Chapter Text
The pillow N had been hugging for comfort was deflated by how hard N was squeezing it. For the almost (not really) hour N had waited he had done nothing but sit in silence, partly interrupted by one of Cyn’s games. For all of those many seconds he waited he assumed that Uzi had hated him, or was annoyed, or weirded out.
When the boy finally received the response he was shocked. The simple answer seemed way too unenthusiastic but considering the person? It was quite literally the best response he could’ve gotten.
~~~
Uzi - 6:19pm
>sure
~~~
Uzi’s friendships were few and far between. In elementary school she had one friend who’d ran away after only talking to her for a few months, in middle school she was sent to an all girl’s boarding school halfway across the country and by the time she was in high school she was already an outcast. If her many piercings and striking hair didn’t turn someone away then her deafness would. Not like it would bother her much. Everything was on the internet now- even friendship. She’s held a plethora of online friends beforehand. Sure she fell out of touch with all of them over her high school years but that was fully her choice. Online friendship was just easier in a way. Get online, they text and she texts back, sometimes they video call on the few platforms with live closed captioning, and when that got boring video games were always available.
High school has been stressful. The last time she transferred into public school she was bullied out of the state and into a whole different system (god that boarding school was boring). This time though people were a lot more silent with their disdain. At first she was interesting and curious, like a tiger paraded around at a circus. Her school acted like they were so diverse for taking her in, making a show of it every assembly with an asl translator. Nevermind the fact that Uzi didn’t need one in the first place, they don’t even know that she skips every assembly ever since the back to school rally. What would've been helpful would be a translator in all her classes, but the school doesn’t have the funding for that. So all she gets are begrudgingly written lecture notes from student teachers and the ability to use her phone to speech-to-text her way through all four years of high school.
What Uzi doesn’t want to admit is that a friend would’ve really helped. Yes, her internet friends were there for her emotionally but no one was there to stop someone from bullying her, or making fun of her, or just telling them off for staring. While she’s never really had a real friend before, she could assume that they’d help in that situation. Although, she didn’t know what constituted a friendship. Sure she texted kids in her class, but the moment summer started and school ended her phone would be as dry as the face of the moon. And yes, she’s joked around a lot with the aunties and young kids at asl club but it was more like another classroom than an actual place to meet people.
For the longest time Uzi had been secretly wishing for a friendship to fall into the palm of her hands. For someone to walk up to her and say hi.
She did not want it to be Nathan.
It was hard not to notice him. She never forgot him. His sickly white hair and his boring brown eyes and his lanky frame. It seemed he’d finally grown into his long arms. Those same arms that he used to throw her hearing aids out the window. Those same arms he used to torment her for those many months. She never forgave him. Her therapist told her that forgiveness could help with her feelings, for the bitter taste his name left in her mouth. She didn’t have the heart to forgive. That was lost the day she was ostracized, the day she transferred.
She was bitter and she did not care. When they first met again her first thought was to kill him. Unfortunately, that option is illegal. She was able to rough him up a little, god knows she wanted to do much more, but when she saw him reach out for friendship, who was she to turn him down?
Those sloppy signs he made were the first efforts shown by anyone in years to connect with her. Even if there was a high chance he was doing it out of guilt, out of his own self pity rather than out of true innocence of friendship, Uzi had just been waiting for a chance. So for a few weeks they’d meet. They’d catch up and they’d talk. She’d teach him a few words and he’d sign them back. A transactional relationship. He didn’t text outside of asl club and she didn’t reach out.
Suddenly the past month had felt like a fluke, like a red herring life was giving her. It made her not want to show up to the club the next meet, or the next week, or next month. She wanted to avoid him again, to run down those stairs and out the glass door and down the main road and let the ocean swallow her whole. Of course he didn’t want her. Of course he wanted forgiveness.
That was until that day, when he texted her that string of words. It seemed more so like a self soothing rant than it did a question. Uzi left him on read for the better half of an hour. She’s never hung out with someone in real life before. N was very.. enthusiastic about asking her. It wasn’t like anything she expected from anyone. From anime and tv shows it usually just cut to the next day where they went out and had a fun time, there was never an inbetween where they actually had to talk out the plans!
Here she was stuck. She wondered if it would be wrong of her to add on to the plans, or to ask for a change in plans. She actually had no opposition to any of N’s plans. In reality she would’ve been fine if N asked her to come explore the dump, with his large toothy smile and halo of white hair she would’ve been okay with anything. But she didn’t know what was socially acceptable. It seemed she never did.
So “sure”, the answer was “sure.”