Everything In Between

four

FOUR

Meera can stand around four people at her school. Two of them out of school: Theo and Juniper (Juniper a little more than Theo).

Even though every single person Meera has interacted with in the last two days has told her to stay in her room and drink soup, she finally decides to leave the house. She'd been getting even more fidgety somehow, and Juniper had called to meet up. When her mom left, so did Meera, thankful for an excuse to breathe air that wasn't already her own.

It had snowed again, heavier this time, and all the reports were predicting for it to stick for longer. Meera loves snow, but, unfortunately, this was the slippery kind. Two steps away from her house, she falls, yelping loudly on her way down. She hears a window open above her, and looks up to see Toni peeking her head out the bedroom window. Toni had taken the net off of it permanently since she is always sneaking out, anyway--no one knew why, since Mr. and Mrs. Maverick are clearly very well aware of where and when she is going out.

"You alright, Meera?" Toni calls down.

"So good! Yup!" Meera juts a gloved thumb up.

"Wait, aren't you sick?"

"I--"

"Toni?" asks another faint voice from the house, just loud enough for Meera to catch. She squeezes her eyes shut, tight. She'll never be able to leave now. "Who are you talking to? Is it that dick Ryan, again? I told you to stop talking to him, he literally hits on Dad every time he's here. And Mom. And me. And the cat." Meera frantically motions for Toni to not give her away, but Toni's turned away, and suddenly she's lost the use of her peripheral vision.

"No, it's just Meera."

"Meera?" says Theo. "What?"

A moment later his head pops out next to Toni's. They look almost like twins, molten chocolate gazes burning down at Meera (Theo's more than Toni's), dark hair hanging low to frame their faces (Also Theo's more than Toni's. Toni just shaved her entire head, and Theo's curls have been bouncing in his eyes more and more, as of late (he's too lazy to get it cut)).

"Meera!" Theo exclaims, frowning. "What the hell are you doing? You're still sick!"

"Okay, you don't have to yell that loud," Meera rolls her eyes, and Toni nods in agreement.

"Also, you can't just expect me to stay holed up in my room for the next week!"

"Uh, yes I can? Did you need something? I'll bring it over, but you have to go back in."

They stare at each other for a long, tense moment. Finally, Meera throws her hands up in exasperation and marches back into her house.

She calls Juniper instead.

"Hey, aren't you coming?" Juniper asks in greeting.

"Can't, Theo's deciding to control me again."

"I mean, you are sick..."

"Anyway, I've called to discuss a boy," says Meera, and she can practically

hear Juniper's eyebrows rising on the other side of the phone.

"I have not heard that come out of your mouth since, like, the seventh grade. Tell me

everything." So Meera tells Juniper everything, which actually isn't much at all: just the boy leaving her his phone number on a Pippi's napkin that he'd conned out of her. Meera realizes that she still doesn't know his name.

After, it is quiet. Then Juniper says, "So?"

"So what?"

"...Have you...called him?"

"Um, no?"

"Will...you...call him?"

"Um, no?"

"What!" Juniper exclaims, and Meera has to hold the phone away from her ear. "Why not?"

"We don't know who he is!"

"Which is why you call him and get to know him," sighs Juniper.

"He could be a psycho murderer, Junip!" says Meera, eyes widening. "Or a stalker." She gasps, voice lowering. "Oh, my God Juniper what if he's a stalker? He seemed familiar, I feel like maybe I've seen him befo--"

"Don't flatter yourself, you don't have a stalker, Meera." Meera can hear Juniper's eye roll from the other side of the line. "Just call him. Talk to him. See if he's boyfriend material."

"Whoooah, there. I am definitely not ready for a boyfriend." Meera's last boyfriend (if one could even call it that) had been Logan in freshman year. He had absolutely no personality, but he was the star soccer player so he had calves to die for and was so, so very dreamy.

"Okay, well who knows, maybe you'll get a really cool friend out of him!"

"Yeah. I mean, he was really cute. His eyes are so gr--"

There's a knock on her front door before it swings open and Theo peeks out from behind it.

"I gotta go," Meera says quickly, looking away. "Theo's here."

"Oh," says Juniper. "Yeah, okay. Feel better!"

After hanging up, Meera swivels around to watch as Theo kicks his shoes off and sets Tupperware on the counter. She can see soup swirling around.

"Theo, that's literally, like, the sixteenth bowl of soup you've brought around, I haven't even finished the last one.

"It's all I know how to make!" Theo protests, eyes wide. Meera laughs. "I'm just trying to help, okay. Who were you talking to?"

"Juniper."

"Oh, yeah, how is she?"

Meera tells him that Juniper's good, and Theo says that Juniper was always uncomfortably kind, and Meera agrees. Then Theo asks if anything important has happened in Meera's life lately, and Meera fiddles with her hand, and tells him everything except for the things that pertain to a certain green-eyed boy, which makes her frown inwardly, because never has she ever kept anything from Theo. Ever. (Until now.)

// HAPPY NEW YEAR THANK GOD THATS OVER do you have any resolutions?

i want to finish a book this year and finally get out of my writer's block/slump, that'd be rly chill tbh

thanks for reading! ily

- ana x