I glare at the mirror – there. There’s the face I know so well and identify with. This is me.
I sit down in my room, fingers steepled under my chin, and look at my phone and all the messages there from all the people I don’t know, asking me if I’m free tonight and telling me a slice
of their life. Something terrible is happening here; I’m on the precipice of something big but I
don’t know exactly what. I close my eyes and think of him.
I open my eyes and pick up my phone and answer yes, and I’ve made a choice but for what, I
don’t exactly know.
*****
I don’t love him. But I’m still awfully fond of him.
He sounded so earnest when he said “Unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.” It’s John Green, it’s disgustingly teenish and I don’t think about how I’m
the one who recommended Will Grayson to him, how he talked with me past midnight about
that quote and its meanings, how I would lie belly down on my bed and just stare at my phone
willing it to spit out an answer.
It’s my favorite quote - and coming from him, it sounds like rejection.
*****
Being liked is a novel sensation; it sits wrong in my stomach and becomes something I carefully
don’t think about, and then I become used to it. I’m friendly to everyone and friends with no
one, and everyone in the school knows me – I get a nickname, then presents, then birthday
cards, then smiling faces – and it’s so, so easy being liked.
At night I lie down and watch the shadows play across the ceiling, wondering if they like me
for who I am or just because I’m likeable. People tell me stories about themselves: “I should
probably tell you that I broke up with him”, “She was talking behind my back all the time and I
thought she was my friend”, “Everyone thinks I’m an only child but I actually have a half-brother and a half-sister”, “Maybe I should give up biology and just do music and art all the time”,
“What do you think?” They look at me expectantly—looking for what, I don’t know.
I nod along and soak in everything and file it neatly away in my head, a folder labeled gathering dust.
*****
I remember quietly swallowing back what I was about to ask him. I remember not saying:
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