I decided I might give Ellie a chance. I’d never shared anything with her. I’d never told her my biggest fear. My biggest secret.
Maybe I was choosing to be lonely.
I decided, since it was only eight thirty, that I should go over to the commune and find her and tell her I was mad at the world. Maybe if we could start there, I could eventually tell her the truth about me.
I saw the lights on in the chicken houses, so I walked there to find her. I brought a blanket so we could go and sit in the field and talk. I brought a bag of contraband snacks inside the blanket. Doritos. Fluorescent orange. Our favorite.
When I got to the chicken house, all I found was one of the preteen girls who sometimes helped Ellie with her chores. I think her name was Matilda.
“She’s out in the field.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”
Matilda went back to the chickens. I fast-walked to the back field.
And before I got all the way there, I saw something I never wanted to see.
Ellie on top of Markus Glenn—the boy from down the road who once asked me to touch his tipi.
I stopped dead.
I slowly turned around so they wouldn’t see me, but before I could get far enough away, I heard Ellie yelling. “Glory! Come back!”
But I kept walking.
I wasn’t jealous.
I wasn’t mad at them. I was mad at the world.
Why shouldn’t I be mad at the world? The world let fireflies hump toothbrushes. The world was so full of shit.
“Glory!” Ellie yelled. “Stop! Wait!”
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to talk to Ellie about anything right then. I knew what was going to happen to her grandsons. They would be slaves to the machine—fingers that reached out in the night and stole lives.
Next thing I knew, she was grabbing my shoulder from behind. “Seriously. Would you stop, please?”
I stopped and turned around. The Doritos fell out of my blanket.
“What?” she said.
“You told me we’d make a cute couple,” she said.
I didn’t say anything.
“So what’s your problem?”
I thought about this. “I’m mad at the world,” I said.
“Shit,” she answered.
“I came over to talk to you about it,” I said. “And Matilda told me you were in the field. I didn’t expect you to be screwing him… but I guess you move fast.”
She crossed her arms and started to cry a little. Her dress was hanging crooked and I wondered if she had underwear on. I don’t know why I wondered that, but maybe that’s what I was supposed to wonder.
“I’m not mad at you,” I said. “I was just coming to talk to you about something else and I didn’t expect to see that. That’s all.”
The silence wasn’t awkward then. It was just silent.
“I’m ready for it to go away now,” she said. “All of it.”
“Me too,” I said. We were such cowards. There we were on a speeding train, and instead of putting our heads out the window and screaming wheeeeeeeee, we complained.
We stood there on the edge of the road for a few seconds and listened to an approaching car, and then saw its lights and then watched it pass us, the kids in the backseat staring as if we were ghosts.
I felt like a ghost.
Ellie probably did, too.
Ellie sighed and started to cry. “You totally think I’m a slut.”
“I don’t.” I did. I totally did think she was a slut. It made me cry.
She looked at me. “Why are you crying?”
I shook my head. “I’m mad at the world,” I said. “Go back,” I said, pointing to the field. “Have a good night.”
“But what about you?” she said.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said. “Remember?”
She nodded and turned toward the field. As I watched her walk away I thought about Peter and how she flirted. She’d flirted with everyone that way since I could remember.
It wasn’t just her. All the girls in school did, too.
Somehow, Darla doing what she did saved me from this. As I walked back to the porch, I was thankful. I’d been so preoccupied with whether or not I would turn into Darla—so busy being the walking picture of emptiness—that I’d overlooked society’s expectations of me.
I smiled at this.
Did all outcasts come to this realization at a certain point in life? That being outcast from a bogus and pornographic society actually was a good thing? I hoped so. I hoped there was an army of us out there, smiling about it that very moment.