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“He thinks you like me. Is he right?” he asked anxiously.
Nothing in this world made me panic as much as having to express my feelings for someone else, even my parents and my brother. I had been dabbling in studies of human emotions. It was still very confusing to me, because there were so many contradictions. Strong, positive feelings for someone else could be a real paradox. There could be so much about that person that you didn’t like, and yet you could feel an attraction that would refuse to be defeated.
If I paused now to list what I thought were Greg’s weaknesses and mistakes, I’d be here for an hour. Top of the list was his tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt, as he had just expressed when it came to Mateo. He was too trusting, too eager to please and be pleased. The survivor in me wished he would be harder, more cynical. Years from now, his wife might wish that, too, I thought.
And yet it was exactly that softness, that sweetness, that drew me to him. In a world full of spiders weaving traps for everyone else, he was a butterfly. He was a respite, a harmonious pause in a world where everyone was shouting, pushing, and demanding. His beautiful black eyes with their flashes of green pleaded with me to take a breath and forget explaining the tide or what made clouds in the atmosphere and just enjoy the moment.
“Yes,” I said. “Mateo is finally right about something.”
He smiled. If he only knew how hard that was for me to say, I thought, he would smile like that all day.
Perhaps scared that my brain would retract the statement of my tongue, Greg lightly touched my hand and hurried off to class with a “See you later.”
The feeling of his touch lingered. I gazed after him for a few moments and then went to the library. The prospect of going to my special room to study math theories was suddenly distasteful. Would I go so far as to think it would be boring? This feeling was so rare that I couldn’t recall when I had last felt it.
The librarian, Mrs. Kasofsky, glanced at me when I entered and then looked down at her new shipment of library books. Perhaps nothing affected me as much these days as the way teachers looked or, more correctly, didn’t look at me. It was as if they were afraid I’d ask them a question that would expose something they didn’t know. Consequently, I was practically invisible.
No one else was in the library yet, so I walke
d through the silent space quickly, stepped into my cave, as I was wont to call it these days, and plopped into my chair. I tossed my books onto the desk and sat staring at the wall. Idiotically, every other student in this school was envious of me for having such freedom. If I wanted to, I could get up right now, walk out of the library, walk out of the building, and either go home or go to the mall. No one, not even the school’s security guard, would stop me or even ask me where I was going. After all, I might be off to do some special research.
But who would be with me? Who would laugh with me and enjoy the freedom? How much could I talk to myself? I could go visit my mother, but I’d have to stand there and watch her work and talk with her client more than she would with me.
I opened the textbook and began to read, but after only a minute or so, I closed it and got up, walked to the window, and looked out at the corner of the parking lot and a portion of the baseball field. A tenth-grade girls’ PE class was organizing for softball. Normally, I wouldn’t give them a second look, but for some reason, at this moment, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I could see some of them laughing.
My gaze went to the nearly cloudless late-spring sky. A chatter of facts about the atmosphere, the climate-change crisis, and entropic algorithms of weather systems clotted in my mind for a few moments, until I literally shook my head and forced myself to concentrate on simply observing the girls, the way they ran, the joy they exhibited when one of them made an error, and the PE teacher, Mrs. Grossman, waving her arms and shouting something to get them to be more serious.
It brought an unexpected smile to my face.
I did little else for almost the entire period and then looked at my watch and hurried out of my cave. Some of the students looked up from their reading or writing in their notebooks as I marched through the library with an intensity that probably surprised them.
Someone, a girl, said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Looks like someone really has to poop,” and all the students laughed.
Mrs. Kasofsky pounded her desk with a gavel similar to one a judge would have in a courtroom, and the library grew instantly silent, but when I opened the door and looked back, almost all of the students were laughing at me.
At least they noticed me, I thought, and continued down the hallway, turning at the corner and walking down another until I reached the door of what I knew was Greg’s classroom. The bell rang, and students began streaming out. They barely took note of me. Greg came out talking with Camelia Lopez, one of the prettier girls in his class. She had shoulder-length raven-black hair and a figure that would put her in contention for Miss Teen USA in a heartbeat. Moreover, there was a mature beauty in her face, with her perfectly straight full lips and high cheekbones.
Greg laughed at something Camelia had said. She was so close to him that from the rear, they looked attached at the hip. I stepped farther back. Greg shifted the books under his arm and in doing so turned his head just enough to see me. He paused. Camelia saw that he was looking my way, but she didn’t wait. She joined Paulina Guerra so quickly that one would think she couldn’t be alone for even a second.
“Hey,” Greg said, coming over. “What’s happening?”
It wasn’t often that he saw me during the school day other than during lunch hour or an occasional moment in the hallway. I looked toward Camelia, who was quickly disappearing around another turn in the hallway.
“Donna? Anything wrong?”
I looked at him. He could have asked her, I thought. They looked so perfect together. But he hadn’t.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes?”
“I’ll go to the beach with you Saturday,” I blurted, and then I turned and rushed off as if I had just gotten away with stealing something valuable.
Had I made a mistake? I had made a decision impulsively, without doing my usual full analysis.
And in my life, that usually led to regret.
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