But before I know it, I’m at the door. There’s a tiny window in it, but I can’t see the back of the classroom where my table is—and where Vann might be sitting right now, if he’s indeed there.
I close my eyes.
Make a friend, and stick by him ‘til the end.
I push through the creaky door, then open my eyes.
Sitting at that back table is Vann, today wearing a loose black t-shirt that nearly hides his frame, compared to yesterday’s more fitted shirt, and no leather jacket. (Maybe he took it off and left it in his locker?) His black jeans are torn at the knees, bunched up at the shins atop those same military-style boots, one foot of which is kicked up on the leg of the table. He’s staring down at the table where he appears to be scribbling away in a notebook, frowning and pensive, his short dark hair a spiky mess, some of it pressed to his forehead haphazardly.
He’s here. He’s actually here.
A girl behind me politely clears her throat, and I realize I’ve stopped in front of the doorway. I mutter a quick apology and urge my feet to take me down the aisle. As I slowly approach the back table, my heart makes a speedy climb right up into my face, making my cheeks red and leaving me weightless and numb.
Then I drop onto my stool and stare at the side of Vann’s head with unblinking eyes and held breath, like I’m desperately waiting for something to happen.
Vann continues to focus on scribbling in his notebook, with no seeming intention to talk.
After a minute passes, disappointment heavies my chest. I put my own notebook on the table—still blank from day one—and get out a pencil, resolved to enduring this class, silent and unsatisfied.
Until my eye catches sight of what, exactly, he’s scribbling. It’s a drawing of a muscular man with demonic features, like two curving, artful horns protruding from his head like a crown and six more from his back like an external ribcage, hugging him from behind. He also has black-feather wings, and a chain whip hanging from his clenched fist, the end of it set afire. Well, a colorless fire, since it’s all sketched in pencil. In terms of quality, it’s a very good drawing. In terms of content: … slightly terrifying.
In terms of beauty: it’s exquisite.
But the way Vann focuses on his work, gnawing on the inside of his cheek as he meticulously shades in the bicep muscles on his demonic humanoid creation with painstaking detail, leaves me breathless with admiration.
I part my lips, then wrestle with my inner anxieties, picking and choosing the words I might say to him. What can I say to him? How do I approach yesterday at all? Is he still mad?
The bell rings instead, catching me by surprise.
Mr. Schubert appears at the chalkboard at once to begin the day’s lesson, and all hope of striking up a conversation with Vann is stolen away like the last lone electron for an ionic bond. I sit and stare at the teacher’s mouth moving, and without really listening, I reluctantly copy down whatever he writes or illustrates on the board up front. It pales in comparison to how interesting Vann’s drawing is—and whatever we might have chatted about, had I had the nerve to actually say something.
I guess it’s no use trying to thank him again. We all know how well that went. And I guess it’s too much to hope for an apology, either, seeing as Vann appears to be the last person on Earth who apologizes for anything, and besides, there was a kernel of truth in what he said: I should have stood up for myself. Otherwise, Vann would not have stepped in and gotten himself in trouble.
I hope the principal went light on him.
Time crawls by at an excruciating pace. Instead of connecting oxygen and carbon molecules, I’m connecting words, juggling all of them in my cluttered brain, forming the sentence I want to say to Vann as soon as the bell rings. I need to say something to him.
Before I know it, it’s seconds until the bell. My eyes are glued to the clock’s cruel, apathetic minute hand as it hovers just before 10:14 AM, which releases us. I clench my pencil tight, rehearsing the words I’ve chosen over and over in my head.
Then the bell rings.
I turn and let the words fly out of my mouth before I can even think. “Did you get in trouble with the principal yesterday? I felt horrible. That’s why I apologized to you in the office.”
Vann doesn’t look at me. But he doesn’t move either, even as the rest of our classmates are off their stools, chatting and going for the door, which spills in bright, midmorning sunlight.