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She fell asleep with her glasses on. Closed eyes behind them, and the face that wears them is relaxed. Easy because her mind isn’t running in circles, stressing over her campaign. The only sounds she makes are little snores and slow breaths that match the movements of her chest. In and out. In and out.
Pieces of her loose hair sweep in front of her face. As you’ve watched her for the past hour, lying beside her on her bed, you notice things about her that you haven’t really seen before, like sometimes, she wrinkles her nose—ticklish, or she’s dreaming.
You so badly want to reach forward to move those strands of hair away, accidentally have your fingers brush along her cheek, but you would risk waking her. She should wake up on her own. Even though you’re a tad bit worried about her.
It’s not like Jane to fall asleep during a meeting. A Pink Ladies hang-out, or whatever Jane calls it. Some silly thing. Something oddly specific.
Something so Janey.
She caught you at your locker before third period today and talked of plans for a Pink Ladies presidential campaign meeting (was that what she called it?) at her house. She already invited Nancy and Cynthia, and although you had your own plans to sit in the park after school and read, Pink Ladies come first. And, being completely honest, you can never say no to Jane.
Gathered around Jane in her bedroom, surrounded by pink walls with painted clouds, the four of you brainstormed ideas, of ways to get her platform off the ground. You’ve done buttons, spent all night staining them with your lipstick. What was next?
Cupcakes?
No, cookies.
With ‘Vote Pink’ written on them!
Do any of you even know how to decorate cookies?
Variations of ‘no’ and shaking heads filled the space.
Maybe something simpler?
Rydell’s newspaper? Olivia could —
Cynthia.
Nevermind. Maybe fliers?
That’s not a bad idea. We can pass them out at the football game!
Oh, and at the Frosty Palace!
It was settled, then. The Pink Ladies were going to make fliers. Nancy volunteered to design them, her hand shooting into the air when the question was asked.
A half hour, and that was it. But just as you were about to stand up from Jane’s bed, she grabbed your hand and guided you back down. Conversation started again. Not of the campaign, not of Rydell, not of Jane’s opponent. Instead, you talked about life things. Nancy’s new designs, Cynthia’s journeys as a thespian. Jane being Jane. It was nothing she hadn’t told you before.
Another half hour mixed with laughter and words after words after words, and you spotted Jane sleeping next to you, all curled up. You didn’t realize you were watching her, staring at her, until Nancy cleared her throat.
“Jane’s asleep,” you whispered, and gestured to her.
Cynthia and Nancy leaned over. “Oh. Long day?” Cynthia asked.
“I don’t know.”
Nancy crossed her arms. “You were with her all day, weren’t you?”
“You were staring at her,” Cynthia said. “Almost—”
Nancy let out a dramatic gasp, like you would expect from her. “Mesmerized.” She and Cynthia exchanged a look. “Focused.”
Cynthia nodded. “Absorbed.”
You hugged yourself, because, for a split second, you allowed yourself to crumble, and your friends saw it. All of it. Well, your friends, minus Jane. You needed to build that wall back up. If you could even build it back up. Collect each piece and place them together. Connecting perfectly, like it never collapsed in the first place. No cracks left behind. No cracks.
So what could you say? Because they couldn't know that Janey had opened your heart. Pushed each and every last brick down, leaving you defenseless. But not in a bad way. In a way that would make it harder to resist the vulnerability. To let other people in, too far deep.
“No, I— I just wanted to make sure that she was okay,” you told them. Finally, your mind was slowing down enough to pick out words and phrases to form something coherent. And it wasn’t like it wasn’t true. You were making sure that she was okay. Maybe you got a little bit… distracted.
Nancy and Cynthia didn’t seem convinced by your response, but they let it pass. “Should we wake her up?” Cynthia asked.
No.
The two of them left soon after—Cynthia had promised her dad she would be home for dinner and Nancy had a shift at the Frosty Palace.
And you? You said you would stay with Jane. I don’t want her to freak out when she wakes up and no one is here. I don’t… want to leave her, not by herself. Once you walked Cynthia and Nancy out, you joined Jane on the bed, lay down on the opposite side, and slipped her blue (bear?) plushie into her arms.
You take them off, her glasses, and fold them. Gentle and careful. You place them on the bedside table on the side you lie on. Somehow, you manage not to disturb her. When you turn back to her, she’s still asleep. Odd, knowing that, for Jane, just the smallest of movements or sounds can wake her.
At the Pink Ladies sleepover last weekend, if any of you woke up, she woke up too. Even the rustling of blankets disrupts her sleep. You don’t know how she sleeps through the night.
Having not gotten a single minute of sleep, she told all of you the next day that she can’t do sleepovers anymore. A rule she created so she wouldn’t end up sleep deprived, no focus or attention lost. No falling asleep in class.
On Monday, she did fall asleep during Algebra, her favorite class. She came to you after the bell rang, upset with herself. You closed your locker and met her gaze. Through her glasses, her eyes were full of regret and shame.
Blaming herself for falling asleep in class.
And again during a Pink Ladies meeting. Hang-out. Get-together. Whatever.
You settle into a more comfortable position, your arm tucked under your head, and her open, tired eyes greet you. She blinks a few times and rubs the sleep out of her eyes with her knuckles, probably confused. Very confused. About why you’re lying beside her. Where the other Pink Ladies are. What happened. Definitely about what happened.
She goes to speak, parting her lips, but your fingers brush them before words can tumble out. “It’s okay,” you say. “Cynthia and Nancy couldn’t stay long.” You move your fingers away from her lips slowly. “They had other things to attend to, but I couldn’t leave you here by yourself.”
Jane nods, processing what you’ve said. You can tell—the gears in her brain are trying their best to function. She’s not awake yet. “Why didn’t you wake me? Wait.” She touches her face, panic flitting across her features. “Where—?”
“On the table, on my side.”
“Your… side?”
You chuckle. “Don’t worry. I didn’t scratch them.”
She nods again and glances down at the plushie in her arms, which she moves to the floor. She doesn’t let it fall, but stretches to lower it to the floor as if it would break if she were to drop it.
God, she’s so—
“You didn’t have to stay.”
“Do you sleep with your glasses on a lot?”
“Yeah. I forget that they’re on my face sometimes.”
So Janey.
So…
No. No. You should go. Jane is awake now. She didn’t freak out. You did your job. You did what you told the others you would. Why stay any longer?
You don’t need to, but something is nagging you, keeping you here, an anchor too heavy to lift back to the surface. An anchor that happens to have the name ‘Jane’ engraved at the center, in its heart.
Your heart.
You can’t move from your spot on the bed. You can’t peel your eyes away from her. And you think that… maybe, she’s doing more than just bringing your walls down. Just by being in front of you. Just by simply existing. She has you captured, wrapped around the frames of her glasses. The ones that lay on the nightstand behind you.
On your side.
Your side.
“Did you, um, have another sleepover?” you ask. You just want your mind to stop.
“What?”
“You fell asleep, so I thought—”
“No, I was up all night studying. I had a really big test today.” Jane flops on to her back and stares up at the ceiling. Her arms cross over her stomach. “Really important, actually. And you know my mom wouldn’t let me have a sleepover on a school night.”
Of course. “A test might be important, Jane, but…” You rest your hand on her arm, right by her shoulder. “...but sleep is just as important, if not more important.” You pause. “I really care about you.”
She looks at you, shocked. She didn’t think so? Know so?
“You care about me?”
“Yeah, obviously. You’re…” My best friend.
No. Far more than that.
“I’m what?”
Something special. The same words that left Jane’s lips when you locked the Soc boys in Dot’s dad’s study. The way those words made your heart skip. You remember that feeling. Like you swallowed a bunch of butterflies. You feel it now, but not only in your heart. It’s in your chest, too. The heat present in your cheeks. How right it feels when you hold her hand. Touch her shoulder. When you’re right next to her.
Not just something special. Everything.
Jane Facciano is everything.
She faces you, completely, back to lying on her side, her head propped up by her hand. “Olivia? I’m what?”
You try to speak, but nothing comes out. Words tied to the back of your throat. They’re unmoving.
Hesitant, you tuck her hair behind her ear. The same hair that hung in front of her face as she slept. For a moment, your fingers dance over her cheek and the skin right by her hair line. You linger, and each second becomes longer, heavier. As if the earth’s rotation is slowing down. As if time is coming to a stop. And Jane… Jane has no idea.
Yet, she leans into it. Eyes closed, she hums, a vibration of her lips you so wish to— “Liv.”
Kiss.
Can girls kiss girls?
Your face is so close to hers that your breath touches it, a puff of warm air on warm skin. The pink of her cheeks. Like the pink of her lips you inch towards.
You don’t care. Your lips press to the corner of her mouth, then you pull back and look at her for anything. Anything, but disgust. Hatred. Anger. What you receive is blank. An empty expression that you can’t decipher. The longer you’re in this unmoving silence, the more your chest tightens. The more you forget how to breathe. The more you drown in worry. The more you internally kick yourself for doing that. Ruining something so beautiful with something so stupid. It wasn’t a full kiss, but it was still beyond what friends do.
And what if that scared her? What if you scared her?
You lower your hand from her face and sit up, readying yourself to leave. Straightening out your skirt, fixing your hair. Dirt rests on your tongue, and you can’t wait to go home and scratch it all off and hope that it never returns.
But you won’t have to. She grabs your wrist. She keeps you from leaving, again. You sit back down in front of her with a sigh. She doesn’t say a word, and instead, does what you thought she wouldn’t.
Jane threads her fingers through your hair and guides your lips until they collide with hers. They mesh together like puzzle pieces, pink and red puzzle pieces. It’s so perfect and right, and your head fills with clouds, like the ones on her walls. Relief and joy flood through you. So much joy.
You giggle, a teary giggle—she does too, as you come apart. Only to be brought back together, in each other’s arms. She buries her head in your shoulder. “You’re Jane,” you finally whisper. “My Jane.”