Secrets

Rena tells me everything-- how self conscious she feels at mass, how she doesn’t like eating anything messy in public, how her mother doesn’t trust her, how a boy winked at her in English class today.

I tell her everything, too-- at least, I tell her things I could never tell anyone else. I tell her about crying without knowing why, about watching a couple have a completely silent argument at the mall. I don’t tell her that she’s the first person I’ve talked to since I left for school this morning-- but then, I barely acknowledge that to myself, anyway.

Tireton suggested imagining myself in a safe place whenever I start to feel anxious and she asked if there was anywhere I liked to go to relax. I lied and said I liked to go to the lake by myself sometimes.

I know it’s silly to lie to a therapist but I just can’t bring myself to spill my guts to someone who hasn’t even told me their favourite colour-- it’s not that I think she would blackmail me or anything, but I hate that feeling of one sidedness-- it feels like I’m sitting high up on a see-saw and my partner’s about to step off and leave me to fall crashing to the ground.

It’s unbalanced.

That’s what’s so great about our friendship, Rena. I give you all the little bits of me and you give me all the little bits of you-- not as a trade, but just because we can. Because we’re special to each other that way.

I think maybe you’re my safe space, because when something embarrassing happens to me, I picture telling you the situation later on. Like today when the teacher told us to get into groups of three and I ended up sitting awkwardly at the edge of a table of best friends since kindergarten-- I pretended to tell you all about it-- imagined how we’d laugh about it, and how you’d tell me that those girls don’t matter.

I wish she were here so I could tell her-- but I don’t think I’d be able to anyway. Maybe it is better that I’m writing all this down instead- I’d hate to interrupt her third retelling of how that guy from her math class asked her out by folding a note into a paper crane.

Last night she told me she was in love. She said it with dark eyes glittering in the moonlight from our bedroom window and with a small, thoughtful frown.

I felt honored she would reveal something like that to me-- and in such uncensored words--

“I’m in love with him,” she’d said. “Me, Cy. In actual love.”

-- I Couldn’t wait to sort through her thoughts and feelings with her, to find out exactly who this english class kid was and if he was worthy of my sister.

Rena tells me everything but she couldn’t tell me anything beyond the color of her boyfriend’s eyes and his opinion on Nirvana and she wouldn’t tell me what had happened when I found her in the bathroom with mascara streaking down her cheeks.

“It’s private,” she’d said, and suddenly I felt as if I’d overstepped a boundary.

I wanted to remind her that there were no limits to what we could tell each other-- but how could I tell her anything when she wouldn’t tell me everything? When she barely even smiles when I say hi to her anymore?

So I talk to you, the looseleaf section in the back of my latin binder.

It ’s not the same, because of course you can’t talk back to me, but at least I can put all my thoughts onto a scrap of paper without worrying that when I’m done the paper will still look blank.