by Tara K Ross
They wait, both leaning too far forward.
With devout interest, I stare at the remainder of my cookie. “Ash, these things are amazing. Can your mom pin the recipe?” I take another speech-impeding bite.
She rolls her chair closer to me. “May I take a whirl at fleshing out some more details for you?” She crosses her legs and rests her hands on her knee like British royalty. Oh no. This is Ashley’s let-me-tell-you-how-I-see-it posture. What happened to our white flags?
Chocolaty goodness grants me the ability to respond with a reluctant nod.
“So, Gavin wanted more than you had bargained for and got angry when you didn’t want to put—”
Jade clears her throat.
“When you didn’t respond to his level of interest?”
I shift my foot under my other leg but don’t interrupt.
“And you obviously got distracted by this Kyle guy.”
This time I hold up a finger. “Khi.”
“Khi?” Her forehead wrinkles as if she doesn’t believe that this could be his name. I nod. She continues, “So he is amazing on the guitar. I’ll give him that.”
Jade gives me a reassuring nod.
“But what I don’t get is how you basically ditched your gush-crush from the past two years after his first real advance on you ever to immediately throw yourself at this strange, creepy, foreign dude.”
My back straightens at her description of Khi, and I touch my lips, needing to defend him once my mouth is clear. She doesn’t give me that chance.
“Yes, Thea, strange. To not care about the applause after an awesome set, and then to walk off to some middle-aged barista. He barely looked at you while you were talking to him. Yes, I noticed. And how could he not with the way you were put together?” She throws up her arms.
I scratch the back of my head, not out of anxiety, but from frustration. How can I defend myself or Khi when she tosses this perspective at me? Fleeting glances and a silence punctuated only by chewing fills the room.
Jade finally breaks through the tension, “So, are you and Khi like a thing? I mean, you obviously like him, right?”
After licking away the nonexistent crumbs, I respond. “Yeah. I mean, no. It’s hard to know what we are. We’ve only spent a few hours together, but there is something so real, so authentic about him.” How do I describe him in a way that will extend beyond the physical? That will explain how the accolades are secondary to why he creates. “There’s this part of me that exists when I talk to him that I’ve never felt before. It makes me second-guess who I am. Do I like him? Yes. Do I know how much?”
I shrug, wishing I could answer her question more concisely. I have never felt so transparent and yet been so vulnerable with a guy before. The way he watches my expression, reacts to my tension, attunes to each sensation. Like a reflection. It is more than physical with him. His clear eyes and après-ski vibe doesn’t hurt. But it’s his spirit that is so real. So alive. So infectious.
“When are you going to see him again?” Jade interrupts my thoughts.
“Wednesday after school.”
Ashley squashes my daydream. “You’d better figure out how you feel by Friday’s rehearsal. We need to strategize damage control with Gavin.” She passes me a folded pile of papers. “Ms. V gave me these before leaving. She’s rethinking the whole skit for the festival.”
“What?” I unfold the paper. Three paragraphs cover the first page.
She pulls out a second set of sheets from her bag and starts reading. “She doesn’t think that our version of Romeo and Juliet will float well, given Malin’s and Nora’s recent decisions.”
“Just Malin,” I correct her with a weighted glance.
“Anyways, she thinks we should go with a more uplifting parody.” Her voice imitates Ms. Vosper’s overprojection with surprising accuracy. When our eyes meet, she smirks.
Jade moves closer to her to read as well. “What, like with Romeo and Juliet not killing themselves at the end? That’s sacrilegious.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t put it past her.” Ashley flips to the end of the pages. “I haven’t had a chance to look.” She scans and, without breaking focus, reoffers what’s left of the platter of cookies. “Either way, you’ll want to state your preference sooner than later, or you may have some very awkward blocking ahead of you.”
I also leaf to the end. “Let’s hope there is an option for Romeo to run away during the first few scenes.” I jest. Mostly.
If only fixing real life could be that simple.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Breathe in the smell of coffee, breathe out stress. Despite my love of drinking tea, the smell of freshly brewed coffee pulverizes my stress like roasted beans through the grinder. M&H should capsule the scent. Nadia could become the newest dealer in town. From across the café, she wipes a frothed hand on her logo’d apron, and I imagine it with a new tagline: Quick fixes for caffeine addicts.
I should tell Tom my scented dream scheme. He’s a self-proclaimed coffee aficionado now, largely due to his two-hour sunrise commutes each week. Our breakfast conversations have become centered around this newest passion. But he would hate it. Just imagining Tom’s kick beneath the breakfast table causes phantom pain to hit my shin. The nerve of suggesting such a blasphemous substitute to his new lifeblood. He is so passionate about the whole coffee experience he’s created a mission to convert me over to the dark-roast side. Twenty-two different Keurig flavors later, and I am still a coffee spectator—betrayed by an aftertaste that trumps my morning breath. I keep letting him try, though. I still love the lingering smell on Monday mornings and crave the calm of our mundane weekend banter.
M&H’s beans do not help today. At all. The bouncing of my foot on the base of the table could rival a five-point-oh-magnitude earthquake. Any attempt to stop the surges only causes my upper body to tremor as if I’m in withdrawal. Which I guess is accurate. I have been waiting to see Khi since Saturday, and it feels like an eternity of junk has happened since then. Ashley and Jade helped some, but they still don’t know most of what is going on. For whatever reason, Khi is my fix. I trust him, and he wants to listen. I hope.
A bitter gust of wind hits the back of my neck, and I twist to see the door in response. The fashionista twins, who likely frequent M&H more than I do, suck out my excitement like the wind behind the door. Their fleeting glances and whispered huddle jolts me back to shuddering the table. Of course, they are talking about me, but any details are covered by the Spanish guitar music Nadia chose today. They cackle above the music, and I catch, “Can you get any more stiff?” within a pause in the music. And the rumors have reached grade twelve. Brilliant.
I swipe at my phone with a quivering thumb. It’s only a quarter to four. I have been extra anal about being on time lately, but why did I show up at my high school’s hangout half an hour early for a … I don’t even know what this is.
The urge to start plucking becomes overwhelming. I need a distraction. I grab hold of the script revisions with both hands and leaf through to the last option—the least interactive, most congenial scenario. My plan: show up to rehearsal on Friday—with a strong antiperspirant and no perfume or siren-inspired-clothing—and blow them away with my memorized lines and inspired blocking for option number three. Gavin is too busy ruining my life to contest, and the only other person who will be affected is Declan, the guy playing Paris. Declan narrowly missed out getting the lead, so I highly doubt he’ll mind being bumped up to the levelheaded mediator who takes the tragedy out of the story and supports Romeo as the new star of the show.
My modified Shakespearean world emerges with the closing of my lids. With each whispered phrase, my own family feuds, strained friendships, and failed romantic attempts become whitewashed into the scenery. I dig deep into my memory to recall the longer segments. Just as I confront Romeo about the fatal outcome of his feud with Tybalt, the smell in the air changes.
The addictive scent of coffee fights for territory with t
he more familiar smell of vanilla. I startle from my imaginary world. Someone places a London Fog next to my script. The afternoon light targets the freckles on Khi’s forearm. He takes the seat across from me and sets his coffee on the table. He pulls out a leather-bound book from his satchel and opens to a page filled with fine print and pen-filled margins. “Please, continue.”
Not a chance. With one spastic movement, I slide the pages and myself out of view under the table. “How long have you been listening?” I squash the script into my bag and then pretend to reorganize, waiting for the heat to recede down my neck.
“Don’t stop. It’s lovely to hear you so engaged with … is it Romeo and Juliet?”
He was listening way too long. “Well, if teen angst is lovely, then you have come to the right table.” I freeze in my feigned effort to organize. “Did I just say that as my greeting? I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He slides a yellow plate heaped with a preferentially sliced piece of heavenly hash cake next to my tea. “I hear chocolate is good for teen angst.”
“You must have a sister or a long line of girlfriends to have such wisdom.” I attack the cake that put M&H on the Ridgefield map, ignoring all southern niceties that Etiquette Ashley is shouting inside my head. “I’m sorry. I should be sharing. Or waiting. Do you want some?”
He closes his book while laughing to himself.
“Really, you are too kind. Or naïve.” I resume wolfing down the cake. Way to make a lasting impression, Thea. “Are you sure you want to sit here?”
“Can’t think of anywhere else.”
“You may not feel that way if I start venting about my latest teen angst. You’re going to think you should’ve dropped the cake and run.”
He stations both his hands around his mug of coffee. “Try me.”
“Okay, but I warned you.”
Out comes an unnatural spewing of every horrible event since Saturday. His whole body appears engaged and attentive to each new complaint and melodrama. If only I could focus my attention for five minutes on the way he soaks in every trivial word I speak.
I pause from complaining about my parents’ incessant fighting to take another sip from my mug, the last glorious gulp. “How did you know I drink these?” I hit the home screen on my phone. An hour has slipped by.
His gaze slides to Nadia at the counter. “It pays to live with the owners.”
I shift between Nadia and Khi and then back to Nadia.
“No, we are not related. She and Bernard are my house parents while I’m visiting Canada.”
“What? You’re only visiting? Like on an exchange?”
“Something like that, except there isn’t anyone in Iceland in my place while I’m here. I came to serve for the year. Nadia listed herself as a billet for volunteers after her own service project to Ecuador last year.”
It’s my turn to lean in. Time to stop dominating yet another conversation with a pity party devoted to me. Show that I can think outside of my own life. My own rather insignificant life, from the sounds of it. I didn’t even know Nadia had gone away to volunteer. I’d just assumed it was to visit family. And who would leave Iceland to come to a nothing suburban sprawl to volunteer for a year?
“Serve?” I ask. “You’re not getting paid, and you’re not traveling for fun. You just came to help?”
“Yes.” He says it as though it makes perfect sense. Perfect sense for a senior citizen incapable of traveling to more adventurous places.
“Where do you volunteer? How long have you been there?” My chest starts to balloon. “You’re not leaving soon, are you?”
He can’t be visiting. The first guy ever I can talk to is on some goodwill field trip and could be leaving me next week. Thea, you are supposed to be asking about him, not for you. “Okay, just answer the first question.”
“I volunteer at different places around town like the hospital and the seniors’ home down the street. I go to whoever needs someone to listen to their lives. I want to be a …” He pauses and twists his mouth. “I don’t know the name for it here.”
The conversation I had with Nadia from last week comes to mind. “Nadia called you a luminary.” I hesitate with the last word.
With a gentle laugh, he lilts his head side to side. “Yes, that is part of who I am, but I also want to train in a profession to support people who are having emotional troubles.”
“Troubles, eh? Like parents fighting and stupid decisions with friends and issues with anxiety?” I slide my mug away like the dangling carrot I should have noticed it to be an hour ago.
“Yes, but that’s not why I’m talking with you, Thea.” He emphasizes my name in a way that makes me want to believe him.
Despite the calm in his voice, I start to crumble. “No? Because I sure feel like a test subject.”
The internal earthquake returns, and with no distraction, I dig into my hair, finger and thumb sliding toward the clear-cut patch of skin.
Before I can pull them away, he presses down gently on my remaining clenched fingers. “Thea, talking to you means so much more. This is not career practice. This is me wanting to know you.”
He wraps his hand around mine and gently rotates my wrist palm up. With one hand beneath and one above, he again uncurls my thumb from its gripped cocoon.
“Why me?”
“How can you not know? You are extraordinary.”
There is such urgency in his face and yet gentleness in his touch. With each finger he uncurls, my tension seems to travel to the ridges of his forehead. He remains silent, but his motives couldn’t be anything but pure. He wants me to believe him. And I want to. I want him to help me. To accept me. To want me, broken as I am.
I lean forward and our foreheads touch. I fold in and accept his soundless intervention. “I just keep screwing up. Even with this gift.”
“You said the other night that you feel like you’re losing a part of who you are.”
I nod against his forehead.
“Maybe you need to lose a part of who you are to make room for who you could be.” He sits upright. He wants me to look at him, but I can’t.
Instead, I tilt my head toward the window. The sky hangs low, draped with heavy clouds that further suffocate me in my confused state. Tree branches strain against the gusting force of the wind. The last of the wilted leaves fly off in chaotic directions.
“How do I know what part to lose?” My recent attempts to change make me cringe.
He takes a sip and stares out the window with me. He seems to focus beyond the trees, toward my school. “What if you were not alone in deciding who you could become?”
I huff in defeat at the idea.
“Hold on. Give me a chance. What if you could feel what was right and not what the world tries to convince you is right?”
Through the layers of maple branches, I peer in the direction that still holds his attention. “What do you mean?”
He points at the half-mast flag marking the front of Ridgefield Secondary. “Think of yourself like that flag. If not tied to something, you would toss aimlessly, caught up in whatever the trend of the week happens to be or by whomever you are currently aiming to impress.” His voice rises at the end; he knows all too well who that is. Was. “You become lost or caught in a snare when you seek to please everyone. And then you become someone you don’t recognize. Let’s say you could find an anchor instead. Something strong and deep to help you stay grounded.”
“I’m kind of following.” Does he realize how close his analogy is to my reality?
He continues, the excitement audible in his speech. “Now imagine you are tied to something, like a rope that lifts you higher than you could go on your own. You’re raised above the everyday trash and traffic. You see that real beauty is around you in much simpler things. Now put it together. A cement foundation, a connection point that lifts you above the everyday distractions. You always know where your place is in the world. And who you want to be becomes as clear as the air around
you.”
“Yeah, but that flag doesn’t look too happy, even with its safety net.” The rippling material tears back and forth with each gust.
“But the wind is necessary. Think of it like your personal map, guiding you in the direction you need to go. Sometimes strong and exact. Other times gentle and inaudible. When this wind—let’s call it an invisible spirit—rushes against me, there is relief. I know I’m safe and secure, rooted to a center, rather than swept off without awareness.” He pauses and takes another sip. “I would rather feel the wind, even if strong and abrasive at times, then be stagnant in a space with built-up walls.”
He turns from the window to me, and the intensity in his face softens. Does it soften for me? Or is he just passionate about feeling this magical wind? “This is how you can live. Not striving to go somewhere or be someone you are not intended to be. You can know yourself and become more aware of and yielding to the storms that will come.”
I repeat his last words: “That will come.” I can’t help but smile back at what seems like the simple and honest intentions of his words, even if they do sound a tad strange. “What if I am a flag, and I’m stuck in one place. Wouldn’t that become boring after a while?”
“But you’re not stuck. You are constantly changing directions and outlooks, experiencing new things.” He gestures to the flag, now blowing to the north. “You have a forever home as your center and can travel in any direction from there.”
I breathe out deeply. “It sounds great in theory, but how am I supposed to figure out what my center is?”
This time, he does not hesitate. “The center is Love. Pure and simple. Like the perfect parent who welcomes you back, no matter what direction you take in life.”
“No offense, but you’re beginning to sound like a Hallmark card.”
Khi scrunches his nose. “Hallmark?”
“It’s a greeting card company …” I stop; the tangent is not worth the distraction. As much as I feel lost in his explanation, there is a pang building in my chest, a desire to understand. “So, I need to be rooted in some abstract emotion? What if I’ve never experienced it yet?”
