Matters of Circumstance (6 page)

“Actually.” Farrah looked down at the book, a little embarrassed. “I—I think there’s something kind of endearing about them. It’s kind of sweet, the things they put up with, how they’re so eager to please—”

“Endearing? Are you kidding me?”

“Well, you probably hated it,” she said, wrestling her crazy emotions down to look him in the eye casually. “The guys in my class are all complaining that they want some really macho knight in shining armor, the air of mystery and danger—something to make them look good as a gender, you know? The girls agree, too, but I don’t know. I’m weird ‘cause I always root for the underdog.”

Neal raised an eyebrow and quipped, “You sound pretty passionate, are you thinking of writing a book about it?”

“No, someone’s already done that—” she gestured to said book with another wry smile “—I’m just trying to make a point: everybody seems to prefer the tall, dark and handsome type, but I’ve always wanted to choose the best friend who’s always been there, or—you know—the nice person. So I can kind of see what’s going on in this book, in an extreme sort of way.”

At this point Farrah knew she wasn’t making much sense. She knew she was talking too much, and the way it wouldn’t stop was like word vomit. If Neal’s expression was any indication, then he realized it, too. It made heat flame in her cheeks.

She gritted her teeth.
‘Shut up,’
she told herself.
‘Just shut up right now.’

“You know what I think?” Neal said finally.

She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to ask, but she did anyway, “What?”

With an enigmatic smile, he reached out and patted her on the cheek. “I think all this media brainwashing we’re surrounded with is getting to you. Take it from a real person—in their own way most guys are both, not one or the other.” And he nodded several times, as if to further accentuate this point.

She didn’t expect it to, but that was when it hit her, bulldozing her consciousness with all the force of a semi screaming down the highway.

Neal was like that. He was exactly like that. He was both.

What he said made perfect sense, but for what felt like the first time in her life Farrah was utterly speechless.

“Neal, I have the growing pains and weight loss, too,” she said as soon as she was at his house and helping to feed his wings through the slits in his t-shirt.

He really needed the help these days, because his wings seemed to have acquired a mind of their own. They randomly twitched and flexed even at school, where he tried so hard to keep them folded and unnoticeable. Farrah’s didn’t give her this problem, but she also didn’t build the strength in hers like he did, either.

She got whapped in the face with his right wing when it finally shot through the shirt and expanded. Her own only twitched feebly beneath her layers as she clutched at her nose and cursed.

“Jesus Christ! Farrah, I’m so sorry,” he cried, spinning around and lightly touching her arms as her hands slipped from her face. She was not really hurt, just shocked. In all the times she had helped him (and she had been doing it pretty often these days), this sort of thing had never happened. Behind Neal, his wings were opening and closing in agitation. She knew that he was genuinely concerned about her.

“No, I’m okay,” she said, pushing him off. “It just surprised me, that’s all.” She lifted her head and smiled at him reassuringly.

Neal watched her for a couple more seconds, but eventually let it go. “I am sorry, though. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“I know, and everything’s fine. We’re good.”

“So what did you just say about growing?” he asked, seemingly eager to change the subject.

Usually it was her. What a nice change.

“Just that I’m feeling growing pains, too, and I’ve started losing weight.”

“You have? Oh, well, it has been about six weeks for you—here, feel what it’s doing to me.” He held out his arm, but she just looked at it.

“What about it?”

“Try hold it up.”

“Oh, okay.” She touched the underside of his forearm, and felt it when he stopped supporting himself. She had never consciously compared it to what he had felt like before, but she knew that this was lightweight for anybody. It wasn’t that he was skinny—there were actually modest muscles in his arms and abdomen—he was just… light.

As if his very bones had been hollowed.

Farrah’s eyebrows shot up as she realized this, and he pulled his arm away. “I actually fell slower than usual today,” he said. “It’s probably a combined effort of the muscle-building and losing all this weight. While I’m probably going to have to start taking calcium supplements since I can’t afford to lose any more, short flights might actually be possible by the end of the year.” Then he glanced at her hoodie and made a face. “And no offense, but your control wings are pathetic.”

“I know,” said Farrah. “And I’ve been meaning to ask: should I keep doing nothing?”

“I’m actually afraid I might have damaged your ability to build strength in them,” he said somberly. “Obviously the experiment was a success, but you should start exercising them as soon as possible.”

The intensity of Neal’s gaze made her falter. “O-okay. I will.”

For absolutely no reason at all, they kept looking at each other. Farrah had never thought it possible to do as they said in the books and get lost in another’s eyes, but right now she literally couldn’t think of anything except
blue.
Blueblueblue.

Then Neal’s father walked by singing
Young Love
by Air Supply in an off-key undertone, and the moment was over.

“Hey Dad,” said Neal, cheery as always.

“Hiya Neal—listen, if your mother calls I’m in my bathroom, okay?”

“Sure thing. I’ll tell her.”

Only at that moment did Farrah realize that he had been using that response a lot more lately.
Sure thing
was her default; she was famous for it.

She waited until the door to his dad’s bathroom shut to simper, “People have been saying that you’ve started talking like me, but I never believed them until now.”

Neal grinned back with a knowing gleam in his eyes. “What? I say ‘sure thing’ once and all of a sudden I’m talking like you? I thought you were less judgmental than that, Farrah.”

“No, now that I think about it, you have been talking like me these days. More than a few times.” This line struck her as very flirtatious, but while her mind was sounding alarms, reminding her again and again that things weren’t like that for Neal—that he acted the same with everyone—her body just wasn’t listening. Or perhaps it was that, for once, Farrah didn’t want to be held back. Even if she was rejected, at least she would know that she hadn’t pretended like what she felt wasn’t special.

Because it was special. Neal was her hero, her confidant, her support, the friend who didn’t care about superficial stuff as long as she was wholly herself. From the start, he had always been exactly what she needed—Farrah would have to be brain-dead if she wasn’t smitten.

“Or maybe,” he said with a mock-thoughtful expression. “It’s that
you’ve
begun to talk like
me
and since you’re popular everybody just assumes that it’s the other way around.”

The only problem was that while Neal was always there for her, it never seemed to go the other way. Farrah got the feeling that his support—his emotional foundation, if you will—was so diversified throughout his friends and family that one person would never be enough. She had always told herself she was okay with that as long as she was a part of that crowd, but right now…

Right now she really wasn’t.

Farrah snorted. “Don’t tell me you have an inferiority complex.” If he was, then he needed to look in the mirror. Only an idiot wouldn’t realize how great Neal was.

“How can I, when you like me?”

He was full-on leering now, and instead of feeling anything else Farrah just wanted to smack it off his charismatic face.

“Don’t give me that look,” he said confidently. “Just admit it: you
like
me.”

“Why would I do something like that without any sort of reassurance? It’d be like walking straight over the edge of an emotional cliff.”

“Happens to the best of us, Farrah my dear. And besides, I don’t see why I should offer you my condolences when you’ve never verbally reassured anybody. I had to figure it out on my own. Why should I let you have it easy?”

“Because you’ve already seen me in a bra.”

“While I was saving you from a mental breakdown. They cancel.”

Farrah rolled her eyes and bluffed, “Oh yeah, like that little speech back there didn’t give it all away, anyhow.”

“What did it give away, then? You tell me.”

Shit, he saw right through her. “Fine, even though it’ll make you look like a—”

“Uh-huh. That’s exactly what I thought.” Neal took a step back and crossed his arms. “You have no idea what I’m thinking.”

That got her. Just like at the bathroom by Joe’s, he was so collected, and she was so… not.

“Yeah, well it doesn’t matter if I don’t know, does it? When you’ve got a hundred different people to depend on, why settle for one?” she exploded. “If I had been Ruby, or Shellie, or Michael—
anybody
—we’d still be in the same position. We understand what each other’s going through, and we’re friends because you heard the rumors and put two and two together, but that’s it. I’m just another variable.”

There was a silence so heavy that it could have flattened her like one of those penny-pinching machines, stamping a whole new face onto her profile as if everything she had been before never existed. Then Neal said, “You’ve known me all this time, and you still believe what I said about listening to rumors around school? Really, Farrah? Maybe I’ve given you too much credit.”

“Why else would you pay attention to me?” she cried. “You don’t give a rip about being popular, and you were perfectly happy with your life before! I know you don’t care about gossip, but for all I know the one time you listened to anything about anybody was the time it was about me slouching around school in a hoodie. I really don’t know how you found me—maybe you were talking to Ruby or something, but there’s no reason to talk about me, so…” Farrah threw her arms out and then let them drop to her sides with a dull smack, her angry fire thoroughly doused by her defeat. “I don’t know.”

All she knew was that she was here right now, and even though they were fighting there was nowhere else she wanted to be.

She wanted to tell him that, she really did, but even thinking about it made her throat tighten. It was a matter of pride, because she felt like an open book and he
wasn’t
. She wanted a level playing field, once and for all.

Suddenly Neal’s wings expanded and snapped back against his torso. His hand almost made it to his neck, but then he stopped it and shoved it in his jeans pocket. “You’re thinking way too much about it, Farrah. Just jump to a conclusion, for once,” he said stiffly.

She already had, several times. She was too afraid of being wrong to say it aloud. “Why don’t you say it yourself, if I’m being so stupid?”

“The same reason you were never planning on saying anything to me?”

Scared.

That was the first word that came to mind. Neal, who had always been the one to comfort her, scared—she had such a hard time imagining it, and yet…

Her face was hot, but one look at his revealed pink, as well. His whole body was tense, waiting. She had never seen him like this. It was always easier talking about someone else than yourself, and in a way he had saved her by announcing what she felt.

Didn’t she owe him a rescue now?

“You wouldn’t have noticed something was up with me unless you had been watching yourself,” she said slowly, carefully, hoping that she didn’t sound like a conceded moron, and also that her voice wasn’t trembling where she couldn’t fix it. “But the only reason you would have been watching is if I had done something to interest you, though we had never met or talked. And when I started showing the same signs you had, you decided to approach me. You—all along, you… liked me.” The last words came out as a whisper: a shocked, partially elated whisper.

“It’s stupid, I know,” he muttered, looking at the ground and flexing the fist that wasn’t in his pocket. “But Ruby talked about you sometimes, while I was over. Said how refreshingly down to earth you were, and that you were courteous to anyone who talked to you. I couldn’t believe the school would actually recognize someone like that.”

Farrah felt a sudden surge of affection for Ruby. The next time she forgot her breakfast, she was going to bring something really nice to show her gratitude for that loyalty. She didn’t feel like she deserved it.

That was probably why the gesture hit so hard.

“So you do listen to gossip sometimes,” was all that left her mouth.

Neal’s face looked as red as hers felt, and while his smile was tiny it was also heartfelt and easy on the eyes. “Ruby’s a friend, and she knew you. I was willing to listen, because that’s not really gossip.”