Hello, I Dislike You Intensely. Have a Nice Day.

Well, guess what? The rest of today was horrible. It sucked. It blew chunks. I did not enjoy the rest of today. And you might think that I'm secretly being lighthearted because I'm paraphrasing Office quotes, but that is sadly not the case.

In Bio, there was a boring lecture that lasted the entire period. It was just as well because all the while I was frantically rehearsing plausible-sounding things to say to May in my head. My only victory for the afternoon came when Mr. Nyman's voice gratingly cut into my auditions to ask how many base pairs did he just say were in the human genome. With a miraculous flash I realized I actually knew the answer to this thanks to Coralie, and told him over 3 billion. He looked pretty surprised to hear that. In a good way for me, at least.

I caught up with May after World History. She was going the opposite direction I needed to go, but I figured it'd be worth being late if I were friends with her again. I fell into step next to her, trying to make it seem natural, but instead I found myself trying to swing my hips. So then I just walked normally.

"Hey."

"Oh. Hey, Dani."

"Are you still mad at me?"

She shrugged. "It's okay, I guess. Maybe I just freaked out a little too much. I mean, I never gave you a chance to talk."

I felt totally undeserving of her forgiveness, and scrambled to explain myself. "Well, what happened was - " and I froze. All the half-truths I'd spent the last two hours constructing suddenly sounded faker and more unconvincing than anything I'd ever heard. I couldn't say any of them; I just knew she'd know I was lying. But I couldn't tell the entire truth, because then I'd feel like I was betraying Alex, and I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't do that. I was penned in by couldn'ts. "The thing was - " I began stupidly again, trying to recover myself. It was hopeless, though. I couldn't be recovered.

"Just say it," May coaxed. "Even if you were sticking up a 7-11. Even if you were stalking...Justin Bieber! As long as it's the truth."

I wished I'd been doing either of those. We stood silent for a little bit, May looking intently at me, me looking anywhere but her.

"Okay, then," she said quietly. "Never mind."

She started walking away. My body felt numb. "Wait. May," I called feebly after her. She turned. "My grandfather died," I spurted without thinking.

"I'm so sorry, Dani," she said.

"It's okay..." The entire time, I wasn't looking at her. I was too afraid she knew it was a lie, and an awful and lousy one at that.

The late bell rang, like a portentous omen of doom. Or no, it was a portentous omen of doom, now that I look back on it.

"I'll see you later," May told me.

"You too," I heard myself saying. Scummily enough, all I could think of as I hurried off to class was how I couldn't be sure it really had been a lie, since nobody had heard from my grandfather for years. He could have died, and none of us would've been the wiser. It was entirely plausible.

I was stared at when I entered Geometry, but for once this relatively minor humiliation glossed over me. Me and Alex met eyes, and I knew that he knew something was wrong.
Suddenly, I couldn't stand him. All I could think about was how I'd visited his mother that morning, and he never had. Not even once. And maybe if he had, things would have gotten better. And then maybe he wouldn't have gone mental the night of May's party, so I could've gone, and I wouldn't have needed to tell her that awful series of lies and take advantage of her trust and sympathy.

We were doing partner work again today, which made everything worse. I barely talked or looked at him and he started to get freaked out. So I said I'd tell him everything after class, and I did. Starting with the visit to Hargraves and ending with the worst lie I've ever told anyone.

He looked momentarily bewildered at the magnitude of all that happened. Fix that! I mentally dared him.

He took a breath and said my name, and then something I wasn't expecting. "I never asked you to visit Mom."

"I know," I said, a bit impatiently. "But, I figured someone should. You know."

At this, he looked very steely and hurt and withdrawn. "It wasn't your place." His voice was clipped and slightly snarky, like a topiary. I refused to feel low. There was a moment of déjà vu where I was reminded of that weird argument we had in English when we still barely knew each other. He was playing the bigger person again, but instead of undermining myself this time, I had plenty to undermine him with.

"It was your place. You never took it. You haven't seen your mom for two years, and she hasn't seen you. You were all she could talk about."

The emotions clashed subtly on his face, but I couldn't stop myself after that.

"I can't believe you would hide from her. You wallow in the guilt of everything you did, but you still can't own up to her."

The look in his eyes told me I was spot-on. He lashed back at me.

"You blame me for the problems with your friends, don't you? I know you were mad at me on the day Marina went to the hospital. And you were mad when I called you on Halloween. And you are also mad now."

This truth, coming from his so bluntly, was more crippling than I'd expected. I was now on the defense, and I did an abysmal job of it.

"That's ridiculous! I don't blame anyone but myself. I wouldn't accuse you of that!"

"But then, you're probably lying again," he said balefully.

"At least, at least I'm not an avoider."

"At least I can handle the truth."

"You can so not handle the truth. You started attacking me the minute I called you out."
"Attacking you? I cannot believe you're still putting up your facade of innocence."

"I never said I was innocent."

"And I never attacked you."

We were making an infernal scene. We'd become of those couples who fought loudly in public.

"Okay, so I was lying. I was telling huge, revolting, pathological lies to people I really cared about. And I don't know how I'll fix them."

"And I am most definitely a coward. And I like to wallow. And avoid. And neglect. And run away. And all those shitty assorted actions. Everyone has faults."

"But you revel in your faults."

"You revel in your faults. Because you like hating yourself."

"You like hating yourself."

It felt wronger than anything to be so at odds with him. It felt impossible. We were supposed to be different than the rest of them. Bigger than twice the sum of our parts, he'd said. An implacable question came to me - If we were so similar after all, why were we fighting?

"I don't know," he answered, having sensed the question.

"I warned you against this. Do you remember that?" It was when we were still communicating with each other through notes left in trees. Even though that was less than two months ago, it felt like another time completely.

"I do remember. Maybe you were right. Maybe we're too similar after all."

People were staring as they walked by us, no doubt expecting us to break up and head broodingly off in different directions. We didn't break up (this is why I'm still holding myself together), but we did leave in opposite directions. Alex said he'd promised his aunt and uncle to help out at a food drive this afternoon - which was probably not the truth, but it was his way of leaving without having it hurt too much. I said I needed to study. We mumbled some formalities about seeing each other soon, then parted.

And just like Death Cab said, here I rest where disappointment and regret collide.