Once When You Were Mine

Chapter Two

                                                                       "People living in competition..."

                                                                                             - Boston

It wasn't until much later that morning that I plunked my backpack down on the library table and sat down next to Austin. (I had, of course, missed my bus.) Austin was bent over his physics book, trying to decipher the assignment we'd put off the night before. We had both opted for A.P., or Advanced Placement, Physics this year, figuring it couldn't be much harder than Honors Physics. Were we ever wrong! Instead of problems that asked about the acceleration of a dropped object, we had homework that asked about irregularly shaped objects being dropped on an elevator attached to a spring in a vat of water on the moon.

Austin had the same teacher I did, but my class met last period, while his met during first. Since our buses usually got to school pretty early, we normally met in the library to hang out and to try to work on homework. Most days, we would be joined by other friends; usually our table was full by the time the first bell rang. This morning, only Dave Kendall and Anita Tanaka were there. Maybe everyone else was running late too, I thought to myself. That's Monday for you.

I was friends with Dave from band (he played French horn) but Austin knew Dave better than I did because of all the time they had spent together on the track team. Dave, small, dark, and wiry, ran cross-country; Austin pole-vaulted.

Anita was also in the band, but we had become friends only fairly recently when we found ourselves seated next to one another in psychology class.

After she watched me yank my thick physics text out of my backpack and thump it onto the table, Anita leaned over the table and asked, "Do you want to do our psychology experiment this weekend?"

"Sure! I'll run down to the Five and Dime store after school for some play money." Anita was my partner for our final psych project; we had decided to drop envelopes of "money" around the local mall to test people's honesty. I had "borrowed" the idea from a TV show.

Austin finally looked up, noticing my presence for the first time. "Hey, Meg. You're running late this morning."

"I missed the bus. How's the physics going?"

He sighed. "Well, I got the second problem done, but I'm still having trouble with the last one. My answer doesn't match the book's."

"Let me see what you've got." I pulled my solution for problem three out of my binder and looked at it.

"I think this number should be negative." I pointed to a spot halfway down his homework page.

"No way. That can't be a negative." He glared at down at the paper and then looked up at me, a challenging look in his eye. I knew it well. "You're wrong." He waved his hand at me. It was like waving a red flag at a bull.

"I am not! You're wrong! It's obviously negative!" I tapped the paper, knowing how much I was annoying him with each deliberate tap.

"No, it has to be positive." Austin jabbed at the paper with his finger, "WRONG!"

Austin and I might be best friends, but we bickered about nearly everything. It was like our phone conversation the other night when we kept hanging up on each other. It was our twisted way of showing affection without becoming too awkward. Our spats usually ended when we were laughing too hard to spit out any more insults.

Today we argued amiably until the first bell rang.

"Time for physics!"

"You mean time for you to get proven wrong," I replied, aiming for maximum smugness.

* * *

I had gym, or P.E., as the school insisted on calling it, first period. This was something that was only beneficial when it was warm. In good weather, you could just wear your gym clothes to school and change into your normal ones afterwards. In the cold New Jersey winter, though, it required getting up very early, getting fully clothed, going to school, and then getting unclothed. This daily ritual also gave me zero incentive to spend time on hair and make-up in the morning. After class, there was barely enough time to shed one's gym clothes, let alone to stop and fiddle with one's appearance. I had settled for simply tying my shoulder-length light brown hair back into a ponytail, and sighing at my reflection in the mirror on my way out of the locker room.

This quarter, I was taking "pickleball and basketball" as my P.E. elective. We were finished with basketball and had just begun to learn pickleball, a mysterious sport that involved hitting a whiffle ball over a knee-high tennis net with a ping-pong paddle. Or at least, that was my impression of it. It was actually pretty entertaining; two guys from my physics class, Mike Delhern and Nate Oswell, had gotten into the spirit of pickleball immediately, hurling outlandish insults at each other when they volleyed. Our school's choice of P.E. electives might be odd, but it beat running laps or climbing ropes.

This morning, when I stepped, shivering, into the East Gym, I found Delhern (as everyone called him) issuing some kind of challenge to Nate. When I got closer, I could hear that they were heatedly debating whether a bet involving one's first born could be considered legitimate in the arena of pickleball.

I decided not to intervene. I grabbed a whiffleball and batted it up against the wall a few times to warm up before class officially started. When Coach Fresnell arrived, he took all of three minutes to arrange us in Round Robin fashion so we would get the chance to play everyone in the class at least once. Then he scurried off to God-knows-where and left us to our own devices.

At the end of class, I found myself opposite Nate. He smiled at me and asked if I wanted to serve first. As we played, I began to notice how cute he was. He had dark, curly hair that usually had a decidedly rumpled appearance. He was new this year, and I had never really had an opportunity to notice him before now. He definitely had personality. I had to smile when he took a flying dive for an outside shot. Wait, I nudged myself mentally, you just broke up with Rob. Do you really want to get into another relationship so soon? I'm just window-shopping, I reassured myself, as I hit the ball into the net, losing the game.

* * *

Maybe pickleball just wasn't my forte. I was giving myself a mental pep talk as I headed back to the locker room. Surely I didn't throw the game just because I was distracted by Nate. At least I hoped I hadn't. The truth was, though - I just wasn't very good at sports. I had driven Coach Fresnell to distraction during our basketball unit, constantly tripping over my feet and letting the ball get away from me.

Even Austin had given up on me. He had talked me into going running with him once. Annoyed that he had left me in the dust almost immediately, I had disgustedly walked back home, borrowed the car, and driven to the park that marked the halfway point of his jogging route. He found me there sitting on the hood of the car reading a book. He gaped at me for a minute and then started laughing so hard he couldn't stand up. Since I had the car, Austin abandoned the second half of his run and we went out and gorged ourselves on pizza instead. Unsurprisingly, he never asked me to go running with him again, though we often went out for pizza.

Austin was probably as serious about track as he was about physics. He was hoping to get a college scholarship for next year. College. That was another reason not to get involved with Nate, I reminded myself. Oh, it's only September, a little voice inside my head argued. College is a whole year off, the voice said blithely. Anything can happen in a year, right?