"Who, the Doctor? Oh, yeah – he was a story. Just a story. We were little kids. I'm not crazy, Rory – oh, fine, but you're crazier."
I wasn't meant to hear that, don't think. Not that it was my fault, necessarily. 'Can you grab the curling iron?' she'd said, so I did, and I ended up hearing her conversation with my other friend.
I paused before opening the door. It didn't really matter, right?
It did. That was why she closed the door.
I honestly don't really bother with English equivalents anymore. Apparently I'm a little too Yankee for British English. (Josh tried it out – but torch and lift and crisps sounded wrong and strange with the harsher American tones and he gave up on that.)
So here we were, my senior year, the day before graduation. Grades 11 and 12 allowed to attend a prom of sorts, and the rest were allowed to eat their hearts out in jealousy.
And here I was, half-zipped in a long-sleeved dress and pretending I hadn't heard anything. I believe I did a good job of it.
Amelia gave me a big smile when she saw me, and motioned for me to sit down already! And so I sat, and she plugged in the iron and started doing my hair, talking on the phone at the same time.
"Alright, then." She bit her lip to stop the silly smile from spreading on her lips. "So, we'll meet you and Brian an hour then? Okay, great. See you then." She looked down at me in the middle of grasping a difficult strand. "Brian says hello, and he can't wait to see you, gorgeous. He's sorry he has to leave early, but he's going to make up for it."
Her smile turned a little mischievous, and I guess I have to admit my blush. Brian and I have reached the one-year mark already, and if Amelia had a say in it, I would finally kiss him today. Maybe I would. But Joshua would never, never let it go.
As it turned out, Amelia's hunch that Rory was gay was dead wrong. I'm not sure if she knew, or if she was going with him as a friend, but Josh asked me, and I asked Rory, if maybe it was that he just had his sights set on my best friend. And he blushed and stuttered his way through an admittance that, yes, he kind of liked Amy.
Amy, that's right. She's been Amy since she hit freshman year. As far as I know, anyway. I wasn't too happy with it, and she insisted on the idea that she wasn't a little girl anymore.
We'd had an argument over that. My position mostly being that you've been Amelia since we were kids, and her defense being that haven't we grown out of fairy-tales and raggedy men in boxes? And that's when I knew "Amy" would be a little bit more trouble than I was used to.
I don't want to sound like her mother, but since when is taking a dare to kiss as many boys as possible in one lunch period smart in any way? Even Rory was being a little mother-hennish about it, though he had completely different reasons than I did. Even Joshua winced and went, "She's just turned into a little punk, hasn't she?"
"Why don't you just become a kissogram, then?" I asked her once, more a little fed up with her new attitude.
Amelia had paused in the middle of applying an edgy red lipstick. "You know," she said, "I might do that."
So the blame for Amelia's career choice lands on me.
Sorry, Rory.
Amelia tousled my hair a little, and tucked some strands behind my ears.
"All set," she said proudly. Then she zipped up my dress. "Okay, now you're all set. Go ahead and look."
And so I did.
"Amelia! Oh, my g – that's fantastic!"
I turned and hugged her tightly, still glancing in the mirror at myself. She'd done great – my mass of hair didn't even look like a mildly dead possum anymore. The brown ringlets even went well with the deep blue dress – admittedly my favorite color since I was eight.
"He's going to fall at your feet," Amelia enthused confidently. "Okay, my turn."
And so I straightened Amelia's hair and pushed the fiery locks behind her head.
"That's it?" Amelia laughed. "I think I'm getting less than I paid for here."
"Hold on, Pond," I grumbled playfully. "You can't rush art."
"Hurry up, Blythe," she threw back, "you're on a time limit."
I stuck my tongue out at her and began braiding and straightening and clipping some locks and letting the rest hang loose.
"Should I be worried?" Amelia asked. "There seems to be a lot going on back there."
"Shhh!"
And so, in the end, I ended up wrapping a braid round her head and pinning it with a diamond clip. With the forest colored dress that had as much personality as she did, I didn't have a hard time picturing Amelia as some mischievous Celtic princess. Maybe a fairy.
"Okay, you're finished. Get up."
Amelia saw her reflection and she couldn't stop grinning.
"I know why you're my best friend now," she teased, turning her head at different angles with her eyes trained on the mirror.
"Oh, whatever, Amelia."
Her eyes flickered every time I called her that. She'd already fought me on the name. And I won. She was Amelia.
Josh ended up taking us in his truck. He'd fixed the thing up by himself, and honestly, he'd done a good job. College or no, attentive parent or no, between books and how-to videos and our father's training he was easily Leadworth's best mechanic. The only trouble was the fact that some days it took a load of nudging and pleading to even get him out of bed and to work.
But with his skill, no one could really say anything about it.
"Careful, Ari," he told me quietly as I slid out of the truck. I gave him a grin that he returned.
To Amelia he raised his eyebrows.
"Make sure the number of people you kiss stays in the low dozens," he chided. "Have fun, punk."
Amelia stuck her tongue out at Joshua, her eyes crinkling with laughter. She and Josh were the definition of the word frenemies. She wasn't Amelia or Amy to him. In his book she was either Punk or Button ("Because she pushes mine," he'd explained), and she was just fine with that.
"Right!" Amelia exclaimed. "We have boys waiting."
The set of Joshua's shoulders spoke of a figurative eye roll. He smiled slightly.
"Right. You don't want me here for that. I'll scare them off." He considered. "I think Rory's immune by now, though."
His if I stick around I'll run Brian off went unspoken. I heard it anyway.
"Okay," I said, and smiled. "Bye, Josh. Love you."
"You too, Ari."
It both pleased and scared me to see that as soon as he pulled out, he didn't look back. Like he trusted me to be alright without him.
I guess it's been like that for a while though.
I understand that I've turned this book into a diary. But it's only going to get so far. I don't think I need to write about the tingling in my stomach and the fluttering in my chest when I saw Brian, all dressed up and dapper with his black suit. He didn't necessarily match with me, but that hardly mattered. I barely took note of Rory, sidling up to Amelia and looking delighted, stunned and flustered all at once.
In the books they make the entire 'girl sees her boyfriend and walks to him from across the room' sound like she's walking in a daze, in complete euphoria and the rest of the world falls away. Not quite how it happened, and I wonder if maybe I over-romanticized the experience. I was a little too aware of it all. The laughing, the talking, the flashes of color from other peoples' outfits. I was focused on Brian, though, and how he clashed so nicely with my timeless blue. It was loud and it was frazzling and I felt a migraine coming on but I was excited, and I was happy.
"Hi," I said when I reached him. I can't help but wish I was more eloquent when drowning in adoration.
"Hey," he replied, and I instantly felt better.
Brian glanced over my head across the room before he looked back at me.
"You look amazing," he told me, running a finger briefly over a curl. He flashed a grin at me and offered me a hand. In a split second, I took it and squeezed once.
And then I lost myself. The entire thing was a blur of radio hits and dancing, sometimes slow and sometimes fast, and during one song he had his cheek pressed against mine as we slowly spun. We bumped into Rory and Amelia at one point – Amelia whose lips, I was surprised to find, had not touched another person's yet so far – and we traded off for a song, Amelia flying into Brian's arms and Rory holding me like a brother holds a sister, like Joshua would hold me. He kept giving Brian worried glances and I'd squeeze his forearms, telling him that it was okay and I'd never let Amelia leave him like that, not for my date.
He laughed, and for a split second I was sorry that I hadn't asked Rory to be my date, and so sorry that I didn't have feelings for him – because as amazing and handsome as Brian was, there was no surpassing one of Rory's laughs, and he had a patient and gentle way about him that any girl would be blessed to have. Sometimes Amelia took him for granted. I never did. I watch him with his quiet politeness and the way he pores studiously over medical books (because there's no way he won't become a doctor ((not Doctor)) or nurse), and I'm always, always struck by how he's going to make such a good husband one day, and I am so proud of my friend.
It was when Amelia broke away from Brian and I hugged Rory in thanks that she came. A slim, dark haired beauty with flaring makeup and a confident way walked straight up to Brian.
Her satiny dress was the exact shade of green as his tie. His suit was the tan of her headpiece.
I froze, and Amelia and Rory looked over with eyes wide, when she all but flung herself on my boyfriend, looping her arms around his neck, and gave him an open mouthed kiss.
"What?" Amelia hissed. Her vibrant eyes narrowed as she sped through every possible explanation. She didn't like what she saw.
And neither did I.
Brian's arms came up to the level of his chest and he flinched backwards.
"Ana!" he said hastily. "You can't – not right –" He gestured not-very-subtly right in my direction.
Ana turned, and she saw me.
And she cringed.
"But you said you'd tell her –"
"I know what I said," he interrupted her.
I was speechless. It wasn't real. And yet, as I tamped down the dreadful hollowness building in my core, the bile rising in my throat, I couldn't help but think that it was all too real. There was a sudden spike in my headache.
"Brian?" I asked shakily. "What…"
He took a half step away from Ana, whose lips were pulled back in a wince, and reached a hand out. Clasping his fingers gently around my shoulder, he chuckled. Nervously.
"Ariane, I promise you, it's not…" But it obviously was.
"Brian," Amelia said warningly.
He grimaced, and I stepped away from him. His hand followed, as if to clutch at me again, but Rory pulled me back with a gentle hand in mine.
He was not glaring. But he stared through my boyfriend with a look so sharp that I pitied Brian.
Everything was circling uselessly in my head, and I stood, catatonic, in Rory's brotherly embrace. Amelia's eyes were as fiery as her hair, and her fairy-tale boldness came back, more vengeful and intense than I'd ever seen.
"It's not what?" she said hotly, advancing a step. She was taller than him, I realized, and he looked even smaller right now, cowering away from both her and the wide-eyed stares of the people around us. She was not fazed. "This girl comes and kisses you like she's – she's your wife or something, and whatever it looks like, it's not?" Her Scottish brogue became thicker by the second as she processed, and I shrunk back against Rory. "She kisses you and you come coordinated with her instead of your girlfriend and we're not supposed to think of a bunch of worst-case scenarios?"
I looked up at Rory as he decided to speak up. My head was throbbing.
"That was why you said you'd only be able to attend half the prom, wasn't it?" he said quietly. His voice carried, and that was when I realized everyone was silent, watching. Brian opened his mouth, but Rory beat him to it. "How long were you cheating on Ariane?"
And there it was. I thought it would be okay, just as long as we danced around the word. I put so much into the past year. I put my all into being good.
And Rory said it.
And Brian answered.
"A few months," he admitted, sheepishly.
A few months.
I'm trying so hard to make this legible. I'm trying so hard.
And I feel so stupid.
"Okay," I said, to his shock and mine. My voice shook. "Okay." And then I looked right at him and used my long-suffering one, the one I used for the most awful moments during Joshua's lows, the one I tried so hard to keep steady for when he admitted to wanting to just shoot himself and be done with it. I used that voice, the emergency one that hid how much I hurt.
"Goodbye, Brian," I said quietly, and people moved out of the way as I walked out of the building. Or, I thought I did. Until I realized that Rory was leading me out and I was barely walking. My head was aching and I was in blinding pain now.
"It's okay," he told me carefully, once we were outside. And because it was okay, I went ahead and cried.
I cried until Rory's shirt was cold and damp and he must have called my brother because then Joshua was there, gently picking me up and putting me in the passenger seat of the truck. The normally soothing rumble of the truck went at odds with my intense migraine. Opening my eyes hurt and I felt faint.
"Brian," Rory explained, and Joshua's lips thinned.
"I had figured," was all he said. "Where's 'Melia?"
"Still inside."
"She'd better do her job."
He didn't elaborate on that and drove us both home, after Rory hugged me goodnight.
He didn't say much else, really. He just took me inside and sat me down on the couch and disappeared into the kitchen with the liberty he'd had when he lived here.
Then he sat down next to me, and was silent for the longest time.
I looked up at the cool feeling of a glass bowl pressing against my arm, and looked up.
Joshua offered me the bowl of fish sticks and custard once more. I accepted and leaned against his arm, sticking a well dunked piece in my mouth.
"You know," he began quietly, his American accent becoming softer, posher, British. "That dress is lovely. Really a lovely color. Reminds me of a story I heard once, about a magic box of the deepest, most impossible blue, and the raggedy stranger that fell out of it…"
A smile tugged at my lips as he told his rendition of Blue and Raggedy, but I couldn't help thinking of Brian.
And the next morning, when I saw him walking down the street, his face adorned in purple bruises the size of Amelia's fists, bile rose up and my chest constricted in hurt.
I was going to kiss him last night.
Look! I'm back! I promise, I think that's going to be the last Doctor-less chapter for now, heheh. I think everyone's sick of Ariane's stupid personal life. Thing is, now I have to focus on whether I want a certain Blythe to be alive and present for the duration of the story.
Hah.
Thanks for reading, schatzis!
