III: So high school
I’ve been dragging my feet on this story about Willa. It turns out not even the fact that it’s true, happening in real time, and I’ve already begun (and therefore made a kind of commitment to a hypothetical reader), is enough to make me productive. It’s so much easier for me to write my silly little cultural rabbit hole blogs than it is to practice the one thing I actually want to be good at. Sigh.
To recap: I’m using the story of a real-life internet friend (with permission) to strengthen my fiction writing muscles.
I: My reasons for doing this.
II: The backstory of our connection.
We’re onto part III. Fair warning: this is going to feel like its straight out of an early 2000s high school movie.
Willa is in her final year of school. I don’t want to share identifying information so let’s keep it vague and say she goes to a big co-ed in Melbourne. She turned 18 in April. Because this is a true story she doesn’t fit into a clear clique. She describes her place in the school social hierarchy as ‘mid’. Not cool. Not a full-blown nerd or weirdo. She thinks of herself as kind of invisible, and she mostly likes it that way.
Willa’s the type of girl who has a solid group of friends but has always felt slightly removed, as if she’s got one foot out the door. There’s one exception: her best friend Charli (not her real name, obv, and yes this pseudonym was inspired by Charli XCX). They’ve been tight since they met on their first day 7 years ago. Willa describes their friendship as ‘volatile’ because Charli is over-sensitive, needy and jealous. She’s told me she sometimes thinks that if she’d never met Charli, she’d have more friends.
I’ll add my two cents here and say (with love) that friction requires two surfaces.
Up until about 4 months ago, Charli and Willa lived at each other’s houses on weekends. Played in the same softball team. Operated a shared wardrobe system. They look similar enough to have joint custody of a fake ID and subsequently, weekend drinks are another thing they’ve always shared. They’ve been in orbit around each other for so long that everyone sees them as one entity, not two. Nevertheless, it’s clear to me that Willa has always been the moon to Charli’s planet.
So what happened 4 months ago? Charli auditioned for the school musical. It came out of the blue from Willa’s perspective, but she wasn’t shocked. From what I’ve been told Charli has always had a flare for the dramatic. Attention lights her up. She’s the type of girl who laughs louder at jokes when other people are in earshot. Their drama teacher nudged her to give it a go. She did. She got a lead role. No. She got the starring role: Elphaba in Wicked.
Almost overnight, Charli went from ‘mid’ to Cynthia Erivo. And who was her Ariana Grande? Lauren Whitfield.
Even in the real world, some people do fit into high school archetypes. Lauren is one of those people. You know what I’m going to say already, right? She’s beautiful, popular and annoyingly good at everything. Also: her parents are loaded. Willa tells me that unfortunately she’s also nice. Ugh. Think of Lauren as this story world’s Mandy Moore—you’d love to hate her, but you just can’t. Given this, it wouldn’t have made sense for anyone else in the school to play Glinda. Here’s the next unsurprising development: Lauren and Charli are now besties.
Alright I’ve set the scene, now let me tell you what happened 4 weeks ago…
Some spring days fill you with hope. Willa thought this particular Monday in October was going to be one of them. The sun shone. The air was sweet with blossom. There were only 6 weeks of high school left in her life forever. She maintained that sense of optimism for about 65 seconds after entering the school gates, which was how long it took to walk to her locker. Charli was waiting. She’d not seen her best friend all weekend—a fact that 3 months ago would have been unfathomable but these days was standard.
They hugged. Charli exclaimed that she missed her. She asked about Willa’s weekend. Willa responded drily that it was uneventful, but Charli had already changed the subject. Her eyes grew serious. She had something to say. On the weekend she’d gone to a party at ‘Lozza’s’ and some of the boys had been there. She’d ended up hanging out with—
Before she could finish, a voice called Charli’s name. Not just any voice, but one that Willa was intimately familiar with in daydreams. It was the voice of Ben Tia.
Stay with me. This isn’t quite as clichéd as you think.
Ben isn’t the hottest boy in the year. He’s not particularly sporty or smart. They don’t have quarterbacks or homecoming kings in Australia. He’s just… Cool. Special. Earmarked by Willa from the age of 13 as hers, even if only in dreams. They knew each other, had even been partners in physics class earlier that year. In Willa’s head they were soul mates, in reality, their relationship hadn’t progressed past a slight smile in the hallway.
But you and I both know that parasocial attachments don’t require much feedback.
Willa had a crush, the foundational crush of her life, on Ben Tia. No one knew this better than Charli.
So as Willa observed the interaction between Ben and her best friend that morning and it became increasingly clear that something had happened between them, she felt the betrayal bite deep. She didn’t storm off, though. She stood there listening like a creep. Her words to me were: “I let myself baste in the nightmare.” It was the sound of the bell that finally jerked her from this purgatory. She grabbed some books and fled for first period. Charli called her name but she didn’t slow.
Willa spent lunch in the library. She stewed. She performed a dozen confrontations with Charli in her head: in some she was spitting like a cat, in others she let the tears roll down her cheeks, the best scenarios were the ones in which she maintained an icy poise, withering eyes filled with quiet, lofty disappointment. In all these imagined moments, fictional Charli always retaliated with the same thing, “but it’s not real, Willa, it’s always been all in your head.” In real life, Willa’s rage grew.
She made it to fourth period without seeing Charli or Ben, then her luck ran out. When she entered English class the desks were laid out in a U shape. She was early and settled first, pulling out her copy of The Age of Innocence and burying her head in it. She felt them arrive but didn’t look up. They settled across from her, the roll call of her emotional ruin: Lauren, Charli, Ben. Talking and laughing as if their existence weren’t dismantling the very foundations of her existence.
The teacher, Ms Penn, began the class. Willa is in the habit of recording her classes (she’s dyslexic), so I can give you a full transcript for this part (edited for clarity):
“Okay — before we step back into 1960s Hong Kong and finish In the Mood for Love, I want to draw your attention back to a pivotal moment with Newland and Ellen in The Age of Innocence. Please turn to chapter 18.”
[sound of papers shuffling]
“You remember it, right? This final conversation between them before the wedding — what made it powerful was that they both voiced their feelings for the first time, but still felt unable to act upon them.”
[Ms P reads aloud]
He stood up too, flushed and resolute. "Nonsense! It's too late for that sort of thing. We've no right to lie to other people or to ourselves. We won't talk of your marriage; but do you see me marrying May after this?"She stood silent, resting her thin elbows on the mantelpiece, her profile reflected in the glass behind her. One of the locks of her chignon had become loosened and hung on her neck; she looked haggard and almost old.
"I don't see you," she said at length, "putting that question to May. Do you?"
He gave a reckless shrug. "It's too late to do anything else."
"You say that because it's the easiest thing to say at this moment—not because it's true. In reality it's too late to do anything but what we'd both decided on."
“Remember this powerful line of Ellen’s from further along in this same passage, “I can't love you unless I give you up”? That’s the emotional space we’re stepping into again now in film form.”
“Wong Kar-wai’s masterpiece is set almost 100 years after The Age of Innocence, and within a completely different cultural context, but it’s driven by the same questions: What do we owe to our desires — and what do we owe to our moral sense of right and wrong?”
“I want you to consider how similar these worlds actually are. These characters might live in narrow stairwells and shared apartments instead of grand manor houses, but the pressure of reputation, gossip, and ‘what people will think’ is just as palpable. Both couples find themselves standing on the edge of something real, something life-changing — but are unable to take the leap.”
“I also want you to pay attention to what’s different between the two stories, chiefly in how the film expresses its tension without words. Wharton gives us long speeches and inner monologue — Wong Kar-wai gives us slow motion, colour, silence, and repetition. Instead of reading our characters, we feel them through gestures, glances, cinematography and soundscape. That’s the power of showing, not telling.”
[a moment of silence before the movie begins]
Willa was only half listening, distracted by the way Charli was twirling her hair while Ben watched out the corner of his eye. The injustice of it raked along her skin from the inside, as if trying to let something ugly and vicious break out.
This next part is best read while listening to Yumeji’s theme from the In the Mood for Love soundtrack. It’s what Willa was listening to in that moment, and you know how I feel about music and narrative layering.
Willa told me it was almost as if she could see the gossamer strands of new feelings stretching between Charli and Ben. Her anger rippled through her, powerful enough that she wanted to use it to reach out and swipe those strands from the air.
She watched Mr Chow and Mrs Chan on the screen, circling around each other in a rain-soaked alley, feeling deeply while performing a pretence of feeling. It struck Willa that humans were pitiful creatures, so easily buffeted by the unpredictable rapids of their own emotions. She wanted to be above it, she wanted to be more. Willa yearned for control.
I don’t know if this is a belief specific to kids who grow up reading fantasy novels, but have you ever had the sense that your mind could do seemingly impossible things if you just believed in it enough? Like telekinesis, telepathy, you know, mind tricks. I used to think that as a kid, and spend hours trying to move objects across tables or insert thoughts into my sister’s mind.
That’s the feeling Willa described having in that moment, it was like she acknowledged her desire for control and her brain showed the way. She was suddenly overcome with the belief that it was within her power to stop Ben falling for Charli, and, if she wanted, to make him see her instead.
Yeah, I know, teenagers are a mess.
The classroom was dimly lit, Charli and Ben were leaning into each other whispering. Willa decided to indulge her brain because fictional Charli was right, the whole thing — both the drama and the romance — were only ever in her head anyway. So why not continue the story?
She imagined a thread of rage spooling out of her and drifting across the classroom toward them. She sharpened it to a knife point and watched it hover above the growing connection between the pair, which she said hung between them like a spiderweb trembling with dew. Willa allowed the sharp edge of the knife to glide across the strands, gently at first. Ben shifted in his seat. Charli murmured something to him and he laughed. Willa gritted her teeth and tried again. This time she sliced sharply, severing the imaginary web. Charli’s wisps of feeling retracted into her body instantly, but before Ben’s could do the same Willa snatched at them with phantom hands and tugged them back across the room toward herself, she drew them all the way to her chest and anchored them there. Her eyes were half closed. She felt weak and a little sweaty. She silently giggled at her own insanity, relieved she was the only one privy to such unhinged imaginings, then she turned back to the screen in the dark. She felt better.
The movie ended and Ms P flicked the light on, wiping tears from her eyes. She instructed the class on their homework: an essay exploring the ideas presented in the film:
What happens when restraint becomes its own kind of passion?
How does the world around Mr Chow and Mrs Chan — its rules and expectations — shape what’s possible between them?
How much of the story happen in reality, and how much inside their heads?
Willa wrote her notes slowly and carefully, as was her habit. She put down her pen, lifted her gaze, and froze. Charli looked pale and nauseous. Her body was half turned toward Ben, but he was angled away. Willa’s eyes met his across the room. He was staring at her with a kind of confused intensity. Willa’s brow furrowed just as Ben’s face split into the sweetest smile she’d ever seen in real life or on a screen. Think boyish charm meets naked vulnerability.
Willa’s only coherent thought was, what have I done?
This is a very delusional thing to say, but on the off chance one of the 5 friends who reads this blog like this post and want to share it, can I ask a favour?
Please only share it irl. Like, using words to another person’s face who is in front of your face. Text message is maybe okay (not iMessage), but definitely not on social media, messenger, even whatsapp. And please I beg of you — do not to talk to any AI LLMs about it.
We need to go analogue.
I’m being paranoid, but I’ll explain in Part IV. Things are going to get weirder, exactly as I hoped.