by Laura Steven
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 d
ue 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.
Saturday 17 September
1.30 p.m.
Party day! Danny and I are spending the afternoon trailing Ajita around every clothing store imaginable in search of the perfect outfit for tonight, both of us providing helpful and educational commentary on her selections. So far we have vetoed the sequined overalls [like a cabaret show vomited onto a hillbilly], the high-waisted mom jeans [she’s three feet tall and they come up to her nipples] and the distressed faux-vintage band tee [when challenged to name any song or album by Pink Floyd, she mumbled something about us being assholes, which is offensive yet accurate].
I’m super excited to wear my outfit for tonight – a gray silky shirt I’ve had for years and years, but I still feel like an absolute queen when I wear it. It’s an original Armani with these silver studs all around the collar, and it’s the only piece of designer clothing I own.
When I was fourteen and just starting to be painfully aware of how badly I dressed compared to everyone else, I found it on a weekend shopping trip with Ajita [I could never afford to actually buy anything, but I enjoyed hanging out with Ajita enough to tag along]. It was in Goodwill for $40, which is a lot of money for Goodwill, and I had nowhere near enough to afford it. I went home and begged Betty to loan me some cash, and she agreed to put aside a little money from her next paycheck to buy it for me. I spent every single night praying nobody else would buy it in the meantime. By the time we went back to get it, it had sold, and I was heartbroken.
But who’d bought it? Ajita, who had got it for my birthday. I honestly nearly cried when I tore open the carefully wrapped tissue paper and saw the silky gray material I’d fantasized over for so many weeks. I still only wear it on special occasions because I never want the magic to fade.
Anyway, back to our preparty preparation. The mall is absolutely packed, and I keep subconsciously hoping we’ll bump into Carson and Co. There’s a group of basketball dudes hanging out at the wishing fountain, laughing raucously at something on one of their phones, but Carson isn’t among them. In fact, on second glance, I’m not even sure they go to our school. By the time we finally sit down for hot pretzels, I’m pretty sure I’ve given myself repetitive strain injury in my neck.
I guess it’s a good thing we don’t see Carson since Danny might just expire in sheer fury if we did. Though to be fair to him, he’s acting pretty normal today. Making witty observations about dumb fashion trends and such. Long may it last, I say.
Still, thinking about what Betty told me about his parents, while Ajita’s ordering our cream sodas and pretzels, I nudge him on the shoulder. He’s doing anything he can not to look at me, staring up at the fake palm trees which shade us from the strong September sun currently beaming through the mall’s vast skylight.
“Hey, everything okay at home?” I say, quietly enough so the table of snooty-faced soccer moms next to us don’t hear, but loud enough that it’s not weird or conspiratorial.
Regardless of my volume policing, he immediately tenses. “Why wouldn’t it be?” He sweeps stray salt granules off the table with his hoodie sleeve, then rubs at a dried condensation ring with his thumb.
Message received. “No reason. Forget I asked.”
The plan for tonight is to get ready at Ajita’s, as her house is a stupidly beautiful mansion and also just around the corner from Baxter’s place. Her parents are super-rich neurosurgeon geniuses, and fully expect Ajita to follow in their footsteps, which is hilarious because Ajita has flunked every biology class we’ve taken over the last two years. Not because she’s dumb [she isn’t], but because Danny and I are dreadful human beings who lead her astray on a daily basis, like annoying parrots sitting on her shoulder and chirping in her ear about how much more fun it is to perform a silent film for our classmates than it is to learn about plant-cell structure.
Besides, I have it on good authority that in the real world, nobody will ever question you on the function of the mitochondria [THE POWERHOUSE OF THE CELL! See, I know things] or the vacuole [nah, I got nothing]. By good authority I obviously mean my grandma.
[Man, you really just cannot predict where my tangents are going to take you next! From fashion advice to cell biology. What a narrative rollercoaster. I really am incredibly versatile and insightful.]
Then, armed with our crates of beer [Capri-Sun], we’ll get a lift to Baxter’s empty house at like seven thirty this evening. The party starts at eight, and I know it is borderline tragic to arrive so early, but you remember how I told you I need to know everyone’s drama and business? Yeah, I have FOMO when I miss a significant portion of a social event. Ajita does too. So we just sit in a corner watching everyone and eating popcorn, like Big Brother but more intrusive.
6.24 p.m.
Writing this from Ajita’s ensuite bathroom, because DANNYYYY.
About five minutes ago, after I’d dragged a brush through my scarecrow hair and done my makeup to the best of my ability [smoky charcoal eyes and nude lipstick if you’re interested] I pulled my party attire out of my duffel bag and started to get changed in front of Ajita and Danny, as I have a hundred million times before. Seriously, they have both seen me in so many different stages of undress that they could probably do a pretty accurate life drawing of my naked body, with freckle location accuracy down to a fraction of a millimetre. Since I’m not body conscious, and because we’ve all known each other for so long, I’ve never felt weird getting changed in front of them. It just wasn’t a thing. Before tonight.
Ajita’s sitting at her vanity table, trying and failing to get fake eyelashes to stay on her face, and has accidentally glued one eye shut as a result, while Danny’s sitting on the edge of her bed and flipping through his phone. Honestly, he’s barely even paying attention to either me or Ajita. I kinda get the feeling he’d rather be playing video games with Prajesh, but Ajita’s athletics prodigy of a brother is away at some sadistic training camp in another state.
So then I whip my tee off and I’m just standing in jeans and a bra, as I have a hundred million times before, and before I can put my fancy Armani shirt on, Danny groans, covers his eyes emphatically with his hands and says, “Jesus, Iz, do you have to do that here?”
Ajita’s glued eye pings open in shock. “What are you on about, dude? You’ve seen her shirtless before. Hell, you saw me shirtless about ten seconds ago. What’s the big deal?”
He drops his hands into his lap and stares at his grubby fingernails, cheeks burning as fuchsia as Betty’s nail polish. But before he has to reply, I save his awkward ass.
“S’al
l right,” I say quickly. “I’ll go next door.”
He shoots me a grateful look that tells me everything I need to know.
Shit. We’re in trouble.
10.53 p.m.
Update from the front line: Danny is off chatting up one of the cheerleaders, who looks like Michelle Obama’s younger sister, but he keeps glancing over at me to make sure I’m witnessing his superb flirtatious finesse. I just nod encouragingly for lack of anything better to do, trying to ignore the fact that to the untrained eye I look like a creepy uncle lurking on the edge of the dance floor and supporting his lecherous nephew’s efforts to get laid for the first time.
Ajita and I are chilling on a lime-green sofa in the living room. The house is rammed with sweaty teenage bodies, which are completely incongruous with the immaculate decor. The lighting is low and the music is loud, and everyone’s drinking beer out of plastic cups, spilling it all over the wooden floorboards. That’s gonna stink in the morning.
My best friend, bless her heart, is completely unperturbed by the fact I’m updating my blog while at a party. At this point in our friendship she’s pretty used to me tapping furiously on my phone’s touch screen as she chugs her beer and observes the teenage drama unfolding in full flow around us.
Baxter’s house is actually super nice, probably because his mom launched this tech start-up a couple years back and it’s really taken off. They used to live in a low-income housing community like mine, with metal bars over the windows to prevent break-ins, but now they’re firmly in the fancy part of town, where every mansion has at least three cars in the driveway. One of which is usually a Range Rover, let’s be real.
Inside, the house is like something out of an interiors magazine, with bold printed wallpaper, metallic sculptures and glass coffee tables. They’ve mixed it with that industrial chic look that’s so big now, all exposed brickwork and factory-style lighting. I’ll give it to them, it looks pretty cool. And thanks to my fancy shirt I don’t feel as out of place as I usually do.