Natalie

What do I want in a friend? The words kick around my brain like a soccer ball on steroids. 

Winn directs a set of keys to some four-door vehicle while shielding his eyes from the ball of gas radiating various electromagnetic waves. "Presenting my batmobile!" Winn sweeps his hand over a black sedan with a dent in the passenger rear.

My fingers brush against the unwarmed exterior as I contemplate my boneheaded decision. My risk versus reward locus must have malfunctioned. Boneheaded pre-frontal cortex. Nevertheless, I take Winn's cue, a short shrug, to deposit myself in the front seat. I'm a bonehead. Staring past the shrinking concrete school, the guitar in the backseat, and then at Winn's buzzed head confirms my idiocy.

Winn shifts to the right, brings his left hand up to rub the base of his neck, and lets his brows knit together in a questionable "u" shape before opening his mouth. "Don't answer that question if you don't want to," he murmurs, turning off the bypass.

I owe you that, if anything, for wasting your time.

"What do I want in a friend," I test the word. Friend. It's not foreign. No, I've used it to describe my peers: the lying, faking, scared people invading my life. Frankly an insane practice. "Integrity, loyalty, and an ability to," I pause, pressing my middle and pointer to my forehead. Don't say that. I force a different phrase, "Be kind."

"I admire those qualities," Winn says, voice rasping. He clears his throat, leaning into the door. His head hangs out the window so dangerously that he's staring at his reflection in the wing mirror.

What happened to his rationality that I so adore?

Thankfully, Winn ducks his cranium back into the moving automobile, making a familiar guttural noise. "With loyalty, it's nice to know someone's got your back," he mutters, his voice wavering between the level tone of an experienced soccer player to a nervous first-timer.

My stare is unyielding as Winn turns onto Main Street in a wobbling curve. His eyes dart, and his jaw tightens. A dramatic contrast to the mellow ambiance he creates with his warm smile and understanding words at school. No matter where Winn hangs, whether that be in the academics, nerds, normals, band kids, or jock's domain, he surfs with ease. Winn, my goofy friend, you are an untouchable power of mayhem, a skillful negotiator, and an unwavering confidante.

Reality strangles me when my senses, unfortunately, return. A posterboard advertises the current fair on the left side of the road, directing drivers, including Winn, with a neon arrow. Curse you, you overrated escapade of mechanical rides, business booths, and entertainment. You're the entire reason I'm here. Partly. Why would anything have to do with the Ludicrous Earthling, LE for short, camping at the hotel off the interstate?

I force out a breath. I don't have to interact with her if I'm never available. I don't have to see her again if I'm never available. I don't have to lie to Caleb and Lindsey if I'm never available. Then, I inhale. A pine scent drifts through the car.

Concentrate.

Winn's trajectory is logical. He was at Scramble's booth yesterday to offer me a job. Why wouldn't he recruit more minions before shipping himself to his dream college in Massachusetts?

My jaw tightens. Stop making assumptions, brain.

"Winn," I break the silence. "Where are we going?"

His head jerks my way, and his brows post to his forehead. "Did I not... You jumped in the goddang car without knowing where I was headed." He facepalms, muttering something about being delusional. This is why we don't jump to conclusions, brain. "You needed to text your dad, didn't you? I'm playing a gig at Fizzy's. I've been in a real loop lately, sorry."

A sweat breaks on Winn's forehead and neck, shining like he's sprinted a hundred yards. He glances at me, his eyes flashing with no familiar surety. My mind puzzles the expression into a catalog with another memory. The only other moment where there wasn't a spark of something uplifting and light about his eyes. The picture remains solid in my head, never dissolving. Real. Unnerving.

A voice in the peanut gallery echoes advice. While reasoning on the sidelines screams louder, chanting theories of Winn's thoughts. Logically, he's grappling with something personal. Pinpointing the stimuli and response is easy. While the process inside one's brain is covered in pounds of rock and dirt, making it difficult to unearth. He has three valid and viewable options: his mother, father, and grandmother. The surface level junctions the populous is aware of. I skim over those theories, then stop. He is not a research project. His business is not my business. Nor should his personal life have been in the public's eye.

After a simple shrug and a glance away, Winn plasters a grin on his face, picking up and running with positivity no more than ten seconds later. "You seemed so relaxed in the library. Then you got all anxious looking," Winn points out, his voice void of cracks. He's beaming a smile that could melt someone's face off.

The way his fingers tighten around the wheel pressures my human decency into gear, shoving all curiosity aside. The static fuzzes and frizzes into a different field.

I entertain his question. Why did I panic? Let's see here. I almost let plan (b) slip my mind after plan (a) nearly failed. Both essentially follow the same principle. Unavailability. It's simple yet obscene. It's gross. Disgusting. It's the scum on the bottom of a shoe, from E. coli to Klebsiella pneumonia and MRSA. All despicable diseases picked up from, including but not limited to, a simple exercise, walking.

I might as well be a disease too.

I'm a disease that doesn't want to join hands and sing a happy little song with the LE overflowing with otherworldly kindness and generosity. Either my mother has mastered the art of duplicity or transformed into an alien in the past seven years. And Caleb and Lindsey wonder why I abandoned their planned dinner today, but I'm sure they would understand if they knew too. They don't know anything. Not the lies back then. Not the lies now.

But those words don't cross my lips.

"I didn't have a ride," I explain. True. "My dad lent his truck to our neighbor, so he's using my car."

"I'll help you anytime," Winn says, trailing into a parking lot.

The dusty Fizzy's sign spots my vision, blue with a blocky off-white logo. The momentum of Winn's sedan ceases. I catch the hazel of his orbs again, a soft brown swirled with the dull nuance of green. He sighs and turns to me with a smile. All I see is a gaze of unsurety. But it was replaced with bright waves of sunshine six minutes ago.

I open my mouth. The words clamber away in a rocky chunk. "Are you okay?" I question, holding my breath.

He wears his usual goofy grin, chirping, "I'm doing okay, livin' my best life, y'know?" Our eyes meet in a flicker. For another second, an added memory, Winn's eyes flitter as he whispers, voice turning hoarse, "Thanks for asking, Natalie," before tripping out of his vehicle of mayhem with his guitar in tow.

Winn, microexpressions don't lie.

You aren't "okay".