"You're pathetic."
She heard it, she heard a voice say that she was pathetic, and she hung her head, knowing it to be true. What had she done? What had she accomplished in all this time here? She accomplished becoming a waitress. She accomplished drinking too much, she accomplished sleeping around. Had she accomplished becoming an actress? Not hardly. She was in low rent, low budget things that any amateur could be in, any junior high kid with a projectable speaking voice. What did she know of it, really? What she knew of most things, nothing.
She thought about Sheldon and Leonard, who were actually accomplishing things. She listened, she knew of all the schooling they had gone through to get where they were, she knew that they held the highest degrees possible in their fields, she knew that they had things going for them, their extraordinary minds. What in the name of God did she have going for her?
She wasn't an actress, that was the truth of the thing. She was a waitress. She remembered when Sheldon was having trouble with some equation or something at work and he wanted to do something menial so his mind would be free to work on the problem in the background. Menial. And he had done what she does. It was menial to him, her mind was so far below his, her possibilities were so limited in comparison to them.
Part of the problem might be that Leonard and Sheldon and Howard and Raj and Bernadette and Amy were not appropriate friends for her. She wasn't in their intellectual league. That was their entire deal, they all lived in their minds, they all worked on things that mattered, and what did she possibly have to do with that?
She thought that being with them had lead her to believe that she should be able to compete with them, or at least be able to do some of what they could do. She thought that all her hanging out with them, overhearing the talk about equations and multiple universes and string theory and M theory and the implications of black holes, she thought that all of this overheard information had leaked to her somehow, she was surrounded by this, immersed in thoughts and theories that were light years beyond her.
Each and every one of them was doing something extraordinary and worthwhile and what was she doing? Wiping tables, taking orders, holding hot plates and burning her fingertips. Howard was designing stuff for NASA. Leonard was doing something with lasers, she wasn't so sure but he was always devising experiments and going in early and staying late and it was in the noble realm of discovery, and what about her? Smiling and trying to be nice for tips. Amy was doing work with neurobiology, maybe finding the causes of Alzheimer's or mental illness or something that might make people's lives better and what about her? How was bringing people hamburgers and greasy orders of fries making anyone's life better? Bernadette was studying the little organisms that caused disease and what about her? Waking up hungover almost every day, meeting strange men and bringing them home. Raj was discovering planets. Sheldon was working out equations that may one day unify everything in the universe, or universes. Sheldon was unmasking the face of God. And what about her? Tired after being on her feet for 12 hours, her mouth dry like cotton in the morning as she woke up to yet another stranger with long distance eyes and beard stubble.
She had no business being with any of them, she wasn't even worthy enough to bring them their shlopp at the Cheesecake factory.
Could she talk to any of them about this? Raj couldn't talk to her unless he was drunk. Howard never said anything real to her. Leonard agreed with everything or tried to tell her what he thought she wanted to hear. Amy lusted after her and smiled at her inferior intellect. Bernadette? Well, Bernadette used to work with her at the restaurant, but Bernadette had intelligence and the means to an education and she got out. She must know that not everyone could do that, and she wouldn't rub her nose in it like a dog who made a mess on the rug. That left Sheldon. Sheldon, with his ruthless honesty. Sheldon with his inability to lie. She had to amend that. Sheldon could lie if he thought out an elaborate story first and made sure every track was covered. She didn't think Sheldon was capable of white lies, the lies that Leonard specialized in.
She knew what she thought of them. What did they think of her? Only Sheldon would be capable of telling her. She marched over there, hoping she would find Sheldon alone. She burst into their living room and saw all four, Raj, Howard, Sheldon, and Leonard. Damn it. She shook her long blond hair and cleared her throat.
"Sheldon?" she said, happy that at least he wouldn't understand the cracking in her voice. Leonard noticed it and squinted his eyes at her behind his glasses.
"Yes, Penny?" he said, looking up at her, his eyes and his voice calm. What was really going on in that head of his? Were equations constantly knitting and re-knitting and flying apart, just to be put back together again? She didn't understand how the thought of an alternate universe had anything to do with math, she didn't understand the numbers on the white boards behind them. She didn't understand anything. She didn't understand how a girl full of hope and delusions could come to California and fail.
"Can I talk to you alone, maybe in my apartment?" she said, and she saw his put out look. He didn't want to, and what would be the point? How could he illuminate anything for her? She wasn't smart, she wasn't a genius, she was making no lasting contribution to anything. She worked at a low paying job doing work that was, that didn't feel...oh she didn't even know.
"Please, Sheldon?" There, raw pleading, and he wouldn't notice, he couldn't notice. But Leonard did.
"Penny, is everything alright?" he said, and she could cry for him and his concern. Things were not alright and she didn't want his brand of placating. She wanted the truth, shining like unvarnished steel that might go right through her heart. It was time to hear some sort of truth.
"Oh, alright," Sheldon said, setting his laptop down and getting up. He adjusted the T-shirts he wore, one over the other like a 12 year old boy. He dressed like a child.
In her apartment he sat in his accustomed spot, fiddling with the sleeves of his shirt, and she watched the way his thin fingers picked at the fabric. She licked her lips. How could she bring this up, what help would he be?
"Listen, Sheldon, I know I'm not as smart as all of you, but do you think..." Did he think what? That her continued presence in their life was necessary? That her dreams were unrealistic and as such would fail? That she might not have talent or the work ethic necessary to accomplish anything?
"Does it seem to you like, well, I don't know..." She wasn't even smart enough to know how to ask him about this. She hung her head, her hair falling around her face, two blond curtains covering her.
"Penny, you are having trouble completing a sentence. Why did you ask me to come over here?"
She could ask this, she could formulate it enough to get the words out of her mouth. She was friends with him, after all. He had worked hard to incorporate her into his life, his routines. She should just start at the beginning of the whole thing.
"Sheldon, what do you think about me not being as smart as you, and Howard and Raj and Leonard and even Amy and Bernadette? I mean, what do you think about that?"
He swallowed, and she could see his adam's apple bob violently with the motion. She could see the veins in his neck and on the backs of his hands. She could see his full lower lip and how it glistened when he licked it.
"What do I think about that? It is merely a fact, just as it is a fact that Howard, Raj, Leonard, Bernadette, and Amy are not as smart as me,"
"Yes, but they're all in the same league, they're doctors and they use their minds, even if they aren't as smart as you they're still considered to be geniuses, and I'm not. I'm not even particularly smart, or at least I don't feel like I am." That wasn't a question, and Sheldon didn't answer. She shook her head, determined to try again, to get him to tell her something, to help her somehow. He was the genius and she was lost and floundering in her life.
"It seems to me that I don't belong, that I have nothing to contribute, and I want to know if you think that's true, or if you think...something else,"
There was a question in that convoluted sentence, there was something he could tell her about this, about life, about why her brain wasn't the same, why she couldn't make startling connections like they could, why she couldn't even clean her apartment, why she couldn't get into a real play or something on T.V. Why she couldn't succeed, he had to tell her. He had to tell her why she felt so worthless and so hopeless and why it seemed like she might never make it out of the morass, why she would never make it to the top of the fucking mountain. He was the genius with all the answers, and she needed some answers now.