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“Don’t you think you might’ve been a little mean to Wirt,” Hobbes asked, not looking at Calvin. He instead was focused on digging the dirt out from under his claws while he leaned against a tree. “I mean, he was only trying to help you.”
Calvin looked up from the bugs he was watching, a small frown on his face, as Hobbes was talking. “I don’t know,” he said, his tone a touch defensive. “I told him that I was fine. He just had to stick his nose into my business. I was only telling him to buzz off.”
Hobbes gave Calvin a dry look. “By calling him a noodle-necked, muffin-brained, straw-for-arms, nosey jerk?”
“… Maybe I was a little harsh,” Calvin admitted, magnanimous in demeanor.
“You should apologize,” Hobbes said, ignoring Calvin’s faux humility.
Calvin flopped onto his back, staring up at the multicolored canopy of leaves. There were some gaps caused by leaves that had already fallen, and they revealed the gray November sky. Indecision ate at him, and Hobbes let him figure out his feelings in silence. The sound of autumn in the woods kept them company.
TO: CONEHEAD🔺
hey
can we talk?
Sent at 5:17 PM
FROM: BIRDY 🐦
Wirt doesn’t want to talk to you right now.
And
Quite frankly
Neither do I.
I’m only doing this so Wirt can ignore his phone.
Received at 5:23 PM
Calvin stood next to his bike, wondering if he had made the right choice in going to Wirt’s house after Beatrice’s messages. Hobbes had elected to stay home because Mom was making tuna for dinner. There was a twitch of one of the curtains in the front windows, and Calvin saw Greg looking out at him. Normally, Greg would wave at Calvin. Calvin rose his hand in a wave, a weak hope that maybe Greg would wave back. The younger boy just gave Calvin a frown. Calvin’s hand came back down to rest on his bike.
Yes, it was clear that Calvin had misstepped to the highest degree. Guilt churned in his stomach, and he had to force himself to take off his helmet. After walking the bike up their driveway and propping it up by their garage, he stepped up to the porch. He took a shuddering breath in, trying to steel himself to knock on the door. After a few seconds of doing nothing, he rose his fist to knock, but the door opened before he could make contact with the wood.
“Calvin,” Beatrice greeted him dryly, the bare minimum of civility in her tone. Her auburn hair was in a loose braid, strands poking and falling out.
“Hey, Bea,” when she just continued to stare at him, he finished lamely, “trice.”
“…” She stared at him, door open only enough for her to be seen. She turned her head back towards the inside of the house for a moment, as if listening to somebody. “Are you sure?”
Beatrice faced Calvin again, a more marked frown on her face. Then she said, with a grimace, “Please, come in.”
Calvin edged his way in, trying not to accidentally brush into her. And given that she barely moved out of the way to let him in, he suspected that was the point.
“He’s in his room.” She said shortly, and then closed the front door.
Calvin took off his sneakers and placed them next to the door. Once Calvin started for the stairs, Beatrice went into the living room, casting a backwards warning glare at him. He gulped, and took the steps up to the bedrooms. Greg opened his door as Calvin approached and peeked out. Calvin wanted to wave again, but he didn’t know how he’d feel if Greg didn’t wave back again. As he passed Greg, the door closed slowly. Calvin sighed.
Wirt’s door was cracked open, which from past experiences meant that he could just walk on in, but Calvin didn’t want to press his luck anymore than he already had. He knocked on the door frame twice and waited. After a few agonizing moments where Calvin was sure that Wirt had only let him in to prank him, Wirt opened the door fully. He was still wearing his clothes from school, which Calvin was surprised to see. Normally, the other boy preferred to be as comfortable as possible, and would trade his slacks for joggers pretty much as soon as he stepped into his house. Looking at Wirt’s face more closely, though, revealed to Calvin that he was probably the reason for this uncharacteristic move. Wirt looked… Tired. And resigned.
Calvin frowned. Wirt, while not the most optimistic person in their friend group, didn’t tend to look like he’d been beat with a shovel emotionally.
“Cal,” Wirt greeted in a small voice. He opened his door wider to allow Calvin to walk in. Wirt crossed the room and sat down on his bed. Calvin closed the door behind him, leaving the same crack open that Wirt had. He sat down on the chair by Wirt’s desk.
They sat in a tense, awkward silence for a while. Wirt didn’t want to be the one to speak first; Calvin didn’t want to hurt his friend even more than he already had.
Eventually, Calvin decided that this sitting in silence thing they were doing was probably just reinforcing whatever negative thoughts were swirling in Wirt’s head. “I,” he started, wringing his hands together in his lap, “want to apologize. About this afternoon, I mean. I didn’t mean what I said.”
“Why did you do it?” Wirt asked, his voice just as quiet as before. His eyes wouldn’t meet Calvin’s.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. He really didn’t know why he lashed out at Wirt the way he had. “I was stressed, I guess. Things had been going wrong the entire week, and today was just awful even before you tried to help. And I guess I took it out on you or something.”
Wirt didn’t respond, processing Calvin’s explanations.
While he did that, Calvin looked around the room like it was the first time he’d been in here. In the corner by the window, a clarinet case and a bassoon case were sat next to each other. The hat that the marching band wore sat on top of them. The other corner, the one by Wirt’s head, had pictures of his family and his friends. There were more than a few with Calvin in them. They’d met the first day of freshman year, sitting next to each other in English lit, and bonded over the weird way their teacher talked about William Shakespeare.
Calvin didn’t really have many friends growing up outside of Hobbes and Susie. But in becoming friends with Wirt, Calvin was introduced to people like Lorna and Beatrice and Sara and Jason. Susie rounded out the group, and Calvin enjoyed the variety of personalities that came with so many people. But he knew that though they were his friends now, they were Wirt’s first. And Beatrice had made her stance more than clear about how she felt about what Calvin did.
“It wasn’t nice that you did that,” Wirt spoke up suddenly, snapping Calvin out of his thoughts. Wirt met his eyes this time. “I thought that we were friends.”
“We are friends,” Calvin said, a strange nervousness he’d never felt before rising in his bones.
“Friends don’t say those things to each other, Calvin. Lorna, Sara, Beatrice, Jason, hell even Susie—they would never say that to me.”
“Well, then don’t listen to me,” Calvin said like the answer was simple, “listen to them!”
“It’s hard to not listen to you,” Wirt said, making a slight dig at Calvin’s loud and boisterous personality.
“I really didn’t mean any of it,” Calvin said. “I wasn’t thinking, and I fell back into old habits that I’ve tried to stop doing. You can ask Susie; a few years ago, I wouldn’t have apologized until a month later.”
“What were you stressed about?” Wirt asked neutrally.
Calvin flushed, remembering why he was freaking out earlier. He didn’t want to say it out loud, he’d just barely admitted it to himself, but he also didn’t want to lose Wirt as a friend. “I, uh,” he coughed into his hand, “I think I might have a thing for Susie.”
Wirt stared at him for a breath before bursting into laughter. He fell back against his headboard, clutching his stomach. “You’re only realizing that now,” Wirt got out in-between laughs.
“I’ve known her since we were in diapers!” Calvin protested, glaring at him. “How was I supposed to know that I like her?”
“I can’t believe you called me a noodle-necked nosey jerk because you want to be Mr. Calvin Derkins,” Wirt said, managing to calm down enough to string a sentence together properly. “I mean, everyone knows. Even Jason picked up on it. Jason.”
Calvin made a face. How obvious was he being if Jason, the man who is notorious in their group for not picking up on things, picked up on it.
“Oh my god,” a dawning chill of horror crept down Calvin’s back like ice. “Do you think Susie knows?”
“She’s been waiting for you to ask her out since the second week of the semester, are you fucking with me?”
Calvin groaned dramatically, spinning around in the chair to bury his face in one of Wirt’s open books of Romantic era poetry. How fitting for this moment, he thought in despair.
“Bea is going to be so mad about this,” Wirt said, after Calvin sat up again.
“Should I even bother to ask why?”
“She had money on you not realizing your feelings until after break.”
“YOU ALL WERE BETTING ON THIS?” Calvin’s voice got higher than he thought it could.
“Lorna won, if that helps any,” Wirt offered.
Lorna was probably Calvin’s second favorite girl in their friend group. She was super nice, but she also knew how to be sneaky and enabled Calvin in his plans and pranks. Sometimes, she would come to him with ideas instead. If he wasn’t so in love with Susie, and she and Sara and Wirt weren’t wrapped up in their own little world, he probably would have had a crush on her.
“That does help,” Calvin said, and then let out another embarrassed groan. “How am I going to be able to walk into school next week?”
“I would suggest by using your legs,” Wirt snarked at him. Calvin picked up the first thing he felt on Wirt’s desk, a small softcover book of Keats’ writings, and threw it at the brunet.