~3 Weeks Ago
8/31- Hey Willow, I’m gonna need a raincheck on whatever crime against humanity you prepared as option 4. I’m not chickening out. I was just called on for something so ridiculous you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. See you later. -Haley
Well… I’d be lying if I said I’m not a bit disappointed, but what’re you gonna do? Shit happens. She seemed excited enough to have lunch with me before, so whatever came up must be important. Right?
Looking over at the still-wrapped BLT with guacamole I had made for her, I grimace. “I blame you.” The sandwich refuses to respond to my taunt, seeing as how it’s a sandwich. “Stupid dumb joke sandwich…”
“As far as entrees go, your friend there isn’t very verbose,” a new voice interrupts my dressing down of a well-dressed, would-be lunch. Thanking my lucky stars that I didn’t turn into a cat person and therefore have no real limitations placed on my curiosity, I slowly crunch through the roof gravel as I search for whoever else is up here. I peek around one of the oversized A.C. units spewing hot air above us and find a woman with dark feathers and suitably goth makeup nibbling on some chips. “Sup,” she says while barely nodding at me, but otherwise not interrupting her whole chilled out snack time vibe. My eyes linger in silence for a moment too long and she clicks her tongue. “If you’re gonna gawk at me, can you please hide behind the A.C. too? I’m kinda doing something here.”
Before I get the chance to ask what she means, a short stocky guy with bull horns peeking out on either side of a dingy brown hat bursts through the roof access door. He looks every which direction for a moment, completely ignoring me while catching his breath. “Have you seen a wannabe My Chameleon Romance groupie anywhere around here!?”
Through just my peripherals, I see the feathered woman shaking her head frantically. “Nope, can’t say I have. Friend of yours?”
“Ew, no, my evil sister…” The man waits for a moment. “Didn’t I hear you talking just a second ago? Who else is up here?”
One of my ears bends down to shield my eyes as the overcast clouds allow the sun to break free for a moment, granting me near-blindness and inspiration bordering on the divine. “Oh, well, I was just finishing up my yoga for the day and I was doing some sun salutations.” I stretch my arms up to the sky, not actually knowing what a yoga pose is supposed to look like, as I loudly declare, “Hello sun! My, you’re looking bright today. I hope you have a radiant and exuberant time… slowly crossing the sky! I… umm… salute you!”
The guy stands in the doorway and watches me make a complete ass of myself before shrugging. “I’ll never get yoga.” With that, he leaves, and once he’s properly out of earshot, the woman three feet away from me breaks out into powerful laughter.
“Sun salutations?” She asks, wiping a tear from her eyes. “I mean, I know fooling Len isn’t exactly a major league sport… but DAMN! And you sold it too! That was despicable!”
As the woman continues cracking up, I cross my arms over… wait, no… under my chest? Huh, that’s pretty fuckin’ awesome. More on this at eleven. Back to our headline, the goth laughing at my incredible improv skills! “Mind telling me why I just lied to your brother?”
She waves off the pouty look my face shifted to on its own as she slowly winds down. “It’s nothing major. This is how we settle disagreements, high stakes hide and seek. He wanted to use our parents' car this weekend to take his girlfriend to the planetarium or some shit, and I said I needed the car at the same time. Now, if he doesn’t find me by the end of lunch, guess who gets the car?” She points both of her own thumbs back at herself like sitcom tv legend Arthur Swanzerelli.
“Oh, do you have big plans this weekend, too?”
“Nope.” The dark-feathered lady’s grin grows even wider. “But I overheard Len spewing some bigoted shit the other day with his friends, so I'll be damned if I let him have his little date.”
“Damn, that’s vindictive… I can dig it.” I sit down on the gravel and the lady’s heavily shadowed eyes narrow. “What? I’m up here anyway, and you don’t seem to share my desire to speak to assorted foodstuffs, so you could use the company.”
“Says you! This is where I come to be alone with my precious potato chips. I call it my spud hole.”
Something about the strange, incredibly deliberate voice she put on the end of that sentence makes my ears twitch. That couldn’t possibly… no… “Was that a–Were you doing a The Fine Location reference?”
“I prefer to think of it as an homage,” she says with a smirk.
“Abed Na-Deer!” I excitedly announce, catching her second ref–homage. “Alright, so you have fantastic taste in TV shows. Good to know.”
“Um, actually, I have fantastic taste in everything, thank you very much.” Her declaration made, she raises a single eyebrow in challenge, which I meet with equal intensity as dramatic high noon music plays in my head. “Pineapples on pizza?”
“Absolutely, not even a question.” She nods in approval and I fire back. “Best place to buy clothes?”
“The soup store, easy. Best movie ever made?”
“Pulp Fiction!”
“Actually, it’s Quack to the Future. Mallard McFly and Duck Brown are cinema treasures. But I won’t hold it against you… You know, it’s gonna be pretty difficult keeping this pace of questioning.”
“Actually, it’s gonna be super easy, barely an inconvenience!”
“Oh, really?”
There’s a pause as the baton is passed back to me where I just look at this woman, completely dumbstruck. “Not to drop another reference… but did we just become best friends?”
The number one customer of our local Goth Topic store cracks into a half laugh, while shaking her head at me. “Girl, I don’t even know your name… but maybe?”
“Oh, fuck, you’re right. I’m Willow. Nice to meet you!” I hold out a hand to shake hers, but half curl my fingers like I’m kind of going for a fist bump because I’m an idiot. Realizing that literally nobody on planet earth still thinks fist bumps are cool, my hand shoots back to my side as a cacophony of different possible gestures float through my mind until I slowly bend at the waist slightly before straightening out. Fuck. Did I just bow?
“Did you just bow?” The woman I just made an ass of myself in front of asks, rudely reading my mind.
“Nope, never happened, and if you say it did, I’m just gonna deny it.”
The girl mercifully trying to hold back another laugh at my expense bows slightly in return. “Whatever you say, Willow. I’m Daphne.”
For the next few minutes, the two of us throw pop culture fixations at one another, trying to see just how many same hats we can fit on our heads like some kind of horrific hive-mind TF2 monster. Until, as the two of us crack up over silly references, my phone rings.
…
Wait, my magic texting box can ring? I don’t think I’ve ever heard my actual ringtone… and I don’t like this. The peppy, poppy tune, accompanied by the words “Baby Back Libs BBQ Sauce Calling” causes my heart rate to spike with a potent blend of eleven herbs and spices of anxiety. The woman sitting next to me witnesses my entire being freeze. “You gonna get that?”
Without thinking, I swipe up on my phone and place it next to my ea–the flat side of my head? Oh! Right! It migrated north, damnit… I move the phone up to my ear properly, not sure how this was gonna work when it was my turn to speak. “Willow, girl, where are you? I saved you a seat.” She… She what? “Tammy, Xan, and I are talking weekend plans. We gotta have you here to at least weigh in. After all, we’re dragging you out with us whether you like it or not. We’re not too proud to resort to kidnapping you!”
Moving the receiver closer to my mouth, I hesitate for a moment. “You saved me a seat?” My voice cracks as I ask this.
There’s a silence that persists after I raise the phone back to my ear and, for a moment, I feel like I missed Libby’s response. “Um… yeah? Of course I saved you a seat. You’ve been eating lunch with us for the past couple of weeks. I kind of figured this was going to be a regular thing.”
A place?
I have a place?
A place with people?
I mean, I know I’m welcome to drop in whenever. Those three have never tried to ditch me or tell me to get lost. Talking to them is… pleasant. More than pleasant, it’s fun. It’s just that I’ve never really thought of myself as someone whose absence gets noticed. Now there’s people who not only realize I’m gone but… care?
“I’ll be right there… Actually, is there an extra seat besides mine?”
The phone call wraps up, and I turn to Daphne. “So, turns out I was supposed to meet some people for lunch. Who knew? Do you wanna join us?”
She shrugs and shakes her head with a slight expression of regret. “I still need to evade Len, so I’m gonna stick out lunch up here. But you go have fun, Bun.”
Part of me wants to keep talking to her, to keep joking around until the bell tolls and sends us back to class. Then I think about Libby, actually going through the trouble of calling me over, and I have to stand up and dust myself off. “Fine, but next time, you have to come sit with us, assuming you’re not trying to torment your brother again, which I will always be in favor of.” Handing over the still wrapped sandwich, I declare, “Here, take this incredibly gay sandwich to keep your spuds company.” Switching to as dramatic a voice as I can muster, I add, “Guess this is bye bye, birdie.”
“Ugh, awful exit line! Go hop down the bunny trail, Willow cottontail!” I share one last laugh with my unexpected new friend before heading back down to Libby and company, and a seat I could call my own.
***
9/1- Good news, Haley, I ended up giving option four to a woman of impeccable taste, so the mystery special didn’t go to waste! Bad news, I’m still absolutely going to make it for you again at some point, so be prepared! Just lmk when you want to cash in this threat coupon! -Willow
9/3- Just checking in to see if all is well with you. If you need anything, even just to talk, let me know! -Willow
9/7- New week, new chance to brave the terror of option four… or any other option… or fuck sandwiches altogether. Can we talk at some point if you’re not busy? -Willow
9/20- Willow, I’m so sorry about going silent for so long, but I finished what I had to and I’m ready to tell you whatever you want to know. Assuming you ever want to speak to me again. I can explain everything. -Haley
9/20- Oh, I have MANY questions for you… but first things first. Option four, final answer? -Willow
9/20- Bring it on. See you at lunch. -Haley
***
As the excruciating word secretions of my history teacher come to an abrupt end, I bounce in my seat with an unenviable mixture of hope and apprehension. Three weeks. It’s literally been longer since I’ve seen Haley than the entire time I knew her before. I have no goddamn clue what I’m going to say. What is someone even supposed to say at this point? I tried to imagine myself as a normal and well-adjusted person–quite a leap for me, I’m aware–and I still come up with nothing. I just know I’m about to put my whole foot in my mouth, which, given the new size of my feetsies, is a real accomplishment.
Regardless of any turmoil, the moment the bell excuses me from the eternal purgatory of a godawful lecturer, I rush up the stairs to get a head start on nervously pacing across the gravel of the roof. I know I should text Libby or Daph and tell them I won’t be at the usual spot, but all of my executive function is currently busy counting and recounting the number of steps it takes to get from one metal vent to the other. Tough work, to be sure, but nobody has to do it.
Five minutes pass, and I finally manage to settle down enough to sit down and wait while staying relatively still.
Five more minutes pass and the pacing resumes.
Five more minutes still and I’ll be quite honest, I’m a bit miffed.
A loud creak sounds as the roof access door is pushed open, drawing my eyes to the source. “I knew I’d find you up here,” Daphne chides as she walks up to me, and I hide my disappointment that it isn’t a certain demon who’s joining me. “If you’re waiting for Haley, I’m afraid she probably isn’t coming.”
“How did you–”
“I know all. Never forget that.” I give her a frustrated look and she sighs. “Last time you were up here, you were waiting for Haley. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out two plus two is seven.”
“So what makes you so sure she’s not coming?” I ask, a bit bitter to be getting this information secondhand.
Daphne pulls out her phone and pulls up an attachment from Tammy. “You weren’t around this morning, so you didn’t see this when Tammy showed the rest of us.” A video starts playing of Haley and… Is that Arnie!? Since when did those two get close? Wasn’t he the one warning me about her a few weeks ago? The duo performs some kinda dramatic reading of a poem they obviously wrote, with allusions to people they each know.
“That was… something. This must have been the weird thing Haley mentioned before.”
“Yes, I’d say impromptu poetry does qualify as odd.” Daphne nods sagaciously. “Well, whatever it was, it rattled Libby enough not to show up for lunch either. While I was looking for you, I saw her and Haley talking in private. So that’s what’s up.”
“Well, shit,” I say, lacking the ability to elocute further.
“You’re not pulling a Willow again, are you?” A concerned voice chimes in from beside me as Daphne leans closer. “You don’t need to overthink this.”
“I still don’t know why that’s called pulling a Willow when you overthink things too…”
“Well, yes, but when I do it, it’s a classic Daphne. There’s a subtle, if not non-existent difference!” I can’t help but laugh at her ridiculous yet flawless logic. “Look, anybody with eyes can see that you got the hots for Libby, and if the not-so-subtle way she likes to wrap her tail around you is any indication, it’s mutual. Congrats! But, I also doubt any reasonable person would get stuck waiting on the roof with an incredibly gay sandwich for the same woman twice without also liking her in a more than friendly way. So I get the impulse you’re gonna have to rush and try to figure out what’s happening. But I’m betting you’re missing a significant chunk of the lore here, so it’s probably best to just let things play out for now.”
Lifting the sandwich in my hand enough to look at it, I sigh. “I think the sandwich is cursed.”
“Almost certainly,” she nods again. “Lucky for you, I’m ready and willing to unburden you of that curse and keep you company.”
My arm moves to toss the sandwich to her, but I pause. “I give you this sandwich, you never mention my crushes ever again.”
With a wide smile projecting anything but innocence, she plucks the sandwich from my hand herself. “Come on, we both know that isn’t happening. Now for the rest of lunch, I’ll be trying out different mash-up ship names for you, so that the Willow fandom can properly refer to you and your love interests.”
“I hate you so much.”
***
The rest of the day passes in a dull haze of anticlimactic drudgery, and after my last class, I head straight home.
It’s not that I was expecting something incredible out of today. Life isn’t some cheesy eighties teen movie where the awkward lead’s crush dramatically explains everything that’s happened and declares their feelings for them to the tune of a disgustingly catchy one hit wonder.
I just…
I really want to see her.
And yes, I realize just how insane it is to miss someone who I’ve had two conversations with that didn’t involve her directly threatening my physical wellbeing. Granted. Yet even with so little time, it was impossible to deny the impact she had on me. It’s not an exaggeration to say that she catalyzed my metamorphosis. Relative stranger or not, that means a lot.
Plus, she’s beautiful and I’m apparently a lesbian, so there’s that factor at play as well.
Passing by the familiar park near home, a distinct shade of red catches my eye. There’s literally no way. I thought I hoofed it (without hooves) right at the bell. I don’t see how Haley could have beaten me all the way here…
But there she was, like double platinum suede and disco lemonade.
Swallowing the immediate and all-powerful wave of nerves, I walk up to her as she stands still, staring at an empty jungle gym. Wait… empty… Why the hell would she be here without Phoebe? Did things go poorly talking with Libby? Did she come here to be alone? “Haley?” I call out quietly, afraid of startling a potentially agitated demoness. “Everything okay?”
The tall woman with crimson skin barely reacts to her name. Her head lulls back and forth as a completely unfamiliar voice rumbles from her throat. “Haley… Haley… Hold on.” The woman turns around and I realize that I’ve made a mistake. Instead of the woman I expected, I’m face to face with someone that could be her spitting image, only some years down the line. A Haley with a few lines seasoning her striking features and a bit of untended grey along her hair’s roots. The woman stares at me for a moment, and in a flat tone asks, “Do you know my daughter?”