My First Mistake

I stopped chewing my nails two years before I left for college and that meant I hadn't chewed them in what, a decade and a half? More? But god I felt like tearing into them right now as I watched and waited for the arrival of the last person in the world I wanted to see.

I had been person five to arrive. Rachel was number six. Number seven, eight, and nine arrived without much fanfare and then we all sat around waiting for number ten. The last of our group. The final person in the party.

"Maybe they're not going to make it," girl-Kim said to boy-Kim, "Maybe they're skipping orientation."

No they weren't. No, they would absolutely be here.

At least worrying myself about the arrival of the last of our number helped me keep my sanity and helped me forget about the other two.

Eddie sitting so close to me and yet a whole eternity away. He'd tugged up so much of the grass around him that I was surprised he hadn't managed to pull up a whole little circle of it, a small divot in the grass like a moat to keep him withdrawn and safe.

Since the moment where he'd stared at me while I wasn't looking he hadn't even looked my way once. I'd been sitting here, searching for an answer as to how to bridge the gulf between him and I and he was doing nothing to help me with it, but god I would have given anything to have that and not just the enormity of the silence between us.

At least Rachel had the courtesy to sit on the other side of the damn group from us. She pulled up cross legged next to the little clique composed entirely of the girls in the group. They were all chatting away, talking up a storm and no doubt becoming best friends with each other while occasionally Rachel glanced over my way.

When they'd done that as a man I'd had all sorts of guesses as to why they were looking and what they were doing. My most optimistic brain had hoped they thought I was cute, were talking conspiratorially about who I was and whether I was single and hoping they might be able to make a real connection with me. My pessimistic brain, which I think Eddie always liked to call the 'realist' part of the brain, was absolutely sure they were making fun of me, plotting and planning out some new form of humiliation which was going to be at best only a variation on the theme of humiliations that I'd been experiencing nearly all my life.

But now, well things were different now. Now the divide between us wasn't a strictly gendered gulf. Now they were looking at me and I realized that they were seeing something different and I guess I was just so damn distracted by keeping an eye on the horizon for contestant number ten that I didn't even register why it was so weird.

Why it was so odd to them to have me over here and them over there?

Number seven and eight were guys. They sat in the middle distance between Rachel and me. Number nine was a girl, and she plopped down right beside Rachel, right beside the rest of them.

That was the final little stitch in the pattern and when it was set it was like my mind broke out into a bird's eye view. I saw it all from overhead, the little gaggle of groups. The girls a neat circle on one side. The guys a rough blob on the other. Me on the far side of all of it, all isolated out on my own.

Girls sitting with girls. Guys sitting with guys. Me sitting alone, setting myself out as a loner right from the jump.

And it was stupid and it shouldn't have mattered but obviously it did, because Rachel kept on glancing my way and Eddie wasn't looking at me at all. It shouldn't have mattered because it didn't to me at all but it mattered to them and I shouldn't care because all of this was temporary and I was going to find my own way back to my own life and then it wouldn't matter at all anymore when I found the fair and the old woman and made her send me back and besides which I shouldn't care because dammit my whole motto here was that I had nothing to lose.

But I did care.

I cared even though I had far bigger problems. I cared that I was fucking up in new and unique ways. I cared that my second chance was ticking away the time inch by inch and I cared so very much. I did. Right up until the moment I caught sight of figure swaggering his way over to us and knew that I had far bigger and far more immediate problems to deal with.

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