by Olive Zhang
Shame is a hunter. It haunts me even more than the memory of her.
I wash my hand over and over with soap and warm water, but I can’t rid myself of an inner stain. Bubbles slip through the cracks of my fingers, rising up and finally popping a few inches from my face, leaving only the ghosts of their shimmer behind. Soap.
She smelled like lavender soap.
I rested my head on her shoulder as the bus rode bumpily down the streets filled with morning traffic. Strands of hair that escaped from her braid tickled my face. I didn’t move. I let them brush against my skin, light as whispers, bringing with them the faint scent of lavender that must have been in her shampoo. She was scrolling on her phone, her delicate fingers absentmindedly flicking the screen. I didn’t know what she was looking at, and I didn’t ask. We sat quietly in a bus filled with the commotion of excited teenagers on their way to middle school. I closed my eyes to sleep, just like I’d told her.
But I wasn’t really sleeping.
My first confession: I lied to her about being tired. I came up with a whole story of wanting to get some extra nap time on the bus just to rest my head on her shoulder, to inhale her soft lavender aroma, and to steal a moment of closeness before it slipped away.
Not that she would have minded. If I had just told her the truth, she probably would’ve joked that I had a crush on her, called me ridiculous, and then leaned in a little closer, just to mess with me. We were cool with that, half total honesty, half unspoken games.
But behind my veil of neat nonchalance, there was a boiling puddle of emotion that could not afford to be brought to the open. Did she suffer the same for me?
Fast forward a couple of months. I sat in the noisy classroom waiting for the bell to ring, and she sat next to me. It was English class, but it wasn’t just an ordinary English class: the teacher had assigned us to write an essay on our best friend. I knew who I wrote about. I wondered who she wrote about. I was tempted to ask but didn’t, afraid of what I might hear.
“Today we’ll be sharing some of the best essays that you wrote.” The teacher said. Great, maybe I’ll get a chance to read her essay without having to ask her. I didn’t really pay attention when the teacher said how good some of the essays were. My heart skipped a beat when I recognized her handwriting on the screen—and sank to my stomach when I read the title.
Not my name. Of course. Why would it be me? I was only an ordinary friend to her. I didn’t mean anything special. I wasn’t anything special. It was as if a cold knife was stabbed into my body and slowly turned. I turned to look at her as the teacher continued droning on. She smiled at me. I forced my facial muscles into something that resembled a smile but could’ve seemed more like a grimace.
My second confession: I hated it when she was with the other girl. The other girl, the one that she wrote about, the one who was beautiful, talented, popular, and nice. The other girl, the one that she regarded as her best friend, the one whom she prefers to spend her time with instead of me. I was a coward. Instead of admitting my own failure, I chose to direct my anguish towards an innocent girl who treated everyone like a friend.
Fast forward a couple of years. I sat next to her on the bus, only this time the atmosphere was different. It was night-time, the bus going home rather than from it. It was the last day of junior high. We were talking like usual, the same imaginative conversations going back and forth. Perhaps we wanted to escape the pain of parting by not mentioning it. We already knew that we were going to different high schools. The lights were dim in the bus. Her eyes were bright. Her nose was delicate. Her lips were reddish-pink, soft and barely curved, the slightest hint of a smile playing at the corners. My mouth suddenly felt very dry. In the darkened back seat of the bus, I felt exposed to my own desire.
My third confession: I wanted to kiss those lips. I wanted to say something. I wanted her to remember me even if we never met again. But when it was her stop to get off the bus, I only wished her a good summer. She smiled, “You too!” and disappeared into the night.
Shame is a hunter. It cannot be erased from under my skin. It comes back to haunt me like a ghost, bringing with it the weight of long-kept secrets, the guilt of forbidden longing, the unrequited, misplaced affection kept in the dark, even after all these years.
High school brings its own dramas, with teenagers falling in and out of love. Sometimes we text each other about our lives. I still see her occasionally, when old friends gather and catch up. She’s changed, but not much. The scent of lavender is gone, but maybe only because I don’t dare come as close to her as I did that time on the bus.
My shame lies in how I liked my best friend for more than a friend. How I lied to her just to be closer to her. How I was jealous of her other friends. How I wanted to kiss her in the back of a bus. How I wanted to tell her about my feelings and ruin this friendship for maybe something more. How I never did.
Olive Zhang is a high school student from Beijing, China. She is an avid reader and writer who won the Grand Prize for Creative Nonfiction at her school. Olive enjoys exploring quiet emotional truths, memory, and longing through narrative nonfiction and short fiction.
This piece was selected as a runner up of our ‘Lies’ writing competition.
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