Bonnie was staring at her ceiling, hanging off the side of her bed. It was late at night and she should have been asleep, but sleep was not coming. She was letting thoughts fester and remain on her mind. The voice in the back of her head was just taunting her, saying that she did not want to come to the conclusion that she knew was the truth. She hated that voice, even though she knew that it was a part of her. It was just a stupid part of her, in her opinion anyway. She wished that it would just shut up.
For the past few days, she had gone to school and had to see Kim with Josh. The sight of the couple together made her feel physically sick. Her stomach would twist into knots and she would get the urge to throw up. She tried her best to ignore the feeling, but the voice in the back of her head was not letting it go. You like Kim. Bonnie did not accept that, but she did examine the possibility.
Okay, for argument sake, what if she did like Kim? When did that even happen? She had always made it a point to hate Kim since the second time that she had come into contact with the redhead. But, she guessed that she made it such a point because she had liked Kim so much from the first time that they met. It sounded so idiotic in her head. Was she really that stupid? She had to hate someone because she liked the person? Well, yeah, because if she did not hate Kim then she would end up trying to spend time with her and other friendly things like their day in the park and then her sisters would never shut up about her being a “dyke” and making fun of her. She did not want to have to deal with that, even if it was a lie.
“Am I so screwed up?” Bonnie asked herself because of the reason that she began detesting Kim. Yes. Okay, she silently conceded that she had to be pretty screwed up, especially lately considering how often she argued with that stupid voice inside of her head. She was at the very least crazy, she told herself because of that damned voice.
Fine, she had started hating Kim because she liked Kim and she did not want her sisters to make fun of her. They were going to make fun of her no matter what though, she mentally conceded that point. Bonnie could do no right in their eyes and she had spoiled a potentially good and meaningful friendship for that. She had adored her one day with Kim and was so fond of the memory that she wished that she could just relive it over and over again, even though it had started out rather horribly. And she had let all of that go because of her sisters.
They probably could have been good friends, Bonnie thought, if only she had given things a chance. Kim had always seemed like a good person to know and a better person to have for a friend. She had liked Kim enough to be friends back then and she should have gone with that, especially considering how much she grew to unconsciously admire the redhead as time went on, even though the forced hatred that had been planted eventually grew into something rather real.
Well, even if she liked Kim, to Bonnie, it did not explain why she felt the way that she did when she saw Kim with Josh. After all, seeing Kim with Ron did not make her anxious or physically ill. Maybe that was because she knew that Kim and Ron were just best friends while she was more than aware that Kim and Josh were more than friends. It’s called jealousy.
Was that it? Was she jealous? Of what? Don’t play dumb. Well, she was not jealous that Kim had Josh; after all, she did not even like Josh. Stop playing dumb. Okay, fine, she mentally yielded to that irksome voice that just would not shut up. So, she liked Kim in that way and she was jealous of Josh for having the redhead in a way that she seemed to want. But, if that was the case, when did that happen? When did she start liking Kim beyond a friendly manner?
Well, she supposed that deep down whenever Kim did something amazing, she did admire that. But, she did not see how admiration could lead to romantic feelings. Yes, Kim was an incredible person, which she would only admit in her own head at the moment and even that pained her slightly. Now that she thought about it, there were times in the past that she ended up just staring at Kim in pure awe, like if she did some impossible feat in practice or got the answer to a particularly difficult math/science problem or even came up with an in-depth explanation to something in English class; of course, those things happened when they were sharing courses. The things did not have to be super-human, just above average and impressive to her.
There were also the few times when Kim was kind to her, no matter how horrid Bonnie had been to the redhead at the time. Kim would reach out and offer to help her with school work or something, which Bonnie both resented and liked because no one else on Earth had ever offered to help her; not even her so-called friends. Sometimes, Kim would notice that she looked down about something and would actually ask Bonnie if she wanted to talk about it or offer up her assistance or something like that. Of course, Bonnie declined, but it was still a sweet gesture that touched her. Most of the time when things liked that happened, she would forget to be snappy toward the redhead, until someone reminded her anyway.
It was at those times, when Kim did something sweet in regards to her, that a warm, almost pure feeling cruised through Bonnie and put her at ease for some weird reason. It was like she was able to relax, which was actually something rare with her and it did not last long no matter what. Usually when the feeling came over her, someone chimed in and she was expected to make fun of Kim for some thing or another, so she never really had a chance to think on such a strange reaction that she had to Kim.
But, other than those things, Bonnie could not figure out why she might like Kim beyond a friendly manner. She had never been attracted to another girl before; at least, she did not think that she had anyway. Sure, like every other girl on the planet, she judged on girls’ looks and things, but she never thought that was serious or that it meant anything. She still was not totally sure that it meant anything. But, the more that Bonnie thought about Kim, the more she figured that it did mean something because it stayed on her mind. It had to mean something because not only did it stay on her mind, but it always left her conflicted when she liked to swear that she was resolute on the issues concerning her thoughts on the olive-eyed hero. No matter how much time went by, Bonnie knew that she never totally bought into the fact that she completely loathed Kim, so it had to mean something.
Of course it means something. Well, why did it have to mean something? Why could she not just be normal like every other girl she had ever come into contact with? Why could she not be normal like her sisters? The turquoise-eyed teen bet that everyone in existence knew just who they were attracted to, who they wanted to be friends with, and why they treated people in a certain manner. She was willing to bet that her sisters never went through as many internal, mental issues like she did. They knew what they wanted, or at least they seemed to know in Bonnie’s opinion. She wanted to know just like them.
Is that it? You want to be like them?Bonnie sighed; she supposed that she did not want to be like her sisters, although she already was. She treated Kim the way her sisters treated her and she doubted that her sisters did it because they liked her. And she felt like a complete idiot for behaving in such a way to a person that had been so willing to accept her for who she was.
The brunette cheerleader had never been accepted for herself. She had built up a nice shell for people to like, thinking the real her was worthless thanks to years of abuse from her sisters. She had been able to be someone else though that first time that she was with Kim and Ron; she had been able to be the true Bonnie with the pair. They had been nice to her for no reason at all and she had returned it with harshness and cruelty. The more that she thought about it, the worst she felt. Then stop thinking and do something about it.
“Well, what should I do?” Bonnie asked herself.
The bemused teen did not have anything to offer herself. She did not know how to set everything right, thinking that the damage was done and the game was pretty much over before it began. Bonnie actually hoped that she did not really like Kim in that way because she was almost certain that nothing would come of it. She doubted that she could even make things right enough for them to maybe be friends again.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s with this defeatist attitude?” Bonnie demanded to know from herself. The voice did not even need to chime in.
Bonnie was not usually one to give up, no matter what. Sure, she sometimes got bored or distracted, but she never gave up when she wanted something bad enough and at the moment she believed that she wanted Kim in someway bad enough. She wanted something to make the confusion go away and to make the sickness that she felt when she saw Kim with Josh go away. There had to be something that she could do. Well, you could always explain what happened.
Bonnie scoffed as soon as the thought echoed through her mind. That plan sounded extremely stupid in her opinion. Like Kim would believe her if she explained everything. Well, before anything else, she was going to have to try to build some form of trust between herself and Kim if she wanted anything to become of them, be it a friendship or something more. So, she was going to have to explain things somehow, so it would seem that the plan was not as stupid as it first sounded. Okay, so she was going to explain things.
Now, Bonnie had to figure out how exactly she was going to go about explaining things. She was not too sure if she could speak about such personal things face to face. It was not that Bonnie was shy, but she was particularly ashamed of herself now that she thought about things and she was also ashamed of the reasons for why she did such distasteful things. She would just never be able to say it all and she was not sure how she would start such a conversation anyway.
The brunette teen considered that she could send Kim an email, but she did not know Kim’s email address. She supposed that it was on the website, but that would mean leaving her room. Bonnie did not have her own computer, which she found very irksome because the teenager hated being outside of her bedroom when she was in the house and other inhabitants were home. She did not want to have to deal with her sisters or her parents. They never made things easy, after all.
The tanned cheerleader figured that she could always wait and use a computer at school, but that was rather risky. Someone might come and see what she was doing and even though Bonnie did not know exactly what she was going to write, she knew that she did not want it to be seen by anyone other than Kim. Well, there was always the old fashion way of doing things. She could write a letter.
Bonnie picked herself up off of her bed and went to her desk. She rifled through the desk for a pen and some paper. She pulled out a couple of sheets, thinking that she would not need too many. Bonnie then stared down at the blank sheets as if trying to will her thoughts onto the page, even though she had no thoughts at all. She was not sure what she should write or where she should start. The perplexed girl supposed a greeting would make a good start. The first word that she put down in lilac-colored ink was “Possible.” By the end of it, she would be out of five pieces of paper and the cold, formality that started the letter had evaporated like spilled water in the summer.
When Bonnie was done with the letter, she seemed to be on a roll, feeling much betterand she had wrote most of the note with tremendous ease. Her brain and body were running on automatic without thinking of the possible negative repercussions of her decision. She effortlessly and neatly folded the five pages up and put them into an envelope. She sealed the envelope with an old sticker from her desk that she used to put on her notebooks when she was younger. The sticker was a pair of crimson puckered lips.
(Next day)
Bonnie took a deep breath, hoping to calm the anxiety swirling around her stomach like stormy seas. She had been feeling that way all morning, but it got worse when she came to school. She was now standing in the school hallway and staring at down the way at Kim’s locker; it seemed like it was a million miles away. Dare she go and put the letter there? Her brain was ordering her to do so, but her feet were refusing to move. It would seem that good feeling that she had just last night had withered away like a rose in the desert.
The anxiety commanded that Bonnie not do something so revealing as to allow Kim to see that letter, to see through her. Life without a shield was painful, she reminded herself. She knew that from early years with her sisters, whom she had never even provoked. She had been terrible toward Kim for years and now she was considering providing Kim with the matches to light her on fire and destroy every ounce of her being. It seemed so incredibly stupid to do as she thought about it.
But, the tanned teen reminded herself that Kim was not like that, not spiteful or vindictive. Kim was kind…for the most part. Kim had to be forgiving; after all she hung out with Ron, who had to commit a billion mistakes every week. So, it should be safe for her to bare her soul to the redhead. She had to take the chance, Bonnie told herself. She needed to do what she came to do, if only to avoid feeling pain and regret later on.
Bonnie steeled herself in a way that she was used to in order to survive a verbal lashing from her sisters. She took another deep breath and then rushed down the hall as if she expected arrows to shoot out of the walls and she did not wish to put hit. She stopped briefly at Kim’s locker to shove the letter through one of the three slits in the door. She then hurried away, making sure that no one saw her as she made the transfer and getaway. She silently prayed that for once something went right in her life.
Kim was talking to Ron about an assignment that they had that he had not gotten around to doing yet since it was not due for a couple more hours. She had already scolded him about his procrastination a few days ago, so she was not going to bother with that anymore. She was now expressing concern that he might not get it done, but he did not seem to believe that would be a problem.
“You gotta learn to relax, K.P. The Ron man has this one in the bag,” he boasted with a calm sweep of his hand to show that he had things under control.
The redhead wasted no time in looking skeptical on that one. “In the bag?” she echoed incredulously. How was it possible to have an assignment in the bag if he had not done any work for it and it was due in two hours?
“Trust me,” he replied with a sly smile.
Kim could not help shaking her head; unless Ron had magical powers that he was not telling her about, she was pretty sure he was not going to get things done. She turned her attention away from him and quickly spun her locker combination in for the thing to open. As soon as it opened, an envelope slid out and glided to the floor. She did not notice and neither did Ron as he was about to go into his big plan for passing the project, which surprising did not involve magic or even prayer. Rufus was the one that happened to see the letter because it floated passed him on the way, so he tugged on Ron’s pant leg to get the blonde’s attention.
“What’s up, Rufus?” Ron inquired, looking downward.
“Message,” the rodent squeaked while pointing down at the floor.
“Message?” Ron echoed and then he looked down to see what his little buddy was talking about. He spotted the letter and picked it up. “Okay, so it’s a letter. So what?” he asked in a confused tone.
“Kim’s,” Rufus explained and he pointed to the redhead.
“Kim’s? Okay, if you say so,” Ron replied while shrugging. “Here, K.P. I guess this fell out of your locker or something,” he said while handing the letter over.
“Thanks. I wonder who it’s from,” Kim said curiously while inspecting the front of the envelope. It did not even have her name on it, but if it was in her locker, it had to be for her, she figured.
“Probably Mankey,” Ron grumbled with a slightly angry look on his face.
“Don’t say his name like that, Ron,” Kim requested sweetly.
The laidback blonde just rolled his eyes. He was not a fan of Josh Mankey and it had nothing to do with the fact that thanks to that guy he saw his best friend less and less…Okay, maybe it did have a little bit to do with that. But, most people would resent something like that, he figured. So, it was a natural reaction and he was going to keep going with it.
Other than that, something about Josh’s attitude just rubbed Ron the wrong way. Maybe because Josh seemed casual and familiar with a lot of girls had something to do with it. Maybe because Josh bleached his hair like some artist-poser or something like that when Ron had never seen the guy draw a thing in his life. And maybe because his name was suspiciously close to “monkey,” which had to be a hint of evil as far as the blonde sidekick was concerned.
Kim just tucked the letter into her pocket and the friends walked off to class, hoping that they would make it before the late bell rang. The hero eventually forgot about the note until she went home. She did notice that she had not seen Bonnie all day; the tanned teenager was avoiding Kim, mostly out of fear. The redhead was not going to complain; it was nice to have a day lacking abuse.
The letter got olive-eyed teen’s attention when she went home and got out of her street clothes. She went through her pockets and just emptied them out to make sure that nothing got caught up in the wash. She stared at the letter and then decided to open it to see who it was from. She turned it around to the flap in order to open it and was taken back by the sticker than sealed the envelope shut.
The sticker of puckered lips seemed like such a girly thing to do, so Kim now doubted that the letter was from Josh. But, who else would write her a letter? She slid her forefinger underneath the flap, lifting the sticker from the paper. She then opened the letter and liberated the five pages inside. She was stunned by the length and wondered who besides Josh would write her such a long letter. She now feared that she might have taken someone else’s mail, but the opening line replaced her fear with confusion. It was addressed to “Possible,” so it seemed to be hers, but it seemed like a cold greeting that did not go with the time that had to come along with writing a five-page letter.
The olive-eyed adventurer flopped down into the seat at her desk to give the note her full attention and hopefully find out who had written her such a thing. She suspected a girl wrote it because it was in lilac-colored ink. There was a sort of feminine curve and softness to the handwriting. It even looked familiar, but no person was coming to mind. What girl would write her a letter, though? Well, with luck, she would find out soon.
Despite the coldness of the greeting, the letter had the air of an apology for the first few paragraphs, explaining that the author had been wrong to treat her so harshly through no fault of her own or without a logical reason. Kim still did not know who had penned the note, though. She refused to jump to a conclusion. She was glad to have the apology even though she did not know who it was from and she was pleased to find out that there was not something totally wrong with her.
After the long apology came the explanation of why the person had treated the teen hero so terribly. There were now plenty of hints as to who the author was, but Kim still did not allow her mind to assume anything. She could not even believe the person that was coming to mind would ever do such a thing as apologize to her, which was why she would not jump to any conclusions about the writer. The only problem was that from what she knew about the person, the letter made sense. It made a lot of sense.
Kim sighed. If the letter was from who she thought it was from, she did not know what to think. She felt a little sorry if it was the person that she thought it was. It made a lot of sense, but Kim wished that was not the case. After all, she knew what it was like to be treated like crap for no reason for a few years from someone she actually respected; yeah, she actually respected the person that she suspected wrote the letter because despite it all, the person was good at what she did for the most part. Kim could not imagine having to put up with such terrible treatment for her whole life like the author claimed to have to do.
When the explanation for the harsh behavior was done, there came a long, honest pouring out of the mind. The author expressed the true feelings that she felt for Kim, which were far from negative. Those emotions came out as admiration and a desire for a lasting friendship if that was possible.
Kim was a bit skeptical on having a friendship with the person that she believed to have written the letter. Despite all of the confessions and everything, she could still feel the sting of abuse from over the years. She was not totally sure that she could trust the person to be sincere anyway considering the fact that the person had made a career out of putting her down anyway.
The final piece of the letter sounded just as earnest as the rest, but it held an air of nervousness to it as it broached a subject that shocked Kim. It spoke of a possibility that there were some romantic feelings lingering inside of the author. There was a deep longing, the letter explained, and “it could indicate some deeper desire than friendship.” It was ended with a request that Kim “please consider all my words, no matter how repulsive they might seem or how untrustworthy you might think I am. I’m pretty tired of this and would really like to start over and explore what could have been.” It was finally signed with one simple name that caused Kim to gasp, even though she should not have been surprised. It was from Bonnie.
Next time: the reaction to the letter.