Fall in May

~41~ The Secret Bathroom

"Can you put me down on the baby changing station against the wall?" May taps my shoulder back towards the wall behind us.

"The baby changing station on the wall?" Which turns out to be a long shelf securely attached to the wall. "Okay, that's not weird at all."

"Yeah, apparently the government says they have to have at least one on campus for teen mothers? So of course, they threw it in here, just to be super special." May quirks a small smirk. "Truth be told, we don't really have any of those teen mother types here. But it does make an excellent lunch bench. Oh, and I've heard a very a popular place to make out spot with the Other chicks, but I digress."

I place May carefully down on the thick foldout station and back off to let her arrange herself to her liking. I see the April has stationed herself in front of the long wall mirror, inspecting the cutting edge of her ponytail. Will the vanity never end?  

"So here we are." May sighs and adjusts herself on the bench to comfortable. "Now before either one of you say anything, will you please...just not? Because I want you to both listen to what I have to say for a minute. Some of which each of you might have heard before, some you haven't. You think you can both do that for me, please?"

"Of course," I reply in rote.

"Okay May, have it your way." April quips from the mirror, where her sharper image is already rolling her eyes.

"So first off, I wanted to say that I'm sorry to you both, for whatever happened between you two yesterday. The whole thing was my fault, and I should have known better." May shakes her head sadly. "So for that, I am sorry to both of you."

"It wasn't your fault, May." I murmur not wanting to slow her roll.

"Yeah, actually it kinda was, but just not for the reasons you think." May frowns down at her hands. "I know you both well enough, that I should have known that something like that could happen? Especially, if I pushed you together under difficult circumstances. But that's the thing ...I know you both."  

"See Darren, the thing is, I don't tell your truths to April. And conversely, I don't tell April's truths to you either." May rocks her crown slowly.

"April, I don't tell you everything I know about Darren because he's a private person, and he asked me not to. He trusted me enough not to run around talking about him behind his back, even to you. Which I do my best not to." May's shades slide obliquely to where I am leaning against the wall. "So I only tell you both the truths that belong to me alone."

"Darren, you were right when you said that April is my sister and she should come first." She nods through the thought. "So whether or not you can understand this or not? April is the only family I have in the world that I truly love and trust. So you should know that there is a lot more to her than the façade she lets people see. There are a lot of things that you don't know about my sister that are unbelievably stellar. Without her I probably would have been lost a long time ago."

"Seriously." April breathes under her seethe.  

"Something else you probably already figured out about me is that I don't really deal well with personal problems. I tend to just not deal." May breathes in deeply and then launches into her truth.

"So back in the middle of my freshmen year just before the Christmas break, I heard some things about myself. Some really mean things actually? The sort of things that I was meant to 'overhear'." She actually air quotes for effect. "I don't really want to get into exactly what I heard or who said it? But suffice it to say none of it was very nice. Fact is that it really kind of hurt a lot, actually."