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So I drifted like a balloon in the sky, waiting for someone to anchor me back down, but no one ever did. It’s been years since she stuck her nose in my life and figured out what was going on. Me and Principal Prichard are doing things we shouldn’t be doing. I have a journal where I confess all the horrible things I do to people. My friends are backstabbers who hate me, and I haven’t laughed in my family’s presence in over four years.
Four years.
Four unnoticed years.
A tear escapes my eye, rolling down my cheek. The door opens, and Penn walks in. He is quiet, somber. He is always quiet and somber. And present. I can feel his presence like blood flowing in my body. Vital and warm and full of my DNA. The problem with Penn is that he has a girlfriend, but he feels like mine when he’s around, and that’s dangerous.
“How did you know I was here?” I wipe the tear before he can see it.
He rubs the back of his neck. “I thought it was a wine cellar and was counting on some booze.”
I roll my eyes, sniffing.
He plops down on the floor. Yanking me by the hem of my shirt, he motions for me to sit beside him, then he knocks his knee against mine. “Talk.”
“With the enemy? No thank you.”
I drink him in. The curl of his dark blond hair falling across his forehead. His sulking scowl. The love bites across his neck that I didn’t do. I imagine Adriana nibbling and kissing and biting him, then stand, unable to calm myself down. I jog toward the door.
He gallops behind me, tugging me back to him.
“Talk, Daria. Fucking talk.”
“Why!” I throw my hands in the air. “So you can hold it against me the first chance you get? So you can laugh at me with your friends? The prissy girl with the first-world problems? So you know how weak I am? Why should I talk to you? I’m nothing to you. I’ve always been your nothing. The bitch who drove your twin sister away. Don’t pretend otherwise just because we shared a few sloppy, illicit kisses. Don’t act like you give me a sliver of thought when I’m not in front of you. I’m not Adriana.”
His lips curl in revulsion. I think I really pissed him off this time around.
He takes my face in both his hands and brings my nose to brush his.
“No,” he hisses. “You’re not Adriana. I agree.”
He pulls back from me, digs in the back pocket of his low-hanging skinny jeans, and takes out a single house key with a blue plastic string tied around it. He throws it into my hands. I catch it.
My eyes widen. How did he…?
“Stole it from your pompoms.” He looks away, walking to the other side of the room, pacing like a tiger in a cage. This is big. Huge, maybe. He keeps me everywhere he goes.
I chase him across the dance room, planting a hand on his shoulder. He turns around. He looks ragged and heartbroken, and I think it’s because of me. I want it to be because of me. What kind of person does that make me?
“What’s eating you, Daria Followhill, queen bee, cheer captain, and the most popular girl in the county?”
My family.
My friends.
My secrets.
My insecurities.
My errors and mistakes and past.
And you. You bury me so deep in feelings I can’t even explain.
“Melody stopped coming to my room. It used to be our thing. Every night since I was born, she would give me a kiss good night. I think she stopped loving me,” I tell him, and when I do, I realize it’s not a lie. It’s a numbing notion inhabiting every cell in my body. My mother doesn’t love me anymore.
I made someone programmed to adore me unconditionally forget all about me.
“She loves you.” He slides the back of his hand against my throat, staring deep into my eyes. “But you hate yourself, so it doesn’t matter.”
I snort.
“I love myself. Look at me. I’m Daria Followhill.” I motion to my body with my hands. He shakes his head. He’s not buying it.
Wordlessly, he pushes me toward the mirror in front of us. Standing behind me, he jerks my chin up so I have to look at myself. At us. He’s over a head taller than me. Broad and muscular like a Greek god. His face is sharper, more symmetrical than mine. His charisma is blowing up this room, and I’m standing here, casing most of his body yet barely drawing any attention to mine.
“When I look in the mirror, I see an orphan. A football player. A student. A grieving brother. A guy whose dream is to attend Notre Dame so he can escape the shithole that’s his life and break the poverty cycle. I know who I am. But who are you? Tell me what you see, Daria.” His breath fans across my hair. “Help me get into this beautiful, awful head of yours.”
