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It’s not that deep. Maybe it’s the way she chews the end of her pencils and snaps at his bitten nails, chattering sounds behind the bus seat when his IQ result beats her by one imaginable point, and Marie can’t wrap her head around his jokes. It’s inevitable. Maybe. Or he’s growing awkward by osmosis because Neil can’t simply make up an excuse to cover his gaze.
“What are you looking at?” she blinks and he’s thinking about the way she makes a face at the plasticky smell of someone’s binder, but still holds on to it when asked nonetheless. It’s short of what it needs to be—to have a precise conclusion. He doesn’t know what he’s thinking about.
“Nothing.” A lie. She sees through those. “Okay. You have a dot on your upper lip.”
“It’s a mole,” she frowns.
“Oh,” he replies noncommittally.
Sometimes Marie looks as if she resents being noticed by kids of her age. More than not—his classmate, in her finite patience—has been known to cut people off mid-sentence and heels click. He imagines boys nervously asking if she wants to go on dates or gives them a chance, all clammy hands at sixteen and the girl would look at them as if being jolted in infancy, disgusted. He has heard horror stories of her walking past someone in the midst of a confession, blond hair tucked behind the shell of her ear.
“Still no earrings?” Neil prompts when no one else seems to be coming to the music club today, seats empty outside of hers and his. They’re not pierced, he knows. She’s too serious to consider adorning herself with jewellery. “Aren’t you a big advocate for equality and whatnot in our uniforms?”
A beat. “I can use clip-ons for the district competition. They make them, you know.”
His chuckle escapes with ease.
“So you’re fine with a temporary fixture but not a long-term commitment?”
Her brows quirk. She has never been one for subtlety, or the gracefulness of it.
“You know the word fixture?”
“Yes. I happen to sit behind you in English Lit, remember?”
A harmless scoff. She inspects the hemline of her skirt for a while, bangs falling to her nose and he wants to reach a hand out, to brush back the gold strands behind her ears. The left one has a dot of freckles while the right is her favourite to touch. Neil hates that he knows these things all too well, but he masks the knowledge with a pressed smile.
“Welp. I’m going home,” he says because she won’t. Because he has never seen her leave any room early, always staying back. “What? You saw the clock.” A shrug. With Marie, everything comes to the irony of confidence. She’s a polished frame who has been religiously quiet in picking up after crumbs, no sense of gratification with folded hands and neatly written musical sheet. Neil wants to dip his thumb in to make a scene, draw some sort of significance from the way she blinks up at him leaving, the mole on her upper lip stays as a centrepiece.
He doesn’t.
He says goodbye.
The confession is neither everything or nothing, and she knows this because Marie has came out to this bench to think through something, while the boy who’d just confessed to her—did not. School boys see a girl under an oak tree and muscle memory takes over their mouths with romantic wishes. Love wouldn’t solve anything. It’s not even the formula for her longed question.
“Buck!”
Neil walks up to her and smiles too widely, hands in the pockets of his pants and she hates that their school insists on uniforms, of her matching with his tie and they share the same collar for shirts.
Her reply comes off as a bit miffed than usual, “What now?”
Normally people would leave her alone after this. It might be the reason why kids their grade don’t usually invite her to birthday parties, the mailman seemingly vanishes on vacation whenever someone is hosting something outside of the school gate. Stuffs like that pile on, eventually, but it’s more effort than random guys wasting her time. More effort than Neil Kramp putting on the same coloured tie as her skirt.
Marie doesn’t buy her copy of the yearbook once their photographer asked him to stand closer to her.
“Someone pissed you off today?” he replies obliviously and she can feel her eyes rolling to the curve of dawn. It’s not a half-baked concern, but there’s nothing anyone can do about her annoyance anyway.
“No.”
“Then what?” he quizzes.
No response. She lets the question sink in, diverting her attention back to the book.
He has never been one to press much beyond boundaries anyway.
It’s a weird fact that you inevitably pick up after someone. A leaf in her hair or a petal on her uniform. Marie has been in the same class as him since the day she first transferred, and there are things she notices Neil doesn’t quite know what to do with: Her silence, the school’s policy on no skateboarding and the lack of extracurricular activities. He can juggle conversations just fine with everyone around these corridors, claiming the title of their grade’s most playful guy, but whenever she goes silent, it’s as if he wants to follow suit.
The thought makes her insides a little sour.
Marie realises she doesn’t know what to do with this knowledge either.
“Well,” Neil begins again and she can feel the ghostly pressure of his thumb on her skin, even when he’s pressing it against the sharpness of his teeth. He clearly just wants her to look up and catch the image, which is childish of him in every shade.
“Don’t bite your nails.” Marie scoffs, folding her book without the answer, still puzzled and slightly ticked. “That’s gross.”
Against all odds, he shakes his head a little before making a remark.
“Okay. Don’t stop talking when someone clearly cares about you.”
In the cafeteria, he squiggles his toes away from the confinement of shoes, a little careless to being caught and reprimanded for the fifth time this week. This kind of thing is fairly elementary in comparison to the pranks that third-year students often pull, nothing special, a little treat in time.
To be fair, he’s probably somewhat distracted because their class has long rolled out at the first ring of lunch, and there’s still someone he hasn’t spotted yet. He doesn’t know why he keeps looking, but she has never been late to these kinds of things.
“Your girlfriend’s not coming,” one person says before Neil realises whom they’re mentioning, and becomes defensive of one item in his tray. “Oi, move it. You heard what I said. Marie Buck is not going to lunch today, so don’t save her the tea bottle you will never finish.”
At this, Lennox from the class next door continues to loop an arm over his shoulder, but stops short when Neil turns over, pretending to bite at her attempt of robbery. There is a short pause in these acts because she has known him long enough to never really suffer the consequences from his reflexes, and yet, the tennis captain still frowns and swats at his neck.
“God, you’re so smitten. It’s a dumb look on you.”
The girl takes a seat next to his own, opting to snatch something else instead. The mechanics of her actions are wired all the same, if not a drink then it’s one spoon of whatever side dishes he has going on.
“How did you know that?”
“What?” Lennox twirls the end of a french fry from her tray before dipping it into his food. “About Buck or your devotion to saving her a bottle of drink?”
“Ha. Ha,” he enunciates each word. “Seriously, Len. Where’s Marie?”
The question seems to pinpoint something behind her eyes.
A glint like she’s considering the outcome of her words. “There’s a long and short answer, which one would you like to hear first?”
He considers it. “You mean there’s only one, but it sucks?”
“Yeah.” Lennox is a smart person, ego-ridden and a good childhood friend in that order, but sometimes the tides switch. He can feel the flip in her tone. “Promise not to make a big deal?”
Neil shakes his head. “I can’t possibly say that.”
“Ok,” she says, a spot condiment glimmering on her chin and he shoves her a tissue to wipe it off. “Hush! I’m telling you anyway.”
“So,” Janet begins like they’re in a conversation right after the lunch bell rings, and the girl knows Marie can’t simply avoid her when they’re partnered up for the after-class cleaning schedule later on, hence she stays put. There was a possibility of her partner asking to be linked up with Neil, but it would mean fighting off three other people on the rotation.
“I’m listening,” she says, though it can’t possibly be more obvious that Marie is trying to speed through meaningless talks.
“A little birdie told me that Joe Pech asked you out on your morning read. Even got down on his knees with flowers and fruits, am I right?”
“Oh.”
So the rumours have already been spreaded. She doesn’t know what she should be feeling about the situation, if all the theoretics of evolution has been right to dissuade him from making a move.
“My relationship isn’t a good topic to dissect, you know. It’s preemptive.”
“You’re a preemptive,” the girl slaps a hand on her back, symbolically bonding but it’s hard enough to make an echoing noise in the empty classroom. “No, but seriously, we all thought you would at least go for him since you don’t seem to be that dismissive of Joe. Even Bella made a bet of it.”
Marie glances down and she knows the next thing she should say is what’s wrong with all of you, to thrash in a scornful manner, but she feels worse for wear at the confirmation of being a public mockery.
The blonde coughs a little and corrects her posture upward.
“How much?”
“What?”
“How much did Bella and the others bet on this?”
There’s a muscle flinch on Janet’s left eyelid. “Er, I don’t know. Maybe fifteen bucks?”
Marie can only hear the sound of her shoes as she walks out to their table.
“Hey,” he says, eventually, because it’s her first time in detention and she curls up at the sound like it’s a hassle, but then Marie looks back and it’s not so bad to read her expression when she’s too tired to shelter it. To see her so out of her own elements is a softening difference, though he tries not to smile at the tangled-up locks of hair.
“Great.” A light curve. “And what are you here for? Indecent exposure of your feet?”
“For your information,” he points a finger but there’s no bite. Neil knows when she’s trying to make conversation and when she wishes to be left alone. “These piggies won’t be free next year after I graduate and start bringing my business online.” A giggle, though it has not escaped from his lungs and he’s too light-headed to point out that she’s slipped. “Take a number, Buck. You can be my first serious review.”
“I will run your business into the ground,” she shrugs. “I have a knack for that.”
“Then we can team up together and take down all of my competitors. You and me against the world of digital feet pics!”
“Those are some big words,” she notes.
His lips hurt when he smiles, but he’s sure she won’t point out the obvious bruises.
She doesn’t hate the way he combs gently through her hair, picking out dirt and, in his words, making her look presentable enough for the school bus. Apparently, Neil is the eldest child in a family of three, always late for classes to walk his sisters to school.
“I didn’t know that about you,” she exhales and he’s still sitting behind her back, braiding whatever’s left untouched by the girls in their class. Detention is much quieter than she has expected, though the smudge on her college application is not something she wishes to dwell on right now.
When he’s silent, Marie has more time to focus on his voice when the words come out from flesh. To others, Neil speaks as if he’s constantly thinking in sharp writings, always bouncing back. To her, the voice is a vehicle that stretches when he smiles, attempting to catch her grace.
“And I didn’t know you can throw a mean right hook,” he replies, voice slightly muffled but the tells of a smile is all there, shameless. He is covered in more subtexts than the book she’s trying to dissect, and that’s a ridiculous thought. It’s not something she can debunk. “Sorry. Totally didn’t catch you settling things with Bella in the middle of our cafeteria.” A cough. “But really though, that was really impressive of you.”
She groans into her hands.
“Are we talking about stupid decisions now, because you have a lot on that topic to bring up.”
He laughs. “No, not really. I’ll stop.”
But what Marie really wants to say is thank you, because she knows where the bruises from his jaw are from, immediately starstruck by his sudden defence.
He walks her home because the bus is gone and dusk is setting, and she often remembers the neckline of his collar more than her own pain, or the way her new braid swings in the bubblegum pinkness.
“About today.” Marie begins at a cross-section and he tilts down a little, just to hear her well enough. He smells like neutral body wash, clean linen and the scent of fresh grass on the football field. “I was supposed to get my ears pierced, you know, to make the glee competition uniform more easily matched.” Beat and her skin flushed. Marie shouldn’t really continues, but she does anyway. “Do you think I would look good with earrings?”
A train zooms by them at the red light, and she keeps thinking if there has been enough fragments in the way they gravitate to even pose such a question, something so silly that the light in his eyes won’t let go if he has caught up on her bullshit.
But Neil only blinks, brushes a hand behind her ear and says, “I think you’d look good with anything,” and stops.
They don’t make eye contact for the rest of the walk.
It’s something by osmosis, a shared kindling.