And The Dove

It’s Teddy. It has to be. She’s really here, at this convention center.

I peek around the corner of the janitorial cubby, and see four slim shadows strolling right towards me. Two forces meet inside of me, and the resulting crash sends me stumbling from my hiding spot. As if the sheer dissonance between hope and despair willed my body to break the status quo, I’m stepping out from the dark in a wide arc. Trying to act cool, trying not to look like I just materialized out of a hole in the wall. I follow the laughs until they stop abruptly.

There she is, with that coven of the forgettable three. Each one of them is dressed strangely. Extremely. Showing skin in weird stretches of nakedness, outfits both bulbous and geometric at the same time. Their faces are glazed with glitter and masked by oddly-shaped glasses. Their sharp dos are topped with blunt, geometric shapes that are probably meant to evoke headwear in essence but look more like sea-trash caught in a mermaid’s hair. It reeks of something I’d see amid a bizarre adventure, and yet it feels distinctly off.

One of the forgettable three, Rescue Ranger glances in my direction and immediately whispers something in Teddy’s ear. In a span of time so instant that the character I’m dressed up as couldn’t even teleport out, all four of them are gawking at me with disconcerted expressions. And even though I’m entirely within earshot, they start to whisper:

“His face is kinda red,” says E-girl.

Faker nods. “He looks like he’s been crying. It’s creeping me out.”

“He’s just staring at us.” Rescue Ranger interjects with a grimace. “Isn’t he in our class?”

“Don’t mind it girls,” Teddy says, “We must have caught someone at a bad moment. Let’s just get out of here before it gets weirder for him.”

Her eyes had such compassion when she whispered that. A genuine, non-barbed intent to let me be. Teddy was being the voice of reason, naturally. And it looked like the others got the memo. But there was something about the contents of what she said. Framing it as if they were doing me a favor. Telling them not to mind, “it”. It struck something deep down in me, a nerve that I didn’t even know had any feeling left in it. Without thinking, I had said:

“You must think you’re better than me, huh?”

They all look the kind of shocked when you feed a stray cat and then it hisses at you for no reason. It gets to me. Their pity, their normalcy. And as they’re backing off towards the escalator, it finally sinks in. They’re not going to Anicon-Midwest. They were headed up the escalator to the fashion expo schedule on the same day. Of course they were. Why did my dumb ass ever think otherwise, even for a second?

Whatever snapped inside of me detaches and goes into free-fall. I no longer give a shit about making a good impression on the pretty girls. In fact, with the venomous way they’re now looking at me, I wouldn’t mind if that type of person hated me to my core. My reckless, cracking voice charges on:

“You were having such a good day hanging out with all your friends.” Tears pool at the corners of my eyes, blurring my vision. “Only to encounter some pitiful trash on the roadside and be reminded of what it’s like for everyone else!”

I can’t lie when I say that it felt good to say that. Full-throated and yet hoarsely, it was like I’d found the perfect moment to make my stand against all that which was above me. No sooner than I had tasted the high, though, I was cut down with ruthless force.

“What the fuck’s your problem?” comes a voice.

It’s Faker. Red in the face, she had stepped in front of her group like some kind of manic guard dog.

“I don’t remember ever even looking in your direction,” she continued.

A cold hand gripped my throat from the inside, and my legs felt like they were turning into jelly from the ground up.

“So why the hell do you think you have the right to speak to us as if you know anything?” Her voice came out with so much force that she looked out of breath.

Even Faker’s three companions seem stunned at the sudden outburst. And I don’t think she’s noticed, but they’d taken several steps away from her, too. The way her fierce blue eyes are locked with mine, it’s as if an invisible arena has descended around us and she’s determined to strike me down. In that moment, and I really do mean what must have been no more than a couple dozen milliseconds, I’m faced with a choice.

Do I save face and try to salvage what I can of the day and my social life?

Or do I stand up for myself and confirm that what I’ve been feeling this whole time is real?

It’s not a smart decision. But it’s obvious.

“Because no matter how you act, no matter how you think, you’re nothing more than a person. And neither am I!”

Faker winces as if she’d taken a glancing jab to the jaw. Her mouth opens to speak, but she pauses to look over her shoulder at her friends, who are no longer there. She turns around to find them in the corner of her eye, already halfway up the escalator. Her shaking pupils are scarily familiar as she returns to our invisible arena. An expression of pain and failure, the same as mine. Her shoulders puff up against the partially blinding light pouring in from outside, a figure made even more menacing by a top-heavy outfit and the added height of a truly ridiculous pair of flamingo-pink heels.

In a flash, something flies towards me. The arena becomes literal. But I am 1/24th shoemaker, son of one who is one-half shoemaker, and another who is one whole crazy. Being half-crazy myself, this is not the first time I’ve had to predict the airborne trajectory of a hurtling high-heel.

So I dodge.

I throw myself sideways in what feels at first like a graceful, even tactical maneuver—only to stumble diagonally and barely catch myself an inch from wrecking my head against a green janitorial locker. Collecting myself, I retrace the trajectory of the ranged weapon, and I lean down to regard it in my hands. The Faker wobbles indignantly across from me, regarding my every move with a mix of fear and suspicion. I stand, slowly, the massive magenta bludgeon still in hand. But I’ve always wanted a hero moment. So I wipe my tears on my sleeve, set the shoe back on the floor, and kick it back to her, gently.

She’s just as confused as I am, and whether its out of reason or cowardice, leans down. Not in the manner to pick it up to throw again, but leveraging the weight onto one leg so she can don it and leave and never speak of this again. But as her foot comes down, I hear a wicked crack ring out.

At once, she comes to the ground. A valkyrie’s furious presence reduced to a trail of impractically-long and irregularly-colored fabric. I am frozen. She lets out a cry. There are a hundred whispers. Faces gather and blend together in droves, keeping a safe distance at the exact, circular boundary of our invisible arena. Except now it is not an arena, but a stage. We are little more than delightfully emotional marionettes playing out a show on top of it. For the leering eyes.

The crowd regards us with a bizarre mix of sympathy and disgust, the same way that Teddy did just moments prior. Except now, Teddy must be long-gone, and I’ve inherited what must look from the outside like a lover’s quarrel that had gotten out of hand. In an instant I’m brought out from my head, and we’re just 2 teenagers sharing our worst moment in recent memory.