 |
~~~
"I don't know," she sighed, gazing unseeingly down the dark window. "This is all so frustrating...."
"What, watching me cook?" he laughed, breaking his contemplation of a bowl of deep brown batter. "Yeah, I can really see that one...."
"Not the cake," she said, impatiently waving her hand through the air. "Just...everything." She sighed again; feeling suddenly tired, she rested her head in her arms and stared out the window again. The sky was obscured by thick, disgruntled storm clouds, unwilling to rain but reluctant to go elsewhere. Clinging on because there didnt seem to be much else to do.
"Everything?" he prompted.
She buried her face in the dark, warm space beneath her arms. "Everything."
"That doesn't sound emo at all."
"Maybe it does, I don't care," she snapped. "I'm not whining for once, I'm trying to sort all this out...make sense of it...."
"Of what?" He was preoccupied, paying enough attention for a casual conversation, but not enough for what was in her mind.
"Just...." She struggled to find the words to fit the feeling. "Okay," she said finally, "let me ask you this, then. What's the point of this?"
"Making cake?"
"No. The point of...well...let's say, all that school shopping we're gonna have to do next week."
"So we'll have the stuff to go to school."
"What's the point of having the stuff?"
"So we can learn properly and not get demerits?"
"So, no demerits. What's the point of that?"
"We get to exempt exams," he said, shrugging.
"And what's the point of those?" she prompted.
"To, um...assess our knowledge? And maybe raise our grade?"
"What's the point of having a high grade?"
"So we can get into good colleges?"
"And what's the point of that?"
"So we can get good jobs...."
"Point of that?"
"Jeez, so we won't be living on the street--"
"And what's the point of--"
"Come on!" he burst suddenly, turning to face her. "What's with this...this questionnaire, all of a sudden?"
"You asked," she said testily. "I want to know what the point is."
"That's...that's just how life works, okay?"
"Why should it? Look--anytime, I'll take you to the grocery store, and show you--you can get a can of soup for a dollar...or some beans for fifty cents...hell, Ramen costs like, a dime a pack! That's a full meal! You could eat for a week off of five bucks--"
"So what if you can?"
"So, what's the point of working your a** off and making yourself miserable when that's really all you need...just five bucks a week...you could make that by working for a couple of hours at McDonald's...."
"If everyone thought like that," he told her firmly, with the air of one who has already discovered the answers to every problem, "we'd get nothing done."
"Oh, and look at all the lovely things money's done for us," she said acidly.
He snorted, clearly thinking the whole subject ridiculous.
She ran her fingers through her hair. "I just don't think," she said softly, "that that's what I want...is a good job...."
"That's what everyone wants."
"Obviously not," she snarled, and then felt horrible. Why was she being so awful to her best friend? What was wrong with her. "Maybe..." she said, in an effort to make amends, "maybe I WANT to be a hobo...or an adventurer...."
"Sounds exciting," he said, a bit sarcastically; he seemed a little hurt by her tetchy mood.
She sighed. She had been doing that a lot lately.... "Hey," she said suddenly, "you know how drug addicts...how they feel on top of the world that first time, and the other times, it's just...it's no fun anymore, but they can't stand to be in a normal state anymore? They need to be high again because they loved how it felt?"
"Yeah," he said heavily, his mind on other things.
"But every high is the same," she pressed, her words speeding up, tumbling over each other in their haste to free themselves. "And pretty soon they try and get even higher--they mix drugs and try different ones and--"
"--and kill themselves from drug abuse," he said sternly. "PLEASE don't tell me you're becoming a crack whore...."
"No, it's...it's a metaphor," she said quietly. "I'm just wondering...if you've experienced...the best part of life...." She looked quickly down at her swinging feet, remembering all the times she wished she was taller, just to have a tiny bit more equality between the two of them.... "How can anything ever be the same? Even the same thing is just...just another repetitive habit," she finished bitterly. "It can't ever be the same, can it?"
"I don't do drugs," he told her--completely missing the point. She frowned, feeling like she might burst into tears at any moment. Just a few weeks ago, he would never have been so dismissive, so unconcerned....
"I just don't know what I'm doing with my life anymore," she whispered, to no one in particular. "I don't know...."
He didn't hear her. He was too preoccupied with his cake. "It needs something," he murmured; unlike him, she paid attention to every detail about him, every word he spoke.
"Yeah," she said, but she wasn't talking about the cake.
He added a few spoonfuls of butter, stirring it carefully to get the consistency right. She watched him--not the batter, nor his expression of peaceful, unconcerned absorption, but the way his shoulders moved, the way his hair caught the dim golden light.
After a few minutes of suffocating silence, in which she choked helplessly on her own supressed feelings, she finally asked--in a very vague, simple way--what was on her mind.
"So how's the girlfriend?" she inquired, in a purposefully polite tone.
"Good," he said. "How's the boyfriend?"
She opened her mouth, wishing the million responses she had to that question would spill out and spread before his eyes--then sighed and repeated, "Good."
"Good," he said cheerfully, completely unaware of what was on her mind. Once upon a time, he would have caught every tiny, tortured inflection in her words...but no more.
She would have liked to say a lot of things. But she didn't.
Instead, she thought bitterly to herself what she meant, which didn't exactly match up with what she said.
Out loud: How's the girlfriend?
Inside: ...What happened to us?
~~~
This isn't even one of those "******** my life" moments. It's to do with how your view of people change after something happens between you....how everyone changes, suddenly. Or maybe it's just you.
I am such a fat lazy cheeseball.
|
 |
Reply
