2.3

[I've found myself reading way way way too much stuff outside of classwork. I've read four graphic novels, a hundred pages of essays, and watching three hours of videogames (which is not reading). So I don't write. I slide back and forth on a continuum between reading and writing. I like the reading side more, thanks.]

"You're just so . . . symmetrical."
She said it to him because he was. Symmetrical, that is. Daniel was, without doubt, even on both sides. But he didn't know why she said it. He was only fourteen, of course, and hadn't had enough experience with women to try to decipher this one. Daniel was from a rural area and was completely off his game. He wasn't used to a town with two high schools. "Why two?" He asked, incredulous. "We have enough kids for three," came the reply, "and funding for one. So we compromise." He didn't get the joke. Perhaps it wasn't a joke. But here Sandra was, telling him that he was symmetrical. He knew the word, but not the context. As a matter of fact, he knew a lot of things: the smell of fresh-cut hay, the look of a storm cloud on a distant horizon, and the feel of a fish's insides. His father had taken him fishing not two weeks before the new school, and hours later, Daniel had plunged his knife deep into the fish, loosening flesh from bones. His father turned to him. "Daniel, I want you to be good, you hear?" "Of course, dad. Don't worry." "Don't go getting no girl pregnant. I don't want to hear that. I'll put a hurt on your hide that will keep you from sitting down for weeks, son." "Dad, I've never even kissed nobody. I'm not gonna go get some girl pregnant." Daniel cast his mind back to his own school at home. He knew all the girls in his class. Had known them. Most of them he had, at one point or another, been skinny dipping with in the reservoir. They didn't excite him. It was like skinny dipping with your sister, but if you weren't related.
"Symmetrical?"
Sandra hadn't anticipated the situation, so she hadn't anticipated needing a response. So she spat out what first came to mind. Symmetrical. Well, there was no denying that Daniel was very symmetrical. She felt like such a fool. Perhaps she was a fool. Here's this nice boy, and he's not even very cynical, even, and he hasn't been ruined by living in the city his whole life, and she bet he'd never even stolen a stereo like her last boyfriend, or drank alcohol just to fit in, or talked about how many whores he was going to have when he got old. She bet he didn't have any problems at all, just an honesty that disarmed her and made her say "symmetrical" when she meant to say "wow, you are just awesome and I hope slash wish that we could just be as honest with each other hello my name is Sandra and I've actually never been kissed and I've worried about whether or not I'm normal because a couple of my friends have already had sex, and Imean I know that's kind of a taboo topic but I just feel like your honesty requires honesty of me so I'm trying to be honest about how lost I am when it comes to all of this relationship stuff and I have nobody to talk to about it because let's be honest if I'm going to fit in I have to let on that I know more than I do and so nobody actually knows the real me and your comment just kind of threw me off guard and Iguess I don't really know what to say to it other than thanks and I guess I owe you a compliment back because really that's how society works so I have to compliment you and it feels really weird because I've never ever complimented a boy because I've always been afraid that it meant something more but with you, the only boy I've ever met for whom it doesn't mean something more, I'm still veiled and vague and tremendouslyshy and I guess all I can squeeze out of my stupid stupid mouth is that you're symmetrical."

Because really, what do you say when someone says you're beautiful?