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Remembering back, I was pretty hard on him. I mean, using an Android
phone doesn’t make him an introverted burner who probably won’t ever
have a job or a valid driver’s license at the same time. I didn’t mean that.
And I’m sure he didn’t mean what he said when he called me a Steve
Jobs cultist who worships inferior technology because I’m too much of a
bubblehead high on apps to know the difference.
On second thought, no. I like the truce we have going on today. The
letters can wait.
I walk over and sit down on his bed, bringing up my legs to sit crosslegged.
He kicks off his shoes and lies down sideways on the bed,
supporting his head on his hand.
I take the sandwich and peel off the top crust while he pops a grape in
his mouth.
I stare down at the food. I’m hungry, but I’m also tired and suddenly
feel like I don’t give a shit. One of us has to start talking.
He wants something true? Something he doesn’t know?
“I didn’t have many friends in grade school,” I tell him, still keeping my
eyes down. “I had one. Delilah.”
He’s quiet, and I know he’s staring at me.
“She had this shaggy blonde hair that kind of looked like a mullet, and
she wore these frumpy corduroy skirts,” I went on. “They looked thirty
years old. She wasn’t cool and she didn’t dress right. She was alone a lot
like me, so we played together at recess, but…”
I narrow my eyes, trying to harden them as the image of her comes to
the forefront in my mind.
“But I got tired of not hanging out with the popular kids,” I admit. “I’d
see them hanging on each other, laughing and surrounded by everyone, and
I felt…envious. Left out of something better. I felt like I was being laughed