OTR 58 football and buys cigarettes and every pill would glide down my throat, a slippery slope. Instead, he got up and walked to the mini-freezer, pulling out a tiny carton of Ben and Jerry’s Half-Baked, then a spoon out of his back pocket. “Always prepared for when duty calls,” he smiled. “Sweetie, you can’t take that. That’s for the boy who’s low in sugar,” Nurse Kelly called out. “Too late, Miss Kelly.” “It’s alright Nurse Kelly,” came a muffled voice from the corner—Brian from Geometry. “I’ll just pass out for the common cause.” “Chivalry is alive, and uh, well.” He nodded approvingly at the boy and walked back towards me. He sat next to me on my couch, opened the lid and took a spoonful out of Brian’s carton. Then he took a pill out of my hand, placed it in the middle of the orb of ice cream, and looked up. “They’re like little tic tacs. Just hide them in the ice cream, swallow and you won’t even realize you took a pill. It really is easy. Here, I’ll feed it to you—” “Oh, no no,” I looked up at him, laughing. “I can do it
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myself.” He lifted his lands in playful surrender. “Hey. At least I offered.” He had my attention. For the first time, with our heads only inches apart, I could really see him, the details of his face; his eyes were a brilliant green, specks of hazel in the corners. I trusted him and those eyes automatically. Without thinking, with my free hand I took the pint and the spoon out of his. One by one, a tiny ball of ice cream and a pill pinched in its core, I took my pills, every last one. He cheered me on with each one, high fives and smiles and words of encouragement. “You see? Was that so hard?”
I smirked at him. “Yes.”
We sat wordlessly for some time. He kept looking at me, and I found it nearly impossible to keep his eye contact, his gaze unfaltered and piercing, yet generous and soothing. He broke the silence. “Well. Nap times over. Gotta get to class. I’ll see you around.” He headed to the nurse’s desk, swiped a lollipop from the tiny bowl on the corner and unwrapped it. He placed it in his mouth, headed for the door, and then at the last second he turned around, facing me. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Cara,” I uttered.
night after the nurse’s office, I
“James. I’ll see you around, saw him at a house party, and then the next weekend I Cara.” saw him at another, and then He placed the lollipop another until he was the one back in his mouth, smiling at inviting me. We were partners me with full, cherry-stained in beer pong; he coached me lips. Then he saluted to Miss through my first keg stand; Kelly and exited back into the clearly, a modern-day romance shallow high school halls. of the Gods was in effect. I watched him leave, But there was something and then turned to the sorry, beneath the layers of beer silent boy in the corner. “Sorry and house party; more than Brian,” I said. “I’ll buy you that, we were really getting to another pint.” know each other. He played “Don’t worry about it football, rugby, and baseball, Cara. I hope you feel better,” but he really loved playing the Brian answered in his scratchy, saxophone. He’d never killed breathless tone. a ladybug. He taught me big “I’m feeling better words like verisimilitude and exonerate. He was taking Latin. already.” Vox nihil, he’d once told My hands now emptied me in between Jaeger shots. The of their burdens, the pills safely voice of nothing. tucked in my throat, I thanked I didn’t understand it, Miss Kelly and headed back to drunk off my own methods, but class. I couldn’t remember why somehow it had always haunted I had been so afraid of the pills; me. it seemed so easy now. Nevertheless, being his friend was changing me, what Everything was easier I swore was for the better— then, I told myself as I battered something I’ll still attest to. I was through the cold depths of late made better by knowing him. autumn, the sullen roads of My fifteen years became just a midnight. I had never walked number. I felt myself maturing these streets alone; James was by the minute: I’d taken an usually with me, holding my interest in liquor, politics, hand through main roads and and conspiracy theories. He’d trying to feel me up on the side grown into me too, and learned streets. to love Grease and apple cider In those months, time and Elvis Presley. It all became seemed to fly by. The Friday our thing; we had an our thing.
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