Deadra Acosta

July 3 20XX

N/A

NOT NOWHERE

I wrote my number down, in that card I gave him. To be entirely honest, I don’t have any friends. That isn’t the reality, but it’s still the truth, it feels like. I still have all the names of the girls I used to talk with in my head, but I won’t bring them up, because you wouldn’t know any of them, anyways. I look at my commencement booklet, tracing the logic between all the italicized numbers next to the names, and then their meanings on the bottom of the page.

I look at Bronson Gao: ah cl. Academic Honors. Cum Laude.

There’s nothing next to mine, on the other hand. It’s like being invisible, unknown. Yeah, I prefer it that way, though. I look at my raped diploma packed tight and human on top of the desk in this room, what I sleep in when I get the chance. The skin is organized and unknowable, strong like a victim. In the flesh, the interior image collides textures, rice paper against my nails, so it’s like.

That isn’t true literally, none of this is. In my hands, it feels like a piece of cardboard with a nice coating. The inside image feels like paper. I’d do myself a favor incinerating it on the stovetop, hopefully sending the sparks onto the curtains, towards the cabinets, all over the walls and all over us. I hope you’re there too, that day. You, who’s hearing this, is who I want to see the most.

I wrote my number down, though, in the card I gave him. I said “I’d love to talk to you more if you’d be at all interested,” a shitty choice of words. No, yeah, I would not “love” to talk to him more. In reality, I wouldn’t even really like to. I could’ve gotten by just fine saying nothing.

But I waited everyday for something to happen. I checked my messages, my email, voicemail, everything. I must’ve been waiting for nothing, I finally realized, though. It took me five days to figure that out, after his party, that it doesn’t fucking matter. Fuck Bronson Gao. I hardly knew him to begin with.

Two more days came and went after that, and it had been a week, maybe longer. It felt like the feelings disintegrated with each hour of silence. And three days ago I was forgetting about him, until he sent me a text.

“Hey, Deadra, this is Bronson. Sorry for taking so long to get in touch, been really busy,” he said.

“Oh, it’s cool, thanks for reaching out!” I’m begrudgingly willed into typing. Being pissed off washed off easy like blood on a piece of metal, his sentiment like innocuous dish soap, doesn’t know the real thing when it sees it.

“Of course. I bet you’ve been busy, but I was curious if you were interested in finding any time to hang out this summer. I don’t have much going on other than prepping for school and working a little, so I should be pretty available,” he said.

I remembered his kinda boring friends, and remembered being kinda turned off by them, generally. It was a situation where I couldn’t tell how much they were fishing for me in a certain kind of way, and I wanted nothing to do with that, especially because of who I was actually there for. And well, that’s mainly because… there’s a couple different reasons that go into it.

I don’t know how I feel about Bronson Gao, really. I know I don’t like him in that way, don’t wanna date him, but I wouldn’t dislike his company. I also don’t have any friends anymore, like, at all. I get bored sitting on this bed drawing on myself with a pair of scissors anymore. It’s just habit, and it only gets more interesting the harder and deeper you go. I never had a great swimsuit body, anyways, but now it’s pretty much impossible. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

“Do you have anything going on on the fourth?” I ask, wishing I could’ve proposed a sooner date, also horrified: I was going to hang out one-on-one with Bronson-fucking-Gao. What the hell.

“No, I don’t actually. What time would be good to meet up, and where?”

“How about 6:00, and we could meet at the mall?” I said. I said it. Yep, I said it. That’s right, that’s what I said, motherfucker.