Wilted Petals By: Sean Roberts
Author's Note: I hope you're enjoying ... please send feedback to seanr_13@yahoo.ca
Chapter 6
Leslie stands at his locker, waiting for him to come. He doesn't show up. Fifteen minutes into her first class she gives up, hoping she will see him later.
He has been reading almost the whole night. He slept through his alarm and he woke up at one in the afternoon, his curls messy; his eyes dark, tired; his hand resting on leather. He picks up the book beside him and throws it, hard, against the opposing wall. Jonathan glances at the clock beside him; if he leaves now he can still make his English class.
He is a few minutes late. Johanna looks up when he walks into the room and smiles at him. He glares at her in return and takes his seat.
"What's the matter?" she whispers to him.
"I can't believe you need to ask me," he says. They cannot finish the discussion during class. When it is over he gets up quickly and leaves the room. He stands just outside the door, waiting for Johanna to come out. When she does, he shoves her diary in her hands. "Two fucking years of my asking you out; you couldn't have told me any of those times. You couldn't even tell me in person, you left this in my fucking house instead."
He walks away. Johanna has not even looked at what he put in her hands. She nearly drops it when her eyes land on it, the surprise of this object being in her hands overwhelming.
How did it get here?
Leslie picks up her phone quickly that evening, knowing who it is. She does not say hi. She knows they had a class together today; she knows that Johanna left school without her.
"I thought he should know. This was the only way I thought of to tell him. Johanna I'm so sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."
"Have you read it?" is all she can ask.
"No. I didn't. I just wanted him to find out, that was all. I couldn't bring myself to tell him and you obviously couldn't either and I thought this would be the best--"
"He doesn't know it was you who gave it to him. He's mad at me for doing it. He's angry with me for something I haven't done; for something I wouldn't have done in a million years. I hope you're planning to do something about this." Click. She hangs up the phone and steps into the shower. Her anger for Leslie is overwhelming. She never thought she could hate someone so much. Later, she will realize that this hate comes from the amount of love she has for Leslie.
When she was little her mother took her to an amusement park. Together, at the ring toss, they won a large, stuffed bear. The brown animal sits beside her bed. Now, when she comes out of the shower, her bathroom full of steam and her skin glistening, wearing only panties she sits on her bed, hugging the bear tightly against herself. She needed the warmth from the shower because she could not get it from Leslie.
Whenever she was upset she would find Fred and sit with him, resting a hand or an arm on his stomach, feeling his breathing. He loved this sort of company, especially when he was older. He wanted to play less but he still loved her; he needed her as much as she needed her parents. The bear has taken his place.
She tries to make herself cry but she can't. She isn't sad. She knows that her anger towards Leslie is temporary. But Jonathan--he knows everything. It doesn't bother her so much that he knows she is a lesbian but he knows much more than that. He knows every detail of her life that she felt was worth writing down. And now he's upset with her. She wants to confirm this; she wants to have a conversation with him to see how he feels. But she knows that if she picks up the phone and dials his number that he will not say more than two words to her.
At dinner, her mother immediately notices her mood, knows what she is feeling.
"What's wrong sweetheart?" she asks.
"My friends are idiots," Leslie replies.
"Just remember, they're still your friends," her mother says. Words of wisdom. Her father lifts up the jug of water and refills her glass. She smiles at him. From him she can get silent understanding; from her mother she gets advice. She takes a sip of water.
"I know mom. It'll be okay. Let's just talk about something else."
She turns towards her bedside table to turn out the light when she sees her diary sitting beside it, the smooth parts of the leather shining under the bulb.
He's not talking to me, she thinks. For the first time since she has known Jonathan she knows that he actually doesn't want to see her; or hear her voice or even think about her. This is why she does not tell anybody everything; this is why she has secrets, why she has thoughts and feelings that belong only to her and the pages in her book. She pushes it forcefully away from her, off the table, and it slides off the end of the desk. The sound it makes when it hits the hardwood floor is no match for the force with which it was pushed.
Now she starts to cry because she has lost Jonathan.
Johanna asked him once if he was embarrassed. When he asked what for, she said: "Well, a girl sticking up for you. I mean Leslie told four guys to fuck off when they were picking on you, and they did. Most guys would have been embarrassed."
"I don't know what got into those guys that night. There was no fairness in it; it wasn't just them fooling around. If it had been, I would have been really embarrassed. But they weren't fucking around and I've always been very, very thankful that she came to help."
She touched, lightly, a bruise on his cheek bone. "Does it still hurt?" He nodded. The bruise didn't feel like anything; it felt like the rest of his face, like bare skin. She did not know why she needed to touch it. But there was something about his face that bothered her: there were no indications of facial hair; no moles or dimples or any other marks. There were small imperfections but she found that to see them she had to be extremely close to him. There was no after-shave or cologne. The bruise gave it colour; a personality. Something to touch, though it ended up feeling just like everything else.
"What did your parents say when they saw your face?"
"I told them it was dark and that I had no idea who did it."
"I still don't understand why you wouldn't tell somebody; get them kicked off the team or something."
"They're good players. And they left me alone after that, like I knew they would. What would have been the point of getting them pissed off at me again?"
There was one more hole in the story he had given them.
"I was also wondering ... what exactly did you say to them to get them so angry?"
"I was alone in the locker room with them. Everybody had already gone; they weren't letting me leave. Nobody did anything about it because nobody wanted to piss them off. You saw them, they're big guys. They had obviously gotten tired of just calling me a faggot so they told me they would fuck me up if I didn't admit it. So I did, just to get them to let me leave. That's when I saw the look on their faces. After I told them that I was gay; that's when I actually got scared. That's when I ran."
"What the fuck is wrong with people? What does being gay have to do with anything? I mean--say you really were--you're not are you?"
"No."
"Okay. Say you were though. What difference would it make? You'd still be here with me, sitting in McDonald's and eating shitty burgers. You would still have ketchup on your cheek." She reaches over with her napkin to wipe it off for him.
"Thank-you," he says.
"You're welcome sweetie."
She never would have called him that if she knew then how he felt about her. At that moment, he was just a boy with an innocent face on which he had spilt a little bit of sauce. She did not know how he felt about her because he did not know. He enjoyed spending time with her; he got knots in his stomach when he knew he would be seeing her; but the realization that he had feelings for this beautiful girl had not yet hit him. But when it did, all he could do was smile.
This is the friend she has lost. The friend who loves her so much--not because she helped take care of him when he needed it--but because he is able to talk to her about anything, even uncomfortable subjects, without the slightest bit of discomfort. Because there is a connection between them that neither of them thinks they will ever understand.