by Sandy Hall
I would think we were bothering him, but he looks at her a lot. It’s like he’s trying read her mind rather than hear what she’s saying.
“It’s cold,” I say. “Come on, let’s play.”
She looks forlornly over at Gabe and then gestures to the group. “We’re gonna go play.”
He does an adorable tip of his imaginary hat brim, so at least I know he has some personality in there somewhere.
“That was painful,” she mutters to me as we walk over to the group.
“I’m glad you noticed.”
“I’m not delusional, Mar,” she says. I just feel bad because on our way here she was so excited and bouncy, and now she’s confused more than anything. The boy you like should never make you that confused.
I roll up a snowball and throw it at Casey. He looks at me with mock surprise and throws one back and then pauses, looking over my shoulder. I follow his eye and notice that Gabe looks sad and small and appears to be talking to a squirrel.
Squirrel!
It’s been so long since anyone came and played on the green and all of these people are here and they’re all playing and I wonder if they know where my acorns are.
I run in circles around them, careful not to get stepped on the way my friend did once. His tail has never been the same. After running up and down all the trees and watching them play for a long time, I notice one of them is sitting alone.
He likes the girl, I can tell. She was sitting by him before, but now she’s gone and he looks sad.
I zigzag over toward him and hop up on the bench. I sit for a while. This is my favorite bench. I’m happy all these people are here, but I’m sad that this boy looks so sad.
“This sucks,” he mutters.
Is he talking to me?!
I look up at him and he looks down at me.
“How’s it going, little squirrel?”
I am overjoyed! Hooray! I’ve made another friend. Maybe he can help me locate my acorns!
“Are you the same one I always see Lea talking to?”
I fluff up my tail, hoping that’s the response he’s looking for.
“I bet it’s not so bad being a squirrel. I bet you’re cooler than I am. Like if the girl you liked spent a half hour sitting with you on a bench you would actually talk to her. But I couldn’t really hear her through my hat, and my hood, and over the wind. And I wanted to switch sides, because that would have been easier, but her friend was over there and there was no way to do it without being conspicuous. And eventually I’m going to have to explain everything to her, but I don’t want her to feel bad for me. And no matter what, I still don’t like talking about it.”
I turn my head to the side to really look at him. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s obviously very sad about it. I try to think of some way to make him happy.
“You ready to go?” one of his friends asks. Or maybe it’s his brother. They both kind of look the same. But the humans all kind of look the same to me.
“Yeah.”
“Want to say good-bye to your new best friend the squirrel?”
“Hey, man. That squirrel’s a good listener.”
“I could be a good listener, too, if you gave me a chance.”
Sam (Gabe’s brother)
Gabe doesn’t say anything for a few minutes and I feel suspiciously like we’re in an after-school special.
“I know you’d listen.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“I just don’t have anything to say.”
I nod. “You don’t have to say anything important. I know everything has completely sucked for the past year and I’m sorry about that.”
“Thanks.”
We walk slowly back to my house. I’d told my roommates to go ahead and get pizza without us. Gabe obviously has something on his mind, so maybe he’ll talk about it if it’s just the two of us.
“I slept through a fire drill the other night.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you even do that?”
“I fell asleep on my good side with an earbud in.”
“Dude.”
“I know. It’s obviously not a good situation. I don’t think I realized how bad it was.”
“You could like … die.”
“I would hope that someone would realize I wasn’t outside and they’d send firefighters in for me or something.”
“Gabe, this is not the time to be glib.”
“I’m not being glib. I’m trying to reassure myself.”
I’m at a loss for anything to say.
“The flashing light did finally wake me up and I stumbled out the side fire exit as everyone was going back in.”
“You should probably get that checked out.”
“I’m definitely coming to terms with that fact.”
“You hungry?”
“Of course.”
We’re about to turn onto my street but instead we walk in the direction of the sandwich place. The least I can do is buy the kid a meatball sub.
Before we walk in to order, he pulls me aside.
“I need to get everything right in my head. Sometimes I get sort of overwhelmed and confused. And then I feel. It’s a lot of … emotions. And I hate it.”
I nod. Those are a lot of emotions.
“I’m still seeing that shrink, and it’s getting better.”
“Good.”
“But today with Lea kind of sucked. It was like everything that I know is wrong became grossly apparent.”
“She talked to you a lot.”
“I couldn’t hear anything she said.”
“It really doesn’t have to be like that.”
“I want you to believe me when I tell you that I’ve come to that conclusion.”
“Cool. Or else I’ll have to pull some kind of big-brother advantage and make it happen.”
He pushes me out of the way and walks through the door, pulling it shut behind him before I even know what hit me.
“You haven’t had big-brother advantage since I got taller than you when we were in middle school,” he mutters as I stand behind him in line.
I don’t say anything.
“I’m going to take your silence as agreement,” he says seriously.
I burst out laughing. I kind of lucked out in the younger-brother department.
Danny (Lea’s friend)
“He works at the library!” I say to Lea as I pull her in for a hug.
“Gabe?” she asks.
“Yes.” I’ve come to terms with the fact that Gabe will never be mine, so I am going to do my damnedest to help Lea woo him. “Let’s go stalk him.”
I thread my arm through hers and we walk in the direction of the library.
“You don’t seem particularly excited,” I say as we get to the front doors.
“Things are sort of weird with him lately.”
“Weird how?”
“Well, they were really good for a while. Like fun and normal and every time I saw him we would talk and even kind of hang out.”
“But…”
“But then I saw him during the snowstorm and I was sitting on the bench by him because he hurt his elbow and he couldn’t play snow football,” she says.
“He hurt his elbow, so precious,” I say, putting a hand to my heart.
She smiles. “I was talking to him, asking him a lot of questions, but like he never answered. He would sort of shrug or whatever but he never talked. I thought we were past that, you know?”
I make my most sympathetic face.
“Anyway, I hate to complain. Because he hasn’t done anything wrong. But I also can’t help but feel like he paid his debt to me that day in Starbucks and now he never wants to talk to me again.” Her shoulders droop. We’re standing near the elevator.
I put a finger under her chin and lift her face up. “Don’t be so sad.”
She pouts more dramatically and pushes my hand out of the way. I grab for h
er hand and pull her onto the elevator.
“We’re going to find that boy and make him talk to you.”
“That sounds awfully threatening,” she says.
“Okay, so we’ll stake out a table with a good view over by the balcony and you can watch him from afar.”
“I like that idea a lot more.”
We find a table that looks out into the tall atrium at the center of the building. We study for a while, goofing off and chatting more than really getting anything done. At one point, Lea looks down to the first floor and freezes.
“Look,” she whispers.
And there’s Gabe with a cart full of books. I can’t help but check out the way his shoulder muscles move as he pushes.
“I guess his elbow still hurts,” she says.
“He does seem to be favoring the one side.”
Lea puts her chin in her hand, watching until he’s out of sight.
“You like him a lot,” I say.
“I do,” she says. “But it’s dumb. He’s just not that into me. When you’re into someone you don’t sit next to them for thirty minutes in the freezing cold and barely say a word to them. You don’t talk to them in class and then ignore them almost everywhere else.”
I nod. She has a point.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says. “I feel pathetic stalking him.”
As we’re collecting our stuff, the elevator behind us dings and wouldn’t you know, out pops Gabe.
Lea studies him for a moment and he waves. She takes a half step toward him and then slightly shakes her head.
She turns toward me and grabs my arm. “Let’s go.”
I’m quiet as we jog down the stairs and out of the building.
“What was that about?” I ask once we’re outside.
“I don’t know. I think I need to stop torturing myself with him.”
“He obviously wanted to talk to you.”
“Or maybe I would have done all the talking and he would have ignored me again. I don’t like this game anymore.”
I frown at her and then pull her toward the student center. “I think you need FroYo.”
Casey (Gabe’s friend)
“You look like someone killed your dog,” I say to Gabe when he comes out of the library after his shift. We’re meeting up to get dinner. He generously offered me the use of his meal plan.
“I kind of feel like someone killed my dog,” he says, frowning as we head in the direction of the dining hall.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“Lea was at the library with some other guy,” he says after what feels like a million years of silence.
“So?”
He shrugs. “So, she saw me and I waved and she turned away.”
“Ouch,” I say, instantly regretting it. I don’t want to fall down this spiral with Gabe. “Maybe you should just ask her about the guy the next time you see her.”
“I don’t know. They seemed close. I didn’t get a good look at him, but he like, touched her face and gave her a hug.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re dating or something. They could be friends.”
“I don’t know, this felt like more than friends.” He gives the dining hall worker his card and tells her he’s using a guest meal, so she swipes it twice.
He doesn’t say much as we get our dinner and locate a table and start eating.
“I was having a really good day,” he tells me as he stabs at his chicken turnover.
“What’s with the act of violence you’re committing on that puff pastry?” I ask. He grimaces in response but ignores my comment.
“I woke up today in a good mood. I was feeling like I could do this. Like life isn’t perfect and it even kind of sucks sometimes, obviously, but things could suck a lot worse. And I’m making money. I have friends, and I’m doing better in my classes this semester. I really like my job in the dorm even. Helping the first-years with their own stuff is really helping me.”
I feel like texting Sam while Gabe is talking to let him know that Gabe is talking, saying meaningful things. I don’t know what to say back though. I’m sort of terrible at emotional stuff.
“I don’t mean to dump this all on you. I guess I finally could see something happening with Lea and me, and then there she was hanging out at the library, getting cuddly with some other guy.”
“It sucks. If I could change it I totally would.”
“Yeah, I know. I appreciate that. I just keep coming back to the fact that if something ever happens with her, I’m going to have to tell her all this sort of pathetic stuff about me.”
“It’s not pathetic.”
He sighs. “I know. I guess I feel pathetic about it, and I don’t want her to think I’m pathetic.… It’s really complicated in my brain. I can’t imagine telling her about what happened.”
“Maybe you should try to start telling people? Other people? About what happened? Maybe that would desensitize you.”
He gives me a questioning look.
“I’m taking abnormal psych this semester to meet girls.”
“Then I should obviously take your advice.”
“I’m just saying desensitization is a valid form of therapy.”
He throws a pea at me.
MARCH
Squirrel!
“Hey,” the boy says. “Are you the same squirrel I was talking to the other day? I wonder if you remember me. Do squirrels have memories?”
He tosses some breadcrumbs from his sandwich. I haven’t had an acorn in weeks so his crumbs taste really good. I’ve had other food, but nothing as tasty as breadcrumbs.
“I was thinking about telling my professor something about me.” He leans his elbows on his knees and then jerks back. “I keep forgetting about my elbow. Usually it just aches a little, but I had to get the pins out of it, so I can’t really lean on it right now.”
I stare at him.
“The thing is, it shouldn’t be a big deal. I hate that I’ve made it this big deal in my head. People are in car accidents all the time.”
I run up onto the bench to sit next to him.
“But I guess people don’t always lose so much in them.”
I twist my head to look at him and he leaves a few more crumbs on the bench.
“Or they lose a lot more than I did.”
He stands up.
“All right, time to go talk to Inga. I think I’m ready.”
He turns back to look at me.
“You really are a very good listener.”
Pam (Inga’s wife)
As I walk through the door that night, Inga immediately drags me into the living room, sits me on the couch, and hands me a glass of wine.
“I had a breakthrough with Gabe today,” she says, her voice excited.
“You do realize that you’re not actually his therapist,” I say.
She gives me a withering look.
“Just checking.”
The withering intensifies.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you quite this invested in anyone.”
“They’re such nice kids,” she says.
I nod and take a sip of my wine.
“Anyway, I just can’t wait to tell you what happened. I almost called you at work.”
I sit up straight, ready to listen.
“Anyway, he came to see me today at office hours,” she says, her enthusiasm so tangible that it’s catching. “And he asked me if I thought he was doing a good job in the class.”
“And of course you think he is.”
“Yes. He said his major is currently undeclared because of something that happened last year.”
“What happened?” It’s in this moment that I realize I’m almost as invested as she is.
“He was in a bad car accident. Apparently he lost his hearing in one ear and shattered his elbow.”
I put my hand up to my mouth. “That’s terrible!”
“It is. And the worst part is that he’ll never play baseball again.”
/>
“He used to play baseball?”
“Yeah, he had a scholarship and everything.”
I shake my head sadly. There’s an injustice there that I can’t quite put my finger on.
“He says he’s getting help though; he’s seeing a therapist because he’s been having trouble coming to terms with some of the aftereffects, particularly the fact that his hearing loss is permanent.”
“Poor kid.”
“The good news is that the school gave him a position in one of the freshman dorms so he wouldn’t have to pay for housing. So that’s something at least.”
“It can’t be easy to deal with.”
“I know, but it also explains a lot.”
“It does. So he was wondering if I thought it would be worth it for him to major in English. We went through the whole thing about job opportunities and what he wants from life. Before the accident he was majoring in physical education because he figured he’d love to be a baseball coach. But now that’s not in the cards for him.”
“Must have been some accident if he can’t play baseball anymore.”
“I know. It just makes me so sad.”
“Did he decide anything?”
“Well, it’s funny. Because after we talked a little more, he started to think that maybe he’d like to be a counselor of some kind. He was telling me about the kids he works with in the dorms and how he really does enjoy it. It was nice to see him so animated about it.”
“Sounds like a good day.”
“It really was.”
Casey (Gabe’s friend)
“Hey!” I say, catching sight of Gabe coming out of a random office building the Monday after spring break. I jog to catch up with him.
“Hey!” I repeat, well aware that he didn’t hear me, so I touch his arm.
“Oh, hey,” he says, smiling.
“What are you doing down here?”
“Um, well, that’s my therapist’s office,” he says, pointing vaguely.
“Oh.” I feel like I don’t know what else to say. “How’s that going?”
He thinks for a minute. “It’s going really well.”
“Cool.”
“What are you doing down here?” he asks.
“I needed a new parking permit, but there’s not any good parking near the parking authority so I had to walk down and now I’m walking back.”
He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “Lack of parking at the parking authority. Sometimes this place is the worst.”
