Kintsukuroi

Chapter II: Boycott, Clinomania, and Defenstrate

Boycott: (v.) to withdraw from commercial or social relations with (a country, organization, or person) as a punishment or protest.
Exactly two months, a week, and four days ago I was dumped.
It was a new sensation for me. In all my relationships (a grand total of three now), I was the one that always did the dumping, and for good reason, mind you.
Here, let me give you a tour down a particularly rough and bumpy part of Memory Lane: the relationships of Saige Adler!
My first boyfriend was my best guy friend. At the time we had just graduated from seventh grade, and in all honesty we didn't really know what a "relationship" entailed at that point. It was all new experiences, and all we did was go out on "dates" where we would see movies and eat at the fast-food restaurants we both knew the other loved. There was a bit of kissing involved, but any type of affection other than platonic felt really weird to me, and I guess he felt it too. It was like kissing my brother. So we broke it off on mutual agreement that it wasn't working out.
My second boyfriend seemed like a good idea at the time-- I was in my freshman year of high school and he was cute and into me, so when he asked me out I took him up on it. The first date was nice and pleasant as we both kind of tested the waters, and I guess that was the only thing that held us together for the next three months where we fought over little things and bickered like siblings. . . only there was no affection involved. Then I figured out he was cheating on me and I was like, Nope! So that was a bust too.
And now it turns out that with my third guy all he cared about was...not my amazing personality, that's for sure. His charming persona was just an act to get was he really wanted. And I really should have known that he didn't really mean what he said-- he was already notorious as a player at my school, and I had always rolled my eyes at the mention of his name and knew he was trouble, but as soon as he turned his eyes on me, I fell right for it. And I still haven't gotten off the ground.
So now I'm on a boy boycott.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to go all extremist feminist on males. I've had enough experience with the raving "WOMEN ARE BETTER THAN MEN" type to last me a lifetime.
I just don't want to date anymore. Because I'm sick of it. I'm sick of insincerity and I-didn't-mean-its. So I'm not going to have a boyfriend.
Or at least until I was out of high school (which I graduate from in two years). Maybe I'll find some nice, sincere college guy that I like and is mature enough to know when to fool around and when to be serious about relationships. Because I am sick of fooling myself into thinking that I am in love with some ridiculous asshole so that I can feel important. I am done with searching for affection.
When I was young and jejune and in the beginning of seventh grade, I felt sure that my Prince Charming would come some day. Even if I publicly scoffed about it with my friends over a crappy cafeteria lunch in middle school, I was really a closet believer of the true love idealism.
Not anymore.
Maybe a long time ago true love was much easier to find. Maybe people were kinder than they are now, and maybe they were less skeptical than they are now. But now, in our beautiful modern society, everything that has been associated with "true love" or "perfection" when it came to a relationship has disappeared. Leaving us with three, often-confused messages:
An optimist's message: there's true love out there for everybody.
Society's message: true love will come to virgins who wait patiently.
My message: true love is a load of bullshit.
* * *
Clinomania: (n.) the excessive desire to stay in bed.
Interestingly enough, there's a word in the dictionary to perfectly sum up my Saturday morning.
The clock reads 5:03 AM. For some reason, my internal body clock decided to wake me up at a completely unreasonable time for the first day of a weekend. I tell my brain that I don't have to go to school and then roll over on my bed, stretching the sheets out with my feet so that they cover my freezing toes.
I might be able to slip back into sleep if I try hard enough--
"SAIGE!"
Or not.
"SAIGE!" my mother bellowed from downstairs. "Please come down! I really need your help!"
It was then that the stench hit me. My nose crinkled as an automatic reaction and I groaned. It was a smoky, burned-toast kind of smell, and I retched when it first reached my nostrils. I would never get back to sleep now. Moaning, I rolled over and threw the blankets off of my person, knowing that if I dragged it out it would be that much harder. Pretending to be peppy at least fooled my body into thinking I was a morning person.
I hated the feeling of being unprepared (unless I was 100% sure that I wasn't going out that day), so I quickly threw on jeans and a sweater from the day before right over my pajamas. After attempting to tame my short hair (I have an atrocious bedhead in the morning) I took the stairs two at a time and landed in the kitchen with a thump.
"Saige! You have to get to school!" my mother scolded, looking frazzled as she batted frantically at a trail of smoke drifting lazily from the oven. I hurried over and unlatched our rather old-fashioned windows and then threw them open, banishing the stink of burning food for a brief second.
"I don't have school on Saturday, mom." I sighed. Then, after checking the smoke alarm to make sure that it wouldn't go off, I crossed over to the oven and tentatively cracked it open, narrowing my eyes to try to see what my mother had been attempting to cook.
"I wanted to make you some toast, but the toaster wasn't working," she said anxiously, trying to see my expression. She wrapped her pale yellow bathrobe a little tighter around her bony frame and retied it, fussing with the knot. "I got jelly at the store last Wednesday, so I knew we had some as toppings--"
So it was a Throwback day. She hadn't made me jelly toast since I was in third grade. "It's fine, mom. I can probably get Quinn to fix the toaster. She's handy with that sort of thing." I shut the oven door again, telling myself that I would deal with scraping burnt toast off the sides later when it cooled off. I tried to sound cheerful. "Are we opening up the shop today?"
She stared at me blankly for a few seconds before starting. "Oh! The bakery! Of course!" And then she scuttled off in the other direction, heading towards the hallway that joined our house and the bakery we owned next door.
I took a moment to breathe. Already I could tell that this was going to be a painful day. With throwbacks from the alzheimer's, an early morning wake up and burned toast. . . not exactly the best way to start out my weekend.
* * *
I usually really like the bakery in the morning.
It's a quaint little building that was once painted white with blue trim on the latched windows and the entryway. Before mom bought it it had been a flower shop, so there were flowered vines hand-painted on the window sill and over the doorway. Had it been new, it would have been a pretty establishment. But constant rain and sun had made the paint peel and blister, so all in all on the outside it looked rather sad and rundown.
The inside, however, is another story.
I had taken great pains to furnish the walls with honey-colored shelving and made sure to keep the floors scrubbed and shining. Every Sunday afternoon I closed the shop and cleaned it until the floors glistened with the rays of the setting sun. Sometimes, when she had the wits about her mom would help me, but most of the time she would lay down on the couch in the living room and watch old reruns of Cheers or Family Show while I scrambled trying to throw dinner together.
In the morning it would be quiet and peaceful and the place would smell like baking bread from the old-fashioned oven at the back kitchen. I would have time to wipe the flour from my hands before listening to music or reading a book before the first customers came in. I would help them find their products and then Quinn would come in on time and Erika would come in late and find some excuse for it so I wouldn't yell at her, and then we would settle down and find some sort of happy medium resembling peace until my mom would walk in and do something crazy--
Let's just return to the fact that I usually like mornings.
Today, however, the bakery smelled like burned toast. My iPod was on my dresser in my room, running low on battery, and I hated using it unless it was fully charged. It was too stressful having to check the battery every five seconds to make sure it wasn't out yet. I had no good books to read and Quinn wouldn't be here for half an hour, and Erika wouldn't come in at all because she didn't work on Saturdays. So I was left to sit in grumpy misery as I sulked until someone walked in and forced me to pretend to be cheerful so I could get up and do something.
* * *
I almost didn't notice him.
I had been taking inventory near the counter when I heard the door swish open and then close, coupled with the clickety-clack of footsteps on our hardwood floor. I didn't look up. It was only about six, but we had a lot of early morning customers. Even on Saturdays.
But then I heard someone clear their throat, and I looked up from my list.
I was a little startled to see a newcomer. My age, which was a surprise in and of itself. Most of our customers were older. Now that I took a closer look, though, he looked kind of familiar. In fact, I think I recognized him.
Basketball team, if I had to guess. He was tall enough for it; and he stooped slightly as if he had to shorten himself to be less noticeable. His hair was short and mahogany brown, and he wore dark horn-rimmed glasses that matched his eyes.
"Oh. . . hey." Not very professional of me, but I really didn't have the energy for professionalism today. I quickly stacked my papers and shoved them out of sight. "Do you need something?"
It must have come out a little harsher than I intended, because he looked even more uncomfortable than he did before. "Um, yeah." God, the awkwardness. Socialize, much? I thought shrewdly as he fumbled for words. (Well, I was one to talk.) "Could you...help me find a few things?" He stuck out his hand, in which he held a piece of paper folded into eighths. He was so tall I could barely look into his eyes. "I've never been here before...and my mom asked me to get really specific things. I don't want to mess up." He laughed, a little nervously, and scratched the back of his head. He had a light laugh, one that reminded me slightly of a certain someone that I didn't feel like thinking about now. Or ever, really.
I took the paper and flattened it against the glass counter, immediately recognizing the handwriting. The Norwood's. The mother was a kindly woman who always seemed to be losing something; whether it was her glasses or her wallet, she seemed to never have her wits about her. "Your mom's Melanie, right?" I scanned the paper with my eyes. "She comes here a lot."
"She likes the bread." I ducked under the counter and walked along the shelves with a finger hovering down the list. Melanie Norwood always ordered a lot. Her son - Prosper, I think his name is - followed me, matching my quick pace easily. "And everything else, it seems."
I couldn't help but grin.
I guess that it surprised him, because he grinned too, and a real grin this time, not one of those I-don't-know-how-to-socialize-with-this-person-so-I'm-going-to-smile-and-nod type of grins. He had a nice smile, I realized.
That made me stop grinning.
Boycott. That's what I was on. A boycott. I'm not supposed to be friendly to guys anymore.
It was much harder though, now that he was here and standing behind me and grinning that stupid real person grin. I had to force myself to lapse back into a gloomy mood again. "Anyway." I stood on the tips of my toes to reach a product on one of the highest shelves. He moved to help me (I hate being so short sometimes) but I intentionally sidestepped him so that he stopped and then stood there looking awkward again. The atmosphere wasn't as comfortable as it would have been if we had been laughing, but hey, there were prices to pay when you boycotted.
"Will that be all?" I dumped his merchandise on the counter and rung it up as he fished a twenty out of his pocket.
"Yeah. Thanks." He hesitated, as if he had something else to say. Not a good sign. And if he was about to drop a bombshell on me, I'd prefer to have a chance to duck and cover first. But I wasn't fast enough. I tried to cut him off so that he wouldn't say it, but he rushed on before I had the chance. "You wouldn't know a boy named Nolan, by any chance, would you?"
I could literally feel the tension in the room rocket right through the roof. The brown eyes behind his glasses asked the question, not just his words. I hated that. Words I could ignore, words I could brush off. But eyes bored into you, and you remembered them long after the words had stopped echoing. I stopped typing numbers into the old-fashioned cash register as--
"I hate you!"
Bam. Ca-ching. My hand had fallen on the "space bar" of the register, making the little box where I kept the money shoot out and knock his list off the counter. I slapped his change down, silent, hoping that he would get the memo and just go with his bread.
He didn't. "Hey--"
"Can you leave?"
He blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Leave. L-E-A-V-E. It was a vocabulary word in second grade. It means that I want you to get the hell out of this shop before I throw you out."
Yeah right. He probably could have beaten me up if he wanted to. Poisonous words meant nothing if there was no bite behind them. I wasn't a threat.
But he didn't mess. He knew he had hit the wrong button, and now he was getting disconnected. He picked his food up and started to walk out.
I wasn't satisfied. I was hoping he would pick a fight. There was still too much coiled energy in my body, curling around my lower spine and making my stomach tingle. I needed to yell at someone. I needed to throw something. And there was no one here but him. "Don't come back!" I shouted at his retreating silhouette.
The door had already closed. I hoped against hope that he heard me.
* * *
Defenestrate: (v.) to throw someone or something out of a window
I was so restless after Prosper left that I didn't even try to concentrate on work. With fumbling hands, I flipped around our "WE'RE OPEN" sign so that it proclaimed us closed and I walked out. I knew that Mom wouldn't care what I did. She was out taking a walk near the outskirts of the town, where it didn't smell like car exhaust. I had forced her to go get some exercise. I knew it would do her some good. We didn't need to open up today anyway. It wasn't the most crucial sell-day after all.
And I was done being the responsible one. I needed some time to escape.
Besides, Quinn would come later and open up again. She had a key. She could let herself in. For once, I would let her take the first shift. And maybe the last shift too. And the shifts in between. . .
I shoved my hands deep in the pockets of my jeans for lack of something else to do, hunching my head down into my sweater to conserve warmth. My feet were already cold; I knew I should probably have worn socks with my sneakers. But I didn't feel like putting them on. I knew that my iPod was where I left it (on my dresser) but I didn't want to go back in to fetch it. I didn't want to pass through the shop and think, and then regret what I had said. Regret never helped anything.
So I pushed it down, deep down inside, in the little cupboard of my mind that I called the trauma drawer. I rolled up the painful memory and tucked it away to relive later, when I was feeling calmer. Everything I didn't want to see or remember ever again was in that drawer.
I liked the town in the morning, I decided, pressing the crosswalk button with my thumb so I could cross the street. It was much quieter. There were less people, less cars to hear and deal with. Less fake smiles to wear and less faux cheerfulness to maintain. I could almost believe that there was no one else in the world. It was just me and my everlasting problems.
Joy.
It was getting brighter. The cloud cover that had drifted in the sky in the night was getting burned away by sun, and now I had to squint as I walked.
It hit me very suddenly, so suddenly that I didn't have time to put my guards up and block it out. I remembered now. Where I had heard his name.
Prosper.
"Prosper, Saige. Saige, Prosper. You might know each other."
"Yeah, she's on the school newspaper committee, right?"
"You remember me?"
"'Course. You did an article about the basketball teams."
"I remember you now. You're number seven. You play forward on varsity, don't you?"
"That's me."
So that's where I knew him from. And that's how he remembered me. More than just passing glances at school, then. Although I suppose I should have known that before; I look rather different. My hair was cropped short now. I might not stand quite as tall, nor talk quite as loudly. I had abandoned the short-shorts and tank tops of summer for jeans and sweaters during autumn. And Nolan and I--
STOP. I was quick enough to catch myself this time. A mental barrier went right up, along with my guards. I couldn't keep going back to that time.
Summer. Bright and burning, it stuck with me like some sort of ugly sunburn that wouldn't go away. Yes, I could slap bandages over it and cover it with long-sleeved shirts and sweaters. But then the only person that was hurting was. . . still me.
It was always me.