Dead Apples

27- Sticky Situations

"How big is his penis?!" Sage interrupts the stale silence in the room. Everybody looks at her and she realizes that I'm not the only one in the room. "Wait, what's going on? I didn't say that. What penis? I said wenis. It's an elbow thing. What's going on?"

"Dex and Yasmin are together," Amber angrily fills her in.

"What? No they aren't," Sage scoffs, but then she looks over at me standing kind of close to Dex and then asks me, "Are you?"

"No," I finally find my words again. "No. No."

Unfortunately, that is the only word that I can find.

"What are you doing here?" Dex asks, but I don't know who he's talking to. I live here, so probably not talking to me.

"I went to the school to talk to Amber, to convince her to talk to Yasmin so that they can work out what happened," Javier starts to explain. "She had to stay late to file some paperwork and we couldn't get here any sooner. So, here we are."

"Were you talking about Dex's penis?" Amber looks at Sage for an answer. "Because I've told you about that before. And why would Yaz know? Have they slept together?"

"No," Both Sage and I answer together.

"Wait, you talk about my penis?" Dex speaks up.

"No," Amber and Sage say in unison. We almost sound like a musical, the way that we're repeating words and speaking in unison. It almost all sounds rehearsed, but I don't think that anybody could make this up.

"This was a mistake," Amber decides. "I appreciate the mural, Yaz, but if you think that a painting is going to make me forgive you for getting together with Dex two days after we broke up, you're insane."

"Amber, wait," Sage stops her. "I wasn't talking about Dex's, I was talking about his."

Everybody turns to look at Javier, who Sage has pointed to, and he looks down at his feet. He then looks up at Sage and asks, "Why do you want to know how big it is? You guys seriously talk about that stuff?"

"So you're just kissing Dex?" Amber ignores Javier and turns to me to get an explanation for the kiss that she walked in on.

"No," I say again, only louder this time.

"Say something else, Yaz," Sage urges me.

"I... I didn't finish the mural to apologize for getting with Dex. I did it to apologize for ambushing you with the whole 'your boyfriend is a pig' thing. I'm not with Dex, I'm with Javier. At least, I hope so. That look on his face isn't looking very promising," I start to do my best at explaining what is coming into my mind. I decide to compartmentalize the situation as best that I can. First, I'll deal with Dex, since he was first here.

"Dex, thank you for the folder, I appreciate it. But you can't just choose me and then have me, like I'm a toy. I don't choose you. I never chose you. I had a crush on you, but I never loved you. I was infatuated with you, and it was ridiculous and childish and stupid. I don't want to be with you," I inform him quickly before I lose my words again. I then look at Amber, who has her arms crossed and her face almost as red as her hair because she's so angry.

"Amber, I have nothing going on with Dex. I'm so sorry that I didn't tell you that he was sleeping with somebody else but as I have just embarrassingly admitted in front of so many people, I had a crush on him and I didn't want to disappoint him by revealing this secret. And it was before the carnival that I found out, before I realized how unbelievably amazing you are."

Next is Sage, because I want to leave Javier for last so that we can have our conversation privately.

"Sage, please assess a situation before asking a question like that. Also, pick a different question," I tell her. I know that it's been almost exactly twelve hours since she asked me her first question, so this was her second question and she was apparently so determined to know the answer that she just blurted it out without looking into the room first.