billie || billie eilish

18

Ashlae's party is on the rooftop of an  building somewhere on the periphery of town. She rents a room there for half of the paycheck she makes at her dad's tattoo shop.
Ashlae pulls me up the wrath iron staircase to the rooftop, heels tap tapping against the metal. We wobble a bit, but she doesn't mind.
Billie follows behind us, clutching her new red-ink tattoo like a wound. Her camera sways attractively at her hip.
Up there, amidst the wispy clouds and the blueberry blue sky, Ashlae leaves us to greet a girl named Emma who's sitting on a blanket. Shay's there, too. But, he's a bit odd. Like he didn't expect to see me. I touch the rose in my hair. He watches me.
Emma speaks to him in a voice that giggles against the blue-black night sky, face flushed and petite like a fairy. She's the bells and the whistles. A real beauty.
Shay and I stare for a bit. Then, he looks away, choosing the bells and the whistles instead of me. Suddenly, I feel stupid with this dead flower in my hair and boots that squeak as I sit down beside Ashlae in the blanket.
"I hope you don't mind," Ashlae says huskily. "I brought some friends."
"Hi," Emma sings. She's so precious and naive, oblivious to the stake she's driving up up into my guts. She leans against Shay, fingers disappearing into the mess of his hair, whispering something that makes them both laugh. Belly laughs.
"Don't be so tense," Ashlae says, looking at Shay and Emma together, but not really seeing anything. In her head, we're all friends.
I fade into the blackness of the night, staring at them having the best time in the world. They know one another inside and out. Shay and Emma. Ashlae and Billie. And I'm that odd thing on the side that every good friendship doesn't need too much of. But, I'm there and no one knows how to deal with me.
"I'm sorry." It's Shay. He sits beside me, cross-legged, fingers numb and blue from the cold. His words are fog against the inky night sky.
I shrug, uninterested in it all. Only, I do feel better that he's with me now. I hide my smile and this time he can't see it in the dim because there's no bonfire and I realized that maybe he isn't so magical after all. But, I swallow it all.
His fingers are in my hair, picking at the rose and it crunches a bit, specks of dead flower getting caught up in the wind. "I mean, I should have told you that I'd be here...with her. She's only a friend, though. She likes me. But, I don't like her. Not the way I like you."
We sit there, silent and thinking, always just thinking about the things he says and the stuff I never say.
"You let her touch you." My words go up into the wind like dead flowers, too. It sounds stupid and childish. But, I say it and try not to feel bad.
"I don't want to hurt her feelings," he says.
"But, you hurt mine."
He doesn't have anything else scripted. He's empty like tins. His brain is evaporated. Suddenly, he's just a stupid boy. Just another ordinary boy.
"Come here," he says, holding out his cold hands to me. He's trying to be romantic and kind.
He takes my hand in his, pulling me up from the only place that I've known since I arrived and down the wrath iron steps. The wind has picked up and it's wild. My hair gets caught between my lips and more specks of Shay's dead rose vanishes into the night. I can't see where we are going.
"Stop, please." He can't hear me over the screaming of the wind and the pelting of ice-cold rain on our backs. "Shay, stop."
We're in the middle of the street. I don't know what he's got planned and I'm scared and blind from all the rain.
He touches his fingers to mine. "I like you, too. Okay?" He says it like it's the law. And I can't fight the law. I nod. But, I'm not sure.
His gray eyes are silver beneath the July moonlight and it scares me a bit. There's something in his eyes that I can't place.
Shay leans into me, lips cold against my cheek. "And, I know you like me, too. Who cares about Emma?"
I stand there, frozen in the middle of a dead street, legs numb and ready to run at the same time.
His fingers disappear below the hem of my jumper and I just stand there like I always do. His fingers are cold against my skin, rubbing, bruising. I shiver a bit and he smiles like we're having the time of our lives. But, we're not. I'm scared. I'm burning.