Adventures of a Future Journalist

Read my picture book "Charlie's Hair" for FREE:

My main project is called "Inside my Head", which is a series of sharing snapshots of my everyday experiences, both in my external environment and my daydreams, through short stories. An introduction to that, and a few featured stories, can be found here:

i also write some random poetry here and there <3

Three days.

That was how long I had been messaging her. For every message I sent, I became more worried about her perception of me.

You’re so obsessive. And weird. She’s gonna think you’re crazy. Here you go, ruining everything yet again. How pathetic are you that you have nothing else to do but talk to someone you’ve never met? You wouldn’t even need to worry about this if you had just—

A new message.

“Make sure to stick around after you come to the show, I’d love to meet you both!!”

What?

She wanted to meet me?

I bet she’ll regret it. No one likes who you really are.

***

I wasn’t supposed to be here.

I stood behind my friends, observing as the trees that once stood in vibrant color turned to dark outlines illuminated by dimly glowing streetlamps. I couldn’t believe this was real. I couldn’t believe I was actually here.

“Hi, guys! It’s so good to finally meet you!”

My lips curled upward instinctively. Here she was, just standing there in front of me! I felt a familiar tight feeling in my chest, accompanied by an electricity tickling on my wrists and hands.

Don’t stim in front of her, you’ll make a fool of yourself. What a horrible first impression that would leave. Express your excitement like a normal person. Just be normal.

“Okay, so, who’s who? Which one of you have I been texting this whole time?”

I waved stiffly. “Oh, uh, hi.”

“Hi, I’m—!”

I almost laughed when she told me her name, as if I didn’t already know it.

Then she pulled me into a hug, her arm just gently, almost reluctantly, resting on my back.

I let my chin sit on her shoulder, feeling some of the tension in my chest melt away. For a moment, I forgot who I was.

No. No, I didn’t forget… it just meant something different to me now. For once, instead of my past seeming to chase me, the threat of another crisis finding me with just one tiny slip, I found a new perspective on what it means to be alive. Three months ago, I didn’t think I could make it. But there I was. Still here. Doing something I never thought was possible, with someone I was sure would think I was too much. And as she met my friends, talked to us about her career, said goodbye, and disappeared backstage, one thought kept penetrating my mind.

One kid.

One condition.

One email.

The thumping of my heart threatened to break out of my chest. My shoulders heaved as my eyes shifted out of focus, staring into nothing. I sat in a room full of people, yet I couldn't have felt more alone.

A pair of shoes shuffled past my field of view, and my eyes snapped back into focus. I lifted my head to confirm who I was seeing. Yes. It was her.

She didn't say anything. She didn't even look at me. But the way she walked back and forth near me, fidgeting with her hands like she did when she was nervous, being sure not to look me in the eye... we were thinking about the same thing.

She began to walk away from me at last, slowly... and then she stopped and turned to me.

We locked eyes.

The silence that had already fallen over us seemed to grow.

She squinted slightly at me, her eyes softening into an awkward yet sympathetic expression. I watched as she continued staring at me, silently searching for the right thing to say.

...

"I'm gonna have to start telling you really bad jokes."

She laughed slightly, cracking a smile in my direction, and walked away.

I returned her smile reluctantly, affection filling my heart...

The air was cool and crisp, fresh with an autumn breeze. The fire crackled gently, illuminating each one of our faces as we sat around it. My friends sang a soft melody on the karaoke machine, and I listened contently, allowing my thoughts to drift.

“This is the happiest I’ve been in a while,” I thought aloud.

“Good, I’m so glad to hear that,” he said gently in response; everyone else murmured their agreement.

“Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I wanna go on the swing set,” my sister proclaimed eagerly, making her way over to our friend’s little wooden play set as everyone else followed behind her.

Well, everyone else but one.

“Why’d you stay back here?” he inquired softly. His hand rested on my shoulder, startling me just slightly. “You should be over there, having fun with them.”

A thousand reasons ran through my head. I’m not good enough for them, I thought. I don’t deserve to enjoy myself.

“I don’t know.”

A small smile grew across his lips, his knowing gaze glimmering in the light of the fire. “That’s your whole response? All you’ve got to say is, ‘I don’t know’?”

There were so many things I wanted to say to him, but I couldn’t get the words to come out.

“Yeah,” I whispered, glancing in his direction before swiftly shifting my gaze back down to the ground.

A bout of silence washed over us, our shadows dancing in the flames behind. We breathed in sync, his hand following the rise and fall of my shoulders while my heartbeat quieted just for a moment, my eyes transfixed on our collective silhouette in the grass. My mind reeled through every meaningful interaction we’d had lately- every desperate ramble over text, every panic attack he’d knowingly or unknowingly helped me avoid, every smile from across a room, and every hug goodbye after a hangout. But mostly, I thought about how, in so many ways, it felt like he knew exactly what was going on in my head without me having to say anything at all.

I took one more deep breath, and all of this was enough.

His hand shifted a bit on my shoulder. “I get it. Observe from a distance. That’s always been my M.O.”

“I’d never talk shit on you, though,” they continued, stomping on a red-brown leaf that made a satisfying crunching noise beneath their feet. “That’s just what people think.”

“Oh, yeah, I know,” I lied, raising a hand to shield the back of my neck from the sun beaming down on us. My eyes were fixed on the cracks between sidewalk tiles, each ebb and flow of the concrete occupying my mind so that I didn’t have to think about the fact that I was being lied to - not just in this moment, but almost daily.

They swiped their foot across the head of a blooming dandelion, the white seeds gently hovering above the grass before settling on the ground.

“I can’t believe it’s still so hot out,” I thought aloud. “I mean, it’s September; you’d think things would be starting to cool down by now, but instead, we’re just in this weird in-between state.”

“Yeah, well, global warming’s a bitch,” they replied with a suddenly irritable tone, scowling and speeding up for a moment before halting abruptly behind me. “Hey, watch, there’s a car!”

They reached out a hand and gripped my shoulder, thrusting me backward from where I was about to continue into the road as a car whizzed by.

“You good?” they inquired, brows slightly furrowed and their hand still touching my shoulder.

“Yeah, I just got distracted, I guess,” I replied, wide-eyed and still.

After a moment of ambiguous expression, a smile spread across their face, a giggle escaping their lips. “Well, Jesus fuck, man, you’ve gotta watch where you’re going,” they sighed, gently ushering me forward.

“Ooh, you know what, I forgot to tell you something! Guess who finally texted me the other day?”

The smile instantly vanished from their face, and I knew I had said the wrong thing. “You’re so unhealthily obsessed with her. She’s gonna get sick of you one of these days.”

I said nothing in response, my mouth hanging wide open.

“By the way, you’re opening the door when we get there!” they proclaimed singsongily, skipping ahead of me with a content smile returning to their lips once again.

I shook my head in bafflement, crushing another fallen leaf beneath my shoe. The duality of my conversations with them was inevitable, and yet it seemed to throw me for a loop every time. How could I be expected to understand a world that was filled with so many in-betweens?

Applause echoed through the theater and into my heart, which beat swiftly in my chest. I had to squint in the darkness to make out my friend’s silhouette, the feeling of her head slumped against my chest giving me a unique sense of comfort. I took a breath to take in my surroundings, the scent of popcorn drifting through the air and into my nose as the applause slowly died down and we scurried offstage.

After another song or two had passed and we had returned to our places backstage, I felt restless, my mind unable to focus on anything but the upcoming scene. In an attempt to contain my energy, I sat on the floor, taking a breath or two before standing up again, swaying from foot to foot for a moment only to sit back down again. A reassuring smile from my friend allowed my heartbeat to slow, just slightly for a moment, as she struggled to contain a laugh, her smile growing a bit wider before turning her head away from me and toward the stage. I followed her gaze to the black curtain strewn with designs made by the tech crew, the path of the markers’ ink barely visible when I squinted. With the curtain lifting and my friend skipping onstage ahead of me, I put on my best grumpy face to align with my character, a feat which was becoming increasingly difficult due to the opposition of my character’s mood to my own.

We recited our lines with ease, gliding across the stage intuitively as we conversed and sang. As a third actor entered the stage and we continued the scene, I finally allowed myself to smile as my role’s feelings aligned with mine. My heartbeat quickened with every passing moment, the moment I had awaited for so long drawing nearer. As I sang the final line of the song, I turned my head to my friend in anticipation, willing my voice to remain even as I recited her cue line.

Without a moment to spare, she flung her arms around me, my head instantly dropping to her shoulder as we embraced. With the amount of hugs I received in my life becoming few and far between, a moment of connection with someone I had grown to love so deeply was everything that I needed. As our arms wrapped tightly around one another, I no longer noticed how fast my heart was beating. I felt my feet ever so slightly lose contact with the floor as she lifted me off of the ground, allowing my body to fully sink into hers. As the music and applause began to die out once again, my heart ached at a thought I wasn’t quite ready to face.