by L.J. Shen
Love is a battlefield
And I think I fucking died
(last entry)
Graduation Day.
The red cape and matching graduation cap make us look like a menstrual cycle. I shit you not, this thing is brutal. I don’t know who thought of the idea to match our capes to our football gear, but whoever they were, they need to lay off the crystal meth.
Kannon and Camilo trudge behind me in the long line on the stairway leading to the stage as our principal reads out our names.
“At least he shaved.” Cam laughs, elbowing Kannon and jerking his chin toward me. His leg is healing, and though he still has a faint limp, he is surprisingly cool about it. I say surprisingly, but really, if there’s one thing I learned this year, it’s that you rise up to the circumstances when they are presented to you. We are so much stronger than we think we are. But sometimes, we go through decades without having a reason to be tested. The thing about life is, it always hits us. No one leads a charmed life. Even the blond, gorgeous, picture-perfect, popular rich girl harbors secrets. Even the football captain. Even the rich mother of two who married her hot millionaire ex-student. The ballet prodigy. Everyone’s got a story, and we all have chapters we’d rather not read aloud.
“You look good, Penn.” Camilo slaps my shoulder.
“I don’t swing that way, Cam. Stop talking,” I grunt.
“Are Melody and Jaime here?” Kannon asks, snickering some more. What’s with those idiots? They act like it’s the first time they’ve met me, and I’m goddamn Taylor Swift. I adjust my stupid cap and let out a breath.
“Yeah, yeah. Bailey and Via, too.”
“Where are they?” Kannon asks.
“Somewhere in the crowd.” Hundreds of seats are in front of the stage in our football stadium—red plastic ones, of course—but I never bothered to check because Mel texted me earlier telling me that they’re going to grab a place in the back so we can slip out when it’s all over for dinner. The last thing I want is to go on a family dinner, but I promised to play nice with Via, and so far, I’ve succeeded.
“You haven’t even checked? That’s cold.” Camilo pretends to shudder, rubbing at his arms.
I turn around toward them sharply. “What’s with you assholes? If this is about Via or Bailey, no, you can’t hit on either of them. Bailey’s not even fifteen, you goddamn pervs.”
Kannon bursts into laughter that makes the girl behind him jam an elbow into his ribs while Camilo shakes his head on a smile, and says, “Just look for them in the crowd, you basic piece of shit.”
Reluctantly, my eyes swipe over the rows of seats. The principal calls the girl two people away from me. I don’t have time for this bullshit.
“Left, bro. Look left,” Kannon is losing patience. My eyes dart to the last row on the left side, and then a sharp sound of glass shatters in my ears, and it’s probably my heart.
Daria is there sandwiched between Melody and Jaime. She is wearing a purple dress that makes her look like some kind of…I don’t know, fairy or some shit. So pretty I can’t blink because I’m afraid she’s not even real. She is staring right back at me, throwing me a bone. A timid, unsure smile. I want my mouth to break into a shit-eating grin, but my brain has officially disconnected from the rest of my body, and I can’t function.
Function, Penn. Function. Don’t be that creep. Smile back.
She stands because she can, because she is in the last row, because this, I understand now, was planned, and she is holding a sign in her hand. A generic brown piece of cardboard with one word written on it in black Sharpie.
Talk?
I nod, feeling the smile finally spreading across my face, letting loose.
Yes. Fuck. Yes.
“Penn Scully,” Principal Howard yells for what seems to be the millionth time by the impatience in her voice. How long have I been standing here, ogling Daria?
“Penn Scully? One last chance to take your diploma. You’ll need it if you want to attend Notre Dame.” She sniffs, pushing her glasses up her nose. I stumble my way across the stage as people erupt in claps and whistles. My eyes are still on Daria. My eyes are always on Daria. Notre Dame, which I reluctantly agreed to after Jaime basically yelled at me that his daughter and I ain’t happening, might have to take the back seat again.
I’ll go wherever Daria goes. Even if it’s straight to hell.
I take my diploma, mumble my thank you, hug the principal, and dart off the stage toward them. Technically, I need to go back to my seat like the rest of the students to throw my hat in the air. But technically, I’ve also been alive this last semester although anyone who knows me also knows it not to be true.
I run across the narrow row between the seats, knowing all eyes are on me, even though I don’t have the greenest clue how she is going to respond when I stand in front of her.
She is still standing. Mel is in my way to her, and she doesn’t make a move to stand or anything. So I just stand there, watching Daria watching me, trying not to notice the way everyone around us is grinning. I’m out of breath even though my cardio is on point.
“You’re here.” Evidently, I am still intellectually subpar even in comparison to wildlife when she’s around.
She giggles into her palm, looking down at her feet. I can feel in the air that she has changed. I can feel in my gut that so have I. My eyes roam her face and body, trying to detect how else she is different. If she has a tan or a new tattoo or haircut or another fucking guy attached to her by the arm. But she just seems like good ole Daria.
“I’m here,” she says.
“Thank you.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. You know that, right?”
No, I don’t, and I’m trying to tell myself not to get my hopes up because they are slamming their little fists against the door of my brain’s basement, wanting to gush out. She’s just here to support me. Via’s ceremony is next week, and maybe she wants to be there for the All Saints event, too. But then why would I see her here, as a surprise, and not at home, where we’d just left a couple of hours ago?
She finally wants to talk. I have so much to say to her, I want to write it down in my phone so I don’t forget the big stuff. But we have this stupid restaurant thing to go to. Food is for pussies. There’s no way I can stomach anything right now that’s not Daria’s pussy juices. But I highly doubt her parents want to know that.
I turn to Melody and Jaime.
“Any chance we can have a rain check on that graduation dinner?”
“Not a chance in hell,” Jaime replies dryly, his eyes still on his phone screen as he composes an email, his long legs crossed. His cigar pants ride up, revealing funny, colorful socks.
“Fuck,” I say.
“Language,” Mel singsongs, flipping through a brochure she got at the gate but not really reading it.
I turn back to Daria and take her hand even though Mel is between us. Daria tilts her head to the stage, her eyes never leaving my face.
“You better get back over there so you can throw your hat.”
Last time we spoke to each other, she promised not to leave, but she did. I’m not taking any chances. She might as well file a restraining order because I’m not letting her out of my sight. I grin and tug her to me with Mel, Jaime, Via, and Bailey still around us. I squeeze her in a hug.
“Keep your embrace PG-13,” Jaime coughs into his fist, and we both laugh.
The last thing I tell her before she pulls away is the truest thing I’ve ever said in my life.
“I missed you.”
Dinner is surreal.
Everyone exists like nothing happened, which can’t be further from the truth. I high-key channel my inner Ted Bundy and stare at Daria the entire time and ponder the probability of Mel, Jaime, Bailey, and Via disappearing into thin air without notice. Shit’s happened before. Mainly in paranormal movies, but still.
I watch the way Daria cuts her steak into pieces as though she invented utensils. A
dmire the way she steals glances at me to see if I’m still looking (I’m always looking), and how she pats the corners of her mouth with a napkin.
I watch everything. I eat nothing. They discuss the weather and town gossip when I ask Daria where she’s been.
“Where do you live?” I’m aware of the crackling in my voice, but I left my pride at the door.
She looks up at me from her plate and smiles but doesn’t say anything. I don’t ask again.
The Followhills pay the check and pour out back to the street, stopping in front of Jaime’s Tesla. I came here with the Prius because I had to get to school before them. I catch Daria’s cardigan sleeve and clear my throat.
“Need a ride?”
Everyone goes silent for a moment. Daria throws a look at her parents, asking a question, and Jaime arches an eyebrow.
“Rephrase, kiddo.”
“I apologize. Sir. Miss Followhill, will you do me the honor of getting into my cart? I have a hella big sword…”
Jaime chucks my head and laughs. He pushes an uncertain Daria toward me.
“Go. Talk. Fight. Blame your parents for everything. But when you’re back home, I don’t want any drama under my roof.”
And just like that, she’s in my car. As I throw it into drive, it occurs to me that she hasn’t been here before. I never took her places. I never made an effort, period. I took the sea glass necklace, then her virginity, then taunted her about both before completely dumping her upon Via’s request. Throughout, she thought I was messing around with Adriana. But I’ve never messed with Addy. By the time I noticed she was a woman, Rhett did, too, and did something about it.
Rhett. That’s a conversation starter.
“Rhett’s dead,” I say evenly as she chokes on her own saliva, coughing. I don’t twist to look at her as I pat her back. I know exactly where I’m driving. Far away from here and to the only place I need to fix in her memory so she’ll remember why we should still be together.
“What happened?”
“Overdose.”
“That’s sad.”
“No, it’s not.” He was a rapist abuser who has beaten my entire family to a pulp, then proceeded to impregnate a young teenager.
Daria sniffs. “You’re right. It’s not. How’d you find out?”
“About three months ago, he started calling. Slurring about getting a retroactive payment for all the time I lived with him. He was trying to make your parents bleed money or something. Wanted to cut a deal with Jaime where they split my earnings if I made it to the NFL. By the time Jaime sent his lawyers to threaten Rhett, he didn’t pick up the phone or answer the letters. So we went in person. His body stunk, but I guess you could say that about him even when he was alive.”
I can’t believe she is smiling at my stupid words, and I can’t believe I’m saying them. I park outside Castle Hill Park and kill the engine. I round the car and open her door, drawing her outside, then we both walk in silence. Passing the bench where Adriana and I sat the day she watched us from across the park, I lead her deep into the woods. We don’t stop or talk until we get to the broken tree trunk that’s still there. To where we had sex the first time.
I lean against the trunk and cross my arms over my chest.
“You promised,” I say quietly. Sometime between the graduation ceremony and entering the restaurant, I took off the blood cape, and now she can clearly see my black shirt, and the hole inside it, and how not okay I am.
She nods, her hand diving into her hair as she massages the back of her skull.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She doesn’t give me an excuse, which is a good start, but I don’t know what the fuck that means.
“If you want to hear the second part of my secret, you have to promise me something.”
“And what is that?”
“Yourself,” I say quietly. “You were right, that day you told me you were trying to be mine but I never offered you myself. But now I am. And if you want my everything, you need to give me something. Let’s start with a promise. A real one, this time.”
She eyes me warily, and I consider the possibility that when she told me she wanted to talk, she meant for some closure or bullshit. I hold my breath in my lungs.
“I promise,” comes the weakest, faintest voice I’ve ever heard. “I promise I am strong and good enough for you, and I want the rest of your secret. I want all your secrets. This past semester was horrible without you. How did I ever even live without you in my life? Bizarre.” She rolls her eyes.
I look up and almost fall to my knees with joy.
This.
I take out the sea glass necklace I’ve been keeping for her, just in case, and throw it between us. She catches it.
“Do you want me to put my necklace on?” She cocks her brow.
Pushing off the trunk, I walk toward her, take the necklace from her palm, and secure it back on her neck.
“Where did we leave things off with my secret?”
“First, I want you to tell me you haven’t slept with anyone else since I’ve been gone.” She turns her head around to face me, her body still tilted toward the trunk.
“I haven’t even held another’s hand. Even when I jacked off—it was to you. Hell, even my morning woods belonged to you.”
She laughs, shaking her head. I missed her voice. Her laughter. Her.
“Thank you. Well, we left things off with your grandmother cursing you when you tore your shirt. What was the curse about?”
“Eh.” I take a moment to close my eyes and savor the scent of her hair. “So my grandmother is pissed, and she wants me to behave. She tells me that the only way to remove this spell, curse, whatever the hell it is, is for me to fall in love. That’s some Beauty and the Beast bullshit, and I don’t buy into it, but I’m thinking, even at five, that that’s okay. I can fall in love a thousand times in an hour. Maybe not at five, but at thirteen or fourteen, sure. So of course, she puts a loophole.”
I snort when I think about the first time I met Daria up close, after seeing her in and out of her ballet class for years.
“What’s the loophole?” She turns around and holds my shoulders.
Escalation.
I brush my thumb along her cheek, smiling.
“She said only true love would get rid of the curse. And it will have to be requited. And real. And for life. Most of all, she said it couldn’t be just any girl. It needed to be a girl who can become a Scully, like us. But I was five, and dumb, and on pain meds, so what I heard was Skull Eyes. So I laughed and laughed and fucking laughed some more until she hit me with a broomstick. But wanna know what the weird thing is?”
Daria nods.
“When I saw you all broken and upset and finally mustered up the courage to talk to you, there really were skulls in your eyes. Like white marbles, bang, in the middle of your pupils.”
Daria takes my hand and presses her lips to my palm. My heart quickens.
“Every time you called me that, you really called me the love of your life?” she asks quietly. I smile.
“Now she is following. Where have you been this semester, Skull Eyes?”
“Waiting for you.” It’s her turn to grin. “Where I always knew you’d follow. In South Bend, Indiana. Notre Dame.”
Notre Dame, Freshman Year
“Oh my Marx, my feet have blisters the size of your head, Penn. What’s up?” Daria complains. In my defense, no one told her to wear those red-soled heels for our lengthy stroll. In her defense, this shit is pretty goddamn long. I can’t see the end of it, and I’m pretty sure I should’ve packed water, Advil, and maybe even food for the road.
“Just a little bit more, baby.”
She soldiers through it without questioning me or my motives. I said I preferred if she didn’t ask any questions, and she trusts me. Why she does is beyond me, but she does. I hit the fucking jackpot on all counts when it comes to my girlfriend. She is hot, compassionate, funny, a spitfire, and her
dad is willing to pay for our plane tickets when we come home for the holidays.
Daria releases air and starts whistling. She’s bored. She’s never been a power-walker or a jogger. She prefers to dance in the studio. She joined the cheer team at Notre Dame and doesn’t even think about becoming team captain. She is much more content doing her own thing.
“Via said she is having fun at Santa Barbara.”
My sister is attending community college and loving every minute of it. I think it’s because it’s so close to Mel, Jaime, and Bailey. She doesn’t like much exploring outside her territory and still needs some handholding. We’ve been getting better at the whole being twins thing, and Via and Daria have actually been keeping in touch. It’s frosty, but it’s there. At this point, I have no illusions or expectations about them becoming best buddies. If they can survive not killing each other over the holidays—which seems to be the case—I’m happy.
“Good. Good,” I say. I’m too distracted by the insanity that’s about to leave my mouth to care about Via.
“She’s been dating this really sweet guy named Doug. I think she’s bringing him to Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Doug is an awful name, but anything is better than Gus.”
“Okay, what’s going on?” She stops. No. No. She can’t stop. We have maybe ten feet left to complete the journey. I tug at her sleeve and practically drag her the rest of the way between the two lakes on campus in the shape of an eight.
“I said no questions.”
“Fine! Can you release my hand, though? My palm is hella sweaty, and even though I love when you throw romantic crumbs at me, that’s a bit needy, Penn.”
I laugh and shake my head. “Eight more feet.”
“Marxxx,” she drawls. “You’re killing me, Smalls.”
When we reach the spot, I turn around and face her, releasing her hand.
“It’s been said that if a male and female student hold hands and walk around the two lakes on campus in the shape of the figure eight, they will get married.”