That October Night

CHAPTER 5 - Slow Ripening

"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship itself is a slow ripening fruit." — Aristotle

   JOSE SAID COME with me between third and fourth period like it was nothing, already turning down the wrong hallway before I'd fully agreed to follow.

I followed anyway.

He moved through the school the way he moved through everything —like he and time had reached a private understanding.  I matched his pace without asking where we were going because I'd learned in the few weeks being here that asking Jose where he was going usually produced an answer less useful than just going.

We ended up at the far east side of the building where the school seemed to forget itself. An unfinished wall. A cluster of old tree stumps and one long log worn smooth from use. A tree wide enough to throw real shade over all of it. The sounds of Palm High existed somewhere on the other side — muffled, distant, belonging to a different frequency entirely.

Jose dropped onto the log like he'd built it himself.

"Nobody knows about this," he said.

I looked around. Took it in. The quiet of a place that had been forgotten by everyone except the person who found it first. "Not even the pack?"

"Not even the pack."

I sat down.

He had his phone face down on the log beside him — which I'd learned meant he was actually here and not performing here — and for a moment we just existed in the quiet together without filling it.

The sounds from the rest of the school were very far away.

"You know what I like about you," he said.
Not a question. Just something he'd decided to say out loud.

"My sparkling personality?"

The corner of his mouth moved. "You don't perform."

I looked at him.

"Most people—" he picked up a small stone from the ground, turned it over in his fingers, "—they come into a new place and they figure out what the room wants them to be and they become it. Fast." He set the stone down. "You didn't do that."

"Maybe I just haven't figured out what the room wants yet."

"No." He shook his head. "You just don't care what it wants. There's a difference." He glanced at me sideways. "It's a good thing. In case that wasn't clear."

I didn't say anything to that.

He nodded at the silence like it confirmed something. "See. That."

We sat there a moment longer in the kind of silence that didn't need filling.

"Tell me something true," he said, "about before Miami."

I thought about it. Not what to say — I had walls for that — but what was actually true and small enough to offer without it costing too much.

I finally settled on, "My grandfather taught me how to fix engines. Cars. Bikes. Anything with moving parts. He said women shouldn't have to depend on anyone for something that simple." I looked at my hands. "He was right."

Jose was quiet for a moment as if he was actually receiving what I said."He sounds like someone worth knowing," he smiled.

"He was."

He didn't push further. Didn't ask what happened to him or how long ago or any of the questions people asked when they were more interested in the story than the person telling it. He just let it be what it was — something real, offered, received.