"Yeah?" Pushing it open I see a room filled with stuff. Big bookshelves line one wall, overflowing with books and random nick nacks. A desk sits by the window and there isn't room to even place a phone there without it touching or lying on top of something. His bed is hastily made, I can tell he's just pulled the covers over it and called it a day. Maxwell is standing in the middle of the room, backpack in hand, looking slightly worried.
"Did your mom hang my clothes in her room or something, because I can't find any socks."
"Uhm. Yeah. Probably." He gestures for me to go have a look. Like he's scared of coming with me. I shake my head. Alright then.
His mom's room is the opposite to his. Everything is in its right place and it has an airy feel to his cluttered. Although, right now it is cluttered. With my stuff. Jessica has hung my clothes to dry all over the place. And now I think I know why Maxwell didn't want to come. The bra and panties I brought with me are scattered all over the room. Great. Just great. I see a pair of my socks and grab them before hurrying out of there. They're dry. Mostly.
My boots on the other hand are mostly not dry. Grimacing I check my jacket, it's still very damp too. Tears are welling up in my eyes. "Damn it!" Maxwell arrives just in time to see me nearly breaking down. Over a damp jacket. My life is so great.
He holds something out to me. "I figured yours might still be wet. I have an old jacket I haven't used in years. Don't know why I had saved it. But yeah. If you want. You know, to borrow it."
I hate that this has me even more weepy. Do not cry! He looks very worried. I would be too, if some random girl was on the verge of a breakdown because I offered her a jacket.
Clearing my throat I reach for it. "Thanks." It fits quite well. I decide to shove all bad things deep down inside of me. All the sadness and hurt and weepiness. Deep deep down inside of me. After all, I have a full day of school to make it through. I smile at him. The worry line between his eyebrows vanishes and tentatively he smiles back. He has a nice smile.
The bus to school is like any other morning. Although I'm on the other side of town. And not riding with my best friend. And sitting next to Maxwell Greaves. And pretending we just happened to get on the bus at the same time, and just happened to sit next to each other. We get off and walk the last block to school. Not together, but not separately either. He catches my eye just as we walk through the school gates. His smile is almost not there, a secret smile and somehow my anxiety about having to lie to all of my friends lessens. He won't say a thing to anyone, I won't be busted.
"Kathy! Like, oh my god, you won't believe what happened to me!" Ericha tackle hugs me at my locker, making me drop my bag and do everything in my power to not topple over.
I laugh at the normality of it all. "What? Cute Bus Guy asked you to marry him?" Ericha shrieks and jumps up and down, jostling me and threatening to undo my messy bun.
"He asked if the seat next to me was taken and I said no and he said cool and then he sat next to me and ohmygod he smells so good and then he kinda smiled at me when he got off and ohmygod!"
Cute Bus Guy is this slightly older guy who takes the same bus as we do. We think he works somewhere a couple of blocks from school, but is not as if we're allowed to leave school during the day, so we're just guessing. The only clue we have is him getting off at the stop before school and then walking back towards where we came from, but the bus turns a corner and we never see where he stops. Cute Bus Guy has me thinking about my normal morning routine and that has me thinking about mom. I don't want to think about mom. Instead I shriek along with my best friend and pretend everything is normal.
I redo my hair and punch her arm. "Told you he's into you." Ericha pretends to swoon and then goes about to get her books for our first class. We have homeroom together and then English. After that we're separate until lunch, fortunately I don't have any classes with Maxwell on Fridays, until PE that is. I can just go on my day and pretend I really don't know that much about him.
Friday usually means tasty food for lunch, although every day is tasty food day at Whitewater, but Fridays mean Italian style pizza. Ericha and I draw deep breaths as we enter the cafeteria.
"I love pizza so much!" I can't speak, my mouth is watering and opening it would mean I'd drool all over myself, but I nod and hurry her over to the line waiting for the food of gods. Thin crusted and mozzarella heavy slices of pizza fill our plates as we go sit at our usual table.
"Hey Kathy! Did you get 435,5 on question 5?" Alvin has his calculator out and is going through his notes on the pop quiz we had in our last class before lunch.
"Dude. I don't know! How can you even remember these things?" He ignores me and punches the numbers again, taking notes and managing to eat at the same time. I look at Ericha and she shakes her head. Alvin is Alvin.
Mary, Sid and I leave Ericha with Alvin and go to collect our stuff for French. We're discussing French films right now, so this is easily my favorite class. Our teacher isn't allowed to show all of the films we're talking about, apparently French films have a lot of nudity in them. So she shows us snippets and we talk about what happened, as best we can. Somewhere across the Atlantic a croissant is weeping.
It's not until our last class that Ericha says something about my clothes. I've kind of forgotten about it all. Pretending that everything is as usual has me forgetting the crap from last night, apparently. We're in the locker room, tying our sneakers, when she brings it up.
"By the way, is that a new jacket?"
"Uhm, yeah. Well, I found it over at dad's."
"It looks cute on you." What she really means is that she'd never wear it, but I manage to pull it off.
"I know it's like a men's jacket, but mine was all drenched from last night." Ericha shrugs her shoulders. She doesn't care, she's moved on to other things.
Entering the gym my eyes scan the guys standing over by the door to the boy's locker room. They're huddling together, laughing about something Dean West is saying. It's probably something rude about someone. I spot Maxwell, he has his back to me.
Ericha fluffs her hair and meanders towards some girls standing over at the side. "God! I hope we're done with basketball already!"
"Yeah." Coach blows the whistle, calling everyone to him and by the big orange ball under his arm I'm guessing our prayers were ignored.
Ericha and I end up in different teams. Coach doesn't believe in students picking teams and I suspect he spends an unhealthy amount of time trying to find the best teams in each sport he forces upon us. Ericha is tall and ends up in a team with the rest of the tallest students. I'm in with the fairly average height kids, but I'm also really bad at basketball and end up trying to avoid getting anywhere near the thing. Mostly I'm very successful.
I only really touch it once, and that's to very poorly pass it to the person in the team who's actually decent at this game. Abby catches my fumbled toss and scores us a point. Coach blows his whistle. School is over, for this week at least.
YOU ARE READING
Night Rain
Short StoryKathy has another falling out with her mother and her only solution is to go and knock on the door of her estranged father. She just hopes his new wife won't be too upset at her showing up in the middle of the night.
