Chapter 20: It Started With Triskaidekaphobia

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Tomorrow’s the concert. Mom’s been bugging me since Monday to ask Cairo to take me. Nai’s been extremely excited since yesterday. Although she tries to hide it when she’s with me, I know she’s super hyped about it. I don’t really feel sad about not going anymore. Yeah, for the first few days I was disappointed. Who wouldn’t want to be at a concert with her best friend? But hey, I can’t dwell on it. So I’ve been studying my reviewer with Sunny in the library during morning recess for the whole week.

“What do you call a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that may be read the same way in either direction?” he asked.

“A… a… pan… pandome… pandi… palin, palindrome!” I exclaimed.

“Shhh!” the librarian was quick to hush me.

“Oops,” I uttered.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sunny smiled at me. Then he looked at his wristwatch. “I think we have time for one last question before English.”

“Go ahead,” I said confidently.

“What do you say we make this last question a bit more interesting?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Well,” he smiled at me. “Are you free tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I’m bringing Story to the zoo tomorrow… so… if you miss this question, you’ll have to go with us. Okay?” he gave me a kind smile. “I have a feeling Story’s gonna want to see the birds and… well, I’m kind of uncomfortable around birds, especially birds of prey, which just so happen to be the birds she’s been drawing since she started watching this show on TV, so…” he trailed off.

“I’m in. Ask me the hardest question you can find,” I smiled at him.

“Okay, from the general information category… Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of what?”

I knew it was the fear of the number 13. But I also knew that I didn’t want to be home alone tomorrow.

“Fear of… being alone?” I answered.

He smiled at me.

Afterwards, we walked together to our classroom. We’ve been doing that a lot nowadays since we’re always together during morning recess. I’ve become immune to the whispers when we walk together down the hallways. My conversations with Sunny drown them out, anyway. And… well, it’s just something I’ve noticed… but we seem to walk closer and closer to each other every passing day. Sometimes, I feel like he’s about to hold my hand. When his hand brushes against mine, I feel like… like I’m on a roller coaster and it’s about to go down that great fall… a mix of excitement and fear.

As we approached our room, I reached out for the door. But Sunny held my arm. So I turned to him. I found him smiling, and I didn’t know why.

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