Chapter 4 — Naming the Invisible

Some years had passed and Molly was not that same little kid anymore. She still had her name and still had her ways, but she was a certified big girl now, although she didn’t know quite how to feel about it.

She was old enough to catch the bus on her own and stay out just a little later without checking in. She could understand when adults were pretending and not saying what they meant. Her body had changed and so had the way people spoke to her. They expected more now but they explained less.

She noticed it one afternoon as she was sitting at the kitchen table while her mum talked to her about school subjects and what might be useful later on. The conversation sounded normal and caring even, but Molly felt herself squirm in the chair as if something else had joined them.

“You need to start thinking ahead,” her mum said. “It’s just realistic at your age to at least have a clue about what you want to become.”

Molly had heard this before. Well, maybe not quite in this exact phrasing, but something of the sort. There had been a big group discussion at school about careers. Brenden had taken charge without saying he was doing it and everyone else adjusted around his voice. Molly felt herself go quieter even when she had something to say. She watched how quickly the room organised itself around his tone alone. These people all seemed so robotic to her now. It irritated her that she still didn’t know why. She just felt so out of place all the time and they were so vapid. That was the word. Vapid.

“Let’s be efficient,” he said. “We don’t have all day.”

Ugh, Molly thought to herself.

Molly made it her mission to call Sosta when she got home and that’s exactly what she did. Her friend always had a way of understanding her without needing to nitpick. While Molly was on the phone with Sosta, she stood in the backyard because it was the only place the call felt clear enough to have. Inside the house, there were too many half sounds and interruptions for her to make heads or tails of her own thoughts, let alone hear someone else speaking.

“You still noticing it,” Sosta said.

“Yeah,” Molly said. “All the time now. It’s like once you see it, you realise it was always there. It’s just been treated as normal.”

“That sounds about right,” Sosta said with a laugh.

“It’s strange,” she said. “People think they’re having a conversation, but half the time something else is already talking before anyone opens their mouth.”

“I know,” Sosta said. “My grandma used to say you should always pay attention to what comes into the conversation before the people do.”

“What does that mean?” Molly said with a pained frown on her face.

There was silence on the other end but Molly didn’t mind. She was glad to have someone actually come up for air before rambling.

“She said rooms get filled long before you walk into them. Fear fills them and rules fill them. There are expected but unexplained roles that some people want to play and expect others to play along, too. Sometimes there’s love in there also. But whatever’s there first is what decides how everyone behaves.”

Molly hadn’t found the words to explain the way she felt in the entirety of her life. Every time she tried just to explain it to herself, she couldn’t, and yet, Sosta summed it up in a sentence.

“That’s exactly it,” Molly said.

“My grandma would say you don’t argue with the person then,” Sosta said. “You notice what’s standing between you.”

“That makes so much sense it’s annoying,” she said. “I keep thinking I’m reacting to what someone’s saying and then I realise I’m responding to urgency or judgement or expectation or something else.”

“Yup. She also said if you don’t notice it, you’ll think it’s you or you’ll think it’s them. Either way, you’ll miss what’s actually running the show.”

“I think that’s why it feels exhausting,” Molly said eventually. “You’re never just with the person. You’re managing everything else that’s there, too.”

“Yeah,” Sosta said. “And no one admits it because it sounds weird until you've felt it yourself.”

“Hey, Sosta,” Molly said.

“Yeah?”

“You're an enigma, you know that?”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”