Fade

Chapter 2

We have first period science together, and we sit across from each other. She won't look at me, just sits over there, across the two lab tables pushed together, tall and proud and not seeming as if she regrets a thing. My stomach flutters.

No one likes the science room much because there are stools instead of chairs. There are four groups of two lab tables pushed against each other lengthwise. There's a projector at the front of the room near the door and windows in the back, with sinks and counters down both sides.

Our science teacher is loud. Her name is Mrs. S, and everyone loves her. Her motto is why react when you can overreact? Everything she says, she screams, her laugh is loud, and she says she has trouble hearing. A conversation with her will go like this in a loud classroom.

You: I need a shovel.

Mrs. S: What?

You: A shovel. I need a shovel.

Mrs. S: What?

You: A SHOVEL

Mrs. S: *laughs* A what?

You: *gives up and points to the shovel*

Anyway, Sylvie is sitting across from me, laughing with Jimmy, who's sitting next to her. I flinch. I wish she was laughing with me.

My chest tightens. I need to stop thinking. It hurts. Everything hurts.

I throw myself into the lesson, then into the rest of the day. We're in the same history, then we have math separate, then literacy together. We spend history in painful silence.

I doodle my way through math, forgetting and remembering and forgetting again. Our book, Geometry for Enjoyment and Challenge, is open on the desk in front of me, and my notebook is in my lap. My brain struggles to keep up, to understand. Math is hard for me.

I give up trying to focus, and I'm writing a little song for her before I know it. The tune is in my head before the words, but those click into place fast. I'm scribbling it in the margins of my notes:

You tore me down

From the inside out

And the last thing I need

Is to love you now

But it's of no use

'Cause I fall for you

And I try to forget

All the things you do

I'm such a fool

I long for you

You're the air that I breathe

And it's nothing new

Relive

Not yet

Forgive

Forget

I still

Regret

Giving in to you

You tore me down

From the inside out

You strike me again

And I'm on the ground

But I'm safe and sound

Without you around

I slam on the brakes

Just to slow me down

But it's of no use

'Cause I fall for you

You're the air that I breathe

And it's nothing new

I turn my attention back to the board. Congruent angles associated with parallel lines. I'm fighting to keep up. I don't understand it. I'm in too deep for myself with this class- it's always back and forth between barely passing and barely failing, and it's a gamble whether I'll pass overall.

Then it's literacy. Oh no, oh no, oh no. We've got new seats- and me and Sylvie are diagonally across from each other in a group of four. In the other two seats are two guys named John and Max.

John is burly, already starting to grow a beard, and sweet. He's loud, but it makes up for me and Sylvie's silence. Max is shorter, but hefty, with a bumpy, broken nose. He's interested in quantum physics, I think, and is a lot quieter than John on his own, but together, those two... wow.

Sylvie talks, oh yes, but not to me. She never meets my eyes. I may as well have be invisible to her. Everything hurts.

Then it's lunch- we sit right next to each other, we have every single day, and again, we ignore each other. I smile, I laugh with the other girls at our table, as does she, but we never say a single word to each other.

Band, we sometimes have together, sometimes not, since I'm full band (all five days a week) and she's half band, half choir (a halfsie, as we call them, with band on Mondays and Fridays, choir on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and trade Wednesdays back and forth). It's a choir day. No Sylvie.

Then I have gym, then foods, then it's heading home for me and staying after for honors choir for Sylvie. I've never felt such agony as this.

Jasmine is at the kitchen counter doing homework when I get home. Mom is making dinner. Toby's not home yet, and Henry is barreling around the living room, Sesame Street  playing on the TV in the background, back and forth between his play kitchen and his plastic animals on the couch, apparently making food for them.

"Welcome home," calls mom.

"Thanks." I dump my backpack on the living room floor, go into the dining room with Jasmine, and flop down on a chair, leaning halfway back.

"How's Sylvie?" she asks, just like every day, because she knows we've been fighting. I'm glad she's facing away. The color rises in my cheeks.

After only a split second's hesitation, I answer, "Fine." Then, mind racing for something else to talk about, anything, I ask, "What's for dinner?"

"Cheesy potato soup."

I nod, stretch, get up, grab my backpack, and sit back down.

Looking down into it, I see the flyer for jazz band I grabbed, and things come crashing back to me. 

I want to be in jazz band. Sylvie is in jazz band. She plays keyboard. I want to play keyboard. Originally, before things were so bad between us, I asked to try out with her, but she told me not to, and we had a fight over it.

"Hey mom," I'm saying, before I can stop myself, "Jazz band starts tomorrow. Can you drive me?"