+ + + + +
Grace opened her locker as students began pouring out of the school. The final bell had just rung and people were rushing out towards the weekend. It was Friday, and that meant her parents would be going out for the night just like they did almost every week. I was obviously all for it, and even a few hours would have been great, but they decided they needed the whole night. If that was what it took for them to keep their spark alive, then they could have had at it. I didn't mind one single bit.
"Are you cooking?" she peeked over, smirking. "Let's just get a pizza or something tonight. . .It'll give us more time for everything else."
"I'm oka-"
My agreement was interrupted by one of the soccer players coming up behind Grace and closing her locker for her without even knowing if she was done with it. Turning, Grace's right hand brushed her hair behind her left ear and looked up at him with slightly widened, glistening eyes. The expression she showed to this guy was close to the one she had showed me, seriously close, and it probably irritated me way more than it should have. It just made me sort of angry seeing her give that expression to someone else.
In the douchiest, most cliche fashion possible, he pressed his hand against the locker and leaned forward into it. It almost felt like I was watching the filming of some high school romance where some side-character decides to approach the female lead and tries to start a conversation only to have it ended by some outside force. That outside force could have been anything, a bell or another person. I wasn't entirely sure, but I think I wanted to be that outside force.
"Hey, Grace. You mind?" he smiled. "I wanted to ask you something."
"Not really." she leaned against her locker, still very much smiling. "I have to go soon, but I don't mind."
"I was just wondering if you had a date to the dance. If not, I'll be more than happy to take you."
With painfully clenched fists, I had suddenly procured a very strong yearning to stuff his face into a meat grinder. His smile pissed me off, and the fact that Grace was looking at him with that same smile made me that much angrier. She could have told him no right away, at the very least, but instead she was looking at him like she was actually into him. What I was feeling felt horrible, but watching her made it even worse.
Before I could even hear her answer, I had long turned around and was already out of the school as I headed the down sidewalk towards our neighborhood. In the pit of my stomach, I felt this turning, knotting sensation mixed with a bit of anger. It almost felt like she did it on purpose, just for the sake of making me angry. Maybe she was just teasing me like she always did, but she went too far.
I mean, obviously I was being childish and was completely overreacting, but I hated seeing her smile like that for other people. Wasn't I allowed to be selfish and want it only for myself?
"Hey, slow down." her hand caught my right arm. "Why did you run off like that?"
"Don't fucking touch me." I swung around, batting her arm away. "Obviously you were too busy smiling and looking pretty for him to even notice that I was gone."
Grace looked to her left and then to her right before looking back to me with a smile. She followed forward with wide, playful steps as her smile only seemed to grow bigger and bigger with each ridiculous, exaggerated step. I wanted to turn around and storm off, because I selfishly felt hurt. The one person I was able to call my own was talking and batting her eyes for some scrub who played a sport. I wanted to leave, because I didn't want to see an inevitability happen.
"Holy shit. Lynn is jealous." her smile morphed into an ear to ear grin. "I can't believe it. You're actually jealous of some guy, of all people."
My slow steps backwards were stopped in their tracks, feet glued to the concrete as that grin and her feet seemingly inched themselves forward with every light tap of her shoes. That glistening, the sparkling in her eyes returned with a grin that held absolutely nothing back. Those eyes and that smile, the expression they created said it all. Grace, right at that very moment, was gazing directly at me. Only at me.
All was forgiven. I couldn't stay mad at her, especially when she looked at me like that.
"I'm a lesbian, babe. Or do I need to remind you who I'm with?" she cocked her head to the left, sarcastically smirking. "My eyes are only on you right now, they've always been only on you. I love watching every little thing you do. I love watching how you slow down when we're walking home so it takes longer. I love watching how you always paint your nails my favorite color. I love how you make me part of everything you do. But more than any of that, I. . .just love to watch you."
Grace eyes bounced to her right and left once again, leaning inwards as her hands met behind her back. The longest ten seconds of my life passed as she seemed to just look at me, watching and cocking her head like a curious puppy. Then, in broad daylight, her lips touched mine. It was a simple peck, something so typical between us, yet that simple peck felt so special right then and there. It was golden, just like her.
"You know, Lynn, you're like an ocean. You're deep and you don't seem to have a bottom." she spun past me as she skipped ahead.
"But I love letting your waves carry me."
+ + + + +
Seconds of a momentary peace passed while Jay looked at me with a completely straight face. Another few seconds passed before that straight face became that of one trying to hide a smile, in which he failed miserably. Before long, that smile turned into a fit of full-blown laughter as he fell onto his back and took off into the sky. Metaphorically, of course. I'd be selling him out to the government if he could actually fly.
"Why are you laughing?" I felt just a prick of embarrassment.
"I don't know, maybe because you thought your lesbian girlfriend was going to ditch you for some dude she didn't even really know? Or that little cheesy as fuck rom-com line, 'but I love letting your waves carry me.'" Jay threw himself back up. "Is she visiting you? I wouldn't mind meeting her, she sounds like fun."
I brushed my hair back and looked into the water, entirely unsure of what the right thing to tell him was. "I'd love that, but I think it's kind of impossible right now. Besides, I don't think I'd want her to see me like this anyways."
"What do you mean?" He shrugged his shoulders. "If she's your girlfriend, there isn't an excuse for her not to be here supporting you when she can."
"Her excuse is that she's in a coma." I looked directly at him and then slowly veered away. ". . .It's not exactly easy for her to get up when she can't even open her eyes."
I hadn't given Jay a reason for what happened to her, not that it was my fault and not that she tried to kill herself. Even if the possibility existed that he would find out sooner or later from someone else's mouth, I didn't want yet another person to look down on me. I was finally in a place where I was somewhat accepted, even after what I did to Lucas, or had this just been Jay's way of pitying me for what I did?
Maybe he understood the feeling in some way. Maybe he knew what it felt like to be looked down on, to be looked at like a lower life form.
Jay, for better or worse, was not even close to the dick he painted himself out to be. He wasn't the devil or the villain that religion and feminists made him out to be. He wasn't the monster that his lyrics made him out to be. At the end of the day, like any artist, Jay wanted to express himself and his emotions through his art. He wanted to use music as his paintbrush to make a mark on the world and tell his side of his story, his side of his experiences.
He was called the second coming of Kurt Cobain, but he just felt so much darker and so much more relatable than Nirvana ever had. His voice made you feel pain, while the lyrics described it. His lyrics spoke of sadness, but his voice pulled it out of the listener and wrung it dry. After hearing a little about what happened to him, it was obvious where he pulled the darkness from, where he pulled that pain and sadness from.
Jay was special in the way he mysteriously blended his life into words and sounds, how his hardships and setbacks gave inspirations to others. Some found answers within his music while other people even found reasons to keep living for another day. It took a special kind of artist to do that to people, and I was around one my whole life. Both him and Grace had the power to change lives by just being around, just by smiling and being themselves.
Then, was the way I judged people completely wrong? Grace, who I thought was a shining light for all the world's darkness, was comatose after trying to commit suicide. Jay was a rising star that was found passed out in a fast-food chain, yet he had several songs on the charts that month from his new album. He had fucked himself up into rehab and Grace just decided to jump off of a building, so what exactly made me think these two were special when they very clearly needed help?
Lifting my right leg, I wrapped my arms around it and rested my chin on its cap. "She tried to commit suicide, because her piece of shit father couldn't accept the fact she was, you know, dating me."
"Her dad doesn't like you?" I could feel his eyes on me. "That's some stone age shit, right there."
"No. He didn't want to accept the fact that his daughter was dating another girl, that she was a lesbian. He literally called his daughter 'the enemy'." my eyes rose to the same blueish sky Jay had looked at before. "He took her away from me, and I thought there wasn't a damn fucking thing I could do about it. There was plenty that I could have done to stop her from doing what she did, you know?
I could have broken into her house, I could've kept calling until they gave in. I could've sat by her window and annoyed her until she opened it. All I had to do was be around her, be there for her when she needed me, but I was stuck so deep in my own bullshit that I hadn't realized anything. I could have stopped her, but I was being miserable on my own instead. I fucked up. Where was I when everything I loved decided to jump off a roof? Not where I should've been."
Jay cleared his throat. "You'll probably figure this out eventually, but once someone really sets their mind on dying, it becomes hard to stop them. So, if you feel the need to blame anyone or anything at all, then blame her parents. But you definitely shouldn't be blaming yourself."
So, then, she really wanted to die? Grace wanted to leave this place without giving me so much as a solid reason? I don't believe that for a second. Something happened with her, something made her do it. She was sad, hurting inside and nobody seemed to notice it. She was spiraling and nobody noticed until she gave a final warning, a farewell. I was the one who couldn't answer her cry for help. I was the one who was too late.
"I do blame myself, Jay." I pushed myself from the ground and onto my feet, turning slowly.
"I blame myself because I fell in love with her."
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