The Exact Opposite of Okay(21)
I want to ask him how school’s going, but at the same time I don’t want him to feel crappy about the fact we’ve been discussing his lack of friends behind his back. So instead I say, “All fine and dandy. I hear you’ve been hanging out with Danny. Playing video games and such.”
He nods. “Yeah. He’s a cool guy.”
There’s a weird silence I’ve never really experienced with Praj before. He’s definitely going through an awkward adolescent phase. His voice broke over the summer, and he still looks uncomfortable with the way it sounds.
I take a sip of the smoothie to be polite, and even though it looks like sludge it tastes pretty good. I thank him for looking out for my arteries and wave him off as he heads to practice.
Heading down to the basement I spot Danny’s sneakers by the door, and the nerve-rhinos start mating in my large intestine. Logically I know I don’t owe him a damn thing, but guilt’s a funny and unpredictable beast.
Sometimes Ajita is not a good person to have in the room during a time of tension. She’s a master of manipulation and orchestrates the most wonderfully uncomfortable situations and conversations, which is quite entertaining when you’re not on the receiving end of her shrewd witchcraft, but not so much when you are a mere pawn in her game of distress chess.
She’s curled up in the armchair like a smug python, leaving Danny and me to sit up close and personal on the two-seater sofa. The beanbag has conveniently been tidied away. I bet she paid Prajesh ten bucks to take it to his room and fart on it, thus rendering it useless for the purpose of this debrief. All I’m saying is if she ends up with pink eye I will not offer her even the slightest bit of sympathy.
My first clue that Danny knows ALL THE THINGS is that he doesn’t look up when I “accidentally” trip down the last three stairs. Ajita snorts like a wild boar. Danny sits rigidly. I flump into the seat next to him.
“What’s up, guys?” I ask, cheerier than Mrs Cheery during National Cheeriness Week, helping myself to a handful of nachos from the table. They’ve barely touched them, which is another sign that it’s not just my imagination – there is definitely An Atmosphere.
Ajita eyeballs me, and without the handy indicators of physical violence, I’m struggling to translate. Probably: tread carefully, he’s pissed. Which makes me pissed, to be honest, as he does not have ownership of my vagina by any stretch of the imagination, and really what right does he have to make me feel like shit for acting on said vagina’s natural urges?
So I throw him a trademark Izzy O’Neill curveball. “How was Michelle Obama Junior?” I ask, grinning and nudging him in an old-buddy-old-pal kind of manner.
I feel like this is a strong tactic, focusing the attention on his behavior rather than my own, until he mutters, “How were Vaughan and Carson and the rest of the basketball team?”
As I flinch, Ajita says, “I’ll be upstairs,” which surprises me because usually she thrives on this quite rare level of severe awkwardness. Even more upsettingly, she takes the nachos with her, and I feel their absence deep in my soul.
The door at the top of the stairs bangs shut behind her, and I hate myself, I really do, but I start smirking. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I think our bodies are hardwired to respond to extreme tension with uncontrollable laughter. It’s that thing where your teacher tells you to stop giggling and it just makes you giggle even more and then you get sent out of the room to calm down, and you think you’ve managed it, but then as soon as you come back in you collapse into another fit of hysteria. Yeah, that.
“It’s not funny, Izzy,” Danny snaps.
The TV flashes silently in the corner, illuminating the purple velvet on the pool table. There’s an abandoned game still set up from before I arrived.
“Why isn’t it?” I ask, sincerely wanting to know the answer.
“Do you really want to spread that kind of reputation for yourself??” His voice is colder than the North Pole pre-climate change.
Suddenly I’m not laughing. Deciding to keep at the deflection tactics I’ve employed so efficiently thus far, I retort, “What’s it to you?”
“I care about you, Izzy. I don’t like seeing you make a fool of yourself.” He’s fidgeting with his man jewelry – a leather-strapped watch from some vintage shop downtown, a shark-tooth surfer bracelet that doesn’t suit him in the slightest, and a festival wristband from the summer, which all the ink has rubbed off so it’s basically just a bit of fraying plastic.
“I had a good time, Danny. I don’t see how that makes me a fool. Would you judge one of the guys for sleeping with two girls in one night?”
Now he looks up at me, aghast. “You slept with them both? I thought you just kissed Vaughan! Jesus, Izzy. What’s wrong with you?”
I’m getting mad, but am trying desperately to swallow it so I don’t drive a wedge even further between us. “Nothing is fucking wrong with me.” Okay, so I didn’t mean to curse.
“They’re both just using you.” He looks so sad, and guilt starts building inside me, even though I know it’s illogical and futile to regret anything. Actually, I know I don’t regret anything. I just don’t want to hurt him even more than I already have.
I soften my voice. “So? I’m using them too, Danny. It’s not like I’m gonna marry either of them. I’m young. I’m allowed to have fun.”