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Noelle was flipping through her flashcards with such unbridled speed and energy that the movement of the little pieces of stiff, slightly laminated paper was producing an air current fanning out directly in front of her. With the warm late-spring air wafting in through her open bedroom window, Akarsha was feeling rather hot, so she leaned close and let herself be cooled by the air coming off the cards, letting it play lightly across her face.
“Thanks for fanning me, Frenchman,” she said with a happy sigh. “It almost feels like it’s summer out there.”
“Hmmmmmm… what did you say?” said Noelle, not slowing her steady, machine-like movement through the stack of flashcards, nor taking her eyes off of them.
Akarsha stared at her. Then she said, loudly, her enunciation flawless: “I said that I love you, Noelle.”
For several seconds Noelle said nothing, she just kept breezing through the flashcards, the little slips of fact-adorned paper flitting silently in front of her face.
“That’s nice, Akarsha,” she said finally, still not looking away from the cards.
“That’s what I thought,” said Akarsha, making an unseen face at the other girl. She scooched off her bed, which the two of them had been sitting on to study, and stood up. She walked around the bed and over to the window, leaning against it and letting herself be cooled by the evening breeze coming in from the outside.
The last finals they would ever have to endure in high school were coming up in less than a week, and of course Noelle was taking all the pressure with quiet dignity and grace. That is to say, she was becoming a totally unbearable monster. Staying up until all hours of the night, prone to yelling at anyone that deigned to interrupt her (except, curiously enough, for Akarsha, though she still found time to yell at her too, though that was for her own personal, entirely emotionally-repressed reasons), she was generally becoming a total and complete royal pain. This was nothing new for Akarsha though, who secretly and against even the wishes of her own conscious mind, on a visceral, uncontrollable, and almost animally instinctual level loved even this most terrible side of the-object-of-all-her-affections.
Most of their studying for their other classes had already been squared away, with Diya, Akarsha, and Noelle squirreled together in some private corner of the school, textbooks for math, geography, or literary studies propped open beside them. They read quietly, quizzed each other, and ate snacks, and while it wasn’t easy, they had generally ended up alright. But for science class specifically, things were very different.
When they had started twelfth grade, Diya had made the choice to enroll in the traditional senior science class offered by their high school, instead of the more advanced biology and chemistry class that Noelle of course had opted for. This allowed Diya the opportunity to coast along as the smartest person in the class, and more importantly it allowed her to take it alongside Min-seo, which was the real reason she had decided to do it. But it had also left Akarsha with a choice, of either enrolling in the general science class as well, meaning that she would be able to both take things easy AND hang out with Diya and Min-seo for that hour everyday, or signing up for the more difficult and advanced lessons with Noelle. If she chose the easy option however, Akarsha would be both consigning Noelle to periods of scientifically advanced but utterly lonely study everyday, and also committing herself to a whole hour of school every day where she couldn’t torment (read: talk to, look at, touch ) Noelle. And it hadn't taken Akarsha long to decided that she just wouldn't be able to live like that, and so she had enrolled in the advanced course. There were days where she regretted her choice, when the difficulty of the subject matter and the effort she was required to expend to maintain her grades seemed like they might outweigh the benefits of spending those extra hours with Noelle.
But days like that weren’t very common. In fact, Akarsha often wasn't sure such days even existed at all.
And so it was that when it came to science, Akarsha and Noelle found themselves thoroughly Diya-less, and in response they had decided to simply opt for studying for that particular exam from the comfort of one of their houses. And of their two houses, Akarsha’s was the natural choice.
“Augh!” said Noelle suddenly, throwing the flashcards into the air. They struck the ceiling fan spinning above the room and scattered absolutely everywhere, fluttering down to the floor like enormous white snowflakes with biology terminology written on them. “I CANNOT get these down!” she yelled, slamming her hands against the bed, each of her fists making the tiniest little ‘thump’ imaginable as they struck Akarsha’s comforter. Then she spotted Akarsha over by the window. “What are you doing over there?” she asked.
“I just needed some air,” said Akarsha. She looked around her room at the flashcards that were covering literally everything, her bed, the floor, her dresser, her many stuffed animals. “You gonna pick all that shit up?” she asked, not unkindly.
“Of course,” said Noelle, already reaching around to grab the cards that had landed nearest to her on the bed. “I have to keep studying them after all.”
“You’ve been studying them for the last hour,” said Akarsha exasperatedly. “Aren’t your hands tired from all the flipping? And besides, you just said they weren't working.”
“You don’t know how resilient my hands are,” Noelle retorted, a sentence so unexpected that it caused Akarsha’s heart to skip a whole entire beat and part of a second. But Noelle continued on, before Akarsha could respond with a question asking what exactly she had meant by it. “The flashcards always work though,” she said confidently, her momentary anger at said cards from only thirty seconds ago already forgotten. “They always work, in the end,” she repeated.
Akarsha gave her head a little shake to try and think clearly again. “I don’t know,” she said finally, stooping down to scoop some of the supposedly infallible cards off the floor. She handed them back to Noelle.
“Why, thank you,” said Noelle, accepting them graciously. As she took them from Akarsha’s hands, their fingers brushed together, and then lingered in contact for a moment.
“Uhhhhhh,” said Akarsha, 98 percent of her brain tied up in the square centimeter of her skin that was pressed against Noelle’s warm (and apparently resilient???) hand. “Aaaaaaare you sure about these cards?” she asked, returning to her senses. “Maybe I could try helping?”
Noelle didn’t speak for a few seconds. “They’ve always worked for me before,” she said eventually. “I can’t think that I should stop using them now. I just have to keep at it. But thank you for your offer though.”
“Have it your way,” said Akarsha, shaking her head. “Burger King.”
Noelle blinked at her. “Isn’t that…” she started to say, looking confused. “Isn’t that their actual slogan?”
Akarsha stared back at her. “Oh god… I… I think you’re right,” she said, looking horrified. She glanced down at her wrist, as if checking the time, though she was absolutely not wearing a watch. Then she looked back to Noelle, eyes wide. “Years of constantly fucking it up, my whole entire high school career never once saying it right, and now with just days left until retirement, only minutes left on the clock, I go and completely fuck my unbroken BK fuck-up streak to smithereens!” She fell down to her knees, cradling her head in her hands. “I’m such a failure!”
“Oh, give it a rest, would you!” yelled Noelle, laughing. She picked up a pillow from Akarsha’s bed and took aim.
“Years of academy training, WASTED!” Akarsha was moaning, shaking her fists at the ceiling, when the pillow sailed through the air and collided with her face. “OOF,” she said, reeling backwards.
The pillow seemed to linger for a moment on top of Akarsha’s face, and when it finally fell away, Noelle could see… a look… in Akarsha’s eyes.
“Oh… Frenchman,” she said, her voice low. She stood up, the pillow in her hands. “Oh ho oh, Frenchman…” She advanced towards the bed, raising the pillow over her head. “HONHONHON, FRENCHMAN!” she cried, bringing the pillow down on top of Noelle’s head.
“AKARSHAAAAAAA!” Noelle screamed, laughing, holding up her right hand to shield herself from the falling of the pillow’s blows. After a moment of scrambling against the soft surface of the bed, brushing aside scattered flashcards, the fingers of her left hand connected with a second pillow. She wrapped them around one end, gripped it tightly and swung it in a wide ark, slamming it against Akarsha’s side. An instant later their eyes connected, and they could each feel a fire lighting up inside of them.
***
After she had tossed her flashcards into the ceiling fan, they had scattered all over the room, making a real mess. When Noelle and Akarsha finally disarmed themselves of their pillows and slumped against the side of Akarsha’s bed, panting and smiling at one another, the room looked like a disaster zone. Every single object that had been sitting on the surface of Akarsha’s dresser had been knocked to the ground, to roll and bounce around and ultimately end up kicked under the dresser or the bed or scattered across the floor. All of the many superfluous decorative pillows that typically adorned Akarsha’s bed had been conscripted to serve their secret primary function, that of being utilized as weapons of war, only to eventually find themselves discarded as well, dropped to the floor to land beside the rest of Akarsha’s junk.
“You know,” said Akarsha, surveying their destruction. “I actually cleaned my room when you said you were coming over.” She paused, still struggling to catch her breath. “Look at this place now. No way I’m getting that deposit back.”
“Oh shut up,” said Noelle, shoving Akarsha in the shoulder. “I’ll help pick up.”
“Careful,” said Akarsha, shaking her hand as she drifted it threateningly over towards one of the downed pillows. “Any act of physical aggression on your part could be taken as an act of war, nullifying the terms of our previously agreed upon cease fire.”
“Look at you with all those big words,” said Noelle, widening her eyes in mock surprise.
“Pillow fights is serious business,” said Akarsha, seriously. “You have to get the terminology right.”
Noelle laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She stopped talking for a while, looking off out the open window. Night was falling outside. “You know, I can’t remember the last time I had a pillow fight,” she said finally.
“Now that’s just sad, Frenchman,” said Akarsha, holding up a finger to the corner of her eye and dragging it slowly down her cheek, as if it were a falling teardrop. “Though, I suppose,” she went on, grinning wickedly, “that being Frenchman, your first instinct is always to surrender.”
“Did it look like I was about to surrender?” asked Noelle sharply, her own hand being the one to drift dangerously back towards a pillow this time. “Be careful yourself. Any verbal instigation of conflict on your part could ALSO nullify the terms of our previously agreed upon cease fire, forcing us to immediately exit this lovely peacetime conversation and return to a state of open pillow warfare.”
Akarsha has never wanted to kiss someone more in her entire freaking life than she did in that exact moment. She stared at Noelle, her emotions swirling all around troublesomely inside her, and Noelle must have noticed something was wrong, because she moved her hand away from the potentially weaponizable pillow. “Are you okay?” she asked, staring at Akarsha’s face.
“Yeah of course,” said Akarsha quickly, looking away and willing her stupid face to return to normal. “I’m just…” she started, her mind trying to rapidly spin up some idea of what she could say to stop ruining the moment. Her eyes landed on one of Noelle’s flashcards, which had been trampled during their fight, leaving it looking thoroughly worn out. “I’m just worried about our finals, that’s all,” said Akarsha, shaking her head.
“You?” said Noelle, incredulous. “You’ll be fine, since when do you even worry about tests? You always inexplicably end up doing alright.”
“Well I’m glad I make it look so easy,” said Akarsha, forcing a grin back onto her face. “Or maybe it’s just that you make it look hard.”
“Oh shut up!” said Noelle, laughing again.
Whew, thought Akarsha to herself, listening to Noelle’s laugh and allowing it to sooth her tormented soul. This is great. I’m going to get a good grade in Noelle, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve,-
“We should get back to studying,” said Noelle, interrupting Akarsha’s very normal and regular™ thoughts. She stood up from the sitting position she and Akarsha had been occupying against Akarsha’s bed since the end of their pillow fight. “We really did make a mess,” she said, looking around.
“Aw, don’t worry about it,” said Akarsha, also getting to her feet. “This is pretty much what it looked like in here before I cleaned it up this afternoon to prepare for your arrival."
“Really?” asked Noelle, slightly alarmed.
“...No,” said Akarsha, shaking her head at the other girl. “I was just being nice.”
Noelle giggled. Akarsha swooned.
The two girls did a little bit of tidying, but when they both ended up sitting back down on the bed again, the room was still very messy. Noelle held up one of her trampled flashcards. “So much for these,” she said, flicking it back across the room. It landed on the floor, on top of a pile of junk that had accumulated during their fight.
“Hey, I just finished cleaning that,” said Akarsha.
“Sorry,” said Noelle quietly, staring at her hands.
“What’s up?” asked Akarsha, sensing that something was, indeed, up.
“I just never got down the stuff from those flashcards,” Noelle said, shaking her head. “It’s like you said yourself, I sat there for an hour and it just refused to sink in.”
“I hate to say it, Frenchman,” said Akarsha, her voice commiseratory, “but maybe your pretty little head is just too full up with facts.” She reached over and rapped her knuckles against the top of Noelle’s head, ever so gently. For the briefest of moments, she could feel the softness of Noelle’s hair against the back of her fingers. “No more room for anything else in there.”
Noelle sighed. “Well my ‘pretty little head’ never had a problem with too many facts before this,” she said, shaking her aforementioned pretty head slowly from side-to-side. “I’ve been mastering rote-memorization my whole life,” she said bitterly. “Ever since I was old enough to know things, I also somehow knew I was supposed to keep knowing them, forever.”
“Some things you just don’t know,” said Akarsha. “It’s only natural.”
“I guess,” said Noelle.
Both girls sat in silence for a time. Akarsha started off just sort of looking at Noelle, feeling vaguely sad that she was so sad, but slowly and surely, a plan started to form in her mind.
“I’ll tell you what, Frenchman,” Akarsha said suddenly. She reached over and took one of Noelle’s hands in her own. Noelle’s eyes widened a bit at this, but she did not pull away. Akarsha took that as a hopeful sign.
“It’s late, we’re both tired. We’ll stop for tonight, and I’ll put together my idea tomorrow and then explain it to you after school. If you don’t like it, I promise my feelings won’t be hurt, and you can go back to these-” and she held up one of the rumpled flashcards.
“You’re idea?” asked Noelle, curiously.
Akarsha blinked. “Oh yeah, remember when I asked if I could help you?” she said.
“I… guess?” said Noelle, narrowing her eyes as she tried to remember that one single part of their conversation from hours ago.
“Well, when I asked you, I didn’t actually have a real idea for how to help, I only wanted to seem nice,” said Akarsha, grinning sheepishly. “But I have a real idea now, and I think it might actually work. So how about it?”
“An idea for helping me learn…” Noelle glanced down at one of the flashcards. “Biological Phylums?”
“Yep,” said Akarsha, nodding eagerly.
“Okay…” said Noelle, smiling in spite of her confusion. “I, uh, can’t wait to hear about it.”
“Oh, you’ll hear all about it alright,” said Akarsha, giving her an oddly significant look.
After that, the two of them went back to cleaning Akarsha’s room together, and talking, but soon enough, the sound of Noelle’s mom’s car pulling up in the driveway could be heard coming through from the open window. “Time to go,” said Noelle, smiling over towards Akarsha. She reached over and grabbed Akarsha’s hand, as a part of their farewell ritual. Akarsha wanted to keep holding Noelle’s hand as she walked her to the front door to say goodbye, but she thought that might have been weird, so she simply squeezed Noelle’s offered hand once, and then let go.
“Okay then,” said Noelle, sighing.
They walked to the front door together, and Akarsha held it open for Noelle. “See you tomorrow,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to hearing this idea of yours,” said Noelle. Akarsha beamed at her.
After closing the door behind her, Akarsha walked to the window and waved goodbye to Noelle as she got into the passenger seat of her mom’s car, and a moment later, Noelle was gone.
Instantly, Akarsha raced up to her room, climbing the steps on all fours in an effort to get upstairs faster. She ran into her room and slammed the door behind her, looking around wildly. She spotted some of the flashcards lying on the floor and scooped them up, grinning. She had work to do.
When Noelle arrived at school the next day, Akarsha was nowhere to be found. Noelle met up with Diya by their shared locker, and Diya helped her open another of her firmly sealed water bottles.
“Did Akarsha not walk with you to school today?” asked Noelle, looking around for any sign of a bright neon windbreaker.
“Nope,” said Diya, shaking her head. “Never got an IM message from her this morning. Maybe she’s sick?”
“She seemed just fine last night,” said Noelle, beginning to become worried.
Eventually they had no choice but to head into the school for their classes, but even though she should have been focusing on reviewing for her finals, all Noelle could think about was where Akarsha might be.
She would have to sit, her unease growing for hours, until the end of their fifth period, right before they were about to be dismissed for lunch, while Diya was reviewing some last minute mathematical equations and Noelle was wondering about Akarsha, when Noelle heard their teacher say Akarsha’s name.
Noelle looked up sharply and there she was, standing in the doorway to their classroom in her usual windbreaker and sandals. But she didn’t look well.
“Akarsha,” said their teacher again, looking down to consult a note on her desk. “Why, we were told that your mother called you in sick this morning?”
“I’m fine,” said Akarsha, walking forward into the room. “I feel much better now.” It looked to Noelle as if Akarsha hadn’t slept at all since they had parted ways the night before. She was pale, with dark circles under her eyes.
“Well,” began their teacher again, her tone not at all unkind. “Are you quite sure you’re alright?”
“I’m fine,” repeated Akarsha, glancing around the room. Her eyes found Noelle, and though she looked absolutely exhausted, her face did light up a little as they found each other.
What the hell happened to her? thought Noelle, who was very worried at this point, so much so that her heart was hurting in her chest.
Their teacher still looked unconvinced, but at that moment the bell rang for lunch, so there wasn’t much she could do as Akarsha walked across the room to Noelle and Diya. “Can we go to lunch?” she asked quietly.
“Okay,” said Noelle, reaching out and placing a hand on Akarsha’s arm. “Are you really alright?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” said Akarsha for the third time, and she turned to lead them out of the classroom. Out in the hallway they ran into Min-seo.
“Hey, where the hell have you been?” asked Min.
“Yeah, are you doing okay?” added Diya.
“Look,” said Akarsha, letting out a long sigh. “I told my mom I was sick, because I had to stay home and finish some… things.” It seemed to Noelle that Akarsha was purposefully avoiding her eyes as she finished her sentence.
“Anyway,” Akarsha continued. “Once I was ready to go to school, my mom told me I couldn’t go, because she said I didn’t look so good and that I needed to stay home and rest.”
“And she was right dude, you look fuckin’ terrible,” said Min, grasping Akarsha by the shoulder.
“I’m fine,” said Akarsha yet again, determinedly pushing off Min’s arm. Her point was somewhat undercut though by a full ten second yawn that forced its way out of her mouth at that exact moment. “I’m just tired,” she said finally.
“We can see that,” said Diya.
“Anyway,” said Akarsha, seemingly eager to be done telling her story. “Since she wouldn’t let me go to school, I had to wait until she wasn’t looking and then make a break for it. After that I just sort of, walked here.”
“Dude!” said Min, sounding impressed. “Make a break for it? How can you make something as lame as refusing to skip school sound cool as hell?”
“It is not cool, she looks like she’s about to pass out,” said Noelle, her anger flaring out at Min-seo.
Akarsha’s hand reached up and grabbed Noelle’s arm. “I’m okay, really,” she said, and Noelle could see in her eyes that she was trying very hard to be convincing.
“Okay, if you’re sure,” said Noelle.
“Hey, can we go to lunch?” Akarsha asked again, still holding onto Noelle’s arm, and underneath the dark circles beneath her eyes, a slight red blush was added to her face’s growing color palette.
“We’re going there right now,” said Noelle, confused.
“No, I mean can we go to lunch,” said Akarsha. “Just you and me.”
“Oh,” said Noelle quietly. “Okay.”
Noelle said goodbye to Diya and Min, who still looked a little concerned about Akarsha, and then the two girls headed off on their own. They walked to Diya and Noelle’s locker, and Noelle collected her lunchbox.
“Let’s go over there,” said Akarsha, pointing out the window to a hill just a little ways away from the school that had some benches situated on top.
Noelle looked in the direction of the lunchroom, hesitating. “What are you going to eat?” she asked, concerned.
“I’m not hungry,” said Akarsha, shaking her head.
“...you’ll eat some of my lunch,” Noelle decided.
“Okay,” said Akarsha, and she led Noelle out of the school’s front doors and over to the benches on the hill. It was a beautiful, sunny, almost summer day, and since all the other students were eating lunch over at the lunch tables, Noelle and Akarsha had the benches to themselves.
Noelle was still quite worried about Akarsha, but apart from being extremely tired, and uncharacteristically quiet, she did seem to be okay.
They sat down on a bench, and Noelle opened her lunch box and pulled out a bag of melon wedges. “Please eat some,” said Noelle, holding the bag out to Akarsha.
“Okay,” said Akarsha, taking one of the slices from the bag. She nibbled on a corner. Then, after a moment of staring down at the slice, she shoved the whole thing into her mouth. Noelle giggled in spite of herself, watching Akarsha chew. After she had swallowed the slice, Akarsha looked up at Noelle. “Could I have some more?” she asked.
“Please,” said Noelle, holding out the bag again.
Akarsha grabbed several more slices out of the bag. “Food is good,” she said, absentmindedly.
They ended up sharing the rest of the melon wedges, and Noelle’s fried rice too, and some of the water out of her water bottle, and after Akarsha had had something nourishing to eat and drink, Noelle thought she was starting to look a little better.
But once they were done eating, and Noelle had closed up her lunchbox, Akarsha started to look nervous and frayed again.
“Look, what’s going on?” Noelle started to ask, when Akarsha began to speak.
“I finished it,” she said simply, and Akarsha reached down into her backpack and began rummaging around inside.
Noelle’s first instinct was to ask, 'finished what?' but for once in her life she held her tongue and sat, watching Akarsha as she looked through her bag, and thinking. A second later it came to her.
“This is about that idea you had last night, isn’t it?” she asked, frowning. “Oh, please tell me you didn’t stay up all night working on some hairbrained-”
“I did,” said Akarsha, pulling a flat square box out of the depths of her backpack. After a moment, Noelle recognised it as a CD case. “And you’re right,” continued Akarsha, who was unable to meet Noelle’s eyes. “It was hairbrained. I’m really not sure if it’s any good at all. But you promised you’d hear me out.”
Noelle let out a very long sigh. “I did,” she said finally, shaking her head.
Akarsha smiled. She reached down into the bag and pulled out a discman and a pair of headphones.
“I’m supposed to listen to it now?” asked Noelle.
“Yep,” said Akarsha. “You have to listen to it now, because I’m so nervous about it, if we wait any longer I’m worried I’ll just throw it away.”
“That’s… concerning,” said Noelle, unable to stop herself from being honest in this moment.
“Yep,” agreed Akarsha. She popped the CD into the discman and handed Noelle the headphones. “Now,” she said, and Noelle noticed for the first time that Akarsha was blushing very profusely. “I burned this on my computer this morning. You have to promise to listen to the whole thing, and not say anything until it’s over.”
“Is it terribly long?” asked Noelle, placing the headphones on her head.
“Nah,” said Akarsha, shaking her head. After a moment though, her eyes widened. “...at least, I hope it doesn’t feel that way,” she added. “OH WELL, NO GOING BACK NOW," she shouted suddenly, and she pressed the play button on the discman.
There was the sound of faint audio feedback for several seconds, and then a rudimentary beat began to play, and then Noelle heard Akarsha’s voice coming out of the headphones.
"Yo, yo, yo, Biological Phylums' let’s go,” said the Akarsha on the recording, her voice going in time with the beat. Noelle’s eyes went wide as dollar coins.
“First is Annelida, which means ‘little rings.’
Are they segmented worms, yo, or is that just what it seems?”
“WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS?” Noelle began to say, but Akarsha slammed a single finger against her lips to keep her from talking.
“Next is Agmata, or ‘Fragmented’ Agmates,
that’s the phylum with which you know you wanna be best mates.”
The rap went on, and on, and on, eventually covering all 40 of the phyla that Noelle knew they would be responsible for knowing on their final biology test. As the rap progressed, Noelle was struck by how completely competent it was, how the information was all accurate and how it almost always rhymed. Eventually, the recorded Akarsha said:
“Finally there’s… uh… Xena…coelo…morpha, yeah that’s it. They’ve got that ‘strange hollow form.’
Let’s hope this biology rap keeps you safe from, uhhhhh, horm.”
There was a moment of silence on the recording, and Noelle thought maybe it was over but then:
“THIS IS MC AKARSHA, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED NOELLE!
RAP BATTLE ME SOMETIME, YO YO YO YO!”
There was a click, and Noelle could hear the disc in the discman begin to slow its rotation. She finally looked over at Akarsha, who this whole time had been sitting on the bench beside her, hiding her face in her hands. Her ears were blushing heavily though, and Noelle could see her eyes, shining as they peeked out from between her fingers.
“What… was that?” whispered Noelle, her eyes wide, as she slowly removed the headphones.
“I made a CD,” said Akarsha, somewhat lamely, and very unhelpfully. She pulled the disc out of the discman and put it back into the case, which she set on the bench beside Noelle.
"Yeah?" said Noelle, still entirely unsure what the hell was happening. "Why?"
“I thought you could, I dunno, maybe listen to it while you sleep, and it would help you remember all the phylums,” said Akarsha, looking down the hill.
“Oh Akarsha…” said Noelle slowly, ignoring the CD and taking the other girl’s hand in her own. “This must have taken you all night to write! This is why you’re so exhausted! What were you thinking?”
“You were having such a hard time studying them…” said Akarsha, looking confused.
“Yeah, but you didn’t need to do all this,” insisted Noelle. “You must have worked so hard…”
“It wasn’t hard,” said Akarsha, smiling. “Besides, it’s easy to go overboard doing stuff like this when it’s for someone you-” she suddenly reached up with the hand Noelle wasn’t holding and clapped it over her mouth. “Geez,” she said under her breath a moment later, removing her hand from her mouth. “I’m so tired, I almost gave the game away.”
Noelle went cold all over, goosebumps prickling up and down her body. “What do you mean by that?” she asked. She gripped Akarsha’s hand tighter. “Someone you… what?”
“It’s not important,” said Akarsha, shaking her head quickly. “Anyway, I hope you like the CD,” she added, before making to stand up. But Noelle did NOT let go of her hand. Her mind was racing.
Writing a song like that composed of literally all the elements I was struggling with from our final unit must have taken Akarsha all night, Noelle thought to herself. With her own final exams only days away this girl chose to forsake sleep to create a specialized study tape just for me.
Akarsha looked down at Noelle from the half-standing, half-sitting pose she had been forced to adopt due to Noelle retaining her grip on her hand. But Noelle ignored her, still thinking.
And that’s before factoring in the actual musical element, which was surprisingly sophisticated. Setting the whole thing to a functional beat would be hard enough, but Akarsha went the extra mile, incorporating unobtrusive joke elements to further render the song memorable, which only reinforces the song’s true purpose, namely that of helping VERY-SPECIFICALLY-ME with the studying I’d been struggling with.
“Frenchman?” asked Akarsha, giving her hand a little shake. “Can I have my hand back?”
Something about this question was able to permeate the cocoon of Noelle’s rapidly expanding galaxy brain, and she replied with a curt “no,” before she hopped back aboard her runaway train of thought.
“Oh,” said Akarsha. “Okay then.” She sat back down, thoroughly nonplussed, and stared down at Noelle’s hand wrapped around her own.
Working through the night to make a highly personalized song like this would be a labor that one would only perform for someone they truly cared about. Noelle continued her line of thinking, screwing her face up with concentration. And given what I know about Akarsha and how she behaves, coupled with her most very recently made statements, leads me to believe that there can only be one logical conclusion!
"Someone you what?!" Noelle asked again, her voice unnaturally high-pitched, her heart beating high up in her throat. She brought both her and Akarsha’s intertwined hands up against her chest, and clutched Akarsha's there tightly.
Akarsha gave her head several repeated little shakes, mouth slightly open, before she could no longer help herself, and finally spit it out.
“Someone you LOVE, Frenchman!” she said, wide eyed and clearly, utterly terrified. “It’s easy to do something like this when it’s for someone you love! Oh my god, it’s the easiest thing in the whole world!”
And then Noelle finally released Akarsha’s hand, and brought her own up to gently cup it around Akarsha’s cheek. And then she pulled Akarsha’s face forward towards her own, and kissed her.
***
“I’m dreaming,” said Akarsha. It was sometime later, after the two of them had finished kissing, and had been sitting for a while on the bench, just staring at one another in silence. “It’s the middle of the night, and I fell asleep writing that song.”
“You are not dreaming,” said Noelle, making a face at her.
“It’s okay,” said Akarsha. “This is a good dream. I don’t want to wake up.”
“You don’t?” asked Noelle, unable to stop the smile spreading across her face. “You want to stay here with me?”
“Well, yeah,” said Akarsha, looking at her as though this should be obvious. “When I wake up, it will be morning, and I won’t have finished writing the song, and so I won’t be able to give it to Noelle in the waking world, and so she won’t want to kiss me.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Noelle. “I think she might already want to kiss you regardless.”
“You really think so?” asked Akarsha, her voice so full of hope that it could have broken Noelle’s heart.
“Oh yeah,” said Noelle gently, leaning in to place another soft kiss on Akarsha’s lips. “I‘m pretty sure.”
Akarsha sighed happily, but after a moment she narrowed her eyes at Noelle. “So this really is a dream then?” she asked slowly.
“NO,” said Noelle, snorting and reaching across the bench to give Akarsha’s shoulder a shove. “I was just kidding with you.”
“It’s not?” asked Akarsha, sounding unconvinced. “But I’ve had dreams just like this one before.”
Noelle stopped laughing, her heart skipping a few beats in an arrhythmic pattern. “You have dreams about… us kissing?” she asked quietly.
“Oh yeah,” said Akarsha, giving her a skeptical look. “All the time. But you already know that, you’re always there with me.”
Noelle had almost died just then when Akarsha had said the words All the time, but when Akarsha finished speaking, Noelle somehow managed to pull herself together enough to sigh, and then lean forward and grab Akarsha’s hand, squeezing it tightly to simulate the so-called ‘pinch’ that white people sometimes did in movies to prove they weren’t dreaming. “I’m the real Noelle, not dream Noelle,” she said, speaking her words loudly and clearly.
Akarsha stared at her for several long seconds. Then she jumped to her feet, rapidly patting down her own face, arms, and legs as if trying to make sure they were still there.
“THIS IS… REAL LIFE?” she yelled, staring down at Noelle on the bench. “REAL, REAL LIFE, I MEAN. FOR REAL, YOU’RE BEING REAL WITH ME RIGHT NOW? REALLY? FOR REAL???”
“Yes,” said Noelle, nodding her head slowly.
“OH MY GOD!” Akarsha screamed, throwing her hands up into the air and taking off, running all the way around the bench in a little circle. As she passed around the front of the bench again, looking like she might try to make another circuit, Noelle stood up and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“You really need to sleep, don’t you?” she said quietly, pulling Akarsha into a hug.
“I think so,” said Akarsha, her face against Noelle’s shoulder, her breathing a bit ragged.
“You really shouldn’t have stayed up all night writing that song,” Noelle said, shaking her head. “It’s not good for you.”
“Do you really feel that way?” asked Akarsha, still leaning into Noelle’s body with her own.
“No,” said Noelle, finally releasing Akarsha and looking into her eyes. “If you hadn’t spent all night writing that song, you might not have been so sleep deprived that you actually told me you loved me.”
“I do, ya know,” said Akarsha, staring back at Noelle. “Love you, I mean. I have for ages.”
Noelle’s vision went white for half a second, and she reached out, grabbing for the bench to steady herself after hearing those words. She took several breaths to calm her racing heart. Then she shook her head, laughing.
“I love you too,” she said, reaching up and grabbing Akarsha’s face again. “And I have for ages.”
And then both of them were laughing.
They ended up walking down the hill back towards the school, hand-in-hand. The sun was shining high in the sky. “We were so stupid,” said Akarsha, shaking her head. “All those wasted years…”
“We really were,” said Noelle, shaking her’s as well.
***
There would be finals to take in a couple of days, and the summer ahead after that, the first summer of her life that Noelle would spend in the company of an Akarsha who had told Noelle that she loved her, and to whom Noelle had told the same. Noelle’s head started to swim with the possibilities whenever she allowed herself to sit and think about it for too long. It made her nervous, more nervous even than her impending final exams. But it was a good nervous, a kind of nervousness that made her start to shake as the prickling feeling in her palms that she usually associated with Akarsha started to spread out along her entire body.
But she had to avoid it for now. Had to keep a level head. Just a couple of days left, and her finals would be over.
She glanced at the clock on her bedside table. A bright neon green 11:47 flashed at her face. Time to go to bed, she thought to herself.
She reached over and pulled a discman from one of her dresser drawers, and popped the CD Akarsha had made into it. She turned out the lights, laid back in her bed, and slipped the headphones over her ears.