I Tried to Kill My Dumb Friend and Now I'm on Probation

Chapter 8: From Bad to Worse

Do you ever just get a sinking feeling? You know, it starts as kind of a lurch down in your gut, and then it slowly melts into a nice, thick, black slime sticking to the outside of your stomach. Unpleasant, right?

Well, right now on the bus, it seems like all I can do is sit there listening to myself say nothing, and feel the slime trickle down to my liver and slosh onto my kidneys. And it seems like Billy's going through the same thing.

Neither of us seems to really know how to act ever since Unmentionable Event Number Two. This last kiss was completely voluntary on both sides. What does that mean?! What's our relationship now, I ask you? Was this supposed to be a good thing? Is it a good thing? It doesn't exactly feel like a good thing... What were we intending, here?

We get off the bus and make our way down the hall. Billy stops at his locker.

"Uh... Bye, Mandy," he waves.

"Ye-yeah, see you, uh..., later..." I reply. We both hesitate, like we're waiting for some sort of cue that we know isn't really ever going to come.

"Have a... great morning, Mandy..."

"Uhh, sure..."

He coughs.

I cough.

He scratches his head.

I straighten my hair and square my shoulders.

He coughs.

"Okay, this is weird," I say quickly. "What happened, Billy? 'Cause I have no idea what happened!"

"I... I just wanted to make things better...! You said you didn't like accidents, and I thought maybe... maybe if it wasn't an accident, we'd be happy, and then things could... could go back to... uh... normal..."

He trails off as though suddenly realizing how self-defeating that idea is. He sighs slowly.

"I just... The first time we... The first time it happened, it was like... I mean, I was... It kinda made me... And then you... But... I mean, I don't know. I don't know at all, anymore, and it was all... weird... and now it's still all weird... You know?"

I nod. Because the odd thing is, I totally know. I understand every last one of his fragmented thoughts clear as a bell, and I don't like a single bit of it. What he's saying is, the more we try to clear things up between us, the more it seems to get weirder. It's like one of us has unraveled part of a blanket, and now the more we try to fix it, the bigger of a tangled mess we get.

"So... what should we do?" he says.

"I don't know," I answer. "It's just... just really weird."

"Yeah. Weird," he says.

I feel like we're holding back about something, but I'm not quite sure what. I start to leave, then turn around.

"Billy...?"

"Uh-huh?"

"When we, uh... you know..."

"Yeah?"

"Was it... was it because you..."

"Yeah, Mandy?"

"Uhh..." I turn back toward my locker. "Never mind..."

Then I hurry down to my locker without another word.

Man, this is so completely weird! How in the heck did this happen?! I mean, one day we're fine, and the next day we're fighting, and the next day we're kissing?! What the heck is that? Who in the heck is running my life?! Because I'm pretty sure I've lost control!