Just For Glory | COMPLETED

Andale, Speedy!

It was very gradual, so much so that I didn't really notice until December that I talked to Piper on a regular basis. I guess it started about a week after she gave me the choice to be ignored or to forget the bet. She casually asked how my weekend had gone, and I answered out of habit. From then, there were more scattered conversations, mostly consisting of small-talk. The point is that Piper was loyal to the fact that she'd treat me like everyone else.

On the last day of the first semester, she surprised me again. I was walking across the parking lot when I saw her getting into the passenger side of a station wagon her mom was driving, her brother sitting in the backseat. Out of habit, I raised one hand in a lazy salute to her. She smiled slightly.

"Have a good break, Donovan. I'll try to stop by and see you at the café," Piper said as I passed. I was a little taken aback. Yeah, I had probably mentioned that I had gotten a job there, but if so, it was just in passing. I was learning, though, that Piper Nolan had an amazing memory for random things. At first, I had been smug that she had remembered some things about me, but I quickly realized that I wasn't special in that aspect. She once told me the birthdays of her entire fifth grade class and rattled off the pets of every person on her street to prove a point.

"Yeah, uh, thanks. You too," I muttered, looking nervously at her mother, who was beaming at me and waving very enthusiastically. Piper laughed at her as she shook her head slightly, shut the door, and immediately engaged her brother in an animated sign language conversation, looking very excited about something. He grinned at her, then, as the car pulled forward, glanced over at me. I met his gaze, and it lacked any sort of unfriendliness. I saw it as a non-threatening, non-verbal exchange, albeit an uneasy one.

She was true to her word. Two days after Christmas, Piper and her brother came into the café. She pulled him over to the armchairs by the window, plopping down in one and looking pointedly at another chair then at him. He sighed, sitting down across from her. "Happy?" he said, and she grinned brightly, nodding smugly.

Piper looked pretty much the same as she did in school, wearing an emerald green sweater, dark jeans, and her yellow Converse. So far, I had counted six pairs of Converse, one pair of which she wore daily, without fail. I'd seen brown, yellow, red, green, black, and the peace sign ones. She even had me beat out there. Each pair showed signs of common wear, with the frayed laces and scuffed tips, but the black ones seemed like they were the oldest.

I glanced at Jane and Lila, the two waitresses, but they were both at other tables. Resignedly, I made my way through the small tables towards the pair by the window. Piper was laughing at something her brother said, and when she looked up at me, her radiant smile shrunk to a small grin. "Hey, Donovan. How was your Christmas?" she asked, tugging slightly on the brim of her black newsboy cap.

I shrugged. "Fine. Relatives knew just what kind of envelopes to send their money in. What do you wa—I mean...Can I take your order?" Technically, I was supposed to be cordial and have a little notebook with a stubby pencil to write orders down with, but I had yet to screw up someone's cappuccino, so I forewent the hassle altogether. Besides, people who get offended by waiters just need to desensitize themselves.

Piper wrinkled her nose, looking at the menu. I noticed with some surprise that she wasn't wearing her glasses, but she didn't look radically different. It was just odd to see her without something I was so used to seeing. After much deliberation on her part and impatient jaw-clenching on mine, she replied, "Um...I don't know, really...I suppose I'll just have a plain bagel, toasted, and a Coke." She looked over at her brother, signing briefly and gesturing towards me with a slight inclination of her head.

He looked up at me, apparently better prepared than his younger sister. "House coffee and a blueberry muffin," he stated without hesitation. "See, Pipe? Not that hard," he whispered at her. She rolled her eyes but didn't reply, reaching out her hand expectantly. He stared at it, raising an eyebrow in question.