang world. Hard, when you put on fifteen pounds! Ugh! So the world already knows you’re like, letting yourself go, they definitely cannot know you’re not a virgin! Christian Moms Against Pop hate your mini-skirts and dance routines. They said you deserved to get shot! But, um, it doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible that you can’t flirt or be sexy, so???

With or without Littlefinger, the eyes are on you. It's a tricky dance, popping the lid on a Greek salad, pitching the packet of vinaigrette, picking at wilted iceberg, laying each leaf like industrial rubber onto your tongue. Swallowing. Epiglottis opening. Esophagus contracting. Belly juices spewing, grumbling. Come on, did you want more, or less? You feel the iceberg swell up to dozens of times its size. Perfect, you're full. Rubber is too much for pretty girls. You let that falsehood tide you over. You seal the salad. Randa chew-talks. Wylla nurses an Evian, or neatly butchers her cuticles. Brienne says, "That's all? No more?"

Fine, three more leaves. At that point, they stack up to the top of your throat and tickle the back of your tongue. "Really," you say, "I'm full."

If you smile just right, they leave you alone. And truthfully, you can't have much more. The bathroom on the bus is small, the door thin. They don't need to see: they can hear.

They're already, and always, front row.

So four leaves it is. And besides, you like being hungry. It's another drug, another high, pill and powder free. When you're empty, you float. You live like an angel, like a little bluebird. Your head is light on your shoulders, fuzzy and sharp at once, to let you know you've been good. It's a walk on a razorblade, because yes, you're that thin, that graceful, that edgy, and that close to soliciting your own end. If you snap, if you have one too many of Randa's fries, or it's late at night, and she's put a bag of your favorite snacks in your bunk (Starburst, Sour Patch Watermelons, Strawberry Fanta) and like an ugly animal you feast, there's always your last resort: motion sickness. A shame! But it happens. "I gave you dramamine," Randa says, as you sit hunched over a toilet of pretty pink puke. No duh—you felt it in your throat both times.

—

Midday in North Carolina and you kept down the lettuce. It's not a good tummy day. It's not a good day. Everyone is texting you, everyone but the one person who should totally be texting you but isn't because he was seen on Rodeo Drive with none other than Margaery Tyrell!

Alone! Laughing! Smiling! (⌯˃̶᷄ ﹏ ˂̶᷄⌯)ﾟ

So like, are you over? Doesn't he love you? He hates when you go on tour because then you can't give him head, but you hate it too! It's hard being apart. You were kinda fighting last night. He sent a picture of his dick and said if u luv me prove it. fly out and see me. You said not enough time :-(

Then:

babe?
u there?
i love u sooo much
its just the tour
i promise ill make it up to u
like pinky promise
ok i love u
ur probably asleep
show went well! ill tell u tomorrow
good night babe <3

This morning:

joff?????
i saw the pics like everyones seen them
please answer my call :(
i don't mind really i just want to know if we're still together
when you have a minute text me pls
or call
please please please
i love u ill be right here babe
pls just text
about to get ready 4 show
but ill be here
love u!!

Brienne claps in front of your face. "Break is over in five minutes. Then it's time for hair and makeup."

You roll your eyes and slide your phone in your purse. It's lunchtime for everyone else, up in the sky lounge at the RBC Center. You sip your can of Diet Cherry Coke through a straw and side eye the buffet: sandwiches, a whole table lined with ten foot subs, scattered with shreds of vegetable, cheese, and cold cut carnage.

You don't want to be here, for the record. Everyone is here, down to the Marys and Mollys and Podricks and your pretty boy backup dancers. It’s weirdly crowded and loud. But Wylla begged you to come up because she wants to buy from the Kettleblacks. She has friends in Durham coming to the show and wants to show them a really, really good time. So you set them up (Randa set them up) with VIP passes and lounge access and one Kettleblack stands in front of the swinging kitchen door while the other does considerable business. You smile at Osmund so he knows you know his not-so-secret secret. The trade-off: he knows yours.

You prowl the buffet, but kinda make a dance of it, like you're a fairy or magical girl, with airy steps and twirls. Is anyone watching you? Yes, a few. No one important. You speed up, make a show. You sing a little to yourself; it's cute, but you're jittery; you walk a fine line. Joff's betrayal hurt. Your phone has stayed silent. It weighs down your purse. Does he love you? Yes, he loves you. No, you're ugly. Look down. A tummy poofs from the waistband of your low-rise kelly green sweatpants. Gross. God, why are you so gross? Like, all the money in the world and you can't get a boy to love you? He likes her better because she's skinny, did you think about that? She's younger and skinnier and her boobs are bigger. He's probably touching her boobs right now. They're in his Lambo, he's driving too fast and she's sucking him and he's fondling her one-handed. He takes a sharp turn and puts his come on her face, not yours. He's asking, "Did you like it?" and she says, "Yeah babe, I love it. I love you." And he pulls her in for a kiss; he doesn't care about her sticky skin and he says, "Of course baby girl, I love you too."

A chunk of sub sandwich sweeps seamlessly into your purse—like your others, a well-practiced move. "Excuse me," you say, as a path clears anyway, and you make a beeline for the lady's room, but that's too obvious, you need to do one better. So you round the corner, and another, you find a fire escape, go down a level, one more, the halls are darker, good. Two steps out at ground level and you find your haven: an abandoned men's room.

Isn’t it so weird how they always smell worse? It’s the urinals and those ugly pink things they put at the bottom of them. They stink. Men probably just pee on the floor, anyway.

You don’t look in the mirror; you put yourself in a stall. Four close burgundy metal walls. You slide the lock, click. You lower yourself slowly to the toilet seat. Your breath is the loudest thing in the room. It sounds the way it does when you’re spreadeagled under the bath faucet. You set your purse in your lap. This is like surgery, you think, as you unzip it and pull apart the leathery sides to reveal a mess of guts. Your Coach purse isn’t huge. Two soggy halves of bread are mashed amidst your phone and iPod and lipgloss and My Melody pill case and gel pens and strawberry Trident gum. The sandwich oozes mayo and shredded lettuce as you pick it up. It's turkey and bacon with tomato. Bacon is forbidden, like porn. You smell it. You run your tongue along it. You breathe into it. You squish your thighs together and shift on the slippery, gaping seat.

Your tummy growls.

An orchestra blares. A ghost soprano rings from somewhere high above, and with cherubs dancing, God smiling, you shove the sandwich, double-palmed, into your face. Fod meets a welcome pink hole. Mayo smears, bread shrinks, lettuce crackles, tomato drips, flesh parts. Your teeth touch down, briefly, briefly. You’d rather this be like breath. Round globs force open your throat. Dry swallow. It goes down like stone, scraping what’s raw, indisposed. Oh, no. Tears run along your cheeks to where hands stay clasped to the squashed bread tail end. It goes all the way in but your mouth doesn’t close. Your jaw and throat revolt.

Too full, too full. Don’t use your holes.

So you gag, and you catch dry heaves in your hands, and you turn around, kneel before the white altar, here’s a good hole, and your fingers go down and blech, blech, blech there’s your naughty little meal reconfigured, floating in water and a yellow halo of bile. Tears drip down.

You sit for a while. Your mouth hangs open, spit dangling. You shake. Shaking loses calories. The scald of emptiness slows to sluggish calm. Your heart isn’t a concerto; it's a tribal drum; it's dragging you down. You got what you wanted, bluebird. Are you satisfied? Yum fucking um.

Your phone doesn’t buzz.

You unstick your sticky palms from a stickier floor. Gun-point steady, you stand, slide back the latch with a finger, and slip, hands up, through the stall door.

He’s there.

The monster is there. Leaning against the sink, arms-crossed, facing you.

You hate the noise you make, a scream meets moan meets sob meets whine. It’s a miracle your bladderful of Diet Cherry Coke stays inside. He’s huge and somehow sneaky and his dark laugh booms like thunder as you stagger backwards. Strong hands shoot out and catch your shoulders. “Not so fast, little bird.”

At his touch, your legs go. He holds your entire weight and steps close. The expanse of his black polo shirt, stretched over beastly swells of muscle, is your entire world. A world that burns.

“D-don’t hurt me,” you whisper. He laughs again.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

How does he know?

“You followed me.”

“You ran away.”

“I got sick.”

“I heard. You’re a mess, girl.”

He’s wrong about you being a girl. But you glance to your hands and frown. When you frown, you feel the crust of dried vomit, tomato juice, and mayo glued to your face. “I’m sorry,” you say.

You don’t notice his mouth coming until it's on you. It’s a dirty trick, because you open up for a no or stop but you leave yourself prone, and his tongue attacks yours. Now you’re full and all you can do is whimper. He’s not trying to kiss you. Methodically, his tongue sweeps your inner cheeks and teeth, right to left. He licks your tongue. He pulls out, and goes after your lips and chin. “Messy bird,” he growls, and a warm glaze of spit on your skin replaces the shame there before.

Sure, you try to fight. Your hands go to his chest and you take fistfuls of shirt. But it’s not a fight; you’re cleaning up. You wipe off sandwich and floor grime. Secretly, you learn how his muscles feel, how they’re firm yet soft, hot to the touch. You learn how his heart pounds like planets colliding. This amount of man, of meat, is so foreign to you. He lets you explore. Lips connected, he takes your waist. He picks you up, turns, and sets you down on the cold edge of the sink. His hands leave, water pours, but you’re busy. His lips are weird, half-burned. They taste like barbecue and tangy blood. Now your tongue is intruding, prodding cracks, licking ridges. Inside his mouth there’s stale liquor and pot smoke, bacon and puke.

When you taste yourself you gasp and pull away. Sandor is on you with a wet brown paper towel. You don’t want to, but you start crying because it’s really embarrassing that he found you like this. Joff hasn’t texted and you shouldn’t have eaten that stupid sandwich. You should have known better and you didn’t even remember to chew a piece of gum, but it also doesn’t matter because Sandor has your hand in his and he’s running the paper towel over your open palm and in between your fingers and then he does the other one and his breath is steady and he says, “Easy now. Just a little more.”

He wets a fresh square of paper towel. He lifts your chin so you’re forced to watch his face. His eyes are sharp gray, slanted like a wolf’s, topped with a horribly strong and fuzzy brow (half intact). This close, you can see he’s old. His tanned and lined skin knows the sun. Through strings of black hair, his ruin shows. He’s only part monster. The other part wipes your lips and and tear-stained cheeks, dabs beneath your puffy eyes.

“There,” he says at last. “A proper clean bird.”

When his eyes meet yours you squeeze shut. You crumple. You sniff.

“Thank you,” you get out.

Two big hands claim your stitched up face. Rough lips scrape your forehead. “Don’t mention it.”

I won’t, you think. I’m still Joffrey’s girl.