Page 94 of Safety Net
Lincoln led me up the stairs and to the group of guys. There were six of them, and I started forgetting names as soon as Lincoln began introducing them. I smiled, or at least tried to smile. I didn't have much control over my face. As Lincoln went on about the musical, my hands started to tremble. The one linked with his was relatively stable thanks to his secure grip. But I tucked my free hand into my sleeves, clutching the fingers into a fist.
I tried to find something to focus on during the conversation, an external life jacket when my internal one of positive affirmations deflated.
The guy on our left said he'd grown up in New York. His parents would often take him to the theatre.
I built up the courage to ask, "Do you miss it?"
He looked at me blankly and asked, "What did you say?"
Between the music and the people, even my "loud" voice had no chance of being heard. I tried again. It wasn’t successful. All the guys looked confused, and my skin was so hot I was surprised Lincoln's hand didn't have third-degree burns. It'snot a question worth repeating. No depth or substance to it to warrant this amount of time spent on recovering the words. It was as if I’d stopped us to admire a small hill when the view of majestic, snow-capped mountains was right around the corner.
"Do you miss New York?" Lincoln gave my hand a comforting squeeze as he repeated my question for me.
I couldn't even pay attention to the full answer because the guy started with, "No, never. Like I said, I was counting down the seconds until I was out of there."
With all the overstimulation, I hadn't remembered him saying that before I asked the question. It was a small mistake that catapulted me into the depths of embarrassment. I tried to anchor myself by focusing on how my hand fit in Lincoln's, with a perfect overlap of fingers and alignment of palms, and how I was close enough to smell the warmth in his cologne and the spice of his aftershave.
Our group kept changing throughout the night. Most of the people Lincoln spoke to, I didn't know. Naomi and Finn migrated in our direction for a little bit. She took one look at me and leaned in to whisper, "Finn and I are heading out. You want to leave with us? We could hang out back at our place."
I forced myself to smile; it worked this time. "It's okay."
"You sure?" She pulled back to get a good look at my face.
I nodded and glanced over at Lincoln, who was completely enmeshed in a debate he started on whether childhood is better with chemical-colored cereal. He kept switching sides, mostly to annoy his fellow debaters.
"I'm going to stay a bit longer. Try to challenge myself." I hadn't been part of a conversation I started on my own. And every discussion Lincoln managed to rope me into had my senses too overwhelmed to process in time to formulate something worthy of saying. Coming here had been solely for Lincoln, but somewhere after the fifth or sixth experience of mythroat becoming too tight to share my name, I decided I needed to be here for me as well. It’d taken me a summer to become brave enough to click a submit button. It'd take even longer to develop a voice strong enough to withstand my cyclone of social inadequacy.
"And I need to talk to Lincoln before the night's over," I added. "Check in about sets for the musical."
We looked over a Lincoln who was in a deep one-on-one with a guy on the football team who swore he also grew up with a ghost. Apparently, his family had hired a team of ghost hunters called the Jones Family back when people used landlines and phone books.
"It might take me a month or two to detangle him from all of this," I joked.
Naomi smiled and nodded in agreement, "Okay, but if you change your mind and get tired of waiting, let me know."
I hugged her goodbye and watched as she made the escape I so desperately craved since I'd set foot inside the house.
As the night stretched, I managed my anxiety by doing breathing exercises and gradual body relaxation. The ground techniques worked until another wave of worry breached my walls. The house got more crowded, bloated with students and older people from town. The music got louder, and people got drunker. Conversation became looser, so one would think it'd be easier to weave in and out. One would be wrong. One would be me.
I took my first leap with a group of women who were on Mendell's softball team. Their conversation had broken off from the hockey guys, venturing into the realm of a dating reality TV show I'd binged (and loved) whenever I couldn't manage to get to sleep. Two of them hated the obvious scripted nature, while the other two thought that's what made it fun.
"It's almost the best of both worlds," I'd spoken up, inserting myself into the back and forth like I'd seen Lincoln do a dozen times tonight. Like he'd done ever since I'd known him. The initiation's not as terrible as I've built it up to be. It was everything that followed.
"How so?" All the softball girls had a blinding level of beauty, but the one who asked this was the kind of breathtakingly beautiful I believed could start wars. Her jet black, tight coils, dark skin, and round eyes would be the muse to some oil painter one day.
The beauty and inquisitive gazes sent me into another panic. I tried to build on my previous conversation skills: no awkward staring, no sudden pauses, and no weird stumbles (like when I couldn't pronounce 'school' earlier).
"Having people follow a script but somehow always make it their own. It's a compilation of happy accidents," I managed to get out seamlessly. Pride swelled in my chest because I hadn't had to look at Lincoln once. In fact, I didn't know where he was. I stood on my own, articulating my genuine opinions. The balloon of joy that'd begun to inflate in my chest popped when they stared at me for a moment in silence and exchanged the kind of looks only people who had known one another for years could. A silent conversation proceeded, and a subtle judgment was made.
"Right," one with long legs and a short, blonde pixie cut said after their judge, jury, executioner sidebar. "Interesting take, I guess."
One of them scoffed, as if she disagreed. The others remained silent, as if waiting for a train to pass before they could continue exchanging ideas in peace.
It was a lackluster response. Nothing groundbreakingly horrible, and yet, I felt the need to apologize for interrupting and inserting myself into an established friendship that wasn't currently open to applications.
They eventually continue their conversation as if I hadn't said a thing. And the kicker was, they ventured into the realm I'd been trying to go. Theorizing on the merits of the blending of fact and fiction in a world where, thanks to social media, we have to exist in both constantly.
I didn't know how to stand. How to untangle myself after having said one thing and being edged out of the conversation in a heartbeat. I turned my body away from them at least, understanding social cues enough to know hoovering would be foolish. My gaze scanned the room, heart racing in hopes of finding a lighthouse before the storm got too heavy. Everyone I knew had gone home or somewhere else. My need for escape was dire.
