Dreams of 18

But they’re all a lie, right?

They’re a lie because I’m lying to him. I am a liar.

I don’t go to college.

The truth is that I don’t even know if I’ll ever go to college. I can’t even imagine setting foot in one of those crowded establishments when I can’t even go grocery shopping.

And it didn’t bother me up until a few days ago.

It doesn’t even bother me right now. It doesn’t.

I’m fine.

Fiiiiiine.

I’m handling things my way.

It’s just that… I hate lying to him. I absolutely loathe that I’m lying to him.

“No one will ever say that to me,” I mumble that without really thinking things through.

Because I don’t go to college.

“What?”

Oh fuck.

He’s back to looking at me and I’m not sure how I’m going to lie my way out of this. How the fuck do I make something up to get out of this when I’ve got all his attention?

Damn it.

Why is it so hard to lie to him?

Then I decide to tell him a different truth. I tuck my hair behind my ear and shrug. “Because guys don’t notice me and that’s okay. I’m pretty invisible, Mr. Edwards.”

I chuckle.

Because chuckling is so much more preferable to crying over the fact that I’m lying to him. That no one forced me to do it but I’m doing it anyway.

But then, I notice something that makes my chuckle die down.

He’s staring at me so hard that I’m pretty sure that he’s drilling holes in my body.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re kidding, right?”

The way he says it makes me think that he wants me to be kidding. That I better be kidding.

“I’m kidding?” I dart my eyes around the room and sit up straight, lifting my chin from my knees, going alert. “Okay. About what though?”

He doesn’t answer me as he takes long seconds to analyze my face. I’m analyzing his face, in turn. For the first time ever, I can read him. There’s a touch of disbelief on his features. His frown is one of incredulity and his eyes are inquisitive.

“You don’t know,” he concludes finally, whatever he was trying to conclude. “Yeah, it makes sense. It’s the highway all over again. You don’t notice anything. How could you? You with your giant headphones and your nose stuck in a book. You’d sit under that tree, the one by the chemistry lab window and you’d write whatever the fuck you write in those goddamn journals. Of course, you don’t have a clue.”

“What?”

He shakes his head and scoffs. “Tell me something. In a class, how many times has a teacher singled you out to answer a question?”

That is a very weird, out-of-the-blue query. I was not expecting it at all. On top of that, there’s another concern.

How does he know this about me? About the tree and the journal and…

I swallow when I see that he’s impatiently waiting for my answer so I reply, “I… um, I don’t know. Almost every day, I think.”

“Every day.”

“Almost. And that’s because teachers liked to pick on me in school. They thought I wasn’t paying attention in class.”

Which is the truth.

Students would ignore me, which was fine by me. But I was somehow really visible to the teachers. I think it was because I’d stare out the window or doodle in my journal while they were teaching us important life lessons or something.

“And how many of those teachers who picked on you were men?”

This is getting weirder by the second. But still, I indulge him. “I don’t know, most of them?”

“How about all of them?”

“Um, okay. So all of them. What does that matter? Men are assholes and they like to show it off.”

“Fuck yeah, men are assholes.”

“What’s happening? What are we even talking about?”

His jaw goes really hard at this. So hard and tense that it makes me think that he’ll never utter another word. He’ll never tell me what’s going on and what he’s trying to get at.

But then, he goes and says, “We’re talking about how blind you are. How you have no idea what men think and why they do the things they do.”

When I still appear somewhat confused to him, he goes on, “Let me explain it to you, all right? Because I’m pretty sure your boozed-up mommy never explained anything to you. They single you out not because they want to pick on you, it’s because they want you to look at them. They want your attention. They want your big, brown, innocent eyes on them. They want to hear your voice. They want to look at your pretty, schoolgirl face. They want to look at your hair, your milky white skin and they want to imagine things.”

“Imagine th-things?”

That’s the only thing that I could think of to say and still remember to breathe.

“Fuck yeah, imagine things. When they ask you to talk, they want to stare at your lollipop-sucking lips and imagine what else you can suck on. When they ask you to stand up, they want to stare at your teenage body and imagine how they can put their hands on it. Can they pass you by in the hallway and walk a little closer so they accidentally brush against your arm? Can they pat your back when you leave the class and feel the delicate lines of your shoulders? Can they ask you to fucking bend over and help with the papers they let slip on the floor on purpose so they can stare at your tight ass?”