When I woke up in a cold sweat, I opted to ignore Sahhas and Russur and the ominous death of Tehhet, not because they were uninteresting or unappealing, but because I couldn’t do anything about them. I could daydream, and that would get me through my classes, but it was much more practical to try and wrangle another emotion, just like I had failed to capture jealousy yesterday. I decided, to let the spirit of the poor murdered Heather rest peacefully, I would try to focus on a positive emotion. Grief was big and raw and powerful, but I didn’t particularly want to feel it. Jealousy at least could accomplish something, but what use was grief? I had nothing to grieve for except my own life half-lived. If I was going to push a circle emotion into my square-hole brain, it would be much more pleasant to at least try a nice one, like friendship. I was fairly confident friendship was an emotion.

Now, as far as good people to feel friendship at, I was unfortunately lacking. I had long ago decided that the only feelings I should regard Ginny with were caution, fear, and resentment. My brother obviously couldn’t be my friend, since he hated me, and Ginny’s friends all felt the same wariness about me that I felt about them. The most optimal strategy was to find a new friend, fertile soil I could plant a friendship in, but I had no idea how to even start to do that. I didn’t talk to people, especially not new people. I had a reputation (even a positive reputation is an awful punishment for success, but a negative one is far worse) for being cold and strange, so if I just turned to my neighbor in math class and began talking to them, they’d probably either shush me and shy away, or request to switch seats. Girls might be better candidates for friendship because they were, on first meeting, friendlier than boys, but it’s not like they wanted to talk to unattractive, unambitious boys like myself. They’d think I was hitting on them.

Ginny it was, unfortunately.

Ginny decided that she was going to have a slumber party. It was going to be a big, fun event, and we were going to steal alcohol and marathon Hallmark Christmas movies and make fun of them even though it was March. Emphasis on “we.” I was invited. In fact, I was supposed to sneak in through the window and hide whenever her parents’ footsteps approached the room. I did not like this idea very much, but I couldn’t say anything about it. I nodded and made stupid comments about it being a spy mission.

One girl - Melissa Hodges - was uncomfortable with the presence. “I don’t want to sleep in the same room as a boy.” She protested.

“He’s gay.” Ginny stated forcefully.

“So? That doesn’t change the fact that he’s a boy. I don’t want him to watch me sleep. It’s creepy.”

“Then sleep in the living room.” Ginny countered. “And he’ll sleep in my room.”

“I can sleep in the closet.” I offered. This got a couple laughs.

“Besides,” Ginny said, “My brother’s going to be there too. He’s a boy too. If you’re worried about him-“

“That’s different.” She said, and we all knew why it was different, and no one made a comment about it. Surely she should feel safer that I wasn’t physically capable of creeping on her, but either she didn’t believe I was gay (fair) or she had a much larger problem at play when it came to interacting with me. I tried not to let people like her make me horribly depressed, but I didn’t like when people thought about me at all, especially negatively, especially if I was being lumped in with a giant group of people I knew and cared little about.

Melissa Hodges declined to attend the slumber party, which Ginny shrugged off effortlessly. “We’ll have fun without her.” She said. “There’s enough of us for a solid party.”

I decided that I should feel friendship about this. Instead of offering Melissa the opportunity to kick me out, which would complicate matters far less than my attendance, she steadfastly maintained my presence. Even if no one wanted me there, I was a vital element to the festive atmosphere or something. Perhaps I was the best at making fun of Hallmark movies. I will concede this is probably true; I've had much practice. But perhaps Ginny just likes me that much. I would normally feel fear and disdain about this, because our relationship is lopsided and she is the only one who feels positive emotions about the other party, but today I decided to feel friendship.

Friendship felt like... I don't know. Warm, maybe? I've heard people describe pleasant emotions as warm. I tried to remember how Heddeh felt about Heather, but it was all gone now, washed away by the day. I was left with only the impression that there was something, all the numerical values that represent friendship without any of the actual feeling.

I wondered how Sahhas and Russur felt about each other. About Tehhet. They were so old, supposedly, so old they were simple facts of like for the Dark Denizens. Did they still have uses for things like friendship, or had time weathered away any pain that could come from grief? Friendship led to grief, of course: this was evidenced in how Heddeh mourned Heather, in how Sahhas and Russur presumably mourned Tehhet, in how when I inevitably die young Ginny will probably mourn me. But friendship was worth it in the moment, maybe.

I wondered if Tsulluts had friends. Her closest relationships... Heddeh, Vuccuv, apparently she knew Sahhas and Russur... and most important of all, her arch-rivalry with the Immortal from the Realm of Fire. He was evil, but he was still the most prominent figure in her life, the metric by which she lived, died, and, recently, gave up on living on dying about. She missed friendship, craved her relationship with her brother more than both life and death. Friendship was worth sacrificing everything for, even if she hadn't truly experienced anything but enmity in ages.

I wondered how all the girls around me felt about each other. For some reason, it was a lot harder to get into their heads than it was to get into Heddeh's and Tsullut's. Perhaps because I literally had been Heddeh and Tsulluts, but it felt more likely to me that it was because of the dreaming state in which I became and observed them. Those dreams were so much more vivid than reality, oceans of emotions. When I was Heddeh and Tsulluts, I felt. Here I have to decide how I feel about people.

I wondered why I ever decided to feel resentment towards Ginny. Sure, she treated me terribly, but what was the point of hating her for it? That didn't accomplish anything except exacerbate my displeasure of her presence. Even if I was miserable (which I wasn't, because miserable was also an emotion. probably), if I could simply decide to feel happy about it, why not? I would decide to feel friendship for Ginny. She invited me to her girl-filled slumber party in no uncertain terms. And I kind of liked the prospect of being treated like a girl rather than a boy, even if it was with Ginny. But... 

Non-sequitur: It would be on Friday. Today was Thursday, which I would say I plodded through miserably, but I wasn't capable of feeling misery, so who knows? Perhaps I plodded through it perfectly fine and was overjoyed by the mere fact of my existence. Perhaps a bunch of interesting stuff happened that I didn't tell you about. My life could be very rich beyond these silly little words, and you would have no idea. I don't have to tell you anything about me, and yet, here I am, doing it anyway. I wonder if there's something wrong with me for it, I wonder if I'm failing to feel the proper shame or inhibition. I won't tell you anything about me except the most important parts. That's basically the same as spilling my blood across your lovely white tablecloth. A slate of nothing, clean and neat and totally normal and perfect, with all these ugly stains on it, for absolutely no reason other than that I feel the need to bleed out.

It does feel like bleeding out.

Kindler tells me I shouldn't worry about bleeding out. As a joke.

Anyway, that day I walked with Ginny to her house, and her father was already there. He got off work early because of some reason he never got to adequately explain. Ginny greeted him with a "Wow! You're home! What's the occasion?"

And he glanced over her shoulder, to look where I hovered. "He's still following you around?" He asked, not even trying to be cordial. "I thought you dumped him."

"He's gay." Ginny reiterated.

Her father rolled his eyes. I waved, I hoped warmly, to communicate that I wasn't a threat.

"We were just gonna stop by here on our way to his house." She said, rolling her eyes in retaliation, to communicate she was a threat. He didn't notice.

"You should stay here." He said. He didn't say "where I can keep an eye on him," but that's what he meant. Ginny was his princess prisoner. No boys allowed; you know how boys are. They can only think about one thing, and that's laying waste to your daughters' feeble virginity. Vicious and violent and foaming at the mouth at the slightest exposure of the upper thigh. He wanted us to stay in the living room and be surveilled and me to feel uncomfortable and concede and go home. Unless Ginny gave up, this is what would happen. I wasn't sure which outcome I would prefer.

"I can't." She twirled her hair around her finger, a tell-tale sign that she was lying. "His mom invited me over for dinner. She's making tilapia, whatever that is." She obviously knew what tilapia was, but included the last line as a way to maneuver the conversation in her favor. Details would make her lie more convincing (to mitigate the effects of the tell, but this was probably the cause of the tell in the first place), and he would be inclined to comment on the fish rather than anything else.

He bit. "It's a type of fish, honey."

"Ohhhh. Yeah that makes sense. She said she was going to make hushpuppies too."

"And you told her you were coming?" He glared at me, as if I was the one who invited her, or as if any of this was real. It was kind of frustrating how easily he believed it. Maybe he just felt vindicated that his worst fears were confirmed.

"Yep."

"She invited you, or did-" He said my name, which I've gratuitously expunged from my transcription of events. You're welcome.

"She invited me." Ginny said this as if she was talking to an idiot. And then explained, more pleasantly: "She overheard me talking about liking seafood, or how I hadn't had a hushpuppy in forever or something, and she was like "you should come over sometime!" and now's the time. So I want to go over there." This was a subtle jab, not necessarily about how much she likes seafood or how her parents never cook it, but about how they never listen to her. The conceit, of course, is that she would ever offhandedly mention liking seafood.

"And if I call her, she'll tell me that?"

Ginny nodded. "Yeah." She said, even though it wasn't remotely true. This was bad, but entirely foreseeable. 

Ginny had a solution, though. "I thought she hated you, though. Are you sure you want to call her?" My parents liked hers just fine. But playing on her father's insecurities was really easy. As far as he was concerned, my whole family was out to get him, steal his daughter away from him. Really, what good could a phone call bring, except to give her an opportunity to berate him to his face? Even if it wasn't exactly the truth, he knew, knew, that other people disapproved of the way he raised his family, that they disagreed with his authority. The liberal spies were everywhere.

I didn't know if he believed in liberal spies. But it seemed in accordance with the rest of his identity, so I'll leave that line in. Besides, I think it's funny to kick a man while he's down.

He bit the inside of his cheek, weighing his options. Apparently, the weight of my mother's disapproval was so great that he needed time to think. He spent too much time vacillating, though.

"I just need to get in to get my phone charger." Ginny said, squeezing past him. Her phone charger was in her backpack.

Left alone with me, her father stared me in the face, mustering his best scowl. He put his hand to his pocket to feel for his gun, but it wasn't there, because why would it be, and he decided to fold his arms instead. "So, -" he said my name again, "How's it been?"

"Fine." I answered mildly. "How've you been?"

"Fine." He spat. And then, after a few seconds of silence he found awkward and I found pleasant, "Don't try anything. I know where you live. I know who your folks are. I know just how many bullets it takes to make a human body stop moving."

If I asked how many, he would say "one," very slowly and ominously, and point to my forehead. I knew because I'd asked him before. Instead, I said how I felt. "I feel friendship."

"Pardon?"

"My relationship with your daughter is friendship." I repeated. "I've decided." It was true, and therefore difficult to say, but it would be convenient for me if he thought he instigated the feeling, if he thought he'd won something.

Obviously he didn't believe me, so he scoffed.

Ginny weaseled out from behind him, phone charger in hand. "Got it!" She declared, holding it up for him to see, proving that she was inside for completely legitimate reasons and not just to make her lie more convincing. I did feel friendship for her, or thought I did, admiring her verbal acuity or her ability to lie or something. It wasn't the same way Heddeh felt friendship, though. This was less primal, less real, less warm.

He told us to be safe and not do anything foolish, which we would not heed, but not for the reason he assumed. Ginny laughed at this. We began walking towards my house, with the idea that we'd change course as soon as we were out of his eyesight. We did; there's a small creek that runs through the neighborhood, where, if all else fails, we sit and throw rocks. I don't show her the more interesting spots along the creek, or anything in the kudzu forest.

She chooses this time to berate me.