Transition Metal
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He may seem naïve, maybe even dull, but he knows how to cry, how to break, just as anyone else.
He may also seem smart, like he's breaking the teenaged-boy mold (his working model being Hayner), but really he's just like every other boy – trying to get the girl and have his share of happiness. He wishes he could be strong and brave and fight in the town square like Hayner does, but he just doesn't have the ability. Just like anyone might do, though, he pretends it doesn't hurt somewhere deep. He nods and smiles because, really, he says, "I think violence is just stupid." Regardless of his words, it's simply easier to lie. It makes the hurt less, and eventually even he believes it.
And he may seem resigned to being the best friend – one of them, anyhow – while Hayner stakes his claim on Olette one day, out of the blue. He may even seem like he doesn't care, like he hasn't waited for her since the playground days, like he doesn't know that Hayner's only noticing the lovely way she's beginning to curve. But he does. He does. He may seem fine with Hayner announcing that Pence shouldn't like her too, because it would "totally screw up our dynamic." And when Pence says, "Not me," he says it again and again to convince himself, to dull that same deep, aching sore.
So finally when Olette does choose somebody, who, by the way, is not Hayner and most certainly is not Pence – whatheheck, Seifer? – and Hayner announces that he doesn't care and that Olette doesn't have taste and that Pence never had a chance anyway "Not in a million years!"… well, Pence may seem like that doesn't hurt him. But it does, it does, especially prickly in the words of a friend.
While it may seem to you or anyone else that the dynamic is the same again, despite Hayner's sly remarks about Seifer's lack of intellect (like he can talk) and his "freakin' shemale clothes, c'mon, Olette" it's not. Because though he may seem gullible, bookwormish, ignorant and all of those things – well… he's made of the same glass as anybody else who ever loved anybody.
Pence knows how to break just like you do.