When Secret Places Collide

Martie

I swallow the rest of the granola bar. Out of the corner of my eye I see Tara smiling. I turn my head towards her. As soon as we make eye contact the smile is gone. She is once again the small, quiet, and timid girl that I met only moments ago. She intrigues me and I want to know more, but I don't want to scare her off.

"Hey, do you want to play a game?" I ask with small smirk.

"I don't know. What game?"

"A question and answer game."

"Um... okay."

"Great, I'll go first. Why did you have a panic attack?" Tara knits her eyebrows and looks up at me through them. I hold my breath. I think that I might have gone too far on the first jump. I start the tell her that she doesn't have to answer, but she takes a deep breath.

"I'm stressed about school and I have anxiety so those two combined cause me to have panic attacks," she says and lets the air that go that she had been holding captive in her lungs throughout the sentence.

So many other questions are buzzing in my hears. "What does—"

Tara cuts me off, "I think that it is my turn." I smile, embarrassed, and nod. "Why do you play the piano?"

I open my mouth as if there is a simple answer, but as I think only a little ways deeper into it I see that there's not. "Hm..." I say to fill the air between us as I think of my answer. "My parents want me to be successful and they think that the only way for me to be that is to have a very clear and obvious talent so I play the piano."

"That sounds awful, my mom just wants be to better and my step-dad wants me to suck it up." I smile. "What?" She asks with a concerned look on her face.

"We are so similar and yet so different at the same time."

"You're so cheesy," she says with a playful shove and a light in her eyes, but that quickly vanishes when she processes what she has done and apologizes quietly.

"Why do you always do that?" I ask looking at her, but her hair creates a barrier between us.

"Do what?"

"You smile and come out of your shell then retreat and apologize and hide and cower."

"I don't know," she says, her voice muffled.

"See, I can't hear you right now when only a second ago you were laughing and shoving me." I reach across and take a piece of her hair in my long, bony fingers and tuck it behind her ear. She looks at me, her eyes are misty and her cheeks are red.

"No one has even been interested in what I had to say, so when I said something I always felt like it was wrong."