she doesn’t quite know what did it. she doesn’t know how she made it before the sun came up.
she met a boy once, and she didn’t think much of him then, except for that he was quiet and would she see him every thursday after this. my, was he skinny. she had a brother that skinny once, in anothertime anotherworld where smiles didn’t cause sunrises and eyes were just eyes and not panes of fogged-up glass, s(light)ly olive-tinted, and if the light hit just right you could see something real staring out. they were just smiles, they were just eyes, they were just green.
she was a sucker for green eyes.
–
she failed sophomore biology, and the next year she took it with him. he scolded her for not trying, but never out loud. (later she would learn that he was a procrastinator in the most extreme degree. she would try to help him with it, only to learn that procrastinating is the sort of problem you have to cure yourself.) they both got over her unspoken failure, because they knew she could do better. they laughed at the stupidest of things. they pranked their classmates. he jokingly stole her pencil but then forgot to return it. he emailed her, “tell me to give it back on monday.” she found it amusing that he would do that over such a small thing- she didn’t value her pencils like he thought she did.
he failed the ap exam. she would still be remembered as one of the two kids in her grade who passed it. the others would have dropped the title if they knew that, after that test, she took the class for the third time in summer school. they would have dropped her entirely.
–
she was a monster that year, toothy and fearsome, though no one else thought so. she slept in brackish waters, ocean-deep secrets and tangy insecurities. she kept to herself because she didn’t want to poison anyone else with her thoughts. she had a lot of (not-really-) accidents around that time; bushes reached out to grab her at the exact wrong moments. “the ice just didn’t want to be alone on the ground, so it pulled me down to be with it,” she would say.
she hated her emotions for doing this to her. she hated them so much she ripped them apart and kept them like secrets in the pit of her stomach. they were far better food than the lies the doctor fed her about being able to get better. she was so far beyond getting better.
–
they didn’t have trouble parting for the summer. they said their hellos cautiously that next fall. there was no tearful reunion. there was nothing to catch up on. there was nothing to be missed, because she hadn’t found it yet.
that fall they started talking more. they had a music class together again, and he was demoted to second chair. she was demoted to fifth. both of them took it hard, she a little more than he. everyone knew she was meant for fourth chair. they called it travesty whenever the thief was out of earshot. no one said anything about the green-eyed boy, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he lost out to a prodigy.
–
she started trusting him with little things. he never really said anything about it, but he defended her when she was picked on, and she couldn’t thank him enough for that. she didn’t really need it, but she appreciated the sentiment.
“sorry, i’m used to more… jerk-ish things from people. not from you, but.” she dipped her head.
“that’s good. as in, not from me-” he tried to clarify, but she, indignant, interrupted. “not really-”
“-not that you’re used to it,” he finished.
“oh, yeah, not from you- well, i’ve built up a tough skin; i don’t get affected by it anymore so… it’s all cool, i guess.”
and every time she realized she went too far with sharing, she’d add, “sorry i’m such a downer, haha.” because she knew she was a good liar, and she knew he trusted her too much to even consider that she wasn’t happy underneath the mask; and also because she didn’t want him feeling sorry for her.
–
he was a joker if she’d ever known one, always laughing and goofing off, but she’d seen his other side. they were both raised to be quiet children, but in school, the discipline wore off. she just wanted to be happy.
he was polite, too, and that was what got her, because she didn’t know why. she had problems with reading people, especially the quiet ones, and she couldn’t tell whether she was just hypersensitive or whether what she was looking for was actually there. it was the little things, and she knew they counted, but she couldn’t tell if she was winning.
she tended to get down on herself. she never really had much of a self-esteem in the first place. she wrote, but she was convinced she was just another angsty kid with a pen. she drew, but before showing any of it to anyone else she would preface it with a, “yes, i know this sucks, but i like it anyways,” and then she would point out every single flaw in it just to let you know that she knew they were there, she knew she was horrible at it.
she won the school art contest. there were no places, but she was one of ten picked. she wasn’t proud, and when she told him, she brushed it off. she was more excited about his knowledge bowl meet, which he brushed off, saying he could have done better.
“did you win?” he asked her.
“well, yeah, but so did nine other people.” she laughed.
“nice!”
“i think they just listed everyone who entered, haha.”
he ignored her excuse. “see, you got at least one of about 1500, that’s pretty good… at least nine. and you thought three of sixtyish was good.”
“well, it’s not the same, because not everyone here is predisposed to art.”
“well-” he mimicked her tone- “not everybody is predisposed to knowledge, either.”
“haha. but i doubt i got it of 1500.”
“that’s how many people go to our school, isn’t it?”
she grew exasperated at his insistence. “yeah, but not all of them entered, see?”
“because if we knew we did, we would have no chance.”
that caught her off guard. “why- thank you,” she said, and pretended to curtsy.
“for some reason, i can’t imagine you doing that much.”
“haha, i like to at least pretend to be fancy sometimes. but seriously, thanks. that means a lot to me.”
“really?”
“well, yeah.”
–
around that november she realized that when she was around him, the suicidal thoughts slunk away, sneaking off sulkily like beetles from a flashlight. it wasn’t that they weren’t there anymore- they were just dormant, but even that was a much-needed break from the torment. that was when she decided she needed to be around him as much as possible. when they were together, she was happy. she could just be free and forget, for the moment, all of the things that were wrong (with her).
he started making his way into her writing, and that was when she knew she had fallen hard. but to her, it didn’t feel a thing like falling; she was so lighthearted she could have floated away.
she hadn’t cut in a month.
–
it seemed near every other day they talked outside of school, and for hours at a time. she always started the conversations, and, driven by guilt and perhaps a bit of motherly worry, would periodically ask if she was getting in the way of homework. he felt bad for letting her go, but they both knew it was for the best. he had grades to keep up.
she started to wonder why he let her talk to him so much. her brother started to wonder why she talked about him so much.
she didn’t always win, though. he forgot her once, and she would never forget it.
“hey. next time you say you’re going to come back and talk to me, could you at least come back and say nevermind?”
“i’m sorry, i completely forgot.”
“it’s okay, i just kind of waited for you to come back and you never did. i wasn’t really mad.” that, she supposed, wasn’t a lie- she was lonely, terrified, depressed, but not mad.
“i finished the test at nine, but then i was like oh yeah, here’s an assignment i still need to do, and the thing closed that night, so… yeah.” he trailed off uncertainly, apologetically.
“yeah,” she assented. “can i ask you something?”
“uh huh. i mean no-”
“-you can’t lie, either-”
“-not at all. sure. why? how? which? what? anyways.”
“i’m trying to be serious,” she huffed.
“sure you are.”
she took a deep breath. “…you don’t find me annoying or weird or anything, do you?”
“well, weird perhaps.”
“i mean, you don’t ever wish i’d just go away and leave you alone?”
“once in a while, but mainly no.”
“good… once in a while when?”
“usually only when i have homework that i know i need to do and you’re only helping me to procrastinate.”
it wasn’t the answer she was expecting at all. “oh, haha… you don’t have homework now, do you?”
–
in january of her senior year, they took a field trip to new orleans with their orchestra and the band. he had to take a test that day and was worried he wouldn’t finish fast enough to get a seat on the bus. he was afraid he’d have to sit by a stranger. she told him she’d save him a seat if he thought he could stand her for that long. it was a sixteen-hour drive, and she knew how she got at times. he said she’d probably be more sick of him by the end of it. so, each doubting the other, they made a silent bet of it.
there were a few times when, overcaffeinated, he acted too annoying for her tastes, but she didn’t do anything but smile at him. there were a few times when, overwhelmed, she cried quietly next to him, but neither of them said anything about it.
they never admitted who won, but she felt rich just from his company.
–
that day, he finished early, and they met by chance outside her spanish classroom as she was leaving. she grinned nervously at him, afraid she was not needed anymore, but they still sat next to each other. as their bus departed, the girl in front of them looked back and said, “ooh, sleeping tonight’s gonna be awkward for you two,” and laughed. she had already thought of that, but didn’t bother to look at him as she blushed, so she never knew if he had, too.
he brought his favorite pillow, and she a blanket. she offered to share, but he wouldn’t take it. that night, they fell into sporadic sleep around one-thirty, back-to-back, constantly readjusting in the effort to make the seat more comfortable. it didn’t work, and though she couldn’t see him, she felt him shift all night.
she was an insomniac and had left her meds in her suitcase, so she stayed up and stared out the window, listening to the sounds of four dozen sleeping students on the highway. the glow of the light under their neighbor’s seat matched the moon near-perfectly- a faint, bitter blue the taste of imagined abandonment, but she felt safe surrounded by all of the teenagers around her. half of everyone who had ever cared was within a dozen yards of her, and though she might not be occupying their sugarplum-dreams, it was still nice to know that they were there.
at about five, she gave up on sleeping entirely and sat up, tilting her head back and closing her eyes in quiet, but completely conscious, contemplation. he woke up soon afterwards and copied her position, but not before nodding off again. at one point during the bumps and curves of the ride, his head fell to rest on her shoulder. she left it there, because (this is what she told herself) she couldn’t stand to wake him. that morning, over breakfast, she would ask him if he remembered. he would tell her that he didn’t.
–
“well, there’s only one way to solve this.”
“do you mean a fight to the death, or something less extreme?”
–
through the trip they stayed by each other’s sides. she learned more about who he was just by his proximity over those few days than she had in more than a year of knowing him. (he would later be referred to by her friends as the kid who sat by her on the bus, yeah, he’s cool. and so funny!) she looked to him to see what he wanted to do, and when she didn’t, he would simply follow her without question. they never said, hey, let’s stay together this whole time- they just assumed. it was what she wanted, anyways, though again she wondered why he hung around so much.
on their last day, the group they were hanging with passed a gang of others from the school, and she could tell by the look in his eyes that he wanted to go with them. “you don’t have to stay with us, you know,” she told him, and he said, “oh.” then he left. she wondered if he had felt obligated before to stay with her, and thought about asking him, but she never did.
–
she started counting up the little things, trying to see if she meant as much to him as he to her. he said good night to her twice. he brushed up against her once. he asked her to play games with him, most of which he won. he teased her about that, which she loved.
he stood up for her once or twice. he joked around with her all the time. he talked to her; he didn’t run away when she got weird. and he never ridiculed her for being who she was.
she felt like she could trust him.
–
she never wanted to tell him, for fear of losing him.
written s26feb2012.
half-fiction.
this one was really hard to post where everyone can see it, but it’s a good story.
idiography 