Excerpts from the Life of Linden Rand

Changes and Families

It feels like we undergo a change when we meet someone we like. We are suddenly opened up to this whole series of questions, questions that are often vocalised by our friends when we tell them about our attractions and our feelings, if we manage to work up that much courage, which is in itself a whole other world of trials and tribulation. We're introduced to this sense of wonder, this feeling of new at which point we realise that this is someone we have so much to learn about, and it's very much like walking into class on the first day wondering who you're going to be sat next to and who you're going to like or have to learn to like. There's often this exclusive feeling too, as if everyone else in the shot has been blurred out and the focus of the camera is actually on you and this person, this being that has suddenly thrown everything very much out of recognition.

It very much felt like I was floating through the rest of that warm Wednesday when I met Ezra. It was the smoothest sailing I'd experienced for a while. It still surprises me how blissful and carefree I was feeling following my meeting this stranger, this boy who was with every thought of him injecting these very foreign entities into my heart that were making me feel all of these crazy, downright confusing things, and it really should have terrified me a hell of a lot more than it did, or maybe that's just clichés talking. To say that they, these new thoughts, weren't making the old ponder every previous conception of my heart and where it could, or should, or would lie would be disingenuous, because they were going into something short of overdrive, but at that time it just didn't concern me. It's always been tricky for me to try to figure out why it wasn't causing the dysphoria and panic that it's been known to do. I couldn't describe any of it then and I can barely do so now because to say that it all felt right is also untrue. It was then, at the beginning of my questioning period, that my mind would go to Alistair, and to Jane, Elijah, Serena, even Tabby. They were all these suddenly very present beings that I thought would decide my stance on it all even though I wanted the opinion, the decision and the direction to be mine.

All I knew was that it didn't feel right, but it didn't feel wrong either.

Alistair was conspicuously absent when I returned to our pitch, much to my relief, and it only took seeing Jane's mildly annoyed face to figure out where he'd gone. She was sat in a ghastly fluorescent pink chair which practically screamed 'Notice me!' with a novel in hand, one of the four she'd picked out from Waterstones when her and I had visited the town just prior to our departure. I approached carefully, as if I were eight years old again and trying to sneak into the kitchen to swipe some sweets from the top shelf, praying that I wouldn't make too much noise shutting the cupboard doors, and silently congratulated myself when I managed to reach her without being detected. I stood just a few steps away from her chair and lowered myself to the grass, looking around purposely. I gave it a few more seconds before I began to whistle a tune that I knew she liked. Her expression almost immediately softened, and her eyes drifted up from the pages to meet mine. She smiled one of those smiles you would expect of a mother, those reassuring ones that not only tell you everything's okay but make you feel like that's the truth, and that whatever was wrong before is no longer, and all that remains is the beautiful, transcendent connection between two human beings bound together by a unique form of love. I couldn't help but return her smile, and it was one of the rare occasions of that period where I wasn't faking it all.

"Where were you?" She asked, her voice laced with concern. She'd probably been expecting me to return within an hour or so, like I normally would, and not at least five hours later, so I can't blame her for being worried about me. I addressed her coolly, telling her where I'd been and concocting some story about seeing how far I could go before being well and truly lost. I don't know if she believed me or not, but whether she did or she didn't wasn't of any consequence because she didn't ask. She hoped that I'd had a good time. I had. I'd had an excellent day.