ALL NOVEL Chapter 7
My skin is definitely changing. It isn’t only growing softer, but already I have barely any pimples left in my face. It looks very different now. Cleaner. Does that make it more feminine? I honestly can’t tell.
The doorbell rings. I’m the only one in. I’ll have to open up and talk to somebody.
Ugh.
I much more feel like shutting myself in.
But then I give myself a shove and push off the sink and make my way down the stairs.
Sadie’s waiting outside. She’s dressed for the weather, shorts and a tank top. My outfit isn’t that different, except she must’ve put at least some degree of effort into hers, right? I don’t think she’s wearing any makeup and if she is, I can’t tell.
Suddenly, I feel like asking, but I manage to shut the question down in time. What does it matter if she’s wearing makeup or not?
Sadie’s voice snaps me from my thoughts. “Is this a bad time?” she asks with a sheepish smile, clearly misinterpreting the frown that’s crept onto my face without my noticing.
I smooth my expression. “No, it’s…” Yeah, like I’m ever going to tell her if I can help it. “What’s up?”
Her smile turns hopeful. “I was wondering if you would like to come to the home centre with me. My parents are busy and I didn’t want to go alone, so I thought maybe you’d….” She trails of and gives me puppy eyes.
I can’t help but smile. It’s almost like she heard my thoughts and came right over to distract me.
“Yeah, I’d like that,” I say and briefly go back inside to pack my things.
We spend the whole day out and about. We take the bus to the home centre and spend hours browsing virtually everything. Other than her parents, Sadie didn’t bring much from Thailand. She tells me she learned to live with whatever fits in a few suitcases because that makes everything just so much easier. It also lets her redecorate every time they move.
I don’t think I’m of much help. She asks me for my opinion a lot, but whatever she proposes is already pretty amazing. She has what seems like a perfect sense of style to me. Okay, granted, my sense of style is absolute trash, but hey, I can still have opinions, can’t I?
She settles on a large bed with a grey frame as the centrepiece of her room, a simple desk with a natural wooden working surface, a large closet with a mirror inside the door and so many other things. She even picks out new bedsheets and everything.
Of course, we don’t buy the things right then. She puts every serial number in her phone to later hand over to her parents so they can do the actual shopping.
We spend the whole time talking, telling stories and joking around. She tells me how she used to take care of a street cat she named Sanches in Thailand and how she’s wondering how he’s doing now, or how she used to climb up onto the roof of her apartment in Paris to watch what few stars would shine through the light pollution. In turn, I tell her about the time Henry and I were out in the forest and found a dead fox, and spent the next several days planning traps and gear to go monster hunting because clearly, that must’ve been the reason for the fox’s demise.
Interesting stories, huh?
I feel like my stories are so boring and childish in comparison to her great adventures in the outback or the Amazonas and I tell her as much, but she says she likes listening to them and seems genuine about it, too.
Later, she invites me to eat lunch with her at a tiny Chinese restaurant close by. The food is salty and tasty and after several hours of walking and standing, the break is just great.
“It’s funny, don’t you think?” she says, swiftly stealing a prawn from my box of noodles with her chopsticks. It looks so effortless, the way she handles them. I have to use a plastic fork. I’m not mad, though. I don’t mind sharing and even if I did, the humorous glitter in her eyes would makeup for it. “How, just because I know I’m here to stay, everything feels so different.”
I watch her with a slight smile. It’s not like I could relate to that feeling, never having moved in my entire life. She also brought it up kind of out of the blue.
Fortunately, she doesn’t seem to expect any kind of input from my side yet.
“I mean, yeah, I got totally lucky that I met you right on the first day and we get along great, but this is not the first time I have nice neighbours,” she muses. She always tilts her head to the side when she’s thinking. “But I’d never get comfortable with them so quickly. It was always different because every time I had this knowledge in the back of my head. I’m gonna be gone in a few months or half a year anyway, so what’s the point? Like, I’d have friends and I’d have fun with them, but I never had a conversation like we had on the beach and I don’t think I’d’ve felt comfortable had I had the chance, either.”
She glances up and her eyes sparkle again. “Am I being dramatic?”
I shrug and my lips crack. “Maybe a little?”
Her grin broadens, the sparkle intensifies. “All I’m saying is, I think you’re great and I’m very much looking forward to the coming year.”
Well, I’m not. But that’s not her fault, so I mirror her grin and raise my can of coke. “Cheers to that!”
She insists on paying when we leave, saying that I’m already giving her my time so this is only fair.
We only return home when the sun is already closing in on the horizon. We spent several hours just walking through town and Sadie found a little second-hand bookshop she said she’d absolutely love to spend the rest of her life in. And even though I don’t read much, I can see the appeal. The store is absolutely crammed with books, with tall shelves and ladders you need to reach the top rows. It has this distinct paper smell but not the clinical kind of the huge bookstore chains. The old man that owns the store had a nice little chat with us and even offered us hot chocolate.
And when we’ve arrived at her house, she spreads her arms and gives me a prompting look. And then we hug.
Sadie’s parents get all the stuff over the next few days and we spend hours sitting on the floor in her room, putting the pieces together. After the first time her Mum made sandwiches and somehow managed to totally mess them up, we start doing the cooking ourselves. Only for my Mum to notice and take it upon herself. That I’ve gotta give her, she’s an amazing cook.
Henry comes around on the second day and helps a little but we quickly realise that it’s too cramped that way and he leaves again later.
The evenings we spend lying on her bed, first on a simple mattress, then on the actual bed, watching The Swarm, first on her laptop, then on her very own TV. It’s the internationally produced series of her favourite book and I really like it. She already knows it but doesn’t seem to mind watching it again.
It’s weird, how quickly we’ve become good friends. We spend so much time together. It’s so easy to laugh when she makes stupid puns and even easier when she makes puns in a language I don’t even know without realising it.
Honestly, I think a lot of it comes from the conversation we had a few days ago, from realising that in spite of our opposite lives, we’re very similar in our relationships to our parents. Trauma bonding is great bonding or something along those lines.
Henry seems to notice, too.
“So, you and Sadie,” he says a few days later as we’re working out in his garden.
I didn’t have the time or energy to meet up these last few days with the physical strain of helping Sadie put up all her furniture. But now I’m finally here, working out in the shade of the tree in Henry’s backyard, where he put up a small callisthenics training station.
It’s early morning, so it’s still kind of cool outside and there’s a soft breeze, yet still I’m drenched in sweat. After having trained for only fifteen minutes with breaks between sets.
Well, I’m not complaining. It feels amazing, knowing that I’m doing something against all this…. Against this virus that wants to take away my body. The pump in my arms is already quite noticeable, but I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
“What about her?” I ask, stepping away from the training station to stretch a little and move my wrists before the next set of dips.
He grins. “You like her?”
I shrug. “Yeah, she’s-” I stop myself when I realise why he’s grinning like that. “Not like that, bro.”
He cocks his head. “Why do you like her then?”
He’s not being misogynistic, of course, he’s trying to bait me into giving myself away.
“She doesn’t annoy me about possible girlfriends, for one,” I tell him, both eyebrows raised. “And apart from that… well, she’s nice to be around… funny, and I guess we just have a lot in common?”
“And you don’t think she’s pretty?”
“Of course she’s pretty. But what does that matter? I’m literally changing into a girl!” Is he acting this stupid on purpose?
I push myself back up onto the parallel bars and start doing dips.
Henry takes a moment with his reply. “You know, that shouldn’t keep you from dating anybody, right?”
I shake my head, briefly hold my breath as my muscles struggle to push me back up. “But it is!” I hiss through gritted teeth. Not because I’m angry, really, but because I’m still working at the edge of failure. “If you find her so pretty, why don’t you date her?”
He raises his hands in surrender. “I was just curious, that’s all.”
And anyway, he has a girlfriend. I don’t know her very well, she lives quite a ways away so it’s pretty rare that she comes to visit. She’s definitely nice, though, and also really pretty. Maybe not as pretty as Sadie.
Of course I know she’s beautiful. But that doesn’t have to mean that I want to date her, right? Not right now, anyway. And by the time I might want to, I’ll be chest-deep in the friend zone. So that’s that taken care of.
I nod, once again jump off the station and take a deep breath. “Let’s just not talk about it, okay? Stuff like that….”
Stuff like that being anything and everything to do with the virus. Which includes my dating life, obviously.
Because who’d ever want a boy in the body of a girl?
“Yeah, sure,” Henry says and nods, his expression a little worried now. Probably worried he got my mood down. Well, he’d be right in that assumption. “Sorry I brought it up.”
“Just forget about it,” I mumble and take a swig from my water bottle.
