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

First day back, feeling dead. I kept fucking up the dates on all my papers, writing ’09 or ‘010 instead of ’10. A new decade could not have come at a time when I cared less. I barely even remember New Year’s Day; must have been really low. Fuck that.

I went to Ms. Greenwood’s office to tell her I was withdrawing from the musical, because I just can’t do it anymore. I think about it and I just feel dread and despair. But the longer I stayed in there waiting for her to show up the less brave I felt. How would she react? I wondered, would she yell at me, cry, be completely blank? I couldn’t face her then, and left. How ironic would it be if I stayed in the musical after all and performed in front of an audience – an act most people associate with gutsiness and moxie – because I'm a coward?

During lunch May asked me where Alex was. I wanted to break down and cry. But I told her I didn’t know – which was the truth, just not the whole truth.

“He’s been gone for a while,” she said. “I hope nothing’s the matter.”

My airway was slowly constricting because of the lump in my throat. I squeezed out a “Yeah” anyway.

“Does he even go here anymore?”

Please, please stop talking about it! I wanted to scream at her. But I kept my mouth shut and shrugged instead, like I totally wasn’t a mess underneath it all.

“Maybe he has mono,” she continued musing.

By now I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. I had to do something to get her to change the subject, so I blurted the first provocative thing that came to mind.

“So I was thinking about quitting the musical.”

She gaped at me. “What?”

“Yeah…” I tried to assume a corresponding expression of shame, but I was mostly just relieved we weren’t talking about Alex anymore.

“You can’t just quit, Dani! We perform in March! We need you! You’re good, plus you’re one of the only girls.”

“You guys got on fine before I came. I’m not even that good, and it’s not like I have any major roles or anything.”

“We were so not fine before you came. You’re so talented – you can sing and dance and act – most of us are only good at two out of three, or really good at one and not so much the other two. And your roles are important too! Narrow Fellow – " His name had taken on a dirty meaning and here May smiled risqué-ly before going on, “would not be nearly as evil without his evil unwilling accomplice, who also happens to be his mistress going through an existential crisis. I mean, that role is priceless. You are probably never going to meet a role like that again.”

I listened to her go on about my other roles, when suddenly she broke off and said, “This doesn’t have anything to do with Alex, right? Like I’m just grasping at straws here, right? Wait, you never did tell me why you’re doing this.”

It occurred to me that Alex was the reason behind why I’d signed up for the play in the first place – we were having that one awkward conversation where he kept following me and I used the guise of signing up for the play to get out of the awkwardness. Now that he was gone, it technically made sense to quit.

“What? No,” I assured her. “Alex has nothing to do with this. I just need to get my grades up this semester. Like, I really, really need to. I had a 2.0 GPA last semester. That is straight-up abysmal for me.”

“It’s okay. You can do both. I can tutor you if you want, in anything except Bio, anyway.”

“No, I can’t do both. That’s what I’ve learned.”

“There’s some way to have both worlds,” she insisted. “You just have to find it.” The girl was not giving up.

“Girl,” I said, putting on a faux ebonics accent. “Ah ain’t dat ho Hannah Montana.”

And finally, thankfully, the bell rang for the end of lunch.

--

I wrote a letter to Ms. Greenwood telling her about my withdrawal, then slipped into her office when I knew she was teaching a class, leaving it on her desk. Afterward I went to the bathroom and cried, just like that one time. Except this time no alien girl came to my comfort – something better, yet worse.

Wait a minute. There was one Alex-affiliated person I forgot to go to. Delia.

Yeah, it’d be awkward. But I gotta do it.

--

So it wasn’t as painful as I thought it’d be. At all. But. She didn’t know anything.

I had no idea how to go about finding her at first. The amount of information I knew about the girl was next to zilch. But, finding myself after school in the same place I’d been at the last time I saw her, I realized it was a good idea. And wouldn’t you know it, she came.

This time she was wearing a cable-knit cardigan, gray skirt, leggings, and what looked like riding boots. I thought about how neat it’d be if she and Coralie met and had a long discussion about clothes. Keeping this image in my head, I swallowed my nervousness and called out her name. On my second shout she turned and saw me. I had the strong urge to walk right past her and continue calling her name to some imaginary girl, but it was too late – I’d already made eye contact.

“Hey, Delia, I’m sorry if I create a situation that is unbearably awkward, but do you know anything about where Alex might have gone? I mean, he’s been gone since the 22nd of last month. And – " Here something came out that I’d never meant to. “I’m really scared.”

I could tell by the look in her eyes that she knew all about this. “I’m sorry, Dani. I honestly don’t know a thing. Everything seemed fine before that day…but at the same time I don’t think he’d be the most vocal person in the world with his ex.” She shrugged helplessly, but her words weren’t bitter.

Then, without ever feeling it coming, I started to cry. Except this time I was right in front of her instead of hidden behind a bathroom stall wall. I wondered if she’d ever ID’d me as the mysterious crier.

In another second her arms were around me and I heard her voice saying, “No, it’s okay, Dani. Alex is just being Alex, except on a grand and unusually frustrating scale. Don’t cry over it. It’s nothing to cry over. Whatever’s wrong, he can fight it, or deal with it, or figure it out. Remember, this is Alex. Whenever you’re ready to give up on him, he comes through and gives you a reason to love him even more than you did before. Trust me, I’d know. He’ll come back. He’ll come back with the craziest-ass story anyone’s ever heard, but it’ll all be okay. If he doesn’t come back, there’s something seriously wrong with the universe.”

I realized that Delia was probably the only person in the world who knew how this many of my feelings felt like. Suddenly I knew I needed her, I couldn’t let go a person who understood so much. Coralie flashed into my mind, whispering, “Be my friend” and I had the urge then to do the same thing, but I knew I had to be more tactful.

“So, there’s a Barnes and Noble not too far away. Do you want to…I mean, I just really want to talk about things that I don’t think anyone else would get. I mean, if you can’t, it’s fine. But…”

She thought. “The only thing about bookstores is theyr’e too Alex-y. I’m thinking the mall. Then we can go into all the girly stores we want and he won’t be able to ‘hear’ us, you know what I mean?”

I nodded. “Sounds great. I don’t have any money, though.”

“Neither do I. Whatever. We can just try things on and pretend we can afford it. I like thrift stores the best anyway. But they’re not as luxe.”

So that is how I ended up going on a spontaneous outing with the ex-girlfriend of my MIA boyfriend. It was barely awkward at all and we had a lot of stuff to talk about. This was Alex; of course there’d be a lot to say. But even then, only about three-fifths of what we talked about had any connection to Alex. The rest was anything from fashion commentary to why the interior of Hollister is so dark and why Hot Topic would sell Justin Bieber merchandise, to weird fetishes, Pastafarianism, and illegal immigrants.

Shit, I just realized I’m late to go see the new shrink. Ugh. Wish me luck.

--

Holy God, amazing. His name’s Dr. Kessler and he looks kind of like Cory Monteith. So much hotness. I don’t care if we never talk about therapeutic things, I will gladly go to him twice a week and stare at the man.

Okay, so I know I’m technically still taken and this makes me a woman of sin. But after what Alex did, don’t I have every right to act like a ho? Aren’t we as good as broken up now? I mean, what am I supposed to do when he’s disappeared off the face of the planet, waste myself away pining after him, and recite rosaries?