**********
It's past ten o'clock on a perfectly good Friday night and I'm moping alone at the boathouse. Why? Straight answer: today is my birthday.
It hit me afresh today that I'm twenty-one going on eighteen, still playing catch-up. I say that because it feels like I'm at least three steps behind my contemporaries, like I missed the train and I'm stumbling along the tracks while they all chug ahead way faster than I can run. It probably doesn't help that I keep tripping over my own feet, but whatever.
Most of the time, this knowledge doesn't bother me, but it got real tough to ignore this afternoon when mom brought out the cake -- a chocolate frosted inferno topped by an embarrassing number of candles. I made my wish and told Jamie and Junior to blow them out for me because I was afraid my hair would catch fire.
I can't help realizing that I'm wrapping up my freshman year of college as most of the kids I used to know are graduating. I'm still doing spot contract work for low pay while the majority of them are entering the workforce full time. Most depressing of all, some of them are already married and planning families... and I don't think I've ever even been in love. Not for real, anyway.
Scott Chandler was puppy love. Sebastian Hui provided companionship in a strange land. Leo DuPres was sex and lots of it. Grown-up casual sex with no strings and no shame. Never would have lasted, though. None of them was meant for me. Scott needs a nice girl who needs a hero. Sebastian just wanted to defy his tradition- bound Chinese family by slumming it with the wicked American blonde. As for Leo, he loves Greenlee Smythe and probably always will... heaven help him.
Case in point, even *Leo* has been in love. The happy-go- lucky player who fronts shallow and feels deep, he actually loves someone enough to swallow his considerable fear and let it all ride on a dark horse like Greenlee. He lets her hurt him because she's the only one who can heal him. He trusts love to carry him through the rough spots, to make the ride worth all the bumps and bruises.
I've never felt like that about anyone and I don't know that I ever will. I don't feel that kind of trust with a lover. Maybe J.T. ruined that in me. The bastard.
I was barely more than a child when I stripped naked for his camera, let him pose me like some lurid doll with limitless points of articulation. Touched without kindness by virtual strangers, before I was ready, before I knew what it was supposed to be like between people who cared for each other.
I don't have nightmares about it anymore, and I refuse to stare at the floor when I feel a stranger's knowing eyes crawl over me, but I do occasionally find myself wondering if Leo was right when he brought up that old Indian belief about photographs – maybe a camera *can* steal something from your soul when it's wielded by a thief.
When he took those pictures, Jim Thomason stole a lot from me; my innocence, my dignity, my sense of safety... it's pointless to go down the list. I've fought hard to get most of it back, but I can't seem to find that last crucial element, that ability to let the walls down with someone special, to get so lost in the good that the bad just glances off like rain on feathers.
So here I am, living out one of the worst cliches of my generation – carelessly overlooking all the wonderful blessings in my life in favor of brooding alone, pouting over this one elusive godsend I *don't* have.
I've got a camera with me, of course – the pricey digital with the enormous memory card and serious zoom, a gift today from Edmund – and I'm getting a cheap giggle by shocking the lazy Willow Lake ducks with my high-intensity flash. Happy birthday to me.
"I should report you to the game warden for waterfowl abuse," a voice calls out from the dark. My heart jumps for a second, solely because the interruption was so unexpected. It's definitely not unwelcome, since I'm in dire need of friendly distraction.
"Piffle. Everybody knows ducks love having their picture taken – it's those surly geese you gotta watch out for," I reply to my critic.
Bianca Montgomery bounds up the steps and into view. She's wearing an aquamarine sun dress with little fishies all over it, high heels and full supermodel makeup. I open my mouth to say something smart, but all I can do is gape and stifle laughter. When she's decked out like this, she doesn't even resemble the shy, relaxed girl I know – she looks both amazing and amazingly uncomfortable.
"Don't give me any grief about the get-up, okay?" she warns. "The commercial shoot ran late. I went straight to your house from the set, but Brooke said you left just after things broke up. I'm so sorry I missed the party."
Even before she leans in for a quick hug, I know she means it. This is perhaps the only teenaged girl on the planet who would rather attend a low-key birthday dinner than glam it up in a big time television commercial. One of the many reasons I'm glad to know her.
She sits on the rough wood bench by the rail and pats the plank next to her, inviting me to leave the ducks in peace and sit for a bit. "So, how was it? The big two-one."
"Ugh. All those candles... it was terrifying. I was afraid the fire marshal would burst in and fine mom for starting a bonfire within city limits."
She pulls a face and thumps my arm. "Whiner. It couldn't have been as bad as the commercial shoot."
"Says you. It was sort of like, `Hey, Laura's another year older! Let's stuff her full of cake and drop presents on her head to take her mind off her sad GPA, emaciated finances and non-existent social life.' Whee."
Bianca nods soberly while choking back a snigger, simultaneously letting me know that she feels my pain and that I am being a great big doofus. She's gotten quite good at it.
"I've got you beat," she says.
I shake my head and declare this to be impossible.
"Get this -- I tripped and fell onto the display pyramid of Enchantment perfumes. It collapsed and the bottles shattered all over the park cobblestones," she informs me. "Three pigeons died of toxic shock and the set designer fainted. My mother yelled so much, she lost her voice. The whole thing had to be scrapped and rescheduled."
At first I don't believe her, but Bianca drops her face into her hands and screams quietly, obviously still brimming with humiliation. The girl is not joking.
"Oh, my God." I stroke my knuckles along her shoulder in an effort to comfort her, but she flinches just a little at the touch. Guess my hands are cold. "Well... are you okay?"
"I'm still kind of rattled, I guess. Mom fired me again, which is actually pretty funny since I *volunteered* to do this shoot."
"Which I still don't understand," I add. "I know you despise modeling, so why do the commercial in the first place?"
"Because she wanted me to," Bianca says dismissively. "Can you fire someone who isn't being paid? Is that legal? Maybe I should contact an attorney."
"And sue your mother for... what, exactly?"
"Discrimination against the congenitally clumsy. It would be a landmark case and Enchantment would give me a huge settlement to avoid bad publicity," she gleefully theorizes. "I could invest some more in Leo and Ryan's new business, then I'd finance another demo for Junior's band, and of course I would set you up with your own photography studio -- "
"Bianca, stop." She looks surprised by my interruption, so I explain. "I know this megaload of cash is purely hypothetical, but you're investing it in everyone's dream but your own." Just like she always does.
"Thank you for your concern, but it's my dream money and I'll distribute it as I see fit," she snippily counters. I hold up my hands in surrender and she falls quiet, looks pensive until she finds her voice again.
"Laura, the truth is, I don't really know what I want right now. Until I find something that suits me, it makes me happy to help the people I care about succeed and prosper in their chosen fields and... and all that good stuff. You know." She waves her fingers in an upward spiral, figuratively encompassing the universal happiness she wishes to bestow on those she favors.
If she can't have the perfect home life, she'll do what she can to make yours easier; if she can't locate a career path that feels right to her, she'll work to smooth out the bumps in yours; and if she can't be with Sarah, she wants to see her friends content and in love – which is why she tried so hard to keep Leo away from Greenlee while he was dating me. When I told her that Leo and I had stopped seeing each other, Bianca reacted rather strangely; it seemed she was more disappointed than I was. I didn't understand it, just wrote it up to her generally sensitive nature, her desire to protect her friends.
I squint and shell out a smile of disbelief as I realize anew that I am one of those remarkably lucky people. "What planet are you from, again? Philanthropia? That's in the Altruistic Nebula, right?"
Her blush is immediate and intense. She hates being mocked, even gently. "Oh, shut-up."
"And if I don't?"
"You won't get your birthday present. Nyah."
"Yikes." I purse my lips and symbolically button them shut, which seems to please her greatly. She grins and pops open her little Kate Spade bag, slips out a birthday card-sized envelope and hands it over.
I gently tear open the green paper and pull out the contents, several sheets of folded white paper. I think it might be a letter of some sort, but when I read the first few lines of the top sheet, I'm instantly confused and more than a little scared.
I know the text to be a string of web addresses, and I recognize some of them as places that showcased J.T.'s pictures of me. It reads like http://www.teenflesh.com/gallery1/lk001.jpg and so on, but each internet address is followed by what appear to be computer commands – lines like "file scrub" and "burn directory contents *.*"
The terrible suspicion that Bianca actually saw those pictures is eating away at my stomach, making it churn. But why would she... forget it. Enough with the mystery.
"I don't understand." I hold up the pages and ask, "Bianca, what exactly *is* this?"
"Work report logs from a computer virus, one created especially for you."
And Laura's confusion grows deeper. "My very own computer virus."
"Yeah! It's called Blackjack, in honor of your twenty-first!" Bianca trills excitedly. "My friend Phil wrote it, and it's a thing of beauty. See, it scans the contents of adult websites and it recognizes the graphic thingies of your... you know... those old pictures, and when it locates one of yours, it gets rid of it. The program erases it from the server and then lays low in the subwhatevers, just in case they try to reload the picture or any variation of it. It really is the gift that keeps on giving."
My mouth is hanging open. Guess the button on my lips broke. I am totally unsure how to respond to this, so I should probably stall her for a few more seconds. "Are you... is this for real?"
"Oh, yeah. Phil is a total techno-prodigy, and she's fascinated by the whole virus thing. She could be a cyber terrorist if she wanted, but fortunately, she's chosen to use her powers for good and not evil," Bianca reveals. "She's working on a version that hitches a ride on e-mails, so anyone who's on the website's mailing list will suddenly find your pictures unviewable on their home computer. That probably won't be ready for another few weeks, but she put a rush on this one so it would be out there working in time for your birthday."
Some people take the impersonal route and send cash or checks for birthdays, some actually buy you clothes, music or books, items that correspond to their perception of your tastes and interests, and some go the extra mile to prove that they care by investigating your preferences or personalizing the gift with initials or inscriptions.
Then there are people like Bianca Montgomery, who apparently saw through all my claims of indifference regarding the pictures, who wanted to give me something that I considered both impossibly precious and irretrievably lost – my privacy. This is the finest gift anyone has ever given me. I should tell her so, but I can't seem to find my voice.
"Laura?"
I look up from the pages and find her lovely face tense, her dark eyes fearful.
"You're mad, aren't you? I knew it, I knew this was too weird..."
She's still muttering apologies as I reach for her and loop my arms around her neck, but she's quiet by the time I pull her close and hug her, quiet as my head drops onto her shoulder and I start to cry. After a moment's hesitation, I feel her arms go slowly around my waist and a kiss is pressed against my hair. For what seems like several minutes, she stays silent and holds onto me as I shake against her, crush the pages in my fist, and try to imagine letting go of a pain I thought I'd have to hold forever.
"Shh. Don't cry," she eventually whispers. "If I'd known this would make you weep on your birthday, I would have gotten you a Chia Pet instead. Nobody cries over a Chia Pet."
Even now, she makes me laugh. Just casually wrings good humor out of me when I'm sure all I want to do is cry myself to sleep right here on this bench. I feel tired, so my laugh is low and short, more like a stuttered breath against her neck.
She flinches slightly... again. Just like earlier, when I touched her arm and assumed my hands were cold. Maybe that wasn't it at all. Her back is stiff, tense. I feel her arms slip away and she draws back to end the embrace. Strange thing is, I don't feel like letting her go.
Over the past year or so, several people have intimated that perhaps Bianca was such a stalwart friend because she was romantically attracted to me. I dismissed their suspicions with various displays of incredulity -- and in Greenlee Smythe's case, downright rudeness. Still, at times like this, when we're alone and close and Bianca suddenly steels herself and backs away, I find myself wondering if they're all wrong... or am I just being willfully blind?
I ease my head away from her shoulder, keep my hands linked behind her neck as I examine her perpetually honest face. She isn't looking at me. Her hands are pressed tight against the bench on either side of my hips, and she's studying one of the little fishies swimming on her sundress. Her chin is shaking just a little, causing her lips to fall open and release the barest, smallest sigh I've ever heard.
It washes over me then, the understanding, the awareness that she wants me to kiss her, followed closely by the awareness that I want to know how it feels to kiss her, followed almost immediately by a deafening "WHY?"
That's not so easily answered. Both my eyes and my heart find her beautiful, always have. She doesn't weigh your contributions to a relationship against her own, doesn't keep score to make sure you give as much as she does. There has never been a time when I went to her for help and she turned me away, and I'm certain there never would be. She loves with the doors and windows wide open, no secrets and no lies. No walls to hide behind.
She's brave and tender and I know she would never hurt me, never give me cause to retreat behind my own walls. She knows me and accepts me and wants me around even though I'm stained and hard around the edges, a mess in the middle. If I could just muster my scattered courage and close this last little distance, cross the final inch of mingled air between her mouth and mine, I would know for certain if what I'm feeling is just errant gratitude or welling loneliness... or something that would change the rest of our lives.
She's waiting and I'm stalling and the thing that gradually crushes down my curiosity is the fear that nothing will come of it. I've kissed women before and felt nothing. I've kissed friends before and felt nothing. I don't think I could stand it if Bianca were the only one to feel the spark. The guilt of leaving her alone with that would tear a hole in me, and after everything she's done to help mend my heart, I *will not* do something that might endanger hers.
I loosen my hands and slide them into her hair, draw her face downward and solidly kiss the smooth skin between her brows. "Thank you," I tell her. "Thank you so much."
Her lips are pressed into a forced, flat smile. She nods and murmurs, "Sure. No problem."
Carefully, I smooth the hair away from her face, tuck some strays behind her ears, then drop my hands onto hers and squeeze tight for one last bit of indeterminate contact before the retreat back to friendly safety. I wipe the drying tears from my face and smile at her, aggressively cross-eyed, until her mood cracks and she reflects my silly expression.
"So, how much did this fabulous present set you back? I hear computer geniuses don't work cheap."
"Didn't cost a dime," Bianca proclaims proudly, seemingly just as eager as me to put the past in the rear view. "I did, however, have to persuade Ryan Lavery to escort Phil to some big technology exhibition in New York City."
"Hmm. I'm guessing Phil *really* likes Ryan."
"About as much as Jamie likes Britney Spears."
"Oooh, so we're talking major crush here, huh? How did you get Ryan to agree?"
Bianca hesitates and fiddles with her dress hem. "I promised him that Enchantment would run banner ads on the IncredibleDreams.com website."
My suspicious mind is leaping ahead to the next probable revelation, but I have to get confirmation before I start tripping. "And you got your mother to buy the ads by agreeing to do this commercial shoot?"
"Umm..."
"Bianca!"
"Well, Ryan was the only thing Phil wanted, and plump ad revenues to impress Adam Chandler were all Ryan wanted, and I couldn't very well pay him myself – my klutz discrimination lawsuit hasn't even been filed yet! I had to do it!"
"And now, three innocent pigeons are dead," I solemnly remind her. "I hope you at least buried them, gave them a proper sendoff."
"Actually, mom kicked them into the river when she was throwing her hissy fit."
Bianca notices the unmistakable disbelief in my eyes and she nods to confirm that this did indeed happen. She sputters out a laugh and I'm fast on her heels, helpless against imagining Erica Kane delivering a Mia Hamm-style goal kick and launching a poor dead birdie into the East River. Quite a capper for my twenty-first birthday. Laughter, joy, tears, confusion and strangeness, then laughter again.
This is what Bianca brings to my life, and I don't want to lose any of it. It feels a little different now, and I'll probably continue to timidly wonder if a kiss could mean more instead of less, gain instead of loss, but as long as I'm uncertain about what I can offer her, the risk is too great. She's the best friend I've ever known, and she deserves nothing less than that same sort of protective devotion from me.
"It's nearly eleven," Bianca says as she stands and smooths her dress. "I should probably head home and face the music."
"Call me if you need to talk after. I doubt I'll get to sleep until late."
I stand and reach for her again, pull her into a much less confusing embrace, one with no awkward moments or quashed impulses. It's nice, comfortable. Almost like before.
As she steps back, I trail down her arms and take her hands, holding on just long enough to make one thing absolutely clear.
"I love you, Bianca," I tell her. "You know that, right?"
A half-smile and a shy nod. "Same here. Happy birthday, Laura."
"Goodnight."
"`Night."
My best friend goes off into the night and it's just me and the ducks again. I should drive home now, write a thank-you note for mom and leave it by the coffee maker so she'll be certain to see it in the morning. I should point out to Brooke English how she's provided me with so much that I'm thankful for – a home, a family, an education, a chance to become whatever I am.
And as for that one little thing I'm missing, that thing I was sulking about for the better part of an evening... it might not be so far off as I thought. I'm only twenty-one years old, and despite my recent moments of despair and panic over my advancing age, I know that life's best storylines evolve over time, that experiences like tonight will deepen my interest in what happens tomorrow. Things change. Feelings, people, everything. Maybe b-day number twenty-two will find me with nothing at all to complain about.
I gather the crumpled pages of techno poetry from the bench and smooth out the wrinkles, fold them neatly and tuck them into the green card envelope. On the front, in Bianca Montgomery's neat hand, are the words: "For Laura on her birthday."
She dotted the "i" with a little heart.
**********
END
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