Page 69 of Sad Girl Hours
“Saffron,chill. It’s literally fine. I’m not ashamed or anything. Loads of people have anxiety. I’m not special.” She snorts. “Well, I am. I’m a goddamn superstar. I just mean you don’t need toworry about anything. I kind of liked sneaking off with Casper to do some nonsense puzzle or rehearse my lines while you all kept partying. It wasn’t a secret because I was ashamed. It was just a secret because I hadn’t told it. If that makes sense.”
It does make sense. But it’s not what I’ve been doing.
“Right.” She looks at Casper again. “Nell got her questions in last night, so I guess that just leaves you, Casp. What’s your question?”
“I’ll ask mine later on if that’s OK,” he says, and Jenna looks thrown for a second before she continues.
“Sure. Then I guess that’s it. Shall we?”
As we walk downstairs and out of the house, I fall into step with Nell by my side. “Hi!” she says brightly but she’s concentrating hard on my face.
“Hi,” I say back. “Are you excited to ice-skate?”
She smiles with something that looks like relief. “Absolutely. I do need to reiterate, however, that my enthusiasm for something does not necessarily correlate to my skill levels in said activity.”
“Which translates to you telling me that…”
“I suckassat ice skating. I’m like a baby penguin on the ice but at least those guys have the excuse of being, you know, being fresh out the egg.”
I laugh. She looks forward again and I shiver, remembering again how cold it is, adjusting my giant scarf so it’s covering the whole back of my neck.
“Hey.” Jenna joins us and Nell smiles at me before swapping places with Jenna and lightly jogging to catch up with Viviana and Casper. I watch her put her arms on their backs and, I think, start trying to convince them to ‘one, two, three, wheee’ her.
“She’s ridiculous, isn’t she?” Jenna says. “But you can’t help but love her.”
“No,” I say. “You can’t.”
I remove my gaze from the other three and note Jenna’s ever-so-slight shake of her head as she smiles at me.
“I’m sorry for ambushing you earlier,” I say. “We should have waited outside and not come in. I feel awful that—”
“Saffron, I’m only going to say this one more time. It’sfine. Don’t beat yourself up for something that ifIwanted to beat you up about I would have done already. OK? I’m not one to postpone a bollocking.”
I nod, trying not to smile. “That is true. Thanks.”
“I’m glad, honestly, that it’s all out in the open. Sure, it’s been nice to just chill with Casper, but it’s also nice that I can talk to all of you about things now. I, Jenna Adebayo, am asexual. And I have anxiety. Really collecting those ‘As’, aren’t I?”
“Seems like it. But it’s nice to meet you, Jenna Adebayo, asexual person with anxiety. I’m Saffron.”
My sentence ends there. There’s more I could add like Jenna did.I’m Saffron, an allosexual lesbian who has seasonal affective disorder and who is also just a general mess of a human being.
“You’ve always been so brave.” The words come out before I think about whether they’re the right thing to say.
“I have,” Jenna says. “I’ve had to be. But I’m also a person. I get scared. Nervous. Anxious, obviously. Like yes, I’m amazing. I’m going to conquer the musical-theatre world and also pen plays that will win awards at fancy award ceremonies where I’ll get to say thank you and alsofuck youto the old white men who’ve beenso graciousas to finally stop sleeping on the achievements of people like me.”
“Iconic behaviour.”
“Thank you. But no one is infallible, Saffron.” Her use of my name feels pointed. “Everyone’s got their own thing going on. I wish we all talked about that way more than we actually do.”
Definitely pointed. Another piece of evidence that I’m not as good at hiding my difficulties as I should be.
Although, the thought occurs to me that Jenna’s making a lot of sense, and maybe hiding things awaydoesn’tmake sense.Whyshould I hide it all away? Who exactly is it serving to not talk about these things?
You, something in my brain says.Because what if you did tell them and that made it harder to keep it all in from now on? Or you did keep it in but now they knew you’d been hiding things from them all this time, and lying about where you were last winter, and everything fell apart and they didn’t want you around any more?
God, I’m tired of this. For once, I don’t want to burn myself down: I want to burn down whatever it is that’s making me feel like this. I want to strike a match and tell it tofuck offand let me enjoy my life for a change withoutconstantlyoverthinking and analysing everything I do and say. I just want tobewithout thinking about it first. I don’t want to perform any more.
I told Jenna she’d been brave and she has. But, walking along with her like this, she’s not acting like some earth-shaking revelation was just shared and our relationship will never be the same again.
