Page 15 of I Love to Hate You
“Hey!” a thin-voiced girl yells across the hall with no regard for anybody’s ears. “There you are.”
My eyes follow the sound, and my stomach rolls at the sight of a very familiar face speed walking past us.
“Haven’t seen her in a while,” Eddie says as the girl goes by. “You guys still not friends?”
I watch my ex best friend, Amy Sims, zoom in front of us like a race car, and my face immediately melts into a scowl. Her long, gorgeous red hair swings behind her, so long that it touches the back of her elbow as she walks. Her pale skin glows when the door opens and the sun kisses it, lighting her up like a spotlight. The simile makes sense, because the entire world has always been Amy’s stage. She has always had the world watching, cheering, and rooting her on as she puts on a show for everyone, with the expectation that her spectators will bend over backwards for her. We’re a long way from freshman year, but I still don’t like this bitch.
“No, we’re not friends,” I growl. “It’s safe to say that we never will be, because it’s clear we’ve developed into very different people than who we were when we met. I can’t stand her.”
“I can tell,” Eddie says. I look over and see that he’s staring at me wide-eyed. “If looks could kill, she definitely wouldn't have survived walking past you just now.”
“Yeah, well unfortunately lookscan’tkill and shedidsurvive it,” I respond as my eyes shift back over to Amy, who’s still walking quickly toward the door and gesturing with her hands.
“Who’s she talking to?” Eddie asks.
I suck my teeth. “Who cares?”
“I’ve missed you,” we hear Amy say. “I texted you, like, three times today but you didn’t answer. I thought you didn't even bother to show up to the career fair. Come here.”
Watching the scene play out in front of me makes my feet stop moving all on their own. It’s like my brain can no longer do two things at once because of how shocking it is. I’m stunned to my core as Kendrick turns his head toward Amy, flashes a quick smile, pockets his phone, and leaves his position against the wall to walk toward her. The two of them embrace in a tight hug like they’re being reunited after years apart, and he even lifts her off her feet a bit. Amy, being the shitty little princess she is, kicks her heels up and lets out an unnecessary giggle that echoes down the hall. For their grand finale, Kendrick puts Amy down, and the two of them dive into a kiss that makes me grimace.
“They’re together? Since when?” Eddie asks, watching in horror.
I don't have an answer, and I don't know why it bothers me so much, but the only response I can come up with contains just three words.
“What the fuck?”
Twelve
~ MAYA~
How did I miss it? I’m going through my fourth year at Temple U, and somehow I managed to avoid any sightings of Amy and Kendrick together. Then again, I avoided seeing Kendrick altogether, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, yet here I am. I have no idea why seeing the two of them has stained my brain, but I can’t get the memory of Kendrick lifting her in the air out of my head. I keep hearing Amy giggle like the world’s happiest bride, and it sends an angry chill up my spine. I cringe when the memory replays. I was cringing all weekend, and now that I’m back for my final full week of classes, I’m still thinking about it. Still cringing.
My mind wanders as my professor presses play on a movie just to get us through the rest of the day. Now that graduation is so close, a lot of our classes have started to become empty and boring. Students aren’t showing up just to watch videos of advertisements or to have pizza parties like we’re in high school all over again. I, on the other hand, keep pulling into the parking lot every time I have a class, because staying at home with my dad isn’t something I want to do. Even when I do have mornings where I think I might skip the inconsequential classes, everything changes when I come up the stairs and see my father sitting in his chair, drink in hand, slumped over from a night of boozing. He never fails to stir awake as I approach the living room, and never misses an opportunity to berate me. He’s been on a tear lately, constantly telling me that my mother’s death is my fault, and serving as my greatest motivation to graduate and start a job that pays enough to move out. I’m on the cusp of freedom from him, so I show up when I don’t want to and remain focused, ridiculous videos be damned.
The TV shows a man in a suit explaining why certain commercials are designed the way they are, detailing the imagery and how it affects the viewer, and my imagination couldn’t be further from the screen. All I can think about is how close Amy and I used to be when I first started college. Losing a best friend is an unfortunate thing that plenty of people have experienced, so I know I’m not the only one who understands how frustrating it is. Seeing that person floating around like a fucking fairy every day, smiling for no other reason than to make you think that they’ve easily moved on from the relationship you used to have. The first year after it ends, seeing them is like a kick in the gut. You want to double over and close your eyes until they’re gone. At least, that’s the way I felt when Amy stopped talking to me.
We went our entire freshman year as best friends. When you first get to college, you feel like an outsider. Everyone has their cliques, and the cafeteria is a prison yard. All the gangs are formed and moving in unison, while new people are by themselves, looking terrified and vulnerable. It felt like everyone was laughing at me, and there was no reprieve until Amy and I sat next to each other, both of us silently munching on ham and cheese sandwiches until Amy had the nerve to say hi. From that moment, we were inseparable.
Everywhere she went, I was by her side. Maybe I was clinging because I felt afraid of being myself in a school as big as Temple, and being away from Kensington made me feel out of my element. In my head, everyone knew I was the girl from a bad neighborhood, and I felt like they would think more of me if I was friends with the dainty redhead from Fairmount. So I latched on and did things nobody in my neighborhood would ever do. I talked differently so Amy and her friends from high school wouldn’t refer to me as “ghetto,” and I straightened my hair so I wouldn’t have to worry about them whispering that it was “nappy.” I smiled more so they couldn’t say I was angry … and then I went home to Kensington, where the streets are falling apart, drug dealers set up camp on most corners, and my father is a poor alcoholic living under a dilapidated roof. It became a chore to put on such a drastic front over the course of an entire year, and by the time summer approached, I couldn’t keep it up anymore. I had too much going on at home, and what I really needed was to be myself at all times. I needed some sort of comfort in expressing the pain I was feeling, and I was furious for not realizing earlier that I wouldn’t get it from Amy.
It started with little comments about my hair. Natural curls and cultural hairstyles I saw every day in Kensington grabbed a lot of attention in the halls of Temple U, and Amy did a double take the first time she saw me. At first my hair was unique, then it was interesting, then it was ghetto. The next shoe to drop was how angry I was toward people who didn’t deserve it. I was suddenly overreacting if I was bumped in the hall and demanded an apology. My anger about being mistreated suddenly made me ghetto, and I realized I was being called that word a lot, but we were still hanging out. Then, I saw Amy’s boyfriend flirting with some girl in a narrow hall by the bathrooms. The flirting became play fighting, and the play fighting became kissing. When I told Amy about it, she said I was lying because her boyfriend would never do that. She called me jealous for not being able to land a boyfriend who attended Temple, and ended it by saying she didn’t need me the way I needed her. It was clear that she’d had these thoughts building in her head the entire time we knew each other, and me being myself was the final nail in the coffin of our relationship.
Knowing what I know about Amy, I can’t figure out why she’d be with someone like Kendrick. I have no idea where he’s from, but he’s certainly not some happy-go-lucky guy brandishing a smile everywhere he goes. Based on his reputation and my encounter with him last week at the career fair, he doesn’t seem like the typical guy Amy would date. He’s big, aggressive, and clearly unafraid to be who he is and say what’s on his mind. Her interest in him comes off like a fetish. She’s attracted to his reputation and likes the idea of being with the guy everyone is afraid of, and there’s something about it that pisses me off.
By the time class ends, I’m annoyed by nothing more than thoughts and memories. I walk to the second of my back-to-back classes still thinking about Amy and Kendrick, and not even bothering to ask why. The thoughts are just stuck in my head, and it’s only made worse when I see Amy walking down the hall just before I enter my final class of the day. She doesn’t see me, but I stand before the threshold watching as she saunters toward me, blissfully unaware of my hateful gaze. Her mind is in the clouds as she walks with her head down, staring at her phone while texting. I want to stick my foot out and trip her, but I resist the urge because I don’t want to see her look at me at all. So I step into the room just before she lifts her head.
My last class of the day goes by quickly until the very end. It’s just my luck that the last grade I will ever get in this class is a D, and it comes with a scornful glare from my asshole of a professor as he hands me the paper.
“Not the way I expected things to end for you, Maya,” he says, shoving the paper into my hands. “Let’s hope you’ll be more focusedaftergraduation when expectations are higher and lulls in focus are not allowed.”
I frown as I take the paper with a giant, red D circled at the top and drop it onto the desk. I look at the grade and shake my head. I’m going to pass this class with ease, so I don’t know why the professor is giving me so much shit about a grade that’s completely inconsequential. The interaction adds more fuel to an uncontrollable fire in my mind, and I stomp out of the classroom the second the bell rings.
At the end of the day, the halls are filled with countless people. They cram into every nook and cranny available on their way to the exits, and it continues out into the parking lot, where the zombies practically climb on top of cars to reach their own. I try to keep my head down as I make the trek across campus to student parking, but walking with your head down can lead to problems, and I run face-first into mine.
“Shit,” I say as I slam into someone and the two of us stumble. A phone goes bouncing to the ground just before I make the mistake of looking up.
Amy stands in front of me with a look of pure disgust on her face. Her red hair glows like it’s on fire, her blue eyes sparkle, and her smile vanishes when she realizes I’m the person who bumped into her. It’s clear she remembers me the exact same way I remember her, and time has not healed all wounds. It has only allowed them to grow and fester, causing more pain and anger.
