Desirables
by Leilani Mate, FA25 Writing Team
Nora was this pretty girl I met a year ago.
She had these things about her, like dirt in her nails and fat above her hips, but she was certainly a pretty girl and a good one at that. When I met her for the first time, she wore a sweatshirt that folded over her hands and covered half her thighs. Everything about her was that sweatshirt, underneath it and in its pockets. Nora was a pretty girl and she was all desire, all the dirt and fat and good in her.
She met a boy named Leo a few weeks ago and told me all about it. He had watched her walk to class every Tuesday morning and looked at her from a staircase. Nora looked prettier on Tuesday mornings and from staircases. But Leo didn’t ask her out until Saturday night when he spoke to her at the party.
Hello, he said. Can I talk to you?
I was standing next to Nora and left the two on the porch. She leaned in to laugh at him, then he gave her a cup and she drank from it. Nora was pretty when she drank, but prettier when she just held the cup and kept it near her like a person. By the end of Saturday night she had agreed to coffee on Wednesday.
Nora didn’t have many secrets, but she had things she would rather not say and often didn’t. She told these things to me during her Monday lunch break over salad bowls and soda. So I knew that Nora had never kissed a boy, and more importantly I knew that she desired it; to be held and kept that way. Nora looked less pretty when she talked about boys and all the want wrinkled up her face.
She met Leo that Wednesday for coffee. He dressed nicely and so did she, nice enough for him to mention her hair and her shirt, which hung off one shoulder. They talked about normal things like school and unfortunate things like work, and in-between those conversations they said things they liked about each other. Nora told me he liked her smile and her jokes, how he said her thoughts were nice and she was interesting. Nora liked all of these things and kept liking them for days.
One day, Leo showed up at Nora’s apartment and asked her to get Italian food with him. And because I was there, he asked me to come and I sat in the back of his car while they turned their heads to see the corners of each other. Nora was maybe the prettiest and most desirable from a corner. At the restaurant, though, they sat face to face through candlelight and he gathered all of her at once. Nora liked to be gathered, except for her eyes, which she mostly kept reserved. So she retreated them to the menu, then the food, then the edge of the table and sometimes to me. But at certain moments, like when he laughed or said something exciting, she gave them to him quickly and without warning. It made him eager, the way she rationed and distributed herself. And it made him want, which was even worse.
Nora and Leo stopped talking four weeks after knowing each other. On a Monday, she told me she couldn’t give him what he wanted, but that he liked a lot of things about her and thought she was nice. At the end of it all, Nora was still a pretty girl who had never kissed a boy and wanted to, which I told her was a fine thing to be. Leo continued to look at her on Tuesday mornings when she walked past him, gathering the last bits of dirt and fat off her.
I don’t know why but I get sad whenever I think of Nora. She was a girl I knew but didn’t quite know what to make of. She was good and nice, prettier from corners and staircases, pretty like a girl drinking or walking, smiling and being interesting. She was all want and all desire, yet she was completely undesirable, all of her. Sometimes I think she liked it, that she could hold and keep herself that way. Or maybe she hated it, and one day everything underneath her would pent up and explode and leave pretty chunks of desirables and loneliness everywhere.
Either way, it makes me sad, and I think of her often.
