Wait, so like...carrots?

[XERXES HARRISBURG]

Xerxes’ lips parted into a slight smile as his high-heeled boots clopped down the empty pier, producing a sound akin to hooves on cobblestone. Clip, clop, clip, clop. His iPod blared an old rerun of Grey’s Anatomy, but for once, Xerxes barely took in the medical jargon and obscure sexual innuendos. His eyes were sweeping slowly back and forth across the infinite void stretched out before him. A brilliant orange sun peeked lazily out from a sky clad in curtains of radiant clouds, rays refracted off the sleek, majestic sand dunes below.

The water was calm, shimmering back and forth across the ocean bed, waves climbing up and over each other resembling long, wide staircases racing upwards towards the heavens. It was like something out of a watercolor painting, with all the colors bleeding together. Nothing had definition, nothing was bound to a single appearance or straightforward concept. The Dock was one of Xerxes’ favorite places to come during Episodes when it was too warm to ski: the sight of the sunset cascading over the distant horizon was enough to make worry and stress vanish in the blink of an eye.

Xerxes reached the end of the pier and leaned against the railing, dangling his hair over the waves and feeling the cool ocean spray soothingly massage his scalp. The twilight air was warm and moist: not humid, exactly, but exactly the right temperature. Xerxes felt free out here on the water, like not even heat or humidity were weighing him down tonight. He reached into his pocket and withdrew his notebook and pencil. All the snow’s melting, he scribbled contentedly, but life is good today. I do hope nothing ruins it.

Footsteps on the pier behind him. Xerxes hastily stood up and smoothed his hair back into place. Who the hell could that be? Nobody ever came down here. He rubbed his face quickly and ran his fingers quickly under his eyes, to make sure that his eyeliner hadn’t run and warped his facial appearance into that of a raccoon. He’d had oh to many experiences with that at dances and such. Then he flipped to a fresh page on his notepad.

[patricia]

While Neta was exploring the bustling city, longing for something that wasn’t covered in bricks or metal, she came across a peaceful looking harbor. There was a big empty dock over the water, water that reminded her of home. This was really the first time she had seen actual nature in this city built on concrete and chrome. She inhaled the moist air coming off of the Sound, even though it smelled a bit like fish. Walking wistfully towards the dock, Neta noticed that someone else had the same idea as she did. There was a boy – or was it a girl? – standing at the edge of the dock, looking at the water.

No matter, she thought. Neta had ignored people before. She really needed a chance to be free of the city air and the aura of stress and anger it possessed. This person standing here at the edge of the dock with her would be quite difficult to ignore though; he was dressed as if he was some sort of punk musician, with hair like a hedgehog’s. Oh God, why did everything here in America have to have been invaded by obnoxious ruffians? How could one even tolerate being dressed like that!? Back in Kildare, everyone dressed relatively normal – at least compared to the teenagers here in New York. She so badly longed to be back there.

Neta stood near the edge of the dock, leaning against the railing and trying not to think of all of the grubby hands that had touched it before her. She imagined that she was back in Ireland, sitting at the edge of the lake near her house. Oh, what she would give to be back there. Neta tried to keep her mind in her little fantasy of home, but the thought of standing so close to this spiky-haired lout made her a bit nervous and uneasy. What if this boy was dangerous? Neta quickly opened her eyes for fear of him coming at her when she was exposed and vulnerable like that. She snuck a peek at him – he was holding a little notebook. Well, maybe he was writing! People who liked to write normally weren’t vandals. Neta felt a bit more comfortable, and settled back into her fantasies of home.

[XERXES HARRISBURG]

Somewhere between staring blankly into space and scrawling meaningless drawl on the pages of his journal, he noticed that there was a girl leaning against the railing beside him. Not a bad looking one, either, he noted to the empty page. Her eyes were distant and far away, as if she were gazing at a picture he couldn’t see. He could tell, by the way she pressed wistfully against the wooden railing, hair gently caressing her scalp in the warm wind, that she was longing for something.

Xerxes could feel the nerves dilating inside his chest, the heat rising in his cheeks as the familiar queasy anxiety began to settle in. His heart pounded hard against his ribcage, as if bursting to be free. He glanced at the waves as they licked the marble white sands of the surf, like a puppy playfully lapping at its owner’s face. In and out, Xerxes. In and out. He felt his chest rise and fall with the whistling of the whitecaps across the expansive void.

He began to scribble a message on a blank page of his notepad, then stopped. Oh God. What if she doesn’t like me? What if she thinks my muteness is freaky? For a minute he stood paralyzed, grasping his pen a millimeter above the paper. Then he shook his head. It was these stupid nerves. Why couldn’t he just be normal around other people? Why did he have to get all terrified and jittery? God. Renewed with new courage and energy, he finished his first message on the paper. Then he tore it out with a resounding riiiip, tapped the girl on the shoulder, and showed her the message.

I like your hair. I can’t talk right now, sorry. Sore throat. But hi, I’m Xerxes. What’s your name?

There. That should do the trick. He allowed himself a nervous smile as he held the paper out for her. Oh God, he hoped she would like him. He hoped she would be nice. He didn’t have a lot of friends, but oh, he did love meeting new people. He crossed the fingers of his left hand behind his back, silently hoping for the best.

[patricia]

Neta jumped when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Looking up, she saw that it had been the boy with the spiky hair – he was looking at her and holding out a piece of paper. When she read the paper, she blushed and stood up. Neta wasn’t sure if she should be flattered by his compliment on her hair, considering what his looked like…but that was sweet of him. She stood up and smiled at him.

“Hello, I’m Neta. And thanks, I…uh… like yours too,” Neta stuttered. Ugh. She hated when people made those stupid-sounding mumbly noises – but now she was doing it too! Well, this boy – Xerxes – seemed nice enough. She admired his confidence, even though it was a little bit over the top. Oh God, he must think she was a terrible clod, just ignoring him like that at first – at least he had the decorousness to introduce himself when he saw her. She considered trying to tell him that she merely had not seen him…but no – that would be a complete and obvious lie. At least Xerxes didn’t seem too bothered by it – or at least he didn’t show it.

“What an interesting name – you wouldn’t happen to be named after Xerxes the Great of Persia, would you?” Neta regretted saying this as soon as she said it; what if she was wrong? That would have been awful – Xerxes would have the impression that she was some stupid show-off who just wanted to sound smart and knowledgeable. Neta bit her lip and looked past Xerxes into the water, hoping she hadn’t made too poor of an impression.

[XERXES HARRISBURG]

“Hello, I’m Neta. And thanks, I…uh… like yours too. What an interesting name – you wouldn’t happen to be named after Xerxes the Great of Persia, would you.”

So she was a history girl? How very interesting! She should meet my parents, he thought silently, allowing himself a diffident grin. His palms were still sweating like crazy, and his face was a furnace of blazing flame, but he could feel the terror within him gradually subsiding. He supposed it was like swimming in a very cold pool: the first touch of frigid water upon bare skin was shocking to say the least: but after a few minutes, you slowly adjusted. Xerxes still felt nowhere near comfortable, but at least he had managed to wrap his mind around the situation.

He ran a hand unconsciously through his hair, twirling a stiff strand between thumb and forefinger. It’d be so nice if I could talk right now, he thought disconsolately. But you couldn’t have everything. And perhaps the timing of this Episode was to his advantage: for all he knew it was keeping him from blurting out something he would later regret. That situation wasn’t unheard of, after all.

Neta. That was a pretty name. He wondered if she was Irish, though he wasn’t exactly an expert on foreign cultures. Did she go to Baum? He racked his brains, but couldn’t quite pinpoint a memory of her, couldn’t even draw up an imprint of her face or a scrap of her voice.

She likes my hair! He smiled, flattered, and ran his fingers through it again, feeling them gather the residue from the hairspray like a snowball gathering snow. And my name too!

I guess I should probably say something, he concluded, as the uncomfortable silence stretched on. He scribbled in his journal for a few seconds, then revealed the message to her.

It’s nice to meet you, Neta. Are you Irish? Do you go to Baum?

He really hoped he wasn’t irritating her with his incessant questions. She had probably come here to be alone, not be nagged by some mute, androgynous kid. Maybe he should just let her be.

[patricia]

It’s nice to meet you, Neta. Are you Irish? Do you go to Baum?

“Yep,” Neta smiled, she had to admit she was a bit enthralled with this boy – he was so confident, yet he couldn’t even speak. How did he do it? “I am Irish and I do go to Baum. Do you go there too? I don’t think I’ve seen you, but I guess I must just not have been looking; you must be pretty difficult to overlook, what with your hair and all…” The usually taciturn girl was going off on a mindless tangent, forgetting some of her composure. “Have you always styled your hair like that? It must take quite a while to do it… and a lot of gel. But it looks splendid… well, you know what I mean –” Neta put air quotes around this next word --“sick…?” She was a bit unclear with which words were ‘cool’ to say… but Xerxes seemed pretty accepting.

She looked out at the water – it was so calm, the waves quietly lapping at the edge of the dock. Neta felt very at ease out here on the dock, with this Xerxes boy. Who knew? Maybe they would become friends… but all of his other friends were probably rather strange, considering what he looked like. Xerxes was kind, unlike what one would assume from his appearance, but she was still a bit confused. Could he ever talk? It might be a bit difficult to have a friendship with someone who was mute… but it seemed like he could communicate fairly well through the use of paper and pencil.

Did she even want a friend like him though? What would people think of her if she sat at a lunch table with this spiky-haired, makeup-wearing boy? But no, I mustn’t be mean, she thought. She didn’t want to judge anyone on their appearance – she knew how it felt to be made fun of. Neta really did like Xerxes – he was one of the first few people to have an actual conversation with her. It was nice – actually conversing with someone, even though the manner in which they were conversing at present was a bit unusual.

[XERXES HARRISBURG]

“I am Irish and I do go to Baum. Do you go there too? I don’t think I’ve seen you, but I guess I must just not have been looking; you must be pretty difficult to overlook, what with your hair and all…Have you always styled your hair like that? It must take quite a while to do it… and a lot of gel. But it looks splendid… well, you know what I mean –“

Xerxes allowed himself another grin. I haven’t really seen you either, he thought, but wasn’t sure if that was the best thing to write down at the present moment. Was she a member of the junior class, as he was? Xerxes mentally rifled through all of his classes, examining snapshots from memory, but the image of her face and the images in his mind didn’t fit into place.

Well, that was slightly annoying. But perhaps she was just a very intelligent person. Xerxes was bright, but he’d never been able to see himself in any of the honors classes at school. It was just too much homework taking up his time for skiing, and too much talking and social interaction required. Xerxes enjoyed the classes where a disinterested teacher would pass around assignments, and the student could spend the rest of the time writing in peace and quiet, alone with their thoughts.

He pulled another sheet of paper off his notepad, scribbling on a fresh sheet and hoping that this girl didn’t mind his messy handwriting. Xerxes could write neatly when it was required, but when transcribing his thoughts onto paper, a more efficient scrawl was called for.

Yes, I go to Baum. I’m a junior. How old are you? What else had she asked? He racked his brains. Oh yes, his hair. Not really, he admitted. I used to have a rat tail and used gel and stuff, but that got boring. So now I just use hairspray. My brother wants me to get it dreaded, but that isn’t really my style. Do you ski? he added on an impulse.

[patricia]

As Neta read the paper, she realized how nice Xerxes was. It was almost like having a conversation with one of her friends back in Kildare. She looked up at the spiky-haired, makeup-wearing boy – she really shouldn’t judge people like how she had at first. Thinking back to how scared she had been of Xerxes when she first sat down on the edge of the dock, she grasped just how ignorant she had been being the entire time she was in America. These people weren’t the awful, gun-toting vandals she had made them out to be in her imagination.

When Neta snapped out of her train of thought and answered Xerxes – “Well, I ski sometimes,” she realized there were tears running down her face. She just felt completely awful for being so mean to everyone like that. Beginning to breathe heavily, she looked away from Xerxes. Oh God, now he was going to think of her as some weird, emotional freak. But no, if he was going to think of her like that, then she didn’t even care about his opinion. Although, Xerxes was nice, he would never judge her like that, right?

God, there she went again – judging people! If he wanted to think she was strange, then he could! Sobbing, she stood up and hugged Xerxes. Who knew, this might be the last time she would ever talk to him. It was really too bad though, he was the first person to not treat her like some arrogant jerk who thought she was better than everyone else. She mentally told him goodbye, regretting that she had not been more normal around someone who could have potentially been a good friend.

“I… I’m sorry, Xer-Xerxes. I j-j-just… I’m so, so sorry.”

[XERXES HARRISBURG]

The tears running down her face were the most beautiful sight Xerxes had ever seen. A torrent of shimmering pearls, they were, glistening beneath the canopy of sunlight like gentle fairies frisking to and fro across an immaculate sky. Xerxes watched as they silently filed down her cheeks in a solemn, tabulated line. It was depressing to see a nice-looking girl so miserable, but so, so beautiful.

Neta’s eyes glimmered like tiny brown stars, dancing and twirling up and up into the night air, her wavering smile like quivering animal poised to spring, pulsating to the beat of the earth and the moon and the stars that reverberated through everything and everyone. It was the beat that Xerxes felt on the ski mountains on cool winter nights, with the graceful snowflakes caressing his face and the fluffy snow flouncing up to meet his hands as they propelled him across the gentle dips and bends of the slopes.

And then, suddenly, she was hugging him, pressing her sleek body against his own, resting her bulbous head against his slim, dark one. Xerxes felt a strange sense of belonging as he awkwardly returned the embrace, as if for the first time in his life somebody truly, consciously wanted to be with him, consciously accepted him for who he was and not who they longed for him to be.

Xerxes was overcome with emotions he couldn’t put to words as he pressed his chest against hers, this girl he’d barely met, this girl he hardly knew. Such strangers, and yet, so intimate, as if in another time and place their souls were intertwined as one.

When they at last broke apart, Xerxes returned to the banister, staring out over the sempiturnal ocean, the body that knew no boundaries, no limits, and no ends. Oh, how he sometimes wished that he could enjoy such freedom, that his own soul wasn’t confined to this useless body, trapped in this cage in which he couldn’t even connect to others. God, his life was so screwed up. He didn’t even have any real friends.

Xerxes’ eyes skimmed back and forth across the water, and he noticed a single bird soaring high above the water. A dot against the sky It dove down low enough to scrape the waves and send a flurry of spray cascading into the air, then springing back up towards the heavens until it was only a smudge against the background of majestic blue. You’ve got no idea how lucky you are, he thought, as the bird disappeared below the slowly receding horizon. You can fly, you can soar wherever you please. The world is your kingdom. You’re free.

Xerxes could walk, sure. Xerxes could run, and jump, that was all fine. Physically his body was capable, more than capable, in fact. But how he longed to break free from the barriers around his mind, the impenetrable walls that kept him bonding, from finding the friends and allies that he really needed.

Xerxes felt something warm and wet brush his cheek. Embarrassed he wiped it away, but another had taken its place before he had fully acknowledged its departure. His eyes swept upwards towards the dark blue heavens above, and Xerxes held his head high as the tears slowly fell.

[patricia]

Neta slowly leaned back against the dock, continuing to sob. As Xerxes had returned her abrupt embrace, she had felt a piercing jaggedness deep in her soul, something that made her feel awful for hurting someone, but at the same time, wonderful. Wonderful because she could finally feel comfortable enough to hug someone, despite the fact that it was in apology. Wonderful because he had embraced her back, instead of turning away and shunning her. Wonderful because, at last, there was someone who seemed to identify with her emotions. And now he was crying too. The weight of the moment crashed down on her, and she slid down to the dock, curling her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around them.

“Dear God, please don’t let me have frightened him away. Please, let this be the friend who finally understands me,” she whispered quietly to herself. Never before had she quite fathomed the gravity of how much guilt one could be in because of some thoughts that had passed through their mind. She brushed tears off of her wet cheeks, but more came to take their place. Her previously inexorable philosophy on how to make a first impression had been completely upended, but she capitulated to the rush of new emotions filling her head. Was this what happiness felt like? She surely didn’t feel happy, yet, she did. Neta’s mind was at peace; she had just met someone who hadn’t brushed her away like an ignorant freak. Xerxes had spoken to her, spoken to her as if he knew she wasn’t some arrogant bully, as many others seemed to think.

Neta realized she had been giving off the wrong impression for years. Inside, she had never felt mean, really – just frustrated. Nobody ever identified with her; all the people in her social group tended to lack on the side of maturity. Whenever she said something a bit strange, a bit out of the norm, they responded with laughter or teasing. She needed a serious friend. She needed someone with whom she could be her complete self around, instead of having to prevaricate whenever someone asked her about the newest magazines, or how she felt about that silly romance movie. Xerxes seemed like the type of person who didn’t really care about things like gossiping, or celebrity scandals. He was so unordinary himself that he would probably appreciate her own strangeness.

The tears had stopped. Stretching her legs, Neta smiled. She watched, captivated, as the light grey clouds parted, revealing the bright yellow sun. She could feel the heat radiating from it, warming her face as she tilted her head upwards, glad for a sunny day after a week of melancholy drizzle. Oh, how unexpectedly this day was going…

[XERXES HARRISBURG]

Xerxes stared across the water, squinting as if somewhere, far across the vast, infinite abyss of the long island sound lay a place where things didn’t have to be like this. He rammed the heel of his boot into the dock in desperation, shoving a fist hard into the safety railing. Sometimes he wished he could just vault it, just experience the sensation of free falling, of the wind whipping against his hair, of the complete lack of boundaries, lack of parameters to box him in. Sometimes he just wanted to let go, to leave everything behind. Like the sensation he got as he sped down the ski slope, releasing his hold on reality and leaving his fate in the hands of gravity, leaving his life far behind him at the top of the hill.

And then, as he mulled in his own misery, an incredible sensation came over him. A lightening of everything he carried, as if an enormous burden had been lifted gently from his shoulders. Xerxes gasped as his throat slowly unclenched, releasing an enormous gust of air that swept upward and soothed his face like cool water on a hot summer’s evening. In that very instant, Xerxes Harrisburg’s voice came back.

He turned to face the girl again, who looked absolutely dejected. Poor chick. He wished he could reach out and cradle her, but that could’ve been a tad bit awkward. Instead, he spoke for the first time. His voice began as the quavering ramble that it usually was as he tested it, but slowly grew in strength until it was emanating strongly from his vocal chords as if it had never been gone.

“You want to be real,” he said quietly, a sentence that spewed involuntarily from his mouth. “You wish your friends could see the real colors. Right?”

[patricia]

Neta’s head snapped up when she heard Xerxes speak. He didn’t even acknowledge the awkward moment of before, when she had spontaneously hugged him. She was glad; it seemed like she had been being a bit overemotional. But it was disconcerting, hearing him talk. She had almost imagined that he would never speak, that they would forever communicate through the scrawl of a pen on paper. It felt a bit unnatural, now that he could speak too. She felt less at ease. Before she had almost felt as if they had something in common; she had never been able to communicate well with other people herself. She tried not to be disappointed – she should be happy for him that he was talking again, right? A bit downhearted, she tried to smile again. He was still the same person; it wasn’t as if he had changed his manner of thinking now that he could talk.

She thought back to what he had said. “You want to be real. You wish your friends could see the real colors, right?” She could almost laugh; he was assuming she actually had friends. It was kind of him, really, but she was reluctant to admit that nobody she knew was really, well… a friend, per se. Sure, she had acquaintances, she knew people, but she could never talk to them seriously.

“Well, I don’t really… have friends.” God, that sounded so pathetic. She chuckled, not because it was funny, but she just felt like she should let him know that she realized how stupid she sounded. “I mean, I just… yeah. I understand what you’re saying, though. I wish everyone would just realize that all those things that seem so important, they just… don’t matter. It’s like, whenever I try to talk to someone, they just manipulate the conversation so somehow the topic is related to how much they hate math, or how funny it is that some sophomore had never kissed a boy. It’s just… aggravating, you know? We need to think bigger, who even cares about silly little rumors and things like that?”

She had never said that to anyone before, never really expressed her feelings about the trivialities of teenagers. Now that she said it out loud, she realized that she was contradicting herself – well, her thoughts, really. She was ranting about the futility of worrying about things like appearances and rumors, yet she herself fretted about little things like that. She had spent so much of her high school career troubling over the impression she gave off, about how she could change her personality and appearance to make people accept her. But the pointlessness of it all was clear, now. Seeing Xerxes, seemingly confident in his crazy appearance, even though he hadn’t even been able to talk when she first met him, she was inspired. It was time to stop; Neta had always thought of herself as being above all the average high school frivolities, but now she was realizing that she had never been thinking out of the box, she had never really been any different from the rest of them. Even though how she acted on the outside and how she carried a conversation may have been different, her thoughts were the same. She was self-conscious and impressionable just like everyone else.

Blinking, she shook her head slightly. Wow. Things needed to change – it didn’t matter what other people thought, she had said it herself. Low self-esteem had been her burden to carry since the brink of her teenage years, but she needed to end that. She was finished with agonizing over what other people thought; that was their business, not hers. She needed to start over, to start doing what she wanted. No longer would her thoughts be filled with worries and aches about what other people thought of her, and this whole conversations had given her encouragement.

[XERXES HARRISBURG]

“I mean, I just… yeah. I understand what you’re saying, though. I wish everyone would just realize that all those things that seem so important, they just… don’t matter. It’s like, whenever I try to talk to someone, they just manipulate the conversation so somehow the topic is related to how much they hate math, or how funny it is that some sophomore had never kissed a boy. It’s just… aggravating, you know? We need to think bigger, who even cares about silly little rumors and things like that?”

“It’s okay,” Xerxes nodded, his voice still quavering from hours of neglect. “I don’t really, like, have any friends either. Like, I talk to people, but it’s not, like…” his voice trailed off, his throat like a river run dry. “Like, you know…” he tried again, but his mind was blank and empty, all concepts of words and communication, like, eradicated completely.

“I hate it!” he blurted out, pounding his fist against the railing again, as a long stream of words began spewing uncontrollably from between his lips. “I hate not being able to talk to people. Like, I hate people, I guess. But I have to, you know, be with them if I want to, like, fit in, you know? And even if I don’t want to I still have to, you know, just cause. But I can’t. Even when I have my voice, it’s like I just can’t…talk to them. I get all, you know, scared, like I was when I first saw you.”

Xerxes ran a hand over his face, wet and worn out. "Oh God. I don't even know, like, what I just said. So, uh, basically, uh..."

Xerxes rested his forehead against the railing, squeezing his eyes shut and feeling the makeup he’d laboriously applied this morning cascading down his cheeks. Well there goes that, damnit. “I can’t…I won’t…I just wish everything would…you know, be, like, chill and all that.”

Xerxes looked at this girl, so pretty, so sophisticated, so...collected. She was, like, polite and kempt, you know? She knew what to say and when to say it. She could probably adjust herself and her behavior to different situations and knew when and how. And all those probably came naturally. She didn't have a rulebook or, like, lessons to tell her when to say certain things. So like, why didn't Xerxes know? Like, why couldn't Xerxes do what everyone else in the world could do?

Xerxes stood up abruptly, spinning to face the girl again. “I, uh, gotta go,” he said stiffly. “I’ll, uh, see you around?”

Go figure it would be the one girl who understood him that confused him even more. Go figure it would be the girl easiest to understand who would make it even harder to understand himself.

[patricia]

Neta watched the poor boy. A pained soul caught in the masses. Should she do something? Say something? Her eyes filled with tears when she saw him realize what he was saying and stop himself. You don’t need to stop, she thought, imagining herself saying these words to him, Let it out; I understand. I need to know that someone else thinks the same way I do. That I’m not the odd one out. But maybe they were just both the odd ones out. Maybe neither of them had it all figured out. Xerxes was uncomfortable, obviously, and she knew exactly how he felt. But he didn’t need to be. Neta wanted to tell him that she didn’t think he was weird, she didn’t think he was a freak for thinking these things. She thought them too. They were both outsiders, both always alone in their thoughts of friendship and society. But now they weren’t. Alone, that is. They were outsiders together.

”I, uh, gotta go. I’ll, uh, see you around?”

What? Neta had just opened her heart to this boy. She had thought that they had something in common, that maybe they would be friends or something. So why was he leaving? Why couldn’t she just once have someone to talk to that she didn’t scare away? It made her angry; was it too strange to tell a stranger your deepest worries? Hadn’t he just told her that he thinks about the same exact things? She watched as he turned to walk away, feet slapping the pavement. She didn’t call out, didn’t ask him what she had done to make him leave.

“Bye,” she whispered, wishing she could say it out loud. Neta really had thought that she had finally found someone to connect with. But, I guess things just don’t work out that way. I’ll just be like this forever, spewing out my feelings to random kids I meet in the harbour, won’t I?, she thought, frustrated.

Maybe it would have been better if Xerxes had turned out to be a vagrant, a bully. If he had, then she would never have opened up, never would have told him about the worries and pains that go through her head every day. It would have been better that way, because, then, she wouldn’t have been so hurt when he left. It was these stupid outbursts she had. Sometimes Neta just needed to talk to someone, and she had thought she could trust Xerxes. But now he was probably going to go off and tell all his friends about this. ”Y’know that weird Irish chick? You might not want to talk to her…”, she imagined him saying. He’d probably lied about all that stuff anyway. Nobody else would be crazy enough to think those things except Neta.

But she was just kidding herself. Xerxes was no jerk; he hadn’t pushed her away when she’d hugged him, crying. He hadn’t laughed when she told him what she thought about everyone else. Most importantly, he had talked to her, too. Nobody ever talked to Neta – she had always been that weird girl who opened her mouth at the worst times and said the strangest things. Or else she would just act snobby, like she was more important than everyone. But that side of her was all an act. For the first time since she’d moved here, to America, she had thought there was someone who wouldn’t laugh. She had kind of been right, though. He hadn’t laughed, all he had done was leave. It still made her think, though.

Had she said too much? Had she merely made him uncomfortable when she spilled her personal thoughts? But no, he had opened up just the same way. Maybe it was merely that she had made him realize that there was someone who shared his thoughts. Maybe he had been the same way as she was, always hiding his true feelings and thoughts. Neta knew how the conversation – if you could call it that – had made her feel. She’d cried, she’d laughed, it had been a motorboat ride of emotions. Who knew? Maybe that’s why he had left. Maybe it had all just been too much for him.

She stood up, stretching her arms, looking at the sunset. It isn’t like I’ve made an enemy, she thought. Now she knew she wasn’t alone. Now she knew that the things she thought didn’t only live in her head – Xerxes had the same thoughts. And it had been… nice to talk. She didn’t talk much anymore, now that she was here in America and didn’t really know anyone well enough to have a conversation with them.

But hadn’t she just proved that you didn’t need to have known someone your whole life to be able to talk to them? She’d just poured her heart out to a stranger on a dock in New York. Making friends was possible, Xerxes had responded not like an ignorant idiot, but like a kind, accepting person. Who knew? Maybe not everyone was who she had thought they were… I guess it’s not that bad after all, being with all these people.