Bay Kennish

Please leave mail for Bay Kennish here. Or Daphne Vasquez. It'll get to the right person.

"I'm home," Bay announced, flicking the lights on and off a few times to signal Daphne. If she wasn't home, then the only ones who would be excited to know she was there would be the rats. Even before checking that Daphne was in, she went into the kitchen to cut up a banana for her girls. She sliced up the fruit slowly and methodically, ignoring the way her phone chimed with an appointment reminder. Yet another doctor's visit for what Bay knew would be a requirement for the rest of her life.

Sometimes she thought about asking Scott for the bite, just so that she didn't have to be afraid of the time bomb in her blood anymore. "That was morbid," Bay told herself. Shaking her head, Bay carried the sliced up banana to her room and scattered the discs in the various levels of feeders for them.

Wiping off her hands, she slipped back out to the kitchen.

When she’d woken up on the morning of the 22nd and found herself still in one place, Bay had breathed a sigh of relief. The last couple birthdays had been kind of a crapshoot for her and Daphne, ending up in a new dimension every other year so it was nice to actually make it a year in one place.

Sure, it was almost Halloween and sure something was probably doomed to go to hell before the end of the month, but not today. Today Daphne had made a cake and some mexican rice and was planning a shrimp taco spread. Bay was cooking up some ground beef with spices while the contents of the alcohol cabinet waited for her to do some mixing later. They’d sent out invitations to their friends via text, and both were looking forward to a chill, low-key birthday party for their 19th.

Daphne had made sure not to book any catering jobs for today, but she still had her daily orders for some of the local coffee shops and service stations in the city. She’d gotten those taken care of, then come home and baked and frosted the cake and helped Bay clean and decorate. If she wanted to last more than 20 minutes at her own party, though, she’d decided a nap was a good idea.

She woke feeling much more refreshed and coherent and wandered out to find Bay cooking up ground beef for the red meat eaters that would be attending. “Hey,” she greeted her sister, peering over Bay’s shoulder into the pan before stepping back. “I’m going to get changed while you finish that up, then I’ll get the shrimp cooking while you get ready. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds good. I just got a slew of ‘on my way’ texts but the taco filling is ready.” Proving her point, she took the beef off the stove and tipped all of it into a serving bowl. “I’m gonna stick it in the microwave, so we can nuke it if we need.”

“Actually, I’ve got a better idea.” Daphne grinned and ducked into her room, coming back out with a large box. “I bought myself a birthday present, sort of,” she explained, opening one end of the box and starting to pull out the pieces to the new electronic warmer she’d picked up yesterday. “Just give the dishes a quick wash and we should be good to go. This should keep the food warm through the whole party. Beef in one, shrimp in one, and rice in the third?” She shoved the packing materials back into the box, ready to tuck into her closet just in case something went wrong and she needed to return it.

“That is so fancy,” Bay said, genuinely impressed as she scraped the beef into the first dish. “Okay, you change, I’ll clean.”

“Okay.” Daphne went back into her room, stashed the box and quickly changed, then stopped in the bathroom to pull her hair back and put a little makeup on before taking over in the kitchen so Bay could get ready, getting her shrimp cooking as she made sure all of the food and mixers were ready for people’s arrival.

It didn’t take much time for her to get ready. Bay took a quick shower to get the smell of food out of her hair and off her skin. By the time she was finished blow-drying, Bay heard the first knock on the door. The party had started.

He'd been avoiding her ever since the incident at the lantern festival. It had been all sweet kisses, followed by fangs and hasty explanations and then he wouldn't text her back. Scott hadn't even given Bay a chance to say it didn't bother her and that she definitely would have liked to keep kissing but nope. He'd just run off and Bay, disappointed, had tried to take the bus home only to end up meeting Scott's mom and hadn't that been awkward?

So she'd given it a whole week before she lost patience. Werewolf or not, he was being kind of a jerk. Which was why Bay was stomping her way over to High Gate Terrace, determined to find him.

"Hey Scott, so, I'm in front of your complex now and you can either come out and we can talk about this," she said into her phone. "Or I can bang on every door until I find yours and embarrass the hell out of both of us. What do you say?"

May 23rd. Bay had tried to not pay attention to the date. It was just a Thursday, no big deal. But the more she tried not to think about it, the more it was determined to be at the forefront of her mind.

Polls had opened today and she was one of nine people who might end up on the Council and she was still trying to figure out if she even thought she should be.

It shouldn't even have been a pressing concern, really. Bay knew she was totally inexperienced and had announced to the entire fucking island that she was some kind of juvenile delinquent. She'd been running against people who had a whole lot more to bring to the table besides sign language and being handy with a spray can. For all she'd said that the island needed a voice for the youth population, they'd have to be insane to vote for her over captain of the goddamn U.S.S. Enterprise.

And so she was on her bed, valiantly trying not to think as she scribbled in her sketchbook, deliberately ignoring the page with the speech she'd written and failed to deliver. She was fine. Totally calm and collected.

Bay's charcoal snapped in half and she threw her sketchbook to the floor with a frustrated yelp.

"I can't deal with this for a whole week!"

It had been hard to wait as long as she had. After finding out about Nick, she'd wanted to just run off and spray paint everything and the hell with design or the careful process of cutting stencils. She just wanted to empty her cans on every building in her path and leave everyone to sort out the whole mess.

But then she'd started hearing talk of yet another party as Mardi Gras approached and a plan had begun to form in her head. Sure, she'd have to wait a month, but the symbolism was just too appealing. The last time she'd kissed him was the New Year's Eve party and, on Mardi Gras, she'd tell everyone to kiss her ass. Maybe the reasoning was a little weak, but Bay also had the added advantage of knowing that almost everyone would be distracted, busily hunting down the perfect outfit (hers was lying on her bed, waiting for her triumphant return) and then having all the delicious food they could get their hands on. Distracted, it was unlikely that anyone would notice someone behind the Compound with a poster tube full of cut stencils, tape, and spray cans.

She taped up the first stencil, black for contrast, outline, and emphasis. Pink for the dress and yellow for the sand. Piece by piece, the image assembled itself. Soon, Axe Girl stood on the beach in a pretty, frilly swimsuit while wearing a gas mask and holding her battleaxe.

Bay powered up her cellphone just long enough to snap a picture before frantically throwing everything back together. She'd done the deed and now it was time to party, to celebrate the victory that people would only notice in the morning.

In retrospect, it was her own fault for not being clear when she'd requested a dorm bed, saying she was crashing with Daphne but didn't want to make the arrangement permanent. Not that it was necessarily all bad being with Daphne. It was even, on some level, reassuring to at least have someone she knew from home as a near-constant presence. And sometimes Bay thought she was even glad that it was Daphne of all people. Maybe they weren't the same, not by a long shot, but they were still chained together by events. They'd had moment when they were able to look each other in the eye and share something like closeness and Daphne, just by virtue of being who she was, was still the only other person who had the same particular lens to look through. Short of Emmett, Bay really couldn't think of anyone else she knew that would actually make this situation feel sane. Before, she might have said Regina at least, but even that wasn't sure anymore.

However, that gratitude didn't extend to when Daphne had to get up at four in the morning, sometimes only scant hours after Bay had just started to fall asleep. Because, while Daphne could get up with the sun, whistling a happy tune while birds helped her get dressed, Bay could not. There wasn't much she could really do about it though, beyond pulling her pillow over her head and glaring at Daphne through the slight crack between pillow and mattress. Oh yeah. That'd show her. Her hard-won teddy bear, which she'd taken to keeping next to her, clearly agreed.

After Daphne had left, Bay had been asleep for a couple more hours when she felt something tugging her blanket. "Daphne," she groaned, pulling her pillow over her head tighter. "It is NOT wake up time just because you come bearing cinnamon rolls." She snaked out one of her hands and made a halfhearted attempt at signing when something sharp and plastic scraped at her hands.

Quickly, Bay jerked up and shrieked. Towering over her was a suddenly much larger, much scarier bear than she'd been hugging a few hours before. Its eyes, wide, empty, and plastic suddenly seemed a thousand times less endearing, especially when it opened its mouth to reveal hard-looking fangs.

"Daphne!" Bay shrieked, trying to kick out of her covers. "SOMEONE!"