9.29b

It must have been three weeks into the school year when I called her and she didn't call back for three days. I knew what caused it. I saw what caused it. And the worst part is that I was responsible, you know? No. That's not right. I'm not responsible, but I sure felt that way.

Anyway, we were in the same history class (I stink at history) and we always tried to sit together. The teacher didn't get it I don't think and he always tried to impose seating charts but we never actually sat in our seats. People would get upset at first when we took their seats but them some of the adventurous guys would sit in other people's seats and we destroyed whole seating charts I would say maybe five times? Five sounds about right. Five is just past four and the first three times the teacher was full of optimism that he could corral his rowdy class and the fourth one he was just angry and the fifth one he really was depressed (I mean really depressed), but I don't suppose he said to himself just one more try but it certainly seemed like that because he stopped trying. He never knew it was us, either. We just sat next to each other regardless. It's not like I ever cheated, but she always told me the right questions to ask in class (she knew which facts I would miss when we read the book) and it always looked to the teacher for all the world that I was the best student ever. That is, until I flunked his first quiz because he asked us for the names of the first great philosophers and I put Jimi Hendrix as a joke (not like I knew and like I said, I stink at history).

She always ate lunch with her back to a window. I didn't get it then because I always did like the clouds better than the roof. So I asked her one time and she said "the people" and I don't think she knew what I was asking, specifically, so I asked again. I didn't know the words to ask, really, so I just repeated what I asked and she said "there's so much more happening in here" but I didn't see it. People eating lunch just don't fascinate me as much as the clouds' shadows chasing each other across the quad and I said so and she said "maybe do you give the clouds names?" I said I didn't know anything about that, and besides they would die too quickly to be good friends, so she laughed and said "then there's more happening in here. People are alive in here" but I had to disagree. Not about the alive, you know, but the more.
One time, I sat with my back to the window because I got there first. When she came out of the bathroom, she looked at me funny and then sat with her back to the crowd. I saw two girls ganging up on a boyfriend they accidentally shared. I saw a guy almost put his hand up a girl's shirt but she didn't really want to in the cafeteria so she stood up so quickly he put his other hand in his mashed potatoes trying to grab her arm. I saw two sets of twins sitting together doing their homework and I know that if I had a twin we would try to sit as far away from each other as possible because it just looks creepy. I wondered if those twins were dating each other. I saw the gay kid singing a song from something I didn't recognize and somebody threw a bottle at him, but he dodged it and yelled something in a sing-song voice that I did recognize and it made me laugh to see the bully turn red. I saw a drug user (I don't say that to be mean but really he did offer me some once and I told him I'd think about it) pile his tray completely full of apples and sit down and peel them one by one with one of the meanest-looking knives I've ever seen. I would have never thought he ate apples. His girlfriend didn't eat anything. I asked why did she always want to watch such sad people doing such sad things. She said "I don't know but . . . I feel sad for a reason afterward" and I said that she didn't have to and she said "clouds help" but the next day I sat facing the clouds and she sat facing the building. It was too sunny for clouds much anyway.
I felt a shadow anyway that day. I mean it wasn't really a shadow but more like a darkness over top of me and I turned around to see what it was and my nose was almost inside the shirt of the guy standing behind me. I craned up to see him and I felt really way too small like I was the last old maid in the pan and all the popcorn had been taken out I mean the old maid is all alone and it skitters along the bottom of the pan full of heat and steam until finally it pops or burns. She looked up at him and said "what, Sam?" he didn't really reply but just kind of looked at her and then walked away. The whole time, he never looked at me even once I mean not just eye contact but the whole thing he didn't even give me a once over to see what or who I was. I asked who it was because I didn't know. She said "Sam" but you know that wasn't good enough. I tried asking more questions but it got awkward fast after she said he was her ex and probably not a nice guy and it was terrible that he had transferred to our school and we should probably avoid him. I didn't really like the idea of another guy liking her and getting her goodbye kiss and maybe more than that because with him maybe goodbye meant hello I mean it certainly meant goodbye for me and I had more than once wondered why goodbye had to mean goodbye. But then, I didn't really have to wonder I mean time isn't infinite.

Her locker was closer to all of our classes than mine was, and so I left my books in her locker. I always got to see what she taped on the door that way. I thought girls in movies did that until I got to high school for real and all the girls do it like it's something fashionable or somehow a good idea. She kept lines from her favorite songs and a picture of her dog and her and the picture from last year's soccer team and one of me, small and in the corner and surrounded by hearts and hidden from everybody else but right there at her eye level when she tried to get her books. I thought it was a good locker because it smelled like her and when I forgot my books there overnight once my books smelled like her for days. I didn't really read quickly because I kept lifting the book to my face and pulling it all in. Then one day Sam tracked us down or something because he was standing there next to her locker. I stood on the other side of the hallway and just watched them. He talked to her a bit and then he stopped talking and kind of backed her into the locker wall as the hallway cleared out. The bell rang, and everything got silent. He turned a bit and looked me straight in the eye for the first time with a stare that felt like he was measuring me with his mind. I must have looked sorry I mean I have always heard how men are supposed to get narrower near the hip but was shaped like the men they draw in cartoons the men who are always tired of their job or their wife or their sandwiches and they're just so tired all their shoulders go to their hips and everything evens out and the cartoonist just has to draw parallel lines from their head down to their feet and bang done. Not Sam. He looked like he could intimidate bears. But I held his stare and didn't let it get to me, at least I didn't let it get to me until he (still looking at me, you know) put his hand on her waist and inside her shirt but he didn't stop looking at me, of course, like he was daring me to do something. I lived in that moment for what seemed like ages. I couldn't see anything but his face and grimace and sneer and derision and his dare to me. Wasn't he too big to be in our class? Wasn't he too big to be in high school? I didn't really feel anything at first but then the fear took me and I could feel a lump in the back of my throat, cold and hard like an ice cube trying to fight its way past my muscles to kill me and that moment wasn't it over yet? No, no I was still living it and it felt like forever. Trapped. I kept staring at him and he kept daring me to do something and
I looked away and down at the ground and not at him or at her
you know thinking back to it she didn't say

anything