A Very Large Expanse of Sea. Tahereh Mafi

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       riversandoceans04: Where were you today?

       jujehpolo: Sorry

       jujehpolo: I had a really busy afternoon

       jujehpolo: I just saw your messages

       riversandoceans04: Were you really breakdancing after school?

       jujehpolo: Yeah

       riversandoceans04: Wow. That’s cool.

      I didn’t say anything. I didn’t really know how to respond. I’d just looked away to grab my backpack when I heard, once again, the soft double ding that indicated I’d received a new message, and I turned down the volume on my computer. I checked to make sure my door was closed. I felt suddenly self-conscious. I was talking to a boy in my bedroom. I was talking to a boy in my bedroom. AIM made things feel unexpectedly intimate.

       riversandoceans04: Hey I’m sorry for thinking you weren’t allowed to do things after school.

       double ding

       riversandoceans04: I shouldn’t have said that

      And I sighed.

      Ocean was trying to be friendly. He was trying to be a friend, even. Maybe. But Ocean was all the traditionally pleasant things a girl might like about a guy, which made his friendliness dangerous to me. I might’ve been an angry teenager, but I wasn’t also blind. I wasn’t magically immune to cute guys, and it had not escaped my notice that Ocean was a superlative kind of good-looking. He dressed nicely. He smelled pleasant. He was very polite. But he and I seemed to come from worlds so diametrically opposed that I knew better than to allow his friendship in my life. I didn’t want to get to know him. I didn’t want to be attracted to him. I didn’t want to think about him, period. Not just him, in fact, but anyone like him. I was so good at denying myself this, the simple pleasure of even a secret crush, that the thoughts were never allowed to marinate in my mind.

      I’d been here so many times before.

      Though for most guys I was little more than an object of ridicule, occasionally I became an object of fascination. For whatever reason, some guys developed an intense, focused interest in me and my life that I used to misunderstand as romantic interest. Instead, I discovered—after a great deal of embarrassment—that it was more like they thought of me as a curiosity; an exotic specimen behind glass. They wanted only to observe me from a comfortable distance, not for me to exist in their lives in any permanent way. I’d experienced this enough times to have learned by now that I was never a real candidate for friendship—and certainly nothing more than that. I knew that Ocean, for example, would never befriend me beyond this school assignment. I knew he wouldn’t invite me into his inner circle where I’d fit in as well as a carrot might, when pushed through a juicer.

      Ocean was trying to be nice, sure, but I knew that his sudden sympathetic heart was born only of awkward guilt, and that this was a road that would lead to nowhere. I found it exhausting.

       jujehpolo: It’s okay

       riversandoceans04: It’s not okay. I’ve felt terrible about it all afternoon.

       riversandoceans04: I’m really sorry

       jujehpolo: Okay

       riversandoceans04: I’ve just never actually talked to a girl who wears the headpiece thing before.

       jujehpolo: Headpiece thing, wow

       riversandoceans04: See? I don’t know anything

       jujehpolo: You can just call it a scarf

       riversandoceans04: Oh

       riversandoceans04: That’s easy

       jujehpolo: Yeah

       riversandoceans04: I thought it was called something else.

       jujehpolo: Listen, it’s really not a big deal. Can we just do the homework?

       riversandoceans04: Oh

       riversandoceans04: Yeah

       riversandoceans04: Okay

      And I’d turned away for five seconds to grab the worksheets out of my backpack when there it was again—the soft double ding. Twice.

      I looked up.

       riversandoceans04: Sorry

       riversandoceans04: I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.

      Jesus Christ.

       jujehpolo: I’m not uncomfortable.

       jujehpolo: I think maybe you’re uncomfortable, though.

       riversandoceans04: What? No

       riversandoceans04: I’m not uncomfortable

       riversandoceans04: What do you mean?

       jujehpolo: I mean, is this going to be a problem? My headpiece thing?

       jujehpolo: Is my whole situation just too weird for you?

      Ocean didn’t respond for at least twenty seconds, which, in the moment, felt like an actual lifetime. I felt bad. Maybe I’d been too blunt. Maybe I was being mean. But he was trying so hard to be, I don’t know? Way too nice to me. It felt unnatural. And I just, I don’t know, it was making me mad.

      Still, guilt gnawed at my mind. Maybe I’d hurt his feelings.

      I drummed my fingers against the keyboard, wondering what to say. How to walk this back. We still had to be lab partners, after all.

      Or maybe we didn’t. Maybe he’d just ask the teacher for a new partner. It had happened before. Once, when I’d been paired at random with another student, she’d just revolted. She flat out refused to be my partner in front of the entire class and then demanded to work with her friend. My teacher, flimsy pancake that she was, panicked and said okay. I ended up working alone. It was humiliating.

      Shit.

      Maybe this time I’d brought the humiliation upon myself. Maybe Ocean would revolt, too. My stomach sank.

      And then—

       double ding

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