Proving Webster Wrong

Chapter Four -- Drew

Chapter Four

Drew

Chloe's the type of person that walks around with a serious look on her face at all times, even when she puts on a smile. I used to always wonder how a person could always be that serious about everything. It didn't matter how many times I saw her laugh or have a good time. She was still always serious.

When she said those words, that she wanted to change things, with her eyes wide and her eyebrows pulled down in two perfectly straight line something changed. All that time that I had spent thinking I knew what she looked like when she was truly being serious I had been wrong. The way she leaned in across the table and the hesitant why she whispered the words told me more than she realized.

That fake smile she liked to put on and the standard response of "good" she gave when ever someone asked her how she was were just a mask that at that moment in the park she chose to drop. The Chloe that lacked confidence and that was so afraid had been hidden from all those people.

Then just as suddenly as the change happened she had gone back to sitting up straight with her eyes squinting at the sun. She opened her mouth in a wide yawn, covering it a fist. I laughed as I yawned.

"Sorry. I don't know why I'm so tired."

I knew she probably wasn't really tired. She was always yawning, even when she looked well rested. A long time ago I came to the conclusion that it was just her way of distracting herself when she wanted to stop thinking or talking about something.

"Sometimes I feel like people only see me as Crystal's boyfriend and the pastor's kid. Do you know how many people asked me where Crystal was this morning?" I couldn't let her change the subject. It felt like we were actually getting somewhere. I wasn't ready for that to end.

"What did you tell them?" She didn't even look at me. She focused all of her attention on making sure the lid was placed securely back onto her cup. Then she starting twirling the straw around in the liquid and ice.

"I told them that she just couldn't make it." I told myself that it hadn't been a lie. I just wasn't ready to tell them all that we had broken up. I couldn't face what they might say, what they might ask. What reason would I give them? I hadn't even told my parents yet.

"Maybe it's not them that only sees you as those things. Maybe it's you."

She had a point. It was exactly the point that I had been trying to make to myself. The same argument I had been having with myself all morning long.

"I don't know." I kept my eyes on the top of her head as if maybe she would realize that I was staring at her and look up. It didn't work. Or maybe she knew what I was trying to do and fought against any urge she had to make eye contact. "What about you?"

She kept playing with the straw. Now she was pulling it up and down so it made the horrible squeaking noise against the lid. "What about me?" She may be an actress but off stage she wasn't all that great at hiding things. Maybe before I thought she was, but it was getting easier to see through things.

"The way people define you?"

She popped the lid off her cup and dumped an ice cube into her mouth. Her jaw tensed as it worked to grind up the ice. "What do you think."

I rubbed my hands through my hair. "Aww, come on, Chloe. I'm trying to be honest here. Why can't you do the same?"

That started another staring contest. This time she was the one to give up first, to blink her dark green eyes and look away. She turned around on the picnic table bench so that her back were to both me and the table. I hadn't meant to offend her, just to get an answer. People were always telling me to step up and push things a little harder, to not be so passive. This is what it got me.