Spells to Forget Us

✴ Aoife ✴
 
 
I’m an expert at saying yes. When your parents’ livelihood depends on you, you get used to doing it. Yes, it’s fine to tell our 1.2 million followers about taking me to buy my first bra. Yes, I’d love to be filmed after my wisdom tooth surgery so you can post the hilarious things I say on social media. Yes, you can totally come along to the football game tonight to get pseudo-candid content of me.

“That took so long,” I say, plunking myself down in the stands next to my friend Karim. “My dad just wouldn’t stop taking pictures.” I slump over tiredly and swipe a hand across the back of my neck to unstick some of my curls from my skin. My parents run a popular parenting blog slash social media empire. The Wonderful Walshes documents our family’s lives on our website, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube—anywhere that can be monetized. So that’s why, on this humid September night, I spent most of the first quarter of this football game posing for photos at the edge of Russell Field instead of hanging out with my friends like I’d planned.
Karim leans in toward me. “You alive there?”

“Barely.” I wheeze and clutch my chest, widening my eyes to comical proportions. “Help me . . . The content factory . . . It’s killing me!”

“RIP, Aoife,” he deadpans back. “It was good knowing you.” Important things to know about Karim: He’s a Persian boy with an angular face and thick dark hair. He’s pretty cute but isn’t confident about it, since some of his friends make fun of him for having a big nose. (The nose is a feature, not a flaw. Those people just suck.) We’re in band together—he plays the trumpet, I play the flute—so we’ve always been part of the same large, amorphous friend group. Over the summer, though, the two of us hung out a bunch, so we’ve gotten way closer.

“Are we winning?” I say, turning to look at the scoreboard. He laughs derisively. “Of course not,” he says as I clock exactly how much we’re not winning. Twenty-one to seven? Before the end of the first quarter? Rough. “The love of your life scored a touchdown, though,” he adds, and he’s devastatingly casual about dropping that little detail. “Love of my life?” I echo, cringing.

Karim flaps a hand generally toward the field, right as our quarterback throws a Hail Mary to absolutely nobody. “You know. Mr. Meathead. Nathan Sorenson,” he says, like I needed clarification on who he could be referring to. It’s not as if there are any other football players I’ve made out with recently. “Is he not your one true love?” Karim continues. “I’m just wondering if I should be planning to talk to him in the future. I can kill some of my brain cells to prepare.”
“Come on, Karim, Nathan’s not stupid,” I say, shooting him a disparaging look.

He fidgets with the big over-ear headphones that live semipermanently around his neck. “Okay, sure, whatever. So I should be ready to make nice with him?”

I sigh. “No, he’s . . . He’s avoiding me. I think.” And he has been ever since we made out at his back-to-school party last weekend.

“Okay. Cool, I hate him, then,” Karim pronounces.

“Don’t hate him,” I protest. “He probably has a reason why he’s avoiding me. It’s just kind of frustrating.” He must have realized that while he thought I was hot, he wasn’t into me as a person. Unfortunate. But not unexpected, since this has happened several times before.
“Nah, the reason he’s avoiding you is because he’s an ass- hole,” Karim says. “Trust me. I’m an asshole. I know how we operate.”

“You’re not an asshole,” I say, because Karim really isn’t. Mildly judgmental and totally pretentious? Yes. But not an asshole. “Anyway, I don’t love that he’s avoiding me,” I con- tinue. “We could just be friends. That’s cool with me. But since we made out at that party, it’s totally impossible for us to ever talk again?”

Karim looks as if he’s going to respond—likely some- thing cutting about my terrible romantic taste—but our team catches an interception and our conversation fizzles out as the crowd goes berserk around us.

Once it becomes clear that the interception isn’t going to turn into any sort of momentum for our side, I stand up. “I’m going to get a snow cone. Want one?”

“No, I’m good,” Karim says.

I begin the process of edging past all the other people sitting in our row. We’re in the center of the stands, so this takes a bit. Right at the end, when I’m nearly into the aisle, things take a turn for the worse. The world slows down for a fateful instant as I trip over a pair of black Doc Martens.

“Oof,” I wheeze out, tumbling into someone’s lap. Some- thing cold hits my bare legs. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” I lift my head, and there’s the owner of the Doc Martens trip haz- ards blinking down at me. For a brief moment I’m entranced. Her face keeps presenting new and fascinating things for me to look at. Smooth brown skin, several shades darker than my own. An ornate silver septum piercing. Full lips painted with black lipstick. The round, soft curve of her cheeks, in sharp contrast to the severe angle of her brows. She looks interest- ing—a person I’d like to know.

But also, I should get out of her lap.

“Sorry!” I repeat, extricating myself from her. “I should leave the tackling to the football players.”
Her black-rimmed eyes widen, and she stares at me like I’ve clubbed her over the head unexpectedly. Now that I’ve put a little bit of space between us, the rest of her comes into focus. She’s a plus-sized girl dressed all in black—a black graphic T-shirt layered over a fishnet long-sleeved top and black jean shorts with rips going up her thigh. Her long locs are dec- orated with silver cuffs and other jewelry that matches her septum piercing. Does she go to our school? I feel like I would have noticed her.

“Are you okay?” I ask after a few moments of silence. “Your skirt,” she says, pointing at it.
I look down and find that the cold thing I felt on my legs was ice from a red snow cone. “Oh my god, I’ve sabotaged myself,” I say, wiping at the splotches on my pleated skirt. “I should never have worn white. I’m always worried the whole time, and then it’s like I attract disaster because I’m so paranoid about getting my clothes dirty.” I shake my head, laughing.

At the sound of my laugh, she somehow manages to look even more gobsmacked for a second. Then her face resolves itself into an imperious frown. “Let me—” she says, moving her hand toward her pocket. She freezes momentarily, and a little divot forms between her brows. Then she shakes her head and pulls an embroidered purple cloth from her pocket. “A handkerchief?” I say, surprised. She starts dabbing lightly at my skirt. It’s strangely charming, watching this hardcore-looking girl fuss over me in such an old-timey way.

“Do you normally carry that around with you?” “No,” she says. “Lucky I had it today, though.”
When I look again, my skirt is pristinely white. Almost whiter than it was before. “Huh,” I say. “I guess it didn’t really sink into the fabric.”

She shoves the handkerchief back in her pocket. “Guess not.” “Sorry about your snow cone,” I say. “Let me buy you a new one.”

Her frown grows deeper, and her gaze darts about uncertainly. The frown seems more nervous than anything else. So she’s hot and cool and . . . shy? That’s interesting. Her appear- ance is really eye-catching for someone reserved.

“I was about to go get one, so this is perfect,” I add. “Very serendipitous. Maybe they’ll have a two-for-one deal.” I flash a smile at her, one that I hope reassures her that I’m not out to eat her soul or anything. It has the desired effect. She makes a grumbly noise that sounds like agreement and stands up. She’s much shorter than I expected. There are a good four or five inches between us.

“I was hoping that maybe we could score after that inter- ception, but I guess not,” I say as we pick our way through the stands, heading toward the table of band booster parents selling snow cones. “I didn’t get to see the first touchdown, and now I’m worried that I missed our team’s only good play of the game.”

“That would suck,” she says.

“I know, seriously.” I shake my head. “I mean, it’s not as if I come to these games expecting, like, great feats of athleti- cism or anything, but it’s definitely more fun to cheer for us if we’re actually doing something cheer-worthy.” This pulls a nod and a half smile out of her, and she’s somehow even hot- ter when she smiles. “ ‘Go, fight, lose’ doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it, you know?”

She gives me a whole chuckle for that. “I kind of like it, actually. Maybe pessimistic cheers could be a new thing,” she says, and a thrill of victory goes through me. Ha. I’ve drawn her out. She’s making jokes now.

My special skill is making people feel comfortable. I’m accommodating. Adaptable. A vessel they can fill with their own wandering thoughts and anxiety-tinged worries. (Like the guy I made out with last weekend, who told me all about his grandma’s recent stroke before leaning in to kiss me with a sort of charming awkwardness.) (I thought that kind of emotional closeness meant that he intended to talk to me afterward, but that was my bad.)

Even though I’m doing my best to work my Aoife magic, to leverage my cuteness and friendliness into a decent conver- sation, it’s not totally working. She seems like she’s relaxed, but then the crowd starts doing a half-assed version of the wave around us and she gets all twitchy and distant-looking. Fascinating. I have to know what’s up with this girl.

We get in line for the snow cones and I make my move. “Okay, I promise I’m not trying to call you out—seriously, I promise—but you look kind of nervous,” I say. “I know I’m, like, a weird stranger who literally just fell in your lap, but is everything cool with you?”

There’s a pause of no less than five seconds.

“I’ve just . . . I’ve never gone to one of these before,” she says.

I stare at her, trying to guess exactly what she means by this. “A football game?”

She nods. Huh. “Well, don’t get too excited,” I say. “Our team isn’t very good.”

She seems like she wants to say something but doesn’t speak right away. Okay, it’s confirmed. This is an introvert in the wild. I can work with that. Drawing introverts out of their shells is a secret passion of mine. I hit her with my best listening face.

“I don’t go to school here,” she says finally.

“So you go to Belmont?” I say, naming the team we’re playing against.

“No.”

“Are you homeschooled?”

“No. My school is . . . small. No football team.”

“Oh. Did you come here with a friend, or . . . ?” She shakes her head. I nod, processing that. “So you went to a game for two schools you don’t go to. And now you’re feeling weird about it?” She makes a sort of affirmative grunt, and I shrug. “I mean, you do you. Who cares? But I’m kind of wondering, what made you want to go to a football game?”

“It’s normal,” she says, staring at the field wistfully. “It’s something that normal people do.”
The stadium floodlights illuminate her face from a high, dramatic angle as she says this. It matches the main-character energy of what she’s said, but also what the heck? That was actively mysterious.

We get to the front of the line, and I order two cherry snow cones while she lurks behind my shoulder. The white band mom behind the table keeps glancing at her uneasily, and I want to laugh. You’re scared of her? I want to say. The quiet girl who wanted to watch high school football so badly that she showed up to a game for a school she doesn’t go to?

While the mom scoops ice into the paper cups, I turn to the girl. “What’s your name?”

Something that might grow up to be a smile one day passes over her face. “Luna.”

“My name’s Aoife,” I offer.

“Ee-fuh?” she repeats, looking to me for confirmation that she’s said it right.

Incredible. She hasn’t mangled my name into some other thing she finds more recognizable, like Eve or something. “Yeah. You said it right. That’s nice.”

She shrugs. “I just repeated what you said.” “Plenty of people can’t do that.”

“Fuck them, then,” she says, and her voice is all low and grumbly in a way that sends quicksilver darts of delight shooting through my bloodstream. She stares at me with a dark intensity. “You deserve to have your name said right.”

“Could you help other people figure that out?” I say, giggling.

“Yeah, I’ll be your enforcer,” she says. “Anybody who refuses to learn to say your two-syllable name . . .” She cracks her knuck- les threateningly at my imaginary name-mispronouncers.

“Aw, thanks,” I say. I lightly touch her on the arm, and she immediately freezes. Oops. I haven’t exactly been flirt- ing with her, but I also wasn’t not flirting. The line between friendly and flirty is tenuous at best. But touching someone I just met is solidly in the flirting camp. I’m about to apologize when her lips spread into a smile, one that’s sharp and intense and a little cocky. She holds my gaze, and the sounds of the game melt away.

I wasn’t expecting that.

“Your eyes are green,” she says, faintly surprised.

Ah, yes, my second-most-commented-on feature. The combination of brown skin and green eyes really gets people going. “Mm-hmm,” I say cheerily. “Grew them myself.”

“Here you go,” the mom behind the table says, holding out our snow cones to me. I turn back to her and take them. I can feel Luna watching me as I do.

Now, I’m not supposed to know that I’m pretty. I’m well aware of that. I’m supposed to play coy, and protest when people point it out, and post captions on my selfies that say things like “felt cute today,” as if me looking cute is a special thing that only happens once in a while.

But there’s a sort of knowing that creeps over me when someone finds me attractive. Like, Oh. I understand now. This is part of how you think of me. I’m better at knowing when guys think I’m attractive. Guys are easy. If they’re attracted to girls and paying real attention when I talk, they’re probably interested. Is that sexist? Yes. Has it been mostly true in my experience? Also yes.

Girls are harder. They’re nice to you even if they don’t want to make out with you. That leaves me at a loss some- times. But. Lo and behold! A girl! Finding me attractive right here and now!
I feel the sense of possibility expanding out from me, reverberating off my skin and into the air.
“Here’s your snow cone,” I say, holding it out to Luna.

“Also, can I have your number?”