Good/Bad Girl

Sketch credit: Jien Goh

“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”

-       Kate Chopin, “The Awakening”

**

“I think your mind is very complex.”

“How? Explain. Is complexity a good or bad thing?”

“Must everything be categorised into a good and bad thing?” he asks her in a tone that is part wondrous, part challenging.

He adds, “Ok, you, good or bad. Try categorising this.”

She laughs. But that has always been her world. She always knows what is good and bad.

You are either a good or bad person. This is either a good or bad deed.

She gets good grades. She looks good. She likes to be associated with good things, good people – not necessarily boring, dull and strait-laced people. These people are simply not ill-disciplined, confusing or deceitful. She is good at the core. She flirts with the Bad sometimes, treading warily along its dangerous territories but she always returns to goodness.

She is good. She is good. She reminds herself.

**

They look at each other as they lean their heads against the metal railings and if you listen closely, you could hear their collective sighs on their last night together as two people who are/were somehow vaguely interested in each other. The bar opposite is rowdy, and filled with soccer fans cheering. Between them, however, the air is still and precipitated with tension and unspoken thoughts.

Gently and coolly, she releases the smoke from her pale pink lips and gazes at the cigarette hanging precariously between her fingers. He smiles. He likes her that way. 

“So… am I good or bad?” she wonders aloud languidly but the intensity in her eyes does not falter.

“Hm, you’re right in the middle,” he grins. His eyes twinkle like that of a child who has thought of the most brilliant answer to a trick question.

That sounds about right. And perhaps that is why they have even made sense. He has seen that in her, right from the beginning. She is good and bad, bad and good, all in the same heartbeat, in the same breath, in the same kiss.

But she is afraid of herself and this newfound world. It is way scarier and harder to navigate without the tags she used to plaster on things and people and…on herself.

She hears more. She sees more. She cries more. She feels more.

“You’re welcome.” Those are the words she hears echoing in the wake of that revelation over and over again from the good/bad boy.

She thinks she has finally found a place she truly belongs.