Waves

CHAPTER 16

MOUSE

Mouse leaned back against his car, watching as Nora shifted uncomfortably from her own position. She was sitting on the ground, her legs crossed neatly in front of her as she drew with her finger in the dust on the concrete. She looked uncomfortable, but Mouse wasn't sure if it was because of the storm or because she'd just been pelted with a million tiny shards of glass. He was not looking forward to picking those out of her skin.

Maxi was leaning against the brick wall, one eye on Nora and the other on the ceiling, which was a bit too creaky for any of their likings. Harrison was studying the graffiti in the stall next to Mouse's. He didn't appear to be all that interested, but it was a distraction.

"Mouse?"

Mouse looked down at Nora, who was already staring at him. "Yeah, sweetheart?" He responded softly, keeping his voice gentle. He had no idea how spooked she was by the storm, so he decided to tread carefully.

"When's the storm supposed to end?"

"Oh, I don't know," Mouse pulled out his phone and checked his text messages. Deano and Whippet both had assumed that he hadn't written down when it was supposed to end, so they'd texted him the details. Cell service was out, so Mouse couldn't directly check the weather. "Uh, in like five minutes," Mouse told her, turning his phone off and putting it away again.

"Okay," Nora leaned her head against the door of the car next to Mouse's. She looked tired.

"So are you excited for school?" Harrison asked all of a sudden, breaking the once again heavy silence.

Nora leapt at the chance of conversation and nodded eagerly, "Yes!" She said.

Harrison, Maxi, and Mouse all laughed. None of them had particularly  enjoyed their own years in the public school system, but they couldn't help but be excited as Nora was. Her positive attitude was quite infectious, to say the least.

"What are you most excited for?" Harrison continued the conversation, knowing all too well that he was distracting her from the raging weather outside.

"I'm not sure. Learning, I guess, but also making friends and maybe sports. But I don't know what you guys have for sports," Nora responded.

"Football, swim team, cricket team, cheer leading, tennis, golf, cross country, and track," Maxi recited, having gone to the same school as Nora would be attending.

"Well what are you going to choose to do, then?" Mouse added himself into the conversation.

"Maybe I'll try-oh, I just remembered that your football is actually soccer. So maybe soccer, and swim team, and cheer leading, and the running sports. I don't know what I would have time for, but that would be what I would choose," Nora said with a wistful smile, "I did track at my old school in seventh grade, but I only went to the first meet because I got hit in the face with a discus and broke my jaw."

Mouse was about to respond, but he had to do a double take. Harrison beat him to responding. "What?!" He exclaimed.

Nora shrugged, "It's okay, now. I couldn't do any sports for three months and I had to eat everything from a straw for a while, but that's about it."

"How long is a while?" Maxi questioned.

"A month."

"I'm more concerned about the fact that you broke your jaw on a discus," Mouse interceded before the other guys could ask anything more.

"Well, it was sort of my fault," Nora told them, blushing slightly, "I was waiting to throw, and I was leaning against a pole in the court. And a stray discus went flying and it bounced off of the pole, and then went through the mesh netting, and then hit me in the face."