“Well, in that case I think I wouldn’t mind eating it while looking at the ocean.”
“Great!”She smiled.“I have to go, but do you have somewhere to write down my home phone number?So you can call me, and we’ll arrange hours, etc.”
I gave her mytypicalblack notebook with a pencil between its pages.She lowered the cake box onto the table and wrote the number with her name underneath it.We had known each other for a month by now.We were school colleagues, but we were not in the same class.We would bump into each other unexpectedly, between school buildings when she was busy heading somewhere, or because now we both spent some time at the Community Integration Center.
We would always exchange small conversations during those quick encounters, but we hadn’t crossed into the friends category, the one where you share phone numbers and planned calls.Yet.
“Bring your swimsuit!”she said, closing my black notebook and picking up the cake box.
“But it’s already October.”
“There are no rules about swimming only between June and August.”She stretched out an arm to the bright sun shining outside and struggled to balance the cake box in the other.
I laughed.“Alright then.”
We said our goodbyes, and she walked out the door with her cake box.
Her blonde hair danced in the wind, glowing golden in the sunlight.
And a smile spread across my face without me realizing it.
Chapter 18
Miles
October 11th, 1998
Sunday
I looked at Ella as she stepped outside of her gate, carrying a backpack and a towel on each shoulder.She stopped in her tracks and turned to the line of small white mailboxes next to her.Crouching in front of one of them, she accidentally dropped her towel to the floor.
I had called her yesterday.Neither too late, nor too soon, just before dinner time.I had certainly given it way too much thought.
She had given me her address, and we had agreed that I would pick her up at her house around 11 a.m.
“Hi,” she smiled, approaching the car a few seconds later.“Sorry, I just had to check if there was any mail.”
“No problem,” I replied as she opened the passenger door.“Are you expecting something?”
“Maybe.”She got into the car.“I never know.My dad lives abroad, and we keep in touch through letters, besides phone calls, of course.My sister always calls him; she says telephones are a modern invention, and that we’re stubborn andoldfor insisting on theancient way.”She looked at me, smiling.“So it’s just something I’ve always done.Check if there’s any mail.Every day.”She adjusted her belongings on the car floor.“And when there’s nothing from him, I just bring the other mail home and leave it on the dinner table for the family to see.”
I nodded and found myself imagining what that home would look like.
“And your brothers?”I asked.She had told me about having one sister and three brothers.And I had also seen her leave the CIC saying she was going to do “big sister things.”
“Oh, my dad is not their dad.I mean, my mom married another man after my dad.And they had my three brothers.”
“So you live with your mom, your siblings, and your stepfather?”
“No,” she answered, “he and my mom wanted different things.He also lives far away now.He comes back to see them from time to time, though.”
“And your dad?Does he also come to see you?”
“He does!”she said.“But he has a very demanding job, so most of the time, it’s me and my sister who fly in to visit him.”
Ella’s eyes moved back to the little white mailbox.
The idea of them writing letters to each other felt nice.The idea of waiting eagerly for something that would, without a doubt, arrive.
