The Objectively Most Rational Decision

-- Day 47 --

This was fucking blackmail. Blatant coercion deserving of being prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Yesterday, I had finally gotten around to asking my mother to purchase a phone for me. She had accepted, but only on one condition: I had to accompany her on this excursion. Fucking end me now, honestly.

I had, eventually, relented to the terms - despite my multitudinous objections. I had debated over what clothes to wear, before coming to the stunning conclusion that it was just a fucking phone and the hoodie and jeans would do.

We had arrived at the shopping mall shortly before noon, on another bright, terrible day with nary a cloud in the sky. I hated summer. In ages past, a mall on a Saturday would be filled with teenagers doing whatever teenagers did when they hung out with each other, or at least that was the impression I got from old media.

Nowadays, while still respectably populated, there was no particular abundance of teens. I pondered on how and when that cultural shift happened. Not that I minded, because teenagers - with their underdeveloped frontal lobes - were some of the cruelest beings on Earth.

When I was thirteen, I had a particularly irritating classmate who would always sit behind me and mock the answers I gave in class in the most obnoxious, childish voice possible. I got seriously fucking annoyed at him one day, and he kept fucking do it, and I was getting so fucking pissed - eventually, I reached a breaking point. I toppled past my chair and jumped across his desk and tried to fucking throttle him.

I got pulled off of him, obviously, and I got in so much fucking trouble. More trouble than he did, despite being the provocateur. I was angry about the injustice of that, and I yelled at the principal. I got in even more trouble. The one silver lining was that the assholes at school didn’t bother me anymore. Good fucking riddance.

Somehow, while I was lost amidst recollections that still made me clench my fists in indignant rage to this day, we had already went into a store and purchased a phone. That was surprisingly easy. I knew my mother was trying to talk to me the whole time, but I just ignored it. Getting lost in one’s mind was incredibly easy.

“I know you don’t like going outside, Eris,” my mother sighed, “but... I would really appreciate it if you would just talk to me sometimes.”

My throat tightened, and I warily glanced around the mall. Seriously, she wanted to have this conversation now? “Can we not do this here?” I asked.

She frowned, “I just... you always hide in your room, whenever I try to talk to you. I just want to help.”

I scowled in reply, “I don’t like talking about my feelings, okay?” I would prefer to have no feelings at all, in fact. I tried my best.

Finally dropping the subject, she said, “...Okay. I won’t push you. Is there- is there anything else you wanna get while we’re here?”

I was about to respond in the negative when something occurred to me. I was purchasing this phone in order to contact Sean fucking Murphy to enact my revenge. Ergo: I needed more clothes. It would be really weird if I wore the same outfit for every interaction. It was only logical to do this.

“Um, yes, there is one thing...” I responded. I already knew I was going to regret this.

***

It was done. I didn’t want to talk about it. It was... really embarrassing.

I got several new outfits, at least.

***
-- Day 53 --

I was starting to have second thoughts about this.

Electronic contact with the enemy had been established as of four days ago. We had engaged in idle chatter on and off, but I had come no closer to my goal of getting closer to him. That is, until he invited me to a quote “Friday movie night” which he apparently hosted for his friends every couple weeks.

A golden opportunity to further my plans.

Now, here I was - standing outside his apartment. It wasn’t that hard to get into the building, actually: I was probably supposed to ring the doorbell - or whatever it was - but I simply waited until someone else was entering, then slipped in behind them. I knew I got the room right. I had memorized it quite vividly in preparation.

Was I really going to do this? It was- well, it was a bit gay, wasn’t it? No. It was not - I was just acting in order to achieve a goal. Nothing more. Besides, I was already becoming a girl so it didn’t even matter, anyway.

I steeled myself, and tentatively knocked on the door. Three seconds, four, five, si-

The door swung open, revealing Sean behind it wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants. I felt suddenly overdressed. I- okay, well, maybe I tried a little too hard. I had decided on another skirt (I got one pair of leggings, but I wasn’t sure how to hide the bulge in them), paired with a dark purple sweater with sleeves that were a bit too long. It was... cute.

“Oh, hey! Glad you’re here.” he ushered me inside. The apartment was almost as small as my own. There was a kitchen area on one side - shielded from the living room by a disconnected wall - laden with the clutter of use: dirty dishes piled in the sink, bread crumbs littering the countertop, and a purplish stain in front of the microwave. Jeez, didn’t anyone clean around here?

Yeah, I was one to talk.

The living room fared much better: the coffee table was clear, with only a bowl of fruit in the center, and the couch and armchair, though crammed tightly the walls, looked freshly tidied - thin blankets were draped over them and throw pillows were placed quite deliberately on the edges. I wondered whether he cleaned it up every time he was expecting guests, or if it was because of me, specifically. Probably the former; that was a stupid thought.

“Ah, you can take a seat wherever. Nobody else is here yet, uh, my roommate’s in his room and will probably stay there all night, he doesn’t...” he rubbed the back of his head, more self-consciously than before, “He doesn’t really, well, like my friends.”

I sure wondered why, based on my interaction with Julia.

Cautiously, I sat down at the right end of the couch. I eyed him as he cluttered around in the kitchen, before he placed a glass of water on the coffee table and sat down right in the middle of the couch. Why didn’t he take the other end? The inconspicuous invasion into my personal space was duly noted, and my suspicions grew.

Peering at the currently inactive television, I interrogated, “Who exactly are your ‘friends’, and when will they be arriving?” I had come at exactly the time he said - or maybe a few minutes earlier - would it kill for these people to be punctual? I had done nothing all day waiting for this - I had to do something later, and therefore I couldn’t do anything else. It was one of the many strange phenomena of my dysfunctional psyche.

He leaned back on the couch, “Well, today: Julia, her girlfriend, and my friend Nikolas are gonna show up. He’s the one who picks the movies, actually.”

I glanced over and raised an eyebrow, “Do you even know what movie we’re going to watch?”

“Ah, nope!” he shrugged, “He prefers to keep it a surprise.”

Wonderful. I hated surprises.

The conversation faded quickly, with Sean taking small, infrequent sips of his water. I always hated the silence that dwelled in the gaps when interacting with other people. I was inevitably left alone with my thoughts - thinking too much about the impression that I’ve given, and trying not to reveal the unintelligible mess that was my inner monologue. Displaying one’s own weaknesses was never good.

I was about to disrupt the discomforting quiet myself, when the apartment door did it for me. Oh, thank fuck. From the inelegantly cacophonous entrance emerged a man who was really tall, with a plain DVD case in his hand.

“Sorry, tripped on the doorway again,” he sighed, “I keep forgetting it, every time!”

God, why did people always have to be so loud? It was supremely irritating. I instinctively recoiled further into the couch behind me.

The motion caused the intruder to notice my presence, "Oh, hey," he turned his head back to Sean, "New friend?"

He nodded, "Yeah! This is Eris," he gestured at me, "Eris, Nikolas."

Friend? Get a grip, dude, we'd been talking on and off for less than a month. Hardly enough to qualify as friendship. I glared suspiciously at Nikolas, noting the cross pendant on his neck. Saying nothing, I affected only a slight nod.

He gently placed the DVD case on the coffee table and glanced around the room, "Where's Jules?"

Sean smirked, "Looks like you got here earlier, for once."

"Nice. Can I put the popcorn in?"

He shrugged, "Yeah, sure. Better not be too cold by the time they get here though."

"Got it, bro," he flashed a pair of finger guns with two sharp snaps, and retreated to the kitchen. He was being loud as hell again. Were all of Sean's friends so annoying? No wonder his roommate hated them!

"Um-" I eventually started, "Does he always make so much noise?"

Sean chuckled, "Eh, you learn to love it."

I was decidedly unimpressed by that answer, so I silently glared in reply. Squirm, maggot.

"Uhh... I can grab some headphones from my room, if that would help?"

"It's fine. I don't care," I responded. I wanted to complain, not find solutions to those complaints. It was really quite simple, actually.

"Hey, is butter chill?" Nikolas asked from the kitchen, immediately after the microwave finished beeping.

Plain popcorn was incredibly bland - it was like eating cardboard. My response was only a shrug, though, despite myself not being in his line of sight.

"She shrugged," called Sean. I rolled my eyes at that, but neither saw. It was still strange to be referred to as a 'she' - it induced an odd, though not uncomfortable, feeling.

"I shall take that as a 'yes', then!"

He returned from the kitchen carrying two bowls of popcorn - the large one was placed on the coffee table, near the vacant armchair, and the other was handed to Sean, who still sat in the middle of the couch. When Nikolas sat down, Sean scooted over to give him room. My personal space was compromised further, and I bit my lip in consternation. Couldn't this couch be a little bigger?

Nikolas immediately began snatching popcorn from the bowl, which was stupid because the movie hadn't even started, and if you did that you would run out of popcorn halfway through the movie and then you'd have no popcorn for the rest of it and that always sucked.

A few minutes later, the final two guests had arrived. This was going to be overwhelming, wasn't it? The first to cross the threshold of my sight was Julia, and I glared at her in greeting. The next was someone whom I unexpectedly recognized.

She clearly recognized me too, because she began, "Wait- weren't you-" before dropping to a whisper in Julia's ear.

Julia blinked, then leveled a glare at me in return. "You're the one who made her really uncomfortable at the blood lab? She was anxious for the whole day!"

I shrank back into the couch cushions, and furrowed my eyebrows. Wasn't I just making conversation? I was kinda rude, I supposed.

Sean glanced over at me, "Y'know, I was gonna introduce you, but looks like you already met?"

I nodded briefly at him, but was interrupted by Julia's reproachful voice, "Well? Can you apologize to her?"

Oh my fucking God, shut up. I always hated apologizing - it was almost as bad as admitting I was wrong about something. Even when I knew I did something bad, it was always so uncomfortable to admit it - I felt vulnerable, weak, awful in my gut in some inexplicable way. Yet another reason I never liked socializing.

It was especially annoying this time, because I wasn't sure what I even did.

"Uh, sorry?" I flatly intoned. Sean nudged my side with his elbow, and I fought the instinctual eye-roll. I made clear eye-contact with Julia's girlfriend, and forced out the words: "I'm sorry for what I said at the blood lab."

Well, that was over with. Ugh. I was tired of being around other people and wanted to go home already.

"Good enough," Julia sighed, "Come on, Luna."

The two squeezed onto the armchair, and Julia grabbed the bowl of popcorn from the coffee table.

While the apology was being squeezed out of me, Nikolas was vigorously washing his hands of buttery popcorn grease in the bathroom. "Prepare to watch a true cinematic masterpiece, folks," he grinned, picking up the DVD case and retrieving the disk from within, "Troll 2!"

Sean groaned. I raised an eyebrow at him, and he explained, "It's a bit of a crapshoot whether he picks an actually good movie or one of the bad ones he just finds really funny. This is, uh, the second one."

I didn't enjoy the movie. It was weird and gross and made no sense. Nikolas and Julia kept cracking quips at the television, and I felt overwhelmed being in a social setting for so long.

I ended up zoning out, thinking about random things - eventually nothing at all - and leaning further and further into the large, warm pillow on my left. It was cozy, and very comfortable. I would reach up and grab small handfuls of popcorn every once in a while, but I did it less and less as the movie dragged on. When the pillow drew its arm around my shoulder, I grew even more snug, and didn't question it. I wished I had a blanket.

It was only when the credits were finally rolling, and I noticed Julia smirking in my direction, that I consciously processed that I was cuddling up to Sean fucking Murphy.

The comfort that had existed a moment prior vanished instantly, replaced with self-consciousness and self-disgust. Face burning, I slowly extricated myself, and lightly pushed Sean so he would scoot over. This was fine. I was here to trick him into falling for me anyway, so - clearly - I was just subconsciously working towards that goal.

"Welp," said Nikolas, stretching exaggeratedly, "That's all for this week."

He got up from his seat, and everyone else followed suit. I belatedly stood up myself. Standing, it became readily apparent to me just how short I was. Everyone else - except for Julia, who was about two inches shorter - was obviously taller than me. I hated feeling small - it made me feel so pathetic and useless. I wasn't even that short!

Everybody started talking to each other - about random things that I didn't care at all about, which drifted past me unprocessed - and I had no idea what to do with myself. I fidgeted with my hands, and my eyes were drawn again to the pendant on Nikolas' neck. He was talking to Julia, who had her arm wrapped around her girlfriend's waist.

The words fell out of my mouth, "Your religion persecutes gay people."

Nikolas recoiled, "I- I don't-"

Julia interrupted his stammering, and - with a sharp scowl - asked me, "Seriously, Eris?"

"'Seriously' what?" I raised an eyebrow, falling into my oft-trodden arguments, "Religion is an archaic and obsolesced tool of discrimination and control that's clinging on to its last shreds of power."

"'Seriously', it's really annoying to try and incite arguments out of nowhere! Nikolas doesn't represent some monolith of all of Christianity, it's super fucking rude to call him homophobic just because you don't like his religion!" Julia's voice raised an octave higher than mine.

I raised mine yet another, "It's not that I 'don't like his religion', I'm pointing out the fact that it invariably ends up being used as a justification for the most egregious atrocities in history! It really ought to just be fucking abandoned already! I don't see why we should cower to respectability over somebody's belief in some Middle Eastern storm god with an oversized ego!"

"That's the problem with institutions like the Catholic Church, not some vague entity like 'religion' as a whole! People can have religious beliefs for a huge multitude of reasons, and mocking them doesn't help anybody, it just makes you an asshole!"

"Well I'd rather be an asshole than cater to people's delusions! Y'know, it's pretty fucking rich that you're the one defending his beliefs! What, can he not stand up for himself?"

Julia opened her mouth to retort yet again, when she caught the eye of Nikolas. She winced, and closed her mouth.

He looked like he was having a full-blown panic attack: hyperventilating and shaking like a leaf. Fuck. I messed this up.

"I, uh- I guess we should... call it a night, then," Sean said, more uncomfortably than I'd ever heard him speak before.

"Yes. We should," I spat, painfully sensing that I'd ruined everything yet again. I resolutely walked out of the apartment door, slamming it behind me.

Fucking- ugh. My inner monologue was a haze of irritated mutterings for the entire walk back to my apartment - I hardly noticed the cold air of the night. I fucked it up and now Sean was gonna hate me and I wasn't gonna be able to get my revenge. Why did Julia have to go and start an argument with me? I hadn't known her for long but I already hated her.

Why did guys even like females, beyond the biological imperative to reproduce? They were all so intolerably aggravating, and none of them were even that fucking attractive.

I arrived home slightly less enraged than when I left Sean's apartment, but I was in absolutely no mood to talk to my mom. I stalked past before she made any attempt at conversation, and wished I had a lock on my bedroom door when I closed it. Just in case.

Without even bothering to change out of my girl clothes, I collapsed on my bed. What a fucking disaster. I couldn't handle a single fucking social situation without opening my mouth and ruining it. Why did I still bother?!

I shoved my face into my pillow and silently screamed the tension out of me. What a sorry fucking excuse for a human being. I wished, desperately, that I could fall asleep and forget all about my stupid life and wake up as someone else. Anyone else.

Anyone but me.

***
-- Day 54 --

I was still me when I woke up. Obviously.