Paper Hearts (Phan)

65 days

Opting for German class turned out to be twice as boring as second semester had been, and I still had no idea what the teacher was even saying.

"Wie war Ihr Winterpause?" Mrs. Keene would ask and specifically point at me because she knew I couldn't understand a thing. And I'd say "Flugbahn" because it's the only thing I knew how to pronounce correctly, then she'd stare at me disappointedly for a second, repeat my phrase, and move on to the next person and ask the same question.

[How was your winter break?]

[Trajectory]

And then Dan walked in the room, schedule in hand, and waved at me. And Mrs. Keene stared at him like he wasn't supposed to be there until he showed her the schedule and he took a seat right next to me and pulled out a huge notebook with wave scribbled all over the cover, stuffed with notes of words in the language I couldn't learn.

Then she asked him "Wie war Ihr Winterpause?" and he replied "interessant. Ich verbrachte urlaub mit meinem freund." without missing a single beat. "Sehr gut," she smiled, clearly impressed "sehr gut."

[How was your winter break?]

[Interesting. I spent the holiday with my friend.]

[Very good, very good]

I didn't even know he spoke an ounce of another language, let alone attend classes other than zoology.

So when her back was turned, I looked over at him out of the corners of my eye, and popped the question. "Why are you here?"

"What, I can't participate in a language course?" He whispered back, the corners of his lips upturned in a slight smile. I felt like an idiot.

"I didn't even know you knew German."

"Unlike you, I do." He rolled his eyes with a grin and glanced up to answer a question I hadn't heard, then turned back to frown quizzically at me.

"Können Sie mich nicht verstehen?"

[You can't understand me?]

"Stop talking in tongues!" I told him in all seriousness and he laughed, dropping the pencil in his hand to the desk and throwing his head back to stare at the ceiling for a second.

And for the rest of the class Dan triumphed over all the other people stuck in hell with us, impressing Mrs. Keene and literally everyone that heard him say a word in the language. So I sat there, listening to him answer endless questions while I sweat my ass off in a sweater I thought would be fine to wear. But not only was I sweating because it was 34° Celsius outside and the weatherman had lied, but also because just being in this classroom was suspenseful enough let alone having to try and keep up now that Dan showed perfect understanding of basically everything and threw off the curve that kept me at a solid A-.

The bell rang and I left the room before anybody could stop me, waiting outside for Dan to pack up and meet me since we could walk to zoology together now. And I wasn't complaining, don't get me wrong.

And he caught up to me, bumping into my side with his shoulder just as I neared the clearing with the broken water fountain and overwatered flower beds.

"Do you think you could teach me sometime?"

"Teach you what?" He asked without looking away from the cluster of people in front of us.

"How to actually speak another language."

"Alles für dich," Dan said "alles für dich."

[Anything for you]

"What does that mean?" I asked with a pout and he just laughed, hugging the notebook stuffed with notes to his chest and smiling up at the sky.

__________

"What the fuck do you mean he speaks German!" PJ yelled across the hallway into my room. We were both settled under the covers of our own beds, yelling back and forth so we wouldn't have to leave the blankets behind and speak in normal tones.

"He transferred into my class which is for like people that are more fluent in the language."

"You can barely say hello! Even I know what it is!"

"Well then what is it? I need the practice."

PJ rolled his eyes and put his hands over his eyes and muttered "Guten Tag" under his breath just loud enough so that I had a 50/50 chance of not hearing him, which was probably the point.

And we sat there for a little bit in the silence, and the best part was that it wasn't awkward silence because we were both thinking the same things and turning the idea over in our head before we dared to say it.

"Who taught it to him?" I asked, not sure if it was to myself or PJ, or anyone willing to listen.

"I've never seen him try to team it, and I've never seen him, like, speak it either." PJ responded, no longer yelling, but almost whispering "and both Cat and Chris wouldn't have any idea what anything in that language even means."

"Should we just ask him?"

"If there's one thing I've teamed, it's if you ask him about his weird quirks, there's an incredibly depressing story behind it that would be better off never being remembered ever again."

I sat up, the blankets falling off my chest like I was Frankenstein. "What do you mean?"

"Name one weird thing he does."

"Drink copious amounts of alcohol with no regards to the safety of himself or others?"

PJ sighed and cursed lightly under his breath, exasperated and on the verge of giving up trying to explain this to me. I could've told him it was a lost cause and I'd be better off just confronting Dan about this, but he started talking again before I could say that. He grabbed a cigarette from his night stand and let out a long stream of smoke before telling me anything else.

"Okay, so he traces the raindrops down the window whenever it rains right?" He peeked over to me to make sure I was listening, which I was, and continued "And I didn't want to tell you before, but Chris brought it up the first time he did it and Dan told us he used to do it with #1. And nobody knows who #1 is. It's like they're a modern day Voldemort."

"He-who-must-not-be-named." I corrected and PJ glared at me miserably, and I couldn't tell if it was because of my reference or he was down even thinking about Dan tracing the raindrops.

"But anyways, the part that shouldn't be remembered is that #1 was the one that did all of this to him. Set in motion the huge chain link of disasters. And I wish I could forget he ever said that, because I would be perfectly fine placing the blame on 56 people instead of just 1."

I fell back down on the single pillow I owned, the blankets flying up in the air and settling down on my chest. The dust particles floated up like snowflakes suspended in the air and stayed there for a second before fluttering back down to the nearest surface they could find. "That's really depressing." I said.

PJ sighed loudly and lit another cigarette, the flame from the lighter glowing as bright as the sun and as obnoxiously as a pride of lions in a zoo. "I guess so."