The Trouble with Kissing Connor

Chapter 30- (Sadie)

What's that thing people say about silence being deafening? Not only is it deafening, it's also physically palpable. That afternoon I felt like I could taste it, or maybe that was the blood I was tasting from where I'd bit my own lip while launching myself at McKenzie. For a while, the two of us just sat upright on the couch looking straight ahead, not daring to move and certainly not daring to make eye contact.

Tick, tick, tick...

All I could hear was the second hand of the huge grandfather clock killing time. Murdering it one second at a time. In a way, I envied it. I wanted to murder someone right now..... I felt very murderous.

I was still seething. Only this time it was the more silent dangerous kind of seethe. I was busy cataloguing everything. Every last thing that McKenzie had ever done to me, and I was racking my brain for her Achilles heel. Where could I hurt her that would have the most effect?

Throwing myself into a physical fight with her was child's play. The stakes had now been raised. I was in it for proper revenge. Despite what my dad had said, I wanted to make her feel like I did right now.

I heard the fabric of the couch ripple and out of the corner of my eye I saw her cross her legs. She was wearing her short pastel pink skirt, she had the smoothest, longest legs I'd ever seen. They were always tanned, even in winter. Always shiny, like she rubbed glitter on them every morning. The skirt was attached to some tight shirt- obvs (as she would say). Her long blonde hair was so shiny, it was like a mirror. Shiny was kind of her thing.

McKenzie clenched her hands in her lap and started wringing them. Anxiety? So unlike her. She was probably just warming them up for another bitch slap session. Her muscles tensed and I looked back up to her face in time to see a small tear escape her eye and roll down her cheek—Are you fucking kidding me?

I jumped out of my seat, and glared down at her. "You're crying?! What the hell do you have to cry about?"

"I didn't want things to end up like this," McKenzie wailed and then burst into tears. Not just tears, she was sobbing.

I backed away, almost frightened by this very uncharacteristic show of emotion. I didn't know whether to believe it, or whether to nominate her for an Oscar. I guess she could read my mind, because she glared up at me.

"I mean it!" she cried out again. Wow, if she was acting, those snot bubbles were a stroke of genius. "I really, really didn't want this to happen!" She began looking around helplessly for something to blow her nose. Okay, I guess she was being serious.

"Well, what the hell did you think was going to happen when you did it?" I wasn't ready to join her in sobbing. I still wanted an explanation.

"You're as blind as him, you know that," she said, looking up at me. Her face was ugly and smeared with black mascara, and I had never seen this version of her before. Ever.

I shook my head. "Blind? Can you be a little more cryptic please?"

"BLIND!" She screamed the word at me. "You were my best friend! You know that? You were my everything. I looked up to you so much... my big sister, even if it was only by two minutes. And then one day some guy moves in next-door and you dump me. Just like that!" She started to sob again and my mouth fell open in shock. "For ten years I've been trying to get your attention. It's totally pathetic, I know. I've done everything to get you to talk to me, to look at me, to spend five minutes of time with me–like we used to. Even if we're fighting it's better than nothing, at least you act like I exist!"

I stepped back as her words punched me in the gut with forced. Her sobbing tapered off and she hung her head.

"So, yeah. You've been as blind as Connor this whole time."