Unlikely and Unsteady

We were a pair. An unlikely pair, going against what everybody thought with everything we were. A boy and a girl. A jock and a nerd. Not in love, but best friends.

 People swore we were going to end up together one day. I swore we wouldn't. At least, when I was younger and still new at this whole "friendship with a girl" thing.

 She sometimes went all out nerd, with huge glasses and braces and dorky clothes, but other times she went completely "bad girl", thickening her eyeliner, smearing on black lipstick, spiking her short electric-blue hair, and throwing on a leather jacket with a wicked knife in the pocket.

 She had so many different sides to her. Sassy no matter what, a fierce streak a mountain wide, a clever hacker, a kind friend, a sweet nurse, a cruel teenager. She sometimes broke the law. She sometimes caught law-breakers. She was never arrogant, though. She had a sort of self-depricating humor about her. I was the same way, although she swore I was arrogant all the time.

 I, however, was plain. I was an obvious jock, girl-crazed, and stunt-lover. I was obsessed with trucks, country-stuff, and anything with a fine ass.

 Kaliah took some getting to know. At first I thought she was annoying, what with her snarky attitude and ridiculous comments, then I realized there was no getting around her snark and that her ridiculous comments made sense to people she knew.

 "Penguin," she'd say, and I'd think, idiot.

 Then later on I'd find out it was a secret word that meant "I love you, bestie" or something like that. She had a million.

 Which, at the time, was not targeted at me, but rather at her best friend Jamie. But soon enough we got our own. 

 I met Kaliah when she was just turning thirteen and I was just turning fifteen. She was a lot shorter than me at that time. We met at the library, where it hosted a read-alouds for homeschoolers on Tuesdays. She'd already been going there for a while, but I trumped her. I'd been going since we moved right across from it, six years ago.

 "If you hurt my best friend, I will decapitate, disembowel, and destroy you, then hang your remains off a cliff," were her very first, charming words to me. Jamie looked so embarassed.

 "That's not what I told you to say!" she'd hissed.

 "I took that, made it my own, and popped out with this one," Kaliah defended, wrinkling her nose pretty adorably. Then I remembered I was supposed to be dating Jamie. I'd been a pretty horrible boyfriend back then. But then I'd started hanging out with Kaliah. Jamie moved away.

 Kaliah was honest with me. She talked me through my longest relationship (five months), told me when I was being stupid (with those exact words much of the time) and made me realize a lot of things about my self that I hadn't known about.

 "Stop thinking!" Kaliah snapped her fingers in front of my nose and I blinked, shaken out of recalling our history together.

 "What?" I blurted, my voice coming out sounding stupid.

 She smiled. She'd had a Herps Suppliance (something with hinges and screws) put in a while back, part of the braces process, so the screws in front sort of poked out on the sides. You could barely tell, but when she smiled they disappeared completely. 

 "You're thinking. And I told you no thinking on this trip."

 She looked like an angel, her outline blurred with golden rays, cast out by the dying sun. She was behind the wheel, so, as whenever she drove, she had a tiny furrow between her jet-black brows.

 "You're right. Sorry." We were on a roadtrip to the Indiana Dunes, something we'd talked about for years. Now that she had gotten her license (FINALLY), we could go. We'd already been on the road for less than three hours and already zoning out. "Guess you're just boring company. Had to keep myself entertained some way," I joked.

 "Ha ha," she said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "So funny. Maybe I should pull over and make you walk. Sound entertaining now?"

 "Um, no." She'd done that to me once before, on a ride home from the mall. I hadn't taken her seriously, but now I knew. "So how far away?"

 "Probably about an hour. Should we stop for somewhere to eat?" she asked, glasses flashing.

 "Yes," I answered immediately. I was starving.

 "Cool. Wendy's fine?"

 "Um, yeah?"

 I wished I hadn't answered because she jerked the wheel to the right sharply and took the exit, fast-food signs smirking at me like, you want food? She'll give you food.

 "Jesus Christ!" I yelped, head nearly hitting the roof in the small cab of my truck. "What the hell was that for?"

 "You said you wanted food!" she cried, looking at ME like I was the lunatic. "There was an exit! Ta da! Food!" 

 "Shit, Kaliah," I groaned.

 "Oh, be a man."

 This was the crazy side of Kaliah. She often did things impulsively, which sometimes resulted in some not-so-good things. Like now. If she'd been just a tiny bit faster, we would've rammed straight into the side of that large SUV.

 Or that time when we saw this group of guys ganging up on some girl. She charged in there so fast it took me forever to realize what was happening. By that time, she punched one guy in the nose, hit the other so hard with a piece of wood that he was unconscious, and slammed the third one's head into the side of the brick building. The fourth was going after her and I had to jump in. Despite her height and intensity, Kaliah is skinny. She's decently strong from picking up hay-bales at her family's farm, but she doesn't have a lot of muscle or meat. She's been almost filling out this summer, from work and exercise and lots of food, but she didn't stand a chance head-on against a guy three times her weight. Kaliah, soaking wet, tips the scale at 107 pounds. That's it. She only just reached 100 pounds when she was fourteen and has gained seven pounds in two years.

 I remember that day because she called, ecstatic, to tell me the news. She was so happy, she considered throwing a party. She didn't, by the way. I ended up blowing up a balloon, writing "Congrats Kaliah!" on it and giving it to her. She still has it.

 We sat down inside Wendy's, the air considerably chillier inside than outside. Kaliah immediately got on her phone, to check if she had any text messages from her girlfriend. I think they were having some kind of fight.

 Anyway, she started typing really furiously so I got up and ordered. I already knew exactly what Kaliah wanted. Chicken strips and french fries. Her favorite. She'd go to a gourmet restraunt and order that if she ever got the chance. I myself just got a burger.

 I came back with our food and found Kaliah rubbing her face vigorously. Her dark chocolate colored eyes looked wet.

 "What's wrong?" I asked immediately.

 "Well. Phoebe broke up with me," she said in a strangled voice. "She said that she didn't feel like I was with her. You know, on the same page. And that I was always off hanging out with you."

 "Oh." I sat down, speechless. It wasn't the first time we'd both lost girlfriends (rarely boyfriend's in Kaliah's case; she preferred women) because of each other. Phoebe was this British chick who was only fifteen, but incredibly pretty. She'd made Kaliah extremely happy and that was the exent of my knowledge, to be honest.

 "Are you OK?" I questioned, changing spots and sitting next to her.

 "I guess," she sniffled. "I was just really happy with Bee. I mean, I guess it makes sense. She's always so busy lately and we hardly ever got to see each other anymore."

 I bit my lip. What was the right thing to say here? Kaliah was the one with power behind her words. I was the stuttering idiot. She grabbed her french fries and started shoving them into her mouth. Oh, god. I'd seen this multiple times before. She was post-breakup eating, where she basically felt empty and miserable inside so she crammed her mouth so full of food it was almost gross. I tried and failed to think of something helpful to say.

 "I'm pathetic," she mumbled through a full mouth. "I hate everything in the world and I want to die and maybe burn down everything and die some more."

 Well. When she wasn't going through a breakup she had powerful words. This was the first stage: shock and grief.

 "It's ok," I said pathetically. I rubbed her back. "It's ok. You'll be alright."

 As the night wore on and we finally reached the camping grounds, she reached the second stage: anger.

 "I can't believe her!" she seethed, throwing the tent into place. "I was an amazing girlfriend! I did everything for her! How dare she return that in such an awful way!"

 "I'm sure she didn't mean it," I tried to say, but she barreled on, not pausing. Ah, Kaliah.

 When we were slipping into our sleeping bags (on opposite sides on the tent, mind you), she fell into the third stage: understanding.

 "I can't force her to love me," Kaliah reasoned with herself. I hadn't needed to talk for an hour so far. And yeah, I was definitely timing this. "I want what's best for her. And if breaking up with me caused her to move on and find someone better, I'm glad."

 It was three in the morning when she woke in the fourth stage: depression. We had one more to go. She woke me up with her crying and I jolted up, scared for a second.

 "Kaliah," I murmured, moving over and cradling her. She buried her face in my shirt, making it wet.

 "This sucks," she muttered. "I hate this. At least I have you, Nathan. I think the world would've ended long ago if not for you."

 "Not true," I said, brushing her soft hair with my rough, calloused hand. "You would've been fine. I need YOU."

 She scoffed, then quieted down. "I love you, Nathan."

 "I love you, too."

 She fell asleep a few moments later and I stared down at her sleeping form, amazed. This whole day had been ups and downs and still she loved me, even though I'd said almost next-to-nothing. AND I'd been thinking nothing, but gooey thoughts.

 This was the weirdest friendship I'd ever had, longest, too. Kaliah was my first of a lot of things (keep you minds pure, readers). She made me see the world in the strangest ways and she was fun. I had no idea whether we'd end up together in some future or if we stayed friends for the rest of eternity, but I knew one thing: we were sticking together. I also knew in the morning she'd wake up in the fifth and final stage: acceptance.

 I rolled back into my sleeping bag, feeling like my future was way too unknown to work out anything good for me.