Chapter 5: After the Thunder

(Amanda)

That night I dreamt a nightmare and it felt great. I don't remember it clearly, I never do and the pills from last night wasn't helping. I remember that I followed a rabbit with a vicious streak a mile long and large pointy teeth into a cave and ended up drinking tea with him. Somehow I turned into a carrot and it slowly bit my legs off. It may sound surreal and not seem so scary but believe me it was frightening, it scared the hell out of me, but in a good way.

Yesterday I had kept thinking about the idiom; "When you think you can't get any lower in life and hit rock bottom, God hands you a shovel." I don't believe in god but I do believe there are other people with shovels. Instead of being given a shovel someone had pointed to a much deeper hole. It made me realise that even though my life had taken two serious hits it could be worse. I could be a vegetable or lose my legs. At least I still had my health, well actually I had Gilbert's health but you get what I mean.

Somehow I was too restless to linger in bed as I usually did. I put on Gilbert's ugly glasses, correction, my ugly glasses, and looked at the wall clock. 4 AM. Even if I was restless it was too early to get up. On the bedside table there was a book Gilbert's parents must have left. I picked it up and noticed that it seemed well read. "Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation" by Hopcroft, Motwani and Ullman. Great, a fucking geek book. Automata probably meant computer and the languages were programming languages. Well I guess it's better than trying to count Sheep and since I was taking computer 101 it could perhaps contain something of value.

I started reading it and it was even geekier than I had expected. It wasn't even about computers, but about abstract machines and theoretical computing. I didn't even make it through the introduction before Hopcroft, Motwani and Ullman was throwing theorems, proofs and lemmas at me. Just when I thought I understood what they were writing about they threw some mathematical mumbo-jumbo at me and I was lost again. Somewhere among the Greek letters and the diagrams in chapter two I fell asleep again.

It was still early morning when I woke up again, well for a Sunday. At first I didn't understand what had woken me up but then I heard the shouting.

"Nurse, just give me my god damn cigarettes."

"Mr. Walden you can't smoke in a hospital."

"Well, I'm paying to be in here so I'll do whatever I'll want."

"Hey, let go of my arm."

"Not until you give me what you stole from me."

"If you don't let go I'll call security."

"Look bitch if you don't give me my cigarettes I'll fucking hurt you. Now hurry up and..."

His voice ended with a loud metallic thump could be heard through the thin hospital walls. I don't know what ended the ruckus but it was rather obvious that the nurse was the victor. In my imagination she had hit the obnoxious Mr. Walden in the head with a bedpan, if she did he really deserved it.

I looked around and saw that Gilbert was awake. God how awful I look when I haven't put on any make-up. When I get my body back I'll remember that.

"Good morning," Gilbert whispered a bit sleepy.

"Good morning," I answered equally sleepy.

"What a way to wake up. That was even worse then when my dad ran his starship evacuation drill."

I really didn't want to show the geek that I was smiling at his anecdote but the vision of his father running a "starship evacuation drill" was just too ridiculous and from the little I knew about his parents actually plausible.

"Your geek parents seem to like you a lot," I said still trying to hide my smile.

"Yeah, we're pretty close."

"I can't understand how you can cope with being mama's little boy," I said without thinking.

"Well they can be a bit overprotective sometimes."

"A little? Those fucking freaks were suffocating me yesterday. People like them shouldn't be allowed to have children," I said and I almost immediately regretted it. I needed to keep my foul mouth in check if we were to pull this charade off. Besides I hardly knew his parents so what right had I to speak badly about them? And I guess geeks had their place in society as well, even though they were pompous bastards.

"Look, my parents may be geeks and proud of it but at least they care about me enough to show up when I'm in the hospital," Gilbert answered angrily. For the first time I had hit him where it hurt, but his reply hit me even harder than any sledgehammer could have. He was right. If there were any parents that shouldn't have bred it was mine. At least Gilbert's parents cared about him. I felt the tears running down my cheek.

I Sobbed when I said, "You're right. They are a lot better than my parents. My parents won't cancel a dinner with the neighbours to go see their daughter in the hospital."

My comment must have triggered Gilbert's knight in shining armour routine because his anger washed away like an oil-stain in a TV-commercial. Without saying a word he got out of bed and sat down beside me. I was still sobbing when he wrapped his arms around me in a soothing embrace.

"I don't know your parents but I bet they have a good reason for not showing up," he said with a slow and soft voice.

"Well they don't like me. That's their reason," I said a bit calmer, but still sobbing.

"Some people have a hard time showing their feelings. Trust me I'm one of them."

"No, they show their feelings all right."

"It's just a façade. Deep inside they really love you. It's a genetic thing. Parents always loves their children, even if they don't show it."

"Look, I appreciate you trying to calm me but like you said, you don't know my parents. If parental love is a genetic instinct both my parents must lack a chromosome. They make an effort to keep their distance from me."

I don't know why but telling Gilbert about my parents actually felt relieving, like a stone had been lifted from my heart. I realised that I was much calmer and had stopped crying. My god what wreck he must think I am. I never cried, I was supposed to be Amanda Johnson, the callous bitch. Yet in two days this geek had seen me cry at least as many times. I couldn't let someone like him see me this weak. I wiggled out of his embrace and put on my stone face like nothing had happened. Not liking the current topic in our discussion I decided to change it.

"Look, we don't know what has happened to us, but it will most likely not solve itself. Were stuck in each others bodies and forced to choose between living in a charade or in a loony bin. Personally I don't like the latter. Regretfully that means we have to be each other well enough to fool those around us. Like I said earlier my parents are trying to avoid me as much as possible, that means that you will have absolutely no problems fooling them. What really worries me is your parents, you're close," I said with the callousness of a machine.

Gilbert thought for a while and then answered, "I don't think they will so hard to fool. They might be very overprotecting by they respect my privacy and I usually spend most of my time in my room reading. They will probably try to talk about some geeky stuff with you. When they do try acting like you are listening and try to keep the conversation going. If you don't get what they are talking about just nod and smile, that's what I do."

"That doesn't sound that hard."

"It wont be. Other than that you just have to get used to all the hugs," Gilbert said with a smirk on his face. He must have realised that I wasn't accustomed to all this crass cuddling. I was about to drop a nasty remark to knock the smudginess out of him but stopped myself in the last moment. To pull this off we couldn't afford to bicker between us. Instead I just took a deep breath to control my temper.

"Oh, and you'll probably be forced to watch some old sci-fi shows with them as well, or else they will think that something is strange."

"I guess I can do that."

"Believe me that can be harder than it seems. Watching the same episode of Outer Limits over and over again can be dangerous to you mental health. Just look at my parents, they used to be normal."

I don't know how he did it but once again he defused my anger. Just by making some silly joke that wasn't even that funny. He was making it hard for me to dislike him. But I should have dislike him, he was pompous geek, they all thought they were better than common people, didn't they? I was a bit confused but I didn't have time to think about it. I should just be glad that my anger was gone. I had to know Gilbert as good as he knew himself and being angry would hardly help. I needed to control my erratic emotions and get on with this.

"What about friends? Who are they? What do you do when you hang out with them?" I asked still smiling from his silly joke.

"Well that will be easy. I don't have any friends," Gilbert answered unbelievably unconcerned by what he said.

"What? I thought you geeks stuck together," I answered automatically.

"Well, it seems I'm too geeky to hang out with the geeks."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This guy was openly admitting that he didn't have any friends. That was so fucking sad. What was that? Was I feeling sympathetic for the social retard? That thunderbolt must have fucked up something in my brain. I should be thinking about myself and how bored I would become without any friends. There was no way anyone could live like that, but I guess I would have to. Well I suppose it was actually a relief that he didn't have any geek friends. It just made it easier to get new friends, preferably some that weren't geeks. I would have to take it slow though so no one would suspect anything.

"So you spend all your time alone in your house," I asked with disbelief.

"Mostly. Well there is this guy called Peter Hawkins that might come over. I wouldn't call him a friend cause we never talk to each other. He is in a wheelchair and haven't got any friends either. We made a deal so our parents wouldn't have to worry about us being socially inept. When he comes over he will borrow my computer to surf porn. It won't be hard to fool him. Just lie on the bed and read a book and he will not suspect anything."

"You know, you live a pitiful life."

"Well, it's not that bad. My parents are great and they kind of double as my best friends. What about your friends?" He answered and even though he tried to act unconcerned but I could tell that he was actually feeling lonely. Perhaps he was trying to hide it from himself. I guess I should allow him to switch the subject.

"Well unlike you I'm friends with everyone, in the clique anyway. No one is really close, not even Jack, except for Paula. Do you know the names of the people in the clique?"

"No problem. I'm good with names and have classes with most of them. I'm more concerned about how to behave around them. It's not like I have been a member of the clique before."

"The clique is all about status and popularity. Act friendly with the other girls in the clique but always have your guard up. Even if they may seem friendly they are really cutthroat rivals. Whatever happens you need to act confident and never ever doubt a decision you've made. If you show the slightest hesitation or weakness someone will try and use it."

"And these are the people whose friendship you crave?" Gilbert said more as a statement than a question. I really hated him for critiquing the clique and my friends but somewhere deep down I knew he was right. We weren't really friends in the clique, we just pretended to be, but I would never admit that though, not even to myself.

"I'm not expecting you to understand, you're the social retard without friends, remember?" I said not hiding my anger.

"Sorry, you're right. So what do you and your friends talk about?"

"The usual. Music, fashion, movies, gossip, you know."

Gilbert's showed that he was not exactly comfortable with those subjects but didn't say a word.

"Don't panic. I'll write a list with likely topics how to relate to them. If you encounter something you're not familiar with the most important thing is to be assertive. I understand that some of these topics are unfamiliar but you should get a hang of them in a few days, which is just the time we have."

"What do you mean? I thought that we were going back to school tomorrow?"

"We are, but they will only want to talk to you about one thing," I said but Gilbert seemed not to get what I was talking about. "Why I broke up with Jack," I stated as if it were obvious.

"Oh, right. How do I handle that?"

"Just tell them that you don't want to talk about it. Everyone will respect that, but they will probably do everything to trick it out of you. But just don't tell them anything."

"How could I. It's not like I know anything."

"Paula will probably be mad at you for not telling her, but just stare angrily at her and she will back down."

"What do I say to Jack if he wants to talk to me?"

"Just say that his secret is safe but that you don't want to talk to him ever again. Hopefully he will understand. If he tries to sweet talk you just act like you're not interested in him."

"That won't be too hard. I'm not into guys."

I smiled. Jack had told me that once as well, but he turned out to be queer anyway. Well I guess since Gilbert was not a boy anymore I guess saying that he was not interested in boys made him queer. Heck I had never had any real interest in girls so I guess I was one as well. It shouldn't be funny but I couldn't help smiling anyway. I was gay, something I had never expected to be. Gilbert seemed a bit puzzled by what I was thinking and eventually he continued to grill me with his questions.

"Okay. What do you do with your evening?"

"Well, except when studying I hate spending my time home alone. Therefor I'm usually out partying with friends or hanging out with my boyfriend. I think you can skip both for a while, blaming it on that you just broke up with Jack. During weekends some of the girls go out shopping in the mall. Do you know anything about fashion?"