Like Secrets

By Hazeleyed Everglades

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Dakota sent Caden an email two days after he stood her up for the second time. I’m a fucking doormat, she wrote, and told him how the first time he stood her up she waited in the freezing cold outside the theatre hugging her elbows and smiling at families and couples and everyone else who didn’t arrive by themselves. She shivered for fifteen minutes before calling his house. His father picked up and told her he’d gone to a movie with his friends from school. “Thank you,” she said, very calmly, and snapped her phone shut.

I'm not looking for an apology. At this point, it would only make me furious, since it's obvious you don't give a crap.

Dakota spent all her anger within the first few weeks after standing outside the theatre. She just missed her friend.

I'm not angry with you—only a little disgusted and disappointed.

Caden doesn’t know it, but he and their other friend, Jessie, saved her life once. When she first met them, Dakota’s insides were a broken and bloody mess. She knew exactly how many pills her personal toxic cocktail required to keep her from waking again and facing the world.

But he and Jessie made her laugh, so she put the recipe in the back of her sock drawer. She didn’t want to lose it. It reminded her of the high wire she’d walked before Caden and Jessie beckoned to her from the other side.

She regrets never thanking them aloud.

Dakota hasn’t seen Caden or Jessie in almost nine months. She hates herself for missing them—especially Caden—even though it was loyal Jessie who never betrayed her hopes, never ignored her so totally. Dakota knows she probably won’t ever see Caden again, not after the spiteful things she wrote in her email.

Stop leaving me standing in the cold-- figuratively and literally. I have other friends that I enjoy hanging out with, and they respect me enough to tell me the truth when they can't make it somewhere.

She didn’t send a copy to Jessie. She didn’t want to hurt her. She wanted to hurt Caden, if only a little. She hurt too much not to hurt him. If she couldn’t hurt him, she knew she would have hurt the people around her who love her. She wanted that even less. Her mother and brother didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of her misplaced anger.

Dakota thought that by sending the email and standing up for herself she would feel better, but she didn’t. Things still felt incomplete—but if it meant that more bitter words would be exchanged, she’d rather things stay the way they were.

If you don't want to hang out with me, tell me, and I'll spend my free time with my other friends instead of wasting it on you.

She felt a surge of self-respect after sending it. Relief flooded through her, but left a backwash of shame to find relief in such a vengeful action.

The first time Caden stood her up at the theatre, she didn’t say anything. Their paths didn’t cross again for five months, when she invited him to go ice-skating. He readily accepted. She panicked after speaking with him so she got on the computer and invited Jessie and some other friends—friends who didn’t know Caden or Jessie, in case neither showed. Dakota never heard a reply from Jessie; it’s as if she had disappeared. Dakota brushed off the hurt and grinned as her other friends agreed to come.

Caden didn’t show. Dakota’s other friends did. She thanked them and tried to smile through the rest of the night. She abhorred wasting tears, but found that feigning gaiety left her stumbling toward the high wire.

One of Dakota’s real friends leans over and gives her a quick hug around the shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

Dakota smiled, though she wasn’t sure if it could even be seen in the dark ice rink, lit only a disco ball and spinning party lights spin.

“Nothing, Emma.”

Dakota and Caden never dated; they never considered it. They made each other laugh, played tag when they were bored, and watched Abbott and Costello movies. Neither wanted anything more than friendship.

Bitterness slinks into her memories when she lets her guard down. Sometimes Dakota has to remind herself that, yes, they were good friends, once.

Sometimes she wishes she could onto being really and truly angry with him. For Dakota, anger is always preferable to sadness and hurt.

If you'd had the foresight to call before the day of your “Brave New World” performance, I would have gone to see it. It wouldn't have mattered that it was the middle of the week before finals, or that my mother would have made snide comments about how I was too damn nice for my own good. I would have defended you, no matter how weak it sounded, just like I did to my mother when I got off the phone with you.

Three weeks after sending Caden the true and spiteful email, Dakota is driving home from the theatre when she hears “Hey There Delilah” on the radio. He was the one to introduce her to that song; it reminds her of him and how long it’s been since they spoke. Her speedometer creeps down toward the speed limit.

She closes the garage door and tells her parents how wonderful the play was, then sits down at the computer and begins to write about how much she misses her friend. She’s afraid to say it aloud.

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Autobiographical, but names have been changed. Sad, huh? Makes me wonder if he’s turned into a pothead.

Anyway, reviews are appreciated.