Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(41)

“But the show’s over. So what about now?”

I begin to feel the blood rush out of my head, the start of a small panic attack. Right now we’re discussing the speculative fiction I’m writing about you and your maybe-girlfriend.

“Nothing important,” I say.

He nods.

“And I hang out with people here, too. I have hang partners,” I add.

“Well, there’s Ashley’s sister,” he says, teasing.

“Yeah.”

“And there’s . . .” He pretends to think. “An old woman.”

I laugh again, my anxiety dissipating.

“Seriously, though, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I mostly hang out with other kids in my improv class. We just get along really well. School isn’t really where most of my friends are.”

“Well!” I say brightly, trying not to come off too caustic. “You really seem to be spreading your wings this year, you li’l social butterfly.”

“Yeah. I know.” His response is weirdly ambivalent, and he hangs his head a little. Good! He should. Or: I like him, and he shouldn’t. Depends on what precise second you ask me.

“You’re like the boy She’s All That,” I say. “The glasses come off, and bam.”

“Yeah, I’ve got that little red dress, too.” He shovels dirt over a bulb, then goes: “Wait, no, that’s you.”

I blush. Then I surprise myself by asking, with pure curiosity: “How does it feel?”

“How does what feel?”

“To be popular.”

He scoffs. “I’m not p—”

“Shut up. Don’t do that bullshit; we’ll all be dead someday, and you’ll have wasted time.”

He stands, thoughtful, for a moment.

“Weird,” he says. Then admits, “Good.”

I nod and wait for him to elaborate. Mostly for him to admit to aiding Jason and co. in their reign of terror. He doesn’t.

Instead, he asks, “How does it feel to be smart?”

“Um, hello. Thirty-seven. A score not found in nature. You’re asking the wrong person.”

He shakes his head.

“I don’t mean good in school. You’re the smartest person I know.”

“Not really,” I mumble, uncomfortable.

“I’ve always thought . . .” He blushes. “Like, there’s one thing you’re really, really good at, but you don’t talk about it or tell anybody. I’ve always thought you were hiding some giant thing.”

Always thought. My face burns. He thinks about me. For some reason, I feel exposed and immediately want to shock him or put him off as much as possible.

So I say, “It’s my giant cock.”

“Very funny.”

“My huge, veiny monster cock. It’s incredibly unwieldy.”

“Scarlett,” he says, sort of chastising, looking straight at me.

My face burns like I’m divulging some enormous shameful secret. “I like writing.”

“Like poetry?”

“God no.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. Stories, I guess. Maybe . . . novels? I hate how that sounds, though. I don’t know. Let’s not talk about it.”

“Okay.”

We dig in silence some more, until he says: “So are we going to plant this Georgia O’Keeffe steez, or, like . . .”

“Totally, bring that vagina flower over here.”

His turn to blush. He brings it over, and we plant it together, like some weird on-the-nose sex metaphor. I wonder if he’s slept with Ashley. As if he can tell what I’m thinking, he gives me a frustratingly inconclusive nonanswer.

“We’re not official. Ashley and me, I mean.”

“Like, not BF-GF.”

“Definitively. No. Not.”

“What do you want me to do with that information, exactly?”

He shrugs. Guys are so unfair. One shrug, and I’m lying in bed that night replaying the whole scene, every look he shot me, feeling a weird and very real glow I’ve never really felt before.

So I do what I always do when I have two feelings that are pulling me in opposite directions: I write it for the BNFs. Basically the exact conversation Gideon and I had in the garden, albeit continuing the Ordinaria metaphor I’ve built into the previous installments.

As I hit Post, I felt weirdly exposed, like all my sentences were stripped of their woolen layers and stood there naked, unprepared for the elements.

But the BNFs had asked for it. Instead of lofty fights about morals or ideals, they seemed to want me to write . . . what happened, and how I felt about it. That is, how Scarlett felt about it. I mean, that Scarlett. Or—you know what I mean.

xLoupxGaroux: Good stuff.

DavidaTheDeadly: all right, i’m coming around on this pairing. there’s def some meaty stuff here.

WillianShipper2000: idk i don’t really see sideon . . .

DavidaTheDeadly: it’s all about the character-building now! ashbot still has the furthest to go . . . but that’s by design, clearly. i mean it’s all there on her twitter

Scarface: wait what twitter?

DavidaTheDeadly: Ashbot’s twitter, isn’t it you?