Mannaz
I walk slowly in my lace-up wedges. Faye still takes nearly two steps to every one of mine. “He’s right,” I say. “I am exhausted. He just didn’t have to be such a condescending jerk about it.”
“Well, I shouldn’t be so intrusive.” She flashes me a tentative smile. “It’s just terribly fascinating, and I’m not very experienced when it comes to interpersonal relationships with people my own age.”
“You’re fine. It’s just a tender topic, sometimes.”
“You’re not a freak, you know. Every girl on campus would like to be you. Even the ones who—”
Three guys, all in black jeans and black long-sleeved shirts, walk past us on the path, reciting what sounds like Shakespeare put to a hip-hop tune.
“Mi’lady.” A heavy, dark-skinned boy bows with a flourish and a brilliant smile as he steps to my left.
“No, every girl on camps wants to look like me,” I tell Faye. “Even the ones who what? Call me names behind my back? Say I’m trashy?”
She looks at the ground. “They say things about me, too. I’m the ‘orphan girl’, right?”
“I tell you what,” I say, throwing my arm around her shoulders. “I’ll come live with you in your cardboard box.”
“By the campfire under a railroad bridge?” She giggles. “Okay, but you’ll have to teach me how to wear scandalous skirts and smutty lipstick. And bras.”
“Short skirts aren’t hard to wear; you just put them on and go.”
“It’s the walking in them that looks hard,” she protests. “And none of the girls in the dorm can figure out how you sit down without giving a view all the way up your fallopian tubes.”
“Gross!” I gesture for her to go ahead of me up the steps to the dining hall, but stop before we go into the cafeteria doors, and dig in my bag for my buzzing phone.
The doctor doesn’t want to discharge me while I still have a fever. They’re moving me to an outpatient room. Looks like another night of mystery meat and Jell-O.
I show my brother’s text to Faye. She pouts.
I type: How are you feeling?
“Tell him about the book I found,” my roommate says, standing on tiptoe to see the screen when it vibrates again. “About the Native American myths.”
“That would be torture for Jules,” I murmur. “Talking about a book he can’t read.”
Tired. The rash is gone, though. Mostly. Faye leads me though the double doors and through the line while I work my thumbs over the phone, but another message comes through before I hit send. Have to go. Allergist is here.
Faye grabs an extra plastic tray, slides it along next to hers and plunks a salad on it. I erase what I’ve written, and start again: Tell me what they say. And when they think you can get out. Faye and Ethan miss you.
“Can’t we go see him?” Faye asks. “The Dean would give you permission, wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe, but I’d have to find a way to get there.” I hand th
e cashier my meal card, and frown at my phone.
I miss them too.
He really is doped up. Faye pays for her food, and leads the way to our usual table. “You could take a taxi. Or maybe they’d let Jeremy take you. You could bring him the book. It would give him something to do for the project. There are several in there with bird tales. I like the Cherokee stories about the Tla-Nu-Wa. They were huge magic birds who could speak the language of men. I marked them in the book. There’s a very traditional one where a medicine man casts five baby magic birds into a cave where a bottomless river flows. The comparisons are fascinating.”
Ethan is eating at the table by himself. His hair has grown in a little more, a lighter blond than his eyebrows. I wonder if it’s straight or curly, and if he always shaves it, the way swimmers do. Danielle is sitting several tables away, laughing with girls in her project group. Interesting.
Faye claims a spot several spaces away from him, without saying hello. I ignore him, too, setting my tray down. I sit, and then pivot, swinging my legs over the bench in a practiced move.
“It’s all in the knees,” I tell Faye. “I actually keep them together a lot more than people assume.”
Ethan coughs, takes several swallows of soda, but continues to stare at his food.