Sitting alone in the biology closet with her face buried in her hands, Joan contemplated how she had done a pretty good job at avoiding Adam and Mary Jane so far. Oh yes, sure, she had felt his eyes boring into the left side of her face during AP Chem. He had wisely kept his mouth shut when she didn't make any attempt at conversation or even a sign of reacting to his offhand remark of how Lischak became more freaky every passing week.
Joan had wanted to snap something at him, something like, 'Gee, Adam, why don't you go share your thoughts with someone who cares, someone like... let me see... M.J.' Only, she did care. More than she would ever admit. It just hurt so much to face it that she decided not to think about it.
She looked up as the door to the closet opened and a figure stepped in. She caught the surprised look on her younger brother's face as he recognized her.
Luke unsurely rubbed his forehead, asking, "What are you doing here?" as if it was the most unlikely thing that could ever happen.
Joan couldn't come up with any good excuse that would sound believable. There was something to be said for speaking the truth occasionally, so she did. "I, um... needed to hide."
Luke nodded. "Oh. Well, this is a good place to hide. From whom, may I ask?"
Joan wasn't sure she was comfortable with sharing the whole issue with her brother, but if she didn't tell someone soon, she was going to explode in someone's face sooner or later. She was vaguely aware of that, and so she uttered, "Did you meet the new girl, Mary Jane?"
"M.J., sure. She seems nice," Luke replied offhandedly.
Joan let out an exasperated breath, lifting her arms slightly to underline her point. With a sarcastic undertone, she said, "Nice. Yeah. Adam seems to think so too. He's all over her, and she all over him."
Luke frowned in confusion. "Wait. Didn't you," he pointed at Joan, "and Adam break up?"
Joan slowly nodded in confirmation.
The frown on Luke's face became more pronounced as he tried to figure his sister's problem out. "Then why is it that this M.J. thing bothers you?"
Her first and spontaneous answer would have been, 'Because I still love him,' but she was even less ready to admit that to herself, much less to her brother. She pondered an answer for a few seconds and then said, "I don't know. This is all really illogical, isn't it?"
Luke didn't exactly know what to say to that. Women were so hard to figure out sometimes. If he thought of life as a binary system, men would work in zeros and ones, but women worked in 0.1s and 0.9s and anything in between. He lifted his hand to adjust one of the straps of his backpack. "Guess it depends on how you define logical. I mean, if you consider intuitionistic logic and the law of the excluded middle, then there's always the logical fallacy to consider as a possible explanation for your subjective feeling of illogicalness."
Luke was prepared to go into a speech about bivalence in mathematical logic, but stopped when he read Joan's blank expression. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"
Joan smiled despite herself. Caught in the act, she thought. "I lost you at 'institutionalistic logic'. Or something."
"All I'm saying is: Logic in itself isn't always logical, it depends on how you look at it. Things may look completely logical from one angle, but completely illogical from another. How's that for the parking lot version?"
"Better," Joan assured him, secretly thinking, Can you be sure that this is your brother and not God? Because he had just said something that sounded uncannily like what CuteBoy-God could have said to her. She shook her head slightly to banish that image from her brain. Her science geek brother as an incarnation of God was just too weird a concept to grasp.
She stood up from her sitting position, telling Luke, "Okay. I got it. Illogical isn't always illogical, it can be logical if I look at it from another point of view." She wrinkled her forehead, not sure what to do with that information. "Now, don't let me keep you from your canoodling lessons with... You-Know-Who." With that, she left an embarrassed Luke behind in the biology closet.
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Musing about Luke's strangely cryptic statement, Joan walked along the school hallway, lost in thought. What other angle was there that she could look at the situation from? She had broken up with Adam, he had slept with another girl, he had betrayed her. He didn't deserve her attention any more than her love and affection. Love—that word hung like a wet cloak over her shoulders, dragging her down. She had given her love to someone, with all of her heart, only to have it carelessly thrown away. She didn't want to invest in anything like that ever again, she was afraid of it. But then why was it that—
She was abruptly jerked from her reverie as she softly collided with someone coming from the open door of the arts room. When she looked up, she realized in shock that it was Adam. They both said each other's name at the same time and stepped backwards as if a jolt of lightning had hit them both. The silence that followed was heavy, laden with so much more than discomfort.
Joan half expected M.J. to come out of the arts room behind Adam, what with them seemingly joined at the hip lately. For a split second, an image of Iris flashed through her mind, of how she had had so much in common with Adam that it hurt, most prominently their interest and skill in applied arts. But then Joan remembered: M.J. wasn't in arts class, she went to music class instead. Joan thought she had heard M.J. and Adam talking about her playing the violin in the school orchestra before Spanish this morning.
Adam lowered his gaze, not daring to look at Joan. Running into her unexpectedly still freaked him out and made him freeze in uncontrollable rigor. Whenever he could prepare himself for seeing her, he put on his mask, his fake façade of coping and strength and resolution. But when he didn't have time to prepare himself, he was at a complete loss, vulnerable and ready to be shot like deer in open season. Anything she might say now could tear him to pieces, rip apart the last strings that were holding him together.
Trying to find something meaningful to say, he opened his mouth. He had run out of meaningful things to say to Jane a long time ago. "Sorry," he mumbled. An apology for what exactly? They both knew he was talking about their sudden collision, but he might as well mean anything else that was hanging over them like a moisture-laden, darkly gray cloud.
Joan's expression had hardened at his words—his one word, and he didn't know why. Why exactly had she been so abrasive and evasive the whole day today, even more so than usual? He finally tore his gaze away from the floor and looked at her. She just tilted her chin up defiantly, coldly, and said in a resigned tone, "Yeah, whatever." Then she bolted.
Adam couldn't just watch her leave, not this time. He ran after her, calling her name. "Jane. Jane!"
Joan couldn't deal with him, she just knew she couldn't. There it was, the feeling that she would explode any second if he confronted her now. Not knowing what to do, because she felt him running after her in a slight jog, she quickened her step and ran into the nearest girls' toilet. She closed the door behind her, leaning her back on it in relief. Guess she had not done such a good job at avoiding Adam today after all.
She jumped forward, startled, as she felt the door being pushed inward from behind her. Turning around, she realized half in shock, half in astonishment that Adam had followed her in here. Exasperated and demanding, she said, "Adam, this is the girls' restroom, get out!"
He looked at her with determination in his eyes that she had not seen for a long time. "We need to talk."
She snorted a sarcastic breath through her nose. "Oh yeah? Do we? And why is that?"
"Jane, why are you so upset? What did I do to you?" He winced as he realized what he had just said. He knew all too well what he had done. But that was already in the open, that was not what he had meant. He didn't even try to rectify his question, because he knew there would be no way to change its meaning.
Deep down inside, Joan didn't want to tell Adam what she was so riled up about, but there was no turning back now. The words poured out of her like a spewing geyser, driven and carried by ferociousness and anger. "I saw you. At the mall. With her, with Mary Jane." She emphasized the last word to give it its poignant meaning she had intended to.
Adam's brow furrowed in confusion, realization, but Joan couldn't be stopped. "Why did you go there with her? You told me the mall freaked you out because the stores were screaming at you. I accepted that, so I never asked you to come with me. And then I see you there? With her?"
Adam wanted to calm her down, tell her it was all completely innocent, that she had it all wrong and twisted, but his own anger was rising in his chest now. How could she be so unfair? Not able to hold back, he angrily replied, "What do you want from me, Jane? You say you don't want me around, and when I spend my time with someone else, you freak out about that too? What do you want me to do, huh? Spend all my time alone by myself, moping about how much I miss you?"
Adam's eyes had gone cold, almost as cold as when she had told him that he had lost her, that she wasn't his Jane anymore. With equal intensity he went on, "Mary Jane, she was... she made me see there is more than pain and misery to live for. God knows, I don't deserve to be happy, but... it felt good to be happy for a while. And just so you know, Mary Jane and I met at the mall—by accident. It wasn't like I asked her to go to there with me. Yes, I like her, but that's all. I like her the way I like Grace—as a friend."
Joan's eyes had widened at that revelation, but she wasn't sure if she should believe his words. It was so hard to trust him these days. Loving him came naturally, if painfully, but trusting him was an effort she had not found the strength to make yet.
Joan's lips parted to reply, but she heard Adam's voice before she could utter any words. "I have tried, I have tried so hard to try and make it up to you, but I don't know what to do anymore." He had lifted his arms to strengthen his words, but now let them limply drop to his sides in resignation. "I just don't know what to do, Jane," he said quietly, the sadness and desperation having found their way back into his voice—and his eyes.
Joan's own anger slowly ebbed away. He might as well have fallen down on his knees, begging for mercy in front of her. It was those eyes that got to her every time. Joan didn't know what to tell him that would make sense, but Adam went on, his voice having returned to its usual softness. It always reminded her of snowfall in winter.
"Tell me what to do, Jane. Tell me what I should do to make you understand I would never want to be with anyone other than you. If you don't want me to spend time with Mary Jane, I won't. If you tell me to never speak to her again, I will do that." He looked at her pleadingly with that stare that hoped she would provide him with the answer to explain the meaning of life to him.
Joan's eyes involuntarily watered, but she quickly swallowed and blinked the tears away before they could fall. She was touched by his complete willingness to sacrifice this much for her. "No, Adam. I don't want you to do that. It's just... seeing you there, at the mall, with her... It was like you stabbed me in the back, you know," Joan admitted, her voice now bereft of any trace of anger.
At hearing this, Adam looked down, shuffling his feet nervously. "I don't like the mall, it does freak me out. But I had to buy new clothes," he conceded meekly, "and I..." He trailed off, not sure what else to say. He looked at Joan again. "I'll stay away from Mary Jane, if it makes you uncomfortable."
Joan tore her eyes away from his, studying the green imprint of a curved pattern on his gray t-shirt that was partly obscured by the hoodie he wore over it. "No, you don't need to do that, not for my sake. Adam, I... I want you to be happy. But I... I guess I'm being irrational." Joan concluded, as if that would explain her behavior and sudden outburst.
Silence hung heavy in the air for a few agonizing seconds. Then Adam asked in a low voice, "Is it always going to be like this? Between us, I mean?" He looked up and met Joan's eyes, those eyes he could get lost in anytime, every time.
"I don't know," Joan sighed. "This is all really screwed up, and I don't know how to fix it." She brushed a strand of hair behind her ears, more to find something to do with her hands than out of necessity. "Look, I'm sorry I freaked out."
Adam nodded—a silent acceptance of her apology.
Almost embarrassed, Joan said, "Look... could you maybe... leave. I, um..." She pointed at one of the toilet stalls. "... need to..." she stammered.
Adam took the hint and muttered, "Yeah." He turned around and left the restroom, leaving Joan standing forlornly in the middle of it. She walked over to one of the sinks, gripped the edge of it with both hands and leaned her weight on her arms, moving her face closer to the mirror.
How the hell did they wind up like this, her and Adam? It seemed that with every effort she made at trying to get back to good, she always ended up dragging her and Adam deeper into that black hole their relationship had plunged into.
"Please," she whispered, addressing God, "show me how to get out of this mess."
She half expected the restroom door to open again and one of His, or in this case rather Her avatars entering, hearing her plea. When she was still on her own after a few minutes, she muttered, "Fine, be that way. Why are you never there when I need you?" She turned on the faucet and splashed refreshingly cold water on her face. After drying it off with a scratchy paper towel, she turned towards the exit door and left, hoping not to run into Adam again in the hallway.
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