Growing Pains

Chapter 52 - I had made a personality of being laughed at

L U K E

Jason's bedroom was different than Daisy's in every way. Daisy's room was only big enough for a double bed tucked next to the window, a cow-printed chair where she dumped all her equally extravagant-looking clothes, a desk for her to study in, a tiny closet, and a colorful rug she tended to lie in every time I came over.

Meanwhile Jason's room was big enough for his bed, a normal-looking armchair, a desk too messy for any work to possibly be done there, a big closet, and a couch in front of a flat screen and a games console. Their parents definitely had a favorite child.

Daisy's room was also full books and posters of boybands and movie stars stuck to the walls, whereas Jason's was full of big-boy weights and posters of big-budget action-packed movies and frat-boy comedies Daisy wouldn't watch in her lifetime.

I knew this about their bedrooms because I had been in Daisy's room many times in the past few months, either watching something, anything, on the screen of her laptop, or (barely) studying for something, anything, together. Today, however, I had been dragged to Jason's room. Not by him, but by Daisy.

He had physiotherapy and wouldn't be home for hours and she wanted my help to get back at him for killing her baby in a housefire. This only made sense to me after she told me she had left her laptop in the living room to go help her mom with lunch last weekend, and Jason had found it and decided it would be funny to ruin her Sims game. Obviously, it had been funny to no one but him.

To get back at Jason, Daisy wanted me to login to his latest video game obsession and destroy it. As it turned out, Jason's latest video game obsession was the same as mine, except I had finished playing it already and he hadn't. Also, there was no real way to destroy the game for him, except by playing it, and moving the storyline along without him here to see it, which was exactly what we did.

Did I feel bad about ruining for Jason what for me had been one of the best experiences of my life when it came to media consumption? Absolutely, I did. I liked Jason. He sat with me during gym class when my asthma got too bad and occasionally said hi to me in the hallways. But of course, killing someone's baby in a housefire wasn't very nice, even if it was a virtual baby in a virtual housefire in a virtual simulation of life. I also liked Daisy better.

I liked her a lot. I had made a personality of being laughed at, but in the past few months, Daisy only ever laughed with me. I had never thought much about the difference between being laughed at and being laughed with, but it turned out it was life changing. Perhaps because it had been a while since I had received any kind of real approval in terms of my existence, the experience of Daisy's validation was like a psychedelic drug. Every time Daisy watched or read something I recommended and came back to tell me she had loved it I felt high out of my mind.

I also thought she was the most interesting person I had ever met in my life, a suspicion I had since I first met her in freshman year, but never thought to look further into. Had I done it and the last few years of my life probably wouldn't have been as terrible to me as they had.

She was sitting next to me now, cross-legged on Jason's couch in sweatpants and a t-shirt of a boyband I didn't know, and definitely enjoying herself way too much killing zombies, even if she wouldn't admit it. We had been at it for hours and she had decided who she liked best, a character that was going to die very soon. 

For some reason, I thought I should tell her this.

She pressed pause and looked shocked at me, "Why would you tell me that?"

"You just like him cause he's hot."

"And respectful," she said.

"No, I'm pretty sure it's because he's jacked."