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By now, Noelle should really know better than to hope.
(Her parents would be ashamed to learn that sometimes, on very rare occasions, she might dare to. They think they workbook-ed it out of her years ago.)
But when freshman year shows signs of not being completely unbearable, that’s exactly what she does. And for a while, it actually works out — her classes seem more manageable than usual, Akarsha’s not quite as irritating as anticipated, and thanks to the surprisingly-tolerable Min, Diya, of course, is happier than ever. Even navigating her relationship with her parents isn’t as terribly awful as before, more like getting a filling rather than a root canal now.
She’s spent so many nights worrying about high school, the loneliness it might entail for her if Diya finally found her place with the jocks, the anxiety over college and the inevitable fighting with her family. Really, it’s a pleasant surprise to have everything going so well.
However, if there’s one thing Noelle’s learned from her mother, it’s that good things never stick. So of course it all falls apart come spring.
••••
She gets the first inkling that something might be wrong in March, when the weather has just started to hint at the warmth that summer will bring. Chryssa has been accepted into UCLA, so naturally, they’re celebrating at Bombay Garden (since obviously Snowcastle was off the table if Min was going to be involved). It’s kind of become the team’s go-to happy place; they’ve spent many post-victory glows eating tandoori chicken and samosas, though Noelle knows to stay far away from the pani now. (And honestly, it’s much easier to hide spending $10 a month from her mom than spending $20 at a sushi place or something. She’s reasoned it out with herself enough to justify it.)
Diya and Min have plans after, and Akarsha’s parents are picking her up for some family function they’re going to. So either out of pity or a sense of obligation, Chryssa offers her a ride home. Noelle begrudgingly accepts, if only because she knows her parents will still be out.
They don’t talk for the majority of the car ride; Chryssa’s learned by now that small talk only irritates her, and with their team’s season coming to a close, there’s not really anything of vital importance to discuss. Noelle spends the ten-minute drive staring out the window, her mind filled with thoughts of the Honors Chemistry test on Monday and the Spanish 3 essay she needs to finish. Chryssa, to her credit, turns on the classical music station, even though they both know Noelle’s the only one on the team who actually enjoys a good sonata.
It’s the most peaceful ten minutes Noelle has experienced in a while. Usually, her life feels so hectic, so filled with projects and homework and exams (and not to mention those ridiculously stupid workbooks) that she barely has a moment to breathe. Free time is simply an illusion, something reserved for other, lesser people, the ones who aren’t trying to be the best or go to Berkeley. It’s beneath her, her mother always says, but moments like these remind Noelle of exactly what she’s missing out on. Sometimes, it feels good to just do something without expecting an A for it.
Chryssa makes her sole attempt at conversation as they’re pulling up to Noelle’s house. Noelle already has her fingers curled around the door handle — she’s unaccustomed to the “Discussions Held in an Idling Car” trope so popular in the romantic comedy movies Diya makes her watch — when Chryssa puts the car in park and says, “Hold up a sec.”
She turns back, half interested and half anxious to get back to her English homework, and finds herself wholly surprised by the arms that immediately wrap around her. Chryssa’s so strong that Noelle expects her ribs to crack at any moment, given the force of her hug, but aside from that, it’s almost too enjoyable. Hugs aren’t exactly a common occurrence in her world; her parents don’t believe in them, and she’s rarely feeling generous enough to allow Diya to be so affectionate.
Still, it’s nice, as much as Noelle hates to admit it. Chryssa is warm and comforting, and she smells like a mixture of laundry detergent and the spices of Bombay Garden (which isn’t nearly an unpleasant combination as it sounds).
When Chryssa finally pulls away, Noelle has to ask. “Was there a reason for that?”
Chryssa laughs and shakes her head. “Not really, no. Just — I’m proud of you, Noelle. For sticking it out, with the team and all. I’m happy to know I’ll be leaving the club in such good hands.”
She allows a tiny half-smile to cross her lips for all of three seconds. “Thank you for the ride, Chryssa. I’ll see you on Monday.”
She’s standing in her driveway, watching Chryssa drive off, when the warm, disgustingly gooey feeling in her stomach finally registers.
And that’s when Noelle realizes she might have a problem.
••••
She buries herself in an overload of work until, a couple weeks later, she’s actually managed to forget about it. Noelle would consider that a victory if she weren’t actively trying to avoid thinking about the entire Chryssa Situation, as she’d temporarily dubbed it.
(The fact that she’s still having to try makes her wonder, though — has she really won?)
Until it happens again. And this time, she’s not the only one who notices.
Chryssa and Liz have the entire baseball team doing their daily laps around the track, a last-ditch effort they started in February once they remembered the team’s overall physical fitness was about to decrease by several percentage points come June (Diya is really their sole saving grace). Her one lap for the day completed (she refuses to do any more), Noelle’s sitting on a nearby bench, contemplating the possibility of extra credit in her Trig class as she watches the others run. She’ll be honest — Akarsha attempting to sprint in those hideous flip flops is infinitely amusing.
After five minutes, she’s joined by “Yuki” and “Sakura”, who immediately pull out the latest edition of whatever sappy manga they’ve gotten into lately. Esther’s next, only lasting one more lap, and Min and Akarsha resolve to dip out at the same time. Fifteen minutes of sitting on the bench, and Diya’s the only one left running. It’d be a bit awe-inspiring if the sheer level of Diya’s athleticism didn’t slightly scare her.
Liz signals at Diya to stop, and she jogs over to the bench to join everyone else, Min handing her a water that she gratefully accepts. “Okay, we’ll take a quick break. Let’s meet at the field in five,” Liz instructs, appearing way too gleeful for someone who’s just forced an entire team to run laps. Akarsha’s theorized that she’s a secret sadist, but Noelle’s pretty sure Liz just operates on an entirely different spectrum of happiness than the rest of them.
Yuki, Sakura, and Esther scatter to discuss their anime, and Chryssa and Liz have gone to the baseball field to get ready for practice, so it’s just the four of them. Min’s practically drooling all over herself as she watches Diya chug a bottle of water, and Akarsha’s holding back laughter. Noelle is more than a little offended by the whole display. “You could at least pretend not to ogle Diya every five seconds,” she mutters, glaring at Min.
“What, are you jealous or something?” Min shoots back. Diya spits water all over herself.
“Oh, shit — I’m sorry — ” Min scrambles to apologize as Diya turns bright red and starts tugging at her uniform shirt, which is completely drenched. Next to them, Akarsha has dissolved into giggles. Noelle just feels mildly irritated.
“Not your fault. Don’t worry about it,” Diya says, reaching for the hem of her shirt. At Akarsha’s dramatic gasp, she adds, “It’s fine. I have another shirt on.”
Noelle doesn’t realize she’s staring until she catches a glimpse of that oft-discussed six-pack and feels her face flush.
Abs like that should be outlawed, how is anyone supposed to focus —
She stops herself in the middle of the unspoken sentence. Diya and Min have already engaged in another conversation entirely, but Noelle’s heart feels like it’s thudding in her chest. This is borderline unfair. Why is her brain attacking her like this? These thoughts — these weird, gross, totally not her thoughts — they’ve come out of nowhere, and now it’s like they’re deliberately plotting to pop up at the worst possible times. In front of her friends, people she can’t afford to embarrass herself in front of. And it doesn’t make any sense. Diya’s her best friend. She doesn’t think things like that about her best friend, her best friend who is also a girl.
It’s like an alien invader has taken over her brain, except aliens aren’t real, so it must be some kind of parasite in the water or an amoeba or. Whatever. Noelle doesn’t know the source, and for once, she doesn’t care. She just wants it to stop.
In the distance, Chryssa’s whistle blows, heralding their return to the field and abruptly jolting Noelle out of her worrying. Akarsha tugs at her arm — they’re the only ones still by the bench, even Diya and Min having started to move toward the field. “C’mon, Frenchman. Let’s get moving.”
She blinks once, then twice, hoping it’ll somehow trigger a reset in her brain. Akarsha eyes her suspiciously as she stands to leave. “Is someone having a gay crisis over here? I wouldn’t blame you, Diya’s abs could win over even the straightest of women,” she says dramatically, pretending to fan herself.
Noelle knows she’s just kidding, implying things that clearly aren’t true for the millionth time simply to rile her up. But instead of simple annoyance, a tight, constrictive sort of panic — the kind she normally only gets over SATs and math class — starts to bloom in her chest. It’s so intense that it takes her a couple seconds to remember that Akarsha is expecting a response.
But all she can muster is a quiet, “Shut up,” as they head to the field.
Because now, she’s certain. Something is most definitely wrong here.
And she doesn’t know how to fix it.
••••
The situation only devolves from there.
She starts to notice things, things she’d never paid any attention to before. Like how on one Friday, Sakura wears a plum hijab that brings out the warmth of her eyes; or how on the Tuesday after that, Liz stands right in the sunlight and her hair suddenly seems much shinier than usual.
She knows things are getting bad when she accidentally tells Min that her piercings aren’t terribly unattractive. Akarsha doesn’t shut up about it for hours; even Diya texts her that afternoon to ask if she’s okay.
She thinks things can’t get any worse, but because her life is apparently quickly reaching tragic-comedy levels, they do get worse. Much worse.
It is one month and one week after the initial problem with Chryssa, and the last day of classes before spring break. She’s chatting with Diya and Min in the courtyard before first period when it happens.
“Hey, do you think Akarsha’s sick or something? She’s normally here by now,” Min interrupts.
“Dunno. She didn’t walk with me to school this morning,” Diya responds.
“I made it!”
They all start at the sudden noise, only to find Akarsha running up to them, panting heavily. The collar of her windbreaker is drooping on one side, and there’s an unidentifiable blue substance smeared across the left knee of her leggings. “Overslept,” she manages to get out. “Dad already left for work — had to run here myself—”
“I can tell. Your hair’s all fucked up,” Min points out. Sure enough, one of Akarsha’s signature buns is falling out, having turned into more of a half-ponytail.
“Shit. You’re right. We can’t have that, can we?” In spite of her clear exhaustion, Akarsha manages to flash them all a cheesy grin before reaching up and taking the elastics out of her hair.
And then, like something straight out of a goddamn shampoo commercial, she shakes her hair out, letting it fall to her shoulders in a motion far too elegant for someone like her. And Noelle instantly knows she’s done for.
She can’t be attracted to Akarsha. Liz, Chryssa, Diya, even “Sakura” — they’re all relatively normal girls, nice enough, certainly intelligent. It’s understandable if her brain had somehow gotten its wires crossed, fired the wrong signal from the wrong neuron, thinking she was looking at a boy with all of those ideal traits when she’d really been looking at a girl. They were just so nice, of course that could confuse her brain.
But Akarsha? Loud, crude, overly-energetic, cheater Akarsha? Akarsha who is the exact opposite of everything she stands for?
No. Impossible.
She could never fall for Akarsha.
••••
Noelle has decided she doesn’t need a heart.
In the medical sense, of course she needs something to pump blood to her lungs, to keep her alive. So it can stay for that. But she is done with emotions. They’re pointless, useless, only exist for the sole purpose of making her life — and her dream of Berkeley — that much more difficult. So they’ll have to go.
She comes to this conclusion on a Monday night, three days after the disaster with Akarsha and one day into spring break. Diya and Min will want her to hang out with them, but it’s not as though her mother will believe she has tutoring over spring break, she figures she can tell them. She has to come up with some excuse, because they can’t hang out. They can’t. Because if they hang out, Akarsha will be there. And if Akarsha’s there, everything in Noelle’s life, every carefully-constructed ideal she holds dear, it will all fall apart.
Noelle can’t let things fall apart. She is three years and forty-one days away from freedom, she is so close, and she just needs to make it to graduation, just needs to make it to a dorm room and lecture halls and the dean’s list. She has made it this far, and she won’t let one stupid girl in an ugly windbreaker ruin things for her now.
She is going to have to pull away.
And as for the rest of that stuff — the stupid comment about Liz’s hair, the attention she’d paid to Sakura’s eyes, the gross, fuzzy feeling from Chryssa’s hug — she can rationalize that away. She has a plan, a five-point plan. 1) Join a sorority (okay, maybe an honors sorority, because the regular kind might be pushing it). 2) Date a fraternity brother (or maybe just a really attractive Computer Science major, because she’s never been a huge fan of beer or football). 3) Take up a club sport (or maybe just student government). 4) Start wearing skirts (or maybe just skorts). And 5) Never, ever think about her heart again.
Even if her heart wants to be pesky and dumb and try to make her feel things she shouldn’t, that doesn’t mean she has to acknowledge those feelings. It doesn’t mean she has to act on them, either. She can be successful without being happy, and she will do what it takes to get there, so twenty years from now, she won’t have to listen to her parents bemoaning her “wasted potential”. She will play pretend, she will fake at happiness, grasp at it, and then, maybe one day, it’ll turn into something real.
But Akarsha and girls like her, they won’t be a part of the picture. Noelle has to make sure of that.
She won’t survive otherwise.
••••
Noelle doesn’t respond to any texts, not even from Diya. When they return from spring break, the hurt is all too present in Diya’s eyes, but Noelle doesn’t allow her the opportunity to get her alone to ask about it. She hurries to and from classes, starts bringing her water in a thermos so Diya won’t have to open the bottles for her. She skips baseball practice, claiming she needs to work on a Spanish project. When Akarsha plays stupid pranks on her, Noelle doesn’t dignify them with a reaction, simply shakes it off and walks away. Even Min’s idle threats go unanswered.
By the time Day Five of this rolls around, Noelle feels exhausted. It’s tiring, having to work so hard to avoid someone (or several someones) like this. But she has to keep reminding herself that it’s for the sake of her future. It’s for Berkeley, it’s for a white picket fence and a big, nice house in Beverly Hills. It’s for escaping her parents. She has to keep this up, even if it hurts. She has to ignore the hurt.
Unfortunately, Min and Akarsha think otherwise. They catch her as she’s trying to leave school; she’s started taking a different route home, but apparently someone caught on, because they’re waiting for her when she slips out of her last class.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you know how sad Diya is because of your bitchiness?” is the first thing Min says to her, fists clenched at her sides. Noelle’s chest gives a slight twinge at the thought of an upset Diya, but she tells herself to snap out of it. She has to be stronger than this.
“I need to get home. Please let me through,” she says, calmly and coolly. Min’s eyes narrow, and Noelle swears she almost snarls at her.
“Fuck you, you don’t get to go home until we’re done with you—”
“Min. Let me handle this. You gotta calm down,” Akarsha interjects. They all seem to be equally surprised by it — Noelle knows she is. Akarsha being the mature one? Hell must have frozen over.
Min looks like she wants to argue, but Akarsha raises a brow at her that clearly makes her think twice about it, and she slinks off in the direction of the courtyard, probably to go smoke another one of her cancer sticks (even though they’re technically not allowed on school property).
They stand there for a few moments, just the two of them. Akarsha’s hands are shoved awkwardly in her pockets, and she rocks back and forth on her feet, almost like she’s nervous. Noelle is sweating, but she wants to blame it on the heat, even though it’s cool for April.
Finally, Akarsha speaks up. “You’ve been weird lately. Is something going on? Because at first you were acting bizarre around the baseball team, and now it’s like you’ve totally cut me, Diya, and Min off, which — me and Min I totally get, we’re annoying as fuck, but Diya? Really?”
“I don’t need a guilt trip from you,” Noelle hisses. Her fingernails are digging into her palms, and it stings, but she doesn’t try to stop.
Akarsha steps forward, decreasing the space of the gap between them. “Noelle, I think I know what’s wrong. And you don’t have to be honest with me about it, but I think at the very least you should be honest with yourself,” she says softly.
Noelle doesn’t like the way softness sounds on her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she retorts, but this time, there’s no hiding the catch in her voice. She flinches; she knows she’s been caught in a lie.
“You have a hard time with feelings. I get that. But you’re not the only one,” Akarsha insists, moving even closer. Now the gap is almost totally closed. “Being someone who society, or maybe your parents, or both, has told you not to be is hard. No one’s gonna deny that,” she continues. “But you can’t take it out on everyone else. If you’re struggling, tell Diya, tell Min, tell me. We’ll struggle with you. But the crap you’ve been pulling this week — that’s not fair to anyone, including you.”
Noelle finds herself staring at her own feet. Her chest is burning and her eyes are wet, but she doesn’t want to think about it.
“Being different is hard. I mean, no shit, Sherlock. But hard isn’t the same as ‘bad,’ and you’ve got to learn to love yourself. The best people in your life already do, and are gonna love you no matter what,” Akarsha finishes. Noelle can feel her eyes on her. In the back of her mind, somewhere distant and far-off, she recognizes that she’s shaking, or maybe they both are.
And for some reason, that’s what does her in. Something in her cracks, and she lets the words come out like they want to. “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“Nah, you weren’t wrong. You were scared, and you did the wrong thing because of it, but that’s different.” Something in Akarsha’s voice wavers, but when Noelle looks up to meet her eyes, she seems fine, just clears her throat again before she adds, “But enough of that weakass emotional stuff. We’re academic robots, we don’t know what feelings are. However, we do enjoy some bomb shaved ice, and coincidentally, I think Diya’s waiting at Snowcastle for us.”
(Of course they’d planned this.)
“But I thought she and Min were banned?”
Akarsha shrugs. “They appealed it. Now c’mon, Frenchman, look alive. We gotta get there before Diya eats everything there.”
••••
So maybe she can’t pretend to be someone she’s not. Maybe she can’t pretend that she’ll end up the perfect daughter that her mother always dreamed of. Maybe she’s going to be different.
But she has to learn to live with that.
Because yeah, she likes girls.
(Actually, she likes Akarsha, the worst of them all.)
But that’s okay. And everything will be okay.
She’ll be okay.