The Exact Opposite of Okay(23)
6.24 a.m.
I can’t sleep and my alarm is going to go off soon anyway, so I’m rereading texts from last night. There are some from Ajita, some from Danny, and some from both Danny and Ajita in our three-way group chat. I haven’t responded to any.
Ajita’s:
Babe, Danny told me what happened. Can you call me so I know you’re okay and not in a ditch somewhere? I know your crying episodes are invariably followed by half-hearted attempts to drink bleach. I’m worried. Love you xo
I’m getting pissed at you. You know when I’m worried my body temperature escalates, and then I start to sweat, and then I inevitably break out in zits for at least a week. So: fuck you! Love from Ajita’s epidermis xo
(I do love you though. And you are not a bad person. Stalin was a bad person. You are lovely. See you tomorrow. xo)
Danny’s:
I’m sorry, Iz :(
I thought it’s what you wanted. I never would’ve done it if I didn’t.
Please, don’t let this ruin our friendship. You’re too important to me.
Ajita and Danny in the group chat:
*lots of phallic vegetable emojis*
I hate them both, and I love them both. And now I’m crying again.
Maybe if we all put our heads together we can invent a Ctrl+Alt+Z option for horrible life decisions?
9.17 a.m.
After about seven seconds of sleep I go to school looking like something out of a zombie movie. Throughout history and economics, which I have without Ajita and Danny, my gut twists so severely I think I might actually have developed bowel disease over the last few hours.
In my head I play out a number of detailed scenarios in which Danny a) burns me at the stake in some kind of tribute to Satan, his lord and savior, while Ajita watches on and cackles manically, b) designs some actually rather impressive posters featuring Sim-like versions of us mating on the couch and plasters them all over the school, and c) makes human nachos by covering me in cheese, salsa and sour cream then baking me in the oven like some kind of Mexican Hansel and Gretel.
Judging by these worryingly elaborate hallucinations it’s possible that lack of sleep and severe emotional trauma have rendered me delusional and insane.
I mean, I’ve always been the kind of overthinker who has full-blown confrontations with people entirely in my brain. Sometimes I even imagine myself into a bad mood with a person, even though they’re entirely unaware that we fell out inside my head. This usually occurs in the shower, for lack of anything better to do. So I’m no stranger to having fantasy arguments. But the human nacho thing is a bit far-fetched, even for me.
On the plus side, by the time third period has come around and it’s time to face the music, it’s clear that no matter how terribly it goes, it cannot be as messed up as my daydreams.
Because economics is on the other side of campus, it takes me so long to get to biology that class has already started by the time I flump into the seat behind him.
He doesn’t turn around, but Ajita does, and winks at me to let me know she’s not mad at me for potentially smashing our friendship group into smithereens. To be fair, she does have an impressive cluster of zits forming on her chin, and I make a mental note to buy her some peanut butter cups to apologize to her ravaged epidermis.
I then proceed to stare at the back of Danny’s head for forty-five minutes. Again, maybe it’s the lack of sleep, but it feels like I’m looking at a stranger’s neck; like our kiss somehow transformed his physical vessel into something I no longer recognize. His pale skin, covered in a thin layer of pale peach fuzz and tiny moles, is strange and unfamiliar.
Guilt presses in on me from all angles, and I’m in real danger of bursting into tears all over again.
The bell rings and it reverberates right through my skull, and the shuffling of bags and squeaking of chairs over the linoleum sparks a fresh wave of anxiety. When he turns to me, I plaster the most absurd grin on my face.
He looks tired as hell. Forget bags under his eyes, they’re damn shopping carts, and they’re indisputable evidence that he’s been obsessing just as hard as I have.
“Iz.” He shuffles from one foot to the other, rubbing the back of his stranger’s neck.
“Hey.” And right then my unfaltering [ahem] situational judgment kicks in, and I innately know this is not the place to have it out, so I add, maintaining the ludicrous axe-murderer smile, “Let’s talk at lunch?”
He smiles back, probably relieved not to have to spill his guts all over room 506B. Ajita sees the temporary truce and moseys over to us.
“Hey, kids. Wanna run lines on the way to drama?”
We then skip (sort of) to the theater side by side, reading from our Great Gatsby scripts and obnoxiously crashing into lockers/students/water fountains/Mr Rosenqvist as we channel our Academy Award-worthy thespian technique. It’s insane really, and I know I’ve taken it too far when I add a Jamaican accent, but it makes them laugh and honestly, that’s the only thing in the world I care about right now.
Like Carson Manning, lunch comes too fast.
Ajita grabs our usual table and enough fries for an entire battalion, then sends us outside to talk it out. There are some woods behind the sports hall, and in our bid to get far enough into them that nobody will hear us, we pass a few fourteen-year-olds smoking a squashed pack of cigarettes, as well as our phys ed teacher jumping through the trees like a chimp to build his functional fitness. I think he’s one of those CrossFit douchebags; I don’t know.