Supposed To's
Thoughts | Tehlan Lenius
Graphic by Alex Eun
Callie’s apartment was on the seventeenth floor and I never got sick of the view. I peered down at the street lights dotting the city below, the cool spring breeze ruffling my hair. From here, I could see our high school, the soccer field beside it clearing out a square of green on the floor of the city. My house was just to the west, and to the east was the strip mall where we went most days for lunch, sitting on the curb of the parking lot and eating 75 cent beef patties from the Jamaican takeout place.
“Here,” Callie drew my attention back inside the balcony, where we sat on the floor across from each other, cross-legged. She nudged me with her foot, holding out the still-smoking joint between her fingers. “Ready to try?” Her voice had always been like sandpaper, as if she was just recovering from a cold and had to strain her voice to speak. When I first met her, I thought that must’ve been what it was, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that that was just how she talked.
“You don’t have to if you changed your mind,” she reminded me for the third time that night. There was a measure of uncertainty in her voice, like she was wondering if she was doing something immoral, but she wasn’t. We were alone in Callie’s apartment, her mom out on a business trip. It was just us, in a safe place. There were far more dangerous ways to get high for the first time.
I shook my head and took the joint from her.
“No, I want to.” I brought the end up to my lips, drawing in a deep breath, which devolved into a cough embarrassingly fast. I was half convinced that I had swallowed a handful of cinders, the smoke burning the back of my throat, but Callie had told me what to expect and I was determined to see it through. Once I could catch my breath, I tried again, ignoring the way the smoke clawed at my throat until I was sure that it had done its job.
“Okay, but I’m not peer pressuring,” Callie said pointedly, even though that was obvious. This had all been my idea, and it wasn’t like she smoked either. Not regularly anyways. The weed wasn’t even hers; it was her brother’s. I took one last drag for good measure before handing it back to her and pulling my knees up to my chest. I rested my chin on top of them, looking out between the bars of the balcony railing, the cold from the concrete floor seeping through my jean shorts.
“I don’t feel anything yet,” I said after a few moments.
“You’re not supposed to.” Callie passed the joint back to me, and I took another few drags, a little proud of the fact that there was significantly less coughing. “It’s only been like a minute. Don’t worry.”
We waited for a little while, listening to the cars passing by on the streets below, the gentle murmur rising and falling in the air. I wondered if any of the drivers looked up and saw us—what they would think if they did. Who would I be to them? That was one thing I was beginning to like about the city—the anonymity. The idea that I could be someone other than me. I leaned back against the railing, the bars digging into my shoulders.
“Maybe weed doesn’t work on me,” I suggested absently, turning my gaze back to Callie in time to see her mouth curve into a smile. I had to take a moment to process how different it looked from before. Callie had gotten her braces off a few weeks ago. It was still strange to see her teeth all perfect and lined up, like they were surgically put into her mouth. When we first met, she had a crooked front tooth, sticking out from the rest. Some part of me still expected it to be there, even after all the years of metal and glue.
“Some people just fall asleep, you know? It’s called greening out.” She paused for a moment, eyebrows furrowed. “I think.”
“Well that sucks.” I wrinkled my nose in distaste. I wanted to feel something, at the very least. “Why bother smoking at all at that point?”
Callie shrugged, taking the stub of the joint from me and tossing it onto the floor, the toe of her pink Walmart sandal driving it into the concrete.
“Let’s go inside, I'm cold,” she said, but I hesitated, looking out at the city then back up at her.
“Can we stay just a little longer?”
She sighed, leaning back against the wall and offering me her usual half-smile. “Alright, a little longer.”
———
On our way home from school, we always stopped by the park at the corner of Ipswich and Clydesdale. There was a swing set off to the side, hanging over a little circle of wood chips. Callie liked to swing as high as she could, but I preferred to twist the chains, winding up in a circle before letting go and squeezing my eyes shut while I spun around.
I stared up at the tangle of chains above me, Callie dipping in and out of my peripheral vision as she swung back and forth.
“Come on, just tell me who you like.”
I glanced over, catching her eye as she flew past. Callie was grinning with her mouthful of blue braces, eyebrows going up and down suggestively. I looked down at the floor before the heat could rush to my cheeks, digging my feet into the wood chips and twisting the chains one round further.
I had tried to tell her before that I didn’t have a crush, but she didn’t buy it, convinced that it was a tactic to throw her off. I didn’t know how else to tell her that I had never felt that way about anyone. I kept waiting for the butterflies in my stomach to kick in, or my heart to skip a beat when a boy looked at me—the way they show it in the movies—but it still hadn’t happened, and I was starting to think that maybe it never would. I didn’t mind, but Callie did.
“Tell me,” she pried, and even if I had nothing to say, I wanted to give her something. A beat of silence passed, her expectant gaze still pinned on me, a strange sort of guilt twisting in my stomach. It felt like I was letting her down somehow, like I wasn’t trying hard enough to keep up my end of the conversation.
“Okay okay, I’ll say,” I caved, mentally flipping through the faces of every boy in our class. Callie had stopped swinging with her legs and began to slow down, each arc she made growing smaller and smaller as she waited. I settled on a name, picking it at random. “I like Mateo.”
Callie’s face broke into a grin.
“Mateo? Really? What is it about him?”
I shrugged, praying that the panic building in my chest didn’t show on my face. I thought of the things I had heard other girls say about their crushes, trying to find something that would work for me.
“He’s…” I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “I like—” no I couldn’t say that, he didn’t have curly hair. “He has a nice jawline,” I said without thinking, hearing how stupid it sounded only after it was too late.
Callie nearly laughed, catching herself at the last moment and shaking her head. “I didn’t think you were like that, but it’s okay. That’s a good reason.”
“Didn’t think I was like what?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Into looks?”
“I’m not,” I jumped to assure her. I didn’t actually know if I was or not, but the way Callie said it made it sound like a bad thing, and I didn’t want her thinking that about me. “I just said the first thing I thought of, that’s all.”
“Yeah and his jawline was the first thing you thought of.”
“Well, I also like him because—” I riffled through every fact I knew about Mateo, trying to find one that would dig me out of this hole. “He has a lizard. I saw pictures of it once on his phone. It has one of those neck things that pop out like a flower, it’s really cool.”
I watched Callie’s expression carefully to see if it worked, but she just tilted her head to one side, giving me a funny look and a sideways smile.
“You’re weird,” she said, though there was no malice in it. She didn’t wield her words like a weapon, the way other people did. In her hands, weird wasn’t something to be afraid of. She went back to swinging and I smiled to myself, closing my eyes and lifting my feet, the wind flying through my hair as the chain untwisted and sent me spinning.
———
“Do you want anything to drink? Or eat?”
Callie had convinced me to come inside after she caught me shivering for the third time. “I’m okay,” I said, curled up at the end of her couch. I leaned my cheek against my knee and watched Callie drift around her kitchen in the dark, opening a cupboard just to close it again then move on to the next one. There was only one lamp turned on in the apartment, the light warm as it shone through the lampshade.
“I still don’t feel it,” I sighed, picking at a scab on my hand. Callie looked over at my dejected expression and gave up her search, coming back into the living room. She lay down in the middle of the carpet, motioning for me to join her.
“Come here.”
I hesitated for a moment, but eventually slid down onto the floor and found a place beside her, staring up at the ceiling.
“Why?”
“Because it’s fun,” Callie shrugged, and I couldn’t argue with that. There was something childishly amusing about being on the floor. She turned onto her side, and I took that as a sign that I should too, shifting so I could face her. Up close, I could tell that she was tired. Her eyelids were drooping and she had a faraway look on her face, the rims of her eyes a shade of pink.
“Do you want to watch a movie or something?” she suggested, and I almost snort-laughed.
“I don’t think you could make it through a movie.”
“No, I could do it. I could—”
I actually did start laughing then, Callie shoving my shoulder with one hand. “Shut up, I totally could, watch me,” she insisted, widening her eyes to an exaggerated size and staring me down, which only made me laugh even more.
“Okay, okay,” I conceded. “If you can stay awake for the next five minutes, we can watch a movie.”
She grinned, as if she had a sure thing.
“Alright, deal.”
I didn’t have to wait long. It was warm and quiet inside the apartment, the light dim. As hard as Callie fought to keep her eyes open, they drifted shut in a matter of minutes. “I’m still awake,” she mumbled in a final act of defiance.
“Uh-huh.” I nodded along, just as her breaths fell into a slow rhythm. Her features softened in sleep, her lashes casting shadows over her skin and a few wayward strands of hair falling in front of her face. My eyes traced the gentle curve of her nose, drifting down to her lips, and for a moment, I was convinced that if she smiled I’d see her crooked tooth sticking out at that strange angle. I slipped my hand into hers, holding on as tight as I dared, and by the time I closed my eyes, I finally felt it.