Resist

11

“Where is James?”

We were sitting at lunch, Sicily , Nessa, and I at one table. Nessa was looking around, wondering where Sicily ’s boyfriend was.

“The boys are out getting the sewing machine,” Sicily  said as she blew on her spoonful of soup.

“Oh they didn’t end up doing that yesterday?” I asked, remembering the boys’ conversation in the armory. It felt like a month ago when it had been barely over twenty four hours.

“No, I don’t even know what they did yesterday, training I guess,” Sicily  said, now picking up a roll.

I did the same, picking at the crust with my nails, not really hungry. My mind was still aggravatingly thinking about Jack.

The day passed slowly, agonizingly long, having nothing to do. Sicily  and Nessa were on cooking duty again for dinner so I tried to busy myself washing dishes in the kitchen, something I thought would be more manageable than doing the preparing itself. This turned out to be a good idea, I had become helpful somehow, but it was mindless work. And my mind wandered back to the same topic. I had the urge to stab myself with one of the forks; maybe that would get my mind off him.

The autumn sun had already set when the three of us finally headed back up to our room, my arms squeaky clean and fingers pruned from the time in the sink and Nessa’s brown hair containing flour from making bread.

“What’s that by the door?” I asked, noticing something brown sitting on the hall floor when we came out from the stairwell.

“It looks like… a pair of boots.” Sicily  seemed surprised as she noticed this. I was too, why were their boots outside our room?

We got closer and I noticed a small note tied up in the laces. I bent down, picking up the boot and picking at the knot, releasing the paper. It was just a small piece, torn on all four sides and just big enough to lay flat on my palm. In scrawled handwriting, someone had written:

“Estelle , thought you could use these, X”

I just stared at the note for a moment, then down at the boot in my hand, then shifted my gaze to the one on the floor. I really did need them, my current shoes were flapping, the soles so loose from the fabric over the toe that they were like alligators.

“Well you could sure use them,” Nessa said, obviously reading the note over my shoulder. “You don’t know how annoying it is listening to that flapping when you walk.”

I laughed, it annoyed me too. But I knew who this was from and I didn’t know if I wanted them. It was weird, how suddenly I was rejecting him so much; I didn’t like that I was thinking about Jack so much, how overcome my imagination had become. One silly moment with him and I was infatuated, is this what teenage girls normally felt like? My heart fluttered just thinking about him, tying the note on with his long fingers, and leaving them by the door, looking left and right to check that no one had seen him. But that was the other problem, he didn’t want people to know he had been friendly to me it seemed; he had disappeared when I went to Eden ’s and he had never spoken to me in front of anyone, not directly.

“Earth to Essie , we would like to go in now,” Sicily  laughed. I blinked, realizing I had zoned out and was still holding one of the shoes, blocking their way to the door.

“Sorry,” I muttered, bending to pick up the other boot and then going in. I immediately set the boots on the windowsill, unsure what I was going to do with them.