Cycle I: Coming on Strong
The Hidden Voice
The Hidden Girl · 05 (v2.00)
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan
Playlist Track: JENNIE — “Less than a Lover”
The app is still hidden by the time she finds her notebook again.
She is sitting on the floor with her back against the bed, phone in one hand and her notebook open between her knees. With the other hand, she keeps folding an empty wrapper from a frosted pastry into smaller squares.
The page is titled things i know now. The words are underlined hard enough to leave an annoying groove in the paper beneath them.
Below, do not answer right away just because they replied has been crossed out and replaced with do not answer when lonely. Farther down, she wrote that casual means casual even when it starts meaning something else to her. In the margin, beside a list of “watch for free with ads” films she never finished, she wrote stop saying whatever works for you.
She remembers writing the page after something ended. She does not remember which ending.
By the time she finished writing, she felt like she knew what to do. Maybe that was what she needed from the page.
Since then, there has been somebody she kept calling casual until she asked what they were, someone she kept kissing because stopping would have required a conversation, and promises to herself that lasted until somebody she wanted finally answered.
The unfinished message on her phone is for somebody new. They made explaining what she wants sound safe, though it does not take much to make her feel that way.
She has written that she does not mind keeping things simple, that she expects nothing, and that she can work around whatever they have going on.
Flexible is the word she would use. Convenient sounds worse.
She has answered a question about what she wants by listing everything she can go without.
She deletes the part about working around them, then puts it back. The wrapper has become a hard little square in her palm. She squeezes it until she feels the edges dig into her skin.
She returns to the home screen without sending. Her thumb goes to where the app used to be before she remembers she hid it. She searches for it instead.
Hiding it has already become part of opening it.
Her draft is waiting exactly as she left it. She removes that part again and sends what remains.
The word Read appears. Typing dots rise, hold, then vanish.
She starts another message: sorry if that sounded…
She adds cold, reads it, and deletes the word. She tries difficult, then deletes that too.
She leaves the cursor blinking after sounded.
She has already decided to apologize.
She just has not decided what for.