I must admit that what Laura said sort of broke my mood, if you know what I mean.
I lifted up on my elbows a bit and looked into her eyes.
“Why?” I asked.
“I just love it. I hate my house. It’s so empty.”
She looked into my eyes and smiled. “I like all the stuff you have,” she said. She seemed so incredibly innocent and truthful when she said it too, not her usual self, which could be quite hard.
“I don’t get it. My house is a dump.”
She was still looking at me, with her eyes—and I told you how liquid and beautiful her eyes were—just glued to mine. And she said, very softly, “It’s all about you.”
For a second that made me think.
Oh, I thought. It occurred to me she meant my artwork, all the dopey stuff my mom had put on the walls.
“You mean my drawings? God, I wish my mom would tear them down.”
“No,” she said. “Don’t ever do that. She loves you. You’re so lucky to have that. You can’t take it for granted.”
I suddenly laughed right in her face.
And that was stupid.
Her face changed. Her eyes flared.
Her whole body tightened; you can always feel that sort of thing.
Suddenly, she changed the subject and went off on her mom’s art collection. She talked about the artists and how much it all cost, or was worth now, and it was, like, millions. She sat up and started talking, almost yelling, about how she was going to go to art school and study art history and interior design.
She seemed to hate me all of a sudden, because she started harping on what I wanted to do with my life, and I must admit that I’m sort of like my dad and don’t have any idea, and she said that was totally idiotic. “Finding out what you want to do is the single most important thing in your life!” she yelled. “You’re a fool not to find out as quickly as possible! Your whole future depends on it! I think about it all the time! Do you? Do you? Don’t you want a future? How can you be with me and not think about the future? What do we have? Nothing! You better wake up and think about it!”
I swear, she sounded just like her mom, though I didn’t know it at the time. But it was more than that, because her mom had just sounded angry, but Laura sounded tortured by what she said, and under so much pressure she couldn’t help but scream.
She was so pissed at me that I felt I’d been electrocuted. I saw all this fury in her eyes. I almost wanted to cry. I said, “I just want you, Laura. I’m so sorry I laughed.”
She winced at that.
I just curled up on the bed. She’d pulled away from me. I put my fists between my knees and lay there.
What she’d said actually hurt.
I don’t think she understood how much.
How could she?
She had her life all figured out.
She was obviously at a great school and was great at gymnastics and had tons of friends. She was rich. She got everything she wanted.
She didn’t know it, but what she’d yelled at me was something I’d struggled with my whole life.
I mean knowing what to do.
Because I didn’t.
I never had.
I was just like my dad, but I never complained like he did. I never even talked about it.
But I don’t really blame him.
I think it is more my own fault.
Because like I said, I don’t have a clue.
And even though I’d watched people in the neighborhood all my life, I never had decided what I wanted to do. I know they say that if you want opportunity you have to make it yourself. I really agree with that. It’s just that I’m not so great at seeing just how to make opportunities. I just don’t know how to participate. I’d like to participate, I know how valuable that is, and I know the neighborhood was made by a lot of people who did nothing but participate and they made the houses that sort of stare at you and the streets and everything, and they even made all the rules that nobody understands.
I’ve never really felt allowed to participate.
Maybe I’ve always felt left out.
Growing up like I did, there was a lot to tell me that I was just a sort of total nobody and really just a completely lame loser, and since there’s no point worrying about a lame loser’s future, I never gave it much thought.
But the truth is that all along I’ve felt in myself something more important than that, something in me that’s really better than that, even though it’d take a long time for me to get anybody to agree with me, probably because people don’t actually see me, or see any real value in me, which was probably the best reason I ever had to just start hiding all the time.
Laura had seen value in me, I guess, when she saw me at the party. But lying on my bed I thought I’d wrecked that.
I felt like telling Laura all this. She was sitting up on the bed and sort of trembling with anger, and I really did sort of want to tell her, but I guess I felt afraid.
So I didn’t say a word.
I just lay there.
But I really wanted to explain to her exactly who I was and everything, but the truth is, I just wasn’t sure, except that I knew I wasn’t just a lame loser.
And I wanted to explain to her that after a while—if you don’t know how to participate because really you’re not allowed, and all you do is just sort
