time box | on hold

one

Ever since I was little, I liked to daydream.

I could sit quietly for hours with my head in the clouds during kindergarten, my mom says.

The teachers got so worried that they called her in for a meeting about my "condition".

She'd merely laughed when they consulted her. It runs in the family, she'd told them. Then she made me move schools.

Today I'm sitting at the stairs that face the oval. The school fair is just around the corner, so it's crowded with excavators and trucks loading in ferris wheels and booths. My maths binder is in my lap, but I've long stopped doing Mrs Jenning's homework to daydream.

"There you are!" Emily plonks herself down next to me, clutching her own binder.

"Jenny, I think Matt likes me," she whispers loudly, and swivels her head around to face me, eyes glinting.

"That's nice." I smile back at her absentmindedly.

She sighs dramatically and leans back against the cement stairs.

I broke my arm on one of these, on the first day of seventh grade. I'd been running from a loose lizard that belonged to one of the boys. I'd thought it was cute, but when it crawled after me I couldn't stop myself from running.

I don't scream when I run, so my face had been hideous, my mouth gaping open and my eyes screwed shut. It was probably pretty funny, because everyone was laughing.

Anyhow, thanks to a rock on the ground I'd ended up splayed out on the stairs, my left arm twisted and one of my shoes had fallen off.

"What do you reckon, Jenny?"

I snap out of my thoughts abruptly. Emily is turned to me, one eyebrow raised expectedly.

She was probably busy talking about Matt, and I'd spaced her out with a memory of being chased by a lizard.

"Sorry, you were saying-?" I ask sheepishly.

She sighs and rolls her eyes. I grimace.

"It doesn't matter. You wouldn't understand, anyway." She says wistfully, probably keeping in mind that I have never had fluttery thoughts about boys in my fourteen years of life.

I smile bitterly.

"Anyways, the school fair is this Saturday. If we come early, I'll bring my polaroid so we can take pictures at the ferris wheel. It would look so dope for instagram," she grins suggestively.

"Sounds good."

We part a few minutes after that, her mom coming to pick her up.

So I trudge down the road, hands in my pockets on my slow way home.

The wind strokes my face with frozen fingers. I shove my hands into my pocket and quicken my pace.

My phone rings and I pick it up.

"Jenny, come home quickly!" Mom chirps. "There's a very special guest here."

My mind jumps to conclusions. I bite back an excited scream, imagining Maddie sitting on one of our faded, blue sofas.

I imagine her grinning widely at me and hang up.