"I have to work with Tanner on the government project," I sighed.
Cue negative reaction.
"Well, isn't that just the summit of the awkward mountain?" Hannah laughed.
"Wait," April said and I could already tell she was annoyed. "Who said that you have to work with Tanner? Mr. Tracy?"
"April, it's fine." Kind of. Not really. "Don't get all super-mom on me."
She held up her hand. "No. I don't want you hanging out with that kid. Do you remember that he came to home? He terrorized my dogs!"
"He was delivering newspapers," Carney chimed in. "And your dogs probably terrorized him."
"No one reads newspapers anymore," April snapped. She sized up Carney. "Don't you have a stunt to work on or something?"
Carney flinched. "Don't you have a team to lead or something?" she retorted with a little bit too much attitude. Before April could get another word in, Carney walked off snapping her fingers at the boy cheerleaders to come practice her stunt with her.
"You'll never be cheer captain!" April yelled after her to which Carney responded with a firm middle finger in the air. End of conversation. "Anyway," April sang rolling her eyes to me "This is about you, Vana. If you feel uncomfortable, I'll let Mr. Tracy know and he'll basically do whatever I say. And seriously, you don't want to work with Tanner. He's a creep. Remember why we took that self-defense class?"
Tanner wasn't really a creep, but he wasn't your friendly, neighborhood good ol' boy either. After April T-boned the life right out of Tanner's dad, he went downhill. Totally understandable. I couldn't fully imagine being an orphan, but I'm sure I'd go crazy.
But Tanner was little too much. He stopped talking to all his relatively normal track and field buddies, and had started talking to himself. If happened to walk by him in the hall, there was fifty-fifty chance he was saying something to himself. Sometimes it was "I hope lunch is good today" but more often than not it was something like "No one understands the meaning of death and neither do I." There was a rumor he was salutatorian of our class, but all he did in class was write aggressively in this dilapidated journal and it was never math or government notes. And when he did speak up in class, it was always so disturbingly vague that teachers seldom called on him.
We never really interacted. I definitely was avoiding him, but I think he was avoiding me too. And today when Mr. Tracy announced that we had been randomly paired to put together a presentation on the executive branch we made eye contact with each other, but he looked away first, burying his head back in his journal.
"April, it's been a little over three years now. I think if he wanted to chop our heads off, he would've," Hannah said.
"There's no expiration date on crazy," April said as if she was stating a fact. "I would know. I'm crazy."
"We know, honey. Well, I have a dance to choreograph or something so I'll catch y'all later."
Hannah jogged off, leaving April and I alone on the bleachers.
"I want you to be cheer captain, Van-van," April said seriously once Hannah was out of ear shot. April wasn't supposed to pick favorites because she had a little bit of pull during the captain tryout, but I could tell I was her favorite. I couldn't place a reason on why though. I wasn't anything like her.
"Ok..." I said, not sure why this was relevant.
"You can't be captain if you're dead."
"Jesus, April. We're working on one project. Try calming down, okay?"
