by S R Savell
The next wad goes into the collar of my shirt.
There’s no thought. I whip around, lunge at Allyson, still brandishing her spoon, and flip the tray into her face.
“Food fight!” someone screams while she slaps at the hot gunk on her face.
And the show’s on.
I stink like fermented garbage and look like the same.
Knew I’d get those bitches back.
Still smiling, I flip the light switch up.
Nothing.
I flick it down, up.
Run to the lamp, try turning it on. Still nothing.
“No, no, no.”
I slap the kitchen faucet, which does nothing, of course. Desperation curdles into anger, as thick as the layer of chili sauce in my hair. I got most of it off in a quick rubdown at school, but there’s only so much a handful of soapy paper towels and a leaky spigot can do.
“It’s a blown transformer, Ms. Pearce. It’s going to take a while to repair,” the woman on the other end tells me.
“How long is a while?” I dip the napkin in a saucer of water I’ve collected from hammering ice cubes and wash under my eyes.
“A while,” she repeats. “Maybe a day or so.”
I now have two options. Go to work and use the sink or stay home and wait for the water to come back on.
I head to work thinking maybe it isn’t so bad after all.
“God, Michelle, you’re raunchy.” Danny gags, shrinking against the wall as I pass.
That answered that question.
I drop my bag, fall in the chair.
“Go to hell.”
“What, were you Dumpster diving?”
I flip him off.
He laughs, shoots the peace sign, and takes his leave.
Nate is much kinder. Then again, isn’t he always?
One sink shower later, we’re in the bathroom working on my gunked-up hair.
I hand him the shampoo and stick my hand under the faucet, waiting for the water to warm again.
“Okay, two things. One, there’s no electricity at the house, which means there’s no running water.”
“Why wouldn’t the water work?”
“My grandparents had a water well dug when the house was first built. So anytime the electricity goes out, the water does too because the well runs on an electric pump.” I shake my head at their brilliant idea. “Anyways, the lady said it may be a couple of days before we get any, something about a blown transformer. Two, I smell like chili and shit because I kinda started a food fight in the lunchroom.”
I smile at his dazed expression.
“Yeah. It’s been a day.”
I stick my head under the spluttering stream and get to it. There are dry patches and soaked spots when I’m done, and I hold my hand out for the cup.
“I can, uh, do it if you want.”
“Uh, yeah, thanks.”
Together we get the rest sudsed and rinsed. I wrap my head in a towel and offer my right hand. “Thank you, good sir.”
He grins, shakes my hand. “You’re welcome.”
“You want a rinse while we’re here?”
“Uh, well. If you don’t mind.”
I fix my towel crown. “Let’s get to it.”
It doesn’t take long, just a few cups and we’re through.
“I feel like I’m at the beauty shop.” He chuckles.
I take the towel from my head and wrap his. “Girl, let me tell you, today’s been bad, but I know it’s gonna get better.” I poke his cheek. “Know what I mean, girl?”
“I know, girl. I know,” he says, undoing the towel. He gives it a quick rubdown and shakes his head, hair fuzzy and wispy.
My fingers brush over it.
He smiles, pats my hand.
My brain grasps at an excuse for him to keep touching me.
I can’t think of one.
So back to work we go.
The house is still lightless when I swing the door open.
I pull out my phone and maneuver my way to the table, where I left the candles and flashlights.
We rid the fridge of anything too perishable, downing half a gallon of milk, a cantaloupe, a pint of yogurt, and three boiled eggs. When that’s done, we collapse on the couch, letting the dairy/fruit/protein ferment in our guts.
“I think that was a bad idea,” I groan, pushing my face into the couch.
“You feel sick?”
“You don’t?”
“No. Can I get you anything?”
“I’m fine.” I click the flashlight on. “Want to play shadow puppet charades?”
“Sure.”
The next two hours are the best I’ve ever had in the dark. We tell ghost stories and play shadow puppets, listen to music, and talk some more. We’re just finishing a game of Sorry when the rattle of the knob steals the light to the door.
“Hey, kids.”
“Hi, Ms. Yates.”
“Hey.” I sneak one of my pieces two spaces.
Mom disappears into the kitchen, carrying what looks like a case of bottled waters.
“Your turn.”
He reaches out, but instead of taking his piece, he moves mine back two spaces.
I flash the light on him and see his shadowy smile.
“Cheating, Michelle?”
“You know it.”
Mom eventually goes to bed and tells me I have to be in mine by midnight. Oh, and she’ll be checking.
Imagine, a curfew in your own house. The stupidity is boundless.
Ten minutes before midnight, and no one’s won the game.
“Shut your eyes,” I say, shielding his face with my hand.
Nate does, smiling like a little kid.
I shuffle his pieces on the board and a few of my own. We’ve invented our own new mini game within a game. Every so often we shut our eyes while the other person shifts the positions of the board pieces. Each time the number of moved pieces goes up. If we can’t get them all, we lose a turn. We’re on four and he’s gotten them all back in the right spots; I’ve lost one turn.
“Go.”
It takes a minute, but he gets them all back in order.
I think.
“Wait. Was that there?” I flick the light over the board, hitting the rewind function of my brain.
“I’m not sure.”
“We need a third player just to watch us play.” My arms twine over my head, and I stretch from the bottom up, back popping in a couple of spots. “You done for tonight? I call your win.”
“Okay.”
We clean up and say our good nights, agreeing to play again tomorrow with even more screwy rules.
I’m at the stairs’ bottom when I hear him, a voice without a form.
“Michelle?”
“Hm?”
He sounds weird, uneasy.
“Never mind.”
I turn the light on him.
“What, Mr. Slater?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Tell me?”
He fixes the covers, brushes his hair back. “I, uh. Well.” He exhales, rubs his shoulder. “I wanted to say . . . I care about you. A lot. And I’m glad we’re friends.”
I can’t help it, what I say next.
“Aw, I love you too.”
He looks at his hands.
A door slams. “Michelle!”
“Go,” Nate whispers, waving frantically.
“I’m sorry,” I say and sprint up the stairs.
I consider trekking downstairs to apologize, but I don’t want to rouse the she beast from her pit. I don’t even know if he’s upset. I would be, but I’m an emotional junk heap.
A half hour later, I’m in that awkward too-tired-to-sleep mode that makes me want to knock myself out. An hour after that, I consider getting the NyQuil. Sometime after that, I’m willing to settle for head trauma.
The last thing I remember is seeing 2:54 on my cell screen.
The next morning, he’s already forgotten the whole deal, so I can
get back to my normal circadian rhythm. Fluctuating above and below the awake level is my entire school day. By the time Nate comes to get me from work, I’m actually kind of rested from all the ten- and fifteen-second blurbs of unconsciousness.
The door jangles.
I glance up from book number four. “You don’t have to walk me home. I know you’re tired.”
In order to help Mother Dear, he offered to walk me to the bus station at night, even on the ones when he doesn’t work at the store, to save her the extra effort of fetching her only child.
Sad, isn’t it?
He checks the wall clock and flips the Closed sign outward. “I like walking with you.” The smile is honest and sweet. “Besides, there are crazy people out there.”
“And who’s going to protect me from muggers? You?” I shoulder my bag and grin.
“Always.”
We get home in one piece and study together, back at the kitchen table. I begin to wonder if Mrs. Fanna sprinkled some fairy dust in here because it’s where all the magic happens.
“Wait, so the triangular method has to have a one where?”
“On the top left, I think,” he replies.
I glare at the paper and push the book back.
“What?”
“Bullshit. I call bullshit.”
“Why?” he asks, brow furrowed.
“Because you’re the dropout, and I’m the one struggling.”
“That’s bad?”
“Uh, yeah. How am I supposed to help you?”
“You do. You’re the only reason I’m getting anywhere.” He erases something and brushes the residue away.
“Yeah, well, don’t keep counting on it.”
He tilts his head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t remember it being this hard when I slacked. Break time?”
“Okay.” He shuts the book with care. “So how long do you think it’ll take me?”
“You? Two weeks, tops.” I take a swig of tea. “Me, however? I may not make it to grad.”
“You shouldn’t say that.”
“You’re right. I need the money.”
And then I notice the change in him, a subtle unquiet.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I’m just—”
What? Stressed? Tired? Nathaniel works three damn jobs without complaint. I’m moaning because my bwain is stwuggling.
“Being a bitch,” I finish. “The next time I start that, slap me.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Well, you should.” I flip open the book and jab an accusing finger at the example on the page. “Explain.”
He says it simply but effectively, and I get every word.
“You should reconsider working construction.”
“Why?” He’s clearing off the table, piling books and papers into two separate stacks. I notice now how the house seems to have been slowly cleaning itself these past few days.
“Because you’re a good teacher. And have you been cleaning?”
His back goes stiff, and when he turns, his red face tells it all. “I just got bored, and um . . .”
I walk over and take a couple sheets of paper, smiling. “I’m not complaining. And mi casa es su casa, remember?”
He nods, still sheepish.
I don’t know how it happened. I just know it did. And when I realize that his lips are on mine, I don’t pull away.
The kiss is brief, sweet, and he pulls away faster than I want him to.
“I’ve never seen your face that color,” I comment. My ears are hot, and I pull up my hair impatiently, trying to give them room to cool.
He drops his gaze, running a hand over the bright red of his cheeks and jaw. “Yeah,” he replies.
All the blood in my head seems to have swollen my tongue, leaving me repeatedly pushing a too-short bang out of my face, trying to jam it into the mass of hair.
“You wanna make a crane?” I blurt.
“Huh?”
“I was going to make cranes. With this paper.” I look at the paper now crumpled in my fist. I snatch more from the counter, and a couple pieces shutter to the floor.
He grabs them.
I say, “Sorry,” and wait.
He realizes now, the question. Or maybe he was too stunned until there was some distraction between us. “That sounds fun.”
We sit, and I give him a glance. “We need a perfect square first.” I fold it diagonally, then trim the spare strip.
He does the same, focused.
“Then we straighten this out and fold this way.” My nail flattens the crease before flipping it over. “And then this way . . .”
When it’s done, one tipped-over crane glares at its comrade sitting tall and proud.
I laugh, trying to help his up. “I think yours has a hangover.”
“I think so too.” He tries unsuccessfully to straighten the bottom out. It’s still lopsided, so I lean it against mine.
“I didn’t know you liked origami,” Nathaniel says, working on another.
“I just started.”
He nods, lining up the edges to be folded, his eyes narrowed, lips tight.
“Something else we could do together, you think?”
“I’d like that.” He grins, but it fades fast. “Michelle?”
“Hm?”
He looks to his crane.
“You can tell me. I don’t bite.” I take another piece of paper and start on my second bird, heart tapping against my rib cage.
“Sometime. When you’re not busy. Could we, uh . . . go somewhere?”
“Okay.” I tear the scrap paper to confetti before sprinkling it across the cranes’ backs.
“Really?”
“You want me to beg you?” I laugh, but it’s a near choke.
“No, no,” he says, and the happiness in his voice raises my gaze.
“Hey.”
“Yeah?”
I speak, tone as serious as it gets. “Don’t. Tell. Mom.”
And at his laugh, I throw confetti all down his shirt.
I sneak downstairs that night. He’s stomach down, face toward the door. An arm hangs off the side, long legs propped up on the couch arm and sticking out past it.
“Nate?”
“Yeah?”
When I step forward, the night-light flicks on, and I see glimpses of a shadow forming into a man.
“Can I sit with you a minute? I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither,” he admits, sitting up to give me room.
I settle next to him, his warmth a comfort in the dark. I move closer, our arms touching, then our hands, and then my head is on his shoulder, left arm around his waist. His heart is a river, steady and strong, his breathing a hushed whisper in the black.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask, turning to get more comfortable.
“Everything.”
I feel a tentative hand on my hair. When I don’t object, it starts to smooth it back.
“Nate?”
“Yeah?”
I swallow the words, try to reform them to exactly what needs to be said.
“Michelle?”
“Give me a second.”
For whatever reason, I’m reminded of the day I asked him to tell me why he wanted a job so badly. And it occurs to me now that she is the core of his heart now, just as she was then: irreplaceable, invaluable, a part of him that mortal life, or death, can’t strip away.
“Was it . . . harder for you, knowing her health was declining? Or did it make it easier, knowing? You know?”
It’s slight, tiredness making me think I’m moving when I’m not, a stillness so deep that my body thinks it’s spinning with the Earth.
But after a bit, I know it’s true. I feel myself rocking back and forth, in rhythm with Nate, first our hearts, now our bodies, moving to the same motion.
The words halt and stumble, like a newborn deer struggling for his stride or an old deer losing the power of his own.
“I t
hink it’s best as it was. She told me it was. She said it gave her time to contemplate stuff. To make her peace with God and her life. So even if it was worse for me, knowing for so long that she was going to die, that there was nothing I could do, I feel better knowing she was ready. I think that’s what makes this . . .”
“Easier?”
“Yeah. Easier, I guess.”
My arms tighten their hold.
His do the same.
And when my eyes reopen, I’m in my own bed alone.
We’ve been through all Mrs. Stotes’s books except one. The library’s sending off to another branch to get it. In the meantime, we’re trying to make do with what we’re given. Like Mrs. Stotes said, you have to deal.
Mom hasn’t spoken more than two words in my direction in the last few weeks. If I had known it was that easy to get the monkey off my back, I would have called her a slut years ago. Nate says she’ll come around. I can’t say I really care.
I know he understands.
He never turns away. And he never sees anything wrong with me, even when I can’t face myself. Finding and accepting fault is one thing. But Nathaniel doesn’t see the fault. No matter what, he loves me as me and never recognizes the sick parts of me as sick.
A wise man once said that you need to surround yourself with people who are better than you. That way, you’ll grow.
I’ve grown. Things can never be as they were, not even within the sphere of sameness. I’d like to think we changed each other for the better. Maybe I’m an idiot for hoping that. But I want him to be happy. I want him to feel like there’s nothing he can’t do. I want him to know that every day is a good one because he’s so special, so important to someone.
I want him to feel like he’s made me feel.
And I don’t know how.
We can’t decide where our first date should be. I vote for a backyard picnic, and he votes for bowling, so in the end we decide both.
The world gets in the way, of course. He starts his GED program a week later and then gets his promotion at his shipping job and, right after that, moves into his new apartment, all earlier than expected.
