EPILOGUE
Senior year rests on my tongue like a stone. I try so hard to tell it like it is, to remember every moment for its own worth, but it rests, everything stringing together like a massive spider web. There's so much to tell, but so little to say.
I made up with Kate a week later over twin Caesar salads, me, quietly listening, her, babbling on and watching the door. Nothing was the same after that. While she skipped first period study hall with Gordo, drinking black coffee and smoking pot (which tainted my image of Gordo forever), I braved Anatomy with Miranda, passing her notes about how much I don't understand. She was still my harshest critic, but she didn't say anything negative when I sat at her lunch table. I never really knew where I stood with her, with her eye rolls and her encouraging smiles. She was cautious with her friendship, prepared to pull it away at a moment's notice.
Parker found me adorable, told me how she never knew anyone who could be so naïve and so awesome at the same time. I took it as a compliment. She liked to take me on long drives in her energy-efficient car, asking me bizarre questions that were either philosophy or just stupid. But, as I learned soon enough, you have to give Parker the benefit of the doubt.
Larry and I, much to the disappointment of our friends, never dated. Even Kate was rooting for us, she told me over smoothies on a particularly sappy day towards the end of the year. I shrugged and smiled. What Larry and I stretched way beyond any describable relationship. We barely talked about our history together, but somehow it was always there, like the things I learned about him where things I had always known but never paid attention to. Talking to him was like digging through someone else's attic.
Sometimes, avoiding home was necessary. While we tried to be immediately accepting, Matt's coming out knocked everyone off their feet. Mom treated it like ignoring it might kill us. She over-discussed with me, trying to make it clear how it was perfectly normal and how I need to support him. She'd say these things and her face would blur, her sentences clumping together in my mind. A ball of twined acceptance nested in my head.
The most awkward was when Lanny came over to dinner. I spent most of the time trying not to dive headfirst into my spaghetti. Lanny sat across from me, next to Matt, and spent half the time watching me curiously, as I kept dropping everything that came into my hands.
The next afternoon I spent sobbing on Matt's bed after he confronted me about it. I confessed things in the vaguest way possible. He nodded silently, sadly, patting my shoulder awkwardly.
"Well," He had said, trying to cheer me up, "I guess this makes up for all the times I lusted after your boyfriends." This just caused me to sob harder, because I really never knew. Though we never got super close, after that, Matt and I developed a sort of understanding, a good decade wasted. We went to a movie once, but Out Matt was different from Closeted Matt. When he looked at the screen, I wondered if he was starting at the same actor I was. We went to grab a bite to eat and saw a few of his friends and I wondered how many of them were gay too. Maybe it wasn't exactly that Matt was different; it was me that was different. It was like breaking the surface after holding my breath for days. I had to shift my perception about something I never thought I would have to.
The year was loud and messy and morbid but beautiful and fun and free. I'm proud of it, this small creation of time lumped in between my fingers. Things drifted apart and tumbled together; nothing quite made enough sense for it to be boring. My timing was off; I should be hating myself for not patching things up sooner. But as I had learned, there was no real point in regretting.
It's funny, the way believe so often told me to be myself. Like they knew exactly what that was; like they were testing you. They asked me to not take risks because I'm Lizzie McGuire; they asked me to wear the color pink and like daisies. I always thought that someone WAS testing me, that they were watching me closely to make sure I wasn't stepping out of line. This is probably when I realized that no one else cared. Which is a good thing, sometimes.
And so as I slowly make my way through that short tread of life, I'll remember Kate. I'll remember my bald head (which is now grown to the middle of my forehead), the X, lying on my kitchen floor covered in flour. I'll remember late nights talking and beating her to the homecoming crown. I'll remember staring past lettuce and tomatoes onto a white plate and into Kate's soul, trying to fathom why she was jealous of me. And I'll smile. Because, really... who would ever think?
