Chapter 18: Date 3 – After the Game

After the game, while the crowd was milling around and saying their farewells to each other, Dan leaned in close to me.

“There’s an ice-cream parlor about a block from where we parked the car. We have time to go there for half an hour before I have to get you home. You interested?”

I nodded, happily. To be honest I was so psyched up, I couldn’t bear the idea of going home straight away and have the night suddenly come crashing to a finish. Then I had a sudden inspiration. I got up on my toes and whispered in his ear.

“You should invite Pearl and her friends to meet us there.”

He looked at me strangely. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes! You should invite them. And Dan, talk to Pearl. She’s really, really nice.”

Dan shrugged and we went over to speak to Pearl and her friends. I smiled quietly to myself. It was nice to have Dan doing what I told him. It made me feel strong. Dan told them where we were going and invited them to join us. They glanced at each other and then agreed, so that was settled.

It took a while to say goodbye to all the people Dan knew in that little section. I tried hard to remember the names of the people I’d been introduced to, but I didn’t get them all right. Everyone was really nice though, so that was okay. I got some more high fives from people.

Steve had heard about me hugging the other football players and complained that he hadn’t got a hug. I rolled my eyes at Silvia and made sure I hugged him the same way I’d hugged the others. I hugged Silvia as well and she kissed me on the cheek, so I kissed her cheek too. That set Steve off again, complaining about missing out on a kiss. I did this really dramatic sigh and carefully climbed up on a chair so I could reach to kiss his cheek. I didn’t really need to stand on the chair, but I thought it would be funny if I did. I was right! It was funny, because Dan and Silvia and Pearl and her friends and a few others standing around, all saw what happened and they all laughed. Steve laughed too, and then he acted all fluttery and fanned his face with his hand and made a big thing about having been kissed by the most beautiful girl in the world. I slapped his chest for that, and Silvia said “Hey” and slapped his arm. Steve acted all scared and tried to defend himself from the two of us and then said “Oh! Er! Um! I meant by one of the two equal most beautiful girls in the world.” We all laughed at that.

Silvia and I said, “Nice save!” in unison and everyone laughed again.

Eventually we got out of the arena and started walking towards the ice-cream parlor. It had been raining pretty hard. The pavement was wet and there were puddles of water in a few places. The rain had stopped though, so we could walk without getting wet. Pearl started off walking with Dan and me, while Faith and Danielle trailed along behind us. Pearl and I talked about trivial stuff for a bit, and then I nudged Dan and used my eyes to remind him to talk to Pearl. I waited until Dan picked up the conversation and then I dropped back to chat with Faith and Danielle.

“So, how long have you two been together?” I asked.

They glanced shyly at each other.

“Were we that obvious?” said Faith.

“Not really! I figured it out but I think most people wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Nobody cares at school, but we’ve been hassled a few times walking around town.”

“Nothing serious,” put in Danielle. “Just, you know, people staring and making comments to each other and stuff like that. This place is sort of conservative.”

“So now we try and tone it down some while we’re out in public,” finished Faith.

“Well I’m not fussed. And Dan won’t be either. We have an aunt who’s a lesbian so we’ve kind of grown up with her and her partner being around.”

“That’s cool.”

“Do your families know?” I asked.

“Mine does,” said Faith. “I came out to them when I was fifteen. Danielle hasn’t told her family though.”

“My parents are ultra-ultra-conservatives,” explained Danielle. “You know the type. For them, the Bible only exists as a weapon to beat down anyone who doesn’t think exactly like they do. They’ll completely freak when they find out I’m gay.”

“That sucks. It must be hard living at home like that.”

“It sucked big time. That’s why I moved away from home when I got into college. I was able to convince my parents because we live way out of town. I told them I needed to move because it would be too far to drive to school. I had to listen to lectures about not being corrupted and not falling into a life of sin, but they let me move out. I found a place to live. I found a new church where I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not, and I met Faith at school. Life doesn’t suck so much any more.”

“So in the first week of school,” put in Faith with a laugh, “she found faith and she found Faith!”

They had to explain that to me. It was obviously a joke Faith and Danielle had made lots of times. I guess if I’d been more of a churchy sort of person I would have got it straight away. I hadn’t followed the link from going to church to finding faith. I decided that it would probably make more sense if you saw it written down, so you could see where the capital letters were. I guess it was funny though.

Faith started talking about what it had been like telling her family that she was gay. It was pretty interesting but it boiled down to the fact that it hadn’t been as bad as she’d expected. Her parents had been surprised at first, and then worried that she was making a mistake, and then willing to go along with her but expecting her to change her mind. After quite a while like that, they seemed to slowly accept that things weren’t going to change, and that they had a daughter who was gay.

This must all sound like it took ages but it didn’t really. It wasn’t that far to walk to the ice-cream shop and we were done by the time we got there. While we were walking I’d been mostly concentrating on Faith and Danielle, but other bits of my brain were busy too.

One part of me was watching Dan and Pearl walking and talking in front of us. I only heard a few comments here and there but I heard enough to know what they were talking about. First they talked about differences between English food and American food and then about differences between Chinese-American restaurant food, Chinese-American food eaten in homes and Chinese food eaten in China.

I was pleased that Dan was being nice and talking with Pearl. I wasn’t sure if he was being nice because I’d told him to, or because he was a nice guy, or because he was genuinely interested in Pearl. Judging by previous performances, I figured it probably wasn’t the last choice. I thought if I could get it through his thick head that someone like Pearl could be good to go out on dates with, then I was half-way there – wherever “there” was.

Another bit of my brain was stuck in a loop, thinking about Danielle not being able to tell her parents something that important about herself. It was pretty hard for me to imagine. I mean, I was having a problem telling my parents about how I thought something was wrong with my head. I mean as well as the Lambrecht’s stuff. I’d tried earlier in the day telling Mum but she’d pretty much not listened. I had no idea how to even start talking about it with Dad. Probably I’d end up saying it over and over. Eventually they would listen to me – I hoped. But saying stuff and having your parents not listen is totally different from not saying anything because you’re afraid that your parents will go completely nuts at you. I couldn’t imagine that.

So my brain was doing all those things at once. It felt pretty busy in there. I figured it was good that I only had to keep following Dan. If I’d been trying to remember how to get back to the car as well, my brain would have short-circuited and tripped all the safety switches. I’d have been left standing there like a mindless statue until someone pressed the reset button. Even having that thought was enough to make me lose track of what Faith said. I had to ask her to repeat it.

“I said, the only problem my mother has now is that she’s disappointed she won’t get to be a grandmother.”

I laughed. “I should introduce you to my aunt and her partner. They have a nine-year-old son.”

Faith and Danielle were interested in that. I don’t think they were ready to have children right away. They were really only dating, after all. But I think they both liked the idea of someday being in a long-term relationship and bringing up a child.

They had some questions about how it was done and whether there were problems bringing up a child with two mothers. I hardly had any answers for them. These were mostly questions I’d asked and I’d been told that world’s most hated phrase, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

Maybe now I was turning thirteen it was time I asked them again!

We finally arrived at the ice-cream parlor and it was pretty busy. It looked like quite a few other people from the game had the same idea as us because there were a lot of people wearing team hats and team scarves and so on.

We stood in line for a while; then we got our order. Dan bought me a caramel milk shake and he had some coffee and a banana split. Faith and Danielle had coffee and shared an ice-cream sundae and Pearl had coffee – apparently she’s lactose intolerant and can’t eat ice-cream. That didn’t sound like fun!

We were lucky to get a little table in the back that emptied as we walked away from the counter with our orders. It was pretty small for a four person-table and there were five of us but that didn’t matter. The only problem was that there were only three chairs. Every other chair in the place was taken. Faith and Danielle shared one chair, sitting side by side with half their butts hanging off the side of the chair. Pearl had the second chair and Dan had the last one. I got to sit on his lap, again. I seemed to have been doing a lot of that this evening. I wasn’t complaining.

I figured I would need to give Dan a little push, so when the conversation came around to college, I asked a couple of questions about the place and threw in one about if they had a nice place to eat lunch. I found out that they always sat in the same place and also that Dan shared the same lunch time. I filed it all away for later.

When I finished my milk shake, I went to put the paper cup down on the table. It was a small table and there was so much junk there already that I had nowhere to put mine. Danielle was sitting next to me and she reached out to shift things around for me. When she did, the cuff of her long sleeve shirt slid down and I saw a thin red scar across the inside of her wrist. It took me the couple of seconds while I put my cup down to make the connection, but then I gasped and grabbed her wrist so I could see the scar more clearly.

I looked up at Danielle’s face as I held her wrist in both my hands. She had tiny little pink spots showing on her cheeks, but she looked at me and shrugged.

“I told you living with my parents sucked!” she said.

I could feel tears forming up behind my eyes, but I refused to let them out. I didn’t think Danielle needed my crying right then. The first thought that went through my head was how terrible she must have been feeling to do something like this. I looked back down at her wrist. Somehow my finger had decided to run gently along the line of the scar, as if it would pick up some vital piece of wisdom from my feather-like touch.

The next thought that went through my brain was that when I decide to kill myself, I must make sure I cut deep enough so I die right away.

That idea went off like a gong inside my head, echoing around and around inside my skull. When I decide to kill myself...

Like I knew it was going to happen, I just didn’t know when.

Bonggggg!!!!

Having that noise in my head meant I couldn’t really have any more thoughts for a while.

Someone grabbed my head with both hands and moved it. I found myself face-to-face with Danielle. She must have seen something in my expression. Her face was white. She was looking angry and worried. She talked straight at me, from about six inches away. She talked quietly because we were in a crowded place and she didn’t want others to hear but clearly she wanted to shout at me. Her words slammed into me.

“This was the single most stupid thing I’ve ever done in my life. Whatever your reasons are, whatever you’re thinking, don’t do this. Things are never, never so bad that you have no other choice. I got through my problems. You will get through whatever your problems are. Don’t do this! It was stupid for me. It would be even stupider for you. Don’t do this.”

Every time she said “this,” Danielle was waving her scarred wrist right in front of me. It meant her fingers sometimes went between her eyes and mine. That was a bad thing because I was trapped inside her angry, frightened eyes. They were boring into me, driving her words directly inside my skull. Then her fingers would cut across our vision and a word or two would bounce off them and go spinning out into the room, lost forever.

And what she was saying was so important. I didn’t want to lose any of it. I wanted to paint her words in ten-foot-high letters around the inside of my skull. I wanted to cling onto them, absorb them into me and make them mine. I wanted to use them to drive that thought of mine away. Chase it out and slam the door behind it. Bolt and chain the door so it could never get back in. It had scared me. It had scared me so much I couldn’t think straight. I don’t know where it came from. Danielle was totally right. Things weren’t that bad. I’d spent all evening being happy.

Why on earth would I want to kill myself?

Then I got to the point where her words had filled up my brain. There wasn’t any space left. But Danielle wanted to keep talking at me. If she did that, all the new words would spill straight back out of my head and drip uselessly down onto the floor.

I carefully reached out and grasped Danielle’s arms, just below her shoulders. Then I pulled her towards me. I couldn’t move very well ‘cause I was on Dan’s lap and he was holding me very tightly. I leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips. That stopped her talking. Then I slid my face past hers and wrapped my arms around her.

One of us was shaking, I wasn’t sure who. Or maybe we were both shaking. Or maybe we were still and the rest of the world was shaking. I held on tightly until the shaking stopped. It didn’t take long, not really. It felt like it took ages but those ages were each only a heartbeat long. I could feel Dan softly stroking the sides of my arms. I used one hand to stroke down Danielle’s spine. It made me feel better when Dan did that to me, so I figured it would help her as well.

Finally Danielle leaned back out of the hug. Not far, but enough so she could see my face again. Her face was still as white as chalk.

“Promise me,” she whispered. “Promise me you won’t do this.”

My voice had disappeared. It was like I’d forgotten how to make words. I nodded to her but that didn’t seem like it was enough. I freed up one hand so I could run a finger down and across my chest and then down again the other way. Cross my heart and hope to ... oh!

Danielle seemed to accept that. She slowly nodded back at me and then drew away. Faith wrapped her arms around Danielle and held her. Pearl stood behind the two of them and gently rubbed Danielle’s shoulders and neck. Her face was still completely white. Her eyes still fixed on mine.

I watched them do this and knew how much I’d upset her. I felt bad about that, really bad. I felt like shit. Here was someone I only met tonight and I hurt her. I hurt her terribly. I felt so ashamed. I hated myself. I hated myself more than I would ever have believed was possible.

I huddled back into Dan and laid my head on his chest, watching Danielle all the time. Dan squeezed me gently with his arms and kept stroking me, stroking my back and my head. He was stroking me like I was a cat but I didn’t feel like purring. I nestled there and watched Danielle. She sat and accepted the comfort from her friends and watched me. After a bit like that, I nodded to her again, my face rubbing against Dan’s chest as I moved it. I ran my finger across my chest, crossing my heart again for her.

Danielle gave me a half smile at that and turned to Faith, gesturing with her head towards the door. Faith looked across at us and said, “I think we’d better head off.”

“And it’s time for me to get this little one home,” replied Dan.

He stood up. I wrapped my arms more tightly around his neck and made him pick me up. He walked over to Danielle with me cradled in his arms. He freed up one hand and put it gently on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry about the way this ended. Bec will be okay. She’s going through some stuff right now, but she’ll be fine. Thank you for saying that to her, I think maybe she needed to hear it. Will you be okay?”

All this time, I’d been nestled against Dan’s chest, watching Danielle. She’d kept watching me, until Dan touched her.

“I’ll be fine. I have my friend Pearl and I have my Faith to hold onto.” She kind of half-grinned at Dan when she said that. Dan didn’t really get it, because he hadn’t heard the earlier discussion, but I got it. She had both kinds of faith to hold onto.

“It was nice meeting you. It was nice meeting all of you. I hope I’ll see you again, maybe around school sometime.”

Dan turned and headed towards the door. I lifted my head so I could look over Dan’s shoulder and watch Danielle and Faith and Pearl as they got themselves organized and started following us to the door.

Outside, it had started raining. Dan stopped in the shelter outside the door. “I’m not carrying you all the way to the car.”

I nodded and lowered my feet to the ground. Then I slipped my little hand inside Dan’s big one.

“Are you up for running? I think the rain might get harder if we wait too long.”

I nodded again and we took off running through the rain, me clinging to Dan’s hand all the way.

I was a bit damp by the time we made it to the car. I was shivering as I slid into the seat. I did up my seatbelt, then kicked off my shoes. That meant I could tuck my feet up on the seat with my knees up in front of my chest. I wrapped my arms around my legs and rested my chin on my knees. Tucked up into a little ball, I sat and stared at the windscreen, entranced by the lines of water running down the glass.

Dan started the car with a vroom. He carefully backed the car out of the parking spot and steered us into the street. After a couple of minutes, Dan turned the heater on full blast so that we could dry off a little. There was a lot of rain falling out of the sky and there was a lot of water on the roads. I think Dan was driving really carefully and I was glad about that. Feeling safe was pretty important to me right then.

I was surrounded by sound. There was the vroom of the engine and the roar of the rain on the roof and the squeak and groan of the wipers and the whir of the heater fan and the thudding of my heart and the hiss of the wheels running across the wet road and the noises of the other cars, and in the distance an ambulance siren wailed like a lost child. Inside all that sound, I squeezed myself into a little ball of silence.

Dan’s voice stabbed into my silence so suddenly that it popped and disappeared like a soap-bubble.

“Are you ready to talk yet?”

That was a good question. I looked inside my brain. It was like looking at a TV when the station goes off air; just a screen full of static. Dad calls it snow but I don’t know why. Inside my brain was static. I didn’t look at Dan. I shook my head and kept looking at the rain.

“That’s no problem. But you seem to be hearing me okay. Can I talk to you?”

That was true. I was hearing his words and they were all making sense. I was feeling the hot air from the heater wash over me. I was seeing the headlights sweep through the driving rain. I was smelling that smell you get when damp clothes get warm. All the ways for things to get into my brain seemed to be working. I was even thinking thoughts. The only problem was that the static inside my head was stopping the thoughts from going anywhere. Thoughts that would normally turn into words were floating around in the static like junk floating on a slow-moving polluted river, all piled up and bumping into each other and going round and round in little eddies. The insides of my brain were a mess. Nothing sensible was going to come out of there anytime soon.

Dan had asked if he could talk to me. I didn’t care if he talked or not. I shrugged.

“So, I can say something. That’s good, because I’ve been thinking.”

I was pretty sure I knew what he was going to say. I got ready to let his words wash over me and drain away into the static. I’d already got the message from Danielle. I didn’t need to hear it again from Dan.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said in the restaurant.”