Reconciliation

After Thabo returned from his failed attempt to convince Lisa to stay, he must have heard a dozen questions or words of comfort from his clubmates. If asked to repeat what they were, he would fail.

The words felt like they were spoken by people who were far, far away. Thabo’s own thoughts crowded them out.

Several things became clear about his relationship to Lisa, though.

Thabo had always suspected that her animosity toward him stemmed from the way he behaved. But it was much deeper than that. He must have been making her feel inadequate for some time without realising it.

It's not my fault she feels that way.

A comforting thought, but not the one that would solve his problem. How people feel is not logical. No one could really control how they feel. Thabo resolved himself not to resent her for it.

What if everyone feels that way about me?

A less comforting thought. Not one he intended to dwell on. He could ask people if they did…

“Hey, guys…” Thabo announced. The room's attention turned to him. “Do I ever come off like I’m showing off… Like, I don’t try at anything, and I’m making you feel bad for not being able to do what I can? … tell me what you find annoying about me.”

“You have a very punchable face,” said Juke.

“Wait, what? Why?”

“It’s very handsome,” Juke continued. “It compels me to ruin it. But then I think, if I scar him, it might elevate his face from handsome to sexy. So, I haven’t.”

“Good to know you’ve held back all this time, pal,” said Thabo.

“The girls in my grade keep asking if I can give them your number or introduce them to you,” said Linda. “So, to get them to back off, I told them that you are gay. All the girls in grade eight think you are gay now.”

“How does that qualify as something you find annoying about me?”

“It's annoying that they kept asking,” said Linda, exasperated. 

A lot of the behaviour from Grade Eight girls towards Thabo started to make sense.

Recently, Thabo had become acquainted with a group of three girls from that grade who always went out of their way to talk to him. They would always ask him about fashion or hypotheticals beginning with “if you were gay”. They even recommended this ice hockey show with boys' love elements. 

Thabo had always humoured them, but now he knew all those were just ways to coax him out of a closet that did not exist. 

“Does anyone actually have beef with me unrelated to my appearance?” asked Thabo.

“I do think you are a showoff,” said Harry. “But it’s just something that's a part of your personality. I don’t find it particularly annoying.”

“What I find annoying about you is that you are good at Math, but useless at helping others with it,” said Khaya.

“I can live with that.”

“If this ‘roast me’ session is about what your girl said to you,” interjected Kyle, “then asking us about what we dislike about you won’t solve whatever beef she has with you. You need to talk to her, not us.”

Every now and then, wisdom, not smoke, would come out of that final year's mouth. 

Thabo was having himself a pity party. Nothing said in this room was relevant to how Lisa felt or how he could convince her to work with him.

He would talk to her again tomorrow.

                                                                                         ***

Approaching Lisa had proven more difficult than Thabo expected.

Every time he approached her, she would scurry away like a mouse in the kitchen. Her eyes also avoided him. Even when he was goofing off in class, she ignored him entirely.

He had to meet her somewhere she couldn’t run away from him.

The library.

But instead of confronting her head-on, which she clearly was not in the mood for, Thabo would have to ease his approach. He decided the best way would be to check out a book from the library.

Cornering her and forcing her to talk to him would not work. But if he wrote a note on a bookmark that read, “Can I talk to you after school,” and he put it between the cover and the first page of the book, she would surely see it when scanning the book, and he could take it out.

But which book should he take out? Probably something he knew she had read herself. During their oral book reports for English class, Lisa had done hers on “The White Book” by Han Kang. That was probably the best choice, if it hadn’t already been taken out.

When Thabo entered the library, he found Lisa at her familiar post. The book he wanted was there as well. And for once, the line to check out books had nobody in it.

Things were working out for him so far.

“I’d like to check this out,” Thabo said as he held out the book and his student card for Lisa to scan.

She had been too preoccupied with the documents she had before her to notice Thabo’s approach. But she froze immediately after recognising his voice.

Eventually, Lisa took the book and the student card from his grip without lifting her gaze. She paused again when she opened the book and found the bookmark. She held it for long enough for it to appear as though Thabo had written an entire paragraph on it. Then she pulled out a pen, wrote on the bookmark, scanned the book and Thabo’s student card, and handed them back to him.

All without raising her gaze an inch.

Thabo took out the bookmark, which read, “FINE!” in Lisa’s immaculate handwriting. He couldn’t help but grin.

“See you then,” Thabo said before exiting the library.

Each group had cleaning duty for the entire week. Thabo decided to wait for Lisa again outside their homeroom class. He managed to scare her again by greeting her.

“Should we go somewhere to talk?” Thabo asked.

“By the old tuck-shop,” she said, almost in a whisper.

Her eyes were still focused on the hallway tiles. Thabo thought about making a joke about that being the place where students often went to make out, but decided against it. Instead, he followed her quietly to the tuck-shop.

When they arrived there, the pair shared silence. She was probably waiting for him to speak, and Thabo was trying to build up the courage to do so.

Let's get this over with…

“I want to apologise,” Lisa and Thabo said simultaneously. Lisa’s shock at

That finally got her to look at him. She looked him in the eye now as she continued.

“I shouldn’t have said all that. I’m kind of embarrassed that I did. It's just that… do you remember Mrs Hatfield, the piano teacher?”

“Yeah,” Thabo said, “she taught me piano.”

“She was my teacher too… until my parents made me quit. I remember the day it happened. I overheard my mother on the phone with your mom. She was talking about how my academic results had slipped recently after I started my piano lessons. Your mom must have said something about how your marks hadn’t been affected by it, and my mother said something like, ‘At least you have a competent child.’ The next day, my parents sat me down and told me that they weren’t going to pay for my lessons anymore. I couldn’t convince them otherwise. That’s why when you said that you could play four instruments… I couldn’t take it. It felt like you were mocking me. But really, it wasn’t your fault. I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. This is about my relationship with my parents. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

So that’s why she quit piano.

Thabo and Lisa’s parents knew each other from the PTA, and their mothers worked in the same building for different businesses. Every so often, Lisa’s mother had been over for tea at Thabo’s home. Every time Thabo had heard her speak about Lisa, her mother had something negative to say about Lisa’s academic performance or some other critique of her daughter.

Thabo had his own experience with his parents not understanding him. Her feelings of resentment towards Thabo made a lot of sense now.

“Listen… Lisa,” Thabo began. “I was never trying to undermine your efforts. I work hard too, just not in a very traditional way. I record the teacher in class so I can listen to the lessons again at 2x speed when I’m alone. I’m just not wired for the classroom environment. And I’m mostly self-taught in every other instrument I play, other than piano. I actually admire how hard-working you are. I wish I could be that way. Then maybe my parents would stop giving me lectures about how I need to get serious and choose a realistic career path. And not to mention the lectures I get from teachers saying I need to take school seriously… My point is, you shouldn’t let how I behave make you feel bad about yourself. You have enough admirable qualities that I wish I had. You are... an inspiration.”

Thabo cringed at himself, but he meant every word. Lisa’s eyes returned to the grass again, but this time it was not because she was trying to avoid him. Her body language read as more sheepish.

Her attitude change was confirmed by the smile she tried to frown away when she finally looked back up at Thabo.

“Hey Thabo…”

“Yeah.”

“Could we try a redo of the trial run we agreed on yesterday?”

“Of course,” Thabo said through a smile, “Of course.”