How Would You React

I close my eyes and say to myself, "I hope that when I open my eyes, I wake up and realize this is all just a dream, and I’m not here, and you guys aren’t doing this to me." I laugh to make it seem like I’m not anxious and angry, and they laugh too.

David. Lucy. Symphony. Brooke. Elaine. I’ve never dreaded eating lunch with them this much. Floyd acts oblivious, but I don’t think he is as clueless as he seems.

"You’re really starting to annoy me," David snaps, rolling his eyes.

"Just do it!" Symphony exclaims, and Brooke nods.

"Now or never," she says, still nodding.

"You know what guys?" I say, and they all look at me intently. Floyd is talking to Elaine, and I’m glad he isn’t paying attention to me. "Fuck you," I mumble. They laugh again. How is this amusing? I close my eyes again. I open them. I’m still there, in the cafeteria. It is approximately twenty minutes after noon on the last day of April. I take a deep breath and turn to him.

"Floyd," I say, and he turns to face me. I don’t play with or mutilate my plastic silverware. I don’t look to my friends for support. I look straight into his icy green eyes. "How would you react…" I start, and pause for a moment. I feel six pairs of eyes burning through me. "…if I told you I wanted to go out with you?"

His eyes don’t leave mine, and I don’t look away. I can’t this time. I can’t.

My mind races incoherently while he says something about how it would be weird because he knows me too well, and our dads know each other, blah blah blah. And then my thoughts stop abruptly, as if someone had pushed a Pause button, and I hear him say two words.

"I’m sorry."

And it hits me. I just told Floyd how I felt about him. And he just turned me down.

"Okay. Well, then I won’t ask," I say with a small smile and a shrug, and he smiles back.

I’m sorry.

The words echo in my brain as Floyd says something to the rest of the table about how they shouldn’t have been pressuring me to do something I didn’t want to do. Since when did he care about my feelings?

Since when did he know how I felt?

His answer was so smooth, so fast. Almost painless. Almost as if he had been planning it. He had known I was planning, and he had planning also. I had been planning my fairytale, and he had been planning the sweetest way to destroy it. Trying to figure out how to break a heart as gently as possible.

Does he see the hope shining behind my eyes shatter? Does he see a part of me collapse? Does he feel the heart he had had in his hands for so long fall to pieces?

And then it is over. David grins. Brooke and Elaine smile proudly. Symphony leaves because the show is over. Why are they proud of me? Why are they so happy that I made an ass out of myself?

I look down at my hands and notice that they are shaking. I fold them and place them in my lap, hoping Floyd doesn’t see them. But he is too busy talking casually to Elaine, leaving me alone while his rejection sinks in.

I close my eyes again, hoping to see my bedroom. The giant ceiling leak above my head. The dull yellow color of my walls. But when I open them, I see five pairs of eyes, and a few sympathetic smiles, which I do not return. I pick up my tray and take it to the window at the front of the cafeteria. The entire room is out of focus, and I want to disappear. I wonder if they talk about me when I leave. I wonder if Floyd talks about how happy he is that it’s over, and it didn’t seem to bother me. But it does. 

The last few minutes of lunch pass slowly, and for the rest of the day, I walk around in a daze. My angry music blasts against my eardrums, and I find myself on the brink of tears a few times, buried in the safe haven of the back stall of the first floor bathroom. I dig my fingernails into my skin, pinching myself, willing myself to wake up from the nightmare, but I never do.

Does he regret it?

I doubt it.

Chemically Enhanced Fire

Floyd’s eyes are a fire that burns through everything but my heart. How can someone be so brutally honest, yet also not be able to recognize the truth when he sees it?

Maybe I’m better at hiding it than I think I am.

Near the middle of the school year, when the air had become bitter instead of balmy and the first snow had long passed, my crazy Chemistry teacher had conducted an experiment for the class, using different chemicals to light small fires. Each flame was a different color. Floyd’s eyes are like one of those chemically enhanced fires. Light green and icy gray and maybe even a little bit blue all at the same time. His gaze is like heat on my skin. I can always feel it before I see it. I always know when he is watching me, even where he is looking.

"Sneaking your music, I see." His voice yanks me from my thoughts and my eyes are greeted with that fiery gaze. Our French teacher, a tiny woman with a loud voice who was easily frustrated, had initiated a strict "No iPods or Laptops Out During Class" rule after realizing simply yelling at my unruly class wasn’t working. But obnoxious freshmen girls who played rap music in the middle of class and yelled their conversations for the entire class to hear weren’t going to keep from me from listening to Metallica in class, especially on rainy days like this.

Nice to know you were looking close enough.

I think the words to myself in response to Floyd’s comment, but reply only with a small smile and a nod. We usually talk more in French class, but that day, I felt a little jaded, my usual optimism worn down by the dreary weather. It’s funny how the weather seems to control my mood. When it rains, I'm miserable. When it's nice out, I am hopeful and smiling. When it's cold, I'm irritable and nasty.

He had probably picked up on the "leave me the hell alone" stamp on my forehead, complete with bold letters and a bleak expression. Not that that stamp ever really applied to him. Floyd’s random conversations and wicked sense of humor are always welcome.

But our lack of conversation didn’t bother me as much as I expected it to. There's never any pressure to make an effort with him. That’s how it always is with us. We're always laid back, always talking, whether it be with our words or with our eyes, whether it be about nothing or everything. There was once a time when I would remember every remotely sweet thing he ever said to me, everything that I said that made him laugh. But now, all of the times I spend with him blend together, like one big moment that never becomes a distant memory. What would I do if I let that happen? I'm so comfortable by Floyd's side that it makes me wonder if I belong there.

That wondering is what got me into this mess, isn't it?

It’s funny how easy it is to keep a secret. It’s funny how easy it is to laugh at his jokes when they aren’t even amusing. It’s funny how easy it is to be the funny, witty girl friend, but when his back is turned, the perfected exterior falls to pieces, transforming me into the adoring shadow that would give anything to be his girlfriend, to be one word instead of two, and be many more besides.

It’s become a daily routine, putting up the same front every morning and taking it down every afternoon. Smiling and meeting his gaze when he speaks to me, basking in the warmth of his eyes, pride buzzing beneath my skin when I feel it. Making an effort to laugh when he makes an effort to be funny, saying just the right things to make him approve of and adore me. But when he isn’t looking, the smile fades and my eyes follow him slowly and deliberately, memorizing and yearning. And I fall apart beneath the surface, scolding myself for being so hard to love, scolding myself for not being witty enough, not being pretty enough, not saying what I should have. And the cycle repeats itself, viciously turning me into the definition of anxiety.

A clock ticks in my mind. It reminds me that time is running out. I can only wait so long, before he fades back out of my life, and goes back to being the childhood acquaintance he had been before my sophomore year turned my life upside down.

The internal conflict that boils inside of me becomes a war. Anxiety vs. Hope. Optimism vs. Pessimism. The Impulsive Act vs. Saving Myself The Possible Pain And Jumping To Conclusions Instead. Assumptions vs. Reality, which one is which? The battles escalate, the fighters most likely driven insane by the ticking clock in my mind. Time is the real enemy, the enemy in every battle there is. It’s only purpose to make our lives seem a bit more organized, setting up a pretty backdrop behind our chaos, always a reminder.

And there’s only way to make it stop.

My stomach lurches every time I think about it. My throat dries up a little, my fingers feel tingly. It’s such an uncomfortable feeling, anxiety. Wishing for the best and expecting the worst.

Could I do it?

Could I tell Floyd how I feel about him?

Everything flashes through my brain, like it will be the end of my life. Will it?

A bridge named Giles Corey, the bridge he had chosen to build and destroy with me in Shop class "because I’m smart." Times when we had shared our food at lunch; me giving him cookies that he would eat in one bite, him plopping cups of sugary peaches on my tray because he knew how much I favored them. Our eyes meeting, how it still electrifies every part of me, yet I'm still so comfortable with him. Falling for his personality before his looks. Inside jokes. He always keeps me laughing, sometimes until my eyes fill with tears and I'm not thinking about how ridiculous my face looks or if I sound like a hyena. Him always copying my homework, one of the only people I have met who is unashamedly lazier than I am. My friends who see us together and tell me that they think he feels the same way, and the way I smile because they just might be right. How he takes my side when no one else has the audacity to do so, because when Superman is on your side, the truth always finds its way out and the victimizers become the victims. The bit of fear in the pit of my stomach, the fear of ruining everything and the fear of the opposite.

I think of this perfect thing, whatever it is, that we have.

Am I really going to risk it all on a confession?

Too Easy To Forget

It was only six days ago, a Tuesday.

"Are you ready to take this?" the French teacher asked me, referring to a quiz. I had missed school on Monday due to a random case of the flu, but the content of the quiz was things I had already learned.

"Yeah," I said in response, nodding.

"No," Floyd said, turning around. "When asked that question, you always say no." I rolled my eyes.

"No, Floyd, you always say no," I replied, and he laughed, turning back around.

"If anyone needs any help, raise you hand," the teacher sighed. She always seemed frustrated, but if you had to teach a room that was mostly obnoxious freshmen girls, wouldn’t you be frustrated too? Floyd raised his hand immediately.

"What do you need help with, Floyd?" she asked, her voice flat, like she was just expecting that smart-ass comment and she didn’t know whether to acknowledge it.

"Yeah, um, what are the answers to numbers…one, two, three, four—" She cut him off, smiling despite the obvious setup. I think that the French teacher wanted to like Floyd, but found it very hard to.

"Get back to work," she said simply, and walked away to help someone else.

"Floyd," I hissed, and he looked over his shoulder at me. "What’s the date?"

"The twenty-fourth," he replied and before I could write the numbers down on my paper, I stopped short, something in my brain opening up, letting a few memories spill out.

April 24. Sometimes, we just remember certain dates and their meanings, sometimes we don’t.

April 24 had been Kimberly’s birthday. As far as I know, April 24 is still Kimberly’s birthday.

In middle school, in fifth or sixth grade, a new girl had moved to our school, a girl named Kimberly. She was tiny, not even five feet tall, and probably not even a hundred pounds. Her hair was cropped short, almost like a boy’s. Her eyes were light in color, either blue or green, I can’t remember now. Her teeth were slightly crooked, and she always looked happy when she smiled.

Kimberly bonded quickly with my twin sister, Yuuki, who was always welcoming and friendly to new people at school, but I hadn’t really gotten the chance to get to know her until we were both in seventh grade. We had bonded over things we both enjoyed, like drawing, ghost stories, writing short stories, and reading. By that time, Kimberly had become one of the most bullied girls in my grade, not-so-affectionately nicknamed "Farmer John," because she had made the "mistake" of wearing bib-overalls to school. But despite all of it, she had trusted me. She told me things that still haunt me, like the way her parents abused and mistreated her, and how they accused her of being insane because she had told them that she thought she saw ghosts in her home. That was another thing. Kimberly was a strong believer in the supernatural, and she believed that she was very capable of seeing the dead. She saw apparitions in her home, and even claimed to see them at school, in the middle school bathrooms. (For the record, those bathrooms were definitely haunted.) She also shared something with me that I regret keeping a secret: her depression. Though she retorted vicious comments back at her bullies fearlessly, every word still hurt her. She had admitted to cutting. I remember the day she had told me about it. We had been in one of those bathrooms, the one where people hummed that weren’t actually there, the air was always cold and shadows hid in bathroom stalls. Kimberly had thought it was a girl who haunted the room. She had been so positive that it scared me.

While we were in there talking, she had admitted to cutting. There really was something strange about that bathroom, because all of her secrets seemed to come out while we were in there.

"What do you do it with?" I had asked curiously. The subject of cutting had recently been introduced into my life, probably when we had discussed depression in health class, and I had never expected to become affiliated with someone who was actually depressed.

If only I had been able to see my future, I would’ve been even more surprised by how many of my other friends admitted to their depression. And how it easy it was to fall into that pit myself.

Anyway, that is when Kimberly pulled something from her pocket. It was the end of a pencil, the metal part that holds the eraser. But the eraser wasn’t in it, and the open hole had been pressed closed, making the end straight and sharp. My eyes had widened at the sight, and widened even further when I had caught sight of the proof that she wasn’t lying to me.

An angry looking cut on the inside of her tiny wrist.

I didn’t try to stop her. I knew and kept it a secret. What would happen to her if someone else knew?

I had tried hard not to think she was crazy. Even when she talked about the girl that haunted the third floor bathroom. Even when she said that she "kind of liked the taste of blood," her eyes wild and her face smiling. Even when I saw the cut on her wrist that she had stopped from healing many times. The secrets she had told me remained secret, and to the rest of the world she was just an annoying, bad-tempered, defenseless little girl. But to me, she was a walking disaster, the first one I had encountered, but definitely not the last.

And one day, Kimberly was gone.

Some people said that she was dead. Some people said that she had moved to a different school to run from her bullies. Some said she had gone insane and was getting mental help. Some said she had tried to hang herself with a belt.

I’ve considered asking her older sister, who still attends my high school, about her. But asking a girl who I’ve never talked to about such a touchy subject just didn’t seem right.

Only a few weeks ago, I had been at CVS with Yuuki and my mother, and I had caught sight of Kimberly’s sister’s wavy blonde hair and long brown roots, almost like mine had looked before I had dyed my hair back to its natural color. She was with a heavy, dark-haired woman who wore a t-shirt and shorts, and had a stretchy black supporting band around her knee. The woman had said hello to my mother, and as we stood behind them in the pharmacy line, I had thought about Kimberly again. This was her mother, the woman who had accused her of being insane, who had apparently abused her. And her she was, in a pharmacy, picking up a prescription. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was picking up anti-depressants for Kimberly.

If I saw Kimberly tomorrow, would I even recognize her? Would she recognize me? Would she say anything? Will she think of my sister and I on May ninth, me and Yuuki’s birthday, like I thought of her on April twenty-fourth?

I haven’t seen Kimberly in almost four years, and she was almost too easy to forget.

Fifteen Days

Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, doesn't it?

Random medical issues and long spring breaks kept me missing him, and truths that stung like papercuts kept me second-guessing his imperfect perfection, things that made Superman look less and less like a hero.

After a few days of feeling hopelessly stupid, I let it go. Whether they’re true or not, words are simply words. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is human. No matter what they tell me about him, no matter how much they tell me to run away or be careful or that he’s not worth my time, I’ll let the words go in one ear and straight out the other.

It sounds foolish, I know. But Floyd’s reputation doesn’t scare me.

Fifteen days of being without him, and I went through a period of missing him, a period of not missing him, a period of hating him, a period of loving him again, and a period of my feelings strengthening, not ready to collapse for the sake of others. They may only be trying to protect me, but I think I can protect myself just fine.

On what would've been day sixteen, I saw him walk into the cafeteria from the corner of my eye, and I felt my stomach fill with butterflies. A smile spread across my face without me instructing it to, and I was so excited that I could've burst right there on the spot. I was so happy! Every bad thing that I’d heard about him drained from my brain. I was literally being brainwashed, thrown back into the day-to-day adventures of falling in love with him that I had missed so greatly.

All I had to see was that flash of black leather jacket from the corner of my eye, and I knew that luck would be on my side on Friday the 13th of April.

Why does luck always have to be on my side when it shouldn’t be, and vice versa?

Oh well. I didn’t mind.

My naïve, fast-paced heart was back on track.

Life went back to normal, the normal I had almost forgotten. The normal that I thought would never be the same after I found out those things about him. But we were just us again. I was just comfortable and drunken-happy and he was just oblivious, and I’m wondering if that’s still a good thing.

During the day, I was also thrown back into the constant mood swings of being with Floyd. The pangs of jealousy when he talked to other girls, the bits of anger when he said something rude, the ecstatic smile (Why try to hide it?) when he started conversation, the pinch of depression whenever his secrets pulled at my brain as it tried to make its way up to Cloud Nine with the rest of me.

My doubts follow me everywhere, even up to Cloud Nine. But something still lingers in my brain, no matter what moods I’m swinging between, and that something is hope. When hope is lost, it is always restored.

Maybe telling Floyd how I feel isn’t a good idea.

But.

On this supposedly "unlucky" day, we had been sitting together in French class, when he had turned around to talk to me. Not many words were said, but he kept meeting my gaze. It was quiet and intentional and every time I looked away, I forced myself to look back, and his eyes were there to meet mine every time. There was something unreadable in his eyes, and now I know what it was.

It was the hope.

The thing that makes it all seem less impossible.

Wednesday Has A Mind Of Its Own

I’m on my way to shop class when I feel someone yank on my backpack. For some reason, I’m expecting to see someone else, anyone else, but I turn around to see Jordan walking behind me, grinning.

"Hi," he says softly. I smile back and it isn’t forced because I’m happy to see him. Too happy and it scares me.

I had been thinking about him a lot since the day before.

A Wednesday.

He had brought in one of his own electric guitars for the first time. It was black and shiny, beautiful. And his amp made his fast, quiet plucking suddenly intense and flawless, like an endless guitar solo. I wanted to sit on a desk and play my own guitar, having enough privacy to play whatever I wanted for a change, but the perfection of his music brought me to the desk next to his, where I just watched him and listened. His eyes met mine a few times, and at one point, the Protest The Hero song he had been playing for me stopped abruptly. He laughed a little. "I messed up," he said. I would’ve never been able to tell.

Then, he started playing an empty, sad tune on the higher strings. It was repetitive and haunting. A chill ran up my spine, and I felt that vacant feeling that I get when I look outside the window on a rainy day. "I wrote that for a girl once," he said. I wondered what girl would ever make him write such a sad song. Adorable guys like him with so much talent shouldn’t have to be sad. That’s usually left for awkward, unattractive, unlucky people like me. But maybe Jordan was an awkward, unattractive unlucky guy. And I just happened to be an awkward, unattractive, unlucky girl who was finding herself falling back in—

WAIT. Wednesday, what the hell are you doing to me?

Now it’s Thursday, and we’re both in the wood shop. He works on his guitar stand/stool while I cover a huge piece of cardboard in duct tape, the bottom of the cardboard boat that me and another girl are building. For a moment, an image flashes through my mind. Floyd and me’s bridge collapsing dramatically, broken apart by only sixty pounds of bricks. It had brought us together, and I hated to see it destroyed. The teacher had asked us how well we worked together, and Floyd had answered. "Great. She did everything I told her to." And as he said it, he met my gaze and smiled. Ah, Floyd. Like a breath of fresh air in the stench of confusion, that horrible place between love and hate, that fine line that I’m walking like a tightrope for Jordan.

And then I look at Jordan again, hammering a nail into his project, looking at it over his glasses. A skinny girl with straight, dark brown hair stands behind him, brushing dirt off of his shirt. Her name is Emma, and I can’t help but feel bad for her. Another girl drawn in by his adorable-ness (Is that even a word?) and amazing talent, and now at the dead end that is his dullness and closed personality. Another girl stuck trying to figure out a guy who seems like he doesn’t want anyone to know him.

Sadly, I might be one of them too.

Jordan twists around, saying, "Do you have to feel me up every time you do that?" with a laugh and a hint of annoyance that maybe only I pick up on. Emma simply laughs and doesn’t answer him. I continue taping the huge piece of cardboard, but my mind isn’t there. I barely react to the wood glue I had splattered on my sister's skull-print hoodie, and I barely notice Jordan doing Michael Jackson impersonations.

My mind is settling down on Tuesday, a time before my tightrope walking, when Floyd and I were both leaning on one of the wooden tables, and I was helping him do his Chemistry homework, a crossword puzzle that I hadn’t even taken time out of my three day weekend to do for myself. He had called my name, and I had turned around. "Can you help me with my Chem?" he cooed, his voice pleading but sugarcoated. I gave him some of the answers, completely sure of myself despite the fact that I was so incredibly close to him. I hated and loved the way I did anything he wanted me to, and I absolutely adored the way he did the same for me. Now, it’s Thursday again, and he isn’t here, probably at home sick, or possibly just ditching class for a day. He isn’t around to be the coffee I wake up and smell, the splash of water in my face, the hard slap back into reality.

And I miss him. I don’t like the way I’m looking at Jordan, and feeling butterflies fluttering around in my stomach, butterflies I had put under the wrath of bug spray and pride long ago.

Is it so terrible to still like Jordan? Because it feels like I’m breaking a deal with myself, like I’m letting myself down. Am I?