Day 25 #3
She’s sleeping right on the edge, which seems like a very Sidney thing to do.
I don’t even know why, it just does. I squat down next to the bed and just look at her for a second.
My annoyance over Caleb and the necklace, and the fact that she thinks I’m a total douchebag, has melted away.
I set my hand on her shoulder and rub my thumb on her bare skin, trying not to startle her.
She makes a little purring sound, and the crack of light slashing down onto the carpet illuminates the way her nose scrunches up.
I want to laugh, but that feels like the absolute rudest way I could wake her up.
“Hey, Sid?” My hand is still on her arm when her eyes slowly open.
She looks startled for a second, but she doesn’t make any noise. With a shake of her head she blinks up at me, scans her eyes around the room, and then opens her mouth in something between a yawn and a deep breath.
“Shouldn’t you be at the movies?” I whisper, and all of the anger from before has seeped out of my voice, leeched away by the shock of her in my bed. She’s still in the old T-shirt and cotton shorts she was wearing when I brought her into my room earlier. Has she been here the whole time?
Sidney doesn’t say anything; she just shakes her head.
Honestly, it seems rude to show up in someone’s room and then refuse to answer their questions, or to even speak.
But then she rolls onto her back, and then over again, until she’s facing me, but this time from the other side of the bed.
I look down at the empty space where her body used to be, and then at her.
I am so freaking confused right now. When she doesn’t move, I lie down next to her, hoping my bed isn’t as squeaky as hers.
Her voice is soft. “I didn’t go to the movies.” I can feel her breath on my cheek as my eyes focus on the ceiling.
“I see that.”
“Do you know why?”
I turn my head toward her. “Because you knew Caleb wouldn’t create a movie-watching experience half as awesome as I did?
” I smile at her, and realize our faces are only inches apart.
“Because you wanted to hide in my bed like a creeper and wait for me?” She scrunches her nose up like I’ve offended her, but a smile is pulling at her lips, so I keep going.
“You were sitting on my bed, thinking about how awesome I am, and you suffered a narcoleptic episode. Am I getting warm?”
“You’ve had this necklace for years now.” She puts her fingers to her chest where the necklace rests. “Two summers ago.”
“That’s the basic math of it, yes.”
“You suck at this.” Her voice is annoyed, but amused.
“What?”
“Talking about serious stuff.”
“Yeah, pretty much.” I don’t think it’s that I’m nervous to talk to Sidney about this stuff, it’s just that my head is spinning, and the room is dark, and she’s in my bed wearing way too little. It’s a lot to think about.
“I kind of like that you suck at this.” She smiles and rolls onto her back, and I’m relieved by the extra few inches it puts between us. “So if you’ve had that necklace for two years…”
“Do you have a question you want to ask?” I’m still looking at her, but she’s looking at the ceiling.
“Do you have anything you want to tell me?”
I roll my eyes and wish she could see it. “You suck at this, too.”
“Yeah. But you should have told me. I thought you hated me, and we could have had … we could have had less of us being dysfunctional and horrible.”
“Maybe I liked us dysfunctional and horrible.” She levels me with a stare and I let out a long breath. “What should I have told you?”
She doesn’t say anything, she just stares up at the ceiling. And after a minute, she closes her eyes, and I wonder if she’s just going to go back to sleep in my bed and hope she wakes up to find out this entire day was just a bad dream.
I take a deep breath, and decide that I don’t have much to lose; this is a game of chicken that Sidney is never going to willingly let me win. “Hey, Sid…”
She tips her head back toward me, her voice soft. “Yeah?”
“Ask me how much I hate you right now.”
She closes her eyes for just a second. “How much do you hate me right now?” It doesn’t have the teasing edge it usually does; her voice is nervous, almost shaky.
“I don’t.” It’s such a cop-out. I should have told her the whole truth—I like you. I’ve always liked you—but I can’t bring myself to do it without knowing if she’s going to lose her shit and stop talking to me the rest of the summer. So, baby steps.
“I…” She looks back to the ceiling. “Don’t hate you, either.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
She looks at me and smiles, but it’s a little sad. “Me, too.”
Sidney is like the stray cat we had at our house one summer.
We fed her for a few weeks, and she purred and acted like she’d stay forever, but then suddenly she was gone.
So before Sidney decides to bolt, I turn and press my lips to hers.
She shifts, so she’s facing me, and props herself up on her elbow so we’re level.
My hand rests on her waist, and hers wraps behind my back.
We’re still pressed together when a door slams and voices filter into the house. All four of our parents are home. Footsteps enter the hallway, and Sidney bolts up. I whisper in her ear, “My door is locked. Just be quiet.” And just to see what I can get away with, I kiss her behind her ear.
“Mine isn’t,” she says frantically, and launches herself off of the bed.
In two long steps that are almost leaps, she’s in the bathroom, the door softly shutting behind her.
A faucet turns on, the crack of light under the door goes dark, and just as strangely as Sidney appeared in my bedroom, she’s gone.