Dangling Conversations

      The next morning, I look for Noah and find Joni instead.

      “We’ve got to talk,” she says. I do not argue.

      She pulls me into an empty classroom. History’s great figures – Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Homer Simpson – look down at us from posters on the walls.

      “You saw us. Ted saw us.”

      It isn’t a question, so I don’t have to answer.

      “What’s going on?” I ask instead. Implied in that question is the bigger one: Why didn’t you tell me?

      “I wasn’t expecting this to happen.”

      “Which part? Falling for Chuck, or having to admit it?”

      “Don’t get hostile.”

      I sigh. Early signs of defensiveness are not good.

      “Look,” I say, “you know as well as I do what Chuck did after Infinite Darlene rejected him. He trashed her locker and bad-mouthed her to the whole school.”

      “He was hurt.”

      “He was psycho, Joni.” (I don’t mean to say that; it just comes out. A Friendian Slip.)

      Joni shoots me the look I know so well – the same look she shot me when she dyed her hair red in sixth grade and I unsuccessfully tried to pretend it had come out well; the same look she shot me when I tried to convince her (after the first break-up) that getting back together with Ted wasn’t the best idea; the same look she shot me when I confessed to her that I was worried I’d never, ever find a boyfriend who loved me the same way I loved him. It’s a look that stops all conversation. It’s a look that insists, You’re wrong.

      We’ve been best friends too long to fight each other over this. We both know that.

      “So have you talked to Ted?” I ask.

      “I wanted to talk to you first.”

      I think she’s doing the wrong thing. My intuition is clear on this: Chuck is bad news. But I know there’s nothing I can do to convince her to change her mind. Not without proof.

      “So are you, like, Chuck’s girlfriend now?”

      Joni groans. “Remains to be seen, OK? And how are you doing with your Mystery Boy?”

      “I have to find him again.”

      “You lost him?”

      “Suppose so.”

      I say goodbye to Joni and head to Noah’s locker. I see Infinite Darlene and duck past her – I’m sure by now she’s heard about Joni and Chuck, and I’m sure she’ll have loads to say about it.

      I also pass Seven and Eight in the halls, their heads leaned gently into each other, their words impossible to overhear. Their real names are Steven and Kate, but no one has called them that for years. They started going out in second grade and haven’t been apart since. They are the one per cent of one per cent who meet early on and never need to find anybody else. There’s no way to explain it.

      Noah is waiting by his locker. No – let me change that. He is standing by his locker. There is no sign in his posture or in his gaze that he is waiting for anybody.

      “Hey,” I say. I scan his features for a reaction. Surprise? Happiness? Anger?

      I can’t read him.

      “Hey,” he says back, closing his locker.

      “I’m sorry about yesterday,” I continue. “Did you get my note?”

      He shakes his head. I’m a little thrown.

      “Oh. I put a note in your locker. I tried to get here right after school, but ten thousand things got in my way. I really wanted to be here.”

      He can’t read me, either. The confusion is on his face. He doesn’t know if I’m being sincere.

      “Locker two-six-four, right?”

      “Two-six-three.”

      Oops. I apologise on behalf of my pathetic memory and then ask him what he did last night, trying to ease things into a conversation.

      “I painted some music. You?”

      “Oh, I fought a forest fire.” When I don’t have anything interesting to say, I usually try to make up something interesting. Then I take one last stab at sounding impressive: “And I started thinking about the Dowager Dance. I’m going to architect it.”

      “What’s the Dowager Dance?” he asks.

      I forgot he’s new to the school. He has no idea what I’m talking about.

      For all he knows, I really do fight forest fires in my free time.

      I start giving him answers, explaining away the Dowager Dance and the organisational fury of Lyssa Ling. But instead of giving answers, I want to be asking him questions. What does he mean by “paint some music”? Is he happy I’m here? Does he want me to stop talking? Because I keep talking and talking. I am telling him about the time Lyssa Ling tried to sell bagels with fortunes baked inside them as a sixth-grade fundraiser, and how the shipment was switched and we got the fortune bagels that were supposed to go to a bachelor party, with XXX-rated slips of paper inserted into the dough. It’s a funny story, but somehow I am making it boring. I can’t stop in the middle, so I go on and on. Noah doesn’t walk away or nod off, but he’s certainly not riding my tangent. I’m barely on it myself.

      “Thank God I found you!”

      It’s not Noah saying this. It’s Infinite Darlene, right behind me.

      “Am I interrupting?” she asks.

      Now, I really like Infinite Darlene. But among all my friends, she’s usually the last I introduce to new people. I have to prepare them. Because Infinite Darlene doesn’t make the best first impression. She seems very full of herself. Which she is. It’s only after you get to know her better that you realise that somehow she’s managed to encompass all her friends within her own self-image, so that when she’s acting full of herself, she’s actually full of her close friends too.

      There is no way I can expect Noah to understand this.

      I try to send Infinite Darlene a look to let her know she’s interrupting, without actually telling her out loud.

      It doesn’t work.

      “You must be that boy Paul likes,” she says to Noah.

      I turn Elmo red.

      “And boy,” Infinite Darlene continues, “you sure are cute.”

      The first time Infinite Darlene talked to me like this, I stuttered for days. Noah smiles and takes it in his stride.

      “Now, are all the girls at this school as nice as you?” he asks. “If so, I’m definitely going to like it here.”