Page 97 of Fade into You
I did this.
Technically, Bird and I did this, but she never seemed comfortable with it even though itwasher idea. I was comfortable with it, though. She’s a nice person. I’ve been learning that. She has a kindness in her that I’m not used to seeing in people. Dwayne has the same vibe about him, never talking shit, instead finding fun stuff to joke about, cool things to learn. But me, I have that meanness and I plugged it all into Operation Break Up, and now that it’s been successful I feel like garbage.
Immediately I think about going to Bird. I need to feel better, but I also need to know what to do, how to work with other people’s emotions. Dade will be hurt, but if there’s a kindway of telling him, she would know. And maybe she could make me feel a little less like an asshole for setting up the entire Emmanuel/Kayla thing.
This isn’t school talk, though, so I wait until the end of the day, which makes sitting beside her in journalism excruciating. I do my best to feign excitement as we photocopy Polaroids and place them on our zine layout. When she arrives at Betty the Buick, she smiles and slides into the passenger seat like she belongs there—which she does. I smile at her as she buckles up, and we pull outta the lot, waiting the first few lights until we hold hands.
“I have something big I gotta talk over, your place or mine?”
She looks concerned, worried. I hate to see that, but this isn’t so much a car conversation. “My place is cool, Liv’s at cheer practice and the sibs are with their grandparents,” she says.
I get us there in record time.
Up in her room, I nudge the duct-tape line separating the space with the toe of my boot, not sure how to start. Looking around, you can see the effects of Olivia Fucking Rubens all over: cheer pictures, makeup and hair bows, a million photos of Garrett the mouth breather. It’s muted Bird’s presence. She’s minimized herself to a couple of stacks of books and a KlimtThe Kissposter and nothing else.
“You should redecorate your wall with Melissa Etheridge and Indigo Girls posters,” I joke, still a little freaked that Liv is her stepsister and I’m in enemy territory. One night, when we were getting deep, Bird asked me what Liv had actually done to me. I finally told her the story about stupid middle school me thinkingthe world was a better place. I made friends with this chill Jewish chick in my social studies class because I thought she matched the whole chill Greek chick thing I was about. One day, while researching the civil rights movements of the sixties, I mentioned the queer rights movement and Stonewall and without waiting for a reaction, my dumb ass told her I had a crush on her. I had this dream in my head that she’d sayme tooand we’d walk into school the next day, rainbow-clad and holding hands, the perfect lesbian couple.
Instead she outed me to the entire school, which led to me prematurely coming out to my parents, and led to the past four years of open harassment from at least half the student body. The other half was just quieter about it.
Bird breaks me outta my I-hate-Olivia-Fucking-Rubens reverie. “Okay, unless you want me to freak out, I need to kn-know… this big talk. Is it Mack? Is it—is it something with us?”
I look at Bird, her beautiful face, round in the right places, perfectly celestial nose, wide eyes that see me as I’ve always wanted the world to see me. My actual dream girl. My partner in my worst crime, which unfortunately worked. I know telling her will make her feel bad about her participation, but the Band-Aid needs ripping, that scab has to be picked.
“So, Emmanuel told me at lunch today that he’s been with Kayla. She’s cheating on Dade.”
“Oh,” she says, and looks down at the floor.
“I can’t believe it. Like, how did it work? I thought Kayla was decent or something. How shitty am I for putting this in motion? What the fuck do I do now?”
“You aren’t shitty, Jessa, we worked together on this,” she says, but she still isn’t looking at me.
“Yeah, but Dade said he might love her, that’s huge. How do I tell him?”
“I don’t know, Jessa, is it really yours to tell?”
“We may be on the rocks right now, but he’s my best friend! Telling him is literally my job. Wouldn’t you want to know if I was doing some shit like that?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“No, but you’d want to know.”
She’s picking at her fingernails. Looking everywhere but at me, her eyes unfocused on the wall of Liv photos.
“Bird? What do I do? How do I say it?”
“Um…”
“Um? This is big shit! Why aren’t you more shocked?”
She clears her throat. Takes a deep breath. I get it before she even says it.
“Kayla told me.”
Movies show people getting stabbed and it seems painful, steals their breath, and right now I feel like the guy fromSaving Private Ryan, that knife descending slowly toward his chest, begging the other soldier to stop, pathetic, sad, hoping to stop it but knowing that centimeter by inevitable centimeter it will cut through and end everything. That pain spreads in me, cuts into my heart, takes my breath and brings tears to my eyes.
“When?”
It seems important to know the facts right now.
