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Edwina didn’t mean to do it. She didn’t mean to flail her arm out while she was talking. She didn't mean to hit Brettany in the face, and she certainly didn’t mean to lose her balance and topple right on top of her. Edwina shuffled off of her as quickly as possible, but Brettany’s face still turned beet-red. “Lunchtime. Meet me under the bleachers,” she huffed, and Edwina’s heart sunk all the way past her stomach.
“I don’t know what to do,” Edwina whines as she walks to pre-calc. “I don’t know why she wants to meet me there anyway.”
“Maybe she just wants to have a nice lunch with you,” Angie says, unconvincingly.
“Yeah but why under the bleachers.”
“So she can, um. Get to know you better, just the two of you. With no teachers around.”
“Yeah, I don’t buy that,” Min Jin cuts in.
“Me either,” Edwina grunts. “But why did it have to be Brettany Yang.”
Edwina digs her thumbs into her backpack straps as she sighs. Brettany is so cool - she’s in year eleven and always surrounded by a group of friends. She plays violin too and beats Edwina at all their competitions, and Edwina doesn't think it’s just because she’s had an extra year to practice. Brettany doesn’t even bother to play in their school orchestra - she’s too busy playing with people twice her age. She’s just that good, and now Edwina has angered her.
“I think you should go,” Angie says. “Prove you aren’t chicken.”
“Yeah, you could take her,” Min Jin adds. “You’re way taller.”
“But Brettany seems so…feisty,” Edwina says. “Remember that competition where Jordan moved her violin case without asking?”
Min Jin stops in her tracks. She tilts her head to the side, thinking. “Yeah, it was nice knowing you.”
Edwina didn’t pack a lunch today, so she has to go to the cafeteria and then carry her tray back to the gym, hoping no one catches her. She doesn’t know why she bothered to buy food first anyway - this probably won’t take long.
When she ducks under the bleachers, she sees that Brettany is already there, seated on the floor, skirt fanned out around her. She’s halfway through her food, digging her chopsticks into colorful plastic containers filled with rice and vegetables. It smells good, familiar. Far better than Edwina’s sad slice of pizza and bitter red apple.
Brettany’s head snaps up. “Good, I wasn’t sure you were coming.”
“Well, I’m no chicken,” Edwina says.
Brettany scrunches her face together. Her eyebrows disappear beneath her glasses. “Of course not,” she says.
Edwina examines her surroundings. The floor is covered in dust, with stray bits of popcorn left over from the last basketball game. There is a dark, sticky stain near her feet. She sees a corresponding brown drip streaking down the underside of the bleachers.
“Why don’t you sit down and eat?” Brettany asks her.
Edwina turns back to Brettany, nearly tilting the food off her tray in the process. “Oh, you actually wanted to-” Edwina stares back at the sticky soda stain. “But it’s so messy here.”
Brettany shrugs. “I didn’t think you’d mind messy.”
Edwina leans all her weight to one side. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just…your hair is messy.”
Edwina shifts her weight to the other foot. Her apple slides across her tray. “Did you bring me here to insult me?”
“No, it’s-” she says through bits of rice. She swallows her food and begins again. “I like it.”
“What?”
“Your hair.”
“Oh.”
Edwina sinks down to the ground, settling on the floor with her tray balanced across her knees. She lifts up her sad pizza. The end of it flops downward once it leaves the greasy paper plate.
Brettany is intentionally not looking at her. She’s concentrated on pulling the last few pieces of broccoli from the corner of her container. Edwina shoves a few bites of pizza in her mouth. It’s best to eat it quickly before it cools down too much, she’s learned.
They spend several moments in silence, munching on their food, before they both start to speak at once: “I’m sorry about earlier,” Edwina says while Brettany asks “How long have you been playing violin?”
Brettany chuckles. She has a bit of spinach caught in her perfect teeth, but somehow it seems to work on her. “That’s okay,” Brettany says. “I know it was an accident.”
“It was,” Edwina nods. “And I’ve been playing since I was six.”
“That must be why you’re so good.”
Edwina tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “You think I’m good?”
“Of course,” Brettany confirms. “I always practice extra hard when I know I’m going to be competing against you.”
Edwina can’t believe her luck. She thought she came here to get her ass kicked but instead Brettany is being nice to her. Edwina always hoped that they could spend some time together some day - she’s always been drawn to the way Brettany plays and the way she is always laughing when they pass in the hallway. She just knew they would hit it off if they ever got the chance to talk, and she was right.
“You’re good, too,” Edwina says. “I mean, you already know that.”
“Thanks.”
Brettany’s cheek is red. Edwina thinks she might be blushing, but it’s probably just still sore from earlier. Edwina clocked her pretty good.
Brettany puts her food containers to the side, finally finished. “Maybe we could play together sometime-”
Edwina doesn’t have time to entertain that thought, because at that moment, she sees something dark and small scurry across the floor.
Edwina jumps up. Her tray slides off her lap, and her apple rolls right over its blue lip onto the floor - it’s a lost cause now. She’s glad she didn’t open her chocolate milk yet, or it would have spilled.
“What was that?” Edwina cries, pointing behind Brettany.
Brettany turns around. “I don’t see anything.”
“It was a cockroach.”
Brettany examines the hardwood behind her. “Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”
“I want to leave.”
“No-” Brettany clambers up. “You can eat standing up if you want, if the floor is too gross.”
“I lost my appetite.”
“Okay, just - Stay here with me. We can talk.”
“We can do that anywhere,” Edwina protests.
“You’re right. But I didn’t invite you here just to eat lunch.”
Edwina’s breath catches in her throat. “Why then?”
Brettany pushes Edwina’s tray to the side with her foot so that she can step closer, right in front of Edwina, Suddenly, Edwina is reminded of how short she really is - it’s easy to forget when her presence looms so large over everything.
“Edwina, can I kiss you?”
“Yes,” Edwina says immediately.
Truth be told, she never thought about kissing Brettany before, or any girl for that matter. But now that Brettany has suggested it, she wants nothing more. Brettany stands up on her tip-toes so their lips can meet. Edwina grabs onto her arms to steady her. The kiss is timid - Brettany barely moves her lips at first. Edwina can feel all the tension in her body, transmitted through her mouth and the way her hands grip Edwina’s neck. Edwina parts her lips and the dam breaks. She slouches down to deepen the kiss. Brettany’s hands tangle in her hair, pulling just enough so that Edwina can feel it, but not quite enough to hurt.
Edwina realizes faintly, just in the corner of her brain, that her foot is stuck in the gross soda stain, and her head is perilously close to the underside of the dirty bleachers. She doesn’t care. The cockroach from earlier could start crawling up her leg and she would hardly mind.
They kiss until the bell rings then break apart, breathless.
“I’ll walk you to class,” Brettany pants, picking her food containers up off the floor.
“Okay.” Edwina moves to follow her, but her head jerks back in place.
“Uh, Brettany?” she says, panic rising in her. “I think I’m stuck.”
Brettany rushes back over, reaches around Edwina’s hair to see what is stuck. “Oh no,” she says.
“Gum in your hair is not a medical emergency,” the school nurse announces, looming over the cot where Edwina is sitting. Edwina never liked her. She was always stingy with the free menstrual products.
“But Ms. Clarkson,” Edwina protests, jutting out her bottom lip. “It’s vital for my mental health that no one sees me with gum in my hair.”
“She’s right,” Brettany agrees, as she vainly tries to pull strands of hair away from the gum.
“You definitely don’t have to still be here.”
“I’m moral support.”
Ms. Clarkson points one long finger at the door. “Both of you, out.”
“But….I have a stomach ache,” Edwina lies.
“Fine.” She looks over at Brettany. “But you have to leave.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Brettany says over her shoulder as she leaves. “I’ll think of something.”
Edwina slumps down on the cot, panicking. She’s already planning her life as a hermit in the woods. Her hair has been her signature feature ever since she started dying it in first year. She won’t feel like herself without it. Besides, she would look terrible bald. Natalie Portman can pull it off but Edwina can’t. Her head is probably all lumpy, and she won’t have her bangs to cover up her forehead acne. Her cheek acne is bad enough; she doesn’t need to worry about that, too. Brettany would never like her if she didn’t have her long, messy blonde hair.
Edwina is already texting her goodbyes to Angie and Min Jin on her illicit mobile phone that she is definitely not supposed to use during school hours when Brettany pops her head back around the curtain.
“I have a plan,” Brettany says, pulling a jar of peanut butter out from behind her back.
“Um, Brettany, I know we cut lunch short but I don’t need peanut butter.”
“No, for your hair. It can get gum out. I just looked it up. You’re not allergic, are you?”
“I’m not.” Edwina eyes the jar suspiciously. “How did you get a jar of peanut butter, anyway?”
“The lunch ladies love me.”
Edwina rolls her eyes. “Of course they do.”
Brettany pops the lid off the jar. “Well, how about it?”
Edwina shrugs. “Worth a try.”
Brettany scoops out a hunk of peanut butter with her fingers and smears it on Edwina’s hair. Edwina closes her eyes as she works, concentrating on Brettany’s fingers upon her head, the way Brettany’s floral body spray mixes with the smell of the peanut butter.
After several long moments, Brettany’s movements stop. “I think I’m done,” she says.
Edwina opens just one eye. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” She holds up a blob of peanut-butter-smeared gum, with only a few pieces of hair stuck in it. Edwina breathes a sigh of relief.
“The problem is now you have peanut butter in your hair.”
“I guess I’ll just pretend to have a stomach ache a little longer.”
“You don’t have to,” Brettany smiles. “I have another idea.”
They hold hands as they race through the hallway. When they see a teacher coming down the hall, they duck down another corridor to hide, even though Edwina can tell that it’s Mr. Wong, and he would be cool with it if he knew the full story.
Edwina’s heart is racing by the time they sneak into the gym locker room. It’s completely deserted, nothing but a few stray sneakers and gym shirts spilling out of lockers.
“You can shower in here,” Brettany says. “I’ll wait.”
“You don’t have to. You can go back to class.”
“No, I want to,” Brettany says. “To make sure your hair is okay.”
Edwina steps out of the showers ten minutes later, fresh and clean and gum free. Brettany is there to greet her.
“Let me see,” Brettany says.
Edwina tilts her head down so that Brettany can examine it. Brettany runs her fingers through Edwina’s wet hair.
“Good as new,” she says.
Edwina stands up straight. Her hair soaks her shoulders.
“Would you still like me if I were bald?”
Brettany laughs. The sound resonates deep in Edwina’s chest. “Of course,” Brettany says.
Brettany puts an arm around Edwina’s shoulder as they walk out of the locker room. It should be awkward with their height difference, but it isn’t. Edwina feels warm and comforted. She feels like she could do anything.
“Brettany, you meant what you said about wanting to play together?”
“Of course I did. You’re a great violinist.”
Edwina can tell that she’s blushing, but she doesn’t care if anyone sees. “Good. I’d like that.”
“I already have a song in mind,” Brettany says. “Have you ever played Navarra?”
Edwina shakes her head. She doesn’t know it, but she believes that anything will sound good if they play it together. “No, but I’ll learn.”
Brettany squeezes her shoulder. “It’s a date.”