Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute(31)
Her laugh is cautious this time, like she’s worried she’s pissed me off. “You don’t have to—”
“No, it’s fine.” I sigh, mostly because I think Aurora is like a cat—very sensitive to bad vibes. I don’t want her to think I’m annoyed. I mean, I am annoyed, but not with her. Why is everyone bringing the past up today? Her, Brad…
Whatever. Who cares? “We go to the same school.” But she already knew that after our introductions earlier. I pick at a loose thread on my pajamas.
“Have you known each other long?” She sounds interested, and not in a gossipy way, just a normal, curious way. It occurs to me that no one really knows the full story of Bradley and me. Our parents know the, er, parent-safe parts (you can’t tell them all your feelings, or they’ll get upset; that’s just a basic of proper parent-care), and Michaela knows…the surface stuff? But I never got into detail with her because by the time we became friends, there wasn’t any point. Brad and I hated each other; everyone knew it; people barely remembered what we’d been before. It was the Mandela Effect; it was a mass hallucination. Brad and Celine? God, they’ve been enemies since birth.
That’s not the truth.
I wonder if Brad tells his perfect, plastic friends about the way we used to be. I wonder if he tells his only likeable mate Jordan Cooper about me, and whether they talk about it seriously, the way they sit under that weeping willow on the field and talk about books.
“Our mums are best friends,” I explain, “and we’re the same age so we were best friends too. We applied to the same secondary school and stuck together, and I was…well.” I take a breath and when I exhale it shakes. “In primary school, I was the kid everyone made fun of.”
“That’s rough,” Aurora says wryly. “Obviously, I can’t relate.”
After a second of silence, we both burst into laughter. It’s the kind that knits your stomach muscles together but releases something deeper. I speak again, and it’s easier now. “When I made friends with Brad, I thought we were both…you know…He’s really short-sighted. He got contacts for football, but he used to wear these Coke-bottle glasses, and he had acne.” He still gets acne sometimes. He puts these star-shaped stickers on his face and everyone thinks it’s mind-blowingly cool, but if I get a single spot (which I do, twice a month, like clockwork), I get comments on TikTok telling me to wash my face. My theory is, there’s a special something that certain people just have, something that makes everyone around them breathless and witless with adoration. And he has it. He’s always had it.
But I’m distracting myself when I should just get this over with. “I assumed we’d be bullied together,” I admit, “and I thought we could handle that. We didn’t need to, though, because it turns out when Brad is on your side, that stuff just doesn’t happen.” So guess what happens when he’s not on your side?
Yeah.
Oh, well.
“Even back then, no one made fun of him because he was so beautiful—” Shit. I did not mean to say that. “—and charming,” I add quickly, smoothly (I hope). “You know how he is. You like him.”
She’s blushing, appropriately shamefaced. “Well, yeah. He’s…” She waves a hand. “You know.”
“Sure,” I say dryly. “I know.”
“Honest!” she laughs, blushing harder. “He’s so honest! You feel how much he means everything, like…like he cares about every single word he says to you.”
Yeah, I do feel that. It’s rocket fuel to the fire when he insults me. But four years ago, he squashed that quality, he squashed himself, to fit into a social box that wasn’t made for him. Brad is so much more than the popular crowd’s Nice Guy or the prettiest girl in school’s boyfriend. (Thank God that thing with Isabella Hollis didn’t last too long because watching him French-braid her hair in the cafeteria was honestly a gut-wrenching, nauseating travesty of hygiene and at one point I was on the verge of shaving her head for the good of the school biosystem and—)
Anyway. The point is: he was Bradley Fucking Graeme and he was too special to play a crudely drawn role in some tacky 2000s high school movie. But he didn’t even know it.
I tried to tell him. But he didn’t want to hear.
Silence rings in my ears and I realize I haven’t spoken for a while. Instead, I’ve been sitting here glaring daggers at thin air while Aurora watches me with patience and a hint of alarm. “Sorry,” I say, clearing my throat.
“It’s okay.” She shrugs. “If you went on much longer, I was just gonna push you until you laid down, then turn off the lights.”
I snort. “We can go to bed if you want. I know I’m rambling.”
“We’re in bed,” she says, stretching pointedly and punching her pillow. “Finish the story. I’ll tell you one tomorrow, but it probably won’t be half as interesting.”
I roll my eyes and lie down, but after a second, I keep talking. I’m not sure if I can stop. I feel like a waterfall. “There’s really not much more to say. He decided he wanted us to be normal more than he wanted me to be myself.”
I didn’t mean to phrase it like that. I always thought my…my disgust with Bradley was about his own choices, about principles, not about the fact that he’d wanted something better than me and left when I couldn’t be it.