My Life as a Rhombus

by Varian Johnson

Maybe I had learned something important from Christopher after all.

  Christopher escorted us outside. I could feel the anger bubbling just under the surface of his skin. I let Sarah and Gail walk ahead of me, slowing enough so Christopher and I could talk privately.

  I flashed him a genuine smile. “You know, Christopher, I need to thank you. I had a lot of pent-up anger about our whole situation. Now, I feel like I can finally get some closure.”

  He grimaced. “I’m glad you took such enjoyment from making my life miserable.”

  “Making your life miserable?” I shook my head. “What I put you through tonight doesn’t even compare to what you did to me.”

  I noticed an array of colorful rocks surrounding a bed of azaleas at my feet. “I heard your mom got a new SUV. She gave you the Saab, right?”

  “Um … yeah,” Christopher mumbled. “Why do you care?”

  “Oh, no reason.” I leaned over and picked up a palm-sized rock.

  Christopher frowned. “What are you going to do with that?”

  I held the rock to my face and bounced it in my hand. Good size. Good weight.

  “Your father is a mean asshole, and I’m sorry you have to live with him. That’s the only reason I’ve protected you for this long.”

  “Well, now I guess we’re even.”

  “Humiliating you in front of your girlfriend had nothing to do with us. That was strictly about David.” I stole a glance at the Saab out of the corner of my eye. It didn’t look so high and mighty anymore.

  I turned toward the car and cocked my arm. “This is for me.”

  I slung my arm forward and threw that rock as hard as I could. Everything moved in slow motion as the rock sailed gracefully from my hand. It arched just right, and came swooping down toward the back window of the car.

  Then there was the perfect sound of glass shattering, accompanied by the shriek of the car alarm.

  Christopher didn’t know whether to rush toward his car or toward me. He narrowed his eyes and glared at me. “You … you … ”

  I waved him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m such a bitch. You’ve only said that twenty times tonight.” I lowered my voice and leaned closer to him. “But I promise, if you don’t drop the charges, I’ll really show you how much of a bitch I can be.”

  I winked at him and strutted to my car. I could feel his gaze on me the entire time. After opening the door, I turned back to him. “Oh yeah … now we’re even.”

  Seconds later I was cruising down the street, a huge smile plastered on my face. And if I listened really hard, I could still hear the car alarm wailing in the background.

  Sarah and Gail wanted to go out and celebrate our victory over Christopher, but I had more important plans. I dropped Gail off at her house, took Sarah back home, and parked myself in her living room. I wasn’t leaving until I talked to David. I knew he was out playing ball and that he may not be home until late, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t leaving. I wasn’t running away. Not this time.

  David was right. I had been pushing—no, more like shoving—him away from me. If he had the guts to love someone as screwed up as me, I should at least be brave enough to try to love him back. That is, if he took me back.

  As I sat there, surrounded by the calm of the darkness, I thought of all the reasons why I loved David. He was sweet. He made me feel safe. He loved me, even when I hated him.

  He tried to save me from myself, even when I didn’t know I needed rescuing.

  The funny thing was, the longer I sat there, the less I thought about David. Not that I didn’t want to make up with him—there was just a greater reconciliation I had been postponing for way too long. Three years, to be exact.

  David cared for me, but there was a man that loved me even more. A man brave enough to make the decisions I couldn’t bring myself to make, and strong enough to carry the burden of the mistakes I couldn’t bear alone.

  I thought about calling home, but before I could summon the courage to pick up the phone, I heard David’s car pull into the driveway.

  My stomach immediately twisted itself into a knot. I would have given anything for a bottle of water at that moment to quench my suddenly dry throat. I was so uptight, I thought I was going to snap in half.

  I wiped my glasses on my shirt and stuck them back on my nose as David unlocked the door and slipped into the house. He dropped his basketball by his feet and turned to lock the door.

  “Hey,” I said.

  David spun around. Although it was dark, I could still make out the perplexed look on his face. “Rhonda, is that you?”

  I stood from the couch and held my hands behind my back, so he couldn’t see them shaking. I took a hesitant step toward him. “I was waiting on you.”

  David continued to stand by the door. “Why are you here?” he asked, his words short. “It’s late.”

  I moved to the middle of the room. David remained at the door, which was okay. It was my turn to come to him. “Why did you hit Christopher?”

  “Why do you care?”

  I could feel the intensity of his gaze on me. I briefly closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. “At first I thought you were jealous,” I said. “But you weren’t, were you?”

  I was near enough to see David’s body tense up. I inched closer to him.

  “And you didn’t hit Christopher because you were angry at him, did you?”

  His jaw stiffened. “I was pretty damn upset.”

  “But that’s not why you hit him.”

  David pursed his lips together and slowly nodded. “That’s not why I hit him.”

  Two steps later, I was standing right in front of him. He had to be able to hear my heart beating through my chest.

  “You did it for me, didn’t you?”

  David shrugged. “I just thought … it seemed like—”

  I placed my fingers on David’s lips to stop his rambling. “Since I couldn’t punish Christopher, you tried to do it for me.”

  David’s stance relaxed. He looked at me, and I almost lost myself in his eyes. “It seemed like you needed closure,” he whispered.

  “I did.”

  We stayed silent for a few moments, just staring at each other. For as scared and unsure and timid as I felt, I also felt … happy. My heart was aching, but in a good way.

  “So now what?” he asked.

  I wearily smiled. “Now you let me take you out tomorrow night.”

  David shook his head. “I don’t know … ”

  No way was David getting away that easy.

  I stepped even closer to him, so that his personal space was now my personal space. “You know I like you?”

  Finally, a smile crept onto David’s face. He nodded.

  I took off my glasses. “And I know you like me, right?”

  He nodded again, with a grin large enough to brighten the entire room.

  I reached up and pulled his face toward mine. “So if you don’t mind, I’m going to kiss you now, before I lose my nerve.”

  So I closed my eyes and kissed him like I was kissing him for the first time. And maybe it was the first time, because he had never kissed this Rhonda before. Yeah, maybe I looked the same in his eyes. And yeah, maybe my lips still felt the same against his lips. But there was one thing I could do now that the old Rhonda could have never done.

  I could accept true love and return it exponentially.

  There have been a plethora of math-related sayings used over the years, ranging from René Descartes’ “Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare,” to the oft-used quip, “Life is too short for long division.” Given my problems with the verbal portion of the SAT, I was a big fan of a quote by Nathanael West: “Numbers constitute the only universal language.”

  Wouldn’t it be great if e
very person, every event that had ever taken place, could be simplified into a series of small mathematical formulas? Why spend pages and pages of text describing the details of someone’s life, when youcould scribble down a few lines of equations that quantified things just as easily?

  For instance, if I had to summarize my life after Piedmont, it would be something like this:

  Not quite Shakespeare, but it should do just fine.

  Q.E.D. (THE END)

  About the Author

  Growing up, Varian Johnson couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be an engineer or a writer, so he decided to do both. Born and raised in Florence, South Carolina, he now lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and two cocker spaniels. In preparation for this novel, Varian memorized π to the tenth decimal place, relearned how to triple integrate a fifth-order polynomial, and bought his first home pregnancy kit. Check him out at www.varianjohnson.com for more interesting, but totally useless, information.