“Yeah, Will’s a perfect angel! That’s why he’s got it into his head now that he wants to share her with you. Think about when she finds out that you guys are playing tricks on her behind her back. I bet she’ll be happy.”
I didn’t answer. She was provoking me.
She wanted the classicI don’t give a fuck about her, but why give her that satisfaction? She always tried to leave a trail of fire around me. I found it endearing, like her words could prevent me from getting into bed with the first guy or girl who turned up. She’d done it with Ari too. She’d tried to push her away, but it wasn’t hard to understand that if it wasn’t Ari, it would be another.
“I don’t get all the hype around the new girl. She has a pretty face, okay, so what? She’s ten pounds too heavy and dresses like we did when we were in elementary school. She says something embarrassing every time she opens her mouth. What’s so special about her?”
My silence was destabilizing Taylor. She started biting her thumbnail.
Taylor could’ve brought any guy at school to his knees and made him hang on to her lips. She could’ve gotten anyone. I wondered why she insisted on wasting time with someone who would only make her suffer forever. Her narrow eyes got dark all the sudden.
“James, don’t do it.”
All this talking was making me tired. I was exhausted from practice. I needed a shower, and I couldn’t concentrate.
I turned the vape pen off then headed to the bathroom. Taylor followed me, carefully watching my every move as I opened the cabinet door and rummaged through the little yellow containers. Creating the fucking illusion of being strong. That was what I was an expert in. But deep down, I knew I wasn’t. That little sly voice in my head told me that I’d never be enough. To be my own boss, I’d have to free myself of the compulsive need to seek others’ approval and the habits that imprisoned me and led me to feed off others’ admiration. Besides, I’d been depending on the drugs I’d been taking since I was little.
Every time that I looked at myself in the mirror, I tried to imagine that I wasn’t Edward anymore, wasn’t kid my mom never wanted. But he was the one who rebelled, wanting me to take off the mask until I shed everything. Even my own clothes.
I didn’t blame others for the love-hate relationship they’d established with me, because it was the same relationship I had with my body. I loved excess because thanks to that I could feel how anyone should feel: sure of themselves and capable of doing anything. I yearned for extremes. Maybe that was my nature, but I didn’t love the way that I felt after at all.
After a fight, after getting laid, after a night of drugs, after getting drunk, I went back to being me, the same six-year-old who was scared to be alone at night in the dark because nobody cared about him. The mask fell quickly, and the other side of the coin was darker. So I ended up hating my body in those moments. Maybe because it was my body itself with its perfect appearance that created the illusion that there was something good inside me. And the others fell for it. It was exactly that outer packaging they wanted, not me.
I’d never been capable of hiding rage. Those who didn’t know me could’ve assumed I used people, but it wasn’t like that. I just used my body because I was taught that it was the only good thing in my possession. At night, I destroyed it mercilessly with drugs; during the day, I destroyed it with drugs.
But there wasn’t a preset time for violence, just unbridled seeking it out, which seemed like a cure-all for the body that sought to keep itself alive every day. I let others access it without selfishness, as if all those clashes and that intimacy could somehow help me defend myself from the memories, nightmares, and disappointments.
And when White looked at me with those innocent eyes, she definitely couldn’t imagine how much depravity there was under there.
I continued to argue with my image in the mirror. Tiffany would’ve called me vain.
Tiffany had so many qualities, but she definitely didn’t pay attention to detail because otherwise she would’ve realized that I loved to look at myself in the mirror, but never in the eye.
“You should never appear weak to anyone,” the coach had said when he put me on the team in ninth grade.Oh no? Even if I’ve been weak for my entire childhood?That was what I would’ve wanted to ask him.
But I didn’t. It would’ve been an uncalled-for provocation, and the football coach didn’t care if I’d been sneaking off to Will’s house every time I could. Nor did he care about why I ran away from home when I’d seen my mom leave my dad, remarry her first husband, and then fall into depression.
I spent almost every night at Brian and Amelia’s.
Amelia was my first kiss, and Brian was my second.
He punched me, then he spat on the ground in disgust. But I didn’t get offended because there weren’t many other places where I felt safe besides theirs.
Mrs. Hood always came home late from work, but when she got home, she’d roll up the blankets and sit on the easy chair to watch us for hours until she crashed.
I often wondered if she was scared to sleep alone too. But then we grew up, and the bed was starting to get smaller. Amelia had always dated older guys while Brian imprisoned his heart to give it to the wrong girl for years.
Maybe it was his way of avoiding reality.
And while I was left to my own devices when I was a kid, puberty changed things. I felt like an adult by the time I was thirteen. I didn’t ask for it. It was adolescence that overwhelmed me. I’d started middle school, and seeing girls who elbowed each other just for the right to be able to call me their boyfriend was an everyday thing. That didn’t happen to Will.
Jackson had braces and all of them avoided him because he was too tall. Marvin on the other hand wasn’t smart enough for girls that age. I met Taylor in seventh grade. She was the typical bitch who would defend me always and no matter what. And I was jealous of her. She was strong, her dad loved her, and she knew how to shoot well at that age. She told everyone that we’d be married one day, until one day Tiffany showed me how good she was at French kissing. Years went by, and Tiffany showed me so many other things that she knew how to do with her tongue, without ever telling her friend.
I met Ari in high school. She was shameless enough to hit on me repeatedly despite Will and Brian falling at her feet. Amelia on the other hand was pushed around by older guys, but at night she’d let me embrace her.
“Why don’t you leave? I need to be alone.”
Taylor froze at my rudeness, but was floored by my request. I understood this from how she lowered her head but showed no signs of moving. Instead, her pained expression lasted a moment. Now her look had become a white-hot glare. “Can you put yourself in my shoes?” she asked with all the selfishness that she was capable of.
