Page 22 of My Own Kind of Person

“What do you mean?”

“That wasn’t your true voice.”

“The way I was just talking?”

“The way you’ve been talking this whole period. It sounds different than yesterday.”

“In the bathroom?” I wave this silly idea away. “I was playing around then. Practicing for a big audition.”

“Oh?”

I do a very important voice. “I’m trying out for the role of Stupid Idiot in the fall musical.”

He flinches. “I don’t like those words. They’re harsh.”

“But they’re the only appropriate ones when referring to me.” He doesn’t laugh. “Anyway, what’s your true voice?”

He shakes his head. “Just this. I think.”

I’m trying to salvage the conversation but it keeps backfiring. What is it I learned yesterday? You can be honest and not funny and that’s okay?

“Were you sad to leave your old school?” I prepare for him to make fun of my sincerity.

“No.” He rolls his brown eyes and they catch the fluorescent lights. “There’s not even anything interesting to say about it. Just”—and he cuts a hand across the air—“no.”

Mazzei comes closer to our side of the room and I hold up my paper as though I’m referring to it. Mazzei’s left eye drifts slightly, so it’s hard to know where he’s looking. All of us and none of us at the same time.

“And you, Sean?” Elijah doesn’t pretend he’s reading off his slip. “Are you happy to be here?”

“I am.”

“You feel like people get you?”

“I do,” I say, though it’s more complicated than that. Do I? I do. But do I? It’s complicated. And do I really? No.

“That’s good.” He’s even quieter now. “You seem…I don’t know.”

“What?”

He tilts his head as though thinking, then shrugs and says, “I don’t have an end to that sentence. I started it hoping I’d find an end, but I didn’t find it.”

“It must be around here somewhere.”

“I’m very disorganized.”

Mazzei shouts that we’ll stop to share out in one minute. Elijah shifts his desk back to its spot and I find I have to do the same. When did we both move closer to each other? Elijah says something I don’t hear.

“What’s that?”

He turns to face me but looks at the floor and keeps his hands folded in his lap. “I’ll keep looking for the end of that sentence.”

“Thank you,” I say without thinking.

He nods solemnly and drops his voice lower. “You’re very welcome.”

I’d like to tell him that I don’t think people get me but I don’t think that’s their fault. I don’t ever show myself. I don’t even show myself to myself, so I don’t know if I get me either.

That is what I’d like to tell him right now.