Tell Me Three Things(59)
“So what should I do?” I ask, because Scar always knows what to do. She’s one of those wise old people trapped in a young person’s body. Her middle name is actually, I kid you not, Sage.
“What do you mean?” she asks, and sucks on the lemon from her Diet Coke. “Some guy broke up with his girlfriend and wants to ask you out? Sounds like a high-class problem.”
“Well, I just…I don’t want—”
“I think you’re kind of overthinking it all, J.” She takes a moment to look me up and down, to see the ways in which I look different from two months ago, weighing and measuring the changes. My hair is longer, because I haven’t bothered to get it cut, and I’m a few pounds thinner, mostly because Rachel is not fond of carbs. Other than that, I look exactly the same.
“Maybe. It’s just—”
“By the way, Adam is coming over later. And so is Deena.” Scar interrupts me midsentence.
“You’re friends with Deena now?”
“She’s not so bad.”
“Okay.” I bite my pizza, avoid her eyes. Scar knows I’ve always hated Deena. She tried to sabotage my friendship with Scar back when we were freshmen. Told her I was talking shit about her behind her back, when of course I wasn’t. And she’d always make these comments to me that were jabs disguised as jokes. Not elevating bullying to the art form that Gem has, but still on the mean-girl spectrum.
“You know, you’re not the only one this has been hard on.” Scar puts down her Diet Coke, and it splashes onto her plate. She hasn’t taken a single bite of pizza. “I mean, I had to make all new friends too.”
For a moment, I switch things around: think about what it would have been like if Scar had been the one who took off and I’d been the one left behind. What it would have been like to start all over with the people we have known forever. All of those people we had already chosen, for one reason or another, not to be friends with. Until now, it has never once occurred to me that my leaving happened to anyone but me.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t really think about it.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Scar!” I look into her eyes, try to gauge what’s going on. Are we fighting? Scar and I have never fought. Our friendship isn’t like that: we don’t do that teenage-girl moodiness or jockeying for positions. We’ve always just been each other’s favorites. This is new, and the shock of it, Scar being angry with me, maybe even having moved on from our friendship, makes me ache with loneliness. “What’s going on?”
Her eyes fill, and so do mine. I wanted so badly to come home, to sit in this booth that we’ve sat in hundreds of times, to just relax for maybe the first time in months. And instead, now, suddenly, I want to be anywhere but here.
No, the truth is I don’t want to be anywhere at all, because wherever I go, I still come with me. I’m stuck in this brain, in this body, in this ugly swamp of humanness.
How do I manage to screw everything up?
My first instinct is to IM SN, to unload and tell him how badly it’s all going here, how everything is flipped, how home doesn’t even feel like home, but then I remember yesterday and how he wouldn’t even drink a cup of coffee with me.
“Nothing. Forget about it.” Scar busies herself with the pizza—scatters powdered cheese, red pepper, salt.
Still doesn’t take a bite.
“Scar.” There is pleading in my voice: Let’s start over. I don’t have the energy to fight this one out. No, energy is not the problem. Courage is. I can’t bear the thought of us yelling at each other, dissecting each other’s weaknesses, saying out loud the things those who love you the most are never supposed to say. Things like what she just implied: You only think about yourself. I can’t bear the thought that we might not be friends in the aftermath of those kinds of words.
“Let’s just not talk about it, okay?” Scarlett bites into her lemon again, and a drop of bitter juice slides down her chin. I hand her a napkin.
“Okay.” I finish off my two slices, but Scar just picks hers up, dressed and uneaten, and dumps them in the trash.
—
Scarlett sits next to Adam on the couch, her legs dangled over his lap. Deena’s brother, Joe, who is a freshman at the local community college and as annoying as his sister, has brought a case of beer, perhaps the new price of admission to Scar’s parents’ basement, and Deena passes cans around even though they’re warm. Adam’s best friend, Toby, is here too, and though we’ve known each other since preschool, I’m not sure we’ve ever had an actual conversation.
Everyone looks different but the same. Adam’s face is clearer—Scar was right—and he seems less gangly and boyish, like it’s not as ridiculous a proposition that he could be somebody’s boyfriend. That Scar would choose to hook up with him. I picture Adam lifting weights he ordered from the Internet in his basement, which is exactly like the one in my old house—linoleum-covered and low-ceilinged and the perfect locale for that sort of self-conscious project. Deena seems older too, but maybe it’s just that she’s standing straighter, her scoliosis less pronounced, and she keeps whispering things into Scar’s ear and then laughing. Okay, I get it, I want to say. You guys are besties now.
“What’s LA like?” Adam asks, and then the room turns its collective attention to me, and though just a minute ago I felt stuck on the outside, I suddenly feel too much like the center of attention. Talking about LA might make Scar even angrier at me, especially when the questions come from her—boyfriend? friend with benefits?