Chapter 21: Part 21 - Wednesday Morning

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Part 21 — Wednesday Morning

“Ella, Bobby Brandon is a player,” Jessie proclaimed. “He’s been with half the girls in the school.”

I’d taken her into my confidence on Insta chat the previous evening when she got back from state training. I told her she was right. When she’d introduced us in the hallway. That he did like me. And that I’d made him feel so utterly terrible about it. But she was tired last night and her mom was on phone-patrol, so we had to wait until recess today to catch up about it.

“Maybe he’s just not found the right girl yet,” I suggested.

“Look, I get it Ella,” Jessie replied. “He’s a great looking guy and it’s nice getting attention from men, but he will rip your heart up one way or another and scatter the pieces in the air. Take the compliment from him. Just don’t take anything else he wants to give you.”

She’d been kind of weird with me all morning. Ever since last night, in fact. Every time I pressed her on it, she just said she was tired.

Before I’d seen Bobby put that pendant on after basketball, I hadn’t even considered that I might get a boyfriend. After what happened with Rafa Couzins, I was convinced that all men were vicious, self-serving and dangerous. I’d seen the memes, and I’d choose the bear any day of the week and twice on Sundays. But the way Bobby Brandon had ridden to my defense, the way he hadn’t even hesitated, the way he’d gotten himself in trouble just so I could continue to live this secret, double-life — how could that not make my heart flutter and my insides go all squirmy?

“I think I just need to talk to him,” I replied. Then I said something different. And I still don’t know where it came from.

“Have you ever been in love, Jessie?” I asked.

She sighed. There was pain in that exhalation. Pain and something else — frustration, maybe.

She had.

Clearly.

Maybe that was what was making her do all that stuff to herself. I mean, she’d said it was ‘family stuff’, but what if it was more than that. We’re none of us living one-dimensional lives.

“You’re not “in love”, Ella,” she said, making the bunny-ears when she said the words.

“How do you know?” I asked, then — seeing the wounded look on her face, quickly followed it up with, “—How would I even know if I am?”

“Because love isn’t cartwheels and fireworks, El,” she replied. “Love is a force. Like magnetism. Love is looking at someone and knowing — knowing — that you’re meant to be together. Forever. No matter what judgments the world throws down to stop you!”

“So you have been in love?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied, growing far-away again. She kicked her heels up hard against the back of the wall we were sitting on.

“And it felt like that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied again, her tone drawing down the melancholy.

“Did they love you back?” I asked without thinking.

Jessie’s hand reached up to the round school pin that we all wore on our uniforms. She let her fingers tip up against the side of it when she replied.

“Yeah. They loved me back.”

“What happened?” I asked, suddenly aware of the weight of seriousness that had descended on the conversation.

“My parents found out,” she admitted, fiddling with the clasp at the back of the pin and taking it off.

“Your dad put a stop to it?” I asked.

She answered in a noncommittal grunt. I didn’t quite catch it, but was pretty certain it was, “Mhm.”

“What was his name? Did he go here?”

Then a terrible thought ran through me.

‘Bobby Brandon has been with half the girls in the school!’

“It wasn’t Bobby, was it?” I asked, not sure which way I wanted the answer to go.

“No,” she replied with something that might have been a grin, but not quite. “It wasn’t Bobby. They didn’t even go here.” She pulled the pin away from her chest and held it in her hand down by the other side of her.

I leaned in a little closer to her.

“What was his name?” I asked.

“Aimee,” she replied, looking away.

I nearly fell off the wall.

“Aimee?!” I asked, then caught myself in the utter lack of cool that had snatched my tone. “You loved a girl?”

I almost whispered it.

“Yeah, Ella,” she responded, her tone rising. “I loved a girl. And she loved me back. Is that so hard for you to understand?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to calm the situation. “I just didn’t see—”

“Well maybe if you didn’t walk around so completely involved in your own life for five minutes, you’d see things better,” she hit back. Her words were icicles.

What did she mean?

“Jessie, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on with me,” I replied.

She started picking at the wall by her leg with the sharp end of her pin.

“You see?” she asked. “You’ve got a lot of stuff going on with you. Everyone has stuff, Ella. I’ve got stuff. Bobby’s probably got stuff.”

“Bobby’s definitely got stuff,” I replied, trying to make light of the situation.

I recalled the way I’d had a go at my dad for only thinking about himself when he ‘apologized’ to me. I suddenly felt so hypocritical.

Jessie carried on scratching her pin into the wall on the other side of me. Her hand moved furiously with it.

“So, yeah, Ella,” she said angrily. “I like girls. I thought it was obvious. But I guess I’m just a stupid idiot for believing you’d get that.”

“I do get that,” I protested. “More than you know, I get that!”

“Then I don’t get you,” she responded quickly. “When I first told you I thought Bobby liked you, you looked terrified. You never talk about boys. I just figured that maybe you–” The volume of her voice was rising. And she was scratching her pin back and forth furiously on the other side of her body.

Where was all this anger coming from?

Why was she getting so—?

Oh no.

“Jessie,” I asked, my heart hammering against my chest. “Do you like me?”

She moved the back of her hand up to her eyes and wiped something away. There was blood on her fingers!

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, rising. I could see the brickwork where she had been sitting, clean and untouched by her scratching. Then what had she been working that pin against?

Oh double-no.

“Only a stupid idiot would like me,” she said, scrunching up her bloodied hand. Then she left.

There are times in friendships when you need to go after the other person and sort out an argument before the wound has the chance to fester. Otherwise, the relationship will rot slowly from the inside and cold words become cold deeds become cold worlds. But there are other times when you need to let the other person grieve, be by themselves. And if you try to force an opening before it’s time, then the friendship cracks and shatters. As I sat through the rest of morning school and waited for lunch to come, I had the feeling that this was neither of those times. That both going after her and not going after her would lead to the same ruinous end.

What could I say? That I didn’t like girls? That would be a lie. I’d had crushes on girls before. There was a time when I’d even wondered what it might be like to be in a romantic relationship with Jessie. How far our friendship – our love for each other – could go. If we let it. Beyond the platonic, certainly. Beyond friends. Because that’s the thing with a best friend. You might not kiss or cuddle or do stuff with each other, but there is a depth of passion that runs deeper than any love affair. A swell of devotion that drives you to do anything to keep that person safe and warm and loved and in your life. And right now, that depth and swell ran cold and dark in me.

Part of me – the part that desperately wanted to be accepted as a girl more than anything else – kept saying in my head, ‘Girls like boys!’ And even though I knew that girls can also like girls, that desperate part of me was choking down my open-mindedness; my woke broke open by a yearning for acceptance; the het in me was winning out. If I had a boyfriend, especially one who already knew my secret – as Bobby Brandon surely must – everyone would stop seeing me as confused or pretending or in a phase. Everyone would accept me for who I am. It was a vain hope, perhaps, but hope nonetheless.