This is not the story of a happy girl.
I mean, once, maybe, it could have been. But generally? Now? Not so much.
I guess I should start at the beginning: no surprise here, the beginning happens to be a boy.
I was in tenth grade when a senior boy decided he wanted me, hell or high water. Problem was, I didn't want him. At all. I thought, at the time, that I had everything a nerdy academic girl could want or need. Good grades, good friends, cute clothes, and more than enough time spent in drama club and on the newspaper. But my many opinions about how unnecessary he was, and his eye color being all wrong, or his problem skin, or his regrettable haircut, didn't really matter to him. By the time I was aware of how insignificant that part of me really was to him, the part that thought and felt and cared, it was really too late for the rest of me, because he had already taken the only part he cared about.
Honestly, I thought my life was over right then and there. And for a while, sort of, it was. I didn't care about anything except the uneasy feeling in my own skin, as if every bit of me was crawling with spiders just below the surface where I couldn't reach. Even when I slept, all I thought of was the creeping in my legs and my belly. I was never really afraid of creepy-crawlies before, but just knowing that they were inside me, eating away at the pieces that didn't matter, started to eat away at the parts that did. I tried to cut them out of me. Shockingly, it didn't work.
I carried on this way for months. Crawling that wouldn't stop, nightmares that wouldn't end, and a girl who could barely even write an article on the Homecoming football game. In all of it, though, there was one bright spot. Another boy, can you believe it? Tyler listened to me talk about everything that followed The Day, although The Day itself was a topic we would never go near. In his way, though, I think he saved me. My skin stopped moving; my legs stopped scarring; and my Ophelia monologue, while a bit too easily believable for my taste, didn't completely suck.
One day after school, we were having one of our conversations, when my mouth apparently decided I had nothing to lose before it finished talking to my brain first. "Tyler, what would you do right now if I kissed you?"
"I... what? What would I do if you what?"
"If I kissed you."
"I... well... I've never really had much interest in... um. In that. Not to say that you're not my type, or anything, though. If you know what I mean by 'not my type.' By which I mean I'm totally not gay or anything. ...I should probably stop talking now, shouldn't I?"
"So, you're saying that you don't want me to kiss you."
"I mean that I just wouldn't know how to react to it. Especially, you know, considering."
"Considering what?" I asked him, now feeling just a bit defensive and maybe a little crawly.
"Considering the situation and all. You've got like... I don't know, the only way I can think of to say it is 'issues.' You've got issues. And while I'm happy to listen, I'm not really prepared to deal with all of that, you know, full time."
Oh, really. Glad I asked first.
"Right. So just because I'm a little sad, because some guy violated me, you think I've got too many 'issues' for you. Isn't that great? I think it's fucking excellent. Fine. Forget I said anything."
"But, Lena, I didn't... please wait?"
"No, really. Forget that I said anything. Forget I said anything at all."
And that was the end of Tyler.
I refused to speak to him, despite my now-recurring nightmares and my crying jags in the ladies' room by the band hall. He might have tried to explain himself; I was never really sure. I know I got letters in my locker in his handwriting. I also know I threw them all away. I pretended I didn't care that I had lost my best friend and the only person I had told what I was going through. I returned to my former friends and the appearance of my former glory, getting my grades back together and going out for editor of the paper. But what was really happening was sometimes quite a bit different.
Enter Andrew.
I feel like this would be so strong if not for this sentence: "In all of it, though, there was one bright spot. Another boy, can you believe it?"
ReplyDeleteI like reading about boys, but for the average reader, feeling like she is going through someone's Pokemon card collection, one card to the next without much transitioning, might not be appealing and feels even a little trite. My thought? Right now, as it stands, don't go so quickly from one boy to the next. The writing itself is strong, but unless you've got somewhere specific you are trying to get to quickly, don't forget that you have 50,000 words. Take your time. Don't sound like Lauren after too much whiskey where she rambles out one boy story after the next. Again, like a collection.
Excited to see more. Love some of the lines. Ophelia monologue seems out of place. I think we need to know the narrator a little better before we get some of these windows into her brain, such as "when my mouth apparently decided I had nothing to lose before it finished talking to my brain first." I think we need to know that she talks like that/thinks like that before that appears because it is a little too casual/vernacular-y for what would be, what, page 4 or something?
But, YAY. KEEP GOIN' LADY.