The You And I Wars

Chapter 6 - Ice

Lavita leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, slumping as if her body had been filled with pudding.

“This is exactly what we needed,” she said. “A girl’s day out.”

Sam winced as the small blonde woman who sat behind the desk ripped one of her cuticles off. The woman glared at Sam from behind her surgeon’s mask when she involuntarily tried to pull her hand away from the source of pain.

“This is the worst day of my life, Lavi,” Sam hissed, even though there was no way the manicurist, whose name tag read Jenny, couldn’t hear what she was saying. “How long is this supposed to take?”

“Forever, hopefully.” Lavi sighed, her eyes still shut as her manicurist filed her already dainty nail beds. “And no Ashton in sight.”

They’d broken up for the fiftieth time that year, but Sam knew it was only a matter of hours before they would be making out again in some dimly lit movie theater.

Sam’s phone buzzed in her pocket and she fished it out, trying to ignore the look of protest Jenny gave her for wiggling around. Sam frowned at her screen. It was Noah calling; he was usually a texter. She would have waited to return his call when Lavi wasn’t around, but he hadn’t been in school, and she hadn’t heard from him since the night before when he’d bled into her bathroom sink. Half a dozen worries cluttered her mind all at once as she put the phone to her ear, angling away from her best friend, her other hand still in Jenny’s iron grasp.

“Hey,” she whispered. “What’s up?”

“I’m pretty sure I can beat you.”

“First of all, never. Second, beat me at what?”

“Chess.”

Sam blinked, suddenly feeling too clammy in the brightly lit nail salon, and pressed the phone harder against her ear.

“What happened?”

It hadn’t even been twenty four hours since she’d given him his present, and he’d said he would save it for a bad day. Add that to the fact that he wasn’t in school….

“What happened?” he repeated. “Well, I went to my room, then I tore this paper stuff off the box–”

“No, you loser, I mean…are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Bored, actually.”

“Liar.”

Silence on his end. Then, “Where are you? You’re whispering.”

“I’m at the–Jesus, Holy God!” she shouted, suppressing a less pious string of words by biting down on her lip. Jenny had scraped at her thumbnail with some wicked pointed instrument of torture, and then had the audacity to glower at Sam and tug her hand closer. Sam knew masking emotions wasn’t one of her giftings, so she didn’t bother to dilute the look of death she shot back at Jenny. “I’m getting my nails done–or rather, removed,” she said, her teeth gritted together. “Lavi’s idea of relaxation.”

Noah chuckled into the phone. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, it’s bad. It’s worse than an arrow in your arm.”

And at that he laughed even harder. She imagined what he must have looked like at that moment. Probably spread out across his bed–which she’d never seen and had to mentally Photoshop into place–with his phone to his ear, his bandaged arm lying out at his side. His hair was probably falling into his eyes, which were bright like they always were when he thought something was really funny.

“Hi Noah,” Lavi called out from her seat without bothering to open her eyes.

Sam grimaced. “Why do you assume that’s who it is?” she asked Lavi.