Pity Party

“Why don’t you reach out to Mila?”

I pluck a tissue from the box on the table between us. The box is sat between a diffuser and some magazines. I’m not sure why there are magazines in a therapist’s office. In the lobby, sure, but the office itself? This is the question I’d rather think about than the one my therapist just asked.

Blowing snot into the tissue, I try to imagine what she would look like if I reached out to her. I hear the ding on her phone, see the glow on her face as she picks it up. The light would shift from side to side as her eyes skimmed through saccades, reading through a long, pathetic message begging for us to be friends again. I imagine where the light would disappear into shadows, as her face contorts into a disgusted expression. Or maybe an amused one. Or maybe an apathetic one, in which case there would be no shadows at all. I dread that one the most, dread to imagine the light falling completely flat. And when I’ve thought of a hundred faces, now wiping the leftover snot from my nose, I realize not one of those faces were smiling, overjoyed to hear from me.

I look back up at my therapist and lie. “I don’t know.”

She doesn’t believe me. If she has to wait much longer to get an honest response out of me, she might just pick up one of those magazines. She likes to play good cop, bad cop with the silence in the room. She asks the nice questions and when I don’t comply, the silence begins its interrogation. It chokes me out until I fess up finally that I don’t know what I did wrong. 

“How can I ask for forgiveness, for us to begin again, if I don’t own up to whatever part I played in it all falling apart in the first place?” I repeat some iteration of this question a few times before she finally lets up on me.

“You don’t have to know,” the good cop says, “you can ask her.” She starts to imagine aloud what I could say to her. It sounds so pure, rings so true when she says it. I want to ask her to repeat everything she said again so I could write it down, but I’m too embarrassed. The words start to fade from my mind. At the end of the session I bid her farewell and bring the bad cop down with me into the parking lot. In the privacy of my car, I banish it with a whisper, with the one phrase I remember: “I really miss our friendship.” I say it over and over until the tears well up once more.  

✦✦✦

Biting into my peanut butter and jelly, I stew over what just happened to me again. Again and for the last time, I resolve. 

“We’re having a private conversation,” one of them said to me when I tried to squeeze myself into a spot at the popular table. They always seem to be having a private conversation when I show up. “What kind of private conversation can you have with ten people? Did y’all kill someone?” was the witty response I imagined spitting back at them as I sat alone in my new favorite stairwell. My cheeks were hot and as I chewed my throat began to tighten. I forced it back open with a large swallow of dry bread. 

I had really tried this time too. Over the weekend, I busted my allowance on an array of monochrome crop tops from Brandy Melville to perfect my Cali girl look. I wore the best of the bunch, a gray tee with all the phases of the moon. Paired with ripped acid washed jeans and some Converse, I nearly looked the part, if not for the spaghetti strap my mom made me wear underneath. “No bare midriffs for twelve year olds.”

It must have been the spaghetti strap. None of their mothers made them cover up and that’s why they kicked me out. Or maybe it was my stupid southern twang, giving me away as an implant from San Antonio. 

Still fighting back tears, I groaned. My birthday was coming up and if I didn’t have anyone to invite for a second year in a row, my mom was gonna make me go back to that god awful child psychologist. She tried to tell me that I wasn’t the only one who dealt with this problem. But every time I looked around at lunch, I could see it with my own eyes: I was the only one eating by herself. 

I could even see it now. Another table of girls at the bottom of the stairs. An unpopular one, but happy. Their mothers clearly didn’t let them wear crop tops at all, spaghetti strap or not. They wore glittery, rainbow, brightly-colored tee shirts. They sat around their table, uncrowded, blissfully unaware of what a fashion faux pas bell bottom jeans are when paired with running shoes. They seemed nice, maybe even really nice, albeit a bit cringe-worthy.

Mila, a girl I knew from English class, was among them. She was halfway decent, I figured. She got in trouble for reading Percy Jackson in class. We could talk about that. 

Shaking off the tears, I come to another resolution. If these girls reject me too, then I’m done. I’ll accept my fate as a loner and shut up forever. I shove my peanut butter and jelly back into my backpack (only losers eat homemade lunches) and march down the stairs.

“Hi, my name is Morgan. Can I sit here?” All the girls turn to Mila, the apparent leader of the table. She quickly swallows some food and gestures to the empty seat next to her. With her mouth finally free, she smiles at me. “Of course.”

✦✦✦

Everywhere we went, hand-muffled laughter seemed to follow. We conspired at the back of English class, giggling at the cheap sexual innuendos we invented about Macbeth. We drew on each other’s worksheets, each other’s arms, each other’s faces if we got the chance. And now, a year after our first introduction, our throats were raw and we were wiping tears away in the back of a hotel ballroom. 

Turns out, despite our differences in fashion, Mila and I had quite a bit in common. For example, neither one of us had been invited to a bat mitzvah before. Or knew how to dance at one either. We got swept up into what the emcee called the “Hora,” tripping over our feet and garbling our way “Hava Nagila.” Kicks and claps, moving center and back, our bellies were sore with laughter by the time they hoisted the guest of honor up onto her chair. When the interlocking circles of hands broke into applause, Mila and I took our chance to scurry off to the punch table.

“You were terrible!”

“I was terrible? I was just following you!”

“Well what you’d do that for?”

“I don’t know!”

At last, we were sighing, and massaging our cheeks worn out from smiling. We continued to watch them dance, transfixed by their synchrony and the flashing lights. The remainder of the evening was spent behind that punch table, reading each other’s lips through the noise, resting our blistered feet, and bantering about nothing. 

✦✦✦

Before my suite of roommates left for their Friday night frat party, they left me a beer. “Have fun studying!” one said sweetly. Long gone were the days where I’d sit around hurt that I wasn’t invited. I didn’t want to be invited. Studying for next week’s chemistry exam seemed like a much more noble undertaking.

“Thanks! Be safe!” I had to physically turn around to wave goodbye. For some reason, my desk was the only one that didn’t come with a swivel chair. My mom felt that this was a real sleight against me and took it upon herself to bring one of our fancy dining chairs from home and put it in my dorm. When my roommates would turn their chairs around to talk, I would push my feet against the wall to join them, leaning the chair back against its hind legs. And when they’d turn back around, I’d simply remove my feet and fall back into my desk, into my freshman year pre med homework and essays, into the brutal reality that I was probably going to get a B in chemistry. 

When I was facing forward like this, staring at a corkboard chock full of exam dates and research fliers, I reveled in a sense of superiority. But not tonight. The dizzying array of elements and formulas was making me sick. When the noise of my roommate’s footsteps disappeared down the hall, I slammed the textbook shut, cracked open that beer, and dialed up my latest curiosity: Omegle. 

I never did the video chat, of course. I wasn’t trying to get cyberflashed. Entering the text chat rooms, I started to play my favorite game:

“M or F?” is how the conversation would begin. 

“M ;)” I'd respond.

“This user has left the chat.”

I loved to see how quickly creeps would leave when I did that. The night would go on like this for the most part, with the occasional interesting conversation popping up every once in a while. Many creep disappearances later, I came upon one of those interesting conversations. 

“Why are you on Omegle on a Friday night?” the stranger asked. 

“I don’t know.”

Usually, if you don't have anything interesting to say within a minute of talking, the other person leaves. But this one waited to see if I would bite. 

“My roommates are out partying.” I relented.

“Why didn’t you join them? Did they not invite you?”

“No, I’m so busy studying they know by now not to ask lol”

“So why aren’t you studying?”

As my defenses kicked in, my responses became curt. I didn’t want to be the first to leave. I prided myself on being able to make anyone, no matter how weird or intrusive, eventually leave the chat knowing they couldn’t get anything out of me. 

“Got bored.” I wrote back.

“So then you could have just gone to the party!”

“I don’t like parties.”

“That’s not what you said before.”

I tried to wait them out, to bore them out of interrogating me any further. But they pushed.

“Do you like your roommates?”

“We’re friendly.”

“Just friendly? What about friends?”

“Don’t have any. Too busy.”

“You’ve been this busy your entire life? What about when you were a kid? Did you have friends back then?”

For the first time in two years, Mila came to mind. 

“Haven’t talked to my friends since high school.”

“Why not? Don’t say you don’t know.”

When Mila and I entered high school, we made a vow that we would never reject anyone from our lunch table. The implicit agreement here was that I would never be in a position to be rejected again either. People cycled through the table, some cool and some weird, and it became known as “Morgan-and-Mila’s table.” 

Mila started to wear flannels and band t-shirts one day in sophomore year. I didn’t remember what the significance of that was other than it was around that time that 1.) I started to re-introduce florals back into my wardrobe, so our outfits clashed at lunch and 2.) She began eating lunch with me less and less. 

It didn’t happen all at once. The awkwardness built up over time. An unspoken tension between us deepened and rather than say anything about it, we sat in silence. Eventually, Mila began to sit with a different table at lunch, day by day. 

I stuck to the table that was now becoming just “Morgan’s table.” And I didn’t move until there was no one sitting there with me at all. At that point, I started seeking out stairwells again. I saw the back of Mila at her new table, a flannel wrapped around her like a blanket, engaging in what I was certain were private conversations. 

Sophomore year became junior year, then senior year. Senior year became college applications, prom, and graduation. Then one day it became three years without speaking to Mila, two without thinking about her. 

The shock of remembering Mila made my throat tighten up again. I took a swig of beer, wiped the foam off on my sweatpants, and set my sights on shaking off this nosy stranger. When I looked back down at my computer, another message was already waiting for me.

“I get why you didn’t go with your roommates. You’re already at a party. A pity party.”

I stare at the message for a moment. The beer is empty now.

“F you dude, you’re rude and you don’t know anything about me.”

“I’m a girl.”

“I doubt it.”

"You have left the chat.”

✦✦✦

Parked down the street from her house, I take a mental inventory of all the ways I’ve changed. I drive now, which she’s never seen me do. I don’t resent therapists anymore. I have a cat. And a degree in biology. But I’m not going to be a doctor. I have a nice little office job to keep myself busy while I figure out what I am going to do. I make cheese plates now, really nice ones with brie and strawberries arranged in pretty shapes. I brought one of those cheese plates with me as a peace offering for our picnic today. It’s sitting in the passenger seat where Mila will be sitting in a matter of a few minutes. 

And the ways I’ve stayed the same? I hope in enough ways that we fall into that familiar spark, that ease of conversation, that laughter that once brought us to tears. 

Laughter and tears came easily to me the day that Mila texted. It was the middle of the work day. Last week’s conversation with my therapist had already left my mind, the perfect message now completely forgotten. There was a ding on my phone and, assuming it was my boss, I turned my phone over. “Mila” glowed in my eyes.

To my disbelief, she said it was all her fault, which I couldn’t disagree with more. That she didn’t know why the silence began to pile up between us, didn’t know what to apologize for other than letting it get to a point where she allowed pride and shame to stop her from asking. She must have asked her therapist to repeat herself – it was the perfect message. Thinking back to my own anxiety around sending a message like this, all my imaginary simulations of her face, I rushed to call her, to provide her the relief of knowing there were shadows on my face and those shadows were so happy to hear from her. 

Through tears, we decided a proper catch up was needed and the best way to do it would be a picnic in three days' time. I dressed down for the occasion, not wanting to embarrass her. I was pleasantly surprised to see her come out of the house, a chic lavender cardigan paired with a pleated skirt. 

Five years after not speaking, ten years after meeting, we were sitting on a blanket in the park watching children play. I wished that I could have moved here sooner, that we could have had the time together playing the way those kids are now. But the familiar spark is here, we’ve told each other about our lives without even a bit of awkwardness. Within one day of seeing each other, we’ve already laughed. I realize that this is a miracle and I make one last resolution: I will never let the silence pile up again. I make good on my word and look up at Mila after we’ve nibbled through the cheese plate and reached a moment of quiet.

“I really missed our friendship.”