Picture Us In The Light(33)
Harry got a ride down the hill from his dad and at my house we decided to walk to Pearlbubble. We’d gotten to the end of the street when my phone buzzed with a text from Sandra: What are you doing? I’m bored.
I could’ve just said I’m with Harry, we’re walking to get boba, you want to come? But the truth was that I didn’t want her there. Not even her in particular, nothing personal; it was just that it had been weeks since I’d seen Harry and I didn’t want his attention pulled away.
Busy right now, I wrote back. And then, because it felt too abrupt, I added, You get your class schedule already? What is it?
She didn’t answer, and I pushed away the twinges of guilt. A few seconds later Harry pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at it. There was a plummeting feeling in my stomach; I knew already, I think.
“It’s Sandra,” he said. He lifted his head and looked around. “Doesn’t she live right by here? I’ll tell her to meet us.”
If there was a plausible reason I could’ve given to say no, I couldn’t get there in time. We waited for her on the corner. She found us five or six minutes later—her house was just on the next street over.
“Well, hi,” she said, giving me a cold smile, her lips pressed together. “So nice of you to let me join you.”
I could feel my face going hot. “I thought—” And then there was nowhere to go with that one, obviously. I mumbled something about being glad she could make it. She ignored me the rest of the walk as much as you can ignore one of the two people you’re with. But—I always think about this—she could’ve made a scene in front of Harry, she could’ve revealed me as the person I was, and I would’ve deserved it, and she didn’t.
We had homeroom together the next day—it’s alphabetical, and at MV there are so many Changs/Chens/Chengs I barely made the cutoff—and she cornered me while everyone was milling around inside before the bell rang.
“Why did you ditch me like that yesterday? I thought you hated Harry, anyway.”
“He’s—” I hesitated. “He’s not the worst person ever.”
“Not the worst person ever. Right.” She crossed her arms and glared at me, for so long I felt the rest of the room fade back, all those new binders and new outfits and all that first-day-of-school energy. I wished we were outside so I could squint, hide my eyes under the guise of it being too bright. My mouth was dry. The irony was that in basically every other circumstance I always wanted to talk about Harry, wanted to feel his name on my tongue and fill the room with my thoughts of him. Sandra said, “Why did you say you were busy? I was just sitting at home. We were supposed to hang out.”
I’d had the past night to come up with a better story now. “I just thought you wouldn’t want to walk. It was hot. You hate sports.”
“Walking’s not a sport. Are you serious?”
“Well, it’s not with that attitude.” I forced a smile. She didn’t. “Fine, next time if we walk somewhere I’ll tell you. Okay?”
“I just think it’s weird you didn’t want me there. And by weird I mean you were being a dick.”
“It wasn’t you, I just—”
“I also just really didn’t want to be alone.”
She’d been like that as long as I could remember, the kind of person who gravitated toward noise and commotion and who scored off the charts in those How Much of an Extrovert Are You? quizzes online. In elementary school she used to always get in trouble for talking to other people during class, and in high school she’d go to anyone’s party even if she didn’t know a single person there. I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, whatever. Keep it.”
“I’m just—”
But she was done with the conversation; TianTian Chien had come in and Sandra was bounding over to talk to her without a backward glance, which was a rebuke, I knew, even if no one else in the room would notice. I sat down heavily, a simmering feeling in my chest. It had been one afternoon, I thought. And for all she knew I was going to hang out with her later in the day. She was overreacting. But even at the time, I think, I knew that what was masquerading inside me as pure resentment was more complicated than that, something maybe closer to a form of guilt. Which made it worse, actually. I held that against her.
Later, by the time Harry’s and my friendship was pretty widely established, Sandra told a bunch of people she thought I was a social climber. I never got past it, and a coldness filled the distance between us. If I was talking with Regina and Sandra showed up I’d usually go somewhere else, and a few times Sandra had made a big deal out of it. “It’s okay, go ahead,” she’d called after me once. “Go find someone better to talk to. Go for it. That’s right, keep walking. You’ll get more popular that way. Keep going.” That was the time I’d turned around and snapped, “Bitch.” I hate myself for it still.
By that point, Harry and Regina were going out, which seemed like a double standard given that she and Sandra were still best friends (hadn’t we both chosen Harry?), but I guess it wasn’t; it was more that Sandra thought I’d been a hypocrite, I think. Regina liked Harry from the beginning, so Sandra never judged her for that the way she did me. And maybe Regina didn’t make her feel like she’d chosen against her; I’d always suspected Harry came second for her, after Sandra. Or maybe we all just forgive the people we love, because we love them, and for no other reason than that.