Only Mostly Devastated: Chapters 5–10

I didn’t have my own bass with me, because I didn’t go to school carrying it every morning in case someone asked me to jump in on their impromptu musical number, but Sayid grabbed one of the school ones for me.

I could picture the tension pouring out of my pores like a noxious gas.

This kind of music isn’t exactly big in this school, in case you hadn’t noticed. Welcome to Absolution of the Chained.

I have to pick an audition piece for the Conservatory of Music, and I’m stuck between a couple of possibilities.

I definitely had the tools in my vast and nuanced social tool kit to deal with this without making it uncomfortable for everyone.

Here walks Ollie Di Fiore. Master of his feelings, expert detacher, only mostly devastated.

“These skills are all innate. Couldn’t fake them if I tried.”

Before Will could figure out if my deadpanning was serious, his father poked his head around the side of the house.

Aunt Linda shared a conspiratorial glance with me.

Or she might be an earnest flat-earther.

Kind of puts a damper on attempts at humor.

“Easier to say sorry than ask permission, Ollie-oop. Needs do as needs must.”
“You can quote as many clichéd sayings at me as you want, but I’m still impressed.”

When I realized that, I did some visualization. Of Will checking his phone every five minutes with his heart in his throat, like I’d been doing the whole last couple weeks of summer. And that felt so good, it was sure to manifest.

It was one of those places with entertainers wearing creepy, anthropomorphic costumes of chipmunks, ducks, and bears that have crazy eyes like they’ve taken a strong hit of something.

I picked up enough snippets to get a feel for it.

I’d finished up at my locker, mentally rehearsing my excuse to Ms. Hurstenwild, when I got that creepy, ominous feeling. The one that says there’s someone, possibly-slash-probably a serial killer, right behind you.

Before I could get my bearings, Will had joined me and slammed the door closed, plunging us into darkness.

Will’s sigh was particularly loud and scathing in the small space.

I considered pointing out that he’d told people he was with girls that night, but I couldn’t even be bothered going down that road with him. It’d only conflate things.

The conversation with your friend must have been really riveting for you to forget I was there so quickly.

Everything was “ridiculous,” from minor anomalies to life-altering events.

So glad to see me he couldn’t even be seen speaking to me. So glad he’d taken two weeks to text me after getting his phone back. Clearly he was rapturous.

The lie was so blatant that Will scoffed at me.

When he didn’t follow, I gave him a sweet smile, and shut the door on him. Right in his face. I stared at the door, surprised at my own gall.

If I didn’t cut Will off cold-turkey, I’d end up pining over him, all hopelessly devoted, and hurt, and unrequited.

All I’d needed was a Destiny’s Child song playing as an overture, and it would’ve been the greatest “screw you” since Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.

Then other times, I convinced myself Will still had feelings for me, and that I’d ruined a beautiful future—culminating in marriage and three adopted children—with a five-second tantrum.

She apparently thought the appropriate response to that question was to break out into an off-key rendition of “Let It Be” by the Beatles.

He had warm, medium-brown skin with a smattering of freckles over a wide nose, and tilted eyebrows that gave him a permanently concerned, kind sort of look.

Niamh tossed her hair and simpered in a very un-Niamh-like way.

“He’s hot as a soldering iron. If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”

Men come to us, and we deign to pay them attention if we so choose.

As she stared after Juliette, her stoic expression crumpled so quickly I thought I'd imagined it.

The whole time I expected him to make an excuse to leave. Or tell me he was only kidding. Or inexplicably produce a mop bucket from thin air and throw it in front of me to slow me down while he escaped.

No black holes materialized to tear apart the fabric of the universe.