Grapefruit.

FICTION

by Kylie Paige Mattsen 

To all the girls who need it, 

I’m sorry. 

She was angry, that kind of inexplicable femininely divine rage that flickers and simmers under the surface, placidly held chained behind an all-pleasing smile. But still, she was angry. How could she be so dumb and forgetful? She was angry, overwhelmed, feigning surprise, although deep down, she had known. Just my luck, and then she scolded herself for always being so negative. One thin little plastic stick and the cold porcelain of the local run-of-the-mill grocery store chain bathroom that had gone too long without servicing. There was no toilet paper, which was somehow the thing she was the angriest about. No fucking toilet paper. 

 Really? 

 Perhaps it was because when there are so many things to be angry about, the smallest is the easiest thing to be angry at.  

Fuck.  

The small stick of disappointment tossed on top of an over-flowing trash can clatters to the ground, and for a second, she contemplates leaving it there; she will not add to some poor underpaid, overworked employees’ shitty day; there are already enough shitty days in a year. She stuffs it into her pocket instead. 

 She grabs the strap of her backpack and emerges into the dull fluorescent lighting. Six dollars and ninety-nine cents with added tax is enough to grant access to both the bathroom and a world of anger; what a bargain. She was almost out of the too-slow-moving automatic doors when she noticed the glaring red and yellow sign: Grapefruit Fresh from Mexico, on sale! 

Fuck.  

She believes that fuck can be a sentence the same way no, come, yes, and names. She uses it as such frequently. The same applies to all swears because while she’s never read anything academic on it, fuck is a sentence. Because sometimes that’s all you have to say. And she can never raise her hand and ask her poor English teacher, who had the listed Bible at the top of her reading list at the start of the year. Bless her heart. 

She should have thought about it more because who believes Google? Her mom was on another diet kick, which meant the only thing in the house was the bowl of three ninety-nine each grapefruit and, as her mother would say, with a member's club card and coupons, were “only buck seventy-five honey. Can you believe that?”, What Google should have said was a single grapefruit is no big deal. However, eating three grapefruits a day for a week will render your birth control useless. She probably could have had the greasy school lunch, but if it’s the sins of the father, it is definitely the habits of the mother. 

And it was easier to blame the grapefruits than the entire row of white sitting untouched in a drawer at home. 

She felt like throwing up. And then felt like throwing up again because the connotations of throwing up before 7:45 a.m. felt like too much right now.   

She kicks a shopping cart on her way out; it hurts, but she feels better.  

The drive to school is no more than two minutes, but she still waits until thirty-five minutes after the first bell rings to enter the school. The halls are quiet, and she suddenly realizes that the connotations of feeling like throwing up before 7:45 a.m. are working their way up her throat at 8:17 a.m. She rushes to the bathroom as bitter bile reaches the bowl—grapefruit. She hadn’t heard the other girls come in until a shrill, nosey voice floated between the obnoxious cracks in the stall.  

“Looks like someone has morning sickness,” and then the howls of hyenas and the caws vultures. She moves her head off the stall door, grapefruit number two. It’s silent after that. Scavengers chased from their meal. 

The next period is biology; the lecture drowns her brain in cool relief. That is until “at ten weeks, a human fetus has fingernails,” her teacher, a lively yet somehow sad and dull woman, announces. Her head snapped up to the diagram on the board, and she thanked powers she didn’t believe in that she had only two grapefruits this morning.  

The diagram on the board is full of pink blobs, minor descriptions, and time frames. At three weeks, a baby is the size of a vanilla seed; she wonders how that compares to that of citrus. The lecture switched slides, and they’d gotten into the science of it all. She wished she could go back to drowning in ignorance. 

At lunch, she sits with the same group as always. They’re loud, so she doesn’t have to be, but today, she wishes they would just shut up, their gossip and complaints suddenly meaningless, naive. The buzzing grows louder in her ears, and she welcomes it as it drowns them out. She trades her grapefruit for a bag of chips and is thankful for her friends again. If only for a second. She contemplates confiding in them but is reminded of their gossip and the hyenas in the bathroom, and suddenly, a vanilla seed is much too big of a secret to share.  

It's long past the final bell, and she has not left the solitude of the farthest lunch bench in the schoolyard, enough distance that anyone still lingering within the school won’t tell her to pack up and go home, but far enough from the parking lot that home isn’t a decided destination as of yet. She took a deep breath and looked up at the clouded sky, a discomforting winter gray; there were still far too many months before the sun returned. The walk to her car felt like miles; each leaded step dragged her sorry frame deeper into the cracked and worn asphalt. They said it would be repaved years ago; they always do. She turns her mind from the thought of things being made anew.  

From behind her, she hears a noise: “Hey.” And then a louder “Hey!”, the sound of worn sneakers on that same cracked and dismal asphalt. There’s a hand on her shoulder, and she’s turning. She wishes the fissures would rip, dragging her far below. He’s standing close, too close; he’s tall and lean from the track practice he’s just come out of. He hates track, though he would never say that; it was his dad’s idea, something about scholarships. Not that he needs one. She tries to blame his uncomfortable look on his distaste for Track; he never uses the word hate, and it feels far too intimate between that knowledge and the knowledge about his dad.  

“Hey.” He repeats, this time softer as if she hadn’t heard him the first time or the second. 

“Hi.” She responds it sounds flat and dead coming out of her mouth. She wishes it didn’t.  

“Were you waiting for me to get out of practice?” he looks confused; she’s never done that before. There is no reason for her to do that. She worries for a moment that maybe she was, in some pathetic unconscious way, but she chases that from her mind. She wasn’t even aware that the track season had started. 

“No.” she hates how he deflates, wincing like a kicked puppy, “Oh, I just thought…”  

He just thought, what? 

The silence feels echoing.  

“You didn’t call, and I haven’t seen you since Saturday night.” She can feel him pulling at strings that aren’t attached. The clogs behind his eyes whir and overheat; it’s almost adorable, almost. She’s been avoiding him since then because something hadn’t felt right, and she knew then, and now it’s Friday, and everything is not all right. 

And because something hadn't felt right, she had been far too sober to deal with him. And his friends. And well, really everyone.  

She never said she would call; there was no reason she should. She had only ever done that once before, in a far less sober mindset. And thinking about it now, it was odd for him to say or hope. If he had asked on Thursday, she may have worried about his newfound expectations, but that was yesterday. 

She had tried to convince herself she liked him because of the lack of expectation. He was easy and convenient, and she didn’t like that he thought of her any different than she did of him. She didn’t like him. He was just one of her many distractions from reality.  

And on some level, she was his.  

Clearly, he was doing his job because she wasn’t thinking about it, but that also meant she had forgotten to answer him.  

“I know.” And she’s sorry to say it. And maybe she’s sorry to say it because he’s tall and lean, and the type of attractive that in a town like this, it’s the best you’re going to get. Not to say that he’s unattractive either. Actually, she never really equates looks to feelings unless she is talking to another girl because that conversation always goes, “I like this guy.” And then the girl (the other girl) goes, “Well, is he cute?” as if she sets the meter for what’s hot. Isn’t that all in the eye of the beholder and all that shit? And if she’s getting down to it, what bothers her is he’s too sweet. He’s the type of sweet that equates to that sickly sweet marshmallow topping they have at ice cream shops. Or, like peach juice in the summer, the sweet where you don't realize it's too much until you’re practically caramelized in the sugars rolling from wrist and chin. He’s the type of person whom people take advantage of: people like her.  

She is the Sun, and He is Icarus, and she does nothing to alter his flight path. 

It's all her fucking fault. She is going to ruin everything.  

Fuck. 

“Hey.” Jesus Christ, can he stop repeating? Like a Goddamn broken record. 

“Where did you go?” She hates how he questions her and looks at her; it makes her want to scream. How dare he look at her and ask as if he knows her, expect her to call, she feels trapped under his microscope. How dare he see her and act as though he sees her. 

 But, he noticed, and he’s the first person to notice, and that doesn’t equate to caring necessarily, but it's close enough, and he seems so desperate to see her. It makes her want to tell him everything, every little thing, to find out exactly what he sees. But it’s too late for all of those other things, all but one. One tiny vanilla seed-sized thing. 

“I am right here,” she tries to sound genuine. She always does, but it never works. The words never seem right, like they travel underwater or in a vacuum. The usual inflictions that form words into emotions are never present; it all illudes her. Sometimes, she feels like she is floating outside her body, watching and listening to what she says and does like she’s not the one in the driver’s seat. Sometimes, life is like that; nothing is in anyone’s control, and she tries to remind herself of that.  

“So, what are you doing right now?” he asks. She shrugs, and they walk towards her car. Unspoken. 

They’re in his room, on his couch, which makes her think about the type of people who can afford to have couches in their room on the right side of the tracks. They are sat at opposite ends, like strangers on a park bench. He’s trying to talk to her or even draw her attention from the spot on the wall she's chosen to fix her gaze on as she imagines the couch cushions swallowing her whole. He gives up halfway through whatever show or movie they are pretending to be watching. Eyes glued to the TV glow, like a moth to a lamp, she takes this moment to look at him, really look at him. It is probably the first time she's looked at him or given him any real attention, today at least. It sounds cruel; maybe she is. But she has bigger, smaller things on her mind.   

 He doesn’t deserve the things she wants to, no, needs to say to him so she doesn’t. Because he has a lovely house, family, a Division 1 college scholarship for the fall, and an actual future, she shakes away the voice that asks what about her future? She can’t do it. 

Deal with it later. 

So, she decides to be a normal teenager, a normal person for a little while longer. Who isn’t worried about vanilla seed-sized problems or what they grow into? She closes the distance between them on the couch and watches his face break into a smile; how could she take this all away?   

The weather has started to get warmer, with snowy days dotted with days of birds singing. A man is yelling, an evangelical standing with his picket sign. Fuck off, she thinks. Some people genuinely don’t have anything better to do with their time. He’s yelling and waving a sign with what looks like a chewed-up jellybean and a cross.  

Fuck.  

“At ten weeks, your baby has fingernails and toenails,” he shouts into the cold air.  

She knows better than to engage. But it makes her want to cry, or scream, or throw up. Maybe all three at once. Doesn’t he know how hard this is? Doesn’t he know she doesn’t want to do this nobody wants this? Can’t he please just shut up? She drives her car past him and resists the urge to give him the middle finger.  

A single purple tulip comes up through the cracked pavement; she crushes it underfoot. Fuck, new beginnings. And then she regrets that thought and that action because she still wants to believe, even if she feels nothing. She regrets it because it’s her fault; she ruins good things.  

She can feel pollen and hate speech clinging to her worn-out sole as she walks in the front doors, too nervous to pause at the overly cheery welcome mat. The inside of the building looks similar to her pediatrician’s office. The water fountain in the corner makes a too familiar and pathetic glub glub. It smells like a doctor’s office, sterile. She blames her nausea on that, and she wishes she could blame the shaking on coffee or nicotine or something, but it’s been a while since she could do that.  

The lady behind the desk gives her a warm smile, “Hello dear, Welcome; how can we help you today?” her smile is stretching so wide it looks like her face could split in half. She hates people who smile like that; glancing around the waiting room, it’s almost empty; there’s a mom with two kids, a couple whispering, and one lone woman sitting and reading a magazine. The mom has lines on her face and bags under her eyes; she is trying and failing to quietly wrangle in her kids and keep them in line.  

She thinks back to health class and biology and the assembly they had for students talking about abstinence and where to get free condoms, and she highly doubts any of her teachers believed it.  

“Dear?” the lady behind the desk asks again.  

Her voice feels caught in her throat, and she feels small like her grandmother caught her stealing from the cookie jar before dinner. “I called about ten minutes ago.” Her voice was quiet and small; she had never heard her voice like that and hoped stupidly that she’d never have to again, “Oh yes, I remember you!” she began to pull something up on the computer and then paused, “Dear, are you 18?” The lady behind the desk questions sweetly, pityingly. She nods once curt and militant and begins digging through her bag; why are things never where they are left? Finally, the ID was produced with shaking hands; she hoped the lady didn’t notice the tremors.  

“Oh, Happy Birthday, dear.” She sounds happy, and her face-splitting grin looks happy, but her eyes are pitying. It’s the type of happiness receptionists and lunch ladies have mastered: fake, unnerving, hiding how empty they are. The kind of fake-happy that goes unacknowledged, and both parties are better off in the agreed consensual ignorance. 

“Thank you.” she tries to say, but she’s unsure that the words leave her mouth as more than a whisper. She takes the pen and clipboard with the same trembling hands that the lady hands her and sits in the waiting room. She sits in the corner, away from the others. She gets halfway through the first question before shaking hands, make her drop the pen. It rolls across the dull carpet, frozen in her seat, unable to go through the motions to stand and retrieve it.  

One of the kids, the little boy, is pulled from his mother’s quiet pleas for a little bit of peace and promises of McDonalds as the pen lands at his feet. He picks it up, looks at it, then at her, and then carries the pen over to her on shaky toddler legs more stable than hers.  

He hands the pen to her, ten little perfect fingernails, and gives her the biggest, tiny, teethed smile. “Thank you.” This time, the words do leave her mouth. He runs back to his mom, and she smiles at her and turns her attention back to her kids.  

 The sterile smell of the office is overwhelming, the table is cold, and she keeps her eyes focused on the door and not on the tools covered with a thin sheet of medical paper. The gown was itchy and too big, and she could feel the seam on her socks. She can hear a woman crying in another room and the kids laughing in the waiting room. The door bangs open, and the doctor unceremoniously comes in, snapping gloves over her wrist. She sits on her stool and begins to go over the charts, “these things are best dealt with as soon as possible.” she says; she sounds tired, the woman’s cries grow louder outside the door. “I know,” and she does know, feeling scolded nonetheless, “I read the website.” the doctor nods, frowns deeper, and writes something down.  

“Happy Birthday,” she says tiredly and coldly, with a sigh that suggests Happy Birthday is a statement made too many times a year. “I know you read the website, but I will review everything again.” She stands and grabs the machine next to the table. It’s cold on her stomach, and the room tilts out of focus. The woman is talking, but she can’t make out the words.  

The crying from down the hall is still growing louder, to the point where crying turns to sobs, those big, heavy ones where no air can get in or out.  

Horrible half screams. 

She didn’t know how much time had passed, but the doctor placed a hand on her knee, “You okay, dear? Okay? Just try to calm yourself down; it’s all going to be okay,” 

 Is it?  

“Nothing is going to happen that you don’t want to happen.” 

A nod.  

“We need verbal consent to continue; I can review everything with you again.” 

Nothing is going to happen that you don’t want to happen. 

 How could anyone want this? How does anyone ever know what they want?  

She knows this is when she should feel, say, or ask anything. But she doesn’t; she can’t; if she does, she hears the same voice from the lobby echoing from her empty chest. She hates how her throat suddenly tightens and can’t trust how her voice will sound if she uses it. Or what she’ll use it for.  

Fucking weak. 

She will not be another girl heard down the hall.  

She puts in her headphones and closes her eyes, blocking the noise down the hall and the sounds her voice will make when it escapes her mouth. 

“Did anyone come with you, dear?” She feels confused by the sudden presence of a new voice. It’s a nurse in scrubs in an assaulting shade of pink.    

“I’m sorry?” 

“It’s policy. Is there someone you can call to come get you?” 

“Happy Birthday!” He says, looking around, apparent confusion on his sunshiny face. She fears this is the day of the eclipse. She is going to squash out his light like a bug underfoot.  

The bouquet has all her favorite flowers; she doesn’t know how he would know that she never told him: blue hyacinths, lily of the valley, daisies, a single purple tulip, and a yellow orchid, and what she hopes is Queen Ann’s lace and not what it’s commonly mistaken as. Their colors blur together as she fights off the tears with rage, pinks and blues, and whites and purples with hints of yellow. The perfect spring bouquet, new beginnings. She would not cry right now; she would not cry. The tears wouldn’t come when she was alone; they won’t come now. Not here, not in front of him, or the shitty evangelical, or the cracked asphalt. She will not fucking cry.  

He is looking at her and smiling so brightly like she’s the goddamn greatest thing in this whole parking lot, this whole town. And she knows in the next five minutes, she’ll be the one to take that all away from him.  It will crush him, and it will all be her fault.  

He can see it in her face, and his twists further into confusion and worry. 

Take it all away. 

 All her fault.  

Fuck. 

 Like a tiny million mirrorballs shattering on a dancefloor, weeks of built-up rage, confusion, desperation, and solitude of suffering explode throughout her. Tingling hands and feet, bile rising her in a tidal wave of grapefruit-flavored regret. The black spots danced in front of her eyes as the air couldn’t force its way into her lungs; she was drowning in every pent-up emotion that she had planted firmly, secretly in her garden, and how it was coming up as roses with only the thorns.  

Her body shakes and shudders with the release, not the pretty crying of teen idols in romcoms; no, it is ugly, desperate, primal, ripping down and through the whole body. Like all the light has been sucked into a black hole, and there’s no way out just through.  

The type of sobs that come down a hallway.   

She could hear him, barely as if she was underwater, frantically asking her what was wrong, if she was hurt, if it was okay.  Begging, begging, begging, and begging for her to say something, and she can’t.  

Finally, and more apparent now, a simple and loaded, “What's wrong?” just as panicked as before.  

And she looks up at him, like that day on his couch, the best she can though diluted eyes. 

And she shrugs. And gestures to everything.  

And he’s there and repeating comforts as if they are some anti-curse. 

She is too numb to process his words or to the hands on her shoulders back everywhere, ghosting over her collapsing frame; not even the judgmental stares of screaming evangelicals can reach her now, no. She’s gone, eyes focus on the discarded bouquet, crumpled and forgotten, and while he is trying, desperately, the current is pulling her out to sea.  

She’s unsure how much time has passed and how they ended up in her car; it’s dark now, and the sky has gone to that awful green-blue hue of early spring dusk. The car window feels cool, grounding on her forehead. There is no music. Her hands are still numb, the bouquet laid gently in her lap, and she knows he’s been trying to talk to her, pull anything out of her. She knows now that she’s sorry for it all, and if she could trust her voice again, she would tell him, but it's trapped with her beneath the waves. 

She knows at some point, her grapefruit-flavored bile rose into actual bile; they said that could happen. Side effects: people ignore how many things are just consequential side effects, like eating grapefruit, birth control, unsupervised house parties, and carcinogenic teenagers who just want to feel something. She doesn’t want to feel anything anymore. But she knows she must. Even if when she closes her eyes, she can imagine herself sinking through the car seat, the asphalt, the cold layers of the earth, and then the warm ones, the core, and right out the other side into the quiet void of space. 

He drove her back to her house. She remained glued to the window; every breath labored and heavy, tainted with the sour smell of sterile air and sour bile. She is startled by the car lights coming on; she thanks God that he finally stopped talking and that, as rattled as he is, he hasn’t let go of her hand. And then she looks at him and knows that it’s not because of his lack of words but hers that he stopped. And she’s going to have to talk. Eventually.  

He helps her out of the car and up the uneven driveway. They stumble like normal teenagers on a typical weekend, arms slung over each other, equaling their weight as if they could split the heaviness by touch. She ignores that she’s the one dragging him down. The house looks empty, a silhouette against the trees and a darkening skyline; she ignores the warmth and light coming from neighbors’ homes; the light isn’t for her.  

The house is empty; He’s never been here before. On the kitchen counter, a single supermarket cupcake, not a candle or card in sight.  

He helps her change numb legs and arms. She can almost pretend it's intoxication causing this. They just left a great party, and everyone will be talking about it on Monday. He finds a washcloth and gets some warm water to clean off her face. It’s too quiet, and she hates that she once wished for him to shut up; she wants him to say something, anything. Instead, He’s still looking at her with big, sad eyes as if she holds the entire world. Like Atlas, she’s been holding the sky, trying to protect the world from its crushing wear, but it’s too much to bear, and she has to put it down despite the consequences.  

She kisses him; she doesn’t know why, a feeble attempt to prolong the inevitable. She is tired of trying to convince herself how she should feel. So, she lets it be how it is. It’s the type of kiss that is everything but the kiss. Maybe because she didn’t know how to find the right words, maybe, for the first time in a while and possibly the last, she just wanted to feel like a normal teenager, or because she knew it was the last time it would ever be like this, a collision of their mouths wouldn’t fix it.  

They both know it won’t.  

Nothing will. 

He looks at her sadly after, like the lady behind the desk, but he doesn’t push her away.  

She knows it’s her turn now; she knows that. He won’t be the one to break the silence this time; he’s never broken hers before. She knows if he does, she will never tell it all, so it has to be her, and it has to be now. She’s spent too much time trying to protect everyone from herself and her mistakes; in the end, it didn’t even matter. 

The last few moments of silence stretch on forever.  

They split her twin-sized mattress, limbs intertwined and tangled. Like normal teenagers, the window cracked to let the first spring night air in. His clumsy hands ghosted over her frame, like how her grandmother used to smooth out the linings' creases. She finally took hold of his hands to quell their gentle urges to fix everything because not everything could or should be fixed. 

She tells him everything: all the secrets that once felt too big and too small, all the things she could and couldn’t do.  

And it really, really, fucking sucks.