Also, it was hard not to be just a little bit in love with Evey Paros after that day. Which is why I figured out how to fold my own fortune-teller thing and brought it to her at the next class in front of a bunch of the other kids. Not knowing the protocol. Not knowing that I was not cool.
Luckily, she set me straight pretty quick.
She fixed me with a very serious stare, her black eyes locked on mine, and said in a calm, deadly voice, “We are not friends.”
So I backed away, and after class I threw my paper fortune-teller away, along with any shred of confidence I’d gained from that afternoon.
It hurt in a strange way. Like I’d spent a lot of time working on a gift that she’d opened and smashed in front of me.
Then I remember thinking later how stupid it had been to walk in front of everyone like that. How innocent. How completely out of character for me. I hadn’t realized that Evey was just passing time. That she wasn’t being nice to me—she was amusing herself.
The funny thing is, I still have a hard time believing it. We laughed together.
Today, when I checked in for yoga, she acted like she’d never seen me before in her life.
Dark hair, dark eyes, black yoga pants, and a bright blue tank top.
She looked through me as she scanned my card, and there was half a second where I felt like I only really existed because she looked up.
Then I felt pathetic and sidestepped away from the front desk as fast as possible.
Leave the Paros family alone, Yia Yia’s voice whispered.
I am trying.
But Evey is Greek. She has two Greek parents. She goes to our Greek Orthodox church every Sunday and has participated in Greek school since she was a kid. So even if I were a hermit who eats bugs alone in the woods (which I mostly am, minus the bug-eating), I still would have known Evey Paros.
Then again, maybe nobody really knows her. Because something happened between summer and Christmas break.
She and Jordan Swansea were a thing at the end of last school year, and even though my general impression of Evey—from a distance, obviously—had been that she was beautiful in a “watch out for the rocks, her song is bewitching you” sort of way, she suddenly became popular as well. She and Jordan were like high school royalty.
Two rich kids who could do no wrong.
Until they broke up.
And I’m sure if I talked to people, I’d know why. I’d probably know a lot more if I talked to people, actually.
I glanced at Drake, now bobbing his head to whatever music was playing from his phone, and considered asking him what had happened between Evey and Jordan. Then, in what I imagined was the middle of some drum solo, he started bobbing his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears. And I changed my mind.
Then the bell rang and I got up to leave Mr. Thomas’s office.
“Hey, you dropped this.”
It was Drake. He was holding one of my bamboo crochet hooks.
“Thanks,” I said, taking out my case and unrolling it to reveal twenty other hooks of various sizes.
Drake watched me with his mouth open, like he couldn’t quite explain his level of confusion, before he walked out of the room.
I returned my crochet hooks to my backpack, and my stomach dropped about a foot as my fingers didn’t touch the familiar binder that I bring with me everywhere.
It was gone.
My portfolio—all my photos.
GONE.
Namaste,
Leo
4
Dear Journal,
The most honest thing I can write is that my stomach hurts. Always. Without fail. My stomach hurts because I’m nervous. Because I’m hungry. Because I’m talking. Because I’m thinking. It just hurts. That’s its response to everything.
My stomach is supposed to, you know, hold food, but instead it has become a warning beacon for the rest of my body, which is absurd because why is my stomach getting this message? Why is my stomach the ambassador of my mental health? But somehow it is, and I need to respect it. And yoga is supposed to help. But I’m not really good at yoga.
Okay, that’s a lie. I am a master at child’s pose and downward dog. Also corpse pose—I rock that one.
Today Annabelle opened the class by asking us to focus on our strengths. All the things we’re good at.
I’m good at appearing to be okay. Projecting normalcy when I don’t feel normal.
And this took practice, because every time I feel NOT okay, I hear my dad’s voice rise up inside me.
Stop crying, Leo.
Skazmós.
Jesus Christ, every five minutes you’re crying about something.
Do you see any of the other kids crying? No? Just you.
Yep. Just me.
A guy with anxiety is not part of the phalanx, which is a Greek military formation made up of chiseled naked men holding spears and would not be well served by someone like me, distracted by all the ways I could be killed in battle.
Just you, Leonidas.
It was one of those comments that probably worked for other kids. Look at them. They’re being normal—why aren’t you? And then the kid would stop doing whatever weird thing they were doing and behave.
But it just reminded me that I was incapable of stopping. That I had somehow become the weird thing I was doing.
And that just made me feel worse. The memory of it still stung, even in yoga when I was supposed to be letting my negative energy return to the portals of hell, from whence it came.
Or whatever.
Instead, my mind drifted back to the sparkling conversation in Mr. Thomas’s office.
“Dude. Do you have to take a shit?” Drake asked.
Mr. Thomas looked away pointedly, like he wanted to remind Drake not to swear but he also wanted us to keep talking, so he let it go.
“Um, what?”
So maybe I’m not so good at appearing to be normal. Maybe I had been scrunching up my face without realizing it.
Anyway, I should have been used to these kinds of interruptions from Drake, but no one could really prepare for Drake. I took a bite of the prepackaged burrito I’d brought from home and stared at him.
“You look constipated,” he said slowly, as if I hadn’t heard him.
I was prepared to ignore him again, but he makes it impossible. The room had been dead silent. Mr. Thomas was still pretending not to eavesdrop while he typed something on his computer. And I had been staring at a quote on the wall above his desk, from a poem by Mary Oliver that we’d had to take apart in AP English.