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“Thanks for coming over on such short notice, Teaks!” Valere beamed with joy as she opened the door to her dorm room.
“Oh it’s no problem at all. When you told me you needed some help with Geography I positively jumped at the opportunity to put on my tutor hat!”
Valere leads Teaks to the center of the room where a table awaits them. The disparity between her bed (made, tucked, and pillows neatly placed) and her dormmate’s (messy, unkempt, a single, flat, yellowed pillow) landmarks each side of the divide that carves the room in twain.
“Sorry about… all of that ,” Valere says gesturing towards Zale’s side of the room, “I've tried and tried and tried to get him to learn how to pick up after himself but all these years later and he is still a slob. I don't know how he's gonna get a boyfriend to come home to it.” Valere gives a chuckle to bookend her statement; a small smile curls at the edge of her mouth as she turns back towards Teaks. Teaks gives a hearty grin in response and puts her bag on the table,
“Alrighty! So, which parts are you struggling with the most and which are you finding to be easier? I can try to bridge a gap between them to help you make some connections or just find an explanation that connects the dots better than Miss Dread did.”
Valere pulls out a chair and sits, “Um… it's kind of… everything?” She says with a sheepish look. She quickly raises her hands in defense of a non-existent provocation, “I know I know, the smart girl doesn't get geography of all things, it's pretty embarrassing.”
Valere looks away, expecting derision and scoffing to answer her bulwark of self-deprecation. Instead she's met with a gentle hand placed upon her own and a warm look from her friend,
“Nobody’s great at everything, Valere. Everyone has their struggle areas.”
Valere clenches her hand into a fist, but nervously rubs the side with her thumb; she doesn't pull away.
“Not you, you're a straight A student, Teaks. You're the president of the History Club and the Literature Club, you excel in all our classes, and you somehow still have time to hang out with your friends. You're perfect, I'm… I'm just…”
The comment hangs in the air. Valere's eyes are pinned to the ground searching for solace, searching for-
Another hand clasps around Valere’s. She looks up, tears beginning to well in her eyes. Teaks is looking at her with acceptance and kindness and care. She speaks up, breaking the silence as swiftly as it arrived,
“Valere. You are human. And so am I. You only see a little slice of me, the slice that everyone else sees. Sure from the outside it may look like I have everything sorted, but I really, really don't. I don't sleep well, I am extremely stressed out, and-” she quickly reaches into her bag, keeping one hand over Valere’s, “-I fail. A lot.”
Teaks puts down a stack of papers with bright red numbers written on them, ranging from the low forties to the high sixties. Valere looks over them and spies a common trait: all of these worksheets and tests are mathematics related. She looks up to her friend,
“Wait but, don't you have A’s in all of your classes?”
Teaks nods, “I do, but not without hours and hours of effort. Math just… doesn't come to me. I need to work really hard to understand it. Because I'm not perfect,” she looks into Valere's eyes and rewraps her hand around her friend’s now relaxed palm, “Nobody is.” Teaks smiles and Valere matches, albeit with slightly wetter cheeks.
As seconds turn to minutes turn to hours, the two girls find themselves breaking out some snacks to cure a bit of hunger and take a break from the nigh on never ending text from their books. The melody of chip bags and soda cans opening fill the room paired alongside the laughter of the two girls. Valere takes a sip from her can and nearly spits it out when Teaks mentions the time she caught Seraï dancing with her snake in their dorm room,
“I left not ten minutes before and I only came back to the room because I had forgotten my journal. I thought she either fell asleep or had also gone out so when I opened the door to find her dancing with Rice- pfff HAHAHAHA!” Teaks explodes in laughter and Valere barely chokes down her soda before joining in. After their laughing fit briefly wanes, the two move on to another topic: relationships.
“Hey speaking of, don’t tell her I told you this, but Seraï has a crush on Garl,” Teaks ekes out from her ear-to-ear grin.
Valere responds “Oh yeah I think everybody but Garl knows by now. Probably Zale too, honestly, but he’s always been super oblivious. She thinks she’s really sneaky about it but she gets so lost in her own thoughts around him I’m surprised she doesn’t constantly run into stuff!” More laughter. The sound and energy rouse the two cats that were previously napping quite peacefully on Valere’s bed. One (a Russian Blue named Luana) jumps onto the table, almost crushing a potato chip bag under paw. Valere continues, mirroring Teaks’s previous statement,
“Oh gosh, speaking of Zale, don’t tell him I told you this, but I think I know who he has a crush on!”
Teaks responds with a curious, “Ooooh who is it?” She gasps, “Is it Ninja ??”
Valere shakes her head, “No no, it’s somebody else on the track team! I don’t know his name but I saw the two of them chatting and laughing a lot together at their last meet. They would do this-” Valere pantomimes one of the boys reeling over with laughter, resting a hand on the other’s shoulder, “-and this -” she wraps an arm around an imaginary person next to her while staring into space with a blank smile, “-like, that’s gotta mean something right??”
Teaks begins scratching between Luana’s ears and contemplates for a moment, her expression twisting into a caricature of pondering. She looks back at Valere and says,
“I’m not too familiar with how boys interact with one another, doubly unfamiliar with how teammates act with one another. It could be just simple camaraderie? Don’t get me wrong, I would love for Zale to find a romantic interest! This just isn’t really my area of expertise,” Teaks gives a bit of an awkward smile before taking a sip of her drink. Valere joins in on petting Luana, who at this point has fully splayed out on the table and is now writhing around the strewn about papers, purring loudly. The two chuckle as the cat rolls around and around, wanting every last centimeter to be pet and scratched. Luana finally decides that she is done and proceeds to jump off the table and back onto the bed, curling up next to the orange tabby cat, Solen. Valere and Teaks both stare at the cats as they return to dreamland wrapped around each other. The two exchange a brief, almost involuntary look at one another. And then just as suddenly are snapped back into reality, their faces both going flush as their eyes dart to the table and the textbooks once more, looking to escape their own thoughts. They begin to stammer and rush for the pages they left off on until their hands meet reaching for the same book. They pause, one hand on top of the other.
An eternity passes. The clock ticks. Another eternity. The clock ticks once more. Valere rips her hand away and starts to rub the back of her head while forcing out very stiff laughter,
“Ha! Ha ha! So uh, ha, yeah! Let’s uh, let’s get back to it!” Her stilted words do very little to soothe her racing heartbeat.
Teaks responds, her face as red as a beet, “Y… yeah. We should.”
Teaks opens the textbook and begins to coldly read the words on the page. Valere attempts to write down the information but her body is numb and her mind is stupefied. All she can manage is to hear the words that Teaks is saying, barely able to actually listen.
“So uh. Ahem . The uh- ‘The Grand Divide: A landmark located approximately half a kilometer north of the town of Repine. The Grand Divide is the largest singular canyon in the world. It is four hundred fifty kilometers long, is sixteen kilometers wide on average, and has a minimum depth of three hundred meters. The ecosystem…” Teaks’s voice trails off to Valere’s conscious thought. Replacing it is her own,
What’s happening?? Why am I freaking out?? I’m never this nervous! Calm down. I can’t. But I need to . But I CAN’T ! Why can’t I calm down!? All we did was touch hands! And-and look at each other! We do that all the time though! We see things!! With OUR EYES!! I feel like I’m going insane!?! But I-I do want more with her. I want it so bad…
Meanwhile inside of Teaks’s mind;
What do I do… Do I. Do I keep reading? I’m just going on muscle memory. Is Valere even listening? What is she thinking? She looks just as calm as always. Am I overthinking this? What if I’m not? I really, really like her; I want to go further…
Their thoughts echo each others’ in fatalistic harmony:
But what if she doesn’t?
As time lurches forward, Valere finally speaks up,
“Hey uh, Teaks?”
She stops, the words evaporating from the room as soon as they are uttered.
“I uh. I’m sorry, I really spaced out there. I haven’t been paying attention to anything you’ve been saying, heh heh.” An uneasy chuckle forces its way out, attempting to bring levity to the situation.
Teaks, taken aback by the sudden spotlight, replies, “Oh, um. T-that’s okay! I was just, kind of rambling from the textbook anyways. If uh, if you want we can stop there for tonight and pick up during first break or um…” the thought trails off. Or I could just die. That works too.
Valere steers it back on track,
“Yeah that sounds good! I’ll um. I’ll let you know! Since we, y’know, have second period together, haha.” Of course she knows that, you idiot!
“Okay. Uh. I guess I’ll-I’ll see you then!” A forced smile paints itself on Teaks’s face.
Valere mirrors the expression, “Great!”
Teaks gathers her books and bag and begins to head for the door. She stops just before reaching for the handle.
Turn around, you idiot. Hug her! KISS HER! Do something !!
She reaches for the handle.
What do I do!?
She opens the door.
What do I do!?!
She turns around. And gives a wave.
“See you tomorrow, Valere.”
Valere, still standing by the table, returns the wave.
“See ya.”
The door closes. Silence. Loneliness. Tears well up within and without. Thoughts echo once again.
I’m so stupid.
Valere settles into her night clothes when she hears the lock on her door click open. Zale enters wearing his track uniform.
“Hey Valere! How’s it goin’?”
She barely looks up from her book, just giving a simple ‘Mmh’ in response. As Zale puts away his backpack and begins heading for the bathroom, he notices the opened bags of chips and half-drank cans on the two ends of the table.
“Oh, did you have someone over? What did you get up to?”
A jolt runs through her entire chest. A knife in her heart. A pining for love lost. The memory causes Valere to become misty-eyed. Zale drops his bag and hurries over,
“Whoa whoa hey, Val, what’s the matter? Is everything okay?”
Valere sets her book down and collapses into Zale, holding him tight. Zale, taken by surprise, wraps his arms around his friend in comfort.
Teaks returns to her dorm and finds Seraï scrolling on her phone. She looks up for a moment and sees Teaks’s face flushed with wet streaks running down her cheeks.
“Teaks? What’s wrong?” Seraï gets up from her seat and rushes over to her friend, taking her hand in her own. Teaks looks up at Seraï and tries to form a response, but there are only more tears. Seraï brings her to their couch to sit down on and Teaks wraps her arms around Seraï , burying her face in her side. Seraï begins to rub Teaks’s back in a soothing manner.
The echoes of lamentations finding their homes amongst the woeful.