There’s a wretched brilliance in tightropes, Maks. If one walks it with her eyes closed, she can pretend that it never ends. But if one chooses to tread with caution, to study her moves before she makes them, she’s brutally aware that the rope doesn’t last forever. Just imagine how miserable a fate it is to be to be a woman unable to close her eyes.
The screen went abruptly black. I thought it was over until a slow pan downward revealed the derelict houses from our anti-date. The beautiful, almost transcendent way in which Snake captured the dripping orange sunset behind them. My own side profile, messy and disheveled, shadowed in the frame. Snake’s declaration of being “but a pebble in the sand,” with a girl who hated him (see: me) almost as much as she hated herself. Another scene of my dark blue eyes glaring into the lens at Oinky’s, expressing my hatred for being on camera. Followed by a slowed-down version of my annoyed frown with another voice-over. This time, a man.
You know, Margaret? I don’t think even God himself knows why we all ended up in the same circus, feeding the same horses, walking the same goddamn tightrope every goddamn night. But I’ll tell you one thing. I’d consider all of our misfortune worth it if from time to time, you’d glance my way and smile that smile you don’t need to force with Vaseline, and wink like I’m the only one who knows the mysteries of our reality. Like I’m the only one who knows that our tightropes are meant to be right next to each other.
The screen went black for good.
Snake sat motionless and silent, two behaviors I hadn’t realized he was capable of. I could feel him watching me from the corner of his eye, anxious for my approval or condemnation. Honestly, my response could have gone either way.
Some of the shots were stunning, like the opening sunlight and anti-date, while others had a fuzzy, home video quality that a judge in basically any contest would subtract points for. But I knew Snake wasn’t making this film for a contest. He was making this film to stay alive.
I elbowed him. “You need a better title than The Snake Project.”
It was all I could say without giving him too much credit.
He smirked. “I was thinking The Sheer Uselessness of Our Condition.”
“You said Margaret inspired the outlook? The way you see the world?” I asked. He nodded. “Well, any good director allows a Q&A after the first screening, so I guess my question is, where does sheer uselessness fit into your life?”
It was a solid question. Even if I did sound like Dr. Rachelle.
My putting him on the spot had him all stressed out, seeing as how he needed to shove two Twizzlers between his lips to concentrate. “I make idiotic mistakes,” he replied, his gaze fixed on the screen. “I do idiotic things and try to fix them by doing more idiotic things. And, I don’t know, sometimes I feel more or less human than most people. I feel less human because I can’t be what everyone expects, and I feel more human because I don’t want to be. It’s uselessness, though . . . being human. Maybe that doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s actually kind of genius,” I admitted. “Please tell me those are your own thoughts and not something you read or watched, because I’m honestly super impressed.”
He grabbed the remote and shut off the movie. “My own thoughts. Swear.”
“Let me ask you something,” I said. He turned to me completely. I could see my reflection inside his eyes. “Do you think Carla was a mistake?”
If there was one thing I couldn’t do, it was surprise him. He had a Reggie radar, homed in on directness. He was bold all of a sudden, staring at me in the nonpimple way. “It’s hard to say. I wanted to feel, and she helped with that. But now I want to feel long-term. Preferably without Prozac. If I had done things right, it would never have been with her.”
Blue eyes. Dull, boring, cheating blue eyes that lied and hurt and took. That’s what Snake was. He was what was in his eyes. But for the first time, they were honest. And genuine. And raw. They were the tangible equivalent of how The Snake Project made me feel.
He wanted the world to stop, I think. If only for him, if only for the split second he touched my face with his sticky fingertip. When he let his hand fall to the bed, his earth spun again—?wildly, brashly, beyond what he could handle. At least, I wanted to believe that it did. I didn’t want to be the only one whose world wouldn’t stand still, the only one who took pills to slow it down.
“Why was she crying the other day?” I asked.
“Her aunt Henrietta died. They were pretty close.”
“I remember. She came to all of Carla’s birthday parties when we were kids.”
“Her wake was tonight. I wasn’t invited, no shocker there.”
“I’m sure her family members aren’t big fans of the loser who knocked up their precious debutante.”
“I’m sick of everyone blaming me,” he said, raking his hand through his messy hair. “Her dad despises me on unnatural levels. She won’t stand up to him. I get caught in the middle. It’s a whole lot of drama that I never signed up for.”
“Slow your roll, Mr. Ego.” I pulled a Twizzler from the plastic bag. “Mr. Banks has always been a jerk. Seriously, kids at school used to warn each other about Sir Jerkwad whenever he came for career day. You’re not the only one he has it in for. Trust me. And Carla has always been his little princess, sweet pea, sugarplum. Standing up to him isn’t even a concept in her world.”
The DVD screensaver logo bumped from corner to corner of the screen. “I don’t want to live in her world,” he whispered.
“It’s too late for that.”
“I know, but—” He leaned forward. I could tell he wanted to make some grand confession of harbored feelings that I really couldn’t hear, because I wasn’t sure how much I hated him. And if I didn’t hate him enough, I would let myself listen. He watched me with eyes that were slowly becoming more and more . . . interesting. “If I wasn’t in this situation with Carla, and all you knew of me was that I listened to the Renegade Dystopia and liked anti-dates and filmmaking, would you maybe hate me in the good way?”
It wasn’t a confession, but it provoked one. That time, it was me who was on the spot. “There may have been a microscopic possibility that you would have gotten a second anti-date.”
He chewed the end of his Twizzler, watching me like he knew he couldn’t wish for more. “I guess we’ll never know, will we?”
“I guess not.”
After it got dark, I went downstairs. Snake promised he would show me the end of the movie when it was ready, but I doubted I would come back again. Something felt off about being near him. Maybe because I knew he wanted too much, and I wanted too much, and we were too damn stubborn to admit it to ourselves, much less each other.
He stopped at the doorway and stared like he wanted to ask me to stay. I knew he wouldn’t.
“I’m glad you came over.” He stepped closer, breathing his strawberry Twizzler breath all over my face. The space between us was cloudy and thick and frightening. “Sorry I’m not original or remarkable enough to earn your respect.”