MISREAD

THE GIRL WHO ARGUED BACK

I had always imagined starting high school would feel like becoming somebody new, as though there were a particular doorway I could walk through and, once I reached the other side, leave every awkward friendship, every embarrassing memory and every question I had about myself behind. Instead, I discovered that you could change schools without changing at all. You still carried your old friendships in the back of your mind, still remembered the people who had once been the centre of your world, still carried every unfinished conversation with you like loose papers tucked between the pages of a book. On my first morning at Senior School, I carried all of them with me, along with a timetable I had already unfolded so many times that the creases had begun to soften.

The school itself felt enormous. It wasn’t that I had never seen a large school before, but this place seemed to have been built specifically to make new students question whether they had any sense of direction whatsoever. The buildings stretched away from one another in neat blocks, connected by corridors and paths that all looked suspiciously similar. Students moved around me with the confidence of people who knew exactly where they were going, while I stood beside a noticeboard pretending to read an announcement I had absolutely no interest in because admitting that I was lost seemed somehow worse than actually being lost.

I unfolded my timetable again and tried to make sense of it. The letters and numbers seemed perfectly reasonable when I had looked at them the previous night. Now they looked like a personal attack.

“You’re going the wrong way.”

I looked up.

A girl stood a short distance away, holding several books against her chest. She had the kind of expression that told me she had already found something amusing about the situation, and unfortunately, that something appeared to be me.

“I’m not lost,” I said, folding the timetable with considerably more confidence than I felt.

Her eyes travelled from my face to the paper in my hand, then toward the corridor I had been about to enter.

“Of course you aren’t.”

Another girl appeared beside her. She had a notebook tucked beneath her arm and a calmer expression, and I immediately decided that I preferred her.

“First day?” she asked.

I nodded.

The first girl smiled. “Natalie.”

“Chloe.”

“And I’m Shirneen.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

Natalie glanced at the timetable again. “What class?”

I told her.

She pointed in the opposite direction.

I stared at her hand, then at her face. “You could have told me that before I walked all the way here.”

“I wanted to see how committed you were to being lost.”

Shirneen laughed, and despite myself, I did too.

“I wasn’t lost.”

“You were standing in front of the science block.”

“I was exploring.”

“Very educational exploration.”

I rolled my eyes, but I followed them.

That was how I met Natalie and Shirneen, without anything particularly dramatic happening. There was no instant sense that they would become important to me, no strange certainty that I had just met people who would change the shape of my year. There was only a lost girl, an excessively amused stranger and another girl who was kind enough to rescue both of us from the conversation.

By the time we reached my classroom, Natalie had already asked whether I debated, whether I liked performing, whether I had ever been on a competition team and whether I was “one of those people who argues even when nobody asked.”

“I debate,” I said.

Her eyes lit up.

“Perfect.”

“Perfect for what?”

“You have to join us.”

I laughed. “That’s your entire recruitment speech?”

“It’s convincing.”

“It’s really not.”

Shirneen shook her head. “She’s been trying to recruit everyone.”

“Because I’m good at recognising talent.”

“You met Chloe fifteen minutes ago.”

“Exactly. First impressions are important.”

I smiled despite myself.

I hadn’t realised it then, but that conversation would become the first thread tying me to the strange new world I had walked into.

The second was debate.

The third was Maya.

I just didn’t know it yet.

Before Senior School, my world had been much smaller, although I hadn’t realised how small until I left it. My JSS years had been filled with the same faces appearing again and again until familiarity became almost invisible. Janet had been one of those faces. So had Linet, Brian, Emmanuel and the others who had somehow become part of the background of my childhood without any of us noticing that we were building memories we would later spend years trying to return to.

Jeremy was different.

Jeremy was the first boy I had genuinely understood myself as liking.

There was no confusion about it then. I liked the way he made me laugh, the way I noticed him entering a room, the way an ordinary conversation with him could remain in my mind long after it had ended. I would replay things he had said and wonder whether certain jokes meant more than they probably did. I knew what it felt like to have a crush on him because there was nothing complicated about the explanation. I liked a boy. That made sense.

The complicated feelings arrived later, quietly enough that I didn’t recognise them as complicated at all.

Janet and I had become unusually close during third term. At first I thought it was simply one of those friendships that happened when two people spent too much time together and eventually became attached to one another’s presence. I wanted to know where she was. I wanted to be the person she told things to first. When she became close to somebody else, I felt strangely irritated, and when we argued, the disagreement seemed to hurt much more than an ordinary friendship argument should have.

Eventually, we admitted something neither of us had wanted to say aloud: we were possessive of each other. Clingy, too. We both wanted too much attention from one another, and neither of us seemed to know where friendship ended and whatever existed beyond friendship began.

But we lived in a world where two girls having that kind of relationship was treated as something shameful. People talked. People judged. People turned private things into rumours. I had watched enough of that happen to know that there were certain feelings people expected you to bury before anybody else discovered them.

So I buried them.

Or at least, I tried.

Janet eventually chose Brian.

Brian was my homeboy, which made everything considerably more complicated. I cared about him. I cared about her. I wanted them to be happy. At the same time, watching them together left a strange emptiness inside me that I couldn’t explain without sounding like I was accusing somebody of stealing something that had never belonged to me.

I told myself I was jealous because Janet was my best friend.

That explanation was easier.

It was also incomplete.

Then there was Linet.

And Jeremy.

When Jeremy and Linet began dating, I immediately convinced myself that I knew what was wrong with me. I had liked Jeremy first, so naturally I was jealous. It was obvious. Simple. Understandable.

Except there were moments when I realised I wasn’t watching Jeremy at all.

I was watching Linet.

I noticed the way she laughed when he said something funny. I noticed how easily she leaned toward him. I noticed the happiness on her face, and sometimes that happiness irritated me in a way I couldn’t explain. I would tell myself that I simply missed the friendship we used to have, that I was afraid of being replaced, that I hated seeing somebody I loved become less available to me.

Perhaps all of those things were true.

Perhaps something else had been true too.

I didn’t know.

And at fifteen, I had no intention of sitting down with myself and conducting an emotional investigation.

There were easier things to think about.

Like surviving Senior School.

The debate room was at the end of a quieter corridor, where the windows let in long strips of afternoon light and the walls were covered with photographs of previous teams. There was something comforting about the room. The desks were old and scratched, the noticeboards were crowded with papers and the air always smelled faintly of dust, books and whatever cleaning product had been used that morning.

Arguments made sense to me.

You could disagree with someone without hating them. You could challenge an idea without deciding that the person who had spoken it was your enemy. There were rules, structures and boundaries. You had evidence. You had a motion. You had a few minutes to convince people that your way of seeing something deserved to be heard.

People were much harder.

Natalie was already waiting when I arrived for my first practice.

“You came.”

“I said I would.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“Why?”

“You have the face of someone who changes her mind.”

“I’ve known you for one day.”

“Exactly. I’ve learned a lot.”

Shirneen looked up from her notes. “Ignore her.”

“I’m beginning to think that’s impossible.”

“It is,” Shirneen said.

I laughed.

Then I noticed the girl sitting near the window.

She wasn’t talking.

While everyone else seemed to be preparing, comparing notes or making jokes, she sat with a notebook open in front of her and wrote something in the margin. She wasn’t trying to attract attention, which was probably why I noticed her.

There was something difficult to read about her.

Not unfriendly.

Just guarded.

Natalie noticed me looking.

“That’s Maya.”

I looked away immediately.

“I wasn’t staring.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You were about to.”

Natalie smiled.

“I was.”

I ignored her.

Maya looked up.

Our eyes met.

For a second, neither of us looked away.

Then she smiled.

It was barely there, just the smallest movement at the corner of her mouth, but something about it caught me completely off guard. I looked down at my notebook and pretended to be interested in the page.

There was nothing written on it.

I had been holding my pen above the paper without moving.

And then, completely without permission, a thought appeared in my head.

Just kiss me.

I stared at the page.

What was wrong with me?

I had known this girl for approximately thirty seconds.

My brain had skipped every reasonable stage of getting to know somebody and gone straight to the part where I was apparently imagining kissing her.

I cleared my throat and forced myself to concentrate.

Our teacher entered the room and began assigning teams.

When she said Maya and I would be opposing each other, Natalie made a tiny noise beside me.

I didn’t look at her.

Maya stood across the room.

“Ready?” she asked.

I lifted my chin.

“Always.”

The debate began.

Maya was good.

Annoyingly good.

She listened carefully instead of interrupting, which meant that when she finally responded, she had already identified exactly where my argument was weakest. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. Her words landed neatly, one after another, and I found myself becoming more determined with every rebuttal.

“You’ve assumed that because something is widely accepted, it must therefore be beneficial,” I said.

“I didn’t assume that.”

“You implied it.”

“I implied that public acceptance can indicate social usefulness.”

“Which isn’t the same thing.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you say it?”

A flicker of amusement crossed her face.

“Because I knew you’d challenge it.”

Several people laughed.

I paused.

Maya smiled.

I hated how much I liked that smile.

By the end of the debate, our teacher called it a draw.

Natalie immediately objected.

“That wasn’t a draw.”

Shirneen looked at her. “Why?”

“They spent half the debate trying to annoy each other.”

“That’s called debating.”

“Not like that.”

Maya laughed.

I did too.

And something changed.

Not dramatically.

Not enough for me to name it.

But something.

Over the following weeks, Maya and I developed a rhythm that seemed to exist only between us. We argued over motions long after practice ended, corrected each other’s research and borrowed each other’s notes even when we both knew we could have found the information ourselves. Natalie began complaining that we were impossible, while Shirneen simply accepted that the two of us would probably argue about the weather if nobody gave us anything else to debate.

“You two are exhausting,” Natalie said one afternoon.

“We’re working,” I replied.

“You’ve been working for forty minutes.”

Maya glanced at the clock.

“She’s right.”

I turned toward her.

“Why are you agreeing with her?”

“Because she’s right.”

Natalie looked triumphant.

I threw a folded piece of paper at her.

She caught it against her chest.

“Violence!”

“It’s paper.”

“Paper can hurt.”

I laughed.

Maya laughed too.

I began noticing things about her without meaning to.

I noticed that she tapped her pen against the desk when she was thinking. I noticed that she became sarcastic when she was tired. I noticed that she hated being interrupted and that she listened more carefully when someone was telling her something important. I noticed that she could be mysterious without trying to be mysterious. She simply didn’t give every part of herself to everyone.

And I wanted to know the parts she kept hidden.

That frightened me more than the attraction did.

Attraction could be dismissed.

Curiosity was easier.

Friendship was safer.

I could tell myself I simply liked being around her.

I could tell myself I admired her.

I could tell myself that the strange flutter in my stomach whenever she smiled at me was nothing more than excitement.

I was very good at telling myself things.

One afternoon after practice, I found myself sitting outside the debate room with my notes open across my lap. I wasn’t reading them.

Maya came out a few minutes later.

“You’ve been quiet.”

“So have you.”

She smiled and sat beside me.

“Fair.”

For a while we listened to the distant noise of students moving through the corridor.

Then she asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

She looked at me.

I sighed.

“Why do people always know when you’re lying?”

“Because you’re bad at it.”

“I am not.”

“You are.”

I smiled.

There was something about the way Maya looked at me that made honesty feel less frightening.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That you liked girls.”

She didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, she looked toward the courtyard.

“I don’t think I knew all at once.”

I waited.

“I realised I liked people,” she said. “Sometimes boys. Sometimes girls. It took me a while to stop thinking I had to figure everything out immediately.”

“Did you choose a label?”

“Eventually.”

“Bi?”

She nodded.

“Does it ever get confusing?”

“Of course.”

“What do you do?”

She shrugged.

“I let myself be confused.”

I looked at her.

She smiled.

“You don’t have to solve yourself like a debate motion.”

I laughed.

“I was going to say something intelligent.”

“I know.”

“And then you ruined it.”

“You’re welcome.”

I laughed again.

The knot inside me loosened.

Maya hadn’t looked at me and decided what I was.

She hadn’t demanded an answer.

She hadn’t told me that every confusing feeling had to mean something.

She had simply made uncertainty sound survivable.

I didn’t tell her about Janet.

I didn’t tell her about Linet.

I didn’t tell her about Jeremy.

Not yet.

Those memories were still tangled together in a place inside me that I didn’t know how to open.

Instead, I sat beside Maya while the afternoon light moved slowly across the floor.

Her shoulder was close to mine.

I could feel the warmth of her through the small space between us.

For a moment, I wanted to close that space.

I didn’t.

I wasn’t ready.

But I didn’t move away either.

And perhaps that was where everything began.

Not with a kiss.

Not with a confession.

Not with a label.

Just two girls sitting beside each other after debate, the world continuing noisily around them, while Chloe quietly wondered why being close to Maya felt so much more important than it was supposed to.

I didn’t have an answer then.

I only knew that I wanted to stay a little longer.