Wearing My Smile | ✔

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

You used to tell me that I had an odd penchant of making someone who disliked me to like me. I would tell you then that you were being ridiculous because that wasn't it at all. I didn't tell you I thought I was quite an unlikeable person for some people. I was okay with myself, but I knew some found me too quiet, too detached, too boring.

“Did you know that I used to dislike you?” you asked me from where you were lying on the couch. I think we were fifteen, weeks before the incident.

“What? No way.”

“I did.”

I frowned at you. “When did this even happen? We're practically attached on the hip since day one.”

You hummed to the ceiling. “A few days before I came to you with a broken arm the first time.”
“We weren’t even talking to each other before then.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

You reached out to play with my hair for a bit, then lay back down. You told me once, long ago, that you liked my jet black hair long. I told you that it made me look like a girl. You asked me why, “Because you're pretty? There's nothing wrong with being pretty, Roo.” I wanted to argue, but I imagined that if we had that conversation and the role was reversed, I would surely say the same about you.

“Exactly what?” I repeated.

“You were so quiet. And after that incident, you didn't talk to me at all, except when I talked to you first. I just moved here so I thought...”

Talking to you was like pulling a teeth sometimes, Sam, did you know that? “You thought what?”

“I thought you thought of me as stupid. I thought you were judging me, thinking I wasn't worth your time.”

I laughed at you. “Sam, it's rude to assume.”

“Yeah, I know. There's not a mean bone in you. You can't hate people. You're not built like that, unlike me. Between the two of us, I'm the mean one.”

I was silent because I wasn't sure if that was true.

“So, my point is,” you continued with a grin, “I'm an evidence.”

“Evidence.” My statement sounded like a question.

“Yeah. Because people who didn't like you at first would like you in the end, Roo.”

I wasn't so sure if that was true either.

But sitting there alone with my lunch, with Penny worriedly leaving me alone after I'd insisted her to see the principal and Jay not being around all day, days after being punched black and blue, the same guy came to me again with his friends. This time his friends looked both annoyed and apologetic nudging the guy's shoulder impatiently. I was preparing myself for another fight, but what the guy said to me next made me think if you were right. He said, “Sorry.”

I stared at him.

He cleared his throat. “I said I'm sorry.” He looked back to his friends, who glared at him. “I was angry that day and you were conveniently there.”

I studied him like I would study you. “It's alright.”

“You shouldn't just say it's alright,” one of his friends said. “MD can be stupid sometimes. And you look like shit. Let him be your slave for a week or something.”

I laughed.

“I think he doesn't believe you, Theo,” MD's other friend told him.

“I don't know, Sean. I mean, he must've seen the mirror, right?”

“Not that, moron. I mean, slaving off MD? Why don't you just jump off a bridge? It's a faster way to die and less painful.”

I just laughed harder.

Sean poked MD hard on his stomach. “You broke the poor sap, MD. Look what you've done.”

“I didn't even hit him hard enough for concussion!” MD shouted in outrage.

I suppose I get it. As I sat there listening to them bicker to one another, I thought of what you'd said. The way you'd told me that I had a way to bring people's walls down, making them feel at ease with my silence. Being with me was easy.

I watched MD and remembered of how you'd been the last months of your life, how angry and distant you were, how you were isolating yourself. MD was so lucky to have his friends. He probably didn't even realize that he was. They cared about him enough to drag him back to me for an apology, that alone should be a sign that he'd be okay. I didn't know the guy, but it was painful to think that he could someday end up like you. I wouldn't want that for anyone.

“Why are you here alone?” Theo asked me curiously later. They were watching me and I realized then they really wanted to know. Surely, they knew about the circles of friends I talked around school. It didn't make sense that I would choose to be alone when I could surround myself with people, did it?

I smiled at him because I didn't want to answer. I couldn't. Because these people didn't know you, Sam, they didn't know that you used to be sitting here with me, they didn't know how kind and gentle you could be, they didn't know that you liked the quiet when it was just the two of us.

“I like hearing this.” I told them, in my ears was the echo of your long-forgotten words to me forever ago.

“Hear what?”

“Everything.”

I saw a glimpse of your smile on their faces and wasn't that just odd, Sam?