I close my eyes. ‘Yes. I think so. Thanks, Elsie.’
She shrugs. ‘You looked like you were going to vom right there on the floor. No-one needed to see that. Although, if you did spew over Tom Shaefer, I doubt anyone would complain. He’s a dick. And he can’t play clarinet for shit.’
It takes me a few moments of unhelpful navel-gazing to comprehend that Elsie is actually here, in front of me, not hurrying away or averting her eyes. I gather what remains of my wits before I lose my nerve.
‘Elsie, I’m sorry,’ I say in a rush. ‘I never meant to lie to you. I know I’m useless, and I still don’t even really understand what happened, but I know I did all the wrong things. I hurt your feelings. I’m so, so sorry. For that, and for everything. I’m a terrible friend. Worse than that chemist who injected his assistant with gonorrhoea.’
Elsie’s eyes are fixed somewhere in the maple trees above us. She snaps them back to me with a huff.
‘I just don’t understand why it had to be such a secret!’ she blurts. ‘I tell you everything, Sophia. I thought that you trusted me the same, but clearly you don’t.’ Her whole face collapses, and my insides twist in response. She is not yelling. But two fat tears roll silently down her cheeks, and somehow they are worse than anything.
‘I never thought you saw me as just another moron you had to tolerate. I know I could never keep up with you. But I still wasn’t ready to be left behind.’
‘Elsie, but, you know that’s not true! I trust you more than anyone.’
She tugs her hair distractedly out of its topknot, waves cascading down her back. It looks a little lanker than usual, like her complex hair-care routine has fallen by the wayside. It’s that, more than anything, that makes me feel like complete and total mouse balls.
I try to order my thoughts, but I’m terrified I won’t ever be able to articulate them, that I will stand here struggling uselessly to make myself understood while my best friend walks away. So I just open my mouth and let words pour out. ‘Elsie, I didn’t tell you everything because you know me better than anyone. You know the me that everyone thinks is defective, and I know you see all of that too, but you’ve never tried to fix me. You know the me that maybe I don’t always want to be. Sometimes, Elsie, I really, really want to be able to leave that person aside. But I never can when you’re around, because you never let me forget who I am. And sometimes I love you for that. And sometimes, I really don’t.’
Elsie sits down on the nearest bench. The maple-strewn courtyard is quiet now, only a couple of stragglers still skipping out of the building. A few people glance at us; Elsie in her too-short uniform, angrily swiping at her tears, and me, looking, I’m fairly certain, like some expressionless brown garden ornament. I ignore them all.
She crosses her arms. ‘I don’t understand. You are all sorts of incredible. You know that? I’ve never been jealous, not exactly, but d’you know how badly I wish I could do even a bit of what you can?’
I sit down beside her with a sigh. I still feel shaky, and so bone-tired, like the last half hour has drained whatever reserves of energy my body has been using to function. ‘Elsie, you know, I have these moments when I’m sort of … proud of myself. There are so many things I want to do. But then I think, like – why? What’s there to be proud of, if other people only see the faulty bits? What if all I am is the problems that need fixing? You know, Perelman’s mentor said that if this was still the Soviet era he would’ve been forced into a psych hospital by now –’
‘Argh, this guy again? Sophia, seriously, when did you get so fixated on a morose personality with a beard? Maybe you should check if Mr Grayson has a nephew?’ She sniffles, wiping her nose on her sleeve. ‘That Russian guy – who’s to say that things aren’t going to plan for him? Okay, so maybe no-one else gets his plan, but why do they need to? What difference does it make? Why would you want to not be you?’
I hug my knees to my chest. ‘I don’t. Not all the time, anyway. I just wish I wasn’t such a giant freak with all the rest of it, too.’
Elsie pivots on the bench, turning around to face me. ‘Sophia. I don’t think you need fixing,’ she says, her voice adopting that measured, low-octave doctor tone that I’m starting to suspect she’s been practising. ‘But I do think you need help. You need to talk to someone, and I mean, properly talk. You need to be honest with your folks, and with your counsellor … you don’t have to pretend to be okay, Rey.’
I clutch my knees even tighter, the sharp points of my patellas digging into my forearm. ‘Elsie, I think … I know.’ The words, inexplicably, seem to lift something heavy and burdensome from my chest. ‘I know I’m not okay. And I know all of my stuff has stopped you doing normal things, too. I never meant to hold you back –’
Elsie brushes a stray strand of my hair behind my shoulder. ‘That was a shitty thing to say to you. I’ve never regretted pulling you out of that corner in music, not for one second. And if you and I have maybe been a bit … well, isolated, it’s not really fair to blame you.’ She snorts. ‘Believe me, I’ve done a bang-up job of keeping people away all on my own.’
I sigh. ‘Christ, Elsie. We really are hopeless, aren’t we?’
She grins. ‘Yeah. But maybe social competence is overrated.’ Her cheeks flush, a peculiar deep crimson. She tugs uneasily at her hair. ‘Trust me, snogging Marcus Hunn did nothing to improve my social skills, though I think at least fifty per cent of the responsibility for that is on him,’ she says in a tumble of words. ‘I mean, dude, be less insipid, you know? I might as well have been practising with a cantaloupe.’
‘Elsie!’ I hiss, dropping my feet to the cobblestones with a thud. ‘Marcus? When did this happen? And why –’
She waves a dismissive hand. ‘It was nothing. Momentary insanity. Well, y’know, three moments of insanity. I don’t know what I was thinking.’ She gives me a sheepish grin. ‘Maybe I just didn’t want you to overtake me in everything. But I realised … well.’ She shrugs. ‘We’ve done okay together. Haven’t we?’
I smile. ‘Yes. We probably won’t leave here with dozens of signatures in our yearbooks. But I’ve just … always been glad that you picked me to be your friend.’
Elsie is silent, a quiet smile on her face. She knocks her knee into mine. ‘So. Do you wanna come over tonight? We can watch the SyFy channel and make fun of technical inaccuracies. You can throw Pringles at the screen every time someone explains the physics of a wormhole wrong.’
‘Not sure I’m in the mood for bad science, Els.’