The Specks of Smallness

Reagan | Three

                                                                                Reagan| Three

Now that I think about it, I wish that I didn’t count the days for school to end. For that reason, I’m absolutely and positively mad. I know that.

   But really, as I lean on my bedroom’s window, dragging in a smoke, I think about my last day of school. And I wish I did things I’ve never done before. Like when I sat with Boop, the goth mute girl, at lunchtime—I wish I would’ve said to her: “I like your helix piercing.” Boop surely would just nod in gratitude and point at my nose ring. “Yours too,” she’d say, because she wasn’t a talker. That’s why I enjoyed eating lunch with her.

  We actually never had a class in common, but since Boop always sat alone and remained under the radar, I tagged along. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know Boop’s real name; I just called her that—without her consent, of course—because she reminded me of Betty Boop so much. Subtract the revealing dress, add equally dark jackets and pants, and multiply it by a huge Medusa piercing stud; you got Boop.

  We usually sat next to each other, not across. The table we chose was always the empty one at the end of the cafeteria, where the temperature dropped below thirty-two degrees. I swear that if the walls near that table were wet, they’d surely be frozen. That’s why seldom people sat there. I liked it there, honestly. I always thought of it as a lovely sight—the iced walls and all.

  Actually, that’d be beautiful. Boop and I eating calmly and in silence while the world around us freezes up and we’re the only ones with a beating heart. A smile cracks my lips that subtly clutch the cig as I picture that sight.

  It’s quite nice picturing beautiful impossibilities.

  The thing about Boop was that she always waited for me at the cafeteria’s entrance. She was always hidden in a corner, with her head downward and her foot against the wall. Whenever she saw me arriving, she’d open the door and let me walk inside first. Then, Boop would stand next to me and start biting her nails. I would always notice how short her nails were and I would always compare them to some ingredient I always found in the mashed potatoes.

  Oddly, if Boop didn’t bite her nails, I wouldn’t eat mashed potatoes or whatever food reminded me of her bitten nails.

  “I think you smell nice,” I should’ve said to her while we waited in line.

   Boop would’ve nodded in response; I’m sure.

  “Don’t mind them,” I should’ve said to her. “You look great.”

  Boop would glance behind her and notice part of the track team staring at her. I’m sure she always felt their stare on her exposed neck. I’m sure she always felt her knees buckling when Drew, the tallest of them all, got too close to her while we waited in line.

  I was sure he had a thing for her, but I never told her.  Even if I never talked to Boop, I didn’t want her to get her hopes up and then, witness how those hopes crashed hard if I was wrong about Drew liking her.

  Now that I think about it, I owe her that much.

  See, here’s the thing about society’s rules and cafeteria food: they’re the same. Disgusting, yet you eat it and you talk with people as you eat it—and there’s a point where you convince yourself that you like the food, when you actually don’t—and you think about the shit you go through at home while you eat it, and lastly, when you get home and go through more shit, you defecate it, but the next day, you eat it again. It’s a cycle. Simple. Effective.