Page 23 of Stay Toxic

Stay Positive

PS: I didn’t go to the concert because I don’t have appropriate clothes.

I post it the next morning before swimming, mildly satisfied about the fact that this week wasn’t totally awful.

I’m drinking my first coffee of the day, checking my class schedule, still not quite familiar with it, when I’m surprised to see a message pop up from the student portal.

I open it and frown.

Dear Nerd,

…go buy some?

Stay Alone

There’s no mistaking who the message is from, given the format we’ve adopted from the start. I check the sender—all I see is our correspondence number, 1789.

He switched to electronic message, like Timothy and Ari? I’m honestly stumped. That’s what people do when they want to speak to each other faster. I honestly thought he’d want nothing to do with me outside of the mandated one letter a week.

He must be seriously curious about my clothing—or lack thereof. Maybe he’s a fashion student?

Dear Obvious,

Are you ever going to answer any of the questions?

And I can’t go buy clothes.

Stay Cool

I don’t want to get into it, so I leave it at that. He must be pretty damn curious, because I have an answer after Constitutional Law.

Dear Cinderella,

Must be hard to be poor.

Stay on Your Knees (mopping while singing to mice, I assume)

I flush, before reading the parentheses. Right, that’s a Cinderella thing, not a sexual thing. I don’t know why my mind flew to other things women do on their knees. But now I’m more than certain my Dear Stranger is a dude.

Dear Moneybags,

I’m not poor. My mother just looks at my spendings very closely, and she wants me to dress a certain way. I’d feel awkward as hell at a concert with most of the clothes I own.

Stay Judgmental

I don’t know why I’m telling him that; maybe because I’ve done my best to avoid speaking about Mother and her influence over the last couple of weeks, and I need someone to listen and commiserate with me? Plus we might have started on the wrong foot, but he seems genuinely interested. And he’s easy to talk to.

“You’re spending a lot of time checking your phone.”

“Hm?” I flush, putting the device down. “Oh, yeah, I guess.”

Ari’s having guests again—her two brothers. We’re splitting a pizza and watching a movie on her large iMac screen.

“You almost never look at your phone,” my roommate says. “So, it’s pretty easy to notice when you do.”

I suppose I have checked my phone a lot more than usual. “I’ve started chatting with my pen pal,” I admit, not sure why I’m reluctant.

“Yeah? They’re no longer a dick, then?”