Razor blade.
I hate the words but I think them anyway, trying to get used to the shape.
Waverly’s right. She’s always fucking right. In the last six months, there’ve been so many times I used Heather because I could, for distraction or company or just to feel something else. I got so used to knowing that no matter what, she’d always just be there.
But I’m right too. Heather’s a person. I can’t keep jerking her around anymore.
I tell her in the parking lot, in case she’d rather get a ride from someone else and maybe salvage the evening, but after I finish my big ugly speech, she just opens the passenger door and gets in.
Ollie is MIA. He watched the little freshman with the kind of interest he doesn’t usually have for anything, and when Little Ollie spent twenty minutes talking to every girl who wasn’t her, then did a disappearing act, he pushed himself away from the wall.
He walked over to her through the crowd. Left me on the dance floor with Heather. She slid her hand into mine, and when I didn’t squeeze back, she held my arm instead. When she stood on her toes and tried to kiss me, I had to look away.
The whole way home, Heather sits with her head against the window, like she needs to get as far away from me as possible.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
And she doesn’t say anything. If she’s crying, I can’t hear it, and I don’t look away from the road.
After a while, she digs around in her purse and lights a cigarette, but doesn’t open the window. I’m nearly grinding my teeth with how bad I want one too, but I don’t tell her to put it out. The smoke is everywhere and I want it with my whole body. I just stare straight ahead and keep wanting it.
When I pull up to her house, Heather drops the cigarette in the ashtray and takes one deep, shaky breath before she gets out.
“Good night,” I say, and wonder if this is the last thing we’ll ever say to each other.
“She’s not going to pick you,” Heather says suddenly, leaning back in through the passenger side. “Just so you know. She’s not going to suddenly just condescend to be seen with you.”
“What are you talking about?” I say, even though there’s only one direction this could be heading.
“I saw you follow her, Marshall. I’m not a total idiot. What did you think was going to happen? Behind the bleachers like a total slut? God, have you met her?”
I recognize the girl that Heather sees. The one who never cracks.
But that girl isn’t Waverly—at least, not real Waverly. Heather’s only thinking about the lie. Waverly in the daytime.
The thing that hurts is something else completely. I said love. She didn’t say it back.
Heather doesn’t slam the door or make a big dramatic scene, even though she could probably pull off a decent exit. She just walks away, and I sit in her driveway, thinking about Waverly, how she’s not my girlfriend, and what that means. How I’m one step closer to just accepting the terms of what we’ve got, the same way Heather spent the last six months accepting I was never going to hold her hand in public.
How even in that black dress, even in the dark, Waverly was the brightest thing in the gym.
I drive home with the window down and the radio off, just being quiet and alone. Just feeling the air against my face.
When I let myself inside and close the door too hard, Annie comes shuffling out into the hall. “What are you doing? Did you just get home?”
“Yeah.”
She scrubs her eyes like she’s trying to focus. “Why are you wearing that shirt?”
I look at the button-down. “There was this thing at school.”
She squints and shakes her head. “A collared-shirt thing?”
“A dance, okay? There was a dance.”
“Oh.” Nothing for a long time. Then, “Do you have a girlfriend or something?”
“No.”
For a minute, Annie doesn’t do anything, just stands there, looking warm and drowsy. Chowder is huffing for my attention, butting the top of her head against my knee.
Finally, Annie nods and trudges back to her room. She mumbles something into her hand before she shuts the door. It sounds kind of like, “Have fun at your dance.”
Then I’m standing in the hall in a collared shirt that I ironed myself. Badly.
I keep smelling Heather’s lip gloss, tasting it when I breathe, this oily candy flavor, choking and slick.
I brush my teeth. A lot. In the shower, I scrub my face like I’m trying to wash it off.
In the mirror over the sink, I look younger than I’m used to. I can’t stand how helpless, how pleading my eyes look. I cover my reflection with my hand so all I can see is my mouth.
Right away, I get an ugly flash of how my dad will act when he sees my handprint on the glass. He’ll say, what have you been doing in there? Like I’m some degenerate. He’ll want to know why I was putting my hands all over the mirror and I won’t say anything, because the reason is too weird and stupid to explain.
I was covering my eyes so that I would stop looking at myself. Are you happy now?
I was covering my eyes, because I just got home from the kind of school function I swore I’d never go to. I spent most of it with my arm around a girl who doesn’t know the first thing about me, while the only girl who actually matters was pressed up against someone else. This happy, confident guy with sports and activities and lists—these crazy lists of all the things he’s going to do and be and accomplish.
He is the person I will never be.
That isn’t some angry, defiant promise.
It’s just the truth.