[novelle hoofdstuk]

[juliettebinoche]

Ich warte nicht mehr lang…
[I won’t be waiting for much longer]

* * *

She’s everything but logical. Even I can’t understand her, not even after all those years of staring and listening. She’s just her, her own lovely self.
She’s intoxicating, she’s a drug and I’m addicted to her. When she opens her mouth to speak, I’m not listening. I want to listen, but I simply can’t. I try, but all her words float past me. I can only stare, try not to blush.
I so badly wish she was mine. Mine, all mine. My oh-so dearly loved.

I take a few steps and with a smile on my face I enter the classroom. My teacher is standing in the doorway, being her usual cute self. She too smiles. I want to walk to my table, but then I realise that I had a question to ask her. So I turn around and face her.
“Urm, I wanted to ask again, about my philosophy assignment, can I still do that interview?”
She nods and smiles. “Yes, ofcourse.”
“Next week maybe? Because today I’m not really prepared,” I murmer, trying to avoid her piercing eyes. Her wonderful greyish-green eyes.
“Yes sure, but you’ll have to look for me then, next week.”
“Okay.” I’m about to turn around, walk to my desk and start with the debate we ought to do today, but then she reaches out and touches my neck.
“Like your necklace,” she smiles.
I feel like I’m burning inside. Why did she have to say that? I was having trouble getting over her already.
“Yeah, I like it too, it’s a little suitcase,” I answer and walk away.
Fuck. I feel fucked up. For over more than a year I have been totally sickening in love with this woman, with this girl she is in my eyes. After the summerholidays I was finally feeling a bit better, although I still couldn’t communicate with her on a normal level. I’d always murmer, avoid her face, blush, stutter and do everything else that would make me look stupid.
And now she did this. This minuscule sweet ‘thingey’. And all that I need to fall back in love with her, is such a thing.
“Roooeees!” Renée screams and she waves at me from her seat. Suddenly I have to sit at the other side of the table, but actually I don’t care that much. I’m too frustrated and confused to have “normal” and “sane” fun with my friends.
So the debate between Elise & Elise versus Willemieke & Serena starts. It’s about abortion, so it isn’t a very good subject to debate about. Because everyone is on the pro-side when it comes to abortion.
And so I sit out the complete lesson, sometimes distracted by her, walking near me, walking past me or smiling at me. And I sigh, because she’s so damn close and so far away at the same time.

She’s very eloquent, but childish at the same time. Sometimes she’s a bit bossy and at other times she’s a true dear. That’s why she’s a secret. She’s my secret and only I shall be the one to unravel the secrets that lie in the dephts of her soul.
“Roos! Renée! Why aren’t you working?” she speaks sternly while she’s standing very close to me.
“Urm,” I start my unconcinving murmering again. I cannot bring myself to look at her. It hurts me to hear the anger in her voice. She hates me. She hates me.
“We both haven’t got a book,” I speak softly as I stare at my desk, not looking at her in the least of perspectives.
She sighs. “WELL! GET TO WORK! IT’S NOT MY FAULT THAT YOU HAVEN’T BROUGHT YOUR BOOKS!” she yells. I’ve never heard her speak with such a raised voice before. Damn, she must really dislike me. I feel hurt, I really do.
So Renée and I start to scrabble some short letters in our papers. We both feel uncomfortable, but I feel worse.

That nigth my mum and dad went to a parent/teacher conference. And they visited her, the love of my life, the light in my darkness. And my mum said that it was good she punished me. And then she blushed, my dad told me. And she had said: “I didn’t punish her too hard, did I?”
So this means that she hadn’t meant it evilly. That she maybe still loves me. That maybe, some day, she’ll wrap me up in her arms.
Maybe?

She was my first real female love. I’ve known for a long time that I was bisexual, but it just never came up. So in the same time I’d fallen in love with her, I had told my friends. And they were all really supportive, really. They were sweet.
So now my sexual preference is common knowlegde to most people who know me.
And you know, I think she knows. She must know. She’s not stupid, so she must know.
Last year at Valentine’s Day, I send her a card, a truly adorable card. And my own handwriting is quite queer, so she ought to have recognized it. And she never said anything about it. And I must confess that this maybe is for the best. If she’d talk to be about it, I wouldn’t survive. I think she handled it very properly.
But still, I’m counting off the days until I finish my school. Because then, when I’m no longer a student, no longer her student, I can love her. I am allowed to love her. And then she can love me back.
But will she. That is the question.

“Renée, c’mon, I have to look for her!” I say and pull my friend with me through the hallway of the school.
“Roooos! Stop it, we’ve been here for six times already, she’s not at school today! Deal with your issues!”
I smile and nod. Renée’s right. But then I’ll have to go and interview her tomorrow. An one-on-one interview, that sounds very interesting.
“Come, Renée, let’s go home,” I whisper and glomp my very best friend.

To Be Continued…