Artifact 3 All-Access Wristband #4
“And sometimes, I just feel like…we’re not connected?
You just get so…quiet. I feel like I can never actually understand you all the way, you know, because you don’t want to let me in?
So maybe this is what you want, too? I think this is probably what we both have known we had to do, but, like, have been afraid to say for a while. ”
I wanted to tell him I’m quiet because I want to make sure I say the right thing.
I wanted to say You don’t understand me all the way because I barely do yet, because I’m constantly choosing between what is right and what is true.
I wanted to remind him of that one time I tried to be more open with him—when we saw another movie and I said it was boring, said the pretentious film bro could learn a thing or two from Nora Ephron or Jenny Han—and he just laughed.
But instead, I kept my lips pressed together, resigned. Quiet. Because that was the only way I knew how to be with him.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Oliver looked at me closely with his blue eyes, but it didn’t make me feel heated through like before. Instead, I felt the absence of warmth, like a swift storm filling the sky, blocking out the sun.
“Okay.” I stood up and walked past him, outside, where the June gloom had transitioned into a rare rain.
I knew it would destroy my silk press, but I went out into the downpour anyway.
And I started running to the only place that made sense.
To the only person who did understand me all the way and would know how much this hurt.
As I reached the flagstone path leading up to Gaile’s house, lined with lavender and milkweed, my feet slowed, and I felt a sudden pang of worry.
It had been a while since I’d come over.
Was it still okay to just show up like this?
And there was something else, something darting on the outskirts of my mind, just out of reach…
But then she opened the door before I even knocked, like she was already anticipating someone’s arrival.
“Sorry,” I said, wiping away the tears and snot and raindrops on my face. “I should have texted. Do you already have plans with James?”
“No, me and James aren’t even— I was…waiting for you.” Her dark brown eyes searched my face in the dim glow of the porch light, and then she nodded as if she’d found an answer. “But you didn’t remember. Of course you didn’t remember.”
“Did we…have plans?”
As soon as I asked the question, though, the texts I got from her that morning finally zipped in from the edges of my brain, flashing front and center.
You me and all five Twilight movies tonight? I promise not to make my Renesmee face…the whole time.
And then, Is it sappy to say that I miss you? Cuz I miss you!!
But right after, Oliver also texted me that one of his favorite bands would be down from the Bay, playing at the Mode…
“I forgot—god, I’m such an asshole. You deserve to be pissed at me. Please be pissed at me, but first, can you just give me a hug? Because Oliver just broke up with me and I feel like my heart was just torn from my chest? Like, I don’t even know how I’m going to keep going, Gaile? He said I—”
“Harriet.” Her icy voice, so unfamiliar, cut me off. “I’m not just your sassy best friend in a movie. This is real life—my real life, too.”
“What? I know that.”
“Do you think I’m just waiting around until you deign to give me your time? Counting down the minutes until I can hear all the details of your great love story? Until you give me the privilege of comforting you and giving you advice?”
She scoffed and shook her head. “You changed so much about yourself just to make Oliver like you, and I mean, who decided that he was so amazing, anyway? He acts like he’s so subversive and cool, but he’s not even original—he and all his friends wear the same stupid fake vintage shirts from Target.
There’s nothing subversive about Target. Also, his band sucks.”
“His band doesn’t suck…” Out of all the possible choices of things to say, I picked the absolute worst one. And I didn’t even believe it, not really. I was just so used to saying things that weren’t true to keep what I wanted.
But now that my best friend was standing in front of me, angry and hurt, looking like she was done with me, losing Oliver felt like a paper cut. Losing Gaile would be a deep, infected wound—something that might never heal.
“See, you can’t even say they suck when I know you think they suck.”
“You’re right,” I started, but she kept talking, like all her feelings were a shaken-up bottle of Coke.
“Harriet, what you like and who you are isn’t bad. It’s why we became friends. I liked you. But this you…I don’t know who she is. And I…I don’t know if I want to be friends with her anymore.”
I’d just said it felt like my heart was torn out, but that showed me it was still there, right before it was snatched for real this time and stomped on. Destroyed. “Gaile, no. You can’t mean that.”
She held a hand up. “I think I need some space.”
Her lips curved into a deep frown. Her eyebrows pressed together tightly in sadness but also determination. I didn’t think there was anything I could say to make that expression change, so I stayed quiet again.
“Okay.”
I looked down at the ground as the door clicked closed, and then I turned and walked home alone.
And there you have it, the finale to this sad story. I lost my best friend and my boyfriend in the same night.
I spent the last lonely weeks of my freshman year staring at the ground and wishing I could disappear.
But see, what I’ve come to realize in all this time sitting in my room, stewing over it, is that it wasn’t the finale. It was the dark night of the soul! And my grand gesture is going to bring us to our actual finale, the happily ever after version—with one of them, at least. The one that matters.
I know it sounds like a long shot. I know it sounds slightly bonkers. But it feels like the right way after everything I got wrong. I can apologize and express my feelings. I can be loud instead of quiet. I can finally start taking steps toward the Harriet I’m supposed to be.
As I tape the final letters onto the poster, though—I’m Sorry cut out of cardstock in perfectly uniform letters—it doesn’t look even close to right. It looks awful. Like it was made by a toddler—and not even one who was having a good time.