Читать книгу The Exact Opposite of Okay - Laura Steven - Страница 11
Оглавление6.17 a.m.
Am I reading too much into this? Was Ajita casually flicking through Carlie’s Cancún photo album and just happened to land on that particular picture before I arrived?
But I remember the weird stares and the familiar welcomes in the cafeteria. I remember how surprised I was that Ajita hadn’t mentioned her new friend to me until that moment.
What if she’s not just a friend?
How have I never considered this before? Yeah, we’ve gossiped about guys for God knows how long, but looking back . . . is it always just my drama we’re analyzing? Does she ever discuss guys she likes? I’m actually not sure she ever has – at least not in a romantic way. I wrack my mind for the last crush she told me about, but I come up empty. I always thought she was a virgin just because she was waiting for the right guy, but what if there is no right guy?
God, I’m a self-involved mess of a friend. I mean, I’m never going to be a detective, but my lack of observational skills is truly astounding, especially in the context of something so significant in my best friend’s world. What else have I missed?
If Ajita is gay, what’s she going through right now? How long has she known? Is she terrified to come out because of what her family and friends will think? What I’ll think? Of course I would be nothing but proud of her, and happy that she’s embracing her sexuality, and I hope she knows that. But still, it can’t be easy having to guess how people will react. To gauge responses before they even happen.
All I want is to be there for her, but I don’t know how best to do that. I keep thinking about what I would want if the situations were reversed. I’d probably wish she would sit me down and be like, dude, I know what’s going on and it’s fine, I still love you, okay? I’ll keep this a secret for as long as you need me to.
But no matter how close we are, Ajita and I are different people, and I can’t treat her the way I’d want to be treated – I have to treat her how she wants to be treated. It’s an important distinction. What’s best for one person is another person’s worst nightmare. And right now it seems like she’d rather keep this all quiet while she figures it out. You know, if there’s even anything to figure out. I might be reading too much into it, as I have a tendency to do.
Riddle me this, dear reader. How does one ask one’s best friend if they’re gay when said best friend clearly isn’t ready for one to know?
2.45 p.m.
I’m writing this post in incognito mode from computing class because I am a fearless rebel who cannot be tamed. Usually I would wait until I got home and was safely in my cardboard-box-sized bedroom with a small mountain of peanut butter cups, but this is a legitimate emergency.
Spoke to Danny at lunch. It’s true. He’s in love with me. Which is catastrophic on a number of levels. The conversation went like this:
Me: Dude, what’s going on? You’ve been so weird lately. Danny: What? No.
Me: Danny.
Danny: It just bugs me when you and Ajita gossip about guys all the time.
Me: Ajita and I have gossiped about guys since the age of eleven. It’s never bothered you before.
Danny: *long silence while blushing*
Me: *reciprocates long silence because of aversion to conflict* Danny: Well, it bothers me now.
Me: Why?
Danny: I don’t know.
Now, I know you may think this doesn’t sound like your average declaration of love, and yes, while I was typing out the exchange I began to wonder whether I’d misunderstood the whole situation, and perhaps I am simply an incredible narcissist, but I’m sticking to my guns. He’s in love with me. Let’s examine the evidence.
Article A: When I confronted him about being weird, he replied defensively at the speed of light. Which means he pre-empted the question. Which means he knows he’s being weird. And then when I applied the tiniest little bit more pressure, he folded like a poker player with a pair of twos. Trust me, I am fluent in Danny. This means he is hiding something.
Article B: He blushed. Danny has never blushed in his life. In fact due to his immense paleness, I have kind of been operating under the assumption that his blood is colorless, like IV fluid.
Article C: He said, “I don’t know.” Let me tell you, Danny is the most opinionated son of a preacher man on the planet. Possibly in our entire solar system. So for him to utter the words “I don’t know” is utterly implausible. Of course he knows. He just doesn’t want to say it.
I’m not sure how I feel about this development. I think at the moment I’m mainly sad because anything that jeopardizes our friendship is not okay, and everyone knows unrequited love is the cancer of friendship circles. And I do not even a little bit love him back. I don’t think. I mean, I love him, like an annoying cousin or particularly needy hamster, but I am not in love with him. I don’t think.
Or maybe I am in love with Danny? Maybe I’m just missing the signs. Maybe the fact he often makes me feel queasy when he burps the national anthem is not a symptom of disgust, but deeply rooted infatuation. Maybe the fact we’re so comfortable around each other, to the extent where I often FaceTime him from the toilet, is actually a sign we’re soulmates. It’s not exactly how I imagined my first great romance would unfold, but is it really realistic to expect an epic Notebook-style love story in this day and age?
How doth one know that one doth be in love? [I’m unconvinced by the accuracy of my “doth” usage in this sentence, but am leaving it in for authenticity.]
9.16 p.m.
It’s quarter past nine on a Friday night, and instead of headbanging at a gig and/or participating in recreational drug use, I’m chatting to Betty in the living room over a mug of hot cocoa. Rock and roll.
Our living room is the size of your average garden shed. The walls are covered in that weird textured wallpaper most commonly associated with old folks’ homes. We found the velvet sofa on the street, had it examined for termites, and then promptly covered it with blankets and cushions from a thrift store. My grandma’s child benefits and Martha’s wages don’t quite stretch to IKEA, which Mr Rosenqvist would probably be horrified to hear on account of his proud Swedish ancestry.
We also have one of those old TV sets, fatter than it is tall, without cable. Honestly, the battle I had to go through to get Betty to have Wi-Fi installed. Like Vietnam but with more waterboarding.
We’re both piled on the velvet sofa in our sweatpants, and her wrinkly feet are in my lap as I give her a much-needed foot rub while she knits. This is her first night off in ten days, and I can tell she’s feeling it. She groans as I bury my thumb in the pressure points caused by her bunions. For the thousandth time, I wish it was me working so hard instead of her. But when I got in from school, I rang around all the places I’d dumped my résumé, and none of them showed any interest in hiring me. Not even Martha’s.
Once I’ve moved onto painting Betty’s toenails a vivid shade of fuchsia I tell her about the Danny situation, and she doesn’t even have the common decency to act surprised. Even Dumbledore also looks at me like, “Duh, it’s been graffitied on the kid’s face since the start of summer; now give me one of those peanut butter cups or I’ll avada kedavra your ass.” She asks me how I feel about it, and I reiterate the thing about unrequited love being the cancer of friendship circles, and how maybe I am actually in love with Danny, but I’ve been mistaking it for a mild stomach flu. At this she is mortified.
“Izzy O’Neill, you are absolutely not in love with Danny Wells.”
“No, I didn’t think I was.” I wipe a rogue smudge of nail polish from her skin with a cotton bud. “How do you know?”
“Do you want to kiss his face with your face?”
“No.”
“Do you want to marry him and grow old with him and help him tie his shoes when his arthritis gets the better of him?” Her knitting needles click together at the speed of light, which makes it sound like there’s a cicada chorus occurring in our living room.
“Not even a little bit. The thought is vaguely horrifying.”
“Do you want to let him enter you?”
“Gross. No.”
Apparently this is all the evidence she requires to deliver her final verdict: Danny’s love is unrequited. She then proceeds to give a long anecdotal monologue on how she’s always liked Danny and how this is not a surprising development, which I am going to paraphrase for you here:
“You and Danny have always been close pals, especially in the beginning, when it was just the two of you. Ever since you brought Ajita home in the third week of sixth grade, cramming on this sofa with giddy excitement over your first play date, I knew you kids had something special. He’s an only child, so he struggled a bit when he first had to share you, but he soon got over it. You all bounced off each other. Always cracking jokes, inventing games and acting out elaborate stage shows with no solid plot arc whatsoever. Danny doted on you even then, but you always kept him at arm’s length. He’s always been infatuated with you – I think he just finally worked that out for himself this summer. Poor kid.”
“Well,” I say. “Shit.”
“Shit indeed.” She tsks at a dropped stitch in the scarf she’s knitting, examining the damage between her thumb and forefinger. “Hey, has he talked to you much about his parents lately? Danny, I mean.”
I frown, swiveling the lid back onto the nail polish and admiring my handiwork on her toes. They look vaguely less horrific. “No, I don’t think so. How come? Everything okay with them?”
She shrugs. “Word at the community center is that their marriage is on the rocks. Could just be small-town gossip, but who knows?” As she talks, Betty ditches the knitting needles and rubs her temples with her thumbs, round and round in circular motions. At first I think she’s trying to summon the Holy Spirit, but judging by her pained expression, she’s not feeling so great.
“Another tension headache?” I ask.
“It’s those damn strip lights in the kitchen at work,” she grumbles. “Staring at fluorescent tubes sixty hours a week would give anyone a migraine.”
There’s a weird internet phenomenon, born around the same time as BuzzFeed, glorifying sassy older women who work until they’re a hundred years old. Look at them! Throwing shade at snarky regulars and serving day-old coffee grounds to their ruthless managers! So hilarious and inspiring! But this is the truth. More and more vulnerable old people can’t afford to retire, and so they keep working at grueling service jobs because they simply have to. It’s a matter of survival. They work through sore feet and headaches and bone-deep exhaustion, illness and injury and grief. It’s sick.
Anyway, after the pep talk with Betty my general sadness over the Danny situation has made way for crushing guilt. What am I supposed to do now? [I am asking this purely rhetorically. I almost never follow the advice of others due to my insane stubbornness.]
I would love to be brave enough to take matters into my own hands, like a soldier who proudly charges to the front line and faces enemy troops head-on. But alas I am instead going to hide out in my soggy trench until the problem passes, or I’m brutally murdered by a rogue grenade. Either way I am fundamentally a coward and not the kind of person you want on your side in a battle zone. [There have been a lot of war metaphors in this post, which I think is a beautiful representation of my emotional turmoil and deep inner conflict. Imagery and whatnot. What a poet I am. Like T S Eliot but with better boobs.]
Unreasonable though it may be, I feel a bit cross with Danny for messing up a perfectly good friendship, even though I logically know it’s not his fault.
Is it mine? Is my raw sexuality, infectious personality and awe-inspiring modesty sending out the wrong message?
11.59 p.m.
Update: just looked at myself in the mirror. My blonde hair is more “terrifying scarecrow” than “glossy shampoo commercial” and I have raccoon eyes from three days worth of mascara and eyeliner gradually building up and soaking into my skin. The bra I’m wearing doesn’t fit properly, on account of me never having any money, so I have a slight case of quadruple-boob going on. My thrifted Hooters T-shirt [shut up, I bought it ironically] has cocoa stains all down the front, and also a patch of Dumbledore drool shaped like Australia.
It might not be the raw sexuality thing.
