Between You & Me - By Marisa Calin Page 0,12
my chai makes me feel airless. And yet, for some reason, this is the choice moment I pick to try to tell you why we’re racing through school!
ME
There’s something I’ve been meaning to say.
Now my laughing starts and, clutching my stomach, I think for a minute I might have to stop running.
I laugh when I’m nervous!
YOU
I already know that—
ME
No, that’s not it!
Then there’s the sound of footsteps from the blind spot beside the sports hall and I’m realizing that this is a poorly conceived plan as you reel to the left:
YOU
Plan B!
My forced whisper is louder than my speaking voice:
ME
This is plan B.
Plan A was “Be on time.” I can tell from the way you’re running that you’re laughing. Hey, my laughing was panic induced! You’re headed right for the footsteps and when I grasp your plan, I love you more than life. My look says “my hero,” right before I leap the knee wall and drop down behind it into a ninja crouch. So it didn’t feel so ninja-like. They always land with one knee bent, fingers splayed across the ground, and my knees are by my ears like a three-year-old squatting in a sandpit. I’m lucky I didn’t split my jeans. The first voice I hear is Mrs. Keen, our English teacher. Even from behind the wall she’s as annoying as she’d be if I were faced with her, because her expressions appear involuntarily in my head.
MRS. KEEN
Taking a turn around the garden, are we?
Despite there being no one to see, I make a face. I can’t hear your reply but I’m pretty sure you say, We are, and I smile.
MRS. KEEN
Can I assume you have a good reason? You know I have to give you detention for being outside after the bell rings.
She makes it sound like a regrettable hardship but relishes every moment. Then, to my horror (and I use “horror” in its profoundest form) the door to the theater on my exposed side swings open and Mia steps out into the morning sun. I think I actually pretend to examine a buttercup. So now I’m the girl crouched behind the wall like I’m peeing in the woods on a field trip. Could this get any better? I squeeze my eyes tight shut for a second, hoping it might all go away, and when I open them, I’m still squatting over a buttercup with Mia still less than fifteen feet away. From here, it seems she’s managing not to commit to a facial expression. I raise my chin, meet her eyes, and smile a desperate, desperate smile. This is all for you, I could say, but I just crouch here. I hear Mrs. Keen still talking, her voice sounding a mile away now despite the fact that she hasn’t moved. Then, to my astonishment, Mia’s gaze shifts right past me as if I’m not here at all and she crosses casually through the gap in the wall a few feet away to join Mrs. Keen. I hear feet retreating toward the main school building and, the next thing I know, your face appears over the wall. You stare at me where I am still squatting in disbelief.
YOU
This is no time for a pee.
ME
Ha!
—is all I manage and I remain a little stupefied as you take my hand and pull me up. I’m not sure what to make of Mia’s help. I’m filled with a giddy mixture of horrifying humiliation and this delicious sense of complicity.
Moving again, we’ve passed most of the danger areas, so we head more slowly around the edge of school beside the playing fields and cut across the corner of the field hockey turf to the homeroom window.
ME
Detention?
YOU
Yep.
We’re quiet for a minute. I take a breath, shaking my head at the great dearth of words.
ME
Thanks?
It comes out more like a question because clearly it’s not nearly enough.
YOU
You’re welcome?
Feeling a pang of vulnerability that you might now ask why it’s so important that I stay out of detention, and because my reason will never make up for what you just did, I put all my attention into prizing open the unlocked window. As soon as I get my fingers into the gap and pull it wide, I brace my hands against the windowsill. The sill is only chest height but standing here it seems like a surprising challenge. You stoop to give me a leg up, and pressure-induced giggling threatens to return. I tip off balance, psyching myself into it. Then your hushed voice