DEVIL HORNS ― Maddy Perez

06. I'm Sorry

SIX I'M SORRY

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By the end of the week, Fawn had almost forgotten what had happened between her and Sylvia. She didn't regret it by any means, things just felt the same as they always had. She felt almost guilty for it not being some monumental experience for her mainly because she had an inkling that Sylvia did not take it with the same weight Fawn did. That being said, they weren't going to talk about it. Fawn was best at ignoring her problems so her solution was to pretend like nothing happened and that she and Sylvia were still just really good friends. After all, that is what they were. Friends. She just hoped Sylvia didn't want anything more than that.

They sat in the cafeteria now, Fawn biting into a bitter green apple as the cheerleaders came prancing down the stairs, Maddy Perez among them looking good as ever. She and Fawn were still on decidedly horrible terms, but that wouldn't stop Fawn from gluing her eyes to her during the performance. There was a football game tonight and Fawn could not wait to skip it. She hated football, it just reminded her of shitty people who do shitty things. She didn't mind looking at the cheerleaders, though. Judging by the way Maddy was glaring at the boy who was supposed to be her boyfriend, Fawn wasn't the only person the Perez girl was on bad terms with. That brought her a small satisfaction, but she knew they would probably be back together by the end of the night anyway. Still, it was nice to live in the imaginary world where Maddy didn't go crawling back to Nate Jacobs every five minutes.

"Dude, earth to Fawn," Sylvia scoffed as she waved her hand in front of her best friend's face, "You are so drooling. She has a boyfriend, you know."

"Hey! I could easily have been staring at Cassie's tits," Fawn defended herself even though it was a lie. It was a plausible one, though, because Cassie Howard did have impeccable boobs. It wasn't Fawn's fault for having eyes.

Sylvia just rolled her eyes and stood up, meandering through the crowd of football boys to the exit of the cafeteria.

"What the fuck?" Fawn muttered to herself before standing as well, slinging her backpack onto her shoulders and abandoning her lunch as she followed her friend. Once they were out in the hallway, she shouted to get the girl's attention, "What the fuck is your problem?"

"Maddy Perez is my fucking problem," Sylvia shouted in return, not moving to walk any closer to where Fawn was standing, "You are so obsessed with her, but newsflash, Fawn, she's never gonna be into you! This is more than just hooking up, you totally have a crush on her and you know it! She's never gonna like you back. You know what you are to her? You're the experiment. You're the toy she gets to play with when she's mad at her 6'5" Greek God of a boyfriend. You're never gonna be her girlfriend, you're never going to be anything more to her than a tongue and a pair of hands."

"Oh, fuck you, just admit you're jealous," Fawn didn't even know where the words came from as they left her tongue, but they felt true. "She might never be my girlfriend, but don't start thinking you will be either. Just because I actually fucked you doesn't mean I'm gonna start oggling at you instead of her. We never agreed to be anything more than we were so I don't know where you got the idea that I was going to magically stop being interested in Maddy."

Sylvia shook her head, a humorless laugh falling past her lips as she took a step closer to Fawn, "You are so fucking self-absorbed. I think you want me to be in love with you just so you can tell me you aren't interested because you want what you can't have so you're deadset on making everyone else miserable, too. I'm not jealous, I just think you're being fucking stupid."

"You know, just once, I want a best friend who actually treats me like a human fucking being," Fawn sneered, getting up in Sylvia's space. She knew how to be intimidating when she wanted to be. "I have spent the last three years being treated like shit by everyone, even people who called themselves my friends and the last thing I expected was for you to become one of them. I expected better from you. If you had been less of a bitch about, you might have actually had a point, I might actually listen to you. But you just had to go and act like everyone else in my miserable fucking life."

The girl scoffed, pushing Fawn back to take back some of the space. "Having a miserable life doesn't give you the right to treat other people like shit, Fawn. I don't owe you shit, Maddy doesn't owe you shit, no one owes you shit."

Fawn didn't know when she slipped, but the next thing she knew she was standing in that hallway crying. She didn't mean to, she hated crying. Sylvia was right and she knew it, but it felt so much better just to be angry at the world than acknowledge that she might be the real problem. It was so much easier to go down kicking and screaming than become a fragile shell of who she used to be.

"I'm sorry," Fawn choked out, "Fuck, no, I don't -- you're right, you're fucking right, of course, you are. I'm just... I don't know who I am anymore, I used to know who I was but then someone took that away from me, and now I'm left picking up the pieces, but life keeps kicking them under the rug and I can't find them anymore and this is an overly-complicated metaphor because I don't know what to say."

Sylvia looked at her critically for a moment before she seemed to realize that this wasn't an act or an attempt to guilt-trip her. Fawn wasn't surprised she assumed that guilt-tripping seemed to be a specialty of Fawn's. After a moment, the girl caved and pulled her into a hug.

"None of us are supposed to know who we are, we're teenagers living shitty, shitty lives," the girl comforted, "but the most we can do is try not to drag other people down with us."

"I know, I know," Fawn sighed, "Hey, if you were, like, actually jealous of how I feel about Maddy, you would tell me, right?"

The girl nodded as they pulled apart, "Yes, I would tell you. I can't bottle shit up anymore, we know what happened last time I tried to keep everything to myself."

Fawn choked out a laugh as she wiped her eyes, not caring that she was probably smudging her makeup. She could always fix it in the bathroom later, it really wasn't a big deal right now. "God, what a pair we make."

"And what would we do without each other?"

She shrugged, "Die, probably."