Leah Week #3
Leah takes an immediate liking to Blue. She meets him after the others because while she’d seen him at Nino’s, she hadn’t spoken to him, and she hadn’t been at the reading with the others. But as soon as she meets him, she loves him. He isn’t like any of the girls, not at all. He’s somehow lighter than any of them it it makes her wonder if she’s ended up with Ronan and Gansey and Eve because they all have such big sadnesses to carry around with them, like she does. Blue isn’t like that. Blue lives in a big strange house with about a million women, as far as Leah can tell, and he likes to sew and knit and paint things, and he can sleep through the night. When he smiles at her it’s a big, warm, soft smile, and it’s easy to like him in a way that it isn’t easy to like her other friends. And she does like them, but it’s a complicated kind of liking. She can’t imagine abandoning them, but at the same time, it hurts to be with them. Nothing about Blue is painful.
She waits for him in the Monmouth parking lot and sometimes Blue will show up before the others are home and they’ll talk and roll the Spongebob bouncy ball that has somehow made its home in the apartment between them. He never questions why she’s home when the others aren’t, and she’s glad of it. Somehow, no one asks those kinds of questions.
One day he gets there especially early and she hurries down the stairs to meet him after seeing him through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the old factory. She crashes into a hug, powered by the momentum of coming down the stairs two at a time. He makes an oof sound and nearly topples over but manages to steady himself and straightens, laughing, with his arms still around her.
“Hi Leah,” he says.
“Hi Blue,” she says, and she says it like a sigh, the side of her face pressed to his chest.
“How are you?” He asks as she back away and reaches up to pet his hair.
“Oh, I’m okay,” Leah says, but she thinks her voice must sound a little strained because Blue frowns.
“What’s up?”
“I think,” she says, considering as she speaks, because she hasn’t put this into words before, “That I’m lonely.”
They sit down together on the curb of the parking lot. “I’m sorry, Leah,” Blue says, and he really does sound sorry. Somehow, Blue’s voice always matches the words he’s saying. That never seems to happen with the girls.
Leah knocks her knees together. “I know I have friends. Which is lucky, because not everyone has friends. But I always feel – apart from them.”
“I understand that,” Blue says. “I feel that way a lot with the people at my school. I feel like I’m from a different planet from them.”
Leah glances over at him. “Yeah,” she says. “But you don’t feel that way with Gansey and Ronan and Eve.”
Blue makes a face. “I don’t think I’m from the same planet as Ronan.”
They both laugh, and then Leah says, “I don’t think anyone except Ronan’s mom was from the same planet as her.”
“Why do the others like her?” Blue asks, tentative, as though worried that he’ll hurt Leah’s feelings if he’s mean about Ronan.
Leah tilts her head. “She’s beginning to adjust to life on earth.”
“Are you?” Blue asks.
“Adjusting to life on earth?”
“Yeah.”
Leah sighs and hugs her knees to her chest. “I think that’s the problem. I don’t think I am. What’s the opposite of adjusting? Getting less okay? I’m doing that, I think.”
“That’s no good,” Blue says, and Leah nods in agreement. There’s not really anything to do about it, and they both seem to know it.
“The problem,” Leah says, “Is that it doesn’t make me feel less alone when they’re nice to me. It doesn’t matter what they do, I still feel like I don’t belong.”
Blue says, “If it makes you feel any better, I think they all love you. Even Ronan.”
Leah smiles a bit. “Especially Ronan.”
“You must know her better than me,” Blue says, and that’s true enough so Leah doesn’t say anything.
Leah puts her head on Blue’s shoulder and buries one hand deep into his hair. She makes a little sound of contentment and say, “I think you make me feel a bit less lonely. You’re so different of them. You remind me of being –” She stops herself and just hides her face in Blue’s neck.
“It’s okay to be sad,” Blue says, in the gentle tone of someone who knows how true that is, and who knows it’s important to be reminded. He puts an arm around her and rubs her shoulder. “You’re always so cold, Leah.”
“I know,” Leah says with a sigh. “I’m sorry.” They sit quietly for a while, Blue still working on the hopeless task of warming Leah up. Then Leah says, “Don’t tell any of the others what I said. About being lonely. I don’t want them to think that they’re – not enough.”
“Don’t worry,” Blue says. “I won’t breathe a word. I’m good at keeping secrets.”
Leah thinks I know, but she doesn’t say it. Because of course, she knows about Blue’s secrets, just like she knows about Ronan’s secrets and Gansey’s secrets and Eve’s secrets. Really, it’s amazing how many of them are the same. Or almost the same. Or parallel. If she squints her eyes, it really seems like they’re all carrying around the same unspoken words. It would be easier for everyone if they would just say it out loud. But it’s not Leah’s job to make that happen. They’ll figure it out in their own time. One of the things about being dead is that sometimes you just have to sit back and watch. Just sometimes, she gets to step in a fix something, but it’s difficult and rare and when it comes to her friends, she tries to let them live their own lives.