Expectations

It takes a special kind of masochist to look forward to a Monday.

So I guess I must have started to magically enjoy pain over the weekend. What can I say? Hanging out with someone new is like mixing a little bit of that person into yourself. And when it comes to hanging out with her, I feel like if I don't get the point I'll get run through with it. In a good way.

I know that sounds weird, but having a new friend is pretty refreshing, let alone one that's cool with you being your usual level of weird. Suffice it to say, I walk fifteen minutes early into first period global history in what is probably the best mood I've been in all year. And seeing as how I'm the first one there, I hammer out the do-now and watch the door like a hawk as Mr. Cooper snores.

People trickle in through the door painfully slowly, as if poured by a barkeep that's trying to pace a mean drunk. I wait. Patiently, at first. All the other normals in the class arrive in the initial wave and uneventfully take their seats. Then come the slackers, barely beating the bell by a couple of minutes. And finally, as if to spite me, even the class's obligatory delinquent comes shuffling into the room late, tossing their gelled hair and sucking in air through their teeth as if they're the only ones annoyed by having to be here.

As Mr. Cooper gasps to life and start scrawling on the blackboard, I start to get a little bit worried. What if she transferred schools or something? What if her bus crashed? Just as I pinch myself for being an idiot, the door opens one more time, and E-girl comes prancing in like a runway model. I crane my neck past her, and watch Rescue Ranger stomping after her in short order. A tuft of blonde hair pauses in the doorway, and mumbles something to someone. And then, there she is.

I wave hello without raising my hand. But Anne-Marie walks across the room as if she hadn't noticed.

No big deal, it's early in the morning anyways.

I settle down for today's lecture about the Tang Dynasty, and find myself strangely captivated by the exploits of Wu Zetian. There's just something special about a powerful and assertive woman, you know—Even if she's the type to drown your first-born child and take your house in the divorce. On second thought, she reminds me too much of my mom. I free myself of this Oedipal quandary by glancing in Anne-Marie's direction.

But she looks like she's really focusing, so I decide it's best not to bother her.

I sigh, and devote myself to cranking out yet another group discussion assignment alone. Unburdened by the intellects of my classmates, I finish the bullet point list of the Empress's greatest accomplishments in 5 minutes flat. With nothing else to do but to sit and doodle that one S into my notebook margins, bits and pieces of the surrounding conversations inevitably leak through.

"She didn't show up today," E-girl whispers. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah," Rescue Ranger adds, "She hasn't responded to any of our memes in the group chat yet."

I'm a little surprised that our school's guardian angels have a group chat. Would've thought they'd use their telepathic powers for something as lowly as banter.

Anne-Marie adjusts her hair and stifles a laugh. "Chill. It's not like her school bus went off a cliff or something. She's probably just late."

Yeowch. How does she manage to sting me when she's not even talking to me?

"It's not like her, though," E-girl protests.

"Yeah," Rescue-Ranger says, "Teddy is usually the first one to reply, and she hasn't said anything since last evening."

Oh right, Teddy didn't show up today. How the hell didn't I even notice that?

Anne-Marie's phone dings.

"Look," she says, showing them her screen, "She just has a cold. She's going to be fine, besties."

The other two breathe a sigh of relief. One that turns into a hiccup of fear as Mr. Cooper's creaky voice asks:

"Is someone texting?"

The old man pushes himself off from his desk with both hands and shuffles out into the middle of the room.

I see Anne-Marie mouth, "Shit," and furtively stow her phone away.

Mr. Cooper smacks his desertified lips. "I'll have you know, it's school policy to take away the phones of anyone caught texting in class."

The class collectively freezes up. As miraculous as it was that he even heard a phone notification sound ten feet away from him, Mr. Cooper has bizarrely good vision for a spud-sack his age. Plus, he grew up back in the days when you could go right out of high school into a job that paid for a house with a white picket fence and 2.5 kids, so he has a truly antique level of entitlement. Put bluntly, this won't end until he draws blood.

Mr. Cooper scans the room like the Eye of Sauron, his sunken eyes glowering with the heat of a thousand suns.

"Who was it, ehh?" His voice peaks in anger with the power of a creaking door hinge. "I've taught at Northwest Elm High for over sixty years, and not once have I let a student get away with disrespecting this sacred institution. So speak up!"

This is about to go super badly. I see Anne-Marie looking stiff as a corpse behind her best good girl smile. All she did was check up on a sick friend. She doesn't deserve this.

The room watches in suspense as my chair scrapes and I stand up, phone in hand.

"It was me, Mr. Cooper. I'm sorry. My dad's been updating me on grandma's condition, and I forgot to turn my notifications off."

I thought maybe the old grouch would have spared some thought for a woman that might have been one of his classmates. But I guess the only thing colder than his hands is his heart.

"You can come pick it up after school, young man," he says, and shuffles back over to the chalkboard with my phone in hand.

Great. At the very least, though, I'll be staring at the floor for the rest of my classes knowing that I did my good deed for the day. I glance in Anne-Marie's direction as I sit back down and give her a thumbs up. But it's like she’s the only person in the whole class who seemed to have not been watching me embarrass myself, whispering away to her friends without a care in the world.

Right, I mean. It's not like I expected anything for it. And if it wasn't me, it would have been someone else. Besides, it's probably easy to forget about stressful situations when you have the social equivalent of divine protection. Without my phone, all I can do is try and not think about my mom as the class goes over all the unique and numerous ways in which Wu Zetian tortured anyone that crossed her.

The class ends, and everyone filters out. Anne-Marie and co are the first to go, while I get stuck listening to the first half of a lecture about social responsibility from a man that dodged the Vietnam draft by being a conscientious objector. My other classes crawl by until lunch, by which point I'm so starved for distractions that I can actually tolerate the two Jims' daily shouting match over dice rolls.

"Dude, my Slaanesh's shaman totally rolls your marine scout corps," White Jim argues.

"Your mom it does," Brown Jim fires back. "It says in the handbook that I can do three rolls of four damage, one for each undamaged scout."

"But I have surprise mindbreak that does 3 damage first to any unit that tries attacking mine, which means you only have two scouts left!"

"If you think that’s how it works, you're as dumb as your mom."

Nevermind.

God, the unoriginality almost makes me wish that Ricardo had the same lunch period as us. At least then it'd be a novel idiocy every single day. Considering the fact that this argument is going to last the whole lunch period, I start visually combing through the lunchtime crowd. A lot of people are walking around today, but I catch a few glimpses of the popular side of the lunchroom. She should be people-watching around this time, right?

A guy wearing a mask lets out a booming sneeze, unleashing a human wave that clears six feet in every direction.

And there she is. Staring at the same social faux-pas directly across the cafeteria from me. I try to get her attention by waving again, but her eyes don’t shift from the dude that’s now having a coughing fit on the floor. Fair enough. It’s a free show, after all. Eventually, the guy collects himself, looks around shyly as if he hasn’t been the center of attention for two straight minutes, and skitters off into the crowd. Everything returns to normal in the blink of an eye, the human wave blotting out even a glimpse of her side of the lunchroom.

The lunch bell rings. Then the next class bell. About half a dozen bells later, I finish listening to Mr. Cooper’s punitive afterschool ramblings, which started as a condemnation of the moral impurity of my waifu lock screen and ended in a lengthy offshoot about investing in gold to hedge inflation. But a whole day without my phone has rendered me into a zombie.

So I nod through his sales pitch. I nod asleep during the bus ride home. I nod hi to my dad as he rushes back to his garage workshop with a toaster strudel sticking out of his mouth. And I sit on my bed in a fifteen minute stupor, almost passing out.

Then I pull out my phone.

I didn’t expect for anyone to message me. In fact, after the weekend invite spam debacle, I had disabled all notifications that had anything to do with Ricardo and the gang. This alone basically eliminated any alerts that weren’t a missed call from [SCAM LIKELY]. Yet there it was in my tray: A single snap message from her.

“Thanks for the save.”

I type out, “Don’t worry about it,” then erase. I try, “No problem,” but it sounds too dismissive. Too final. But I can’t just go and start a conversation over this, can I? Then again, she’s made it clear that she doesn’t want to be held to a higher standard. So part of me thinks I should just do it. When it’s just the two of us, we’re on the same wavelength. When we’re at school, on the other hand, it almost feels like she’s on a different plane of existence from me. The pessimistic part of myself hasn’t been proven wrong as of late. That is, with regards to anything that isn’t her. So I compromise.

I send her a deep fried meme of a dog wearing sunglasses with the text, “That’s what you get when you enter the bone zone.”

I receive a single laughing emoji in response. And that’s the end of that.

I wake up the next morning, cursing myself for twice now fumbling the bag when it came to clearing the air. But the schoolbus waits for no one, and especially not for me.

During first period, there’s a big buzz about Teddy’s return. People from other classes come by on their bathroom breaks just to hear her say hello like it’s a famous author’s book signing. And with Mr. Cooper passed out in his chair the whole time, the uninterrupted meet-and-greet makes it so that I wouldn’t even have had an opportunity to make contact if I was Anne-Marie herself. I change tactics, hurrying to pack my bag ahead of the bell.

But I just miss her at the door.

Lunch has me in a sour mood, and all I can do is overthink. I don’t bother looking for her in the crowd. Each class starts to blur into the next as I enter my familiar autopilot. Topics, rooms, and faces take up their usual forgettable luster. By the end of the day, I cease thinking entirely. In fact, I’m more excited to do my math homework than I am to head home alone. But just as I’m about to shuffle off to the bus post, my phone vibrates.

“Hey, are you free right now?”