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He laughed. “It’s a start.”
“I pointed to the screen. “Over halfway done.” My stomach churned slightly. “I feel like I am going to need more practice than just the practice questions. I’m just barely getting the hang of it.”
He nodded, “I figured as much.” Trask held up a few sheets of paper. “While you were in your own world, wrestling with inverse expressions, I took the liberty of writing out some practice questions for you. Feel free to FaceTime me or send me your work and I can make sure they are correct.”
“Thank you.” I snatched the papers, looking through them. “This means a lot, but I can’t FaceTime and the pictures would be too small. Could I maybe bring them to you and you could check?”
“Yeah, of course, why can’t you call?”
I pulled out my phone; I wasn’t necessarily embarrassed, but it wasn’t something I flaunted around.
I saw his eyes go from confusion, to surprise, to amusement. “Oh, I see. Some statement?”
I tried to regain some dignity, being frugal wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. So why was I fighting the blush rising to my cheeks? “Believe me when I genuinely say I am not doing this to be ironic. It’s just cheap, and it works.”
“So, is that why you don’t have social media?”
I turned the tables. “Noticed that, did you?”
He shrugged, still smirking at my brick phone. “I wanted to read some of your stories. Couldn’t find hide nor hair of you across Google. Maybe this is all a giant story, forcing me to write silly stories to prove I’m worthy of courting you.” He blushed. “Date you. Take you on a date.”
I shrugged. “I use a pen name. Better that way. And I don’t have social media because I don’t like it. Seems weird, the people I want in my life are in my life, you know?”
“Still,” he picked up my phone and opened and closed it like a toy. “There is something to be said about having a smartphone. The pictures you can take, the quick Google searches, hell, I’d be a mess without GPS.”
I laughed and stretched, rubbing my tight neck muscles. “Oh, believe me, I think it would be one of the most convenient things, I just can’t afford that right now. A plan is like seventy bucks a month and this little TracFone costs me less than a third of that most months. Some months it costs nothing at all.” I glared at him, “Unless someone texts me a million questions about absolutely nothing, then it’s the most expensive month.”
“Hey, I didn’t know that!”
I laughed. “It’s okay, really.”
“You never answered any of my questions.”
“Why should I? If you get your way, you’ll figure them out on your own. Why spoil the mystery?”
He stared at me, long and hard and just when I was about to shift in my seat he whispered, “That’s very true.”
I cleared my throat, still rubbing my neck. “So, you have a story? A story to make me feel something?”
“Yep.” He pulled open his laptop. “Hope you are prepared for all the feels.”
To say I was underwhelmed would be too simple. My eyes flew across the screen, reading about a puppy who lost its leg when it ran away from home and how it was afraid to come back, for fear the human wouldn’t want a three-legged dog. But they did, and all was right with the world again. It was three pages of drivel. I had already planned on being rather lax with my judgments. But this?
“That’s it?” I asked.
Trask’s face was blank. “Missed the mark, didn’t I?”
“Yeah. Pity.”
Trask shrugged. “No, this is the part where I argue the story’s merit and I am so persuasive you must eventually agree, because, as we both know, art is subjective, and who are you to say my art is bad?”
“Art is subjective, but good and bad is not. I can draw a stick figure in two seconds and hold it up to the Mona Lisa. Which is better? Mona Lisa, she required fine skill and talent to complete. That is objective good and bad. Your story was just bad.”
He snorted, and it made me laugh a little. He was undeterred. “No, my story is good, you just didn’t catch the full scope of it, the deeper meaning.”
“What deeper meaning?” I scoffed. “The lost and found trope? The unconditional love? Or are you going to force it deeper and talk about disability and maiming accidents? Because I must say, needing the approval of others for happiness is rather cliché and a poor lesson in what I can maybe, sort of, kind of, qualify as a fable.”
He rolled his eyes.
