Burn Before Reading(28)
It took me two years to figure out I was worth more than nothing. And yet here she is, convinced her time and energy are better used for her Dad, not her. It burns me up inside.
This isn’t how things are supposed to be, I want to say to her. It’s alright to be a kid, for fuck’s sake. Think about yourself for once, before you think about other people. It’s okay to have your own dreams, and go for them.
Except I’ll never be able to say that to her. Not now. Not after the way she touched me, the way I reacted.
So I settle for her words. Her words don’t scowl at me. Her words don’t make me feel ashamed, or confused.
Her words don’t touch my cheek.
Chapter 8
BEATRIX
Dying from embarrassment isn't something I usually do, pen-and-paper.
Generally speaking, I prefer the whole not-dying thing to the dying thing. I've got a lot to do with my life - become a famous psychologist, a good one with a very good degree, research how to cure depression, or at least how to treat it better, and help a lot of people all around the world. Including Dad. Especially Dad.
So dying really isn't high on my list of priorities, to say the least. Studying is. Getting good grades definitely is. I remember once, when I died from embarrassment; my middle-school friends and I went to a boyband concert and lost our minds, throwing our bras on-stage, and then the boy band member I was obsessed with looked my way, looked at the bra on his feet, and wrinkled his nose with disgust. I died then. I'm pretty much a ghost. A very smart, food-loving ghost. I cringe thinking about how stupid I was back then, but the feeling is definitely the same. Except minus the fact Wolf isn't a boyband member and I'm definitely NOT his fan and also it's just so dang hard to act normal when your brain refuses to stop playing the same moment over and over and over -
"Bee?" Dad asked over his morning breakfast of orange juice. "Are you okay? You haven't touched your cereal."
Count on Dad to be aware of how I feel when I need him to be the least. "N-No, I'm fine." I take a massive bite of cheerios. "See? Shoveling food into my mouth like always. Haha."
Dad sighs. "Alright. If you say so. You can always talk to me, you know."
My heart sunk a little. It's a lie, and we both know it, but he says it anyway so he feels like a Dad.
To say I dreaded stepping foot on school grounds that day was like saying a snowman dreads a bonfire. I was terrified. Something had happened at the pool yesterday, something between just Wolf and I, and I didn't know how to handle it. It was just a tiny touch, a voice in the back of my mind says. What was the big deal? I didn't know. I mean, I know now what it was, but back then, I had no clue. It had felt...amazing. That strange shiver that ran down my spine, the way my blood felt like it started to simmer - it happened all at once because of a single fingertip to skin.
I was horrified. At myself, at what I'd done, and at how I reacted. I thought I didn't give a shit about what Wolf thought about me, but turns out I did. Especially if he went and told the whole school about it. I imagined the rumors as I drove that morning - 'The scholarship girl likes him'. I could handle the rumors about me being weird, me being poor, me being unfashionable. But liking someone? I didn't have time for that. I wasn't here - at this stupid school - for that. And liking Wolf of all people? After I very publicly declared my hate for him and his whole family? It would look like I'd fallen under his spell like everyone else in a matter of days. Like I'd succumbed. Like I was just like everyone else. I couldn't handle that. I didn't want to be like everyone else, obsessed with their looks and haute couture and their reliance on their parents' money to get them by in life.
I got out of my car, and the moment I did I could feel people staring. They know. Of course they know. My skin prickled, my face got hot. I wanted to yell at them, at someone. 'I don't like him!' I'd say. 'To me he's about as hot as the extra-grody gum on the bottom of my shoe!'
The only reason I didn't say any of that was because Kristin Degal walked up to me.
To describe Kristin is a bit like trying to describe the sun when you don't have a badass telescope - you know it's bright and hot and provides life, but you don't see the details, like the fact it's made out of plasma, and has beautiful arcing solar flares on the surface, and will summarily implode after a million trillion years. You don't know any of that. You just know it's beautiful and warm. Kristin was beautiful and warm, with soft dirty-blonde hair and a physique like an Amazonian goddess. Someone like that has to have some flaws, you protest. Of course she did. She ate with her mouth open and had the loudest, screechiest laugh I've ever heard. But she had a 4.2 GPA and a near-perfect SAT score that got her on the news. She was nice to pretty much everyone, and only person she wasn't nice to was that one guy who tried to grab her ass in the hall one time. She flipped him over her shoulder. That was the day we all learned she was also a black-belt in Judo.
Kristin smiled at me. "Hey, Bee. I'm Kristin."
"I-I know." I managed. "I've seen you...walking around."
"Walking? Some people say I strut." She mused. "Would you say I strut?"
"Uh, sort of?"
She thinks on this, then shakes her head and claps her hands. "I'm asking you weird things way too early into our friendship, aren't I? Mr. B told me you were pretty smart, so you definitely know what I'm here for."