Shallow

by Yessi Smith

  I felt it. How utterly alone he felt. I wrote to him then. Words I hoped would reach him, give him the hope he gave me when he first replied and offered to fight with me.

  He barely existed

  in a world full of people.

  Laughter and easy smiles concealed

  the fears she hoped no one would know.

  They hid behind masks,

  their pen their only weapon.

  Reading it now, I realized I had given him nothing. My words, my poem was meaningless. Maybe I had nothing to give him. Perhaps I was only fooling myself in thinking we’d fight together when he was better off without me. He’d asked why he felt alone. I left him in silence and it haunted me.

  All day yesterday, I wanted to reach out to him, to take back the words I’d said after he dropped my hand and hurt me. Throughout the night, it wasn’t my mom’s loud screams I heard but Roderick’s hushed ones.

  As I’d done the previous mornings, I waited for Roderick to walk to school before I made the hike to the cave. I wasn’t sure if he would’ve replied. If he was upset with my non-answer.

  But he had left me a message and as he’d done before, he left me breathless.

  Write so you can hide

  from the terrors of this world.

  Write so you can live

  with the terrors of your heart.

  I lived in hiding, but I wrote so I could come to terms with my fears. So I could give them a reason, a voice. So I could fight back for myself. Because that’s what I did. I fought for myself, thought only of myself.

  But at some point during the week, I started thinking about Roderick. About how badly I needed to help him. It wasn’t a want, but a need.

  Without even knowing it, he saw me. With the few words I gave him, he pieced me together and he figured out more about me than I’d been willing to share.

  He was helping me, giving me a peace I’d never known before. Every time I read the words he’d etched on the wall, he saved me from myself. I needed to do the same for him.

  It was irrational. Reckless. Dumb. It didn’t make any sense, this need to be some sort of beacon of hope for him. But I felt it in my soul. It was real and something I had to do for him.

  I took the marker to the wall and rather than think out my words, I bled. Begging him to bleed with me.

  Infuse me

  with your thoughts.

  Consume me

  With your words.

  Bleed into me

  and I’ll bring you back.

  There is no hiding from the terror,

  only fighting

  desperately together.

  My chest rose and fell in rapid succession. I dropped the marker to the wet ground, wishing we could do more than just fight with words. That we could fight with his hands in mine.

  I wanted his demons, his sadness, his anger. Just as I wanted him to have mine.

  A whistle blew from the field and in my cheerleading outfit, I stood beside the bleachers and waited for Danny. Sweat had collected on my back and under my sports bra from our pep rally. I couldn’t wait to get home and wash away the grime. The rally had gone well though, and we managed to sell even more tickets for the Fall Ball.

  I hadn’t wanted to promote it, celebrate the fact the day of the dance was fast approaching when I no longer thought I’d be going. Chances were, I’d be crowned queen, just as I’d won court every other year, but this time I’d win without the friends I relied on standing behind me and cheering me on. This time I wouldn’t feel like I was on top.

  Danny was also nominated. I hoped he won. Not Jacob. Although it was a stupid tradition with a silly title that didn’t mean anything outside of school, I wanted Danny to have it. To know his peers respected him exactly as he was. He deserved that.

  Football practice was over after only twenty minutes when everyone finally gave up on the rain relenting. It didn’t seem to want to stop and the forecast was now saying the rain would most likely continue until next week. It seemed someone had infuriated Mother Nature and she was punishing us all.

  Joseph and Jacob ran passed me, identical ugly sneers on their face. I ignored them, like I’d been doing since the incident during lunch.

  Our quarterback, Ari, tugged my pony tail when he stopped in front of me. I rounded my shoulders back, keeping my fingers by my side, playing with the bottom of my skirt and hoped the twins hadn’t set him up to do something to me.

  “Hey, cheer girl.” Ari smiled.

  He’d never smiled at me before. Never teased me with a nickname. We’d spoken on several occasions, what with him being football captain and me heading the cheerleading squad. At school events, we’d been paired together quite a few times and were friendly, but this felt different.

  “Hey Ari,” I replied.

  “We’re gonna go grab some burgers at the diner,” he said. “You should join us.”

  I’m sure my face mirrored the confusion I felt, and it made him laugh. Danny came beside me, grabbed the sandwich from my hand and after taking it out of the plastic bag, he took a big bite.

  “Yeah,” Danny agreed with his mouthful. “You should come with us.”

  “You’re gonna eat a burger after eating a sandwich?” I asked.

  “A sandwich?” He unzipped my bag to look inside. “What do you mean a sandwich? You always make me two.”

  “You’re not having two sandwiches and then a burger.” I placed both palms on my hips and narrowed my eyes at him.

  “No.” He agreed, taking the other sandwich from my bag and putting it in his. “That’s for later tonight.”

  Ari laughed. “You gonna grab a ride with Brin?” he asked Danny.

  After closing his bag, Danny took my bag from me, slung an arm over my shoulder and guided me to the parking lot. “Yep.”

  “Yeah?” I pinched his side. “I don’t remember agreeing to go with you guys.”

  “You’ll have fun.”

  “Until it starts to rain again and I have to drive in it,” I argued, but it was futile. We both knew I was going. And maybe like he said, I’d have fun.

  It sprinkled on the drive to the diner, but I let Danny drive while I daydreamed in the passenger seat beside him. It wasn’t hard to imagine where my thoughts went.

  Roderick. I wondered if the first thing he did when he got to the cave was read my message. Or if he waited to do other things, like homework, before he’d read it. I wondered what he would think about what I wrote to him. How he would reply.

  I wondered if when he thought about the girl who wrote him poems, he smiled the way I smiled when I thought about him.

  When Danny parked my car, he reached over and nudged my knee with an open palm.

  “You alright?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I know Joseph and Jacob have been giving you shit and…”

  “It’s fine,” I interrupted.

  It was mostly true. They’d tried to make me feel bad, to make fun of me, but they didn’t get very far before someone interfered. Someone I wasn’t friends with, someone who had no reason to stand up for me.

  “Okay.” He squeezed my leg. “How are things at your house?”

  I hesitated, wanted to give him some semblance of the truth. “There was a lot of yelling last night. My mom…” My voice cracked. I couldn’t continue. I couldn’t talk about my mom, I hadn’t been able to mention her name in years. It was a wonder I’d been able to get out the little I had said to Seth about her.

  “She’s having a hard time with the divorce?”

  I nodded, set my lips in a thin line and said, “She has a hard time with everything.”

  He narrowed his eyes, tried to make out what I meant by that. I squeezed his hand and then turned to open my door.

  “You promised me a good time,” I reminded him. “Talking about my parents and their problems isn’t my idea of a good time.”

  He grabbed my hand, tugged me to him for a hug over the center console. “Talk to me when you’r
e ready to, but tonight… it’s on. You’re gonna have the best night of your life.”

  When I got out of the car, he tackled me from the side and lifted me over his shoulder with my butt in the air. Used to his antics, I rested my elbow on his back and my chin on my open palm while he carried me into the diner with his friends laughing and shouting at us. He sat me down gently on a bench and then slid in beside me.

  I was nervous to be surrounded by Danny’s football team. I knew them, some I’d hung out with at parties or talked to in class, but I’d never been with just them. Without my group of friends. But I was glad they weren’t there, that Jacob and Joseph hadn’t made it to the diner.

  Restless, I tapped my foot on the floor. Danny placed a calming hand on my knee and I felt his warmth and strength through the fabric and forced myself to relax.

  Around me, the guys joked about everything. Nothing was off limits. Including my cheerleading outfit. It wasn’t said maliciously though. And even though I felt my cheeks warm, I didn’t feel teased, but part of a joke. Part of a group.

  I felt like I belonged.

  Like I wasn’t alone.

  Desperately together.

  I weaved her words into the fiber of my soul and clung onto it. She was right. There was no hiding from the terror, from our fears. We could only fight.

  Desperately together.

  This nameless, faceless girl I was beginning to depend on. I liked her. Liked her writing, her heart. Liked the way she reached for me. The way she held on.

  She wanted my words, maybe even needed them as much as I needed hers. Again, she’d brought me food along with some sodas and bottled water. She even left me a note saying she had taken my dirty clothes to wash and would bring them back in the morning. I should’ve felt ashamed that she’d done that. Once already she’d done my laundry and I was grateful to have clean, dry clothes. There was no need for her to do it again, but she did it anyway.

  It should’ve embarrassed me that someone I didn’t know was washing my clothes, bringing me food, but instead of embarrassment, all I felt was… cared for.

  I tipped her note over and wrote, A thousand thank yous will never be enough.

  I wasn’t sure before. Now that I knew she came to the cave in the mornings, I wanted to wait for her, so I could see her. But I was afraid I’d scare her away. So although the desire to meet her and hug her to me to make sure she was real grew inside me, I would leave for school in the morning just as I’d been doing all week.

  But the emptiness had lifted. I wasn’t alone. I had an angel with a beautiful mind that was fighting alongside me. She wanted to bring me back. A part of me wanted to warn her there was no coming back for me, but I wanted her to try. Desperately, I wanted her to try.

  It was daunting how well she knew me after only a few scribbles on the wall. I traced my fingers over yesterday’s poem. It touched too close to my heart, made me too aware of who I’d become. And I wondered how she knew? What had given me away?

  He barely existed

  in a world full of people.

  It hurt to read it, to know it was true. At one point, Brinley had been the one who kept me afloat, the one who promised me the hurt would get better. The one who’d make me laugh, and the one who would let me cry. Then the day came that she no longer needed the friends she had, including me, but new ones. The popular, outgoing friends who weren’t hurting or lost inside themselves. She pushed me away, just as she did all her other friends. I wasn’t cruel enough to discard people like she did. I simply withdrew into myself, and no one followed.

  When the rain started to come down lighter, I took off my clothes for a quick shower. Beneath the broken sky, the rain pelted against my shivering body. With my teeth chattering, I lathered soap over my body and let the cloud’s sadness cleanse me.

  While I dressed, I wondered what would happen if I went back to my aunt’s house. Would she let me live with her or was she happier without the broody teenager she was forced to take care of?

  Sitting on the ledge that made up my bed, I picked up my phone. The battery was mostly full since I hadn’t used it much since I disconnected it from my charger in home room.

  My aunt stopped texting me a few days ago. There were no more frantic messages to come back to her house. No more pleas asking how I was doing or where I was. Just like she always did, she gave up on me before she got any answers. But at least she kept paying for my cell phone. At least I still had that.

  Gripping the phone between my clenched hand, I shuddered in a breath. I shouldn’t text her. Wouldn’t text her.

  Instead, I logged onto Instagram where I was friends with people I never spoke to. I didn’t care to see what any of them were up to. I wanted to see Brinley. Always, I was drawn to the girl who stopped caring.

  We’d barely spoken since we kissed. I tried to talk to her and explain why I’d let go of her hand, but she wouldn’t listen. She shut me out, pushed me away the same way she did before. This time, I was going to push back. Harder, until she caved and talked to me.

  I craved to feel the smoothness of her lips against mine, taste the sweetness of her breath on my tongue. Of course, I did. I was a breathing, living guy and Brinley was… Brinley. Perfect in all her imperfections.

  But more than that, I wanted her back in my life. I wanted her to talk to me about her tears, to trust me, maybe not to make things better, but to try to help her feel better. I needed her to know she wasn’t alone. She had me, even if I didn’t have her.

  I went to her page and felt a pang in my chest when I saw her in a picture with most of the football team. Danny sat beside her. His arm around her shoulder and she looked back at him with a silent laugh falling from her lips.

  He saw her, long before I did. He saw that the Brinley we knew growing up was still there, struggling to be set free. Throughout the years, he’d waited patiently for her, while I’d tried to hate her. He saw the hurt she hid from the world where I only saw the shallow girl she put on display for the world to see.

  All this time I thought she’d let me down, when it was me who had disappointed her.

  I was done disappointing her though. I was done with her pushing me away.

  When I walked back to the wall, it wasn’t to the mystery girl that I wrote, but to Brinley.

  I bask in your warmth

  while the cold drains me

  and it balances out.

  Back in my bed, I stared at the photo of Brinley with the guys. She was sunshine, and now that she’d rid herself of her other friends, she would outshine us all.

  The rest of the week went by quickly, even though I no longer had the friends I’d once coveted. Instead, I made new friends. I opened myself up to Danny’s friends from the different sports he played. At lunch, Danny and I sat and talked to Seth and Jeremy who was just as shy but as nice as Seth. Even the drama and band kids stopped to talk to me.

  I stayed quiet around Roderick, only talking to him when we had to work on our assignment together while I continued to go to the cave and feed off our mutual words. He tried though. God, he tried. He met me after class, walked with me in mutual silence, watched me from across the patio where we had lunch.

  He tried and I let him.

  School was different after the lunch incident. And it was especially better after going to the diner with Danny and the football team. It was as if by shedding away the fake, the ugly, the shallow, everything I was afraid of disappeared. And for the first time in years, I had friends I enjoyed hanging out with.

  Jacob and Joseph tried to make my life hard, but the other kids – my new friends – were there for me while Nicole only spoke to me during cheer practice. I couldn’t figure out why the other kids accepted me. Why they let me in their groups when Danny tugged me along. But I was grateful for them.

  More so for Danny. He’d proven to be the best friend I never knew I had.

  “So the Fall Ball’s next weekend.” Danny drew his eyebrows up, twice.

  “Yeah, I�
�m not going,” I answered.

  “Not going?” Danny questioned.

  He stopped walking me to my car, his hand holding onto my arm.

  “You’re nominated for queen,” he reminded.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Is someone giving you trouble after… everything that happened on Tuesday?”

  “No.” I laughed. “I don’t know if you threatened the whole school, but everyone’s been cool.”

  “Everyone’s been cool because they finally got to see the girl I see. You stood up to Jacob, to all of your so-called friends, and they saw you for who you are, and they love that girl. Who wouldn’t? I love that girl.”

  I sniffled, wrapping my arms around my chest. “How’d you know that girl even existed?”

  “I’m like Yoda, little Padawan. I see everything, before it even happens.”

  “I don’t think that’s how that green little freak works.”

  Danny laughed and put his arms around me, but it wasn’t his arms I wanted holding me in a hug. Roderick, that’s where my mind always circled back to.

  Roderick.

  Roderick.

  Roderick.

  We continued writing to each other. Each message or poem more personal, revealing more of ourselves, while in the real world I maintained a safe distance. As if my thoughts could summon him, his huddled figure ran across the parking lot. He looked in my direction but turned away as he wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  “So tomorrow?” Danny asked.

  I glanced back at him, my forehead scrunched up in confusion. “What about tomorrow?”

  “You and I are going to the boutique. Nicole told me she made an appointment for you to try on a dress.”

  “Nicole? You’re still talking to her?”