Akting Out

You put a pot of water on low. It may take a very, very long time, but eventually, it’ll boil.

I don’t deal with pain very well. It’s what made me a good fighter; I can isolate it, put it away, and carry on.
But I can’t forget it.

I thought about Julie every single day for three years after she died. As I grew up, I would pass people on the street and smell her perfume, or see someone who looked a little like her and turn. Every so often, I would chase someone down just to get a better look, just to get shattered all over again just to find that it wasn’t her. I loved her first, and I loved her before I loved almost anyone else.

But one incident in particular made me realize that I had to deal with this.
Come back with me to May of this year, when I started this job.
As training starts, in walks a statuesque blond that stands about five foot six. I glance—and do a double take. It couldn’t be.

Truthfully, I hadn’t thought about Julie in months—she still crossed my mind, and the memories made me smile, but I figured I was past all the hallucinations. After all, it had been nearly twenty years since she had been killed.

But this girl, more than any before her…it was relieving and horrifying at the same time.
The way she walked, the tone of her skin, even the length of her hair. All you had to do was add red highlights and this was Julie!

Of course, the girl had to sit right next to me…sat next to me for three weeks, and be damned if she didn’t seem to wear the same type of perfume as Julie had. I couldn’t look her in the eye, can still barely look her in the eye now. So many times I wanted to blurt out, asking if she had family in Northern California. The resemblance is uncanny—scary. I keep my distance from this girl—and I avoid physical contact.

And somewhere along the line, I realized that I had never dealt with Julie’s death. The girl who so strongly resembles my first love is not Julie. No one will ever be Julie. There will never be another Julie again.

I’ve spent most of my life alone—by choice. I’m great at the short-term encounter, not so much at getting to know people because the idea of loving anyone and losing them is my greatest fear.

Julie’s gone, and nothing will ever bring her back. I’ve known this all along, but writing this will help me accept it, I hope.

I’m tired of feeling angry and scared all of the time. I’m tired of only looking for reasons to push people away. I’ve had people genuinely reach out, and honestly, I’ve had no idea how to accept it because I’ve always been so damn afraid.

I’m hoping that writing this story will allow me to finally put this to bed, maybe develop a real life, real friends…all of that crap that comes with being normal.

A small part of me is always going to love Julie. The whole of me now has to move on.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Akting Out LLC

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My twelfth year on the planet was easily one of the best years of my life. Julie and I were inseparable most of the time. We established a mental link quickly (maybe it was already there). Whenever she was sad about something, she would lower her head, but maintain a small smile. She was always smiling, no matter what. She would keep her head down, not looking me in the eye. She would reach for me, gently wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling me close. I, in turn, would embrace her around the waist and pull her close. I’d hold her as long as she needed me too. When she pulled away, she’d kiss me, thank me, and that resolved her problem.

After a particularly violent night at my house, I showed up to school that following day with an extremely sore shoulder. It hurt to hug Julie, and she immediately went into paramedic mode. She nearly threw me to the ground as she pushed me away (she was always very forceful) as she went up and down my arms, trying to find out why I winced. When she touched my shoulder and I flinched, it was as close as I’d ever seen her to tears. Her eyes were on fire, but not the same fire as to when we first met; this was murderous rage, and I honestly thought she was capable of it as she stared at me.

She didn’t ask who did it, merely asking if it was my mother or father. I didn’t answer.
“Avery.” She declared, “No one deserves to go through this. Not you, not anyone. Do you understand me?”

I had never seen her so serious before. Mesmerized, I could only nod. She grabbed my arm and shook. “NO.” Her voice was quivering, “You fight back, do you understand me? You fight back!”
As usual, I didn’t know what to say. Unable to break eye contact, I shook my head, “I can’t. He’ll kill me.”

What she said next will stay with me forever.

“He’ll kill you anyways.”

The words hung there like an unwelcome presence. She suddenly threw her arms around me and held me as though I was anchoring her in a hurricane. She shook the entire time.

About a month later, she was depressed about something—she never told me what, but I know now. We were over skinny Mike’s house, and she was sitting quietly (a rarity), completely relaxed in a red beanbag chair. Her head leaned against the wall, and she was smiling as though thinking something up, but her eyes were in a faraway place. Neither Mike nor myself knew what to make of the mood.

Peter Cetera’s “Glory of Love” came over the radio. I don’t know what possessed me to do this, but I stood up from the couch and walked diagonally across the living room towards her. She didn’t raise her head to look as I approached. Standing in front of her, I extended my hand.
She looked to me as though noticing me for the first time. She looked to my hand, and then raised her eyes to mine as if to say “Are you serious?” She chuckled, blushed, smiled, and accepted my hand.

I closed my eyes for the entire song as I drew her close. I heard the volume raise; Mike had been good enough to turn up the song. Julie began with her arms around my neck and slowly lowered to hook beneath my arms…she wanted it to go on forever too. My face was at her neck, and I took in the exotic fruit fragrance I had begun to associate with her. We stepped together, in rhythm to the music, turning in a circle.

Her fingernails dug into my back as she whispered it, barely audible. “I love you.”
My eyes flashed open; I had never heard that before, not from anyone that wasn’t family. When I tried to look her in the eyes, she held firm, not allowing me to see her face. But in my stomach, my heart, hell, my whole body…I knew no one else on the planet meant as much to me as she did. She was worth everything to me, and there was no reason to even get out of bed in the morning if she wasn’t going to be there, sometime throughout the day, waiting for me. “I love you too.”

But…to all things, an end.

When school resumed, the first time I saw her, as always, I held her tightly. When I pulled her close, she grunted, wincing.
At first, I thought I had hurt her. I had touched the small of her back, which seemed softer than the rest of her.
When I looked into her eyes, I knew. The still waters had been disturbed, and she was fighting to restore them.
She said nothing as I discreetly pulled up the back of her shirt to reveal a bluish, Rorschach-like bruise just to the left of her spine.

The rage that came over me was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I felt as though my insides were boiling as I looked back to her. “Who did this?!”

She quickly pulled her shirt back down, chuckling to restore her composure. “I fell down,” She smiled, “practicing one of those kicks you taught me.”

You know what? I believed her. Why shouldn’t I?
I laughed, asking her why she wasn’t holding onto anything as she practiced. She was happy to be laughing again, saying that she was, after all, part blonde. But she wouldn’t repeat the mistake again.

Yes, we would see each other at lunch. I asked her to a dance that neither of us would ever attend.

And then I said goodbye.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Akting Out LLC

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Julie and I had met in March; as school was winding down, it didn’t leave us much time to get acquainted, but we made the most of it. Even though my friends turned away (since I had betrayed them for a girl), nerds can’t really afford to lose friends, so it didn’t last long. Once they gave Julie the time of day, she seemed to fit right in; probably because she was a bigger nerd than the rest of us.

Julie knew more about Star Wars—and everything else—than the rest of us combined. Although we all remained friends, Julie’s fiery nature intrigued me—she could argue about anything. Mostly we would hang out in the library (jocks were allergic to books, we found) and debate which ship was faster; the Millenium Falcon or the Enterprise (she held fast to the Enterprise and broke down scientifically why she was right).

By the time school got out, the two of us were virtually inseparable; I remember one time, early in the morning, she called out my name from across the campus (Julie was never shy). I was hanging out with skinny Mike at the time, but with loads of other kids around, everyone turned to first look at her, and then at me. By now, they were used to it, and went on their way. Julie was never shy.
Anyway, she had her hair in pigtails around that massive head brace, and with the oversized glasses, she epitomized the word ‘nerd’. Even I was embarrassed. Mike chuckled at me and put some distance between us.

Anyway, Julie walks up to me with actual blueprints that she had drawn that previous night; these blueprints actually broke down the propulsion system of the starship Enterprise, which she pointed out as she explained to me why exactly the Enterprise could wipe the floor with the Millenium Falcon.

I liked her, but having a girl so overwhelmingly prove her intellectual superiority at age eleven can be a bit humiliating. But she was a girl with a personality I couldn’t get enough of, so I dealt with it. As always, we ate lunch together that day.

Just before school got out, she told me in casual conversation that she was going up to her grandmother’s in Seattle. She would be gone for the entire summer, but she’d be back before school started; plans we had drawn up for a new lightsaber would have to wait. I didn’t think much of it at the time; she had become part of the routine, and I took her for granted…

Over the summer, I was surprised at how much I missed her. I was thinking about her almost every day, debating whether or not to call her. She never called me, I figured that she was enjoying herself up North, and I would be intruding. I always think I’m intruding with people.

That summer, I stood up to my father for the first time.

When school resumed, she was nowhere to be found.
As time went on, my heart sank at the idea that she might’ve chosen to stay in Seattle. I couldn’t blame her; there wasn’t a lot going on in Castro Valley for kids.
Shortly after I turned twelve, I was at my locker before the first bell in the main hall. I was never sure why that hall, wider than the others, was so dark. I liked to think that since there were so many people passing through it, they just sort of absorbed the light. I was a kid, and I always had a runaway imagination.

I always, even to this day, note a pretty girl walking by. This one was walking directly towards me. Even more disconcerting was that she was looking right at me. And smiling at me in a way that I wasn’t used to.

She was wearing a white short-sleeve shirt that revealed her flat, bare stomach. Her hair was a perfect strawberry blonde that almost looked as though every other strand of her hair had been dyed a light red. Down to her neck, it had the illusions as though she had just gotten out of the shower. She was a little tan, wearing light blue jeans that were tight on her upper legs.

I immediately looked away. Girls like that don’t look at me.
“Hi!” She said brightly, stopping right outside my locker. She surprised me; I jumped as I closed my locker, looking to her and nodding casually. “Hello.” I stepped past her, preparing to go about my business. “What, that’s all I get?” She said immediately, turning and gesturing as though unsure.

I turned back to her, not sure what to say. “Um, I don’t mean any disrespect,” I said, trying to sound meek, not wanting to get this girl’s linebacker boyfriend a reason to fold me up. “I think you have the wrong person.”

“Avery.” She said, chuckling. “It’s me.”
I frowned. Suddenly, I knew that voice. And yet…I was looking at this stunningly gorgeous girl, who was looking at me with those big blue eyes…wait a moment…

My mouth fell open as I studied her. If you added a head brace and glasses, she would’ve been…

“Julie?!”
She laughed out loud, overjoyed that I finally put it together. She took two big steps towards me and jumped into my arms, wrapping her arms and legs around me. As I embrace her, I wonder if this is some kind of dream.
We make seven minutes of small talk, but I freeze when it comes to girls, and I find myself unable to stop staring at her. She picks up on it and giggles occasionally. Where did this girl come from?

The bell rings, signaling that we’re both late. “Well,” she says, her voice having picked up a sultry tone that wasn’t there last year, “We’ll catch up at lunch, okay?”

“Yeah…” I remember forcing the word out. My throat was dry. As she turned to leave, and my eyes wandered a little further south, I called after her. I don’t know where the courage came from. “Julie.”
She turned, still smiling, raising her eyebrows as a silent inquiry.

“I will…see you at lunch, right?” I don’t know why I was so scared to talk to her suddenly. The Julie I had known was a ratty-headed little nerd. What stood before me was a supermodel. And yet…the eyes, the voice, even the walk…it was her. And I…me…I was this girl’s best friend!!

She shook her head, chuckling as though the question was stupid. “Of course, stupid.” She replied. She glided back up to me and quickly kissed me on the cheek, whispering, “I really missed you, Avery.” Before turning and leaving. I watched her go, a million questions flooding my mind, my mouth failing to ask one of them.

That day, at lunch, I asked her if she wanted to go out with me.

She said yes without hesitation.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Akting Out LLC

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