---
title: Reposado - Chapter 2
visibility: public
---
I do remember I hugged Cassie before she left for the cafeteria. I made some sort of excuse about needing something from my locker, and then started working my way against the flood of foot traffic. So many hungry kids, and I just needed some air. It got better as I went - at first I couldn’t do much but stand my ground as people went around me, then I started to be able to push forward, and eventually, the crowd thinned out.

I leaned into the pushbar of the glass door and smacked into it with my body weight. It didn’t move as much as I was counting on, and I smashed against the door like a squeaky toy, nearly knocking the wind out of me. But with a little sustained effort, it pushed open, and I was out on the sidewalk, finally.

God it felt good to breathe.

Cold blue skies, bigass gravel parking lot with dusty secondhand sedans, and a whole bunch of those shitty dark green bushes that don’t need a lot of water. I found an edge of the rock-and-mortar planter that seemed to have my name on it, and just let my eye lose focus for a minute. This was… a different kind of alone. Sadder, maybe, but blessed in ways that other loneliness isn’t. You have *room* to be sad, nobody else’s permission or opinion to account for. A person could stare off at the road where it started to be paved, and rolled along the hills into the distance, and just let your heart hurt about it. Sacred melancholy, I think. It’s the kind of sacred that priests aren’t allowed to get dirty.

I pondered taking up smoking. Yeah, it’s stupid. Yeah, it kills your lungs. Yeah, I’ve seen the ads and I’m not a fucking idiot. But also, in moments like this, it sure would be nice to have some physical outlet. Just light up a cig, tell the world to piss off, and watch the grass grow too tall in these fields, destined to be the summer’s fire hazard. Yeah, maybe that would physically tokenize the feeling, and put it in my hand instead of deep inside and untouchable. It’d be nice to hold that feeling and not feel lost, or confused, or broken.

It struck me that I didn’t know what I had to cry about, and yet, I felt a missing piece where crying was supposed to be. And I guessed I’d have to live without it.

So I sat. And kicked gravel around, rocks in the sand-blue dust. On the one hand, fuck this place and everything I’ve ever felt here. And yet, on the other, I’d never loved a place like this, and I knew I never would again. Nothing else would ever feel like home, not without the oak trees and the dandelions and the summer scraggle and the rusted junk. It was… beautiful. Nowhere else could make me feel like that. For better, for worse, for both. I would never feel anchored without this kind of view.

I hadn’t tried to do the boyfriend thing this year. I tried a couple prior years and… I’m a direct and rowdy person, to put it nicely. But with boys, I just felt… scared. Everything was uncharted territory. It’s not like I didn’t grow up with a cultural instruction manual for who I was supposed to be. After 3 years of talking a big game, queen of future-bragging, and never getting to a date before chickening out, I’d just had enough of trying and failing. And you can’t keep failing if you stop trying, that’s a pro tip from me to you.

So no bragging this year. No plans. No ambitions. No failures. Graded on the Lisa curve, this was a subdued year. Graduation was starting to feel.. real. And terrifying. It made me want to just spend time with my besties and hang on to what I could.

Which… did demand an answer to a painfully obvious question. I raised two fingers to my lips, holding nothing, and took a slow drag, letting it off into drowsy spring air.

*Then what the hell am I doing out here?*

* [Chapter 1](/writing/reposado/01)
* [All chapters of Reposado](/writing/reposado/)
* [Other stuff I've written](/writing)
* [Chapter 3](/writing/reposado/03)