| Truth or Dare |
| Meghan and I were a pair, no one questioned that, but we were most importantly part of a pack. I'd found Meg and Emma first after moving into the school district, had arrive at lunch on my third day of classes to find them holding court at the Weird Girls' Table and singing cartoon theme songs, letting out a particularly enthusiastic "THUNDERCATS! HOOOOO..." whenever someone deemed them harmless and made a move into ifringe on their table. We were a trio from the moment I joined in, and then later a sextet, though I can't even remember where we found Gabby and Anne and Amber- I know we were all in the Gifted ed and Talented class, and figured we might as well all like each other because that closed the door on anyone else liking us. We loved G&T but hated school, shrinking into the cinderblock walls in our hand-me-down sweaters and store-brand sneakers and secretly thriving after school and all weekend in each other's company. We lived like queens together, subsiding on our own thirteen-year-old mood-swing cocktails- exaggerated airs of maturity followed closely by frantic grasps for the kid-selves we were used to, the ones that didn't feel inhibited by changing into our gymsuits or singing in our classmates' presence. We slipped back and forth effortlessly, like world travelers who couldn't get our languages straight. Emma, once we got past the cartoon singing stage of our relationship, was the only overtly religious girl Meghan and I felt was worth noticing. We couldn't be bothered with the heavy presence of What Would Jesus Do? anklets and pro-life bumper sticers that swallowed the country whole and left us high and dry with our aging hippie parents. Besides which Emma was Mormon which was just exotic enough to be worthwhile; she could spellbind us for days on descriptions of the levels of heaven and why she had five siblings, not one or two like the rest of us. Her house was enormous and had lots of furniture permanently placed in the wrong rooms, arrangements that seemed to us as foreign as a bidet in the kitchen. We claimed as our own the bunk beds that lived, unmade, in the hallway for the family's children and their friends to careen into at the end of long, caffein-powered nights. All six of us perched on the rickety top bunk for hours, staring at each other to deduce who had the prettiest nose, thickest hair, and eyebrows least like Frida Kahlo or a caterpillar, and finally just worrying about what we could do next. It seemed almost too expected of us to play Truth or Dare, a little too Judy Blume for our blood, but it came up eventually and after a few boring dares involving theft of Emma's brother's beloved Playboys, it was Emma's turn and Gabby was looking at her expectantly and she chose Truth. No one really had a Truth question ready, and we weren't going to stoop to the expected inquiries about boys and bases we'd reached because we already knew where each other ahd been, and we were mostly still in the dugout. Gabby opted for the default question. "What's your deepest secret? Somethign you've never told any of us?" I closed my eyes, thanked God or someone that this question had been used and wouldn't come to me. We waited, watched Emma's face to see what she might pull out. Her mouth inched over a bit, like she was about to laugh or sneeze, opened, closed, opened again. "I'm in love with a girl, y'all." It had been said, and it wasn't my voice saying it, and how had Emma found a girl to love when I couldn't, where WERE the girls to love in Douglasville, Georgia? Amber's eyebrows, voted Most Caterpillarish earlier in the evening, flew up. Anne, who alwasy looked serene, was staring at the floor and twiddling her long, straight hair between two fingers. I watched it all like an undercover detective, boggling over it all but secretly wondering what divine intervention had provide me with this test run. It felt voyeuristic, like watching a possible outcome of my own life on home video. No one said anything and Emma elaborated. I heard only snatches of teh dispassionate monologue that followed, wondering if my own desperation had kept me from this fellow traveler right under my nose. "We met at church..this bracelet is from her...my sister knows, but no on else..." "Who is she?" This from Anne, whose face looked achingly kind but confused. Emma hesitated. " Her name's Leah." "Emma?...Em?" It was the first thing I'd said so far, and sounded to me like I was underwater, yelling but only heard in a whisper. The girls all turned to me. "Me too. I mean, there's no girl, but I mean...me too." "Emma smiled. They all smiled, all but Anne who looked confused still and Amber who didn't but was looking at me blankly. Meghan was grinning, her orthodontia gleaming in the low light, like a Cheshire Cat who'd eaten tinsel. I looked at her for reassurance, my best friend, the one who really mattered when our sextet got reduced down to the stickiness of individual friendships. I smiled back, weakly. I spoke to her, mostly. "I've wanted so much to tell you about it..I thought you'd hate me..me and Emma too now, I guess.." "Sarah?" Meghan had toned down the smile to the low-watt condescension-face I associated ith caretakers for the old, young or feeble. "Sarah, Emma was kidding." I don't think I really heard her at first. It was a joke, there was nothing more to it. "Oh." "We all knew anyway, dude. We were just getting you to admit it." Emmas was snickering, the way we did when the popular kids we hated got caught talking in calss. I'd gotten caught, and she'd caught me. Gabby congratulated her on her acting job. "Is that bracelet new, Emma? I'd never seen it before..it was a nice touch." Amber was looking down now, picking at her jeans. I tucked the image back into my brain to pull ou later- they hadn't told her. If Amber had been my best friend, this never would have happened. If I'd remember Emma's impassioned diatribes about Ellen DeGeneres and the down fall of Western civilization- "Sarah?" Meghan was looking at me, the look on ther face a bastard lovechild of worry and amusement. I stook up, waited to ensure my legs would hold me, and walked purposefully to the bathroom. She didn't follow. |
| Anonymous |
| 2003 KarMel Scholarship Entry |
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