Daniel, Deconstructed, page 9
I know that they’re in a band, and that they play drums. I know that they’re nonbinary and use they/them pronouns. I know now that they also LARP.
“Do you make your own gear or do you buy it?” I hear Phoebe ask as they play.
“Most of it I build myself,” is Gabe’s response. “I’ve had a few pieces commissioned over the years, but I like to make my own stuff when I can.”
Interesting. “How long have you been into LARP?” Phoebe asks next.
I like this. Being an observer, a fly on the wall. I don’t have as much to be self-conscious about when no one’s paying any attention to me. I can just listen, and learn.
“Since I was a junior,” Gabe answers. “My ex-girlfriend introduced me to it, but I was already into cosplay, so it wasn’t much of a jump, you know?”
Cosplay. And girlfriend? Ex-girlfriend. Noted.
“What about you?” Gabe asks.
“I started my sophomore year. A friend got me into it.”
“Nice.” Gabe nods, and then turns to me. “And you?”
I’m too stunned to respond. I forgot they could still see me. It’s jarring to be so suddenly engaged.
“Oh. Um, since I was twelve,” I say, stumbling over my words. “Well, I didn’t start making stuff and getting really into it until later, but that’s the first time I came.”
“He was the friend I was talking about,” Phoebe adds. “We were dating at the time.”
Gabe’s eyebrows shoot to their hairline. It’s the same expression people usually get when Phoebe or I mention the brief moment in time when we thought dating each other was a good idea because it “made sense.”
“We only dated for three weeks,” Phoebe adds. “So it isn’t awkward or anything. And we’re still friends, obviously.”
She isn’t downplaying that, either. We actually did only date for three weeks, which was exactly the amount of time it took for us both to realize we were incompatible romantically. I’ve heard it said that no breakup is truly mutual, but I suspect that only applies to allistic ones, because—in the rare instance I do think back to our brief attempt at a relationship—what comes to mind is a lackluster Yeah, that was a thing once. And I know Phoebe doesn’t think about it much, either, because if she did I would hear about it more. Phoebe doesn’t have much of a filter.
“So, we’re all single then...” Gabe says, nodding absently. “Nice.”
Yes, I think to myself. Very nice indeed...
* * *
After the last session of the season there’s always a big wrap party to celebrate the game. I never stay for that. To me, seeing everyone shed their characters and costumes underneath the bright warehouse lights, with the fog machines and the neon strobe lights switched off, kills the magic and totally ruins the vibe. It’s a glaring reminder that this is all pretend.
And yet, when Gabe asks if I’m going to stick around for it, I’m severely tempted to say yes. It’s only the fact that I have to drop off Phoebe tonight—who might actually hate parties more than I do—that keeps me from agreeing.
“Bummer,” Gabe says with a whistle. They’ve got their jacket hanging off one shoulder and their helmet tucked under the other arm, resting against their hip. “Anyway. You two should come to my workshop sometime.”
Phoebe lights up. “You have a workshop?”
Gabe nods.
“Let’s go!” Phoebe exclaims. It’s the most enthusiastic I’ve ever seen her.
“Yeah?” Gabe looks at her, and then they both turn expectantly to me.
This is a lot at once.
“Sure,” I manage. “I’d be down to hang out sometime.”
Gabe smiles. “Got a phone?” I nod. “Good. You should put my number in it.”
* * *
“What happened to not trusting a Net-Knight?” I ask Phoebe as we head back to my car. I’ve got Gabe’s number programmed into my phone, a fact I’m still struggling to wrap my head around. It feels like it’s burning a hole in my pocket.
“Okay, so firstly, your Gabe is a Junior Net-Knight—”
“A technicality—”
“—who incidentally really came through tonight. Secondly, that was before I knew said Junior Net-Knight had a workshop.”
“So what? A workshop is really not that big of a deal.”
“Come on, Daniel! I want to at least see it! You saw the gear they had on. That could only come out of a top-tier workshop.”
She does have a point. I wouldn’t mind seeing it either, honestly. But for once I’m being much more cautious than Phoebe is, and I’m more than a little hesitant to visit some stranger’s home.
Even if said stranger is alarmingly charismatic. Even if said stranger isn’t really that much of a stranger at all.
“If you really want to see it, you should. You don’t need me to go along.”
“Yes, I do. Because, in case you didn’t notice, you’re the one they really want to have over. I’m the plus-one.”
I hadn’t noticed that, actually.
“By the way,” Phoebe adds, “I think your Net-Knight friend has a crush on you.”
“What makes you say that?” I ask.
“Everything,” she says simply, as if that is at all a satisfactory explanation.
“That doesn’t really tell me anything,” I point out.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You’re smart. Besides,” Phoebe adds, “I could be wrong. I mean, I’m not. But I could be. So if you want to know for certain, we both know who you should ask.”
“Yeah, that’ll happen.”
“Oh, good!”
“That was sarcasm.”
“Ah. Nicely done.”
“Thank you.”
The very thought of someone like Gabe having anything approaching romantic feelings for me makes me literally laugh out loud. There’s no way in heck that’s even remotely possible.
Not when they’ve already met Mona.
Chapter 10
I love texting. It’s so much simpler a means of communicating than talking. There’s no body language or tone to decipher, just words. The trouble with text conversations for me is that I have no idea how to initiate them. Which is why, for the entire week leading up to the first day of school, Gabe’s number sits unused in my phone.
Not that I don’t think about it. Every. Single. Day. Because I do. A lot. Several times a day, in fact. From Monday to Sunday night this big, tangled knot of discombobulated thoughts and feelings just sits in my head, shoved into its own corner where I can ignore it, but not completely forget that it’s there. But I can’t figure out what I would text that doesn’t sound ridiculous, or like I’m trying too hard. Or like I’m not trying hard enough. I don’t even know what it is I actually want to say in the first place. Every time I think about Gabe my thoughts derail and become so jumbled that I can’t even start to untangle them. How much of Gabe is Zee-Four? How much of Zee-Four is in the real Gabe? How could I not have realized they were the same freaking person? And now that I know they are, what about those feelings I thought I had for Zee-Four?
With the beginning of school looming, I have an entirely new set of problems to worry about.
The night before, I stop by my sister’s shop.
My sister was named after Nina Simone, the iconic singer and civil rights activist who both of my parents absolutely adore. She opened her shop about a year ago. She’s always had a strong passion for hair; if she were autistic I’d call it her special interest. She’s good at it, too. Always has been. And after working her ass off to save up the money, putting herself through 1,550 hours of cosmetology training, getting her license, and apprenticing at other shops, she was finally able to open up one of her own.
I couldn’t be more proud of her. But our mom, on the other hand, well, let’s just say she measures the success of her children by a different standard. It’s why Simone doesn’t come around as often as Miles. No matter how well her business is doing, no matter how much her client base is growing, Mom will always find a way to steer the conversation to her love life, or lack thereof.
Simone has been cutting my hair since before she went to school for it. She’s the only one I trust with it, even when I was her guinea pig. I usually come by every two weeks, three during the summer. Today I’m only here for a lineup.
“How’s the wedding planning going?” she asks as I settle into a chair. “I bet you’re sick of it by now, huh?”
“I almost wish they’d just elope already.”
She chuckles. Simone didn’t do what she was supposed to do, or, what my folks expected her to do, and they’ve never outright said that they’re disappointed, even though I know that they are. Especially Mom. I can tell because she likes to tell me not to end up like my sister. And if her opinion wasn’t clear before, it was beyond obvious by how much praise and attention she heaps on my brother now that he’s getting married.
“The usual?” she asks, draping the long plastic cape across me.
“Yes, please.”
I’ve been getting the same haircut since I started growing it out: the curly fade, a tried-and-true classic.
“Your hair’s getting long. You should think about putting twists in it.”
“You mean I should think about asking you to put twists in it?”
“I mean, unless you find someone else who’s better.”
“Yeah, right.”
She goes to work. Simone has a gentle hand, which I appreciate because as a general rule I don’t like people being this close to me for extended amounts of time. But aside from the buzzing of the clippers I can almost pretend she isn’t even there.
“How can you tell if someone has a crush on you?” I ask.
The buzzing stops. The question has been weighing on my mind ever since Phoebe suggested that Gabe might have one on me. I still think it’s a ridiculous notion, but I want to base that conclusion on more than just how I feel about it.
“As someone who’s been the object of many a crush, I can tell you confidently that there’s no one way to know,” Simone says from behind me.
Damn.
“However,” she goes on, “there are usually signs.”
Reverse damn. “What are they?”
Simone clicks her tongue. “Someone who has a crush on you is gonna want to spend time with you,” she explains. “They might ask you personal questions to get to know you.”
“Don’t people who want to be friends do that, too?” I’m not sure Gabe and I are friends, but that would at least be easier to accept.
“Maybe,” Simone says. “But the difference is the intent. A crush might come up with reasons to touch you, like tapping your shoulder, or brushing your hand. They’ll probably flirt with you, too.”
“How do I know when someone’s flirting with me?”
“That’s a tough one to answer. Everyone does it differently. Some people don’t do it at all. You could do what I do and assume everyone’s flirting with me. I’m usually right.”
The clippers turn back on, and she works in silence as I mull over what she’s just said.
“Couldn’t I also assume no one’s flirting with me?”
The clippers cut off, and Simone comes around to face me. “I mean, sure. That’s a sadder, boring option, but you do you.”
Do me. Historically, that hasn’t worked out so well for me. I guess what I do is a version of me. Simone wouldn’t understand that. She’s aggressively herself at all times, which is probably why she and Mom don’t get along so great.
“How is Ramona, by the way?” Simone asks abruptly.
That makes me frown. “She’s fine, I think. Wait, what’s that got to do with anything?”
Usually when a subject changes this quickly, it means I missed some sort of connecting context.
“You know, this conversation would be a lot easier if we both stop pretending that’s not who you’re talking about.”
“I’m not talking about Mona. Why would I be talking about her right now?”
“Why wouldn’t you? Oh, that was a serious question. Okay. I’ll play your weird little game. Let’s examine the situation for a bit, shall we? You two are together all the time—”
“That’s not true. She isn’t here now.”
“—and when you aren’t together you’re always texting.”
“That isn’t true, either.”
“Who’s the last person you texted today?”
“You, when I asked if I could come by.”
“Excluding family?”
“Okay, that was Mona,” I admit. “But we were talking about school.”
“Is she the only person you ride to school with?”
“We’re carpooling.”
“You surely see how that doesn’t help your case, don’t you?”
“Friends carpool.”
“Yeah, and how many of her other friends does she regularly carpool with? And I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”
“Wait, what?”
Simone waves the clippers. “Hey, I’m just the messenger. But I know what I see, and I see it a lot. Make of that what you will. The real question is, how do you feel about Mona?”
“What do you mean?”
Simone sighs dramatically. “I mean this with love, but for someone so smart you can be so...not smart, sometimes.”
Oddly enough, that is far from the first time someone has told me that. But Mona cannot have a crush on me. There’s just no way. But if Simone thinks so, then maybe the idea isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds. And that could be bad. I’m the last person she needs to have a crush on. I need to get to the bottom of this, and fast.
The other thing she said barely registers. How I feel about Mona is immaterial. Especially if she’s hinting at my feelings being anything approaching romantic in nature. That isn’t possible. I’d definitely have noticed that by now.
At least, I think so...
* * *
I can’t afford to let what Simone said bother me, at least not tonight. I’m going to need as much rest as I can get, so it’s bedtime at a firm 9:30 p.m., which to my family is basically 6:00 p.m.
Somehow, it still doesn’t feel like enough.
The first day of school is almost always the same. My routine hasn’t changed since the ninth grade. Sunrise is at 6:43 this morning, meaning it’s still dark out when I wake up at five sharp.
Mornings are like swimming pools. I’m not the type to just dive right in. I need to acclimate, dip a toe in, ease into the water at a nice, controlled pace that allows me to adapt to the changes in my immediate surroundings. Which I almost never get to do, because there’s always someone who insists on belly-flopping into the water RIGHT NEXT TO ME and dowsing me in ice-cold chlorine. And then there’s always someone else who is all, It’s much better to just jump in all at once! You get used to it quicker!
That’s why I don’t like pools, but at least I can avoid those. The same can’t be said for mornings, at least not most of them.
Having my own bathroom is a fact for which I am eternally grateful. It means I can proceed through my routine undisturbed and unbothered.
The weather report gives a high of seventy-eight and a low of sixty-one. About what I expected, so I’ve already planned to dress accordingly.
Toeing the line between fashionable and practical takes a considerable amount of work, especially given that I don’t inherently give a solitary damn about fashion, mostly because it seems completely arbitrary. Back-to-school shopping is a chore I don’t look forward to, a necessary evil. Fortunately, Mona and I typically spend the day at the mall, and having her with me makes the whole process bearable at least. I definitely owe my drip to Mona, which she never misses an opportunity to remind me. If I had a choice I would wear the same four outfits every day, one per season. But that is a noticeable oddity, and so I’ve learned to compromise with variations on the same themes.
I do have a few rules. Any article of clothing that makes direct contact with my bare flesh—shirts, boxers—must be tagless. I’m very particular about textures. Flannel, the unofficial uniform of the Minnesotan during the fall and the winter, is a texture that feels exactly like a cheese grater against my skin. I hate the scratchiness, the stiffness, of it. Wearing flannel feels like fighting with my clothes all day long. I’m less particular about colors, although as a general rule I prefer solids. Minimal patterns and maximum pockets. Layers are key, because I need to be able to add and remove as the temperature and humidity change throughout the day.
Breakfast for me consists almost always of two scrambled eggs and a glass of orange juice. Which absolutely irks my mom, who is of the opinion that this is not nearly a heavy or healthy enough breakfast to sustain a growing young man, despite the fact that my last growth spurt was during sophomore summer and according to my pediatrician puberty has essentially wrapped up for me.
The backpack I have now is the same one I’ve had since freshman year. I hate the way new canvas feels and the sound it makes when it rubs other fabrics. If it were up to me I’d still have the same backpack from middle school, but Mom made me get rid of it after she saw that I had taped up the bottom to keep it together. After I eat, I grab it from where I placed it next to my bedroom door, slip into my shoes, and head out to face the day.
* * *
It’s a fifteen-minute drive from my house to school, twenty on the days I pick Mona up first. Which is most days.
The Tri-City School District encompasses, you guessed it, three cities: Golden Valley, New Hope, and Crystal, all of which are technically considered suburbs of Greater Minneapolis, which is the forty-sixth most populous city in the United States. I believe the term is conurbation—a region comprising a number of urban areas that have merged to form one continuous urban area. Suburban sprawl, if you will. I don’t have to drive through too much of it to get to Mona. The Sinclairs only live a few miles away.
