Life Unaware (Entangled Teen)

by Cole Gibsen

  He glanced at me over his shoulder as I approached and smiled.

  Something pulsed inside me, but I did my best to ignore it. “How’s your documentary going?” I asked.

  “Yeah…” His smile disappeared, and he turned his attention back to the monitors. “I thought I had this great idea to film a documentary about life in an American high school, but…” He shrugged. “It didn’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  He licked his lips. “Sometimes things can get too real.”

  “Is that why you were filming me in the halls?”

  “Yeah…my attempt to capture unfiltered high school footage didn’t go as planned.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “My friend Blake was helping me. I don’t know if you knew this or not, but she gets bullied a lot.”

  Actually, I knew that firsthand, because Amber did most of the bullying. She’d constantly teased Blake and Nolan’s ex-girlfriend, Jordan, calling them both dykes. Now that I knew Amber’s secret, it didn’t make a lot of sense—unless she was bullying them to draw attention away from herself.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “Blake and I came up with the idea together. The focus of the film was popularity in high school. I was trying to capture both sides of the hierarchy and, like I said, it didn’t work. I’m much more excited about our project.”

  “Our project?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He looked at me. “That is, of course, if you’re okay with me filming it. It would make an amazing documentary. We could call it The Graffiti Project, The Bathroom Stall Experiment, or whatever you want. But if the project is going to work, we have to make you credible again. That’s why we’re doing this.” He pointed to the monitor.

  I snorted. “But I still don’t understand what bathroom stalls have to do with apologizing.”

  He grinned. “You’ll see. You’re going to love it.” He returned to the computer and opened another program with various graphs and dials.

  It didn’t take long before my eyes glazed over and I was forced to look away. That’s when I noticed the picture frames on either side of the monitors. In one, Nolan looked barely thirteen. His hair hung to his ears and his limbs were all joints and angles. He stood in the middle of a row of boys, each of them with a skateboard underfoot. In another photo, he had Payton in a headlock. His fist was pressed to her head while she shrieked in obvious delight. “Where’s Payton tonight?” I asked

  “Shopping with Mom. I think they’re picking out her dress for the dance.” He rolled his eyes. “As if she doesn’t already have a closet full of dresses.”

  The Snowflake Ball. I’d completely forgotten the dance was only a couple of weeks away. Fat chance of me going now. I turned my attention to the last picture frame, a photo of Nolan and his ex-girlfriend, Jordan. They were dressed in all black, her hair dyed a pretty shade of blue. Nolan had his arms wrapped around her shoulders and his lips pressed to her cheek. Her mouth was open, frozen forever in the middle of a laugh.

  I couldn’t think of a single time I’d seen her laughing or even smiling at school. I’d always assumed she was just another moody emo chick. But now that I’d suffered Amber’s abuse firsthand, I understood her so much better.

  I turned from the photo to find Nolan watching me with a strange expression.

  “What happened between the two of you?” I pointed to Jordan. “You look so happy there.”

  “That’s the funny thing about pictures.” He reached past me and set the frame facedown on the desk. “They only show what’s on the surface.”

  I understood. The walls of my own home were decorated with dozens of photos of my parents and me smiling and looking like the perfect family. But in real life, I couldn’t remember the last time we’d smiled at each other when there wasn’t a camera around to capture it. “So you weren’t happy.”

  He returned his attention back to the computer. A muscle in his jaw flexed, like he was pressing his teeth together. “She wasn’t happy. I tried so hard to hold everything together—to keep her from falling apart.” He swallowed hard. “I might as well have tried to bottle the entire ocean inside a jar.”

  Before I could ask him what he meant, he pointed to the monitor. “With the green screen, you can choose from a bunch of different backgrounds.” He clicked the mouse, punctuating the end of our previous conversation.

  Several images appeared on the center monitor. One looked like the inside of my grandpa’s study. A large mahogany bookshelf stacked with leather-bound books sat next to a brick fireplace. Another image looked like a school hallway. Two rows of silver lockers lined either side of a glossy tiled floor. A third was a picture of football stadium bleachers. Nolan pointed to the lockers. “I’m leaning toward this one, but if you have something else in mind—”

  “How about a guillotine?” I offered. “Or a firing-squad block? Because I kinda feel like I’m going to be executed.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Like I said, I like the lockers.” He clicked the mouse, and an image of the lockers enlarged, taking up the entire screen. He clicked again, and the stool behind me appeared in front of them as if by magic.

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  “Movie magic.” He winked before leaving the computer and walking over to the camera on the tripod. He adjusted the angle until the stool was centered between the rows of lockers. When he finished, he patted the seat. “It’s all yours.”

  My stomach churned. Biting my lip, I hugged my arms around my chest. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Wasn’t I just opening myself up to more humiliation and ridicule?

  Nolan’s eyes softened. “Are you okay, Flay? I know I kind of rushed you into this. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

  Of course I wanted to, but wanting and doing felt like planets in different solar systems with an abyss of black space between them. I bit my lip. What was it Dad was always saying? Something about a thousand-mile journey having to begin with a single step? I was ready for that step. Even if Amber left me alone and Payton and I patched our friendship, even if the school gradually forgot what I’d done, I never would. I swallowed hard, and then sat. “I have to do this.”

  Nolan hit a wall switch off and his room went dark, except for the soft glow of light from the computer monitors. With his foot, he flipped a switch on a power strip. Instantly, I was nearly blinded as two bright lights on either side of the camera turned on. I squinted for several seconds until my eyes adjusted to the light and the spots left my vision.

  “Sorry.” Nolan adjusted the light stands, lowering them so they no longer shone in my face. “You’re shorter than I am.”

  Feeling awkward and unsure what to do with my hands, I laced them together on my lap. “You filmed yourself?”

  Even though I couldn’t make out his features in the dark, I could see the black outline of his body behind the camera. He shrugged a shoulder and returned to the camera, adjusting the angle for the hundredth time. “For the old documentary—the one I scrapped.”

  “Because it wasn’t working.”

  “Exactly.”

  Again, I wanted to ask why it wasn’t working, especially now that I knew it was about popularity, but I didn’t get the chance. He hit a button and a red light above the camera lens blinked on. I inhaled sharply.

  Nolan chuckled. “Relax, Flay. Pretend the camera isn’t here.”

  Easier said than done. The red light felt like a laser burning into my flesh, and I fidgeted. “What do I do now?”

  He grabbed another stool from the corner of the room and perched on the edge with one foot on the boot rung and his knees splayed wide. “Pretend it’s just you and me.”

  That wasn’t any better, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Nervous energy pulsed through my body. I pulled my hands inside my sleeves and twisted the fabric around them. “I don’t know how to start.”

  Nolan leaned forward just enough to illuminate the edge of his face. “How about this—I’ll ask you some questions an
d you answer them. You just have to repeat the question in your answer so I can edit myself out later, okay?”

  I nodded. My pulse beat heavily against my chest. “Okay.”

  He clasped his hands together. “Tell me about the day you walked into school and found your private messages posted on the lockers.”

  I gave a small laugh, not because I found the subject funny, but because if I didn’t laugh I might cry instead—something I definitely didn’t want to do on camera. My throat tightened, and I reflexively touched the pill case in my pocket. I liked knowing they were there, even if I was trying my damnedest not to take any. It would probably make Nolan’s video a lot more interesting if I dropped dead on camera anyway. The thought made me giggle.

  “You’re nervous,” Nolan said.

  “That obvious?” I tapped my fingers against the pill case. If I popped a pill now, I might be able to prevent a panic attack before it could start.

  “What do you have in your pocket?” he asked.

  My fingers froze, my throat tight. For a moment, I considered lying. I could tell him there was nothing but a tube of lip gloss. When I went over my apology earlier in the afternoon in front of a mirror, never once did I consider mentioning my anxiety disorder or my pills. And yet I found myself withdrawing the small silver case from my pocket and opening it for the camera. “This is my Xanax.” The trembling of my hands caused the pink pills to rattle together. “They help pull me back from the edge when I start to fall.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I closed the pill case with a snap and slid it back inside my pocket. “I have an anxiety disorder.” After spending the last couple years working to keep my secret from everyone, spilling it to Nolan and his camera felt like inhaling after an eternity of holding my breath. I hadn’t realized how exhausting it was holding it in until the words left my mouth and ribbons of pressure unwound from my ribs. “When I was a freshman, I was up late one night studying for finals when my chest started to hurt really badly. My arms tingled and I couldn’t breathe. I almost passed out. I thought I was having a heart attack, so my dad drove me to the emergency room. Turns out it wasn’t a heart attack but a panic attack.”

  I spoke faster, scared I might chicken out and swallow the words spilling off my tongue. In this moment, it didn’t matter if Nolan thought I was fucked up for needing drugs just to function. What I was doing, the on-camera purge of truth woven with regret, felt right in a way nothing in my life ever had before. Like maybe if I laid myself bare, I could rid myself of the secrets and regrets buried like botflies deep within my flesh.

  “High school was a little more than I expected. Everyone thinks I have this perfect life. They don’t know that I’m barely holding it together—actually, I’m not holding it together. That’s the problem. And then there’s my mom—the congresswoman.” I tried to make out my shoes in the darkness so I didn’t have to look at the camera. “She’s mapped out my entire life, set this standard that’s impossible to live up to.”

  Even though I couldn’t see Nolan, I could hear his steady breathing in the silence following my words. Finally he asked, “What kind of standard?”

  “Perfection,” I whispered. A small voice inside my head, the old Regan, screamed at me to shut up, that I’d said too much. You made yourself look weak, the voice hissed. Maybe. But I’d opened myself too wide to pull back now, displayed all of my many scars. And who decides where to draw the line between vulnerability and strength? Because in this moment, I couldn’t decipher a difference. I’d come here tonight to apologize to the many people I’d wronged, but it took me until this moment to realize that maybe the biggest wrong I’d committed was to myself.

  I fingered the tin of pills again and shrugged. “I have to be perfect. So fucking perfect all the time. Not just at home but at school, at church, at the fucking grocery store because everyone’s watching. Like the entire world is just waiting for me to screw up. And I’ve been holding my breath for years because I knew it was only a matter of time before the day came when I slipped up and everything fell apart.”

  I stared into the camera lens. The darkness within seemed to grow larger, like a black mouth gaping wide to devour me whole. I felt my strength draining. I gripped the sides of my stool, trying to root myself to the chair when all I wanted to do was sink to the floor. Just make it thirty more seconds, I told myself. Thirty more seconds and you can take a pill.

  I wouldn’t die in the next thirty seconds, no matter how much the silence of the room made my skin itch and the sound of Nolan’s breathing made me squirm. I opened my mouth and spoke, just to fill the emptiness. “Some days I think the only thing holding me together are these pills.” I shook the tin and laughed a little. “It’s so pathetic. Even more pathetic than the pills, though, are the horrible things I said about other people—the awful things I did. I’m not trying to make excuses because there are none. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for everything—just everything. High school is hard enough without other people making it worse, and I’m really sorry I was one of those people.”

  Exhaustion crept over me, and my shoulders sagged under its weight. Almost done. “I don’t expect to be forgiven for the things I’ve done. I just wanted everyone to know. I don’t want to be the person I was. I want to be me—whoever the hell that is.” I shrugged. “Guess I’ll find out.”

  I paused and searched for Nolan’s dark outline beside the camera. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  The camera’s red light blinked off. A second later the lights on either side of it went dark. It took my eyes several seconds to adjust to the darkness. When they finally focused, Nolan stood in front of me.

  I nearly fell off the stool. “Jesus.”

  He didn’t apologize for scaring me. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. He just stared at me with a peculiar look on his face.

  “Oh God.” I shrank against the stool. “Was I really that bad?”

  “No.” Before I realized what was happening, he slid his hands along my cheeks. The tips of his fingers brushed past my ears and wound into my hair. “I had no idea you were going through all that. God, I’m such an asshole.”

  Unsure what was happening, I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

  Nolan dropped to his knees. His eyes practically glowed in the dim light of his computer screens. A stray lock of hair had fallen across his forehead, a reminder of how uncontained everything about Nolan was. He was so close I could feel his breath tickling my lips. Every breath I took felt like I was breathing in a piece of him. My eyes drifted closed and my body turned to mush, his scent overwhelming my senses.

  “Regan, I have no idea what to do here.” His voice was lower than usual, husky even. “I only know what I want to do.”

  He wasn’t making sense. “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to kiss you.”

  “What?” My eyes fluttered wide and I nearly choked on my heart, which felt like it’d leaped halfway up my throat. “Why?”

  I cringed the second the question left my mouth. Asking a guy why he wanted to kiss you wasn’t exactly encouraging him to do it. And it wasn’t like I didn’t want him to kiss me, did I? I mean, obviously I’d developed some feelings for him over the last couple of days. I couldn’t deny the way my heart had trembled when he showed up at the barn that morning, or the way heat flooded my veins whenever he was near, or—

  “Crazy, right?” Nolan laughed softly. For reasons I didn’t understand, the sound of it held notes of sadness. “I’m going to kiss you because you’re amazing, you’re beautiful, and because I want to.”

  He leaned closer, and I got so dizzy, I knew I’d have fallen off the stool if not for his hands keeping me centered. He was less than an inch away when he paused and looked at me through heavy-lidded eyes. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

  The heat from his palms seared into my skin. This was Nolan, the guy who’d annoyed me in the hallways for years. But he was also the guy who’d let me cling to him in
the bathroom when I would have otherwise fallen to pieces. The guy who’d wrapped me up in his jacket because I couldn’t stop shaking. Nolan, who, in a weird way, stuck by me when everyone else abandoned me. Still, I’d never kissed someone before. What if I did it wrong? What if it changed things between us?

  “Regan?”

  The breathless way he said my name made my own breath catch inside my throat. “Yeah?”

  “In this moment we have everything going against us. Can we maybe just hit pause on all the outside world bullshit and not overthink this?” His fingers twisted deeper into my hair. “For just tonight, let’s pretend that we have no past history—good or bad—and the only moment that’s existed between the two of us is this one. With that in mind, give me the first answer that pops into your head and I’ll be satisfied with the answer. Do you want to kiss me?”

  Only one word came to my mind—the same word that had been there all along.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Considering that everything about Nolan was lean and taut, the softness of his mouth caught me off guard. His lips brushed mine lightly before settling into a rhythm that made me feel like we were two puzzle pieces coming together. I leaned forward, and he pressed closer so my legs straddled his. His mouth explored every inch of mine, kissing both corners before tugging gently on my bottom lip.

  His fingers curled into my hair, pulling ever so slightly. I gasped. The moment my mouth parted, Nolan deepened the kiss, and a warm wave of what could only be lust crashed through my body. The heat of it spread throughout my limbs, searing the tips of my fingers and toes. I reached up and grasped his shoulders to keep from melting away.

  He pushed the kiss further, deeper, until I met him halfway, drinking in the taste of him. Sweet and soft like sugar melting on my tongue. With Nolan’s hands in my hair and his lips on mine, the world fell away until nothing else existed except him, me, and our kiss. I slid a hand down his neck to the hardness of his chest, just to confirm we were still separate people. Because with my eyes closed, with all the heat inside me and the fire burning through my veins, I was sure we’d somehow melted together. He groaned at the contact, skimming his hands along my sides until he reached the hem of my shirt. At the first touch of skin on skin, the last threads of anxiety in my system went up in flames.