110 DAYS LEFT
“That’s not exactly what I had in mind when I said you could decorate your bedroom however you wanted,” Dad said from the doorway.
“It’s just a line,” I replied, standing on my bed, Sharpie in hand, as late afternoon sun slanted through the window.
“And tomorrow it will be two?”
“And then three … And it’ll go all the way up to one hundred ten. Then we’ll paint it over, go back home, and pretend this semester never happened.”
He sighed his professorial sigh, adjusting his glasses. “Are you trying to tell me this quaint month-to-month rental is the proverbial prison?” Dad was a walking stereotype of a college professor: myopic, balding, lactose intolerant. And it was going to be the two of us, alone together, for exactly one hundred and ten days in a new city, in a new state, at a new school, for my first semester of seventh grade. All of this while life went on without me, back home.
“Come on, Esther,” he continued. “You said today wasn’t totally awful.”
“It wasn’t,” I sighed, jumping down. The first day of school (the classic half day) had been fine. Mostly because it had ended at eleven thirty. Before lunch.
“Did you meet Ollie?” he prodded. Apparently someone Dad worked with had a kid in my grade. Marianne told me Ollie’s pronouns are they and them, Dad had said that morning before I’d left the house. I’d heard of that; an eighth-grader back home used they/them pronouns. Look out for them, he’d encouraged. They could be a friend. I’d nodded while internally rolling my eyes at the idea that having a random connection to one out of hundreds of people at a new school could make anything about this move less terrible.
“They weren’t in any of my morning classes,” I replied.
I could tell by Dad’s wrinkled brow that he felt sorry. About everything. And I knew I should tell him that it was okay. That I’d settle in and the semester would be fine. But I couldn’t. Or I wouldn’t. And I wasn’t sure which made me feel worse.
The doorbell rang, saving me from the need to say more. “Let’s go, Dad,” I said. “Pizza’s here.”
Outside, we sat on the peeling front porch steps, the pizza box between us. North Carolina was a different kind of August-hot than Saint Louis, and humidity draped invisibly from the overhang, southern-style. My thighs stuck to the steps. Two blocks from not-home, I envisioned the dim, after-school hallways at South Campus Lab School and laid my half-eaten pizza slice onto a napkin. More than anything else, I’d been dreading my first lunch period as the “new girl” ever since April, when Mom and Dad had broken the news.
“Your dad can’t pass up this visiting professorship,” Mom had said plainly when they’d sat me down on our living room couch.
“And you can’t stay here; Mom’s work is too unpredictable right now,” he had chimed in.
“Mom, you’re self-employed,” I’d reminded her. “Couldn’t you just move your art studio to North Carolina for four months?”
Silence.
“That’s easier said than done,” she’d finally replied. “Besides, it’s just for the semester.”
108 DAYS LEFT
I shivered in my tank top as I approached the lunchroom. The first full day of school the day before had been depressing, to say the least. I’d felt totally distracted the entire day. I knew that I couldn’t hide out at the back table again, feeling awkward and sorry for myself, thinking about Emily, Ava, and Beth back home; the lunch table we always sat at; how easy it had been, every day, to walk into the cafeteria and know that the third table to the left of the hot lunch window was our table.
I froze in the doorway of the lunchroom, not used to putting myself out there. Emily and I had become best friends in kindergarten. Ava and Beth had joined our group in fifth grade. It had literally been two years since I’d gone through the motions of making a new friend. This exact situation was what I’d been dreading for five months.
I scanned the tables anxiously. Just as I was about to give up and head to the back table again, I heard my name. “Essie!” A girl named Savannah from some of my classes was waving me over to her table.
“Oh my God, thanks,” I said, approaching her. “You just saved me from eating alone. Being new sucks,” I admitted.
“Believe me, I know,” she said, patting the open seat next to her. “That was me last year.” I smiled to myself at her southern accent. It was different. Cool.
I didn’t even have a chance to ask where she’d moved from. She began introducing me to the seventh graders who flocked to our table with lunch trays and canvas bags as the cafeteria filled. The vibe wasn’t all that different from what I was accustomed to. The students were diverse, just like back home. Savannah was Black. A girl named Luciana, who seemed to be one of her good friends, appeared Latina. “Don’t worry if you can’t remember everyone’s name,” Savannah reassured me.
Diagonally from me, a boy took a seat, confident at a table of girls. He was white like me, with sandy brown hair and blue, blue eyes. My eyes caught his as I turned to my sandwich, and I felt a weird, electric jolt. When I looked back up, he was smiling at me. “And that’s Ollie,” Luciana said, smiling across the table.
Ollie.
106 DAYS LEFT
It turned out that I had art, and then science, with Ollie after lunch. How had I not noticed them the day before? I couldn’t stop thinking about them throughout dinner with Dad at an Indian place near campus that, according to Marianne, had the best curry in the world. (Mom hates curry.) I’d never felt that jolt before. And it had never crossed my mind that I might feel it for someone whose pronouns weren’t he/him.
Earlier that day, I’d watched them from across the cluttered art room. They’d gotten up from their paint-spattered table to rummage through supplies, continually running their hand through their hair (long, flopping into their eyes on top, short underneath). Tiny gold hoops hung from their perfect earlobes; their gray hoodie draped loosely over camo shorts.
Maybe they’d sensed me looking, because they’d glanced over their shoulder and grinned. I’d smiled at them, and then at my half-sketched still life of an apple.
Dad and I returned from dinner. He deposited our leftovers in the fridge, and I flopped on the couch to text Emily for the first time since that Tuesday, when I’d told her how depressing it had been to sit alone in the cafeteria.
I read back over the text exchange not knowing why I didn’t tell Emily what Ollie’s pronouns were. She’d definitely be cool with them. Not telling her wasn’t about Ollie; it was about me. My brain felt like a tangle of wires. I tried to ignore the fact that they lit up whenever I envisioned Ollie’s face.
102 DAYS LEFT
Standing on my unmade bed, I drew the fourth line of my second tally. I’d made it through Week One and Labor Day weekend.
Okay. So things weren’t as terrible as they could have been. The girls at school, Savannah and Luciana especially, were nice. I liked the electricity that I felt around Ollie. It wasn’t the same as being with friends I’d had since elementary school, but it was definitely manageable.
Morning sun splashed the tiny kitchen. Dad would have freaked to see me pour coffee into one of our Saint Louis Cardinals mugs, but he was in the bathroom. (Back home, Mom and I had kept my coffee habit our little secret.) I added milk and sugar and took a sip. The kitchen opened into a tiny furnished living room where everything was beige. Across from our two minuscule bedrooms, the toilet flushed.
A bird chirped outside the open window, and I wondered if Ollie had left for school yet. I took my coffee onto the front porch.
Inside, Dad bustled around the kitchen until it was time for us to leave. I stowed my empty mug under the porch swing. At the corner, he ruffled my hair and turned left. I turned right, pulled out my fig-colored lip gloss, and ran it smoothly over my lips.
At school, Savannah, Luciana, and some other girls sat on the stone steps that rose toward the arched wooden doors. I hoped nobody would ask about my weekend (which had involved watching subtitled films with Dad, eating Thai food with Dad, and browsing Target with Dad).
I joined the girls on the steps. Savannah’s beaded braids swung as she turned to me. “Hey, Essie! How was your weekend?”
“It was boring,” I admitted. “Hey, where did you move here from?” I asked, trying to divert attention from my pathetic social life.
“Atlanta. My mom got a new job at the university. So…”
“My dad, too. Well, he’s doing a visiting professorship. I spent the weekend hanging out with him,” I confessed.
“It’s only the two of you?”
I nodded. “Since we’re just here for the semester, my mom stayed back in Saint Louis. She couldn’t come because of work, and I couldn’t stay with her because she travels too much.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s an artist. She does installation pieces.” Savannah looked confused, which was something I was used to when it came to explaining Mom’s job. “Her latest piece is at this model recycling plant in Seattle. She made a T. rex skeleton for their front entryway out of, like, garbage.”
Savannah raised her eyebrows.
“Yeah, old, cut-up yogurt containers and stuff.”
“Oh. So when she’s not traveling, does she work in a studio or something?”
I nodded. “It’s at home. In our basement,” I said, wondering if Savannah was thinking the same thing I was: If Mom really wanted to come with us, she could have made it happen.
Savannah opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. I looked to my shoes, then to where Ollie was making their way toward us. They flipped their hair out of their eyes and smiled at us.
Zap.
101 DAYS LEFT
Gym class at Lab could have been gym class back home. The track was spongy after morning rains, and the low gray sky trapped the humid air. I’d never minded running.
Luciana, Savannah, and I pounded out synchronized rhythms with damp shoes as, across the field, teachers supervised the girls doing high jump and discus. Boys were stuck with health class this week.
“Did some people get added to our P.E. section?” Savannah panted, pointing to the building door where a few people in green Lab gym shirts had appeared.
“Yeah, a math class got switched, and it messed up a few schedules. Ollie was telling me in homeroom,” Luciana said.
After gym, back in the locker room, I bent over the water fountain for a long time, then went to my locker to change. Savannah and Luciana sat, backs to me, in sports bras and gym shorts, changing their shoes. In front of them, wearing a baggy green shirt, green shorts, and soccer socks, was Ollie. We smiled at each other as their eyes, black-rimmed blue, met mine.
* * *
That afternoon, I completed the second tally on my wall and checked my phone. Emily had texted: How’s Ollie?!
I wandered into the kitchen. Leaves rustled in the warm air outside the open window. I turned on the ceiling fan. How’s Ollie? I didn’t know how to respond. I wanted Emily to know everything about my crush. I just didn’t want to have to tell her this new thing about myself. I wished I could telepathically transmit the message to her: I like someone with they/them pronouns! It’s no big deal even though how I feel around Ollie seems like a Big Deal.
I shoved my phone under a pile of junk mail on the kitchen counter, imagining Ollie’s face again and feeling the familiar twinkle of electricity.
Outside, afternoon shadows flickered on the front steps. I watched them as I sat on the creaking porch swing, wondering what Mom was doing. She hadn’t called for a couple of days. Classic Mom. I knew she was busy planning a new piece for a gallery in New York, but most likely, she hadn’t called because she was trying to “give me my independence,” something she’d gotten big on once I’d started middle school the year before.
And finally, I allowed myself to think of Ollie, because I kind of couldn’t help it. I’d had crushes before. Lots. But this one felt, well, different.
Copyright © 2021 by Ami Polonsky.
