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“Do what?”
“Be your friend.” And it’s the truth—a small truth.
Hurt shines back at me. “What did I do?”
“Nothing,” I assure him quickly, maybe too quickly. “It’s me. I’m the problem. I just… I don’t know how to turn it off. I told you. I…I get all up in my head. And it doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself that it’s not real. How much I remind myself how good I have it—how lucky I am. I have two parents who love me unconditionally. A roof over my head. A sister who would walk through hell to protect me. I have you… you…”
His jaw works, eyes growing impossibly bright when my words die there.
“It just…it doesn’t matter,” I whisper. “Because that thing inside me…it tells me no one actually likes me. That you’re only here out of obligation. That you only care, because it’s what Izzy wants.”
He scowls. “What? No. Why?—”
I hold up a hand, silencing him. “It’s nothing you did. Okay?”
Well, nothing other than date my sister.
Averting my gaze, I mask a wince, shoving that thought away. “It’s not even personal.”
Except it is…
“I feel this way even about my parents, okay? Izzy too.”
And the thing is…that’s not even a lie.
I meant it when I told him I don’t want to kill myself. I don’t…
I just wish things were different. I wish I was different. And sometimes it just really fucking drags me down, knowing I can’t just turn this off. I can’t be who I know they’d all wish I could be.
“I can’t help but feel like…like I’m this constant burden,” I find myself telling him, words untangling, and taking shape faster than I can keep up with. “Someone that they always have to protect. Coddle. It’s humiliating, and I…I know they probably wish I was different. Was normal. And—” I cut myself off.
Shaking my head, I meet a suspiciously quiet Mason’s gaze and tell him, “I drag people down. It’s what I do. It makes me selfish, makes me miss out on things like your recitals and school dances and….and things that would make me closer to all of you. Like you said, I’m closed off. I’m not helping myself here. I’m making it worse. And I can’t stop.”
His face tightens. “It’s not your fault. The bullying, your anxiety…it’s not your fault.”
“From where I stand, it doesn’t make much of a difference. You’re all still over there,”—I gesture in his direction—“and I’m…” I wave a hand around my room. “I’m here.”
He drops his gaze. His arms hang lifelessly at his sides, and his chest rises with his deep breath.
“It’s just the way things worked out.”
Jaw working, he nods.
A long moment passes where we just stand there, at a loss. He’s got his gaze on the floor, like it has the answers. Solutions to impossible puzzles. And I’ve got my eyes on him, taking their fill while he’s not paying attention.
“I got rejected from Kepler,” I tell him, referring to the private art school in Brooklyn I applied to for early acceptance. “That’s why you found me like you did.”
He drags his gaze up to mine.
Shrugging, I say, “I don’t have enough formal education in art. Not enough…curriculars or-or awards or recommendations or anything at all, really, to show for my art. Because I stupidly kept it to myself all these years, and never tried to learn and get better.”
He frowns. “Jeremy…I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I did it to myself.”
He shakes his head, brow furrowing, and says, “Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true.”
