She gives me a small, forced smile. “Oh. Well…that’s good.” I can still feel her watching me slice and hoping I’ll say more, and I move slowly, waiting for the right amount of time to pass so I can turn the subject back to her. After a few minutes, I hear her start drumming her fingertips on the counter. Finally, when she can no longer stand the silence, she sits up, her back straight. “Okay, I’ll go,” she says, and she launches into a long story about one of the nurses who got caught kissing an EMT out by the ambulance bay.
Fifteen minutes later, I hear the front door open and close. “I’m home!” Dad yells from the foyer. When he arrives in the kitchen, Mom and I are standing side by side at the counter, layering noodles, sauce, and cheese in a deep casserole dish.
“Hi, Annie.” He leans down and kisses the crown of my head.
“Hey, Dad.” I lift my cheesy, tomatoey fingers out of the lasagna and give him a little wave.
But before he can take another step, Mom turns around and grabs his face in her sauce-covered hands. “Hi, honey.”
Dad takes two steps back, bright red handprints on both cheeks, and we both watch him, eyes wide as we wait to see how he’ll react. He just stands there, stunned. Then he shakes his head and gives Mom a peck on her nose. “I’ll just go wash up,” he says.
“You do that,” Mom says with a laugh, and the two of us crack up while we top off our creation with handfuls of shredded cheese. Then the dish goes into the oven, Mom heads for the shower, and I trudge up to my room to start on my homework.
I plop down on my shag rug and open my backpack. In the small zippered compartment in the front, I spot the pencil, right where I left it, now blanketed in gum wrappers. I take it out and run it back and forth between my fingers, just like Bennett was doing this morning as I walked through the door. I close my eyes, picturing the way he smiled as he held it out to me. And I start concocting a plan to return it.
Stalling.
There are more details behind my brilliant scheme to return Bennett’s pencil, but that’s basically what it comes down to—stalling. I intend to dawdle on my way to Spanish so I won’t have time to return it before class. Then, when the lunch bell rings, I’ll stand up, turn around to block Bennett’s path, and give it back to him. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll be able to keep him talking all the way to the dining hall.
My heart is racing as I arrive at the door. The bell rings, right on cue, but as I walk into the classroom and pass Señor Argotta, he claps and announces, “Conversation practice! Time to move, everybody!” He bursts out with it like he’s declaring a celebration.
No. Not conversation practice. This is the worst of Argotta’s clever little group exercises. I’ve timed my arrival perfectly, but it won’t matter if Bennett ends up on the other side of the room again.
Argotta’s walking through the rows of desks, breaking us up into pairs, and passing out laminated cards that depict a situation no one would ever find themselves in on a trip to Spain—or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. He gives me my card, and I shut my lids tight, fearing the worst. I open one eye and read: Partner number one, you are interviewing for a job as a waiter/waitress at one of Madrid’s finest restaurants. Partner number two, you are the restaurant owner. I look over at Alex, my usual partner, and he winks.
Señor Argotta stops and turns back. “Señorita Greene, partner with Señor Cooper, por favor.”
What? No. I’m sorry, señor. I cannot partner with Bennett Cooper. All night I’ve pictured how I’m going to return his pencil. How I’m going to ask him again—when he’s not under Emma’s and Danielle’s scrutiny—if he was at the track on Monday. I’m going to ask him why he seemed to know me then, but now he doesn’t. I’ve pictured the whole discussion, right down to the last detail; but I’ve never pictured talking with him in Spanish.
I consider running for the door. Faking a seizure. I could move across the room and take the open seat across from Señor Kestler, as if I’ve misunderstood Argotta’s accent. But it’s too late. Bennett has heard the instructions just as plainly as I have, and now he’s eyeing me with this “don’t worry, I won’t bite” look. He lifts his chin like he’s commanding me to stand up, and when I do, he turns my desk around to face his.
“Hi,” I say when we’re both settled again.
“Hi. Anna, right?” Bennett looks completely relaxed, and the act of verbalizing my name doesn’t seem to cause the odd reaction it did in the dining hall two days ago.
“Yeah.” I look down at the table, trying not to look at his eyes for fear of getting trapped in there again. “Bennett, right?”
He nods.
“Do you ever go by ‘Ben’?” Where did that come from? Oh, God.
He grins. “No. Just…Bennett.”
And here comes the flush. I wonder if he is as curious to know what I look like without a red face as I am to see him with a haircut. “Thanks for the loan.” As I pass him the pencil, I can feel all my questions just sitting there, waiting for me to launch them one by one, but I can’t seem to find my voice now that he’s sitting here across from me.
“Any time,” he says as he sets it in the long groove at the top of the wooden desk. The pencil must have magnetic properties, because it seems to be pulling both of us into it. “So, what’s our assignment today?” he asks as he leans forward, and I swallow the questions down.
“I’m afraid it’s a tough one.” I reach over, bridging the gap between our two desks, and set the card down with the words facing him.
He picks it up, and a grin gradually spreads over his face. “Oh, this should be easy.” He leans forward, like he has a secret. “I’ve interviewed for several waiter jobs in Madrid before.”
“Really?”
“No.” He smiles. “I’m kidding.”
I laugh too loud. “Well, good.” I take a deep breath to steady my nerves and press my palms flat on the desk to keep my hands from shaking. I move in toward him and say, “I have no idea how to hire someone in this country or any other one.” I take the card from his desk and lean back, trying to look comfortable. “So,” I begin in my most practiced Spanish diction, “tell me about your experience as a waiter, Señor Cooper.”
Bennett launches into a lengthy description of his work at various fictitious restaurants throughout Spain. In perfectly crafted sentences, he describes his expertise with a crumb scraper. He explains how he can talk any customer into getting the special of the day instead of the dish they really wanted. He can handle ten tables at once, including large parties, and he always overtips the bussers. He says it all with a straight face and the smallest trace of a glint in his eye.
I understand his Spanish, but I have to work to hear the words he says. He speaks beautifully. His voice is steady and strong, the cadence is balanced, and I’m completely transfixed, pulled into the richness of his voice. He tells about another fictitious job in a restaurant in Seville called El Mesero Mejor. The Best Waiter.
By the end he has me smiling. Laughing. And more than a little bit in awe. He concludes in his perfectly confident Spanish: “So you see, I am a perfect waiter for your restaurant.” I’m not sure how much time passes between the completion of this sentence and his next word: “Well?” He raises his eyebrows and waits for my reply.
When I realize he’s caught me staring again, I bite my lip and wait for the flush to spread over my face, but this time, nothing happens. I go with it. “You’re hired,” I say with a shrug.
“Wow? Just like that?” he says in English. “You’re an easy manager.”
I try to think of a clever response, but my mind is blank. “Your Spanish is really good,” I say instead.
“I did a study abroad program in Barcelona last summer.”
I smile when I think about living in Barcelona with a local family. “I’d love to do that. It must have been fun to live there. To really get into another culture.”
“It was pretty incredible.” He rests his forearms on the desk. “How
about you? Have you been to Spain?”
“No,” I say under my breath. “I haven’t been…anywhere. I work at my family’s bookstore, and I spend a lot of time in the travel section. That’s about as close to the rest of the world as I get.”
“I’m surprised to hear that.” He leans in even closer, like he’s got a secret to divulge. “This is only my third day here, but it seems like a fairly well-traveled bunch.”
“It is.” I shrug again. “I’m just not…part of that particular bunch.”
“So, you work in a bookstore.” It’s a statement, not a question. “And read travel books.”
I look at him and try to think how to respond. I’m long past the point of being embarrassed by the fact that I’m the poorest kid in this incredibly wealthy high school, but he doesn’t need to rub it in. “Something like that. I take it you travel a lot.”
“Me?” He looks down at the table. “Yeah. You could definitely say that.…” He trails off and seems to be suppressing a smile. “I love traveling.” My expression must show my confusion, because his face gets serious as he clarifies. “Yes. I travel a lot.…As much as I can.”
“Lucky you.” The words sound bitter as they leave my mouth, and I immediately wish I could pull them back.
“I’m sorry. Was that rude? I didn’t mean it to be.”
“No.” It’s not his fault I’ve barely left the state. “You weren’t rude.”
“Look, anyone who wants to travel can find a way to do it. You just have to get creative.”
Señor Argotta suddenly turns the corner, coming within earshot, and Bennett switches back to Spanish. He looks me right in the eye. “You know what they say, La vida es una aventura atrevida o no es nada.” He looks out of the corner of his eye, thinking. “I can’t remember who said that.”
I laugh under my breath.
“What?” Bennett’s smiling along with me, even though he has no idea why I’m so amused.
“Helen Keller,” I whisper, picturing the poster that hung on the wall in Miss Waters’s English class back in seventh grade, its white sailboat fighting against the current in the foreground and the quote Life is either a daring adventure or nothing in block letters below.
“She probably didn’t say it in Spanish, then.”
I try to stifle my laugh but it’s hopeless. “No, probably not.” We’re both still smiling and watching each other, but I break the connection when I look up to be sure Argotta can’t hear us speaking English. He’s clear across the room, kneeling down next to another team and helping them through a translation. When I look back at Bennett, I discover that his eyes haven’t left me.
“Well, whatever language it’s in,” I say, “I have to agree with her. I, for one, am ready for a lot more adventure and a lot less nothing.”
His smile fades, and he looks at me with a serious expression. I think he’s about to say something significant, but he presses his lips together. I watch him, waiting him out, until it’s clear that he’s planning to stay silent.
“Were you going to say something?” I finally ask.
He gives me a little grin. “Yeah…actually…” But then the bell rings. “Never mind,” he says rising and heading for the door. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
I watch him walk across the room and out into the hallway. When I look down at the desk I see the pencil, still sitting in the groove, right where he put it. I twist my hair and hold it against the back of my head with one hand while I stick the pencil in place with the other.
See you later. That’s what he said three days ago—See you later. But I didn’t see him later at all. He wasn’t in the dining hall, I didn’t run into him in The Donut, and he wasn’t in the student lot.
He was in Spanish on Thursday and Friday—and I’m certain he was watching the door for me both days, because the minute I walked in he looked down at his desk. But there was no satisfied grin when he saw me, no smile on his face as he doodled—and he didn’t look up again before I took my seat. Each day, I’d tried to return the pencil, but he bolted for the door in perfect synchronization with the bell. And it was as if our conversation had never even happened.
The storm that starts on Saturday morning rains out my track meet, keeps me awake all night, and doesn’t let up until afternoon. I walk to the bookstore in a daze, and when I manage to make it to the corner without breaking anything, I decide to reward myself with a latte. Even with the stop, I have fifteen minutes to kill before my shift, so I head into the record store.
“Anna!” Justin yells over the loud, steady backbeat of music coming from the ceiling, godlike and omnipresent. He walks out from behind the counter and pulls me in for a hug. “I was hoping you’d come by this weekend.”
“Hey, buddy,” I say, and silently scold myself for calling him that. It’s probably worse than calling him Freckles, but words like buddy or pal or some other brotherly sounding term seem to pop out of my mouth whenever I see him. He pulls back and looks at me, and even though it’s only for a brief flash, it’s there. A twinge, like I just insulted him.
“What’s this?” I ask, pointing up at the music.
He leans in close to me. “I scored.” He looks around the store to be sure no one’s listening—and no one is, since we’re the only ones here. “The drummer from Nirvana just cut a demo, and Elliot let me borrow it.” I don’t know who Elliot is, but I imagine he’s someone important at Northwestern’s student-run radio station, where Justin has been interning for the last three months. While I dream of visiting far-off places, he dreams of moving into a high-rise dorm just down the street so he can major in broadcasting and spend his college years as a DJ for the station’s legendary The Rock Show.
“Do you want to borrow it?” he asks as he steps even closer to me.
“No, really, that’s—” I’m shaking my head, but it doesn’t matter. He’s already walking away, and when he ducks down behind the counter, the music stops. He comes back carrying the CD. “Here, take it. Tell me what you think.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. Just bring it back sometime next week.”
“Thank you. That is so cool of you,” I say as I press it to my chest.
“I think you’ll like it.”
“I’m sure I will. You know I trust you completely.” I look up and find him watching me, and that’s when I feel it. Him wanting to kiss me.
“Any other new stuff?” I try to turn his attention toward the rest of the new releases on the wire rack.
“Not there.” He shoots me a smile and gestures for me to follow him to his usual spot behind the counter. Then he disappears and pops up again, placing a jewel case on the counter between us. The paper cover is painted in watercolors: blues and reds and greens, all swirling in interesting patterns and fading off at the sides. Like any watercolor, it’s unique. One of a kind. Still, it matches all the others on my shelf in my bedroom.
“A new running mix!” I pick it up, flip it over, and read the track names. “You have no idea. I’m so tired of skipping through tracks on my CDs. I always run best to yours.”
“I have to say, I outdid myself this time.” He smiles and blushes, and I watch how the hue makes his freckles disappear. He’s kind like no other guy I know, and I wish for a moment that I could think of him as more than a friend.
“I’m sure you did.” And there it is again. In his mind, this is the moment in the movie where I leap over the counter and rip the buttons off his shirt. Instead, I look at my watch. Three fifty-nine. “Shoot.” I gesture across the street toward the bookstore. “I’ve got to run and release my dad from duty. Do you need any books?” I hold up my new CDs. “You know the deal—one for one.”
He nods. “Actually, I wanted to ask you some—” Justin trails off and we both turn our attention to the front door, watching as a girl in sorority letters walks in, comes straight to the counter, and stands next to me, waiting. Justin shoots me an annoyed look. “Never mind. I’ll just try to come by the booksto
re later.”
Once my back is turned, I let out a sigh of relief and silently thank the Tri-Delt for buying me a bit more time.
Time seems to have slowed to a crawl. Northwestern students come in and look around, then leave. Mothers come in with their toddlers in tow, browsing the Book Club Recommendations table while their kids destroy the picture-book section. I scan credit cards, adjust books into place until all the bindings are even and the newer books are displayed with prominence, and read the Michelin guide to the Côte d’Azur. At 8:50, I total the day’s sales, zip the cash into the green vinyl envelope, and lock it in the safe in the back room. I flip the sign on the front door to CLOSED and click the dead bolt in place.
The coffeehouse is already packed. Finals week at Northwestern has just ended, and no one’s studying tonight. In fact, most look haggard and worn, like they’ve been celebrating since Friday afternoon.
As I walk by, I casually look in the window to see if I can spot Justin with his radio-station friends. He seemed so eager to talk to me earlier, but he never came by the bookstore tonight.
I keep walking, and round the corner to my dark and quiet block. I see a sudden movement in the park across the street and I slow my pace, squinting into the darkness. It’s hard to see any details, but there’s definitely someone there, and I narrow my eyes again until I make out the shape of a person, doubled over on the park bench, rocking back and forth. I step onto the grass to get a closer look. I gasp, because even from this distance, I’m pretty sure I know who it is.
My feet seem to move toward him on their own, and when I’m within earshot, I whisper, “Bennett? Is that you?” There’s no response, but now I’m close enough to make out the sound of groaning, low and weak. “Bennett?” I take small steps, moving in a little closer. “Are you okay?”