5. BACK THEN – October
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
GARRISON ABBEY
“S hit.” I check over my shoulder, noticing Hannah’s mom and her little five-year-old brother at Loren Hale’s neighborhood Halloween party. Located in his overly decorated backyard. Before Mrs. Nash sees me, I pull my hood over my head.
I’m not in costume. Just my usual hoodie and dark jeans.
“What?” Willow asks, both of us loitering near the long snack table. She’s filling her paper pumpkin-shaped plate with only a few kernels of caramel popcorn and two tiny bite-sized pretzels—you know the kind that people put in Chex Mix? Not like a giant soft pretzel at a movie theater.
“Just someone I know, or their mom, I mean. Not actually them.” I shake my head like I’m being stupid about this. She won’t talk to me. Would she? I wave Willow on. “It’s whatever. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
“I’m done. So…” She pushes up her black-framed glasses. Even though they don’t go with her Vega costume, I like that she wanted to be comfortable and keep them on. She tries grabbing the strap of her backpack. It’s not there, by the way. So she catches air.
Willow notices me staring for a long or quick second—I’m not really sure which.
“What…is it?” Her hand shakes, the paper plate rattling, and she clutches it with both to steady the thing.
I spot her anxiety more than she’d probably like me to, but all I want to do is lessen it for her. I’m just not fucking sure how.
“You look pretty,” I tell her the truth, “but you look pretty all days, so there’s not really a difference here.”
Willow pales. She does that instead of blush. “Um, thanks? You look pretty too.” She winces. “I mean, you look handsome?”
I try to make this exchange as easy as possible. “Me? Nah. My dad says I need a haircut, and my eyes can’t decide what color they want to be.”
Her shoulders relax, and she peers close at my eyes. “I always just thought they were blue-green, which is aquamarine?”
“Maybe. I’ve never looked it up, which kinda shows the lack of interest I have in myself.” I nod at her plate. “You really done?” I pick up my own plate. The food spread is intense. The tower of orange-frosted cupcakes alone could feed my entire lacrosse team.
“I don’t have a big appetite when I’m nervous.” She shrugs but stares off at the growing party, more and more teenagers, kids and parents arriving. Apples drift along the pool, water glowing orange from the lights. Torches illuminate the backyard as the sun descends.
I don’t ask what she’s nervous about when I’m positive it’s just this . The party in general. The people. The mingling. I don’t like it much either, but it doesn’t bring me anxiety like her. I remember how her Tumblr questionnaire said she doesn’t like large crowds.
She meant it.
I load my plate with the only thing that looks good to me. Cookies. Sugar, oatmeal—not a big fan of chocolate fudge—but I find the peanut butter ones, my favorite, and stack them high.
“I’m not really sure where to go,” Willow mumbles, kind of to herself.
I stick a cookie in my mouth and point at an unoccupied haybale near the fence. “This way.”
She walks beside me, passing the apple bobbing thing and a couple other games, and when we make it to the haybale she lets out a deep breath like I made it.
I’m not going to lie.
I want to hug her right now.
Instead though, I just sit next to Willow and chew my peanut butter cookie. I set a couple sugar cookies on her plate. “In case you’re not as nervous later.”
“Thanks.” She starts to smile.
My lips rise too. I set a foot on the haybale and my arm on my knee. “If you could be doing anything in the world, what’d you be doing?” I ask her.
“Like a career?”
“No, just on any day, any time.”
She nudges her popcorn around her plate. “I’d hang out in my room. Maybe watch a movie, read some comics, and surf the internet, nothing crazy. I know it sounds boring, but it’s fun to me.”
“It doesn’t sound boring. Just laidback.” I wonder how many people gave her shit for it—because my brothers give me shit for playing “girly” games like Mario Party. Which, honestly, is as much for girls as it is for boys. It’s Nintendo.
“So I finished the fifth season of Supernatural last night…” she trails off as a blonde woman approaches us, a five-year-old clinging to her side. She’s not really “in costume” like her Buzz Lightyear son. She just wears dangling ghost earrings and a tacky sweater.
“Shit,” I mutter, too late to angle my body out of sight. I can’t even force a fake smile.
Mrs. Nash greets me first. “Hi, Garrison.”
Her daughter was my friend and part of the “ you should’ve been the bigger man and stood up to your friends and forced them to stop harassing people” group. I agree, I should’ve done that. I should’ve done a lot of things that I never did, and I can’t take it back.
I can’t rewind time, and guess who has to live with all of this for the rest of their life?
Me.
It’s my shit to bear.
And no matter which way people paint me, I’m still the lesser man. For ratting out my friends. Or for not convincing them to do the right thing.
“Hey,” I say back, dropping my hood. I hang my head though, and my hair brushes my eyelashes.
“It was really nice of Loren to let you at his house.”
“Yep,” I agree. I would’ve never forgiven myself for what I’d done like he forgave me, but I’m not going to tell her that .
“You should find time to thank him tonight.”
I see that she means well, but her coarse delivery rubs me wrong. I force a grating smile and say, “Yeah, I’ll get on that.” Why do I say these things?
“You’re lucky you’re not where your friends are, and frankly, the majority of this neighborhood thinks you should be there.”
She wants me to express deep remorse, break down and maybe shed some tears, but I just—I just can’t do that in front of her, in front of all these people. At this party. I can’t. I know I probably should, but my defenses keep rising and rising. I don’t know how to knock them down.
“Awesome,” I say. “I’ll be sure to pen that in my dairy tonight.” I can’t even look at Willow, but I sense her hesitation towards the entire situation.
I hate that my shit is making her more nervous.
So before Mrs. Nash can scold me some more, I add, “Is that all? Honestly, I don’t have anything else to say about this.”
“I’m so glad Hannah is no longer friends with you.” Ouch. I just nod, and she focuses on someone else. “Willow, right?”
I sit straighter, lifting my head up because I don’t want Mrs. Nash to attack her because of me.
“Yeah. I’m Willow.”
I wait.
Mrs. Nash says, “Don’t let him fool you. He’s harassed your cousin Loren and his wife Lily for longer than he’s probably told you. Just keep that in mind as he tries to make a friend out of you.”
The sad part: it’s all pretty much true.
Though I’m not fooling Willow. I’m not trying to, but she said that Loren told her everything that happened in the neighborhood. I never asked her to clarify which incidents, to tally off and see if he truly did recount everything to her. I didn’t want to bring up my bad history.
Just as Mrs. Nash turns to leave, Willow speaks up. “He’s a good person.”
It gets to me. Like emotionally—it gets to me. I stay still, and I just intake that phrase that no one has ever really spoken about me.
He’s a good person.
She said it so quietly that Mrs. Nash never heard. But I did. I watch Hannah’s mom direct her son towards the table of food.
“Sorry,” I apologize to Willow for that entire shitty conversation.
“She was rude.”
“So was I,” I say.
“Yeah, but…” She shrugs. “You see that you were. She doesn’t see that she was. And I know it doesn’t make it better, but it still matters in a way. I think, at least.”
“Yeah…maybe.” I’d like to believe that too.
She picks up one of the sugar cookies I gave her and takes a bite.
I feel my lips lift again. “So you finished the fifth season of Supernatural just last night and you didn’t message me? I told you I wanted the play-by-play of your reactions. In gif form.” She did it for season two, and honestly, it was the cutest thing anyone has ever sent me links to.
Most of my Tumblr posts are TV shows and movie gif sets I made, daily sarcasm, relating everyday events to pizza, and reblogs.
Her Tumblr posts are questionnaires, fan edits, fandom-related posts, and reactionary gifs as she live-updates watching episodes of TV. It bogs down my feed like crazy—and if you asked me my opinion about it before I met her, I’d say it’s dumb.
It’s not dumb. I hate that I thought it was dumb. It’s really entertaining, especially when I’ve seen the show.
She swallows her cookie and tries to contain a wider smile. “It was 4 a.m.”
I don’t have the best sleep pattern, but I was actually asleep last night at that time. “Finishing the best season of Supernatural is the only good reason to wake me up at 4 a.m. Did we agree that the internet is the best form of communication?”
“We did, but our other option was two tin cans.”
“Right.” I smile at the memory. “What are your thoughts on a cellphone?”
I’m surprised when she shakes her head. Rejected, Abbey. Willow sets down her cookie. “I like seeing you on the internet. I mean we’re not actually seeing each other.”
“You mean my ones and zeroes aren’t making contact with your ones and zeros? I thought they were dancing around each other. My ones know how to waltz but the zeros are just shit dancers. They like to step on other people’s computer code.”
Willow has this giddy smile that’s a little infectious. “If my ones and zeroes could dance, they’d probably still choose to sit down.”
I’d sit down with you. I don’t say it because I’m literally sitting down with her. “What about bobbing for apples?” I ask. “No pressure, honestly.”
“You say that a lot.”
“What part?”
“ Honestly .”
I hadn’t noticed. Maybe I’m just scared people won’t know what’s sarcasm and what’s sincere.
“Hey, I wanted to mention something…don’t take this the wrong way.
” Why am I broaching this now? Don’t scare her or make her feel bad.
I almost pause, but I let it out anyway—because I’m that guy.
“That comic book character, the one we were talking about earlier, I looked him up again.”
“Elixir?”
“No, the other one.”
“Wither?”
“Yeah, him.” I pause. “He kind of looks like me. For a cartoon.”
“Comic,” she corrects while color drains from her face. “…I like Wither, but I never said you were Wither.”
“Yeah, I know. I just thought it was interesting.” I feel like a dumbass, mostly because she can’t meet my eyes. I’m about to change subjects completely and ask about her favorite part of Supernatural season five, but she points to the apple-bobbing tub.
“It’s free. Do you still want to?”
I wonder if she was just waiting for the crowds to clear out around it.
“Yeah, definitely.”