Ready? Not Really.. (Fem USUK) •IN EDITING•

Amelia

As confused as she was at first, Alice sure did take to the laundry thing pretty quickly.
"You forgot to wash my leotards," she informed me as we walked to math class with our arms linked. "I had to wear some ugly-ass leopard print one yesterday."
"I'm sure it wasn't that bad," I said. I had offered to carry her books as well since she seemed to be struggling under the weight of Music Theory, Shakespeare's As You Like It, and World History II, but Alice insisted she was fine and I should "stop treating her like she's fucking handicapped."
"I looked like I broke into a zoo and jumped in the big cat exhibit." I subconsciously grinned at the thought, especially since the last time Alice had gone to the zoo was in fifth grade. She had gotten a pretty bad sunburn and screamed at me when I laughed at her and poked the redness on her arms. "Exactly!" she snapped when she saw my face. "People kept pointing it out, too!"
"I thought you were rehearsing by yourself," I said. Alice rolled her eyes at the subtle subject change.
"I did. That doesn't mean I rented out the whole fucking studio for myself. Even the guy ballerinas laughed at me."
I snorted. "'Guy ballerinas?' Are they like, ballerinos, then?"
"You aren't funny, Amelia." But Alice was smiling anyways. "And actually, yeah. Ballerino is the correct term. They take pride in the little 'o.'"
"Holy shit."
"Yeah."
I pulled Alice back to my side since she had started to drift away from me and held her hand tight in mine. "So any hot ballerinos at the studio?" I asked jokingly, prodding her in the side with my elbow. As if she even cared about them. I'd seen the magazines stashed under Alice's bed. She sucked at hiding stuff.
Alice glanced up at me. She looked vaguely uncomfortable. "Uh, not...not really. It's hard to actually look at their face when they're all wearing black tights that wouldn't fit a third grader." Her palm felt cold and clammy. Weird.
I tried to lighten the mood a little and said, "Darn. I always wanted a man that could do a mean plié." Alice raised her eyebrows, unconvinced, but the corners of her lips turned up in a small smile. "Guess I gotta settle for you, huh?"
She blinked quickly a few times before frowning, and I realised my slip up. I made it way too obvious I liked her that time! Yeah, wow, I've totally always wanted to be with a dancer and look here you are! What was wrong with me? "Y'know," I blurted without thinking. Anything to save myself from embarrassment. It was already hard enough to force myself to tell Alice I liked her sometime around her performance. I couldn't fuck it up now! "Since you're, um, my ballet buddy." No, no, no Amelia. Bad mistake.
"'Ballet buddy,'" she repeated slowly. "Is that really what you just called me?"
My life sucked.
Like, a lot, at that moment.
"...Possibly?"
Alice shook her head. "I cannot believe you. Why am I your friend?" She broke away and rushed ahead of me. "Remind me to never go near you again. Your extremely intelligent alliterations just might happen to murder a few hundred of my brain cells." Although Alice tried to come across as mad or disappointed, I could see her shoulders trembling from holding back laughter.
"You're a dick, Alice Kirkland!" I shouted.
"And you're my cheerleading companion!" Alice ducked into the math room before I could slap her upside the head with the back of my hand.
~•~•~•~
We sat in the back of the class as we had done the entire year since I started talking to Alice normally again. It was safe from stares and meant that I could carry out conversations with my sister and my roommate. Also, our spot in the back let me and Alice hold hands or let her put her head on my shoulder or doodle rose gardens on my papers or whatever, which automatically made this class my favourite. I always tried to think of good comebacks before the period started so I could impress Alice. Usually, it didn't really work, but she would laugh most of the time. Fair enough.
Maddie met up with us after we took our seats, and we had our trio of desks pushed together in no time. "Hey guys," she said, sitting across from Alice after they hugged. I never understood why girl friends insisted on hugging. Like, my cheerleader friends would hug me and kiss me on the cheek, and I found it disgusting. Well...mainly because I just wanted to cheer for a scholarship and didn't care for the people doing it with me. But Alice was half as touchy as me, if not less! I didn't get her at all. "How're my favourite sister and my favourite-sister's-roommate?"
Alice smiled slyly and tilted her head. Her cheeky smile was pretty different from an actual happy smile. The smile that always accompanied her sarcasm was just a lift of one side of her mouth, while the latter was the actual embodiment of sunshine. Her pink lips would pull back just enough to showcase her white teeth and her nose would scrunch up a little and her eyes narrowed into an almost squint and... nevermind. "And exactly how much competition was involved for those two positions?"
"We're doing good," I interrupted.
"We're doing well," Alice immediately corrected me.
"We're doing well," I mocked her accent. I still had no idea how Alice managed to keep it after living in America for over ten years.
Maddie smiled in adoration as if she were watching her own children squabbling. She really wanted us to get together, didn't she? "Good. I'm glad. You aren't nervous for Saturday, are you Ally?" she asked, leaning forward a little to hear her friend better.
Christ, I sure as hell was. I had actually started writing a script of what I wanted to say to Alice and how I would tell her I loved her, through soppy metaphors and whatnot. A mothereffing script. How lame could I possibly be?
While I had stiffened at the thought, Alice's face switched to a semi-sunshine smile. "Well, a little, but I'm sure I'll be okay. When I'm out there performing, the high I get completely overpowers any stage fright." I couldn't stand watching her smile anymore. I leaned over and pecked Alice on the cheek, right where a freckle was. She waited until I sat back to lean over and kiss me on the lips. "What about you?" Alice asked softly.
"What about me?" I repeated, internally panicking. What if Alice was a mind reader and magically found out I was going to tell her I liked her? That would be pretty embarrassing. Thankfully, my fear was completely irrational. Unless, of course, the government was hiding telepathy, but Maddie told me to grow out of that when I confided in her.
"You're still coming, right?" she confirmed, looking slightly concerned yet hopeful. "I would hate if you backed out of it."
Backed out of it? Weird way to put it. "Of course I'm still going," I reassured Alice, taking her hand and holding it tight in mine. "Wouldn't miss it for anything."
"You'd miss it if NASA discovered an alien McDonald's on Neptune or something," she joked.
"Okay, yes. True. In that case, screw any promises I make 'cause that would be seriously awesome."
Alice rolled her eyes but squeezed my hand. "You're such a freak." She kissed me on the cheek and let her lips linger until the teacher called out that class was starting. Alice quickly sat in her seat normally with her legs crossed and took out her textbook, the smile previously on her face vanishing instantly. It amazed me how easily she could switch from flirting to acting normal. Flirting... Was that really what I was calling it? I would be shocked if anyone was masochistic enough to love someone that bullied them for so long.
"Hey, Amelia?" Maddie whispered from beside me. I looked up at my sister and raised my eyebrows in question. "You good?"
"Why wouldn't she be?" Alice asked, not looking up from her book. I hesitated as I watched her. She reached up to tuck a loose piece of hair behind her ear and tapped a pen on the tip of her nose aimlessly as the teacher started to introduce the topic. I was so close to jumping Alice that it was ridiculous. Every tiny action she made drove me out of my mind and I hated it. I could only hope she felt as dependent on me as I did to her.
Maddie seemed to notice my discomfort and smiled reassuringly. "Oh, I don't know. Just asking. It's nice to have someone ask every once in a while." She patted my hand before leaning over to peak at what page Alice's textbook was on.
Wait, when did we take out books again? Fuck. I was losing it. I felt a weight on my shoulder and almost jumped out of my skin. Obviously it was Alice. Who else would want to torture me? "You haven't even opened it yet," she reprimanded me. I couldn't stop staring at her. The freckles on her nose were much more interesting than any stupid thing my calculus teacher could ever teach me.
"Oh," I spluttered. "Yeah. Right. I was just thinking about it. About-" I squinted at the board. I needed a new prescription. Badly. "Uhhh, obviously the Intermedium Volume Theory."
"Oh really?" Alice rolled her eyes and reached across my chest to flip to the page we were on. "It's 'Intermediate Value Theorem,' genius." Every move she made was graceful, calculated. No equation would ever be more important to me than the one in front of me I had to solve: the reason Alice and I were always living parallel to each other, but somehow along the way, we managed to veer off and intersect. When was that point? What did she do, or what did I do, that caused the sudden change in direction? I wish our relationship were as easy as two plus two, but I didn't think it would ever actually change.
I noticed Alice had gone back to working through a problem. She usually didn't listen to the teacher, and that really took a toll on her grades. When I looked longer at her paper, I noticed she was actually just sketching a girl on her paper with their curly hair in a ponytail and glasses pushed up their nose. They resembled Maddie. Or me. I felt my chest clench. "Hey," I whispered in Alice's ear.
Alice looked up at me and smiled. "Hello."
I watched her hands and how she splayed her long fingers casually across the paper of her book as if to hide her doodle. "Still lost in thought about trying to turn the page, I see."
"Yeah, it's a lot to take in." She went back to drawing, flicking her wrist as she drew each individual lock of hair. I clenched my hands together in my lap, taking every ounce of self-control to keep myself from kissing Alice. She didn't need any more attention on herself brought on by me. "Who is that?" I gestured to the girl on the page.
She hesitated. "Err, it's..." Alice glanced up at me through her long eyelashes before directing her gaze onto her lap. "Just someone."
"Made up?"
"Well... they're on my mind a lot."
I stared at her for a long time. "Do you think you're on theirs?" I asked finally.
Alice looked up and tilted her head at me. Her eyes looked pleading. "I really hope so."
I took the pen out of her hand and drew two straight lines beside each other. Alice watched every stroke of ink I made. After stretching each line for a bit, I abruptly made one start to go left and made one start to go right until both lines met at a dot I drew. Alice raised her eyebrows and looked at me for an explanation. "It's us," I explained simply.
She blinked and looked down for a pretty long time before saying, "That's extremely thoughtful, Amelia." Alice absentmindedly ran her thumb over my knuckles before taking her pen back and actually working out a problem.
Maddie must have been listening the whole time, because a bright smile lit up her face as she typed in something on a calculator.
~•~•~•~
I saw the drawing I made every single day after that for as long as I can remember, taped to the front of Alice's folder.