Fake Dating My Childhood Friend To Get Back With His Ex

Have you ever had someone you basically grew up with from diapers to high school and have your bedroom window as a front-row seat to said diaper buddy making out with someone? Well, I do. Hi, my name is Amelie Kelly, but you can call me Ellie. The diaper buddy I was talking about was my neighbor, Weston Pierce. One word to describe what I am seeing right now is gross. See, I live in the suburbs. And when you live in the suburbs, there are unavoidable truths. One of them is that the kids you met back in grade school are statistically the same kids you'll graduate with in high school. There's no escape, there's no fresh start. Only a twelve-year-old group project where everyone knows your most embarrassing moments. Unfortunately, my life is a prime example. I yank my curtains shut, a swish of fabric and rings scraping along the rod. The image is seared into my retinas of Weston Pierce, the boy who once cried about a ladybug on his nose, with his tongue down the throat of Jessica Alverez, the girl who made fun of my light-up sneakers in the third grade. Her hands in his stupidly perfect, sun-streaked brown hair. His hands in someplace I didn't want to think about. The bedroom lights in West’s room are on, serving as a spotlight for the whole neighborhood, and me, with my window offering a perfect unobstructed view directly into him. I'll be needing to scrub my brain with bleach. It's the first day of school tomorrow for crying out loud. Can't they keep it in their pants until the week ends or at least buy some blinds? It's not just gross, it's inconsiderate. A violation of the unspoken neighbor code. I flop backwards on my bed, my hair fanning out on my comforter. My room is my sanctuary, the only place in the world that feels completely mine. It's a controlled explosion of my personality, shelves of my well loved and dog eared paperbacks, a camera resting on my desk beside a stack of developed photographs I've been meaning to organize, and a wall covered movie posters, concert posters of old bands, and a collage of my black and white photos of rain on windows, the gnarled branches of the old oak tree in my backyard, and the busier flour dusted hands of my mother. A stark contrast to the chaotic, all too colorful scene playing out across the yard. With a sigh, I heave myself up and trudge downstairs. The scent of rosemary and roasting chicken greets me before I even reach the kitchen. My mom, Caroline, is standing at the stove, stirring a pot. "Hi sweetheart," she says, not turning around. "Dinner will be ready in a minute, go wash up." This is my mom. She owns her own business, the creative genius behind "Sugar & Spite," the local bakery that everyone loses their minds over. The name is my favorite part. She opened it two years ago right after my dad cheated on her with a woman from his office and left. It was her way of coping, I think. She took all of her anger and sadness, all of her bitterness and betrayal, and transformed it into something beautiful and delicious. She turned her emotions into pastries. Thanks to my cheating father, my mom now has a thriving, successful business and a line of "Break-Up Brownies," that are legendary in a fifty-mile radius. I guess everything happens for a reason, but I'd rather have my mom not know that kind of pain. We sit at the small kitchen table, the clink of our forks against the ceramic plates filling the void. I hate dinner. It's not the food, which is always amazing. It's the silence that makes it unbearable. How it can't be filled with the distant rumble of cars on the main road, or the lone dog's barking two streets over, or even the rustle of leaves in the summer breeze. The silence between the two of us is a living, breathing thing. The ghost of the third chair that used to be at the table, the echo of laughter that does not exist. The silent acknowledgment that our family has shrunk and neither of us know how to make a whole again. Silence during meals is one thing everyone just can't seem to help breaking except for us. We've become experts at it. I was about to take another bite of my chicken when my mom finally spoke, "First day of school tomorrow, are you excited for it? It’s your senior year, baby." Her voice is artificially bright, a little too cheerful. I push a piece of broccoli around my plate. "I'm excited to not see those people anymore." It's true. Every year I'm basically just counting the days until I can get out of this fishbowl. “Oh, come on, sweetheart. Lighten up,” she chides gently, a small smile playing on her lips. "Senior year is the best part of high school. There will be more parties, more time to hang out with your friends. I remember doing that when I used to be a senior, and your godmother and I would sneak out almost every weekend just to go to this old drive-in movie theater two towns over. It was the best time of my life." "Okay, I'm done eating," I announce, effectively cutting off her trip down memory lane. I stand up, pushing in my chair with a soft scrape. The familiar guilt twists in my stomach, but I can't listen to another speech about high school, it feels like she's talking about a foreign planet. "I'll see you tomorrow morning, Mom. Love you, goodnight." I quickly peck her on the cheek, her skin soft and smelling of a hint of vanilla. "At least try to sneak out once, Ellie!" she calls after me, a hint of laughter in her voice as I make my escape. I practically sprint up the stairs, the worn carpet soft under my feet. In my room, I close the door and lean against it, sighing loudly. What's so great about high school? It's a social experiment to see how much awkwardness and anxiety a teenager can withstand. These are the same people I've known for over a decade, I've seen them eat glue, cry over skinned knee, go through their painfully awkward phases. Watch them transform into their cliquey, judgmental selves that they are now. They turned out to be mostly assholes, Weston Pierce included. And I know they look at me as some weird, quiet, camera toting loser who doesn't fit the box. It's a system rigged from the start. God, can't I just skip all of this and graduate, can't I just fast-forward to being in college and in a city, surrounded by people who don't know I once threw up on the bus in kindergarten? I walk to my desk, fingers brushing over my camera. It feels cool and solid in my hands, this is what I want. Not parties or prom or school spirit. I want to capture the real world and the moments people miss. I want to see the world through a lens and make people feel something. I glance at my window, safe behind the thick navy blue curtains. But my mind, the traitorous thing it is, wanders back. Weston Pierce. We used to have a secret handshake back then, a complicated series of slaps and snaps that took us a week to perfect. We built this whole LEGO city in his basement that we named "Pierce-Kellyopolis." We were, for a long time, best friends. Then, around middle school he shot up six inches over the summer, joined the football team and suddenly ascended to the top of the social ladder. He traded our LEGOs and secret handshakes for protein shakes and a new group of friends who didn't know, or care, about his dorky past. He became a stranger. Now, he's just another one of them. The golden boy with his perfect life, perfect body, and seemingly perfect vantage point for me to watch him make out with his cheerleader girlfriend. It's a fitting metaphor for our entire relationship now. Me, alone on the outside, looking in. I turn off the main light to the room, plunging the room into darkness, except for the glow of my desk lamp. I’ve decide that I'll be keeping my curtains permanently closed for the foreseeable future. Tomorrow is the first day of the end, I just have to survive it. One day at a time. And definitely no more looking out of my window.