Page 17 of Fake Skating
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to sound casual and open to the idea when I absolutely was not. “Maybe.”
Yeah, I’m not fucking asking.
It was too bad that Dani was having issues making her Harvard dream come true, but that wasn’t my problem. The last thing I needed was to have her in my world, messing with my concentration when I’d already jeopardized every fucking thing with megabong and needed to focus now more than ever.
Hell, just seeing her for three seconds had almost messed with my focus against Simley; I definitely didn’t need to see her during every practice and game.
It wasn’t my problem that she was having problems.
I was actually pissed at myself for letting her get under my skin during Sykes’s class. I hadn’t planned on giving my speech early, and I was probably going to get a C now because I hadn’t even had my note cards, but after what my mom said the other night, I couldn’t stop myself from helping her.
Because, I swear to God, she’d looked like she was five seconds away from fainting, vomiting, or having a massive heart attack as she stood in front of the class. Before I’d known what was happening, my hand was up and my mouth was moving.
It was probably because the girl I used to know had a stubborn grin and attitude for days, and that girl was not in my speech class. And she wasn’t hiding out in the library at lunch like she was scared of the cafeteria, either.
Aside from a fleeting moment the other day when she’d thrown me some snark, that girl was missing.
And the girl in her place seemed to need me.
Correction: She seemed to need someone.
Or something.
Which explained why I was in the library—fucking again —at lunch. As soon as we turned down the hallway and I could see her through the window, sitting at a table all by herself with her eyes on her book, all I could hear were my mom’s words.
Social anxiety.
And I couldn’t help but wonder what’d made her go from the Dani I’d known to this quiet version. Had she been bullied? I didn’t want to talk to her, but I hadn’t been able to suppress the need to make sure she wasn’t hiding out all alone every day during lunch.
God, I was as big of a chump as I’d ever been.
Only—no.
No, dammit.
I wasn’t chumpy little Alec; I just wasn’t an asshole.
It was entirely possible not to give a shit about someone, yet still behave like a decent human being.
But I sat there for the rest of lunch, regretting my decision to be nice, because while my friends exchanged small talk with Dani, I looked at her face and couldn’t stop the memories.
The barely there freckles that were sprinkled across her cheeks reminded me of the Eighteenth Avenue pool and the way she’d always lied about wearing sunscreen because she hated the smell.
And her dark eyelashes reminded me of the way they’d bunched together in wet triangles when we ran around in the pouring rain.
But when my eyes dipped down to the cursive scrawlings on her notebook, memories of the idiotic postcards clawed at me and I had to look away.
Because, God, those postcards.
I was a grown-ass man with a car and a job, for God’s sake, but every time I accidentally came across that bundle in the back of my closet, I was reduced to a little boy with a thousand fucking feelings.
I blamed the Como Zoo.
After she’d bought a postcard at the zoo one summer morning (we’d been nine-ish at the time), I—of course—had to make fun of her. Hey, Grandma, are you going to send that to your pen pal?
“I love postcards,” she’d said, shrugging while leading me toward the polar bear exhibit. “You get to send a cheesy picture and get credit for being thoughtful, but the tiny square keeps it short and sweet.”
“But everyone can read what you write,” I said, eating (and dropping) handfuls of popcorn while trying to keep up with her.
“True,” she agreed, then pointed at me and said, “Unless you come up with a code.”
We never made it to the polar bears, because we stopped to sit on a rock and brainstorm the code idea instead.
We went back to our shed that day and proceeded to spend hours—and the entire next week—creating our own alternate alphabet of symbols, which Dani made into two decoders that she had laminated at the library.
We were out of our minds over the idea of sending each other coded messages.
By the end of our month, the postcard pact was enacted.
Once a week, we would send each other a postcard—in code.
Fucking little dorks, I thought as I remembered how committed we’d been to our plan.
One postcard a week, and they had to adhere to our strict guidelines.
The guidelines: one sentence of greeting, two sentences describing random things that’d happened to us that week, and one sentence of goodbye.
That was all that was allowed.
It was asinine, but we’d sent those weekly postcards to each other for years.
Years.
We’re talking hundreds of motherfucking postcards.
I sent cards I picked up at truck stops; she sent back vintage cards she had to have found in thrift stores. I bought meme postcards online, and she sent me cards that gave tiny hints about what life was like where she was living.
They started in messy elementary-school chicken scratch and ended in artistic freshman symbols where she dotted her i ’s with tiny hearts.
So, so idiotic.
Alec—
Hey, loser!
1. Yesterday I found a cat in our backyard and gave him tuna, which he wolfed down and then proceeded to immediately barf up on my shoe, leaving me no choice but to name him Sir Pukesalot. :D
2. This morning, my dad told my mom that he was disappointed that she’d never cared about him enough to learn to cook, leaving me no choice but to name him Lieutenant Colonel Pukesalot.
Counting down the days until summer,
Dani
And then they just stopped.
I kept sending them like the chump I was, convinced it was a post office issue because I was a delusional little shit, but apparently she was just done.
And a couple of weeks later, when she came to town and fucked me over, I realized that was just who she’d become.
The girl who’d laminated our decoders had left the chat, and now Dani Collins was just somebody that I used to know.