Wearing My Smile | ✔

Wednesday, August 6th, 2003

Being good friends with Penny was incredibly easy. You must have noticed this, I know, but you weren't the only one surprised.

After meeting you, I had never felt the right connection with kids our age. Even though I was friends to many, sometimes I found it to be draining. No one clicked. I preferred spending time with you because you made everything better. You eyes were often shuttered, especially those past months, and you weren't okay some days, but you eased my loneliness like no one else could ever do.

Then, there was Penny, coming into our lives like a storm with her deep sense of loyalty and self-righteousness. Her apology to you continued on until months later, until somehow we began to spend time with her at school or at home. Not every day, just sometimes. I wanted to tell you that it felt pretty nice to have someone else who just clicked with us without us having to do too much effort.

Her moral set us straight, smoothing our rough edges, balancing out our seemingly desperate cling onto each other. The way she laughed at your sarcastic remarks, the way she smiled and told me when I was being too nice, the way she scolded you like I did sometimes. She fit, didn't she, Sam?

And yet, in the same time, she didn't.

It took me a long time to notice your silence. It was weeks after we took her into our fold. She was in my house with us, shrieking at my television as I beat her yet again on the console game we played. I laughed and laughed and laughed, failing to notice that you, Sam, were probably looking at me with anger flashing in your eyes.

You hadn't been to my house for days and I was worried. The last conversation we had had in our living room where you had asked me if I liked Penny kept looping in my head. Penny told me with a shrug, turning on the console game, “Maybe he's playing with other kids or busy doing something else. What do you want to play?”

I wasn't sure. She didn't get it. If it were any other person, I was certain I'd think that way, but this was you, Sam, and we had been inseparable since those first days we'd spent with each other, playing soccer at my backyard, a cast wrapped around your arm, but I didn't reply because there was no point. I'd confront you later, I thought, when you decided to come by.

Twenty minutes into the game, I could feel Penny's restlessness. I waited for her to mention something, but another hour passed she still wouldn't say anything. I realized suddenly that she was not you, that I couldn't wait for her to talk on her own terms, on the time of her own choosing the way I always waited for you and it made me feel a bit disoriented from this gap, because only then I realized how much I'd gotten used to being around you that I almost didn't know how to be around anybody else.

Casually, I asked her, “What is it?”

She glanced at me with wide eyes. “What's what?”

“What's wrong? You keep losing, I mean more than usual.” This earned me a kick to my leg.

She was fidgeting and I wondered the whole time what was it that she was thinking so hard about. Penny was hardly someone who kept something to herself. She always talked to us, or me, at least, when you were preoccupied, which was often enough.

After long minutes, she said slowly, “The girls in my class kept talking about kissing boys.”

“Did they?” I was still focused on the game, at least until she paused the game and I glanced at her, raising my eyebrow.

She fidgeted as if what she wanted to say next made her feel nervous. Then, cautiously she asked, “Want to try it out?”

It took me longer than it should have to understand what she was asking. If I were to be honest with you, Sam, I had never thought about it, or even wanted it, really, before you. The boys around us had started to talk about kissing and dating. They talked about girls, how pretty they were, how soft, how nice, and I wouldn't go as far as to deny that I didn't notice them, because I did, but I felt like an outsider for not feeling the excitement the way our friends did. I'd never had the interest to like them that way. It was such a foreign idea for me that I didn't care much even if I'd never gotten the chance to try kissing at all.