Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [6]
“Sage?” he asked. “Her sister was in my keyboarding class. Name’s Tammi. Freshman.”
Two new Boyer students in one day?
“What was she like?”
“Loud,” he answered decisively. “I think they’re from Joplin or somewhere south. Dad works in Columbia.”
“Is Tammi a seven-footer, too?” asked Tim. His tray was empty, but he continued to mop up gravy with his bare fingers.
“Nah,” replied Jack. “She’s a dwarf. I don’t think she’s five feet. Cute, though.”
Tim shrugged. “Maybe one’s adopted.”
I didn’t reply. I was experiencing my daily 12:13 kick to the nuts.
Figuratively. It was at 12:13 every day that Brenda would walk by my table. Every day, at 12:13, she would walk past our table, pause, and smile at me. Not the great grin that she used to give me. Just a small, friendly smile, like you’d give an old acquaintance you didn’t really want to talk to.
And then she’d move on. She was good at moving on.
“Witherspoon!” Jack barked at me, stabbing me in the kidney with his fork. Caught in the act of staring, I turned away. Jack and Tim were looking at me with pity.
“Dude, this is getting sad,” said Jack. “She’s not coming back.”
No, she wasn’t. For the first few weeks of our breakup, I didn’t give up hope. Every time she walked by, every time the phone rang, I held my breath.
Logan, I made a terrible mistake. …
Now, I knew it was over. Even if she asked to get back together, I wouldn’t want to. But I wished she’d talk to me. I wished she’d apologize. Do something to show me that the past three years had meant something to her.
Jack threatened me with his fork again. “Snap out of it, Logan. Did you ask Tanya out yet?”
Tim shook his head at Jack with a look of fatherly disappointment. Tim, so far as I knew, had never had a date. Jack would occasionally land a girl with his Adam Sandler I’m so crazy I’m cute routine, but it never lasted. Since Brenda and I had started dating, the boys kind of looked up to me. And if they both assumed that Brenda and I had gone a lot further than we had, I wasn’t about to correct them.
“C’mon, man,” Jack began again. “Show the girls around here what runners are made of.” With his spoon and two fingers, Jack graphically demonstrated just how I should show them.
Tim sighed, belched, and sighed again. “I think what Jack is trying to say is that you’re a really nice guy, and if Brenda couldn’t see that, then to hell with her. But you do need to get on with your life.”
Jack crinkled his brow. “That’s not what I was trying to say.”
I gathered my trash. “Thank you both. And screw you both. I’m fine.”
I dropped off my tray just as the bell rang. Across the cafeteria, Brenda was carefully gathering her things. My idiot friends thought I was still hung up on her, only they weren’t idiots because they were right.
Maybe I should just ask someone out. Find a girl, and if things didn’t work out, at least I’d tried. What was the worst that could happen?
I would find that out very shortly.
chapter four
WHEN I GOT UP for school the next day, I found my mother in our tiny closet of a kitchen cooking bacon and eggs. Though she probably hadn’t gotten off work until one the night before, she was up before seven fixing breakfast.
“Mom, you don’t have to do this every morning. I can eat at school.” I knew I qualified for the free meals program.
Mom slid two fried eggs onto my plate. She looked tired. Lately, I’d noticed the wrinkles around her eyes and the gray starting to streak her hair. Fourteen years of being a single parent were taking their toll. She got too little sleep. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone out with her friends.
“Sit down with me and eat,” she said, patting the cheap table my grandfather had given us. “I don’t get to see you that often anymore.”
Obediently, I joined her. It was always kind of awkward, these meals alone with my mother. More and more I felt like we didn’t have anything to talk about. Things had been