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“As I was saying, it’s obviously done wonders for your teeth.”
I wonder what he’ll say next. I look up and study his expression. Elliott always made inadvertent insults the few times he got nervous.
“Yeah, your teeth are big and a pretty white.” He takes a deep breath. Here it comes. “You could mistake them for a horse’s.”
There it was. I almost run out of the cafeteria in a burst of laughter. If you could only see the look on the poor sap’s face. All the blood drained into his neck. He was a sight to be seen, face pale as death, neck red as beets. I have to look back down at my book to keep my composure.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to compare your teeth to a horse’s. I was only trying to point out how large they were. That is, I mean to say, that they are larger than most people’s. But! Perfectly proportionate to your face. Your face isn't huge or anything! Your face seems pretty average in its proportions. Yes, very well proportioned.” He sighs. “What I meant to say is that you have very beautiful teeth.”
o;Elliott Gray,” I begin, but before I can continue my mother sucks in a quick breath.
“No darling. No. You cannot befriend him. I will not sit by idly while he makes a fool of you again.”
“But mom, he doesn’t know the reason I’ve been isolated by my classmates.” I pause, hating to admit it out loud. I barely whisper the rest, “He doesn’t know it’s because of him.”
“No one could be that dense,” my mother says.
“I don’t know,” my dad laughs, “boys are clueless when it comes to those things.”
“Exactly,” I agree, “I’m one hundred percent positive that he is completely unaware. Besides, I never said I would befriend him again. In fact, I can almost guarantee you I will not.”
My mother breathes easily.
“Well, in that case, continue.”
I sneak a grin at my dad.
“Okay, the easiest way I can explain it is that whenever I am in the presence of Elliott I become acutely aware of myself as well as him, that I am especially attuned to him. I feel things around him that I know are abnormal and I know he feels them as well.”
I'm deliberately vague. They wouldn't believe the details anyway. My dad laughs.
“Oh Julia, that’s just hormones. You’re attracted to one another! Have you never been attracted to someone before?”
I don’t blush at this as normal girls would probably do. My family is strangely open about such subjects.
“Never like this dad. Never like this.”
At school, I arrive at the last possible minute to avoid him. I somehow know he’ll be looking for me and want to avoid him even at the risk of being late. I stride down the main hall and catch him lingering near the main lobby. I took a back entrance hoping he would do just that. I run to my locker for the pencil case I left on accident the day before only to come upon the strangest thing.
The entire front of my locker is a giant painting of intricate flowers but flowers you’ve never seen before, flowers that don’t exist in nature. Striped flowers, black flowers, oddly shaped flowers. Only flowers you would find, in say, a Tim Burton film. I’m a bit taken back by it and cannot understand for the life of me who would have done this. It was as if they knew everything I would have liked and filled it all in, every nook and cranny was covered. No way. No way. I wish I could stay there and admire the workmanship but I don’t have time and am forced to slip into my French class with only three minutes to spare. I arrive unnoticed, except by Sawyer Tuttle.
“Hey Julia,” he says.
I grab the seat next to him and throw my satchel on the ground at my feet.
“Hey Sawyer.”
He frowns, but not in sadness, in contemplation.
“How come you never call me Tut? Like everybody else?”
“That's a strange question to ask all of a sudden. I don’t know, maybe because you never looked like much of a ‘Tut’. To me, you’ve always been Sawyer. Plus, when do I do anything that everybody else around here does?”
“Hmm,” he says, but I don’t know how to interpret this. I don’t take the trouble to ask either. My mind is occupied elsewhere. I’m anxious for the bell to ring, to make sure he isn’t in this class.
“Waiting on someone?” Sawyer asks.
“Huh? Me? No. Why?”
