Sienna
I don't wake up for another two hours but when I do, there's a throbbing pain in my head and the room around me is blurry and unfocused- but at least I can somewhat think straight. That's a small miracle after everything that just happened.
Everything that just happened...
"Oh my god!" I bolt upright, seeing Jase, who's sitting on the ground next to me, turn around, startled.
"Are you okay?" he asks, giving me a worried stare. "You were pretty out of it before."
Oh no. Oh no no no no no no no no. I was hoping that it was somehow some sort of strange concussion-induced hallucination or dream, but no. I really did ask Jase Turner to kiss me.
"Uh... yeah, sorry about that," I mumble, looking down. There's no need to recount any of this now, especially when Jase obviously doesn't feel the same. "I don't really remember what happened. One second I was chasing after Evan, and the next I woke up here. Everything in between is just a blur."
I see the relief on Jase's face and know instantly that I made the right choice. He clearly doesn't want to talk about... that... as much as I don't.
I'm not disappointed. At all. Because Jase and I are just friends. And both of us want to keep it that way. Right?
Jase spends the rest of the day in the TV room with me, though he's as moody and quiet as he was this morning, almost like something's been weighing on him. He barely looks at me in the eyes at all until my mom and Lizbeth get home when he abruptly leaves, not even casting me another glance.
I try to persuade my mother not to take me to the doctor, that I'm fine, but she ignores me- which is how I come to be sitting in the waiting room chair of Glendale County Urgent Care while my mother finishes talking the doctor's ear off about the adequate amount of rest for a concussed person and whether or not I'll ever recover and how much Advil is reasonable to take for a 5'2 teenage girl.
Finally my mother stops talking to the doctor and we leave, but I can't seem to get that god-awful smell of antiseptic and plain, scratchy soap out of my nose- the smell that brings me back to that night, three years ago. To all of the nights in waiting rooms in the year before that, pacing back and forth as calm doctors in white lab coats told us that everything would be fine.
Ha. Fine- with a kind of cancer that only had a 30% survival rate.
But he did survive. Within months, the cancer growth had started to regress, the doctors we saw ones with bright smiles on their faces, not the calm, serious look we'd almost grown accustomed to.
He and I were driving to his last round of chemo. Think of that. If we'd left just 5 minutes earlier, if I hadn't taken so long to find my earbuds...
No. This isn't my fault, I remind myself, though guilt still creeps through me. I really thought I was past this, thought the therapist I had for a few months directly after had done a good enough job convincing me that what happened really and truly was an accident.
But being in the doctor's office brings it all back.
My mother mistakes my silence on the drive home for tiredness and turns off the radio, leaving me to stare out the window, but really I'm just not in the mood to talk. Though that might just be the concussion. Apparently what started out as a very mild concussion from hitting my head on the floor of the Physics room has now become a lot worse- not severe enough for me to have permanent brain trauma or anything like that, but bad enough that I've been instructed to stay home and rest for the next week and "avoid mentally strenuous activities." My mother's already confiscated my phone.
So for the next seven days I do absolutely nothing besides learn Connie's cherry scone recipe, lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, definitely not stress about the amount of homework I'm going to have when I get back to school, lie down some more, be completely ignored by Jase, and paint my nails so many different times that I think they might honestly kill me. My mother wants me to stay home again by the time next Wednesday rolls around, but I've convinced her that I missed enough already, and so we settled on a compromise- I'm allowed to go to school for half the day, as long as I leave whatever class I'm in the second my head starts to hurt. So me and my fuschia-colored nails now stand in front of UVPHS, wondering why the hell I wanted to come back here. Maybe it was all part of the concussion. But now, as I stand here staring at the brick building, all of the stares and whispers and burning papers and bad memories of the last time I went in there it contains, I dread stepping inside more than anything else. I look back at Jase, in the parking lot talking to his friends, but he doesn't even look over at me. Well, fine then. Amazing. I don't care anyways, I decide, shaking my head, a cascade of cherry-red curls falling onto my shoulder as I do so. And then I open the door... and I'm back inside.
I guess I underestimated the power of teenagers' short attention spans and the UVPHS rumor mill, because when I walk through the hallways, I don't hear any whispers, see any side-eyes or fake pity from the girls, guys looking me up and down and winking at their friends. I'm back to being invisible again.
Though, maybe too invisible. Mayah doesn't even look up from her friends when I call her name in the hallway, or in the cafeteria. She even gets up and moves tables when I sit down next to her in Precalc.
Though that screams 'hatred' a little bit more than invisibility.
Mrs. Meyers finds it necessary to show us a 30-minute video on imaginary numbers, and my head starts to throb, so I decide to leave (yes Mom, I'm being a good child).
Directly down the hallway from the precalc room is the bathroom. I'm considering going and splashing some cold water on my face, which for some reason feels like someone just took a blowtorch to it, but this is the ancient, 50% of the time out-of-order bathroom that no one goes in at our school- unless you're one of the rich girls snorting coke at lunch- so I walk past it.
At least until I hear a small sob emanating from the room.
"Hello?" I say quietly, stepping in. It's probably nothing, just some girl PMSing, but ever since my freshman year when a girl almost overdosed on Vicodin in the school bathroom, I've decided it's better to be safe and interrupt someone who wants to be alone than risk something actually serious happening. Plus, sometimes people just want an ear to listen. They just don't know how to ask.
"Go away." I can see the outline of Louboutin heels from under the stall door, but it's the voice that makes me realize exactly who I found crying.
Chrissa fucking Thompson.
"Um... Chrissa? Is everything okay?" I ask, knocking on the stall door. It's too late to turn back now.
The door flies open and a very upset Chrissa peers out. Her usually immaculate mascara and eyeliner are now smudged all over her face (and I mean all over. Even her forehead isn't safe. I mean- how does that even happen?), her eyes are bloodshot, and her face is blotchy and red. "Who the hell are you and how do you know my na-" she asks as she steps out, though her words fade as her eyes connect with me, growing to the size of saucers. "Please tell me I'm imagining this."
"Afraid not," I shrug, leaning against the wall. "What's wrong?"
"You." This time when she says it, it's accusatory, and she's literally pointing her finger at me. "What the hell did you tell him?"
"What?" I ask, raising my brows. "What do you mean? Tell who?"
Chrissa laughs humorlessly. "Oh, you know who. And that innocent act might work on him and on the rest of this school, but it sure as hell doesn't work on me."
"Chrissa, I swear to god that I have no idea what you're talking about! Why would I even know anything about your- oh," I say, realizing what she means. She's talking about the girl I saw her making out with. "I didn't tell anyone Chrissa, I promise."
"Oh yeah?" she yells, and maybe it's my fragile skull, but I can feel the sound reverberating through the bathroom, back into my brain like an echo. It makes me wince. "Then tell me why my boyfriend just decided to break up with me, then? Because believe me, I know you told him. And I am going to ruin you."
Oh.
My.
God.
Jase just broke up with Chrissa?
"Wh-what?" I ask, my mind still reeling. I try to remind myself that this doesn't mean anything, that the two of them break up almost every month, but my head is still spinning.
Chrissa looks over to me, her eyes widening and her voice getting quieter. "You really didn't know..." she trails off incredulously. "I can't believe I just- oh my gosh, I'm a terrible person." She shakes her head, looking over at me. "I guess this is why Jase broke up with me."
"But the two of you are just going to get back together, right? That's what you always do, you break up and then in a few weeks, you're back to being a perfect, happy couple again."
"No," Chrissa shakes her head, sliding down to the floor. I join her. Clearly the girl needs all the solidarity she can get. "This time is different. It's always been me breaking up with him- after all of my friends find out he's cheating on me at a party, or because he didn't buy me the right kind of popcorn at the movie theater or because he got me the wrong roses for Valentine's Day or someone found out that he was making out with a cheerleader at his soccer game. This time... he ended it with me. He said we were-" she sobs, more mascara running down her cheeks- "that we were done, over, for good this time. That he wasn't in love with me anymore, and he knew that I wasn't with him."
"Well... to be fair, you are kind of cheating on each other. And he's the most notorious player in the school. If he doesn't see how amazing you are, then he's just an idiot."
Chrissa shakes her head. "Amazing? Sienna, I poured maple syrup on your head and set your chemistry lab on fire. I'm an awful person."
"Everyone makes mistakes, Chrissa. Even Hannah Montana knows that nobody's perfect."
Somehow she actually cracks a smile at that, sniffling and wiping a tear away from her cheek. "That was a terrible joke, by the way."
"Nevermind. I take it back. You really are an awful person," I grin at her.
She rolls her eyes at me, but then something brings her back to the present moment. "Oh god," she says softly. "Please tell me I'm not sitting here with you while you make awful jokes and Jase and I are over and soon everyone's going to find out that I'm- I'm- bisexual." She sobs, her crying echoing through the whole bathroom. "And- and then I'm going to get kicked off the cheerleading team and then everyone's going to hate me and I'm going to be a loser-"
"Chrissa- I don't care that you're bi. Why do you think everyone else is going to? I mean, we live in 2020, I think people can be a little more progressive-"
She sighs, leaning back, her head resting on the wall as she reaches up for a paper towel to blow her nose. "You don't get it, Sienna. I know everyone thinks it's no big deal and you think you're so progressive and welcoming- but the truth is," she says, looking away, "How many of my friends are gay? Openly, at least? How many times have we had a prom king or queen that wasn't straight? In fact, why don't we have two prom kings or prom queens?" she shakes her head. "You think you're all so inclusionary, but the truth is that you just keep your homophobia on the down low."
A memory flashes back to me of last year. I was checking my phone in a bathroom stall so it wouldn't get confiscated, when I heard Janine, Katie and Saoirse, three of Chrissa's minions (oh, sorry, I meant friends) talking about Christine Abernathy... about how she could've been popular if she hadn't gone and dated a girl. That next she was probably going to chop off her hair and start hitting on them because she was a...
How the hell did I forget about that?
"You're right," I say, giving her a sad smile. "I guess I just don't notice it because it's not directly hurting me. Which I never even realized I did."
Chrissa shrugs her shoulders, sinking down lower onto the floor. "To be fair, though, when have I ever stood up for you or someone else who wasn't a Glendale kid? And not only that, I've been the source of bullying you about that."
"Why?" I ask. The picture I have painted of the rude, shallow and narcissistic Chrissa seems so different than the one I'm talking to right now. And yet, apparently both of them exist.
"...I don't know," Chrissa says quietly, after thinking for a minute. "I guess it's just human nature, our self-preservation instincts come to life. None of us want to be at the bottom, be outcast, even if we have to push others down further while clawing our way up."
"But- Chrissa. Does any of it really matter in the end?" I ask, honestly confused. "No one's going to be asking how popular we were in high school in 20 years on a job interview, or how many people we snapchatted- and hopefully, the kind of person that we love isn't going to be important to anyone else by then either. This whole... popularity thing... it all seems like an elaborate illusion when all it does is trap you in a box."
"Says the girl who spends all her time clearly trying to be invisible," Chrissa laughs. "You avoid the spotlight like it's the plague."
Well... she does have a point there. Too many people looking at me, watching me, makes me itch all over, and as much as I try to repress them, it brings back memories from the week after... my father died. When it felt like someone was crushing me with a brick wall, and it was taking all my energy just to keep breathing- but everyone else decided to be spectators to my experience.
"Well maybe I just don't like people. Or maybe I'm just not interesting and I don't have anything to say."
Chrissa shifts, sitting up, one of her dark, perfectly-microbladed brows raised at me. "You clearly have a lot to say right now, Sienna. Honestly, you need to start showing the world who you really are and stop hiding behind textbooks all the time. Because the world is going to think you're really cool."
"And you," I say defiantly, "need to live your own life and stop caring about what people think or expect."
She shrugs, and though there's still a slight sheen of wet mascara on her face, she's no longer crying and her face looks significantly less blotchy. She's even smiling. "Fair point. But how exactly do you expect this to happen?"
"Well for starters, you and I are going shopping."
A/N: Hello lovely people! I hope everyone's been having a great week! I've been quarantined all day (but hey, pro: I can now stay at home and do nothing all day and have it be called 'social distancing' instead of 'being lazy') and my school is cancelled for the next 3 weeks... and it's my birthday tomorrow? So that'll be somewhat of an iNteResTiNG birthday haha I'm definitely going to be very lonelyyyy :(
I really hope that everyone reading this is safe and not at risk with Covid-19 and I hope that all the people close to you are too! And please please take this whole thing seriously, I know it seems like a lot of unnecessary precautions and closings and quarantining for what feels like the flu... but some people can get really really sick with it and it travels really fast and hospitals won't be able to deal with all the people needing treatment! But at the same time, try not to stress out too much (easier said than done I know) because if you're doing everything you can to prevent getting the virus, it's really not in your control- and the death rate is very very low. And, on the bright side, all of this time on my hands means that I can finally catch up on writing! So get ready for (probably) another update on Friday and/or a double update Tuesday!
Love y'all and please stay safe,
-Selene