Matters of Circumstance (9 page)

“I’m telling you, you’re overreacting.”

“Well that’s funny, because just yesterday you were telling me I’m always under-reacting.”

“Farrah—” Neal stopped himself and let out a hard breath. If they weren’t at school right now she was willing to bet that his wings would be snapping open and shut in agitation. When he had visibly calmed himself down he said, “I wasn’t trying to say that you
always
under-react. Looking back it probably sounded like that, but that wasn’t what I meant. I was only trying to say that it sounded like you were a little too trusting with me.”

“And now I’m paranoid,” she said, aggravated and not knowing exactly how she should take this sort of response. “It doesn’t sound like you can make up your mind.”

“Look, that’s just what it seems like to me. I can’t really help it if that’s the way I feel.” Then he shot her a significant look. “Just like you can’t help being suspicious of these people. They’ve done nothing wrong, Farrah. At least admit that.”

“They haven’t, it’s just—I can’t even describe it. It’s their aura or something. I don’t like the vibes they give me.”

Suddenly Neal’s serious attitude was obliterated by a burst of laughter. “You should hear yourself. It’s like you’re trying to be psychic!”

And Farrah was not so worked up that she couldn’t see the humor in that. She cracked a smile even though it felt awkward and stiff on her face. “Yeah, I guess it does sound kind of funny.”

“Exactly.” Then he hugged her, but as she was a little on the short side the movement unbalanced him somewhat. He staggered forward with her a few steps, but when they steadied he rested his cheek against her in a new bout of solemnity. “God, I hate it when we argue like that,” he muttered.

“Me too,” she said in kind, hugging him back. There were so many things she wanted to add onto that—that he was her best friend and she hated when they couldn’t agree on the things that counted, that he was the only one she talked to like this and despite what it seemed she appreciated him infinitely—but no matter how she tried to convince herself to speak her mouth remained firmly shut.

“I don’t think our arguments are that vicious, though. We could do worse,” she said, trying to keep the atmosphere positive.

“Oh yeah. Some of the shortest and comparatively civil fights I’ve ever had.” He held her a little tighter and said in her ear, “I’m not saying I don’t believe you, either. I’m just saying that while there’s no evidence of anything we need to keep acting like nothing weird is going on. Can do?” He pulled back enough to see her face and smiled slightly, as if in encouragement.

She echoed the gesture a little bashfully. “Yeah, I can do that.” But then she remembered that she had something else to tell him and a sudden surge of embarrassment forced her look away. “This morning I… I told my parents you’d be coming over, possibly staying for dinner. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, or you’ve already got plans, but I did say it.”

He laughed again, but it was softly. Maybe a space-filler or something. “You should see yourself right now. If I didn’t know any better I’d say you actually told them I was your boyfriend.”

Heat was rushing to her face with a vengeance. In a way it hurt that he automatically jumped to that conclusion. In a way, it hurt a lot. She didn’t blame him, though. It wasn’t Neal’s fault if that was the way she acted.

Really, he had no idea how halting and difficult that conversation with her parents had been. Farrah could not believe how timid she got in situations like this. It felt so unlike her.

“A-actually…”

Neal stopped, apparently at a loss for words. His eyes were a little wide and his eyebrows were arched. “No kidding?” he said, his body language hinting that he was trying to lighten the situation.

“I’m not ashamed of you,” she said, too awkward about everything to look at him but meaning all she said, every single word. “It wasn’t fair to you or them if I acted as if you didn’t exist. I’m sorry it took so long, there’s no excuse for that.”

Well, that and the fact that she hated the idea of Neal being bitter about their relationship. It was her fault that she hadn’t been upfront with her parents about him. If she had then this wouldn’t have become such a huge problem.

“There isn’t, but I honestly didn’t expect you to change the next day,” he said, at once astonished and touched.

“If you had seen me this morning you would have laughed.”

He chortled now, as she had hoped he would. “This probably makes me sound like a sap, but I appreciate that you did that.”

Farrah tipped forward and hugged him again. Maybe her actions would communicate how much he meant to her, somehow. She wished that it would be enough for him to pick up on something, at least.

“So you’re coming?” Like she really needed to ask.

“Yeah I’m coming.” He rocked her somewhat as he held her. “So is that all the recent news, according to you?”

“Yeah—why?” Farrah tilted her head up and propped her chin on his chest. “Are you expecting even more excitement?”

“Nope, just checking,” he said with a grin that made her heart puff up like a balloon because it was hers. All hers.

And now that all of the pressing details had been taken care of she could ask him, “Hey, this is a blatant change of subject—”

“Sure, I’m game.”

Farrah displayed a slightly annoyed smile at being interrupted, but continued all the same. “Are you going to have a graduation party? Practically all the seniors I’ve talked to are.”

“Well, I’m kind of half and half about it. Having a party would be fun, but cleaning house afterwards is definitely not going to be, you know?”

She understood what he was saying, but she just had this feeling… “So it’s got nothing to do with this, right?” She purposely brushed the tip of his right wing through his hoodie.

Neal’s expression became tolerant in nature, as if he found her question a little irritating but would have probably asked the same thing if he had been in her place. “Even if it did, I think it’d be a pretty good reason, don’t you?”

“To a point, but it’s like you were telling me before: if you can’t do anything about it, why dwell on it? I just don’t think you should let them control what you do and don’t do, that’s it. It’s your senior year, and I think you should live it up.”

Neal looked at her in a way she couldn’t read, but before he could speak the bell rang and they had to go to their separate classes. Just as he was leaving, though, he gave her a quick peck on the cheek and a truly affectionate smile.

Farrah was so busy trying to control her blush that she hardly heard the teasing wolf whistles and calls of
“Ooh
O’Brien!” that bubbled up around her. It wasn’t much by regular high school standards, where couples were forever making out and groping each other in the halls—heck, it didn’t even
exist
by those standards—but for someone like Farrah, who had only ever casually dated, it meant so much.

It was kind of humiliating that the rest of the school seemed to know that, as well.

*****

Everything was fine and more or less normal until lunch time, when Farrah received a text message from her father.

‘Hey I just got a call from your doctor. You’re due for a checkup in two weeks from Saturday, so don’t make plans on that day. Love, dad.’

She finished reading that with only one word in mind: shit.

Farrah had been seeing the same doctor since she could remember. He was okay, as far as pediatricians went, but he obviously wouldn’t know about her wings. Any kind of checkup would reveal her secret—and who knew what would happen then? She could be put into a protection program for freaks, or she could simply be locked up, or—

There was an unlimited amount of possibilities, and while she absolutely had to escape this she didn’t know what she could do. It wasn’t as if she could feign sickness and get out of it, because that would only make a visit to the doctor more necessary. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been given decent notice…

“Hey Farrah, what’s wrong?” Ruby asked, concerned. She even went so far as to crane her head in the direction of the cell phone screen. “Who texted you? Dalton?”

Farrah shook her head. “Oh, no. I just found out I’ve got a doctor’s appointment. With a pediatrician. That’ll probably be really awkward, don’t you think?”

One of her friends laughed and reflected that yes, seventeen
was
still considered a child since you technically stopped being a minor at eighteen.

“How weird,” said someone else.

“Yeah. Here we were, thinking we were growing up…”

But Ruby was skeptical. “Why would it be awkward? Is your doctor a guy? A creepy guy?”

“No—well, I mean, he is a guy, but he’s never been a creeper or anything. It’s just, you know, pediatricians are used to seeing babies and little kids, not high school students. I’ll be in the waiting room surrounded by babies, you know?” Farah explained, feeling kind of embarrassed for letting this whole thing get to her. Lately it seemed that everything was doing that, and it bothered her. She was usually more collected than this.

Understanding flashed across Ruby’s pretty face. “Oh, that’s what you meant,” she said. “I thought you were afraid of being molested or something.”

“Nah, my doctor’s okay. He just says lame jokes sometimes.”

“Oh yeah, like puns or something, right? I hate it when adults do that. They think they’re hilarious, but they’re really not.”

“I know,” Farrah agreed with an empathetic nod. “And you’re just sitting there, like, trying to fake a laugh or something, but you know it doesn’t come out convincingly.”

“Totally! I do the
same
thing. It’s so awkward!”

“Oh, that reminds me,” said their friend Andrea Barbados. “There was this one time it happened to me at my ex-boyfriend’s place…”

While Andrea was narrating her puny tale Michael sat down at Farrah’s other side.

“Hey, where have you been?” she asked.

“Had a couple questions about fucking math,” he grumbled, his notorious hatred of the subject clear as day. Michael didn’t even bother to mask his dislike while he was in the class, so it wasn’t exactly certain why he was so determined to understand everything. Farrah’s theory was that he refused to let it get the better of him.

“Nasty,” she sympathized.

“That’s why I’m glad Fare’s in my class, ‘cause she gets it,” said Ruby. “All I need to do is look at her notes and I’m good.”

“Well let’s give you an award.” Michael was obviously not in the mood to discuss the mathematical fortunes of others.

“But you get it now, right?” Farrah said to distract him.

“Yeah, basically. I don’t see why we have to use so many formulas though. I mean, what the hell is the purpose of the quadratic formula? Of graphing in general? Nobody’s going to use that shit in real life.”

“I feel the same way about hyperbolas,” she agreed.

“Yeah, I don’t get why we have to learn all of this if we never use it, either,” said Ruby. “It’s
such
a waste of our time.”

“Speaking of time—long time so see, O’Brien,” Michael said, bumping his fist lightly into her bicep. “You’ve been spending so much time with Sumalt that I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Not even. I always each lunch with everybody, and we still have classes together, and I still text and comment on your Facebook status’,” she said with a roll of her eyes. Her voice was blatantly lighthearted, just in case he thought she was being defensive. “You’re just jealous, Michael.”

He frowned as his masculine ego balked at her comment. “Of you? Excuse me, I’m not a fruit, okay? I’m just saying that you guys’ have been spending an awful lot of time together.”

Ruby was giggling. Farrah she thought she heard something along the lines of, “She didn’t even say who he was jealous of” and “Guilty conscience.”

Making a mental note to bring that up later, Farrah merely said, “Well, he is my boyfriend.”

“Oh yeah, I saw him kiss you on the cheek this morning,” Ruby gushed, completely forgetting about her Michael-mocking. “It was so cute! You guys don’t usually act like a couple.”

“Yeah, but it also looked like you were fighting,” said Andrea, apparently done with her awkward-pun narrative. “What was all that about? I mean, you’ve only been together for, like, a week.”

Ruby’s big baby blue eyes got even bigger. “You guys had a fight?”

“Not really. We fight, but we don’t.” Farrah was having trouble putting the notion into words. “We don’t yell or even really snap, we just… talk. It’s weird. We, like, talk about why we don’t agree and make up in five minutes flat. That’s not really fighting.”

“Nah, that’s super mature.”

“And boring,” someone else at the table said, causing everybody—including Farrah—to laugh.

“Yeah, you can’t even make arguing worth gossiping about, Fare. You’re too nice.”

“I guess that’s a compliment,” she reflected.

“Okay, so I’ve got to know: what was it about? I thought a week was supposed to be total honeymoon stage,” said Ruby.