Cheese liked the swings for a little bit. You swing a bit, then you get bored so you swing a bit higher, and then you think — no, this is high enough. Then you get bored of that, so you swing a bit higher, and if you paced yourself, you could get a good hour out of the swings before you ran out of ‘higher’ to get to, and it was time to jump.
Garam Masala took the swing next to him, but he didn’t swing on it. He just kind of twisted on it, round and round.
Garam was cool. Or, he wasn’t cool, but Cheese liked him. His Dad was friends with Cheese’s Dad, which was wild because Cheese didn’t think Donut Joe — Garam’s Dad — had many friends, even though he was really nice. He was more of a ‘read the newspaper and drink coffee’ Dad.
Garam was also like, a browny-red kid with russet hair, which meant ‘dark red’ while being way more fun, and he was a few years older than Cheese, and a lot bigger, but that was cool.
Garam kept twisting on his swing.
“Hey! Garam!” Cheese waited until he was at the bottom of his swing, so he didn’t have to yell too loud.
Garam smiled, but only for a second, and then it was gone. “Hey, Cheese.”
“You! Seem! Sad!”
“I’m not sad.” Garam corrected Cheese. “I don’t know what I am, but I don’t think I’m sad.”
“Mopey?”
“No,” Garam asked, even as Cheese realized that was probably it. It just sounded lame to be ‘mopey’. “Morose, maybe. Pensive.”
Because Cheese was such a good friend, he didn’t point out those were just longer ways to say ‘mopey’. “So, why are you morose then?”
Garam frowned and stopped twisting and spinning. “Can you stop swinging, if you’re going to talk about it?”
“No!” Cheese laughed, “you should start though. Swing together!”
“You mean, like, synchronize?”
“Whatever!” Cheese laughed again, enjoying how the sound of his laugh changed if he was swinging towards or away from Garam.
Garam started swinging. It only took him a few seconds to match Cheese’s speed, partly because Cheese had been pacing himself, and partly because Garam was a lot bigger.
“So,” Cheese said, “what’s up?”
Garam thought about his question for ages before he asked it. “How do I talk to girls?”
“Like you talk to anyone, I guess.” Cheese answered, but then remembered he was talking to Garam. “Talk normal?” Garam. “Aah. Dunno.”
“Helpful.” Garam was extremely sarcastic.
“Why’d you want to talk to girls anyway? I didn’t think you liked talking to anyone.”
“I like talking to you!” Garam protested.
“Yeah, but I’m not anyone.” Cheese stuck his tongue out. “I’m great.”
Garam laughed at that, because he could not handle the truth. “Yeah, you are,” he said. “You’re not a girl though. Even if you dress like one.”
“You mean fantastic?” Cheese looked dynamite in his poofy silk, and any pony who said otherwise didn’t have eyes, or a brain.
Garam nodded. “I mean, yeah, it’s very you. Which is kind of what I mean. You make stuff like that look easy.”
“Sure is!” Cheese agreed.
Garam swung as quietly as the rusty chains would let him. “Not for me.”
“I mean, you’re good at other stuff though. Like, electronics, and chemistry, and stuff.”
“Yeah, but girls don’t like that stuff.”
“How’d you know, if you can’t talk to them?”
Garam swung. “Well, I used to be able to talk to them, and when I did, they didn’t like that kind of stuff.”
“So you can’t talk to girls anymore?”
“Not since I started liking them, I guess.”
“Oh.” Cheese swung a bit too. “Talking to people you like is way harder, which doesn’t even make sense.”
“It makes a lot of sense.” Garam countered. “If I don’t like someone, then it doesn’t matter if I say the wrong thing. And if I just like someone like a friend, then I don’t care. But if I like someone…”
“Doesn’t that mean it’d be easier if you started liking someone you were already friends with?” Cheese asked hopefully, but Garam shook his head.
“Way harder! I think. Maybe.” Garam paused. “Wasn’t it like that with your mum and dad though?”
“It’s weird to think they weren’t ever together, is all.” Cheese thought about it. “What about yours?”
“Same, I think. Dunno. I don’t know how Dad survived without her.” He laughed. “It’s like thinking about how Princess Twilight used to be his favourite customer in Canterlot, because she’d just order bad coffee and read a lot. It’s weird to think of the Princess being a loner.”
“Woah. Yeah.” Cheese’s eyes went wide. It was weird, but his Mum told him Aunty Twilight really was like that. “What do you think we’re going to be like?”
“I dunno. I don’t think we’ll change that much,” Garam answered. “Will we?”
“I like how everything is now. I don’t want stuff to change that much,” Cheese agreed.
Garam’s swing creaked as he sped up. Cheese swung his legs a bit to keep up. “Stuff was easier when I didn’t care about girls, I guess.” Garam paused, thought about it. “Or, when I cared the normal amount.”
“Just don’t think about it then.” Cheese shrugged.
Garam slowed down, and Cheese slowed down with him. It was weirdly harder than speeding up. “I like thinking about it, though,” he admitted. “I just wished I was the kind of guy that girls like, you know?”
“What’s that?” Cheese was curious what Garam thought that even was.
“Like. Tough. Or sporty, or stuff. Or pretty. Or assertive. Or popular, I guess.”
“Garam, you’re describing the bullies in movies.”
“Yeah!” Garam blurted out, “and they always have girlfriends!”
Cheese thought about it. “Yeah, I always thought that was kind of weird.”
“Why don’t girls like nice guys?” Garam pouted, and Cheese laughed.
“They do though! Guys that are nice are the best.”
Garam swung morosely, but he sped up, which was more fun. They’d been going a little too slow. “They never do in movies or stuff.”
“You really believe that?”
“Well, why would they write movies like that if it wasn’t kind of true?” Garam didn’t sound like he believed what he was saying, he just sounded like he wanted Cheese to explain why it was wrong.
“Because it makes a better story when they lose their girlfriends for being jerks. That always happens too.”
Garam laughed. “Not always! Sometimes their girlfriends are jerks too!”
“Yeah, see.” Cheese agreed. “Were you really going to try being a jerk just to see if it made girls like you more?”
Garam didn’t answer, which was his answer.
“You make it really easy to forget you’re the smartest kid I know.” Cheese accused him.
“I’m not good at this stuff!” Garam blurted out. “This stuff is way harder than maths!”
Cheese just laughed, because the idea that talking to people was harder than maths was the most obviously wrong thing Garam had ever said, except for him specifically.
Garam was weird. He was never mean on purpose, and he obviously thought really hard before saying stuff, but it just made him be too honest more specifically. He had a habit of saying the wrong things with the best words to say it with.
“Just try to be the kind of guy you really like, and find someone who likes that too,” Cheese suggested. “If you be a jerk to get girls, you’re going to find someone who likes jerks.”
“I thought it was about being confident, and all the confident guys seem like jerks.”
Cheese shrugged. “I dunno. Would you say I’m confident?”
Garam laughed, then he thought about it some more. “Actually you’re probably the most confident pony I know.”
“My Mum says I have a very healthy self esteem.” Cheese beamed.
“I just don’t really think of you as confident ‘til you asked. It seems different, somehow. I normally think of like… Sugar’s Dad, I guess.”
“Sugar’s Dad’s super cool! But I think he’s pretty shy.”
“What? Really? But he seems so… you know.” For once, Garam really didn’t have the right words. But Cheese knew what he meant, anyway.
“Yeah! I was surprised too!”
“I guess your Dad is really confident, too, and he’s like, the only guy my Dad hangs out with. And your Dad is like, too nice.”
“No such thing!”
“You would think that.” Garam smiled. “How’d you know so much about what girls like anyway?”
Cheese shrugged. “I just like boys too! So I don’t have to think too hard.”
Garam blinked. “What, you mean like, like you like girls?”
“Yeah, I like both.”
Garam paused, and spent a lot of time working out how to say the wrong thing with the right words. “Do you like me?”
Cheese snorted. “You’re not my type.”
Garam seemed disappointed and relieved at the same time, and couldn’t decide which he was more. “What is your type, then?”
Cheese hesitated. This was dangerous territory. Now he was admitting things! He shouldn’t say! But if he didn’t say, then he didn’t get to talk about— “Bubblin’ Squeak.”
Garam skidded to a stop at the bottom of the swingset. “Really? Him?”
“Yeah! His Dad’s from Trottingham, and his Mum’s Coltic, so he’s got that accent, and he’s always wearing the fluffiest sweaters, and he looks like he’d be so soft to hug, and he’s a really good actor, but always takes supporting roles because he says they’re more expressive, and he loves his puppy so much and she’s so cute...” Cheese stopped.
Garam was staring at him.
“Shut up!” Cheese jumped off the swings and ran to go hide in the tunnel underneath the jungle gym, but Garam had longer legs and followed him easily.
“I didn’t say anything!”
Cheese slipped into the tunnel and pulled his knees in front of his face. “You weren’t saying it really loud!”
Garam was too curious to let it drop though. “That’s what makes boys cute, huh? Like, accents and stuff.”
“Only real accents.” Cheese warned him.
“Aw.” Garam paused. “Squeak though? He’s like, all soft. That’s weird.”
“You’re weird.”
“You would know.” Garam smirked, and Cheese buried his face deeper in his knees again.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to be a jerk.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, Cheese, promise.” Garam snickered. “I just meant I didn’t think of it like that. Like, in movies and stuff, they’re always like, cool, and tough guys, you know? Like, even the good guys.”
“You mean, guys like Sugar’s Dad?”
“Yeah, like that.”
“Well, if you could hang out with my Dad, or Sugar’s Dad, who’d you hang out with more?”
“Your Dad, I guess.” Garam worked it out. “Is it really that simple?”
“So simple, you couldn’t work it out on your own!” Cheese shot back.
Garam slid in next to Cheese and nudged him. “I didn’t mean to laugh at you.”
“I know!” Cheese groaned, “I just feel weird.”
“You’re always weird.” Garam was sitting with his shoulder against Cheese. “Never seen you embarrassed before, though.”
“What? Why would I be embarrassed? Just ‘cause—” and then Cheese immediately stopped talking, because even just saying ‘I like Squeak’ was Too Much right now. Okay, maybe Garam had a point. “Okay! Maybe I am!”
“That makes me feel a lot better, honestly.” Garam smiled. “I guess everyone gets weird about liking someone.”
“Well, who do you like?” Cheese asked.
Garam stopped smiling, went pale. “I dunno, actually.”
Wow, that was such a bad lie. Cheese pulled his head out of his knees. “Reeeally?”
“Promise not to laugh?” Garam asked, but then shook his head. “Nevermind. If you’re going to laugh, you going to. Gislaine.”
“Gislaine?!” Cheese spluttered. “Really?”
“At least you didn’t laugh.”
“But she’s so… mean?” Gislaine was a gryphon that was a few years older than Cheese, but not much older than Garam. She wore mesh gloves and way too much eyeliner and she looked like she was entirely made of sharp angles and edges. “She’s not soft! She’s sharp!”
Everything she did was sharp. Her guitar had steel strings, the wire spiral in the notebook she wrote in had glistening points, and she used clear nail polish just to make her talons gleam. She was the opposite of Squeak.
“Sharp tongue. Sharp mind.” Garam smiled, visible even the dark of the tunnel. “She’s not always mean. She’s not as mean as her parents, anyway. She’s really funny, though, and smart.”
“If you like angry sarcasm.”
“I do!” Now it was Garam’s turn to fold his forelegs across his chest and frown.
Cheese was quiet for a bit. “Wow. Maybe this stuff is way more complicated than I thought.”
“I asked my Dad if this stuff gets less complicated when you get older, and he just laughed for like, a whole minute. And then he said ‘no’.”
“Harder than maths, huh?”
“That was dumb. I shouldn’t have said that.” Another interesting thing about Garam is that he didn’t stop thinking about something after he said it. Sometimes for ages. It could be hours later, and Garam would apologize for saying something he realized could have been offensive from, like, three hours ago.
Cheese didn’t know if he liked it about Garam or not, but it made it easier to ask him what he meant, because he always meant something, and he always remembered. “Why’d you say maths, though?”
“I was just thinking, with maths, there’s always a right answer, and you know if you got the right answer or not.”
“Maybe for you.” Cheese grimaced. He hated maths. Garam laughed at that, too.
“Yeah, maybe.” Garam slid out of the tunnel, nudging Cheese as he did. “Hey, want to go get donuts?”
“Yeah!”
“Come on, then.”
Garam could be really cool, even if he wasn’t really cool.