by Zelda French
“You said you broke up with her.”
Lucie gives a cruel bite of a laugh. “I’m glad to see we’re not the only ones you continually lie to.”
Michael drops his arm to his sides, and the crepe slumps to the ground. I’m that close to clapping. He deserves an Oscar.
“Are you done?” Tony asks, offended by my laughter.
Taking long shaky breath, I straighten up and wipe my eyes. None of this shit matters anymore. I have lost.
“Yes.” I throw my hands up. “Yes, I lied and I went out. So, what?”
Lucie jabs a finger in my sternum. “A liar, a cheat, a hypocrite. That’s what you are. A fake. I can’t believe I was torturing myself with you.” She winces. “I have wasted so much time on you!”
“You’re nothing like us,” Tony adds, putting his hand, intentionally or not, on Lucie’s arm. “If you think your new friends are better than us, good for you. We’re done.”
He tosses Michael a dirty look. “Good luck with him.”
Michael’s acting skills are slipping. His face is hardening, his jaw clenching.
“That’s all right,” I say, my own anger palpable in my voice. “Go. I’m not keeping you. You know what? Tell yourselves whatever you want about me. However much you want to help me.” I motion them to move along. “And have a great time together.”
Lucie’s hurt look and Tony’s violent flush both confirm what I have known for months, that thing I always refused to admit out loud. They scatter away, my two friends. Scatter so fast, it’s as if I’d never know them.
That’s it, then. It’s done. A great rip tears me in half, leaves me unsteady on my feet. Immediately a wave of grief rises up from the pit of my stomach. I turn to Michael, hoping to finish him while I still have a bit of anger left in me.
“Anything to add?” I ask, my vision blurry. “Hm?”
Michael stared down at his feet, then at me.
“Why did you say you broke up with her?”
He won’t admit it then, will he? I raise my hands to the sky. “Does it look like she and I are in a loving relationship? Did the part about her and Tony escape you? Did you see the look on their face when they understood that I know? No? Nothing?”
Michael’s hurt expression is a masterpiece. I’m that close to burst into tears.
“You’re acting really weird, Louis.”
I exhale a long breath. “For the record, I never thought I was better than them. It’s actually the opposite.”
“I know.”
I step away from him. My face is burning, my back feels drenched in sweat. “What do you know, exactly? You don’t know me. And I clearly don’t know you. So, I’ll help you. Let me know if you understand my English. After all, I’m just some French idiot.” Michael looks completely bewildered. That expression, I believe, is genuine. I do a little bow. “Thanks Michael. You wanted to fuck up my life. You did. My real friends are gone, and I’ve got nothing left. You can leave me alone, now. Go home, go back to England. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Michael stands there, his face frozen. My time’s running out. If I stay in the street any longer, I’ll collapse into a heap of tears and snot. I won’t give him the pleasure.
“Why are you still here?”I add, snarling. ”You want to hear me say it? Fine, I’ll say it. Thanks for the ride. It was fun. You’re really cute. But you are nothing to me.”
Upon hearing these words, Michael’s eyes have widened to the size of dinner plates. This. This is proof Abby wasn’t lying to me. He spoke these words, he remembers them. His face turns chalkier than a sheet of paper.
“How?” He manages to articulate, his fingers curling. “How did you…” His disbelief, his shock at my knowledge is twisting his handsome face, pulling at deep-seated strings at my core.
Still, in this instant, my heart goes to him.
I just want it to be over now.
“Just go. Please.”
Michael turns to leave, walk over a few steps, comes back, his expression so hurt, so vulnerable, that I almost flinch.
“You don’t really like me, do you?”
A little taken aback by his audacity, I struggle to find the words.
“No!” I say, deeply offended. “Fuck off!”
Michael briefly stare into my defiant face, his lips pursed, concedes a nod of surrender.
“Right. I’m leaving then.” A quick, nervous pause. “Take care, Louis.”
That’s probably the best apology I could hope for, coming from a psychotic manipulator like him.
When he’s gone, at least, I can feel the pressure on my chest lifting up; my lungs expand, and I can take a real breath for the first time in over an hour. I turn around and slowly make my way home, longing for the darkness of my bedroom, my soft mattress, and the joint I have hidden in my sock drawer for an emergency just like this.
Angry righteousness felt good.
I feel so good.
I’m always going to feel that good, because I was right.
Right?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
NOW I CAN REALLY FOCUS ON BEING MISERABLE
SPEND ENOUGH TIME on your own, and you can convince yourself of anything. Most particularly, that the situation you find yourself in was, of course, inevitable. I should have known, and a part of me knew before any of this began.
It was such a small gesture, and yet, it changed everything.
*
“You’re late, again!” Tony said, but he slaps a beer in my hand.
Lucie pounces, open-mouthed, and swallows half my face in a hungry kiss. “You taste like booze.”
“I’ve got a head start at home.”
The party around us is raging. Sacha’s place turned into a nightclub once more.
It’s 2007, for at least another half-hour, or so.
I ended the year with a lie, why not start it with another.
Let me rewind a little.
Sacha’s New Year’s Eve party was in our minds for weeks. It was to be as epic as her birthday party last September, the one during which the cool, collected Yasmine puked amaretto on the Persian Rug. The one where François came out. The time I said I didn’t want to listen to him and left the room You see? That party.
Anyway, there was no way anyone would miss this. And I didn’t. I arrived on time, for a party. A decent 21h30, on the clock, carrying in my backpack two bottles of beer and one of vodka, courtesy of my father’s collection which no-one ever uses. I slipped unnoticed into Sacha’s flat, everyone was gathered around in the kitchen doing shots, and that’s when my eyes came upon Tony and Lucie, right there, huddled in a corner of the room.
He said something. She laughed. Open mouth, throaty laugh, genuine laugher so laid-back I know it’s something I could never do. She dipped her mouth into her plastic cup, laughed some more, and a strand of blond hair fell into her pink cocktail. Tony’s hand reached toward her face, tucked the strand behind her ear in a delicate, comfortable, and loving sort of way.
The truth came crashing at the speed of an eighteen truck driven by formula one pilot on ecstasy. The Truth, with a capital T.
Tony loves Lucie, he always has, he has never not loved Lucie.
And Lucie made a mistake, choosing me.
Lucie made a mistake when she chose look over substance. When she chose the pretty one, who couldn’t love her back. And the ugly truth stared me in the face too, but I was too cowardly to comprehend it. Lucie wasn’t mine. She wasn’t supposed to be with me, but if I let her go, Tony would leave me too, and that, I couldn’t live with.
At this point of during the party, she might not have known that she loves him, but it’s just a matter of time. A part of her must feel it, but to pick her boyfriend’s best friend is something of a taboo, and for him too. At first she’ll pretend nothing’s wrong, she might even attempt to get closer to me… But eventually, eventually they’ll both know and they’ll leave me behind, because it’s the only sensible thing to do.
Natura
lly, I panicked.
I climbed down the grand staircase, hid in a janitor’s closet between two floors, and drank most of the bottle of vodka. Once more or less recomposed, I pulled myself together, sparkling sunglasses, wicked grin and all, and came back upstairs. I was already known as Ever-Late Lou. No one noticed a thing.
I didn’t plan to get so drunk that I would make out with François in the bathroom. But of course a part of me always knew something was off. Lucie was perfect, and so beautiful, but I wasn’t never really into her, was I?
I thought it normal, I thought I was just embarrassed, ashamed of my secret, that one night stand with a girl I never saw again. I was drunk. I didn’t want to be reminded of it.
The odd churning in my stomach at the sight of boys happened so rarely that I never took it for anything else than my hormones waking up. The first time it happened, I was quite young. It was shortly before my mother left.
The truth is this. I knew. I knew about the cute guys. I knew about not liking Lucie. I knew about keeping them both separated when they clearly were made for each other. I knew and I said nothing, because the truth is overrated, the truth sucks, the truth hurts.
Who wants a hurtful truth when they can have a beautiful lie?
I used Lucie badly. So badly I owe her more than one apology. I lied repeatedly to Tony, time and time again, desperate to fit into his mould, his vision, longing for him to see me as I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be special. So special that he would never leave me.
*
Anger, hurt, spite. At first it’s sufficient to convince myself it was all for the best; they thought to leave me, but I left them first. That I would be all right, that I don’t need them.
But who am I kidding.
My anger quickly turns to grief. My jealousy to longing. And my hatred toward Michael morphs in burning humiliation and unbearable grief in no time.
My real success is to show my face day after day at school for a whole week before we are once again sent home for the holidays. Each day, each of us are dragging our sorry asses to school, chin up, defiant glares at the ready, pretending not to see the stares of everyone else around us.
“The band has split up!” Lars said, de facto becoming my new most disliked classmate.
“Who do you think is the Yoko Ono?” a retort followed by a burst of laughter.
Yoko Ono — or Michael, for those who are actually following— looking dashing in his dignified mutism, has never looked at me again. Instead, he’s given all of his attention to his real friends, Sacha, Yasmine, and François. I can only imagine the lies he told them. My brief truce with François is definitely over. When our eyes meet, his are so full of contempt that I have to look away.
One small mercy is that each of us is keeping their distance. Tony and Lucie are hovering the edge, as they always did, and Lucie and the Golden Fork’s friendship looks forever done with. I guess she took to Tony’s philosophies’s better than I did. Otherwise, why would she feel so much contempt for her former friends? My relationship with Michael, as far as I know, remains a secret for everybody but François.
Lucie was always Tony’s true loyalist. I was the fraud.
To find a sign about their happiness, one has to look no further than at Lucie’s backpack, a happy kitten from hell whose toothy smile is taunting me about my failures. At least they’re not flaunting me with their love, if, as I think, they are already an item.
And through it all, a little voice has risen, and like a broken record, plays a song I’m too familiar with.
I knew, I always knew I would end up alone. Like I knew way before Tony that I wasn’t really rockstar material, I was only doing it for his love and attention.
Michael said once that he desired me because I looked pulled from a magazine. It seemed in the end, I fooled him too. I’ve got that right at least.
Being alone for the first time in years has it’s perks, you know. I’ve had a long time to look in the mirror, make note of what I didn’t like, and remove every thing I could change.
Out with the Kurt Cobain clothes and the calculated fake persona that came with it. The baggy clothes, the striped shirts. They end up in a large bin bag. I wake up one morning to see it being driven away. Into the trash. Fitting.
Only my sunglasses remain, the glass on one eye shattered, the last token of my friendship with Tony. My faithful shield for so many years, concealing my lying eyes from my friends and enemies alike. I was wearing them the first time Michael noticed me. What did he see then? Someone cute, to play around with.
I can’t complain, we had some good times. Every time I think of it, I must force myself to remember I was nothing but a plaything to him, or I miss him too much and my throat gets constricted with sobs.
I am becoming a person who goes to school, listens, takes notes, hide in corner to smoke cigarettes during breaks and goes home straight after class. Homework done, essays given on time, grades improving so fast my father does know what to think, and once asks me if I’m taking this Adderall thing he heard about on TV.
“Nope.”
I’m just friendless and bored. Working is just a way to pass the time, to stop my thoughts from driving me crazy.
And now my escape plan to London doesn’t feel so stupid after all, right? And if I carry on like this, I will leave with the full support of my father. I should perhaps got to another city. Wouldn’t want to run into Michael and his next victim. Why not Florence? François had a lot to say about it. It has certainly nothing to do with the fact that Italy is filled with dark-haired men with bouncy curls.
At last, after several days of relative hell, haunting the graveyard of my friendships and my two fake lovers, spring holidays are upon us. I can hide in the safety of my flat for the next two weeks.
My father being, well… my father, and unfit for conversation, I naturally turn to Eugénie for a much needed dose of social interactions. We are getting really good at Don’t Forget The Lyrics. And I’m getting really good at smoke rings.
But a few days into the holidays, even Miss Eugénie can’t take anymore of my face. We are trying to watch a documentary, but I’m not really into it. There are lionesses, and there are gazelles. I let you guess what happens next.
“What happened, my boy?”
“Let me guess,” I say, not taking my eyes off the stalking lion, crouched low beneath the tall grass. “I look miserable, don’t I?”
She nods sympathetically. “You want to tell me about it?” She pushes the tissue box toward me. She thinks she knows me. But I’m not going to cry.
“Sure, let me sum it up for you real quick.” I lift my finger to my chin. “I’m all broke up with Lucie. She and Tony don’t speak to me anymore. And Doriane and I are over. That’s about it.”
The stupid gazelles are drinking from a large pool of water, their gorgeous ears twitching, unaware of the big-ass lioness crouching not twenty meters away.
Eugénie wrings her small hands together. “What happened to Michael? Wasn’t he your friend?”
The lioness pounces. It’s panic among the gazelles.
“No.” My voice has dropped a few octaves. “He wasn’t much of a friend after all.”
Eugénie gives me a look of surprise. “Really?”
“Really, Miss Eugénie. People are assholes, me included. Michael is just a different kind of asshole, but an asshole all the same.”
The lioness has singled one of the gazelles out. It’s do or die, now. The gazelle is fast, she might get away. Please let her get away.
“I can’t believe it.” She says, chewing on the tip of her thumb. “He seemed so nice.”
I concede a nod. “ I agree. It takes a particular kind of asshole to be so charming and underneath…”
The lioness has caught the gazelle, and they both tumble to the ground in a great mess of paws and hooves. Before I can stop it, stupid tears are rolling off my cheeks.
“Oh, Louis…”
“It’s this stupid shit you
’re watching,” I shout, cheeks burning. “Why do people watch stuff like that. We already know life is shit and everybody dies. Why do you have to watch it too?”
Eugénie jumps on the remote and turns off the TV. “It’s gone, gone. See?”
It’s too late, both for the gazelle and for me. I start bowling in the middle of Eugénie’s living room, grateful now for the box of tissues she laid before me.
“Is there anything I can do?” Eugénie attempts a smile. “I’m a million years old, I can do anything.”
Our little joke doesn’t amuse me so much anymore. Michael the lioness had torn a chunk of my heart and now I’m food for the vultures too. I blow my nose dramatically in a tissue.
“I’m eighteen tomorrow, Miss Eugénie, and apart from your exquisite company, I’m utterly alone.”
“My dear boy, you shouldn’t be so miserable on your eighteen’s birthday. No one should.”
“Don’t worry about me, Miss Eugénie.” I pat her affectionally on the knee. “I think I was always miserable, and every time I was actually happy was just a bump on the road.”
Miss Eugénie looks extremely miffed by my statement. I fear she’s going to go into a long tirade about wisdom, stars, and the Church of Scientology. Now’s not the time, you see. But Eugénie’s not like other people; she refrains the speech about me turning eighteen and not knowing anything about life, but she instead says things like:
“You must allow yourself to feel these things. They hurt you now, I know, and they will hurt you more. But you must remember that they will fade away. That’s what they are. Feelings. Terrible feelings, but they will disappear, eventually. Soon enough, you will smile again. But to heal faster, you must learn to forgive, too.”
I spring off the sofa, spilling tissues all over the carpet. “There’s nothing to forgive, really. I’m not mad at anyone but myself.” Eugénie doesn’t appear to believe me. “It’s true! I’m the idiot! I was always an idiot, and I’m incapable of being loved. See? Nothing to worry about. I just need time to adjust to my new life, that’s all. I don’t need friends, and I don’t need to be loved. I don’t need anything at all.”