Between the Lines

- 6 -

Braden

I am an unbelievable douche bag. I think as I watch her rustle in her bag under her desk. What the hell is she doing down there anyway? For a mad moment, I think she’s looking for a gun in there. She might be. It’s the quiet ones that snap, or so I’ve heard. If she comes up with a gun and-

BOOM!

Christ. I swear I almost pooped a little. I’m here contemplating her looking for a gun and then she slams her book on the desk like that! Who does that?

I want to say something, but what? Do I tell her, “God, I really thought you just shot me?” Yeah, that’s not weird. Maybe I should follow up with something clever and romantic like “Ya know, I sit behind you every day and while I eat pop tarts, I stare at your ….” That’d be gold. How would she respond? I’m almost tempted to find out, but she cuts me off.

“Okay, fine. You’re right. Love is the easiest kind of conflict.”

Her eyes are glazed, and I’ve had enough experience in my life to know that this means I was indeed a douche bag, and I hurt her. It wasn’t necessary, she just hit a nerve, and I suck at not retaliating.

I’m not sure which part of my rambling it was that did the trick, but it doesn’t really matter. She didn’t really deserve it, but then again…she comes off so bitchy to me. We’ve been in the same class for years, and she thought my name was Brian?

I breathe out a barely audible sigh and try to get her to look at me when I talk again, but she doesn’t look at me, and I don’t know if that’s a good sign, or a really bad one.

“I’m an unbelievable douche bag,” I say flatly. Whatever response I thought she might give disappears after a few awkward seconds. Not because there is no response, she has definitely responded to what I said, just not in a way that I even considered.

She wrote what I said down on the paper. Exactly. In quotation marks. What?!

“I-I-um-what just happened?” I ask feeling the thoughts blow out of my brain like air from a balloon.

“It’s the start of the story,” she says, but I can’t tell what her emotion is when she says it. She’s always so…I dunno…sterile? Is that the word I want? Is she ‘sterile’ when she talks to me?

“It wasn’t supposed to be,” I reply, whispering but trying to convey urgency. “I’m trying to apologize. I was a dick, and I’m sorry. I don’t know why, but sometimes my mental filters fail and what should stay inside my head comes spewing out.”

She’s not saying anything, and she still won’t look at me. Christ, I hate myself sometimes!

“It’s a good start though,” she finally says, and though she doesn’t actually accept my apology, it kind of sounds like there’s a note of forgiveness in her voice. I hope so.

“Is it? I wouldn’t know. When I write, it usually comes out so, here’s my word of the day again, ‘sterile’. I always hate what I write because it doesn’t sound anything at all like what I think. It’s sterile. And…I really need a thesaurus.”

“How is that your word of the day?” she asks, and I catch a single second of her looking at me, and by God, that is definitely a good sign!

“I-um-I-crap. Ignore me, just write before I say something else stupid,” I reply quickly, trying not to piss all over this potential second chance to converse with her.

Well, not really a “second” chance so much as a third. Because there was that one time last year. That was my first chance, and that went-uh-well-it kind of turned out cheesier than the off-Broadway version of Cats we had just finished watching. And I hope to God she remembers that conversation about as well as she remembered my name. Which is to say, not at all!

“I am an unbelievable douche bag,” she says and I instantly respond emphatically.

“No! You’re not! I am! I got all defensive when you were just pointing out something that I took the wrong way! You’re not…”

“Woah! Easy, tiger!” She interrupts and again I catch her eyes for just a second before she looks back away. “I was reading our first line,” she says, and I see the corners of her mouth turn up in the slightest way. “Let’s just get back to it. Okay?”

“Okay,” I agree and I watch as she closes the quotes on our opening line and then continues from the words of the second character.

“I am an unbelievable douche bag.”

“At times, yes. And I don’t know why, but it doesn’t bother me like it probably should. I just don’t understand why you sometimes act like that.”

“I just-well, did you ever watch the Batman movie? The one with Keith Ledger as Joker?”

“Heath.”

“What?”

“Heath. His name was Heath Ledger, but yeah, I saw it.”

“Heath?! Like, named after the candy bar? Weird. Anyway, there was this line where he says something like ‘Do I look like a man with a plan?! I just…DO things!’  And that’s how I feel. Aaaallll the time.”

I stare at the words on that page before me mesmerized. I don’t know how she just did that, but she spewed out a pair of characters and a starting point that is wide open without even trying.

I look at her with my eyes wide and my mouth agape. And when I speak, I hope she hears a bit of the awe I feel for her and what she does to me.

“God, you’re sick!”