D2 :: Jett Wrenley

chill out, whatcha yellin' for?
lay back, it's all been done before
and if you could only let it be you will see
i like you the way you are

Before her six hundred and fifty-eighth date with Noe — that is not a date, except for the part where it is totally a date — Jett screams into her closet. She does this both literally and figuratively. The physical portion of this screaming occurs with half of a sundress shoved into her mouth to muffle the noise, so that none of her siblings or parents hear the high pitched screeches of frustration. The second portion of this screaming occurs internally, her stomach caterwauling at her spleen because she is in love with her best friend to the point where she no longer knows how she manages to deceive the world into believing that she is a functional human being and not just a perpetually high strung bundle of gay panic with the word GIRL haplessly scribbled across her chest as a disguise.

To be clear, Jett Wrenley is the only one who is unable to allow herself to believe that this is actually a date. The rest of the world knows. Noe knows. Jett's brother and sister both know. Jett's parents know, although they are deeply confused as to why their daughter never introduces her girlfriend as such. But that's just one of the many great mysteries of raising teenagers. In any case, they both like Noe quite a lot and frequently tell Grandma Wrenley cute stories about the nice girl Jett has been seeing ever since they were six and walked home from their first day of kindergarten hand-in-hand.

"If they ever break up we'll have to adopt Noe," Momma Wrenley whispers to her husband after their daughter leaves the house that day. She isn't joking, despite punctuating it with a fluttery laugh to imply jest. As it is, it's hard enough not to offer to move Noe into the house on a daily basis. That poor girl's family is a mess and she's obviously in need of a safe space, but their daughter's girlfriend living under their roof would be a bad idea... right?

The strangers on the street all smile at Jett. What a pretty girl who is obviously on her way to a sweet little date, they all think to themselves.

NOT A DATE! Jett's nausea wails back, desperately wishing it was.

Maybe it could be, her subconscious pesters, wrapping an anxious lock of hair around and around and around Jett's finger as she daydreams about what it might be like to confess... out loud... that she is... very much... in like... AHHHHHHHHHHH... with her best friend. It's sunny and vibrant today, with a happy blue sky and adorable little birds fluttering from tree to tree. Truly picturesque. No one could ask for a better day to confess to the person they imagine kissing (an average of a dozen times per day) that they would very much like to kiss them in reality. Or at least hold hands. In a non-platonic way, that is. They hold hands a lot, after all, but this would be different than all of the other times because... it would have to be. That's friendship stuff and this would be girlfriends stuff. Obviously.

DISASTER! Oh gods, she's going to throw up. She can't admit any of this out loud. Her thoughts whir at ten times their usual speed: What if it ruined their friendship?! What if Noe never spoke to her again?! What if Noe hated her for it so much that she left and never came back and then they never saw each other ever, ever again?! That would completely ruin everything! Her life would be like one of those dusty old tragedies they study in school!

Noe is the only person who knows that Jett still sleeps with her baby blanket hidden under her covers, because she's still a little bit afraid of the dark, and she has never teased Jett about it even once. Noe always helps to carry Jett's art supplies from home to school and back again so that she can focus on carrying her work-in-progress canvases around without smudging the oil paint. Jett has been bullied precisely three times in her entire life and — thanks to Noe, her devastating scowl, and her trusty pocket knife — each of those bullies apologized profusely and swore to never bully anyone ever again. One of them even offered to do all of Jett's homework for the rest of the school year. Second grade was wild.

It's funny that other people think Noe is intimidating. There is no nicer person on the face of this earth and Jett has the stories to prove it, but everyone always thinks she's making them up. Like this one time, when she was nine and her siblings were telling ghost stories and Jett got so scared she started crying. Everyone laughed at her. Except for Noe, who told everyone to shut their dumb sissykid-mouths, because she was about to tell the scariest story of all. It turned out to be a ridiculously long, rambling tale about Snugglywumpkins, the universe's fluffiest unicorn, and everyone fell asleep long before Noe ever got to whatever the scary part was supposed to be. It was a really funny story, actually, with dancing gnomes who —

Oh.

Ohhhhhhhhhh.

So dumb.

She is SO dumb... it was never going to get to the scary part at all, Jett realizes the painfully obvious, seven years after the fact.

Okay, so, Jett has been bullied precisely four times in her life and Noe has been her knight in shining armor every time. Plopping down on the street curb, she rummages through her purse until she finds a crumpled piece of paper that she promptly shoves into her mouth so she can scream some more without causing a big public scene.

When she finally gets to the park, twenty minutes late because she is literally too gay to function, Jett's tongue is stained blue with ink from whatever had been written on the crumpled to-do list spat into the trash post-breakdown. Well, down isn't quite the right descriptive for her heart being so full it actually bursts, but breakup sure isn't the right word either. She just —

Noe smiles and Jett melts, grinning back with teeth as blue as the sky.

"Nice dress," Noe compliments, her fingers fidgeting self-consciously with her own tattered shirt. It's her favorite; Jett knows this and is very proud of knowing this. Noe always wears that shirt when she actually takes the time to think about what she's going to wear that day, instead of just grabbing whatever is laying around because she has more important things to think about. That means — Jett's two brain cells scream at each other in perfect unison, irrationally excited — the thing she cared about most today was how she looked for this date.

NOT A DATE! Jett's nausea corrects herself before she can spiral wildly... into control of the situation? No no, can't have that. It's deeply important to stay in denial and not admit that she already has the thing she wants most in this world, because...

"You look so cool," Jett gushes emphatically because she knows it will make Noe puff up with pride. It totally works. Immediately her friend-who-is-a-girl's fingers stop fidgeting and she runs that hand through her hair, flexing slightly while tucking a wily lock behind her ear.

Jett always saying stuff like this is why this is Noe's favorite shirt.

"It's just a —" random junky old t-shirt with no sentimental value except that Jett thinks Noe looks cute in it, so she wears it as frequently as she can get away with without it turning into some sort of weird... thing, Noe starts to say before remembering how that type of comment is filed under Embarrassing Brain Thoughts Not To Be Spoken Aloud. She quickly changes the topic: "Hey. C'mere. I think you've got something on your teeth."

"I do? Why would I —"

"It's... blue?" Noe has already stepped forward, one hand cupping Jett's jaw as her thumb ever so gently pulls down her bottom lip. They both die precisely one thousand gay little deaths before realization kicks in and Jett starts dying a few bonus, far more miserable deaths.

"Nikki made cookies again," she squeaks awkwardly, lying, trying to reach up to rub away the evidence of how she panic-crammed a ball of paper in her mouth only ten minutes or so ago, but Noe's thumb is already wiping at the smears on her front teeth with the tenderness of someone reaching out to touch a baby animal for the first time. Jett's struggling goes still, her intervention failing in the face of the kind of intimacy where one person doesn't so much as flinch over putting their fingers in their best friend's mouth. It's not weird. Maybe it should be, but it isn't. It's nice actually. It's not like Noe is going to suddenly spit in her mouth or hook a claw through her cheek because they both know she would never do anything like that. Everything just goes quiet while Noe's thumb turns bluer and bluer as the ink is wiped away, until she finally has to adjust her hand and carefully use her first knuckle to rub at the stains on Jett's lip. "You know how my brother is with food coloring."

"Uh-huh," Noe replies, squinting at the crook of Jett's mouth to make sure she didn't miss a spot. It's just a shadow. Her hand lingers for another moment anyhow. "I spit black for a week after those birthday cookies he baked for me." Nikki Wrenley is twelve years old, hasn't spoken a single word in his entire life, and bakes to show affection. His favorite part is decorating the cookies with elaborately colored icing and, to him, more color is more color. "Lemme see your tongue."

"No!" Jett squeals, before wriggling away and sticking her tongue out in a show of childishness. Definitely blue. Noe laughs and the sun shines a little brighter. Running in circles for a few minutes, they chase each other back and forth before collapsing in the grass. Jett doesn't hesitate to grab Noe's arm to use as a pillow. It's as comfortable as having the ink wiped from her teeth.

This is not a date. It can't be. When kids their age date their relationships rarely seem to last more than a week or two, but Noe is one of Jett's forever people. She cannot remember life before her and she refuses to contemplate the idea of life after her and so no matter how many times Jett lies with her cheek on Noe's arm — watching her stare into the clouds to point out bunny shapes, guitar shapes, pineapple shapes, any shapes that might have a chance of making Jett smile — with Jett thinking about how she could totally do it. She could totally kiss Noe right now, tell her she likes-her-likes-her and kiss her until they're both blue... but she won't.

For now that's okay. Noe will wait.

life's like this
and you fall and you crawl and you break
and you take what you get and you turn it into
honesty
promise me i'm never gonna find you faking



^{complicated + sk8er boi by avril lavigne covered by dajeong (pixy).}