Jess was right. Vân Ước had been so busy guessing what cogs were turning in Billy’s brain, she had not spent enough time sorting out how she felt herself.
A free writing scrutiny of Where My Heart’s Been At. By me. Year Eleven.
1
It started with a distant infatuation. Billy Gardiner—have always thought of him like that: Billy Gardiner—like Jordan Catalano, Tim Riggins, Jonah Griggs. Some boys, fictional and real-life, seem to warrant both names. It felt as unreal as any celebrity crush. Nothing would come of it.
2
Despite that conviction, the infatuation grew. Desire grew. Ultimate mew! And there he was right under my nose. Every day.
Complicating factor: Not admirable! White-boy beauty fetishizing. Bad girl, Vân Ước. (Also: he has not always acted like the nicest person in the world.)
3
Though I’ve always found him to be a bit more nuanced and mysterious than he gets credit for being.
4
When he was following me around and I was convinced he was up to no good, I actively went off him. He was annoying. And he stuck like glue. I felt genuine irritation to see him looking down at me over the bathroom stall wall.
5
So, now I am convinced he likes me. Therefore it follows that I should be—happy? Even if his affection turns out to be wish-induced?
6
Interesting side note: It certainly hasn’t delivered the one thing I thought would be a part of going out with Billy: peer approval. Although it’s made me realize that I probably already had a level of approval from people I like, whose opinions I do value, e.g., Lou, Michael, Sibylla.
7
So what do I feel? Heart, speak me some truth.
Infatuation, though that is transforming into something more like—affection. I real-life like Billy. And he has truly gone from being Billy Gardiner to being Billy. Physical attraction (to the max) (worse than before). Ego balm, yes, unavoidable—he does look like a god. Love. (?). Curiosity. Tick. Confusion. Tick. Tick.
What would Jane do?
Jane, what would you do?
Jane would be honest. Up-front. She’d look at the situation here and possibly say that she did not perceive a problem. She—who had to contend with the wedding-day revelation of the existence of her beloved Rochester’s insane wife, and resist a tempting offer to throw doubt to the winds and run off with said beloved, flouting all Victorian ideals of propriety and piety—might well think, pfffft, what is your problem, Vân Ước? Are you a woman or a wimp?
8
Impediments to my relationship with Billy:
The wish-wondering. Major problem. Am possibly living a massive lie.
I’m not allowed to date anyone.
His parents’ almost-certain disapproval of me.
His friends’ certain disapproval of me.
So.
Can’t change my parents’ rules.
Can’t change what people think.
Have to deal with the wish.
Select All. Delete.
What to do?
Jane had all the answers. Of course she did. When had she ever let Vân Ước down? It struck her like a proverbial bolt from the blue that within Jane Eyre’s framework of realism—of social commentary on class, on charity schools, on imperious rich relations, on gender equality and the restricted opportunity for women, on love and morality… there was also some mad magic.
She went to her desk and sat down. The more she flicked through the familiar pages, the more fragments of magic appeared everywhere. Jane believes the moon had spoken to her. Jane feels foreboding that the chestnut tree had been split asunder in a storm. Jane believes in presentiments, sympathies, and signs. She has unsettling repeated dreams of a baby. But where was the passage she was looking for…?
It was one of her favorite parts of the book, because on first encounter she’d been so afraid (reading breathlessly, terrified) that St. John Rivers, through sheer zealous, insistent power, would persuade Jane into a loveless marriage of duty as a missionary in a distant land where she’d contract cholera and die.
Aha—here it was. Jane hears her name called three times:
… it did not seem in the room—nor in the house—nor in the garden: it did not come out of the air—nor from under the earth—nor from overhead. I had heard it—where, or whence, forever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being—a known, loved, well-remembered voice—that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe wildly, eerily, urgently.
It felt so real. Yet it couldn’t have been, surely? But Jane, sensible Jane, Jane who would sit down in a kitchen and prepare gooseberries for a pie, had believed the unbelievable.
“Down superstition!” I commented, as that specter rose up black by the black yew at the gate. “This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did—no miracle—but her best.”
Nature roused, and doing her best. Huh. So the cosmos took care of things?
Vân Ước sighed. That did not feel like a digital-age solution.