The Van Pact

3.5: Valerie

"The Wrangler's at least being fixed, though, right?"

Stevie followed me out of our anatomy classroom. Last period of the day. Doesn't seem like it will be too bad of a class, though our teacher, Mr. Webb, seems to be real into Buzzfeed. He had two quizzes open in two different tabs on his browser. He didn't care that they showed up on the overhead projector before he began lecture. Interesting, right? Probably more interesting than the coursework. I already know too much about anatomy to be curious about it. I only agreed to take the class as an elective cause of a favor to Stevie. She's dead set on pharmacology school and she thinks anatomy will look good on her college applications. Another plus for her is that Jesse's also in our class. Stevie peeked at him through all of our first-day ice breakers. He'd already fled the classroom the minute the bell rang, though, so there was no chance at any more of my Machiavellian matchmaking. Lucky Stevie.

"Dad took it to the shop yesterday," I started for the stairs across the hall. "Why are you so concerned about it, anyway?"

"Why aren't you?" Stevie pushed open the door to the stairway. "Your van would be social suicide for most people."

"His name is Gus," I insisted, "and that's very rude."

"You're about the only person I know who could pull off driving something like that." Stevie said, as we reached the ground floor stairwell.

People have a tendency of telling me I'm able to "pull off" things that they can't. This sentiment, as far as I'm concerned, is grade-A garbage. Who's the unspoken, all-mighty arbiter of "pulling shit off," anyway? John Roberts? Judge Judy? Gordon Ramsey? Whoever it is, he/she's got Stevie by the proverbial balls. The biggest risk she's ever taken was probably the time she tried grapefruit La Croix last week. Spoiler alert: she didn't like it. When all our friends went mini-golfing in July, she wouldn't even let me spend fifty cents to play the claw machine in the corner of the course-side ice cream shop, because "they're scams." Fifty cents! I've never seen her in clothing that couldn't be described as "basic" or "normcore" or "please-don't-look-at-me," and her relationship with make-up is "functional." Now don't misquote me, normcore basics with functional makeup have a right to be as sartorially laissez faire as they want to be- and I would even encourage that style if that was something Stevie genuinely wanted -it can be a cool look!- but I know the girl. She's my best friend. I've seen the way she's admired oversized, burgundy faux-fur coats in Forever 21; the flash-tattoo-inspo pictures she's added to her Tumblr; the weird Renaissance-art-inspired make-up looks she liked on Instagram. Deep down in that self-censored, 'no-fun-for-me' heart of hers, is a living, breathing weirdo aching to burst out.

You might say, "But Valerie! It isn't your place to free the weirdo from Stevie's normie-shell!" And I would agree with you, fundamentally. But it's our senior year already. Twelve months from now and she'll be at some -lulz, probably private- college somewhere, struggling to fit in amongst wannabe finance bros, sorority girls, and the politically conscious types who don't vote in midterm elections. If there's one thing I've observed of the twins' college experience, is that college is the middle school of real life. If Stevie isn't already comfortable with herself by then, the transition to fully-functioning, gainfully-employed adult will be downright brutal. Hell, even if she's able to squeak through her college years, going to honors society barbeques and crusty Panhellenic mixers, without ever letting her real weirdo out, all that self-repression will wreak havoc with her adult psychology. The weird has to emerge eventually. It's manifest destiny. You just don't want it to be when she's forty, married to the first guy who asked her out, and going mad listening to all those Christmas carols on repeat in a Target pharmacy EVERY FIRST OF NOVEMBER. Think about all the bad, midlife crisis-y decisions she'll make then. Decisions that will actually have real, possibly-life-shattering consequences. Who knows if I'll be around to bail her out then. It's best if she sorts this insecurity out while she's still a teenager. Nobody cares what you do while you're a teenager. I'm living proof of that.