The Exact Opposite of Okay by Laura Steven (15)

8.47 a.m.

I wait for twenty minutes by my gates, but Danny never arrives.

10.05 a.m.

Ajita is shocked to see me in school. Her parents, who are unbelievable fascists at times, would make her come to school even if her arms had fallen off in the night, but she knows Betty is a bit of a soft touch. She once let me stay home because of a paper cut. To be fair, it was in the webbing between my fingers and thus a deeply traumatic experience, on a par with losing my parents if we’re being honest. But still.

Thing is, Betty is generally in tune with what I need. She’s amazing like that, like some sort of psychic presence. Such as the paper-cut thing – we both knew I was actually having a horrible day. I’d got my first period the week before, and even though my grandma was great, I really felt my mother’s absence that whole week. It just felt like the kind of thing she should’ve been there for, like riding my bike for the first time, or accidentally getting stoned on pot brownies and breaking into the old folks’ home. And so the paper cut became a scapegoat for my grief, and Betty let me stay home.

On the same level, she also knew that what I needed today was not to stay at home obsessing about a nude picture on the internet, wondering how bad it’d be when I eventually did show my face. So she sent me to school.

I somehow make it through first period without having a breakdown, then Ajita grabs me and hauls me into an empty classroom near the cafeteria. This feels a little like stumbling into Narnia, as empty classrooms are like gold dust at Edgewood High.

All the lights are off, and that’s how we keep them as we close the door, dump our stuff on the teacher’s desk and slip into a few chairs near the back of the classroom. The sky outside is overcast, and after the bright strip lighting of the corridor it takes a while for my eyes to adjust to the dimness.

Ajita’s face is covered in zits. She’s obviously been stressed about my well-being. “Dude, what did Betty-O say?”

We love calling her Betty-O. It makes her sound like a low-end cereal brand.

I sigh and rub my eyes. They sting from tears and sleep deprivation. “She was actually really great. I expected her to nail me to a cross like that scene from The Passion of the Christ, but alas—”

“Like ‘the scene from The Passion of the Christ ’? Izzy, you do know that movie is actually based on the Bible? It’s important that you know that.”

I feign outrage. “What? No way! Next you’ll tell me Santa Claus has his very own testament!”

Faux-exasperated, she replies, “We’ll talk about this later. Now, I need deets. What did the old girl say?”

Even though the door to the classroom is shut, some scumbag sophomores have gathered behind the glass, staring at us agog. Without hesitation, Ajita strides up to the window, pounds it with her fist – causing several of them to flinch – then hastily wrenches down the blind that usually stays up until the end of the day. She rejoins me in our seats as though the last ten seconds never happened. Maybe they didn’t. Like I say, I’m pretty sleep deprived at this point.

“Honestly, Betty was awesome. For one thing, she didn’t bring up my lopsided boobs, which I appreciate. Some grandmothers would express concern at my lack of aesthetic perfection and haul me straight to the plastic surgeon, but not Betty.”

Ajita frowns. “I don’t think I know any grandmothers who would plausibly take that course of action.”

“Ajita, will you please stop taking everything I say so literally. Never in your life have you taken me seriously, why doth thine haben started now?” [Oh wonderful, now I’m throwing random German infinitives into my bastardized medieval sentences. Things just keep getting better and better on the intelligence front. I think my brain cells might actually be falling out of my ears in the night. Remind me to buy plugs.]

Before she can interrupt with another painfully literal interpretation of my strange answers, I add, “No, really. She was all kinds of amazing. At first she was super mad, but not at me, just at the scumbag who made the website and at all the other scumbag minions who do things like make paper airplanes out of my nudes.”

“Then?”

“Then she told me to stay calm, hold my head up, all that clichéd crap . . . and she’ll figure out what to do next. Whether that’s go to the principal, or to the police, since it’s harassment and all that, or string every guy on the basketball team up on her washing line by the nuts.”

“Hopefully a combination of all three.”

“My thoughts exactly, Ajita. My thoughts exactly.”

She smiles sympathetically. “Hey, so, um . . . guess what?”

“What?”

Her perfect little face lights up. “I made the tennis team! Turns out my hand-eye coordination is actually quite good thanks to a decade of ping-pong and video games. Who knew?”

“Oh my God! Dude!” I consider giving her a hug, but decide against it because unsolicited bodily contact gives her the willies, and even though I’m like a house cat who likes to be touching people at any given opportunity, I have to respect her wishes. “That’s awesome. I’m so fricking proud of you.”

And I mean it. I’m really happy for her. But as she skips off to meet Carlie before lunchtime practice, I can’t help feeling slightly abandoned. I know that sounds so selfish, and I hate myself for being this petty, but without her by my side, everything just feels so much more overwhelming.

Like I say, I really need to be a better friend. She deserves so much more.

6.58 p.m.

I hang out with Carson at the basketball courts again after school. I love late September. There’s all kinds of fall foliage around now, burnt oranges and dark reds and whatnot, and I can smell smoking chimneys on the crisp air. It’s almost beautiful enough to make me forget about the hellish implosion of my personal life. Almost.

We shoot some hoops together, even though I have the sporting ability of a concussed hippopotamus, as I fill him in on the latest developments. This time I manage to avoid a full-scale breakdown, which is good for maintaining the illusion that I am not certifiably unstable. Anyway, he seems genuinely concerned about my well-being, which is all new fuckboy territory. He is like a pioneer. A beautiful, beautiful pioneer whose bones I’m in mortal peril of jumping at any given moment.

“Anything I can do?” he asks. “To help y’all, I mean. You and Betty.” It’s such a small thing, but the fact he remembers my grandma’s name warms my heart.

Barely even looking where he’s aiming, he gracefully tosses the ball in the direction of the hoop. It makes a perfect arc then slides straight through the net, not even skimming the rim. Even as a nonsportsball lover, I have to admit it’s impressive.

He hands me the ball. I bounce it a couple of times, pretending to know what I’m doing, and say, “Nah. Don’t worry about us. Everybody has shit to deal with, you know? Even you, I’d imagine, despite your hot-yet-unintimidating demeanor.” He grins at this, and I grin back, before adding, “So I’m not in the habit of offloading mine. It isn’t fair.”

Clearly picking up on the fact I have no idea what I’m doing with a basketball in my hands, Carson comes up behind me and places his hands on my hips, tilting them toward the hoop. My pulse quickens as he angles my body perfectly to make a winning shot, even taking the time to rearrange my feet. I’m not sure why this feels so intimate, given that we’ve already had sex. But I like it. I really, really like it.

As he works, he says, “You know I have nine brothers and sisters?”

He’s back upright now, still behind me, a hand on each of my arms. I focus on steadying my breathing. “Wow. That’s a lot.”

“Yeah. A fertile woman, my mother.”

I consider this as he runs his hands slowly down my arms until his hands are cupping mine. “You probably know I’m an only child, and an orphan, and an all-round disaster,” I say.

He nods. “Yep.” I wait for him to continue. I get the impression he’s been thinking about this for a while, and as usual I am ruining his flow by stating obvious tragic details about myself.

Both of us holding the ball, Carson takes aim. I can feel his heart beating against my back, even through my sweater. Like he’s working a bow and arrow, he gently guides my arms back, then flicks the ball deftly up toward the hoop.

Again, it slides straight through the net.

I whoop, then turn to face him, grinning. He matches my smile. “You’re a natural.”

See? He is a good guy. Which is very different from being a Nice Guy à la Danny Wells.

Also, for some reason, I don’t feel the need to constantly crack jokes and prove how funny I am when I’m around Carson. At first I thought this was a bad thing – like, shouldn’t I be bouncing off him and being hilarious? – but it’s actually quite nice to just relax and have a normal chat like normal people. So it’s weird.

Our faces are so close together that for a moment I think [hope] he might kiss me again, but after a tantalizing moment, he skips off to retrieve the ball.

I take the opportunity to continue the conversation. “So is everything okay at home? You mentioned family issues. I mean, you don’t have to talk about it. But you can if you want.”

He grins again, bounding back over to me. He really is cute with a capital C. Huge smile, smooth brown skin, symmetrical features, striking eyes like Will Smith’s. “Thanks, Iz. It’s really okay, though. Nothing compared to what you have to deal with.”

“Well, that’s dumb,” I retort. “I don’t have the monopoly on messed-up family stuff. Just ask the Fritzls.”

Carson actually recoils a little here. “Izzy, that’s awful.”

“So is your face.”

“Really? Still making ‘your face’ jokes in this day and age?”

“Look, I don’t care what anyone says, your face and your mom jokes will always be hysterical.”

He laughs. “Whatever you say. You’re the comedian.”

But I haven’t even been trying to be funny! I want to say. Is it possible that my natural state is entertaining in itself ? What a relief that would be!

“Nah, honestly, it’s a’ight,” he says. We both watch a nearby seagull doing some sort of Macarena dance as it maneuvers its freshly caught prey into its mouth. “My mom’s partner of eight years left us a few weeks back. Left us in the shit too, financially. Eleven mouths to feed and all. So I’ve been picking up extra shifts at the pizza place downtown.”

“That is unbelievably crappy. I’m sorry.”

“Nah, don’t be. I get free pizza.”

I gasp exaggeratedly. “That is the Holy Grail of job perks. I love pizza more than most things, including oxygen.”

He lets his eyes drop to the ground. [Again, not literally. That would be deeply uncomfortable for him. Nobody wants gravel in their corneas. I mean, maybe you do. I don’t know your fetishes.]

Biting a lip, he finally says, “Then, uh, maybe we should get pizza together sometime.”

Wow, he has such long eyelashes. [Good grief, I really need to stop objectifying this poor boy – it is very unfeminist of me.]

I smile. “Yeah. Maybe we should.”

After we’ve finished shooting hoops, Carson offers to walk me home, which I happily accept. There’s something about being around him that just makes me feel calm and level, despite everything going on, but also tingly and excited. And that’s a sensation I appreciate now more than ever. I can’t get enough.

We walk and chat as the sun is setting, casting a warm glow over the town. Carson and I live in the same neighborhood, so I don’t have to be embarrassed as we stroll past the beat-up cars and overflowing dumpsters and stray dogs scavenging for food. To be honest, the only time I ever properly see those things is through other people’s eyes. Danny and Ajita’s mainly, and even though I know they never judge me, it’s kinda nice to be with someone who lives in the same world. It’s just . . . easier.

On one street I’ve walked down a thousand times, a woman I recognize sits on her doorstep, smoking a roll-up cigarette as two toddlers run around her ankles. She berates the little boy for pushing the girl a bit too hard, even though the girl looks totally unfazed.

The woman is big and beautiful. Her black hair is swept up into a bright yellow headscarf, and her lips are painted purple. When she sees Carson, her eyes crinkle in recognition.

“Hey, Mom,” Carson says, in the same relaxed tone he uses with me. I blink in surprise, but it also makes perfect sense. The woman’s skin is the same perfectly smooth brown as Carson’s, and she has the same wide smile. “This is Izzy. I was just walking her home. Izzy, this is my mom, Annaliese.”

I smile and say, “Pleasure to meet you, Annaliese.”

His mom blows one last puff of smoke through her lips, then buries the cigarette in a terracotta plant pot next to the doorstep. Dusting her hands off on her patterned dress, she stands up and gives me a warm hug.

“Carson’s told me a lot about you.” Her eyes are mischievous, and I know what she’s trying to communicate: he’s told me a lot of good things. I grin conspiratorially.

“Less of that, please, Annaliese,” Carson jokes, but his voice is light. Nothing like Danny’s when he speaks to Miranda. “Everything cool?”

His mom nods. “Yeah. Scott was gon’ come by, but he didn’t. Don’t know why I’m surprised.”

I guess they’re talking about the partner who left recently, leaving them in the shit with money.

Carson grabs the little girl by the ankles and lifts her up. She squeals with delight as he dangles her at shoulder height. “It’s gonna be a’ight. I picked up some extra shifts this weekend.” He places the giggling girl down again and turns his attention to the boy – his brother? “Looks like someone’s getting pizza for dinner again. PIIIZZZAAAAAAA!!” He growls this last bit like a pizza monster, chasing the kid a short way down the street. “GRRRRRR!”

His mom and I are both laughing too. Then she says, “That’s enough, pizza monster. Time for your prey to have a bath.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty stinky,” Carson says, fanning his nose extravagantly to illustrate his point. His prey laughs hysterically. “Want me to do it?”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Annaliese says. “You walk Izzy home. I got it.”

Despite the crappy situation she’s in, she’s all twinkly at the sight of me and Carson together.

As we walk back to mine, I don’t have to force conversation. It just flows. “So is your coach cool with you skipping practice to work at the pizza place?” I ask.

“Nah, he’s a dick about it,” he replies. He works a thumb into the back of his shoulder to dig out a knot, wincing a little as he does so. “But what’s he gonna do? Cut me from the team? Pfft. I’d like to see ’em win a game without me.”

His confidence is nice. It’s not arrogant. It comes with a cheeky grin and a jesting tone, rather than a condescending sneer.

“You must be pretty good then, huh?” I ask. “I mean, I’ve seen you play, and it looks impressive. But I know more about algebra than I do about sports, and that’s saying something.”

He laughs. “Yeah, I’m not bad. Not like I’m gonna be one of the greats, though.”

“No?”

“Nah. I’m too short, for one thing.” I shoot him an unconvinced look. He’s well over six feet tall. He holds his hands up. “Hey, I don’t make the rules. I’m a shortass compared to the NBA All-Stars. So yeah, not tall enough, or committed enough. Or interested enough, to be honest.”

This last one catches me off guard. “Really? I thought you loved basketball.”

“I do, man, I do. But you can love a thing without necessarily dedicating your life to it, you know?”

The profoundness of this statement leaves me slightly breathless. I feel like it might apply to my situation, to the pressure I’m putting on myself to succeed in this screenplay competition, but I’m too engaged with the conversation to delve into the idea properly. I tuck it away in the back of my mind to revisit later.

“So do you wanna do the whole college thing?” I ask, enjoying getting to know Carson beyond the class-clown image.

He shrugs noncommittally. “I dunno. I figure I’d enjoy it, but am I willing to get into that much debt just to check a box?” Another shrug. “Right now, I don’t think so. I’d rather stay home and support my family. Leave my passions as hobbies. Play when I wanna play, read what I wanna read. That’d be enough for me, I think.”

I smile, a warm feeling spreading through my chest. Carson’s on my wavelength. He genuinely understands that following your wildest dreams isn’t the best option for a lot of people. And he’s made his peace with it, but not in a depressing way. He’s happy. And for the thousandth time since we started talking, I feel refreshed by him. By his personality, his kindness, his outlook.

Uh-oh. I’m in trouble.

“So what other passions do you have? Besides basketball.” I find myself genuinely caring about the answer, rather than just thinking about the next thing I’m going to say. As a nervous conversationalist, this is something of a breakthrough.

“I like to paint. Not like hills and trees and shit. More like art as activism. Art that says something about the world.” His hand finds mine, but not awkwardly like some teenage boys would do it. Just relaxed and nice. “I never told anyone that before.”

I remember how good his alpaca sketch was, and the blue, white and red paint the first time we kissed in the hallway. “Art as activism. Like Banksy?”

“Man, Banksy’s some white-ass bullshit. Sorry,” he apologizes hastily, as though he might’ve offended my white-ass feelings.

I nudge his shoulder playfully, trying to show he doesn’t even a little bit have to worry about that. “Why’s that?” I ask. He still looks wary. “I genuinely want to know,” I add, squeezing his hand.

“A’ight, so the dude flew out to Gaza to spray-paint a kitten on a house that’d been destroyed in an air strike. Like, the fuck? Talk about insensitive. Then our white savior has the audacity to call it art, to demand folks listen to his views on the atrocities of war, rather than the Palestinians who gotta live through it.” He shakes his head, his hand tensing and untensing in mine. “Sorry. Shit drives me crazy sometimes.”

“Don’t apologize,” I insist. “I love listening to you. And you’re right. That’s some white-ass bullshit.”

He laughs. “You’re cool, O’Neill. Maybe I’ll show you my work sometime.”

“I’d like that,” I smile back. [There’s been a lot of smiling and grinning in this scene, and I do apologize for the unimaginative descriptions. Turns out there aren’t that many synonyms for smiling and grinning. Blame Carson; he’s the one who’s always making me smile and grin.]

Strolling past the dusk-lit windows on Carson’s street, I catch our reflections in the glass.

I’ll give it to Annaliese – we do look kinda cute together. No wonder her eyes were twinkling.

Mine are too.

10.42 p.m.

Just received a Facebook message from Danny.

Hey, so I just found this cool Getting Into Screenwriting masterclass you can do online. It’s with some prolific writing duo I’ve heard you talk about before.

And he attaches the link. But before I can even click it, another message comes through.

I know you’ll probably freak out that it’s $120, but I don’t mind paying for it as a treat :)

The order of my reactions are as follows:

It just feels, yet again, like he has an ulterior motive. Up until super recently Danny never bought me a thing, and I liked it that way. It made me feel like we were equal. He never intentionally drew attention to the disparity in our situations. And now he highlights it regularly, buying me milkshakes and sweaters and flowers and Coldplay tickets and offering to fork out an eye-watering sum of money in order for me to advance my career.

Is it because he wants me to feel like I owe him something? Or is that too harsh a criticism?

He looks at my life and sees I don’t have much money, and he exploits that predicament to manipulate my emotions. Did he learn that from watching his dad buy his mom’s affection instead of earning it? The Lake Michigan lakehouse was bought right after the news of Mr Wells’ affair came out, back when Danny and I were still in grade school. I was too young to fully grasp what was going on, but looking back it seems like Danny’s dad used money to fix a grave mistake, rather than actually repairing the emotional damage.

I remember his comment back when he found out Vaughan liked me.  What’s he trying to pull, asking a girl like you out.

A Girl Like Me. What does he even mean by that? He’s never made me feel like I’m any different, not once in our thirteen years of friendship. Until now.

Cautiously, for fear of angering the beast, I type out what I consider to be a diplomatic response.

Thanks for thinking of me! This sounds like a cool opportunity, but I’d never take money from you. I don’t want to feel like some kind of charity case, you know?

The three dots showing he’s typing a response appear almost immediately.

Wow, bitter much? You’re making me feel like a dick for offering to do a nice thing for you. I can’t win with you, can I?

Whoa. I’m about to start composing an anti-inflammatory answer when he sends another message:

You spend your whole life complaining about how unfair the movie industry is, how disadvantaged kids with no connections can’t get a foot in the door. And now you’re turning on me for offering to help? Like I say. Can’t win.

Why is this escalating so quickly? I know he’s dealing with some confusing feelings toward me, but man, this is too much.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, I reply.

When I complain about how the movie industry prices poor people out, it doesn’t mean I want a rich person to buy me in. It means I wish the barrier to entry didn’t exist at all.

Two seconds later . . .

You’re exhausting.

I want to scream in frustration. He’s so damn transparent. He offered me money so that when I cried with gratitude and told him he was amazing, it’d massage his ego and make him feel good for helping a Girl Like Me.

It didn’t cost him anything, not really. His parents are rich. That money means nothing to him. But he knows it means everything to me, and he’s manipulating that imbalance with no shame.

I get why he’s lashing out. As a privileged white dude, he’s used to being able to buy whatever he wants. He lives in a country where even the presidency can be bought.

But he can’t buy my love. And that frustrates the hell out of him.

11.07 p.m.

Texting Carson. You know, an actual decent guy, who is nice to me at all times and has never once tried to bribe me into having sex with him. What a revelation!

He messages me first, which is nice, because although I don’t subscribe to the sexist notion that girls should wait for potential suitors to make the first move in a heterosexual relationship, it’s always nice to feel wanted.

Watching a documentary on the Fritzls. Inspired by you, obviously. This is so effed up.

I grin as I reply.

I don’t think they made a documentary about the Fritzls yet. Are you sure it’s not Keeping Up with the Kardashians ? I’ve never watched it, but understand they have a very similar dynamic.

Lol. You’re literally funnier than every guy on the basketball team combined.

That is best compliment I could hope to receive at this point. I was about to cave into temptation and check the online response to my nudes for the millionth time today, but this is enough to distract me for another minute or two.

Well, that isn’t hard. Unlike every guy on the basketball team, who are hard at all times. You know, due to raging hormones and constant exposure to each other’s penises.

He doesn’t reply to this for around half an hour, and I actually start to freak out that I’ve offended him.

I refresh my emails several times – still nothing from the competition judges. I just want to know if I’m on the shortlist, damn it! And if I do not receive word within the next forty-eight seconds I am at very real risk of causing a Chernobyl-like nuclear disaster through sheer nervous energy alone.

But then Carson:

Hey, is your friend Ajita single? One of my firm-penised teammates wants to ask her out.

Oh, Ajita, you daaaaawwwwg. I mean, I’m not surprised she’s in demand because she’s a beautiful goddess and all-round hilarious human being, but still. Always nice to hear my homegirl getting the attention she deserves.

She is indeed single! However, I am not sure firm penises are her jam. I mean, neither are flaccid ones. Like, I just don’t think penises are her preferred genitalia. But your pal should ask away, for I am not her spokesperson!

I then ping off a text about this new development to the queen herself, and promptly fall asleep with the most absurd of smiles on my face, dreaming of pizza with Carson Manning in the not too distant future.