Fell In Love In Stages // a matty healy fanfic

White Noise

In the car, I watched the winding road in front of me, but I couldn't stop thinking about the boy. The way he looked at me. People look at me all the time. But never like that.
I look at myself in the sun visor mirror, wondering what I would see if I saw myself through someone else's eyes, but by some trick of the mind, I couldn't piece my features together into anything that felt whole— Eyes that don't seem to belong to this nose. Lips that don't quite align with the rest.

I felt, and then dismissed, the urge to smash the mirror into pieces, distorting my face into even more sets of eyes, noses and lips. Instead, I gently snapped the visor shut.
I stared out the windshield. It had started to drizzle a little- one of those cloudy days in Wilmslow when the sky feels very close to the ground.
The people in the car laugh, and even though I laugh with them, it felt like I was watching the whole thing from somewhere else, like I was watching a movie about my life instead of living it.
"Babe, aren't you listening?" Charlie snaps me back into my body.
I am listening, I thought, to the cacophony of my thoughts.

"So, do you wanna?", he persists

Feeling taken aback by the suddenness of the question, I find myself nodding in agreement, my mind racing to catch up with the implications of my response.

"Um, sure," I stammer, the words slipping out on impulse, like leaves caught in a sudden gust of wind.

"Sick, I knew you were down. I told you guys, didn't I?" he exclaims excitedly to the group of onlookers in the back, their hoots and cheers echoing in a chorus of approval.

I have no idea what I just agreed to but I'll take my chances I guess.
I make a mental note to remind myself not to zone out so often. No matter how mind-numbingly dull the conversation.
But my mind drifts off again, as it often does, and I start to think about my place in the world.
The constant moving around has left me without any lasting connections. Charlie, whose father is in business with mine, has become my only friend. By default.

He can be a jerk at times. But I've known him since our dads introduced us when we were six. Six! We haven't always been in touch, but he's been the only consistent person in my life. Consistent I scoff. Whatever that means.

We met when we were six. He put gum in my hair once, but then punched a kid for teasing me about it. That pretty much summed up our dynamic—equal parts chaos and loyalty. Not long after, his family moved away, and for a while, he became just another kid I used to know.

We crossed paths again in fifth grade, this time in Melbourne. I remember sitting on the floor of his room, proudly showing off my beetle collection, when he leaned over and kissed me—right on the lips. I shoved him off the bed so hard he knocked over a lamp.

A year later, my family moved to Los Angeles, and, as if fate had a sense of humor, his family followed the next year. By seventh grade, we were back to our old ways. He asked me to the spring fling dance, and I said yes, half out of habit, half out of curiosity.

The night took a sharp turn when I overheard the captain of the dance team—an impossibly tall blonde who'd already graduated from training bras to actual bras—giggling by the punch bowl about how she'd made out with Charlie the week before.

That was the first—and last—time I cried over a boy.

Charlie's family had moved to this town three years before I did, so he had a head start in making new friends. So yes, we weren't officially a couple, but we spent most of our time together, both in and out of school. Along with his idiotic friends.

In the car, where a shrinking slice of my consciousness still resided, I turn up the volume, the sounds of 'Club Foot' by Kasabian drowning out the white noise.
It's all white noise to me.