|Jade|
I've never liked spending time in my house. Mom's usually never there and it's so huge and hollow that I feel way too small to be inside of it.
But I have nowhere else to go.
I drop in front of the piano in the parlor. It's white and covered in a thin sheet of dust - proving just how much time Mom and I use it. When I was little, it got played much more. My dad hired a piano instructor to give me lessons once a week, and when she wasn't there to remind me of my scales, I was making my own music. I loved to fiddle at the keys, combining sounds. What came out of the belly always excited me.
I press a key down and let the note ring out and fade away. Starting from the end, I press all of them, right to the last high note. Dust swirls up my nose, into my eyes. I blow it away, watching the millions of tiny particles tornado in the yellow shafts of light coming in from the window.
A break.
I grunt and slam my elbows on the keys. A disapproving sound grumbles from the piano. My fingers slide into my hair, yanking it back, my eyes squeezing shut.
Who takes a break from a friendship? I mean, I've never really had a close friend before, but I know that's not normal. Girls don't just stop hanging out because they've been spending too much time together. Girls fight when they spend too much time together. I know, I've seen it - the one year I went to a summer camp for 'growing actors' was a test to that. I've never seen so many girls brawl like men before in my life.
Tori and I aren't fighting. In fact, we're the farthest thing from that. Contrary to what I had convinced myself before Beck broke up with me, she's not annoying. She's painfully nice, but that's not a bad thing. She makes me laugh and keeps me happy. Without her, I likely would have drowned in self-pity by now. She stayed with me every day for detention - because she wanted to, not because she had to. We get along ridiculously well. It's hard to believe we were enemies a few weeks ago.
I push another high note on the piano. We've spent every day together, and even when we've been apart, there's the texting and the phone calls. Even now I want nothing more than to be talking to her, because when I am, it tames the whirlwind in my head. I feel calmer and looser and happier. I can't even say for certain if Beck made me feel that calm. I like to think he did, that that's one of the reasons I was with him for so long. It wasn't that Beck made me uncomfortable by any means, but Tori ... it's different, and confusing, and I'm giving myself a headache.
Because, shit, I actually like her.
I close my eyes again and see her standing there, her nervous hands folding and unfolding in front of her stomach, brown eyes skittering across the pavement of the parking lot. It was the first time I had ever seen her really unsure with how to act around me. There was something cute about the way she rocked on her heels and played with the edge of her shirt like she didn't even know she was doing it, the way she said maybe just a little when I asked her if she had a crush on me.
A low note this time.
A crush. On me.
How am I supposed to feel about that? My heart isn't a very good consultant, considering it's done nothing but spazz whenever Tori gets too close. And my brain is such a jumbled mess from Beck that I can't trust that organ, either.
My eyes return to the window. It's dinner time and Mom is out and I'm hungry and confused and Tori is occupying more of my thoughts than she should.
I watch TV for a few hours without really paying attention. I order Chinese food and convince the guy on the phone to bring me a fish head. He's hesitant at first, but at the promise of a big tip, he finally gives in. I shove the money into his tiny palm when he arrives and take the food into the kitchen, diving immediately for the fish head, wrapped carefully in paper. I don't know anything about fish, but it's gray, its black eyes empty and blank. Turning the sink on, I begin tearing the fish's flesh away, the muscles that make up its face, its eyes. The smell of fish fills the kitchen but I keep clawing away at the tissue until it's nothing but bone. I lift the fish skull out from the water and examine it, satisfied. I scrub it down with soap and spray air freshener to try and cloud the smell of fish before taking both the fish head and my Chinese food down to my room.
