Our Year of Maybe

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  “We match,” he says softly. Then jingles his bracelet. “In more ways than one.”

  I like that a little too much.

  CHAPTER 6

  PETER

  “AT LEAST WE HAVE THE same lunch?” Sophie says as we stand in the front office, peering at our very different schedules. When I imagined returning to school, I assumed I’d sit next to her, share notes, partner on class assignments. Sophie and public school seemed inextricably linked.

  My eyes flick over the printout the school secretary gave me. AP Lit, AP US History, trig, chemistry, Latin II, band. I knew Sophie wasn’t taking any APs, but I still hoped we’d have an elective in common. I rub the bracelet on my wrist. My sleeve covers it, but I’ll have to get used to how foreign it feels. I guess if I could get used to dialysis, I can get used to anything.

  “Lunch seems so far away,” I say, because I’ll miss you and I don’t want to be alone would have sounded pathetic. A knot of nerves twists tight in my stomach. I pocket the schedule, positive I’ll consult it at least a dozen more times.

  I know the transplant wasn’t a magical instant cure. That I will live with this disease for the rest of my life. That there are hurdles ahead, that even my immunosuppressants have side effects associated with them. That I’ll have to go through life as a Very Careful Person, limiting sun exposure, going back to the doctor for follow-ups, monitoring my caloric and sugar intakes.

  But it all seems so much more manageable. I feel . . . free.

  Sophie pushes her shoulder against mine. “You just had surgery and you’re scared of public school?”

  “Yes.”

  Despite her teasing, Sophie’s never judged me, though she’s had plenty of opportunities. Back when our parents still let us have sleepovers—as long as we left the door open and one of us slept on the floor—one night when I was eleven and she was twelve, she crawled into bed with me around two a.m. “I can’t sleep,” she whispered, tugging the blanket off me to cover her. When I woke up, I realized I’d wet the bed. That was the most embarrassing part: that I couldn’t control my own bladder.

  But if Sophie was pissed (ha) or revolted, she didn’t say anything about it. She just hugged me, told me it was going to be okay, and helped me strip the dirty sheets off the bed.

  I’m still not exactly sure how she felt about it. If our bond transcends things like bed-wetting. Maybe it does. Maybe it’s another reason I’m lucky to have her.

  “You’ll be fine,” she says, emphasizing the last word. “Most kids aren’t feral.” She mimes swiping a paw at me.

  When she hugs me, it lasts a few seconds longer than usual. Her hair smells like citrus, fresh and clean. It makes me even more reluctant to let go. Makes me wonder if my mercurial crush is back again or if I just like the scent of citrus.

  After I declared my love for Sophie, we navigated a period of awkwardness that lasted a few months. Her rejection made me terrified of complimenting her, touching her. Slowly we found our way back to who we used to be. These days we’re generous with our displays of affection, especially post-transplant.

  “Learn a bunch,” Sophie says, a hand lingering on my shoulder, right above my heartbeat. “If you don’t know it all already.”

  “I’ll see if there’s any space left in my brain. Even though it’s not as big as yours.”

  The joke usually never fails to cheer her up, but now her smile wavers. A Sophie smile is one of the purest expressions of joy—probably because I only see her do it around me. When she’s with her family, she’s only half smiling, hiding her teeth.

  “See you in a few hours,” she says, and we take off for opposite sides of the building.

  On my way to first period, I’m stopped exactly three times.

  Tim Ochoa, who sat next to me during a fifth-grade science unit on volcanoes, says, “Peter . . . Rosenberg? No fuckin’ way! Good to see you, man!” and then slaps my shoulder. I’m so stunned I don’t correct him on my last name.

  Annabeth Nguyen, who shyly asked me to the sixth-grade dance, which I wound up spending in the hospital, says, “Wow. Peter, is that you? You look . . . You look good.” And then turns five shades of red.

  Vivek Patel, whom I shared a locker with in seventh grade, stares at me like he’s just seen a ghost and says, “Whoa. I thought you died.” Cue eerie silence during which it becomes apparent that I am not, in fact, dead.

  I’m not really on social media except for Tumblr, where I mostly reblog things, so it makes sense, I guess, that they’re surprised to see me. Sophie made sure we were early so I had time to get everything done—locker assignment, brief school tour, devastation upon learning our schedules didn’t overlap. Still, I get to AP Lit seven minutes before the bell.

  Slowly students trickle in, exchanging hellos and compliments about hair that’s either grown out or been chopped off over the summer. I sit silently at the end of a middle row, clutching my backpack to my chest before finally letting it drop to the floor.

  The bell rings and Mr. Lozano, a youngish guy in a Shakespeare T-shirt, passes out the syllabus. There are only about twenty of us in class, so he asks us to introduce ourselves along with one thing we like that starts with the first letter of our name.

  When it’s my turn, I mumble, “Peter, and, uh . . . pizza,” which is both stupid and unmemorable, but for some reason it’s the first thing that popped into my head.

  Oh my God. Why didn’t I say freaking piano?

  As I feel my face warm, Mr. Lozano wraps it up with “And I’m Mr. Lozano, and I love literature!” This sparks a few groans. “Sorry, guys, I had to.” He puts a medieval poem up on the screen. “Since I’m sure everyone did the summer reading, which included The Canterbury Tales, this language shouldn’t be too alien. At least for those of you who read the book and not the SparkNotes version. Which I’m sure none of you did. Any brave souls want to try reciting it?”

  Middle English isn’t too foreign to me, but I’m not about to volunteer on my first day, especially after the whole pizza situation. The girl next to me raises her hand, stands up, and clears her throat:

  Whan the turuf is thy tour,

  And thy pit is thy bour,

  Thy fel and thy whitë throtë

  Shullen wormës to notë.

  What helpëth thee thennë

  Al the worildë wennë?

  “Great pronunciation, Abby,” Mr. Lozano says. “Spend the next few minutes discussing your interpretation of the poem with the person next to you. Then we’ll talk about it as a group.”

  I shift toward Abby, but she’s already moving her desk so she can partner with the girl to her right. I’m next to the window, so there’s no one on my other side.

  Partners. When I thought about going back to school, I never once considered the anxiety that comes with picking partners because I stupidly assumed Sophie would be there next to me. More specifically: the anxiety of realizing no one wants to be your partner. The back of my neck grows warm as I glance around the room, trying to catch the eye of any other loners. But everyone’s already deep in conversation.

  Then the guy in front of me twists around. “Partner?” he asks. The seat next to him is empty, and I nod, trying not to let on exactly how relieved I am. He gets up so can he sit backward in his chair, which is attached to the desk. “Are you new? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

  “Sort of. I’m Peter.”

  “Chase. So what language is this poem in again?” His hair’s a golden brown, his skin a light olive. His glasses aren’t the massive thick-framed ones most kids are wearing; they’re thin and oval-shaped with wire frames. Old-man glasses, really. Earlier, he said, “I’m Chase, and I like challenging teachers who make us play getting-to-know-you activities.”

  “Middle English.”

  “And that has nothing in common with our kind of English because . . . ?”

  “Did you not read The Canterbury Tales?”

  Behind his grandpa glasses, his dark eyes shift left. Right. Back
to me. “Shh. I was one of the people who read the SparkNotes version,” he says conspiratorially.

  My first day, and I’m helping someone else instead of the other way around. I used to do it with Sophie all the time. “Middle English is really inflected, and it’s actually a Germanic language. The grammar is more similar to German than to English.”

  “Interesting. What does this poem mean, then?”

  “Well,” I start, because while I’m not one hundred percent sure, I have a guess. “I think it’s a reflection on mortality. A memento mori. We can translate it to, ‘when the turf is your tower/and the pit is your bower/your skin—‘fel’ is skin—and white throat/shall be food for worms/what will help you then’ . . . and then I’m not entirely sure of the last line.”

  Chase is staring. “How . . . did you get all that?”

  “I . . . read a lot.” The mahogany bookshelves in my room. All those first editions. A warmth flows to my cheeks for the twelfth time this morning, though Chase obviously has no idea what my room is filled with.

  “So it’s about the passage of time? Like, this is what’s gonna happen when you die?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Oh! It could be that all of this is going to happen when you die, so what will the good things in the world matter to you then? So take advantage of all of this while you’re alive?”

  “I can appreciate that.” He pushes the sleeves of his plaid shirt to his elbows. It occurs to me that at least forty percent of the male population is wearing plaid. “A little depressing, though.” He actually looks sad, like he was expecting the poem to have a deeper, possibly more upbeat message.

  “Maybe it was less depressing a thousand years ago?”

  Mr. Lozano calls the class back together, and when he asks us what we thought of the poem, I get brave and raise my hand, explaining the analysis Chase and I came up with.

  “Fantastic insight, Peter who likes pizza,” Mr. Lozano says.

  Someone pumps their fist. “Yeah! Pizza!”

  Public school is weird.

  Mr. Lozano continues: “This might shock you, but this poem was once used romantically. A man might have sung this to a woman to seduce her.”

  “Because what’s hotter than worms?” a girl in the back row says.

  I find myself laughing along with everyone else. Relaxing, even. I think I’m going to like this class.

  “Thanks for helping me, sort-of-new Peter,” Chase says when the bell rings. “Partners next time?”

  Something springs to life in my chest. “Sure,” I say. First period of my first day and I already have a potential new friend. Someone who knows nothing about who I am or who I used to be, and that feels even better—the idea that though I’m not a complete stranger here, in a way I’m starting fresh.

  Sort-of-new Peter. It fits.

  CHAPTER 7

  SOPHIE

  AFTER THE LAST BELL, I change for dance team in the privacy of a bathroom stall, which I’ve never done before. Most dancers I’ve met don’t get easily embarrassed about their bodies. But today when I put on my black spandex shorts and swap my striped shirt for a sports bra and tank top, I want to keep my scar secret. I’m not embarrassed by it; I just want it to remain solely mine.

  The first few weeks after the surgery, I stared at it for a long time in the bathroom mirror after I showered. Now it’s as much a part of me as my freckles.

  When my feelings for Peter changed, I began looking at myself in a different way, wondering which parts of my face, my body, he might possibly like. Wondering if he thought I had too many freckles, or if my eyes were too far apart, or if my hair wasn’t soft enough. I craved compliments he wasn’t in the habit of giving out. “I’m not sure about this shirt,” I’d say, waiting for him to tell me I looked amazing in it.

  But my dancing—he praised that all the time, told me he couldn’t believe I could do a switch leap, though mine were far from flawless. Those compliments I held close to my heart.

  I shove my hair into a stubby ponytail and peer at my reflection. This is the time in our lives we’re supposed to have complicated relationships with our bodies, but I’ve never had a reason to dislike mine. I’m small, pear-shaped, muscular. My body does what I ask it to. I respect it, push it far enough but never too far, and it rewards me with art.

  “Sophie, hey,” says sophomore Neeti Chadha as her face appears in the mirror next to mine. I scoot out of the way as she winds black curls into a cute bun. “You weren’t here this summer, were you?”

  “No, I wasn’t.” I stare down at the bracelet on my wrist. “I had . . . some health stuff.” Since I was going to be missing practice, I only told Montana.

  “Oh no, are you okay?” Neeti asks. I can’t tell if it’s genuine. Neeti and I have never spoken much. I nod. “That’s good. How’s Tabby? I keep seeing her baby pics on Instagram. So adorable.”

  “She’s good.”

  “Cool. See you out there.” With sparkly teeth, she grins one last time at her reflection and then bounces out of the locker room. Not once does she say she is happy to see me or she’s glad I’m back.

  “Welcome back, Tigers!” Montana Huang says when we’re all in the gym. Her black hair’s up in its usual ballet bun. She has a dance background like a lot of our teammates do, though others have experience with gymnastics and cheer. Our school’s cheer squad was cut a couple years back after the team got wasted and trashed the gym, so now we’re the ones who dance at football games in the fall and basketball games in the winter. Coach Carson basically lets Montana do what she wants. She spends the beginning of practice on the bleachers, half watching us, before retreating to her office.

  We start a routine Montana taught over the summer, and I’m slow to catch up at first. I also don’t want to bend my torso too much, so I keep my movements as soft and fluid as possible.

  Dance is a language to me, one that sometimes feels easier than English and relies on my entire body to communicate. I can string together axels and leaps and pirouettes, make them mean something. Dance may not always be beautiful, and in my opinion it shouldn’t have to be. It has the power to make people feel, and I crave being completely in control of that. As a kid I loved watching the older dancers at my studio, the way they played and pushed and sometimes even fought onstage grabbed on to my heart and never let go. I’ve never known how to do that with words.

  By the end of practice I’m sweaty but refreshed, and I linger in the gym for a while, doing a few extra stretches. Sure, I could have marked the steps, but Tabby was wrong. I didn’t overdo it, and I feel fine.

  “My parents are cool with me having a party after our game against Lincoln next Friday,” Montana’s saying to her girlfriend, Liz Hollenbeck, another senior. They met on dance team and have been dating since early last year.

  “I love your parents. Can we trade?”

  “No, because I love them too.” Montana’s eyes dart to me. She must realize I can hear her because that can only explain what she says next. “Sophie! You’re invited too, of course. The whole team is.”

  I wrap my fingers around my outstretched foot and stare at the floor. Montana has always intimidated me: the severity of her bun, how completely natural and even drill-sergeant-esque she is in front of the team. She gives off this air of effortlessness, confidence in all aspects of her life. I am only like that onstage.

  “Maybe,” I say. As usual.

  “She never goes to parties,” Liz says, tucking a short strand of blond hair behind one ear.

  I bite the inside of my cheek. I don’t go to parties because Peter doesn’t go to parties, and when I’m not with Peter, life is different. Duller. I’m duller—Peter must have noticed it today at lunch, when we sat with some of the dance team. A couple of my teammates asked him a few questions because he was new and therefore intriguing, but I kept quiet, and no one asked me anything. Now that he’s in school with me, he’ll know what I really am when he’s not around: a burnt-out light of a person.

  But I co
uld take Peter to his first party. Our first party.

  “Actually,” I say, switching legs. “I think I’ll go.”

  “Great. I’ll text you my address,” Montana says, which is necessary because, even though I’ve spent three afternoons a week over the past few years with her and she sits at the far end of the dance team table at lunch, I have never been to her house.

  “I’ll meet you in the locker room, okay?” Liz says.

  “I’ll be there soon.” Montana waits until Liz disappears and then asks, “Sophie, did practice go okay for you today?”

  “Definitely. I missed it . . . over the summer.”

  “Yeah. Wow. I still can’t believe what you did.” Her phone vibrates, and she grabs it, sends a quick text. “Are you still working on some choreography for us?”

  It was something I mentioned toward the end of last year. Casually, just to put it out there, to see what would happen. Montana had seemed interested, but she was probably just being nice. Of course the goal is for the team to perform it . . . but I thought it wouldn’t happen for a while.

  I grab at my ponytail, pull it out, retie it. It’s like I never know what to do with my hands, and my hair is just there. Maybe I should wear it in a ballet bun like Montana does. “Yeah, but . . . I don’t know if it’s ready.”

  “I’d love to see what you have. Do you have the song with you?” Montana asks. She slides her phone back into her bag. A diamond stud in her nose glints when it catches the light. She must have gotten it pierced over the summer. I wonder if it hurt. “I could give you some feedback.”

  I suppose I can’t keep it inside forever. . . .

  “Feedback. Sure,” I relent, scrambling to my feet and finding the song on my phone, syncing it to Montana’s portable speakers. “Okay, so it starts with this a cappella clapping sequence at the beginning.”

  Montana shakes her head. “Show me.”

  All my choreography, though no one’s seen much of it yet, has a story, like all good dances should. This one, the jazz remix, sets up a competition between the dancers. Some are trying to prove this more modern style of dancing is better, while others insist the classic steps are timeless. Eventually everyone comes together and performs a mix of old and new. I try my best to show both parts, and by the end of it, I’m out of breath.