C
I’m really not in the mood to meet up with Thea now. My stomach keeps doing somersaults as I walk to the library. She’s just so—so off-putting. Everything she says seems rude to me, even if it could always be excused. Obviously, I never say anything about it, but being around her just feels like I can never really relax. Like this constant pressure at the back of my mind to prove myself in her eyes and become somehow worthy of even just a pleasant smile. But so far, I haven’t had any luck with that and unfortunately, I booked the study space at the library over a week ago, so there’s no going around that now.
I’m prepared. In between drama club and hanging out with my new little brother, I found enough time to search for sources online, drawing up a whole list of books we could use. Fortunately, I didn’t have access to them, because I’m not at university yet, but a lot of them are available at our local library. I’m not going to tell Thea that, though. To her, it’s just going to look like I really know my way around a library, finding all the relevant books quickly.
The library’s never actually busy, not in the same way a café or an ice rink may be. But for how busy it can get, it’s definitely busy. Almost every table has somebody sitting at it, hunched over books, tablets and laptops, scribbling away on notepads, talking in hushed voices.
It’s late afternoon on Friday. I’m sure most of the people from my year, most of my friends, are out right now, having fun. But Thea said today was the only day she was free this week, so I agreed to come. And anyway, it’s not like I’d be invited to anything yet. Besides maybe the party tomorrow. N’s off to a coffee date with Vivi, Lucy, Nur, and Lila; which is actually a small miracle because Lucy practically never agrees to join in on an activity that requires her to sit still for an extended period of time. I’m actually jealous of her right now.
As I make my way to the front desk of the library, I check my phone. Thea just texted me that she’s waiting by the study space. I didn’t even know she knew where it is.
“Hi,” I say, smiling as I stop before the desk, meeting the eyes of the middle-aged woman behind it. Her name is Martha, and she’s known me since I was six. I used to practically live here.
But the smile she gives in turn isn’t the one she usually greets me with. “Hi, how can I help you?” she asks instead of offering the study-space key like she usually did when I came here with Vivi.
It only occurs to me then that she doesn’t know Noel. My face goes impossibly hot and through the rushing of blood in my ears, I hear myself stutter, “I—I booked the study space for two hours now.”
“Right!” she says, opening a drawer and getting out the key. “Name and library card?”
“Noel Boutin.” Meekly, I hand over my card and watch as she makes sure everything’s alright.
Eventually, she hands me the key. “Okay, here you go. Do you know where the study space is?”
Of course I do, I want to say, but keep my mouth shut. I was prepared for Vivi not to recognise me, but this feels different. I talked to her sometimes, when the days of reading at the library during summer break got long and lonely. I even showed her my grades once, after my parents had told me that I had to get better, and she said she was proud of me.
Tears well up in my eyes at the memory and I give a short shake of my head before grabbing the keys and taking off. I didn’t even know she meant that much to me. And now, can I even tell her? I’d have to ask N to do it for me. Do I want N to know something like that about me?
Thea is leaning against the wall next to the door of the study space when I come up the stairs. She has her eyes closed and her hands folded in front of her stomach. There are earbuds in her ears and as I come closer, I can hear the low beat of the music.
I’m still contemplating whether a tap on the shoulder would give her a fright, when her eyes open abruptly and she takes out her earbuds.
“Hi.” Her voice is just the same as it is in class: flat. With a quick movement, she picks up her bag and shoulders it.
“Hi.” I watch her, taken aback by the abruptness of her ‘awakening’ and the continued lack of emotions.
She turns, then, and gives me an unreadable look. Immediately, my shoulders tense as my thoughts fall over themselves, trying desperately to figure out what I did wrong this time. But there’s nothing. I’m on time, I communicated politely and concisely, never bothering her more than I needed to, but never making her feel like I didn’t want to be around her, either. Even right now, my expression is carefully neutral as I stare at her, trying and failing to read her expression.
She cocks her head sideways. “You gonna unlock the door?” she asks, and her voice isn’t even particularly dry, but it makes me flush with heat all over.
“Oh, sorry.” Hurriedly, I unlock the door, stepping into the study space and holding it open for her.
The room isn’t large. There’s a table with four chairs, carpet flooring and stylish sound-absorbing panels against the wall. The room smells of the carpet more than it smells of books, but the large windows at the far wall are not meant to be opened. Not by us, anyway.
“So, how was your day?” I hear myself ask nervously.
She shrugs, putting her bag down on the table to start unpacking her tablet and notepad. “School.” When I just stare, she stops, hesitating before she says, “I drew a little during class. I liked the weather today, the sky looked pretty until it became cloudy.”
She sits down, her expression changing from confused to expectant.
“Right,” I say, moving to sit down next to her, but stopping short. “Is it okay if I sit next to you? I think that makes it easier to do group work, because we’ll be able to show each other things. I always used to do that with—” Vivi. I manage to catch myself only barely in time. I’m talking too much. Vivi once told me that’s something I seem to do when I get really nervous, and it makes sense, I suppose. Trying to mask my discomfort by forcing myself to behave even more like an extrovert—
Thea looks up from her tablet. “You make a compelling case.” So she noticed it as well.
I make myself go on anyway. Freezing won’t ever help you in social interactions. “I thought we should probably start by getting some books and looking through them, just to see what we’re working with and to get a more accurate idea of our topic.” Too many words. Fortunately, I haven’t sat down yet.
“Uhm, I’ll just go get some books if that’s alright, and you can start your research online, if you wanna, so we won’t leave our stuff behind?”
She nods, and I can’t help but get the impression that the corners of her mouth twitch.
I force myself to move at a casual pace as I leave, even though I want to flee the room. Once I’m out of sight, I lean against a wall briefly, to close my eyes and take a deep breath.
Calm down, Chloe. Thea won’t do anything to you. She’s just—different. Maybe she doesn’t like you, so what if she does. It’s none of your concern. In this body, it doesn’t matter as much what people think, not yet anyway. You’ve still got enough time to convince everybody, this is only just the start.
Only as I push off the wall again, my heartbeat slowed down to a more comfortable pace, do I realise that I referred to myself as ‘Chloe’, not ‘Noel’ as I’m supposed to. But I brush it off, for now. I’ve got more pressing concerns at the moment; I’ve got the rest of my life to get used to the new name.
I gather the books efficiently. I know my way around the library, and having copied the titles and identification codes into a document on my phone, it takes me only ten minutes to gather the first five books as well as two more promising ones I happened across.
Awkwardly balancing the stack against my chest, I finally return to Thea.
When I enter the room, she’s watching her reflection in the dark window, chin propped against her hand. She looks up upon seeing me, pulling the corners of her mouth into this tired half-smile that shows goodwill rather than real emotion. It almost makes me stop short, but I’m already setting down the books, a little gassed from climbing up the stairs.
“Some light reading,” I joke half-heartedly.
To my surprise, she takes one of the books and turns it in her hands, expecting it curiously. “Thanks for finding these,” she says in a low voice, making brief eye-contact as she speaks. “I doubt I would’ve been even half as quick.”
In an attempt to mask my surprise, I give a nervous chuckle and wave it off. But my thoughts are racing, because this isn’t the behaviour I expected from her. And somehow, her being nice to me, or at least polite, is even more off-putting than continuously getting the cold shoulder.
As I sit down, an uncomfortable silence settles around us, and I busy myself by opening the first book that hadn’t been on my list and opening it at the table of contents, to have a closer look at the topics discussed in the book.
But I can’t concentrate. There’s no sound of pages being turned next to me, and from the corner of my mind, I feel that she’s watching me. It makes me antsy. I’m about to say something—not about her behaviour, but something general, to fill the silence—when suddenly, her voice cuts through my thoughts.
“I’m making you uncomfortable, aren’t I?”
Immediately, my heart beats faster. She’s right, obviously, but I’d never meant for her to find out. So I do what I usually do in situations like these: I don’t exactly gaslight, but try to deflect and deter. “What’d give you the impression?”
But Thea isn’t buying it. Which, I guess I should’ve seen that coming. Her expression doesn’t even budge. “I followed you earlier, because I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to do, but then I saw you leaning against the wall—” She breaks off as if not speaking the rest could save me the embarrassment.
I pull my lips into a rueful smile. “It’s just been a long day, y’know? I had to gather my energy for a second—didn’t want to make you feel like I wouldn’t give my best for this project.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You’re tense. You keep glancing in my direction and you flinched just now when you heard my voice.”
For some reason, her insistence on breaking appearances and exposing my private thoughts makes me angry. “Well, how am I supposed to feel if you keep treating me this way?” I say, keeping my tone even in spite of my racing heart. “I don’t know about you, but personally, I don’t particularly enjoy being around people who obviously don’t like me.”
Her face goes slack. “I don’t not like you,” she says, and her voice is uncharacteristically quiet.
“But why did you act that way, then?” It doesn’t make sense that she’s denying it now. There’s nobody watching, there’s nobody here to perform for. There’s no need to play nice!
Her eyebrows draw together in an expression of helplessness. “I never realised that you cared.”
“Why would anybody not care about being treated nicely?”
Her shoulders tense visibly, and she takes a deep breath before saying, “I—I’m sorry, you’re usually so quiet and—I never realised you—I don’t usually go out of my way to be nice to people, but I never meant any offence by it. I assumed you didn’t want to talk to me that much anyway, so we could just—keep it low.” Nervously, she wets her lips. Her eyes are a little wider than usual, staring at me like a deer caught in the headlights.
Somebody pulled the ground from underneath my feet and now I’m falling free. There’s a vague sense of nausea tugging at my stomach. Because I never realised she cared. I’m suddenly painfully aware that I went into this conversation expecting to have a fight, having to stand my ground against somebody who only wants to show me how much they dislike me for no reason that has anything to do with me. But looking at her, I can’t help believing her, which actually makes me the person who went into this interaction looking for a fight; looking to show Thea that I don’t like her.
Because that’s the way I feel about her, isn’t it? I kept telling myself that she just made me nervous, but really, if I’m totally honest with myself, I can’t deny that I resented her for not liking me. Which isn’t logical, and I never acted on it—until now.
My shoulders slump. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have reacted like that. It’s not like you were really doing anything.” She really wasn’t. I was reading into it. I wanted proof that she didn’t like me, because it’s what I’ve been subconsciously expecting for over a year now. I wanted her not to like me so I could finally have grounds not to like her in turn.
“Sorry—I was being a bitch.”
But Thea shakes her head slowly. “No, it’s good that you told me.” She looks down at her hands on the table, playing with her fingers. “I’m—not always good at reading people, that’s why I keep to myself usually. So it’s nice to have clarity now.”
I give a short nod, relief making my shoulders light. “I suppose I’m just really afraid that people might hate me. I worry too much.”
She looks up. “For what it’s worth, you seem like a pretty nice person. Not a lot of people would be willing—or even able to talk about their feelings like this.”