April 5, Seven Days to Austin Film Festival
Edie propped her feet up against her bed as she lay on the ground scrolling through her phone. Nothing was new or interesting to her and she kept opening the same three apps over and over again hoping that fact would change.
She’d been trying to look forward. Even if she’d ruined things with Ben, she needed to be a person and keep going. Her stomach had been empty for days; eating took up as much energy as running a thousand miles. She called Georgia every night trying to get the hours to pass before she could go to sleep and forget who she was and what she had done.
Edie tried to avoid her parents as much as possible. She didn’t want to accidentally say something she regretted just because she was sad. She figured they thought she got a bad grade at school or was tired from all her classes and extracurriculars. Not that it mattered to her what they thought. The anxiety of keeping secrets from them while going through a breakup was beginning to weigh on her more heavily by the day. She wanted to go to sleep and wake up in a new place, far away from her parents and her friends and anybody who knew her.
No matter how hard she tried to pick herself up and do her homework, she couldn’t remove the blanket of sadness that enveloped her every day since the drunken apology she gave Ben. Edie was behind on everything and she couldn’t work up the energy to care.
A light knocking rattled her door open. Marvin entered her room shyly. He still had on his uniform from karate and stank in the way that only sweaty eight-year-olds can.
“What’s up?”
He did a running jump onto her bed. She figured it must be something serious. He never visited her room unless he wanted to talk.
“Something bad happened at school the other day.” She put her phone down by her side and looked up at him.
“Yeah, what?”
“Alex says he doesn’t want to hang out with me anymore.” He looked down at his hands and then looked up at her again.
“Best friend Alex, or Alex from karate?”
“Friend,” he let out softly.
“Why would he say that? Were you being mean?”
“No!” He paused and began to pick at the strings in the blue belt loosely tied around his waist.
“We were at recess and Sarah said that since we’re in the fourth grade, we have to kiss somebody.” Edie held in a laugh as she thought of what to say.
“Icky. Kissing is gross.” She propped herself up on one elbow and held her nose with the other hand, playing the part of knowledgeable big sister.
“That’s what I said. But Alex said that he wanted to kiss Nicholas, and I said that Nicholas is a boy and you’re not supposed to kiss boys. And then he said he doesn’t want to hang out anymore.”
Edie’s mind raced. What was she supposed to say? She could feel her jeans pressing into her tummy and then separating again and again as she breathed quickly. She couldn’t find her balance and spoke before she could think it all the way through.
“Well, it doesn’t matter who Alex wants to kiss.” Edie treaded lightly into her next words, “For example, let me guess. You want to kiss Sarah, right?”
“No! Okay, a little. But only ’cause she’s really cool and nice and has nice hair.”
“Exactly. Maybe Alex thinks Nicholas is really cool and nice and has nice hair.” Her voice shook as she tried to keep her speech even and unsuspicious. Marvin seemed to be thinking over what she’d said.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess. It’s like in the video games when you play the boy character instead of the girl character.” His voice rose in understanding.
“That’s not the same thing.” Edie sputtered out with a small laugh.
“Why not?” His head flinched to the right then the left.
“I do that because the boy characters have better weapons. Which is dumb, by the way.”
“Okay.” Marvin’s shoulders dipped. “I’m gonna say sorry to Alex tomorrow ’cause we have soccer Friday and if he’s not on my team we’re going to lose really bad.” He hopped off of the bed and skipped to the door.
Before she could regret anything else, Edie spoke, “Wait. So, what if I wanted to kiss somebody who was not a boy?”
“Like Alex?” He tapped the door a few times in thought.
“Yeah. Kind of like Alex.” Edie waited for his next words like she was waiting for the end of the world.
He tapped the door a few more times. “Hm, that’s okay. You should kiss who you like the most, like Alex.”
“Okay.” She could barely mutter anything else. “I-I’ll see you at dinner.”
Marvin left and the door shut behind him quietly. He was out of the door before Edie could warn him not to bring the conversation up at dinner. He always told their parents everything. She could already imagine it, her parents going from brown to a deep red. Anger.
They would be angry. They’d say something ridiculous about taking him out of school or making sure he never went to Alex’s house again. She hoped he wouldn’t bring it up.
Edie suddenly felt the weight of the day on her back. She stuffed her notebook and a few homework assignments into her bag and rushed out of her room and into the kitchen. She lied to her parents again about an emergency test she had to prepare for. She wasn’t sure if she liked that she was getting better and better each time she told an untruth. The early evening sped past her as she biked to Georgia’s.
Everything looked the same but glimmered with a hue of hope it’d refused to have before this exact moment. Edie’s thoughts tangled into the moss hanging off the perfectly manicured trees across every lawn. A single shining phrase pulled from one end of her mind to the other as she reached Georgia’s front door and swung it open.
“I came out to my brother,” she yelped as she crossed the threshold and whipped into Georgia’s bedroom.
“Well, I think I did. Kind of. I think I just had a heart attack.” She tossed her backpack onto the blue shag carpet and grabbed her friend by both shoulders. “Geo, this is the only good thing I’ve done all year.”
“Congratulations! What did he say? I mean, what did you say? What happened?”
She recounted the short conversation to Georgia and collapsed onto her bed in one flourish.
“E, I’m not sure that counts.”
“What do you mean?” Edie rose up on one elbow to look at Georgia straight on.
“You didn’t really tell him anything.” Georgia let her face ease into a sympathetic frown as she watched Edie lay back down again.
Edie let the words sink under her skin so she could feel their full meaning. “You’re right. I just got excited because I thought I was taking control. I thought I was doing something good for myself.” She pouted at the ceiling. She had said it, but she hadn’t.
“Baby steps.” Georgia laid down beside her and looked up too.
“I know. Baby steps.”
They watched old episodes of Pose and complained about school until the room became dark around them and they became exhausted with themselves. Homework laid blank and undone next to the bed they’d made into a theater with Georgia’s laptop. The night blanketed them and made Edie forget that she was newly out, newly brave.
Edie fell asleep. Georgia moved from the bed gently attempting not to wake her. She snuck into the hallway and made her way to her mother’s bedroom where she found Frankie watching a cooking show on her small television. Georgia stood in the doorway and watched as a woman folded dough into a heap over and over again on the fuzzy screen.
“Mom?”
“Hi, sweetie. Edie asleep?”
“Yeah,” She hesitated to enter the bedroom. She crossed her hands behind her back. “Can we talk about something?”
“Always, G.” Her mother patted a space on her bed so Georgia could sit down. She walked in and tried to settle into a spot on the mattress. She crossed her legs on the sheets like she’d been doing since she was little. Her mother scooted over so that they were touching leg to leg.
“It’s about Simone.” Georgia ran her hands over the sheets and tried to get the right words to come.
“Kind of a nerd, huh?”
“Yeah,” she let a moment pass. The quiet floated between them, her mother’s smile expectant. “Actually it’s nothing.” Georgia slipped out of the room before her mother could say anything and snuck back to her room. She felt disappointed in herself for not speaking up, scared to tell the truth. She snuggled into bed next to Edie as moonlight sparkled through her bedroom into the next day.
The morning came slowly. Georgia looked over at the clock and saw that it said seven. Frankie opened up the bedroom door with a whisper.
“Edie, your phone has been going off all morning. I just saw it on the counter. I think it’s your dad.”
Edie opened her eyes and let them wander over the room that wasn’t her own. Everything was blurred at the edges and she was unsure of what was going on.
She noticed Frankie holding her phone out towards the bed. “I think your parents have been trying to call you, sweetie.”
Edie focused and everything became clear. She had slept over without telling her parents. She’d kind of but not really come out to Marvin. Her chest tightened.
“Oh my god, thank you.” She grabbed her phone from Frankie and skimmed over the dozens of missed calls and texts. “Shit shit shit.”
They were all exclamation points and questions with two and three question marks. She saw Marvin’s name mixed in with all the messages. Her stomach hurt and she felt as though she needed to throw up.
“E, are you okay?”
“Yeah. I think my life is over. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She was breathing hard. Nothing made sense.
“Hey, calm down. It’s going to be okay.” Georgia grabbed her into a hug as her breathing increased. “It’s going to be okay.” She just kept saying it again and again as Edie tried to slow her heart rate.
“Okay. I’m going to go home. I’m going to deal with this. Everything is going to be fine.” She repeated this in her head as she grabbed her backpack and walked out of the front door of the house. Georgia stood in the doorframe watching her pick up her bike.
“Call me, please. You can stay with us as long as you need no matter what happens.” Frankie stood behind her echoing the sentiment with a nod.
She settled on her bike seat quickly and pedaled down the street back to her home.
“I’m going to go home. I’m going to deal with this. Everything is going to be fine. I’m going to go home. I’m going to deal with this. Everything is going to be fine. I’m going to go home. I’m going to deal with this. Everything is going to be fine. I’m going to go home. I’m going to deal with this. Everything is going to be fine …”