Glass Cutter

“Does he ever tell you he loves you?” Delilah’s words caught me off guard as I gathered my books from the lab table in front of me, my side unusually accompanied by her from Oliver’s absence.

A few weeks had passed since school returned from winter vacation. The time had brought forth a newfound public display of affection between Oliver and myself—intertwined hands throughout the halls, brief butterfly kisses between classes, et cetera—and while I had been completely sure of my stance on my feelings for him, I hadn’t entirely expected Delilah to ever confront me so calmly about it.

“What?” I asked dumbly, avoiding her look.

“Oliver,” she answered. “Does he ever tell you he loves you?”

I cleared my throat, trying to stall for time to respond. “Why are you asking me that, D?” A weird feeling arose in my gut, my stomach muscles tightening from nerves. While I had always figured that Delilah would ask me about my relationship with Oliver and demand answers for it, I had just never really thought out a response for the scenario.

She shrugged and followed me as I walked toward the exit of the classroom. “I’m just curious. Does he?”

I finally glanced at her. Unlike I’d ever expected, the expression on her face seemed calm, maybe even serene. I’d always expected the conversation between us concerning Oliver to be filled with tension and anxiety, but in that moment, it seemed like she was sincerely curious about my relationship with him—and not for selfish or spiteful reasons.

“Yes,” I answered lowly, somewhat hesitant about what her reaction would be.

She smiled. “That’s really nice.” She shrugged to herself and stuck her hands into the pockets of her black cardigan. “He’s never said that to anyone before.”

I nodded, hitching my bag further up my shoulder. I felt uncomfortable talking to Delilah about Oliver, but even more than that, I was baffled about why she was talking so calmly about it. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d ever actually talked to me and not down to me, and I’d just never thought it would be about Oliver Sykes telling me he loved me.

The silence between us became awkward, more than the conversation had been, and so I asked her, “Does Alex ever say it to you?”

She sighed. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.” She stopped walking, and I waited beside her before she continued. Though I was slightly disappointed that the conversation had shifted to being about her, just as all conversations with her eventually did, I wasn’t really surprised.

“Alex said it to me on the phone last night,” she went on; “and I said it back, but the thing is...it made me really uncomfortable.” She brushed long, blonde layers behind her ears. “No one’s ever said that to me before—like no boyfriend. I mean, we’re just so young—too young for stuff like that. I get that Alex is older than us, so he’s gonna be quicker to say it, but like...I don’t love him, Amanda—and I don’t want to, either.”

Even before the tension in our relationship had started, it had always been difficult to talk to Delilah. Often times, I’d felt like she was more of a Barbie doll than a human being. She didn’t seem to ever feel normal emotions, such as care for those around her or conscientiousness of harsh criticism’s effects, for example. It was the reason why I’d never been able to have a serious or sincere conversation with her for as long as our friendship had existed. She simply couldn’t feel empathy, and she had no interest in learning how to do so.

It was also perhaps the main reason why I’d been so quick to accept Oliver’s advances earlier in the school year. There were, of course, many factors I’d already been more than consciously aware of—Delilah’s overbearing flagrance, the commonalities he and I had shared in family members’ absences and shortcomings, and just the mere fact that a boy I’d found attractive was paying me attention—but as I stared blankly at Delilah for a moment in the crowded school hallway, I realized that the moment he’d truly captured my focus and affection, whether I’d been aware of it at the time or not, was the Tuesday night he’d come into Nanny Brook’s New & Used Books in search of an abstract novel titled Aphrodite: Mœurs Antiques, written by a Frenchman that went by the name of Pierre Louÿs.

That night, not only had he known right off the bat who Jim Morrison was—which, in itself, was impressive, considering the usual cultural ignorance Delilah and her friends had always possessed—but he had also responded knowledgeably to a reference I’d made concerning Edward Hall’s Handbook For Proxemic Research. Being friends with Delilah Weston at that point had meant ten years of “flawless” friendship, but it had also meant ten years of a wasted mind—my wasted mind.

By allowing myself to be buried for ten years beneath endless discussions concerning the most trivial topics of human life, such as premature intimacy or name brand clothing; the interests I’d ceaselessly withheld in more productive subjects, such as 1960’s cultural influence or human behavioral studies, simply to avoid teasing from more than one already unwanted peer; the pretense that I’d forgotten all about Derek Austin’s torturous remarks throughout middle school regarding my lack of a backside or latent chest, simply so Delilah Weston could say she was dating the school’s quarterback; the force-fed hatred and resentment for the promiscuous mother that had actually been the only person in Menlo to ever give a true care about me prior to Oliver Sykes; the numerous consecutive years of school lunches passed with a group of invalids that neither could nor ever would know their ass from their heads; the identity I’d failed to establish throughout my life, all for the sake of a peaceful relationship with a careless human being...

By allowing myself to be buried for ten years beneath a worthless friendship whose sacrificial toll I’d blinded myself to, I’d never even realized just exactly how relieving my relationship with Oliver Sykes was—until the sentence, “I don’t love Alex, and I don’t want to, either,” left Delilah Weston’s ruby red lips.

She must’ve thought a wire in my brain had shorted as I remained gaping at her blankly, my lips slightly parted from the stunning reminder that she was an awful individual. I wanted to say something, but all that came to my mind was a passage I’d remembered from our sophomore year after reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby.

They were careless people—Tom and Daisy, Nick Carraway had narrated. They smashed up things and creatures, and then retreated back into their money, or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made; but the worst part of this opinion I wanted to voice so much regarding Delilah was the fact that while she was a careless person, smashing things up and retreating back into her father’s money and her own carelessness to let others clean up her mess, I also came to the realization that she was sort of beyond human functionality, a sort of hopeless cause to the rest of society.

Everyone that lived in the town of Menlo—every single person down to the 2,997th one to move there, aside from Oliver Sykes—was a careless human being. Even I had fallen into that despicable category for most of my shortly lived life. However, as the seconds following her statement passed between us in our crowded high school’s hallway, I felt a woeful awareness, the awareness that Delilah was the worst of them all, come to my conscious; and this thought made me sad because along with it came the awareness that as the most careless and self-centered individual of a 3,000-population town, hope to cut her down to the level she belonged on—or just to a level of human functionality, even if conceited more than deserving—was useless and, like my mind had been for a long while, a waste.

It wasn’t even a matter of who had allowed her to get to that point anymore. It could’ve been the clout her father held in politics for being the richest multimillionaire within the town’s limits; or it could’ve even been the infatuation all humans had with perfection, her physical appearance being nothing short of it; but what only mattered then was just the mere fact that somehow a seventeen-year-old girl, not even a legal adult yet, had gotten to that point of carelessness, a point that most celebrities didn’t even get to in their entire lifetimes.

Immediately upon this realization, though, I also felt guilty for coming to it. I felt guilty for passing judgment; but at the same time, I also had to remind myself that while I was certainly not a perfect human being and nothing even close to it, I at least had some admirable values inside me—courtesy of Oliver Sykes uncovering them from the wreckage I’d allowed my friendship with Delilah to be; and it made me realize just how much of a better person I’d become simply because Oliver Sykes had become a part of my life.

Menlo wanted to condemn him as a loathsome human being, an individual only comparable to the biblical heathens, but at some point during the seconds I’d spent staring at Delilah in the hallway with distasteful paralysis, I also came to the conclusion that this conviction could’ve only come from one single origin: fear.

For as long as history ever allowed man to go back, humans had always aimed to destroy that which they did not understand. The Jews during the life of Jesus Christ, for example, had crucified Him, put simply, because they could not make sense of His coming; and His persecution had only been permitted because without establishing reason to His claimed purpose that the majority could accept and take solace in, a seed of fear had been planted and eventually blossomed into an organism of chaos on its very own.

While Oliver may not have equated to the Christians’ Jesus Christ, he certainly hadn’t neared the status of their condemned pagans, either; and Menlo only wanted to persecute him because they couldn’t understand him. A seven-year-old boy’s abandoning father as a reason for why he’d tried committing suicide seemed unreasonable to the majority because they’d all had a two-part parental system, thus causing a lack of empathy and sympathy for the minority that didn’t. Even within the minority of the single-part parental systems, none had mothers or fathers that had chosen to leave without a trace as if the decision had been a dinner debate between McDonald’s and Burger King; and because of this consensus between all family systems of Menlo, a lack of empathy and sympathy for him had been put and kept in place, thus causing a rift between what the townspeople could understand and what Oliver needed them to.

“I think you’re afraid of loving him,” I finally blurted, my eyebrows knitting together at the statement I didn’t believe.

She returned the expression, the movement in her face momentarily casting a deep shadow over her blue eyes. “I’m not afraid of loving him,” she quickly argued. “I’m not afraid of loving anybody, Amanda. I love you, right? I love my parents, too, don’t I?”

I literally bit my tongue to stop the reflexive response of, You don’t hold the capacity in that careless little head of yours to love anybody but yourself, from rolling off it freely without hesitation. Instead, after swallowing away the faint taste of blood, I offered, “But that’s all platonic love. I think what you’re afraid of is romantic love—you know, the kind that you should at least start feeling towards the guy you’ve been calling your boyfriend for the past four months.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and scoffed. “I’ve romantically loved a guy before. I just don’t have any interest in feeling that again. It’s just tiresome and too much effort, you know? Once you tell a guy you love him and mean it, he turns into this huge dick that’s just good for breaking your heart. You’re just lucky Oliver hasn’t added you to the list of girls he’s used—and that’s just for now.”

I looked at her for a long time in silence like I had before, but this time, I was not stunned. I was discovering yet another piece to the complicated, beautiful jigsaw puzzle that Oliver Sykes had made my life. My mind flashed back to Delilah’s Halloween party, the image of Alex and myself standing alone on her front porch as we waited for Oliver to return from my car. She does like Oliver, though, I recalled him saying. She sort of said it in a really long monologue.

It wasn’t that she’d dubbed me fortunate for the victimization my heart hadn’t yet felt from Oliver—that wasn’t what made me finally see the one stray facet to Delilah’s carelessness. What made me finally see a single inconsistency within the self-absorption that defined her was the tone her voice had taken on for her last response. She’d sounded defensive, as if I’d truly offended her by insinuating she’d never felt romantic love before, but she’d also sounded detached at the same time, as if she hadn’t wanted to fully acknowledge or address the fact that she actually had.

Delilah truly was a careless individual, worse than most celebrities, the worst of Menlo entirely—but Oliver Sykes had been the one individual to crack that determination of her character. She had played a game with him, and he’d reciprocated the offense; but just as all humans’ imperfections eventually do, the flaw in her personality—a personality that possessed the kind of carelessness Fitzgerald had so perfectly narrated through Nick Carraway’s accounts of Tom and Daisy Buchanan—had also been the cause of a slight deterioration in itself; and had Oliver been willing to spend more time with her, I almost felt like she wouldn’t have been beyond hope, like maybe he could’ve possibly cut her down to the level she belonged on if I’d really declined his advances and wishes the way she’d said I did. It felt like maybe he could’ve completely eroded away her carelessness to uncover a fairly pleasant girl had that been his original interest and intent.

I felt uneasy as I realized this because a faraway feeling of compassion formed in the pit of my stomach—compassion towards the girl I’d called my best friend for a decade and the girl that had also not once ever tried to reciprocate the favor for even just a second—and though the emotion had once felt akin for a long while, it had lost its familiarity in that moment as my gut tightened around its returned presence.

Months had passed since I’d last felt it, and as it squirmed its way back into my nerves, tangling and strangling the cells, I was positive I wanted it to go away, and I never wanted it to come back. The biggest problem with a resurfaced sense of compassion towards Delilah—among many—was that there was no way to feel it for her and still feel for myself; and a lag in the resentment and distaste I’d formed for her over the months spent with Oliver at my side also inevitably meant a sense of guilt was making an uninvited home for itself within my conscience.

If Derek Austin hadn’t spent our middle school years bringing attention to every aspect of my appearance that had come short of his taste, I might’ve been able to brush off Delilah’s coinciding and ceaseless criticisms, and I might’ve been able to think a little more highly of myself following puberty. If I’d been able to develop a more positive image of myself, I might’ve been able to do away with the social anxiety that should’ve disbarred after the sixth grade and hadn’t. If I’d been able to grow a pair and make a friend beyond her limits, I might’ve been able to pay her less attention, or I might’ve been able to let go of some of the resentment for her that I’d always kept locked away to grow and feed off of itself. If I hadn’t latched on so tightly to those bitter, angry feelings, I might’ve been able to notice that Oliver Sykes was the only boy Delilah had ever cried over...

If I’d realized that Delilah had allowed Oliver Sykes to make a place for himself inside her head, I might’ve told him there was no place for him inside my heart; and the idea of living without him didn’t scare me in that moment like I’d thought it would because the idea of living without him for Delilah’s sake angered me more than I’d thought it could. I wasn’t a careless human being like she was, and I wasn’t so blinded by my own self the way that she was—but I was a relatively selfish person, and I wasn’t willing to give up the boy I’d come to love for the girl who’d never loved anyone but herself.

“I am lucky,” I finally replied; and the expression on her porcelain-like face told me that from the amount of time it’d been taking me to respond, she was sure I was in the process of losing my marbles.

I cleared my throat. “But you are too;” and with my lips still together, I gave her perhaps the realest smile she’d ever gotten or would ever get from me again.

Delilah Weston was lucky in a way, but I would never explain to her the real reason for it because she would never understand it. The girl I had called my best friend for ten years was lucky because she had no idea just how oblivious she was to the rest of the world, and that was a good thing. The world was harsh; it could be downright cruel sometimes; and ignorance to that was certainly a lucky trait to possess.

She shrugged, simpering back to me, and I knew that all was well again in her head because it had been the way I’d kept on her good side for all the years of our friendship—because all I’d ever done was reinforce the pedestal she should’ve never been put on.


I rushed to Oliver’s house after school that day, eager to see him after being void of his company for the whole day. I found my way in through the unlocked back door and crept towards his bedroom. I could hear the sounds of light snoring coming from it, and I smiled because I imagined his thick lips pouting as he dreamed, his eyelids fluttering with his imagination.

I knelt down on his floor mattress, leaning over him, and brought my lips to his. His snores immediately stopped, his even breath hitching, and he responded much more quickly than I probably would’ve had our positions been switched. I smiled against him as he ran his hands up my back over my shirt, lowly groaning with eagerness.

A laugh escaped from my mouth at his exceptional sleep reception before I pulled away to brush some of the knotted hair from his forehead. His eyes were still closed, but his one hand made its way to the contours of my lips, gently tracing their shape with his thumb.

“I could get used to being woken up like that,” he said, smiling up at me as he opened his eyes.

I smirked, but the expression faded a little as a small thought crept into the back of my head—because Delilah wanted to be the one to wake him like that.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up.

One of the many things I loved about Oliver was that he was extremely perceptive. There had been many times that something was bothering me, and a lot of those times, I hadn’t wanted to offer the information, but I’d wanted someone to ask me about it because I’d still wanted the weight of that information off my chest; and at that moment, I appreciated his impeccable perceptiveness because I really did want to tell him—because I really knew he could make me feel better.

I cleared my throat. “Did you ever read The Great Gatsby?”

He nodded, remaining silent, and so I went on.

I told him all about the conversation I’d had with Delilah, all about her wishes to never love Alex. I told him all about how I’d felt guilty for loving him, how I knew I’d never be able to stop myself from doing it. I told him about my realizations concerning her, my conclusion that he would’ve been able to change her if he’d wanted to; and all the while, he listened patiently, nodding as I shared my innermost thoughts. I had never kept things from him, but I’d just never shared things so explicitly and in depth. It had never been because I thought he would judge me or it would change things, but I had just felt that while he had such a fascinating, complicated mind, my average one might’ve bored him.

By the end of my story, he remained silent, his expression unreadable. My stomach turned as I contemplated all the different ways he could respond, but I just kept telling myself that I had to have faith in him. He had never before let me down, and for that much, I owed him my faith.

“I’m not sure how to respond to that,” he finally answered. “I think it’s fucked up she’s playing Alex like that, though.”

I pursed my lips. “But how does that make you feel?” How did Delilah’s love make him feel?

He shrugged. “It doesn’t make me feel anything, in all honesty.” He took a hold of my hand at this. “I already knew she’d started caring about me, which is why I broke up with her. I know this sounds fucked up, but I don’t care if she loves me or not. I don’t love her. It sucks to suck, I guess.

“I love you, Amanda; and I know I don’t say it a lot or as much as I should, but that feeling only gets more intense with every second that we spend together.” He softly chuckled, his cheeks pinking a little. “I’ve never gotten butterflies before—and I know that sounds so cheesy and gay, but I don’t know how I could ever explain to you just how much I love you.

“Delilah’s feelings really don’t mean shit to me,” he went on; “and I know she’s still your friend from the fact that you still give a shit about her—so I don’t mean to be a dick about it—but I just don’t really care if she’s head over heels for me or if she can’t stand my fucking guts. It makes no difference in my life.

“She played with fire—and yeah, I showed her how you get burned when you do. It’s like you said about The Great Gatsby, though; she’s a careless, self-centered person, and she’s worse than the whole lot of ’em...and because she’s so careless and self-centered, she’ll get over it.” He squeezed my hand at this.

“Did you ever think that maybe she’s just trying to manipulate you,” he asked, “because she knows she can make you feel guilty for being with me, simply because she knows you’re a good person?”

I pursed my lips at his suggestion because that thought hadn’t even crossed my mind—and it was very plausible.

“She’ll be okay, love,” he concluded, nudging me with his knee and a smile on his face. “Even at the end of Gatsby, Daisy still ran off with Tom while everyone else had to deal with their aftermath—and they were okay with that, just like how Delilah will eventually be. Trust me.”


The next day, I still felt slightly uncomfortable during each interaction with Delilah. The possibility that she loved Oliver made me most anxious because he was what swarmed my head for just about every second in the day, and because I had so recently been reminded of her past relationship with him, she, too, had wormed her way into my daydreams.

I had physical education as my last class of the day, and though Oliver and I didn’t share a teacher, we shared the period; but the most disappointing part of it was that Tommy Dennings was in Oliver’s class, and Derek Austin was in mine.

Oliver and I had been standing together in the hallway as we waited for our teachers when I realized I’d forgotten my phone in the locker room. He offered to go back with me, and about halfway there, he linked his fingers between mine and gave me a small smile.

Once getting my cell and situating it in the pocket of my cotton gym shorts, I exited the girls’ locker room into the mostly empty hall, and with a proud smile on my face, I took a tight hold of Oliver’s hand. We exchanged grins to each other. I was happy he’d come to school that day because I really did need him; and while I knew I needed him at all times, I also knew it was especially at that time because of my insecurities.

As we slowly ambled down the hallway from the locker rooms to the gymnasium, swinging our intertwined hands and laughing with smart comments, the bell rang and the last few students that had been left behind with us scurried into their classrooms, leaving the corridor a ghost town. Oliver and I still had two minutes before we would be considered late for gym, though, and we took advantage of the extra 120 seconds we had together as if it’d be more than forty minutes before we’d get the chance to again.

“I love when she wears her gym shorts,” a familiar voice suddenly echoed past Oliver and me, causing our steps to halt. We exchanged confused glances before peering at the still open boys’ locker room door, where the sound had come from, because we hadn’t thought anyone else would be cutting their time for tardiness so close, especially with how strict the gym coaches were notorious for being.

“She filled out awesome,” another voice answered, and I remembered that voice because I hated it; and though it wasn’t very often that I came across it, I still cringed the same at the very tone of it each time I did.

Tommy Dennings laughed at Derek Austin’s comment. “Oliver Sykes is a lucky bastard, gotta give it to him.”

I felt Oliver’s grip of my hand tighten and saw his jaw clench. I tugged at his arm and lowly murmured, “C’mon, let’s go.” Nothing good had ever come from me eavesdropping on people’s conversations, and I didn’t want to wait around for another example to add on the list of reasons why.

He shook his head and gently hushed me while Derek asked, “Has Delilah talked to you about that situation?”

“Yeah,” Tommy answered, “but I’m a little nervous about it, in all honesty. Something about it’s not settling right, you know? I just feel like if it didn’t work the first time, what makes her think it’s gonna work a second?” ...If what didn’t work the first time?

Derek made a kind of scoffing sound. “I don’t understand why you don’t just fucking ask her out, rather than take Delilah’s advice for the way to go about it. You know D’s just using us to get revenge on the two of them, and fucking Amanda’s house up again isn’t gonna convince her to leave Oliver.”

I felt a tingling sensation form in the back of my neck at Derek’s words because it had suddenly all made so much sense—but for once, eavesdropping hadn’t been the cause of another element added to my puzzle. It completed it, and all the fragments came to make a picture.

The story had started with Oliver’s crush on me and his efforts to convince Laura Heely and Delilah for help in voicing his affection. However, Delilah’s ego had come into the picture, and she’d played a game with his mind, a game of lies and unsaid words. What she’d failed to take into account, though, was Oliver’s Type D personality—a personality mostly run by the distresses of a flawed past and their influential effects on his present—and because of this, she had made herself a type of guinea pig to the experiment she’d also provoked him into doing. Only later, after all the damage had been done, Oliver had been able to get a hold of his dream, and a whole new kind of living had become mine, just as we had become each other’s.

When later came, however, the game had seemed to escalate into a type of Russian roulette, with Oliver loading the gun and Delilah placing the bets. She had been unable to accept what she’d considered to be a character loss, and so she’d manipulated Tommy Dennings and Derek Austin into exacting her revenge by vandalizing my home. Her father’s presence and assault on my mother had only been a coincidence to the destruction, but they were both examples of just how far Menlo’s fear of Oliver Sykes went.

Lastly, not to mention, Tommy Dennings also apparently shared Oliver’s appreciation for my physical appearance.

Oliver took one step towards the locker room entrance, and the second that I felt his grip loosen around my fingers, I knew he was intending to go confront Tommy and Derek. I yanked him back, though, because he had much more than a physical beating to offer them. They didn’t deserve his energy.

“No,” I whispered, holding his hand tighter. “Leave them alone.”

“Did you not just fucking hear what they said?” he hissed back, almost growling at me.

I nodded and cupped his face in my hands. He’d always somewhat frightened me when he got so angry, but in a way, I’d sort of found him to be easily tameable. All he needed was someone to want to tame him.

“I did,” I replied, locking my eyes with his; “but if you go in there and start fighting with them, chances are you’re gonna lose because it’s two of them and one of you, and you know that Principal Aarons is gonna jump all over the opportunity to suspend you because Tommy’s his nephew.”

I saw the storm begin to leave Oliver’s eyes and the calm take over, so I went on after stealing a quick kiss; “We’ll get them back, don’t worry—same way we’ll get Mr. Weston. Okay?”

He nodded silently and brought his lips back to mine. It was the first time we had really shared such intimate affection in public, and I was only waiting for Tommy and Derek to come out and see us; but something about the gentleness of Oliver’s kisses, his taste of mint and cigarettes, the soft stubble that would sometimes graze my lips, made it hard for me to care.


Oliver’s ragged breath against the skin of my neck, his fingertips against the bumps of my ribcage—it made me lose my mind each time, never losing its novelty. Even that day after school, after finally making sense of the fucked up storyline that had been the narration of Delilah’s carelessness, I couldn’t hold my breath or stifle the excitement he made me feel in the dim light of his bedroom.

As we laid there in silence, though, tangled in his sheets and his fingers tracing light shapes over my bare shoulder, my mind made its way back to Delilah’s resemblance to Daisy Buchanan, even despite the beautiful and soothing acoustic music Oliver had kept on in the background.

I heard him take a deep breath to speak, the sound distracting my reverie, and a few moments later, he whispered into my ear, “I know how we can get them all back.”