If you saw a picture of Delaney, you’d scroll past it. I mean she’s pretty, but there’s something forgettable about her. Or maybe forgettable isn’t the right word. It’s hard to distinguish her features, to look directly at her and really see anything but the fuzzy outline of a person. What does she look like? Well, it depends. Her hair has been long, short, completely shaved, brown, blonde, red, pink, green. I’ve looked into her eyes so many times, and I have no idea what color they are. She’s not really short or tall, not really fat or thin. She’s…white? Yeah go find Delaney, she’s one of the 35 white girls at this house party. Does that help?
The thing is, everyone I know who has actually spoken to Delaney has immediately had a crush on her. I’m including myself. She has this way of speaking that makes you feel like you’ve known her for a long time even when you’ve just met. And a sort of fragileness that makes you want to take care of her. I met her three drinks in on the front porch of some dickwad’s big, Victorian-style house that my friends dragged me to for a party. It was the summer of 2010, which means A) the drinks were Four Loko–the original kind that got taken off the shelves later that year–and B) I was dressed like fucking Zooey Deschanel. I’d stepped out to get some air after ducking under the couch to avoid my least favorite ex boyfriend. I remember tugging at the skirt of my polkadot dress and feeling like a real asshole. I never met a party I didn’t want to leave. That’s when Delaney sidled up to me.
“Are you Kristen?” I am in fact Kristen.
“Yeah, sorry, you look familiar, but I don’t know your name.”
And so she was Delaney. She said she’d heard about me from some of our mutual friends and felt sad we’d never had a chance to meet. If I thought about it, I could kind of remember seeing her hanging around some people I knew, but she looked different. Her mousy hair was cropped in a short bob, like mine, and she had a silver nose ring I was sure she didn’t have before summer break. I told her I was happy that at least we were meeting now, and she gave me her number. I walked home that night feeling a bit stupid and giddy. I wrote, “Find out if Delaney’s straight.” in a note on my laptop before passing out that night.
Being a coward, I never actually texted or called her after that, but somehow, over the course of the next couple of weeks, Delaney had become a stable fixture in my friend group. It was like she had always been there. Delaney was saving us a table in the dining hall. Delaney was studying for a test in our dorm room. Delaney brought a big bottle of water for everyone to share when we went to smoke weed in the woods. If I decided to go take a walk, Delaney linked her arm through mine, and we’d slowly spiral through campus together. I’d gabble about movies or music or whatever the fuck, and she’d bob her head up and down, always in agreement. I stopped being able to tell if I liked her. Talking to her was like talking into a mirror, but you can walk away from a mirror when you don’t want to see yourself. Delaney was always there.
It started grating on me. People I didn’t know would wave me over only to realize I wasn’t Delaney. If they could tell us apart and we weren’t together, they’d ask me where she was like it was weird to see one of us without the other. And really, I guess it was weird. We were always together. At some point, my room mate had given her a key to our room, and she’d started sleeping over. Were we best friends? If someone asked her, would she say we were? What would I say if someone asked me? I spent so much time with her, but she felt like a stranger.
I snapped one day when I came to my dorm after class, and she was rooting through my clothes, already wearing one of my sweaters.
“Delaney, wear your own fucking clothes! Why are you always here?” She froze and immediately started crying. I felt like I’d kicked a dog.
“Delaney. Dude. I’m sorry I yelled at you, but what is actually wrong?”
She sank into the pile of clothes she’d laid out on the floor and looked up at me with pleading eyes. I sat down next to her, and she put her head on my shoulder.
“I like you,” she said. “Don’t you like me?”
“Like you like…how?”
She laced her fingers into mine and tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. I reflexively laid my head on top of hers, my lips touching her hair. Why was I yelling before? She pushed herself upward and rested a hand on each side of my face. She leaned in and kissed me gently on the lips. I kissed her back, hard, and then pushed her away so I could really look at her face. She looked lonely and sad. And something else I couldn’t quite articulate. Why was it so hard to look into her eyes? Feeling a shiver down my spine, I quickly stood up, leaving her in the pile of clothes.
“I don’t actually know you. Like at all.”
She started to cry again.
“How can you say that? We’re the same.”
“I don’t know that! How could I possibly know that when you always just agree with whatever I say? I have no idea what you’re ever thinking. I have no idea what you like.” I suddenly understood what she looked like. She looked scared.
“You do know me,” she said, sounding more like she was trying to convince herself than me. “I agree with you, because we like the same things. I’m like you.”
“Delaney, you need to go home. You can’t keep staying here.” Her back stiffened. Her eyes got even wider.
“Kristen, please. I’m sorry. Please let me stay.”
“You can’t stay in your own room for literally one night?”
“I’ll be quiet. You don’t have to talk to me.”
“Delaney, go to your own fucking room! You don’t live here!”
Bawling uncontrollably and still wearing my sweater, Delaney stumbled out of my room and let the door shut behind her. I left the clothes on the floor and laid down in my bed. What kind of dumb piece of shit was I? I wanted to crawl out of my skin. What would have happened if I had just nicely told Delaney that I needed some alone time? Why didn’t that feel like an option?
I woke up freezing cold and completely disoriented on top of my blankets what must have been several hours later. It was dark out, and my room mate wasn’t home. Was it 8:00 PM or 3:00 AM? Was it even the same day? I reached out for my phone, but it had shut itself off. Dead battery, I guessed. I turned on the light and plugged my phone into its charger. I walked to the bathroom to fill up a cup of water and returned, attempting to turn my phone on. The screen lit up for a moment and then turned black. I tried again. Light, darkness, nothing. Fine, whatever.
I grabbed my purse and decided to take a walk. September had become cool and crisp, and the wind on my face made me feel calm, reassurance that the season was still passing like normal, whether or not I was an absolute fuck up. The campus lights were on, but I didn’t see anyone walking around. I figured it must have been at least 2:00 AM for that kind of quiet. Fine by me.
I looped around my dorm building and up the steep, concrete steps that led up to a path into the woods. The moon was bright, so it was easy to see my way through the trees and into a grassy clearing where I liked to sit. Using my purse as a pillow, I looked up at the stars for a while until a rustling from some bushes caught my attention. My heart pounded. The woods around me suddenly felt dangerous and unfriendly. I almost screamed and then immediately felt silly as an enormous buck stepped out of the brush and into the moonlight. I observed him quietly as he made slow, tentative steps across the grass and into the darkness on the other side of the clearing.
“Goodbye, friend,” I whispered, mostly to myself.
“Goodbye?” A man’s voice directly behind me. I froze completely, unable to even turn my head toward the voice. A tall, dark figure stepped into the light and sat beside me. “It’s been a while, Delaney.”
“I’m not–” He brushed warm, clammy fingers across my cheek and kissed me hard, snaking his tongue around my mouth, licking the inside of my teeth. I pushed him away and tried to pull myself up into a standing position. He held my shoulders down firmly. He looked into my eyes, and I tried to understand his face. His eyes were bright and cruel, and they shifted in his head, lowering and widening, coming closer together and easing back apart. His features moved with his eyes, rearranging themselves into different configurations. A handsome, chiseled jaw, a ratlike overbite, a doughy pout. His hair lengthened and shortened; his skin darkened and lightened. He was impossible to look at.
Hands still pinning my shoulders, he looked up at the moon, his nose becoming long and sharp.
“You’re still you, you know,” he said. “It’s always so easy to see you.” He turned back toward me with a gentle, soft-featured face. “And I’ll always be here for you.”
He pushed my shoulders down against the grass and leaned in for another kiss. I managed to lift my elbow and and push against his neck.
“I’m not Delaney, you dumb fuck!” He seemed to consider this. His hairline receded as he took my wrist and shoved my arm back down into the grass. He swept his other hand up my thigh, over my hip, up my stomach and then pushed down on my breast while looking me up and down. He shrugged.
“What’s the difference?”
What was the answer to that question? I felt hollow, emptied out like a pumpkin for carving. I thought of Delaney’s face, soaked with tears. The way her hair smelled. I looked into the man’s awful, moving eyes.
“You don’t know me,” I spat. And then I screamed. I screamed and flailed and kicked and bit. The man straddled my hips and put a damp hand over my mouth. I kept kicking. I kept pushing. It didn’t matter. I am so small. I grabbed his hair and pulled, screaming again as he reached his hand up to grab my wrist. He smiled across a thousand faces, teeth yellow, teeth white, teeth missing, teeth sharp.
And suddenly I was thrashing in the grass alone. I stood up and monitored the clearing. Empty. I grabbed my purse and ran. I sprinted through the woods, down the path, down the stairs, to my room. I threw up in my trash bin, simultaneously vexed and relieved that my room mate still wasn’t home. I laid on the floor for a while, feeling the stiff carpet on my back as I slowly caught my breath. When I finally reached for my phone, it was already on. 5:00 AM. Sure, fine. I called Delaney and got her voicemail. I called again. I texted her. I called again. Eventually I fell asleep as pale sunlight peeked through the curtains.
My room mate was at her desk doing some homework when I woke up.
“Where’s Delaney?” she asked. I wept inconsolably.
Sometimes I see Delaney pop up on social media. It’s hard to recognize her, because she’s always with a new group of friends, and she always looks like she fits right in. I try to figure out what she’s like, but she slips away and crops up again later, somewhere new. I try to figure out what I’m like too.