by H G Lynch
I frowned. “Poppy? Are you okay? You don’t look so good,” I said cautiously, shoving my other hand in my pocket to keep from touching her.
Her eyelids flicked open, and she fixed her gaze unerringly on me, a tiny, uneven smile gracing her lips. “Thanks for the compliment,” she commented sarcastically, but she sounded slightly breathless.
Surely, that wasn’t from pulling me down the hallway. We hadn’t even been running. Nobody was that unfit. She raised a hand to push back a few strands of hair that had fallen into her face, and I saw her hand tremble. Maybe she was fragile after all. Maybe she had some sort of illness, cancer or something.
I didn’t want to ask, so I said instead, “I’ll take you to the nurse. She’ll let you lie down for a while at least, if you don’t want to go home.” Please don’t go home, I mentally begged. I didn’t want her to leave. We had Art next. I’d been waiting all day for the chance to sit and talk with her, find some answers to the million questions buzzing around in my head like angry bees.
“No, not the nurse,” she abruptly stood up straight, so quickly I barely saw her move. I jerked in surprise, and she gave me a rueful look. “Sorry. I just…I think I should just go home. It must be the heat. I’m not used to so much sun.”
A funny, indecipherable expression crossed her face when she said it, but I just nodded numbly. Unhappily, I walked Poppy to the office so she could sign out. The round woman behind the glass was kindly, with greying hair, pink-rimmed glasses, and wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. She handed Poppy a pen and the log-out book, smiling sympathetically.
“This heat is awful. You’re not the first one to go home poorly, honey,” she said in voice rough from years of smoking. Then she disappeared back somewhere behind the counter, around the corner into the main part of the office where no student ever saw. Like the teachers’ lounge, it was a mystery to students. For all we knew, those office ladies played bingo and drank chardonnay back there.
Sighing, Poppy signed herself out and turned to me with her lips pressed into a crooked line. She raised her eyes to mine and shrugged one shoulder apologetically. “Sorry. I was really looking forward to Art. Guess I’ll see you tomorrow. We have English third period on a Wednesday, right?” she asked, though I knew she already knew it.
She started out the door next to the office, letting sunlight spill in through the half-open door, and then she hesitated. The bright, yellow light washed over her, turning her hair to a burning amber and bringing out colour in her cheeks. Her eyes closed briefly, and her brow furrowed, as if the sunlight hurt her, but then she made a soft noise and turned to wave goodbye to me. I waved back, but she was already gone, the door swinging shut behind her and cutting off the glow of the day outside. I stood there, hoping Poppy would be in school the next day.
She wasn’t. Sitting in English, in my usual seat by the window, I kept watch on the door, waiting for Poppy to come in. Maybe she was just running late. Maybe she’d gone to the bathroom to brush her hair or something—the other girls did that all the time, regardless of whether or not they would be on time for class.
The moment I gave up hoping for Poppy to make a last minute appearance to class was when Mr Adams finally looked up from his book, took a headcount, and asked, “Does anyone know where Poppy is?”
I glanced once more at the door, and then raised my gaze to the clock. Forty-three minutes. Forty-three minutes until English is over. Then fifty minutes of Physics, sixty minutes of lunch, fifty minutes of Graphics, fifty-five minutes of Maths. That made two hundred and fifty-eight minutes until school ended. It felt like a lifetime.
“Anyone? Nobody knows where Poppy is?” Mr Adams asked.
I foolishly raised my hand before I could think about it.
He touched a finger to his glasses to slide them slightly down his nose, tipping his chin down to look at me over the rims. “Anson, you know where Poppy is?” He sounded sceptical.
I resisted the urge to sigh. Even the teachers knew of my lonerdom status. Carefully, I nodded. “She went home sick yesterday, so, um, she’s probably off today.”
Mr Adams marked Poppy absent on his attendance sheet, and then stood up and wheeled out the blocky old TV again. “We’ll be watching the rest of Romeo and Juliet today, so settle in and take notes.”
He flipped off the lights and drew the blinds closed, allowing just the faintest trickle of sunny daylight to leak in. It highlighted the empty seat next to me, and I scowled, reaching up to adjust the slats of the blinds so they tilted the light in at a slightly different angle. I got out my MP3 and plugged in the headphones. I put my feet up on the empty plastic chair next to mine and leaned back against the wall, settling in for thirty-nine minutes of boredom and misery. The rest of the day was going to crawl by and I knew it.
The rest of the week progressed in much the same manner: Slow, dull, and Poppy-less. She didn’t turn up to Art or English on Thursday, and by Friday I was beginning to think I’d just imagined her. If it weren’t for Alistair’s equally dejected attitude in Art on Friday afternoon, I’d have sworn I’d just made her up inside my own head to relieve the tedium of being alone all the time. Then again, Alistair was a Goth, so his dejectedness could have merely been part of his look.
By the time I got home from school on Friday, I was desperate for the weekend. I wanted to be able to sleep in until noon and mope about the house in my jeans. My mood hadn’t been quite this low in a while, so it got my mother’s attention when I slammed the front door shut a fair bit harder than I’d intended to.
Kicking off my trainers by the door, I heard my mother in the kitchen, cursing as she dropped something and it clattered onto the floor. I threw my schoolbag into the cupboard under the stairs, where it lived on weekends, and went to find out what she was cooking. It smelled like chicken, and I could hear a pan sizzling on the stove. The kitchen was cluttered with knives, a chopping board, and various ingredients scattered on the worktops.
Mum was busy cautiously stirring chicken bits around in a frying pan with a wooden spoon while trying not to get hit by the grease spitting at her. She had her auburn hair tied into a messy ponytail and it looked like she’d spilled sauce of some kind on her pale yellow t-shirt. A large pan full of water was boiling on another ring of the stove, and I lifted the lid to see what was inside. It was rice. Chopped tomato lay next to diced onion on the chopping board, and a sieve was sitting on the draining board by the sink. The saltshaker and a steaming jug of what appeared to be chicken stock were standing side-by-side next to the microwave.
“Oh hey, sweetie. Could you take the rice off the heat for me? I think it’s done,” Mum said, scurrying to the cupboard above the microwave to pull out three plates.
I manoeuvred around her to turn off the ring the rice pan was sitting on and carried the pan to the sink to drain the water with the sieve. The window by the sink was fogged up with steam, and no wonder, it was roasting in there. I could already feel sweat breaking out on my forehead and shoulder blades. Meanwhile, my mother tipped the chopped onions and tomato into the frying pan, and did her motherly duty by asking me about my day and my obvious foul mood.
“So, what happened to get your knickers in a twist today, Anson?” She cast me a questioning sideways glance as she took the rice pan from me and poured it out onto the three plates.
I shrugged grumpily and turned the sieve upside-down on the draining board. “Nothing” It wasn’t really a lie. Nothing specific had happened that had caused my bad mood. It was what hadn’t happened that had my Teenage-o-meter set to Sulk. Poppy hadn’t shown up to class and asked me for my phone number or asked me to hang out after school sometime.
My mother gave me a long look that said, Aye right. She stirred the chicken some more, and then turned off the heat for the stove ring before leaning her hip against the counter and eyeing me as if she knew something I didn’t. Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, “I hear there’s a new girl in your English class.”
How would
she have heard that? She never leaves her study! Then I remembered my conversation with Aaron the other day and scowled. He was such a rat.
I tried to look as if I didn’t care as I asked, “Where’d you hear that?” I didn’t want to talk about Poppy with my mother. I didn’t want to talk about Poppy at all. I’d rather just forget she existed, at least for the weekend. The self-pitying could resume on Monday.
Feeling fidgety with my mother watching me so closely, I opened a cupboard and put the saltshaker away, then started shuffling things about inside it.
I could still feel my mother’s eyes on me as she spoke to my back. “I was at the shop today, getting milk, and I ran into Lacey Silverman’s mum. She was telling me that Lacey had been in a rage the other day because the new girl had apparently called her fat. She also said that the new girl had picked to sit next to you.”
I chewed my lip, lining the herbs and spices bottles up exactly parallel to each other; Rosemary, thyme, chilli powder, basil, nutmeg. I could deny it, say that the only free seat in the room had been next to me and it hadn’t really been Poppy’s choice. That would save me from the obligatory motherly teasing. But, I kind of suddenly did want to talk about Poppy after all.
“Actually, what she said was Lacey should find a size eight because she didn’t look like she fit into a six anymore. I had to agree with her, seeing as Lacey was kind of obviously bursting out of her shirt.”
Mum just cracked a smile and shook her head gently, apparently amused. “Brave girl,” she observed. “About time we had one of those around here. Do you like her?”
The way she asked it seemed simple enough, but I could hear that what she meant was, Do you like her? As in, Do you want her to be your girlfriend? The answer to that was lingering in the edges of my mind, and I refused to let it in. I couldn’t let it in, not yet. I had to know more about her first. I had to spend more time with her. But so far, Poppy intrigued me.
I kept my answer truthful, though it wasn’t really an answer to her question. “I don’t really know her. I’ve barely spoken to her. She was off most of the week ‘cause she got sick on Tuesday from the heat.” I tried my best not to sound bitter, but I’m not sure I achieved it very well. I was done rearranging the contents of the cupboard in front of me, but I still didn’t want to look my mother in the eye during this conversation. I closed the cupboard door and opened the cutlery drawer to pull out forks and knives, taking my time to find forks without bent prongs.
“But she’s different, yes?”
I felt a smile tug at the corner of my lips. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, she’s different.”
The weather took a drastic turn overnight, and so did my mood. I woke to the sound of rain pattering on my bedroom window and wind howling plaintively outside. Rolling out of bed, I threw open the blue curtains and watched the raindrops splattering on the glass. Down below, on the street, a dirty stream of rainwater carried an old crisp packet along the side of the road. Puddles formed miniature lakes on the pavement and bigger lakes on the other side of the road where the tar was uneven with potholes.
The sky was carpeted in a thick layer of grizzly grey clouds, an impenetrable fog over the sun. Wind rattled an empty drink can along the street, and shook the trees that lined the opposite side of the road. Everything looked duller under the dust of miserable weather, but I felt less miserable at least. I couldn’t say what it was that had bucked up my mood, but I just had a good feeling about the day. I’d have said I’d rolled out of the right side of bed, but since my bed was against a wall, there was only one side I could have rolled out of. If I’d tried to roll out the other side, I’d have smashed my nose on the wall.
Drizzly light spilled over my room, making it darker and colder than it had been in a few weeks. I flipped on the ceiling light, flooding the room with an artificial yellow glow. Blinking in the sudden brightness, I shuffled to my wardrobe and pulled out my favourite jeans. As I tugged them on one-handed, I rummaged through my dresser for a t-shirt and came up with a black long-sleeved one with an ugly-ass zombie printed on the front. I pulled it on, found a pair of mismatched socks to wear, and eyed the set of weights sitting next to my computer desk. It was too early to work out. That could wait until I’d had breakfast.
As I crossed the hall into the bathroom, the smell of bacon wafted up to me from downstairs and I grinned. It was always a good day when it started with a bacon butty. Mum must have been taking the day off from her study-dwelling work. She didn’t usually take Saturdays off, so that should have alerted me that something was up, but I was too distracted by the thought of bacon to care.
I slid into the kitchen in style, my socked feet skidding on the laminate flooring. Unfortunately, I’d put a little too much force behind the super slide and ended up smacking ribs-first into the countertop. My mother, frying bacon under the grill in the oven, clucked her tongue at me, holding a fork in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other.
Setting down the orange juice, she slid my special mug—the one I’d painted myself in a ceramics class I’d taken a few years ago—toward me, the tantalising scent of hot chocolate melting into my olfactory senses. It even had a handful of mini marshmallows in it, and a plastic spoon. I liked to scoop up the melted marshmallow goop and eat it with the spoon.
I grinned at my wonderful mother gratefully. “Bacon and hot chocolate? What’s the occasion?” I asked, raising the mug to my mouth for a sip. The chocolaty drink was just a little too hot and burned my tongue, but it was too good for that to matter much. I took another sip, feeling it scorch a path down my throat, warming me from the inside out—just what I needed on a rainy day, even in June.
It only occurred to me right then, thinking about the date, that it was strange that Poppy would move to a new school right at the end of the school year. There were only two more weeks of school until the summer holidays. Only two more weeks of Jake Clark and Lacey Silverman. Only two more weeks of homework, detentions, and 7 am wake-ups. Then I was done with Augustus Academy forever. My last year of school would be done. I couldn’t wait. Also, it meant there was only twenty-eight days until my eighteenth birthday party.
I had already turned eighteen on the summer solstice, which made me one of the oldest kids in my year. However, my mother always waited an extra month to throw a party everyone my age was studying for exams in June—not that I had any friends to invite to the party anyway—and family members couldn’t take time off work.
I wondered when Poppy’s birthday was. For some reason, I had the intense feeling that she was a winter girl. November, maybe, or December. It was a weird feeling because I thought she looked like such a sunny person. But those ice-blue eyes…
“No special occasion.” My mother interrupted my pointless pondering, handing me a plate with a bacon butty on it. Greasy, fatty bacon lay on a bed of toasted white bread, smothered in bloody ketchup and neatly topped off with a second blanket of bread. It was heaven on a plate. “But, I do have a favour to ask,” Mum added slowly, watching me out of the corner of her eye as she loaded more bacon onto her plate.
I froze with my sandwich halfway to my mouth and narrowed my eyes at her. Mum’s favours often consisted of making library runs for piles of overdue books and dropping off stacks of important papers with her boss at the University. Both were unpleasant tasks because the local librarian was a notorious gossip and anyone who got too close ended up in an hour long discussion about who was supposedly having an affair with who or which of the Leslie sisters was pregnant this time.
Dropping off papers with Mr Felix—Mum’s boss—was bad because he scared the crap out of me. He was a historical professor and a lecturer at the University, but if you ran into him in a dark alley, you wouldn’t try to read his laminated ID badge before bolting in the opposite direction. At six feet and four inches, he was tall and built like a tank, and he had a voice like thunder. He was friendly enough, but I’d heard somewhere—possibly from Mrs Henderson, the librarian—that he’d been a b
oxer in his youth before discovering a passion for mouldy ruins.
I was almost afraid to ask what the favour was, but I tipped my chin up and spat it out. “What favour?” My voice came out as wary as I felt.
My mother frowned as she turned to put the frying pan in the dishwasher. “Nothing terrible. I just need you to pop round to Mr Gunderson’s house and pick up a volume he’s letting me borrow for my article on timepieces from the eighteenth century.”
Fascinating topic, Mum. I must say, you really make history sound awesome. I think I shall forget my art and sign up for a college course in ancient timepiece research.
She made a face at me as if she knew what I was thinking. Sometimes, her ability to read my mind was spooky.
Still, a trip to Mr Gunderson’s wasn’t nearly as bad as a library run or visit to the University, and she had made me hot chocolate, so I agreed with just a grimace. Mr Gunderson was an elderly widower with a penchant for telling stories from his days as a fisherman aboard the little trawler, the Dubious Lobster. So named, he’d once told me, because he’d once had a pet lobster that had always walked side-ways.
“Thought he was a crab, he did. Daft wee bugger,” he’d said to me in that raspy old-man-voice of his.
I picked up my plate and mug and slunk through to the living room, where the TV was already showing the BBC news. I settled my mug on the floor next to the sofa and snagged the remote, flipping to the Discovery channel. Mythbusters was on. Taking a bite of salty bacon on toast, I joyfully watched a cement truck being filled with explosives. You had to love watching things blow up in the morning. It was the kind of thing that gave me a fuzzy feeling to see.
It was almost noon by the time the rain stopped so I could make my trip to Mr Gunderson. The clouds had cleared a bit, but there was a damp hesitance in the air threatening a return of the rain at any moment. Clouds wriggled across the sky slowly, following me as I trekked down the street with my shoulders hunched against the wind.