Chapter Text
The R train took twenty minutes to drag itself one stop. One stop. Temari and Kankuro could have walked from Atlantic Avenue to Brooklyn Tech in less time than that, but out of laziness they decided to transfer to the R after taking the 5 from Brooklyn College. Kankuro wanted to buy churros from the shriveled old lady under the staircase, and they were both carrying laptops—Temari's was a stupidly heavy 17-inch one, so her shoulders were killing her. The train is lousy with bodies. One young man sits with his legs spread aggressively. What sounds like Jay-Z trails from his headphones, and it's so loud that Temari can't hear her brother speak. A two-year-old girl wearing a princess dress pulls one of her pony-tails, and an old man drools on Kankuro's shoulders. Everyone is wearing puffy coats, and everyone smells like feet. Temari reads the Subway Poetry on the wall across from her, then reads the ads for orange juice and plastic surgery.
Finally, the train wheezes to a stop. They get off in a flood of people, pushing their way to the exit. A girl with a thick braid and an LIU sweatshirt bumps into Temari and doesn't apologize, but she's gone before Temari can complain. They make their way up the stairs and into the cold winter sunlight. Temari shivers. She didn't wear enough layers. She considers asking Kankuro for his sweatshirt, but she decides against it—she doesn't want him to be cold. It's not too far to Brooklyn Tech. They have to pass LIU first, then a bunch of bodegas and junk shops, but if they walk fast their rushing blood will warm their bodies. Kankuro wants to walk slowly, because he's cold. “Come on you idiot,” snaps Temari, grabbing his hand and dragging him past a passel of Tech kids stuffing pizza in their mouths. “Gaara's waiting for us.”
Gaara is standing outside of the entrance near facing Fort Greene Park. The school looms behind him, cold and dark like a mountain range. This is not the exit he's obliged to use each day, but he says he finds it soothing to watch the trees while he waits. He isn't talking to anybody when they arrive, just standing with his eyes closed, listening to his iPod and nodding along with the song. A boy with a furry jacket that smells like dog brushes past him, but Gaara says nothing in protest. Temari waves to him, and Kankuro takes his heavy backpack and hefts it onto his own shoulders. “How was school today?” asks Temari.
Gaara blinks. He says, “I couldn't get my combination lock to open after gym class. Mr. Maito had to use some sort of clamp device to break the lock. I need to buy a new lock.”
“Aww, Gaara, I told you to write down your combination before you went to class,” says Kankuro.
“I did. I just couldn't get it to open even though the combination was correct.” Temari shrugs and promises him that they'll pick up a new lock on the way home. She asks him if he managed to make any friends today, and Gaara shoots her a clipped, “no.” She drops the subject. It's a touchy one, one she should have known better than to pursue.
“Do you guys want to walk home or take the train?” she asks. She isn't keen to get back on the sweaty, crowded R train. Gaara says he wants to walk, and Temari does too, so they head back to DeKalb Avenue. It will take over an hour to get home this way, and Gaara probably has too much homework to make it worth it. Temari has a paper due for her Politics of Fear class next week, and Kankuro has an exam in Intro to Psychology on Friday. Still, Temari can't bring herself to sacrifice the pleasure of walking with her siblings in the cold afternoon sunshine. She smiles at Gaara, and he does not smile back, but he looks at her without looking away.