Pride Month 2020 SHORT STORIES

Dhalia's Big Thoughts

First suggestion was for a story with a gay villain.

Dhalia's Big Thoughts 

I'd known Dhalia since preschool. Not once in the long years in which I was friends with her, did I imagine that the sweet little girl with pigtails and lace-lined clothing could be capable of the things she's done. But then, people don't usually expect sweet pink fingers to be washing off red bloody gunk from large knives. Knives so large their length surpassed the length of her small face. She was so tiny and the knife was so big that it looked like an over-sized prop in the hands of a petite cartoon character. Her size had always been charming. Everybody thought it was cute that she was so small. But big thoughts went on in her little head. Scary thoughts. Thoughts she kept to herself, and that's why they were so dangerous.

The first time I knew that Dhalia liked girls was in 9th grade. Our school (an all-girls catholic school) had an assembly about something - I can't remember what it was – and there was a power point presentation, or something that required the use of one of the student's computers. Everybody in the amphitheater could see what was being done on the computer on the big cinema-sized screen hanging above the stage. The operator (probably another student) was moving around some files, either trying to make something work or trying to find a lost folder. And then, she clicked on her desktop since she couldn't find what she was looking for in the other folders. Her wallpaper was a photo of Edward Cullen, the glittery vampire from the popular young adult trilogy: Twilight. The entire room shook with girls' excited (and now that I think back on it, probably horny) screams. I remember screaming with them in a desperate attempt to fit in. I didn't really understand the excitement but I wanted to be a normal teenager who screamed when they saw pictures of hot actors, or whatever. As I was screaming and smiling and drowning in my unquenchable thirst for approval, I noticed that Dhalia was not screaming. She looked disinterested. She didn't care about Edward Cullen and she didn't care about conforming to the irrational hormonal actions of at least 50 other girls. She just sat there looking annoyed at all the ruckus until the operator found the file she was looking for and the assembly could finally start.

I didn't assume that Dhalia didn't like guys solely because of this incident. I figured that maybe she just didn't like the Twilight series. But it was the first time that the thought had crossed my mind and I had a strong feeling that it was true. Maybe I should've been more concerned about my own disinterest.

The next year, I started noticing her staring at women. She would stare at Vanessa Hudgens' thighs when we watched the second High School Musical Movie (Vanessa wore a lot of short shorts in that movie). And she would also stare at the English teacher's chest in class. The teacher wasn't wearing revealing clothing, but Dhalia was staring at her chest. She was caught too. The teacher yelled at her for staring at her shirt instead of paying attention to the lesson. I was sitting next to her that day, and her discomfort was palpable. But it was a good thing that the teacher didn't catch on to what she was really staring at.

Throughout the years, me and Dhalia became close friends. But I never asked her about whether or not she was gay. I figured that she would just tell me herself when she was ready.

I thought I had such a sharp eye for being able to notice these things about her. But the things that I missed were much more important. Like the time that I needed money urgently, and she came up to my house with her car at 10 PM at night and took me to several stores and helped me sell my cellphone. I'd rather not explain the circumstances that forced me to come up with 300$ in one night. That's a story for another day. The point is that Dhalia left her home at night and drove me around (I didn't have a car) and helped me till 1 AM.