Page 12 of The Truth About Love

Monday morning, my sister’s advice to make some friends is fresh in my mind like a headache that won’t fuck off.

Having friends, plural, isn’t something I have ever imagined being plausible for me. After years of being relentlessly bullied at my previous school, it became pretty clear that I’m not someone people tend to like. And after a while, I stopped liking people too.

But if I scrunch my eyes shut tight and focus really hard, I can maybe see myself tolerating the frequent presence of one person. Maximum. Auden not included.

I don’t know what he is to me exactly, but he is definitely not my friend.

My experience is limited, I know, but I’m pretty sure friends don’t lay in bed at night imagining what it would be like to touch the skin of the other, to feel their heat and their lips and their breaths on your neck as they fall asleep beside you.

Maybe Auden sees me as a friend. But I don’t see him as one.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have someone to spend time with, talk to and confide in now that my sister is away at college.

I just have no idea where to start or how it even works to build a connection with someone on a friendship level. Even as a small child I didn’t have friends. I’d play by myself in the corner and eat my sandwiches in the classroom with the teacher while the other kids played outside.

When I went to high school, cold shoulders in the school yard turned into cruel words in the cafeteria. Fictitious rumours were spread about me, my name was slandered in gel pen on the walls of the restrooms and my locker was vandalized more times than I can count.

It didn’t take long for me to realise that I must not be a likeable person and I guess I’ve just always accepted that loneliness is an inevitability for me.

But something about this little town has created a shift inside me and left me with a nagging little voice in the back of my mind that says maybe my misery isn’t written in the stars. Maybe I’m not fated to spend my life alone in darkness. Maybe I can have some colour in my life if only I let it in.

And that voice in my head, the one that sounds suspiciously similar to the seventeen-year-old boy with eyes the same colour as the waters surrounding this place, is the reason I find myself approaching a table in the cafeteria at lunch and hesitantly taking the seat across from Marlowe Eriksen.

I decided this morning during Anthology, as she rolled her eyes at some bullshit Mr Hanson was spouting about Gen Z’s ruining American culture with their lip fillers, TikTok and condemnation of side partings, that she would probably be my best shot at finding someone with common ground.

From what I’ve noticed of her over the past week, Marlowe, like me, is a loner. Less hostile, sure. Doesn’t have the resting bitch face down like I do either, but she’s a loner nonetheless.

She keeps her head down and her nose tucked into her chest, her index finger continuously holding her round-framed glasses to her face. She walks through the hallways like no one can see her and she’s totally oblivious that some floppy-haired, smirky douchebag from the swim team called Tyler can’t take his eyes off her whenever she walks past.

At the sound of chair legs dragging against the old wooden floor she looks up at me.

“Hi.” My voice is quiet. Sheepish, even.

“Hey.” Marlowe tilts her head to one side, watching me with narrowed eyes and a crinkled brow.

“Can I sit here?”

Perhaps the question is a little belated considering I’m already sitting, but she’s looking at me with such wariness that it wouldn’t feel right not to ask permission.

“Why?” she asks, shifting further back in her seat.

I freeze. What can I say to that?

Can I sit here, because my sister said I need a friend and you’re pretty much the only option I’ve got and actually, now I’ve been thinking about it, maybe she’s not being totally off base when she says that I need to sort my shit out? Maybe I really could do with a friend. Maybe if we just sit together in silence at lunch, even if we don’t bother making small talk or acknowledging each other at all, life would be a little less grey not having to eat alone every day.

No.

I obviously can’t say that. So, even though my mouth opens, I say nothing at all. I just nod my head.

This was a bad idea. She doesn’t want me here. Who would be interested in building a friendship with a girl who acts like she hates the world and cuts herself before bed each night?

People don’t make friends with people like me.

I nod my head again, more for myself this time, as I push my chair back and turn to leave.

“Wait.”

I turn slowly at the sound of Marlowe’s hesitant voice.

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