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Isabelle came back with the tape before Debbie had decided whether she was going to pick the mirror up again. It was still lying face-down on the floor between her shoes, the cheap blue plastic frame showing a white scrape along one corner from its latest fall, and Debbie had been staring at it with the deep personal resentment ordinarily reserved for people. She heard Isabelle’s steps before she looked up, recognized them because of course she did, and immediately wished she had bent down first so there would have been nothing for Isabelle to do. Instead Isabelle appeared beside her with a roll of clear tape in one hand, set her bag against the lockers, crouched, and took possession of the mirror without so much as a glance at Debbie. Debbie tightened her hold on the books against her chest and said nothing. She had become very good at saying nothing over the past two days, particularly when Isabelle was within hearing distance.
The mirror had been falling all week, although that morning it seemed determined to make up for lost time. Debbie had bought it because it was cheap and because she liked having one inside her locker, where she could check whether her hair had escaped its clips or whether there was anything on her face before heading into class. The magnet on the back had seemed perfectly adequate in the shop and nearly useless the moment it encountered an actual school locker. Sometimes it lasted through three openings. Sometimes the door barely moved before the mirror slid down with a scrape and dropped to the floor. Debbie had tried sticking it higher, lower, farther from the hinge, closer to the hinge, and once had simply pressed it in place for nearly a minute as though determination might transfer from her fingertips into the magnet. None of it worked. Isabelle had seen it fall at lunch and Debbie had pretended not to notice that she had seen. Then it had fallen again just now, with Isabelle coming along the corridor at exactly the wrong moment, because apparently Debbie’s week had not been sufficiently irritating already.
They were not speaking. Nobody had announced it and nobody needed to. There had been an argument two days earlier, then another smaller piece of the same argument afterward, and by the next morning neither of them had been prepared to make the first approach. Debbie had spent that first day telling herself that this was fine. By lunch she had begun to notice every time Isabelle spoke to somebody else. By the end of the day she had decided she absolutely did not care who Isabelle spoke to. That night she had lain in bed replaying several parts of the argument and thinking of better things she could have said, some of them clever, some of them devastating, and one or two so devastating that even Debbie knew she would never actually use them. By the following morning she was angry all over again, which at least felt cleaner than missing Isabelle.
Isabelle turned the mirror over and pushed at the magnet with her thumb. It shifted under the pressure. Her eyebrows drew together and Debbie instantly knew the expression, because Isabelle looked exactly like that whenever something refused to behave according to what she considered obvious logic. Debbie had seen the same look directed at badly designed school forms, at a photocopier that had eaten half a flyer, and once at a vending machine that had accepted her money without releasing her crisps. There was always a moment when Isabelle seemed personally affronted by the existence of poor design. Then she would decide the problem had challenged her. Debbie had always found it funny before. She did not find it funny now, or at least she was determined not to.
Isabelle peeled off a piece of tape, tried it across the back, pressed it down, then immediately pulled it off again because she had put it crooked. Debbie saw the tiny flash of annoyance cross her face and had to look inside the locker before her own mouth gave her away. The locker was suddenly fascinating. Her notebooks were stacked badly, a folded handout had slipped down the side, her headphones were hanging from the shelf by one earpiece, and the photograph tucked near the door was still there despite everything. Debbie deliberately avoided looking at the photograph because Isabelle was in it, sitting cross-legged on somebody’s carpet with one arm thrown around Debbie’s shoulders, both of them caught halfway through laughing at something Debbie could no longer remember. She had considered taking it down yesterday. She had not taken it down, largely because taking it down would have been dramatic, and Debbie had no intention of being dramatic about this.
She had, however, spent ten minutes the previous night writing about it in her journal and then torn the page out because it sounded ridiculous. That did not count.
Isabelle tried another strip of tape. Debbie watched her hands without meaning to. There was ink on one finger, dark blue rubbed into the crease beside the nail, and one of her rings clicked softly against the plastic frame each time she turned the mirror. Debbie knew that ring. Isabelle had bought it months earlier from a little table at a street fair and spent the rest of the afternoon admiring it as though she had acquired crown jewels. It had a tiny green stone that probably was not a stone at all, but Isabelle liked it and therefore wore it constantly. Debbie had tried it on once and it had nearly slipped over her knuckle. Isabelle had wrapped a narrow strip of tape around the inside until it fitted, then made Debbie wear it for the rest of the afternoon. Debbie remembered Isabelle holding her hand up to admire the result.
She stopped looking at the ring.
Isabelle pressed the mirror against the locker. It stayed for perhaps two seconds before beginning to slide. She caught it neatly in one hand, stared at it, and sighed through her nose. Debbie almost smiled. She was annoyed enough with Isabelle to enjoy seeing her defeated by a cheap magnet, although the satisfaction lasted only until Isabelle reached for the tape again with renewed determination. Debbie should have known. Isabelle did not abandon things once they had begun to irritate her. She simply escalated.
This time Isabelle abandoned the magnet entirely. She held the mirror where Debbie had originally placed it and ran tape over one corner of the frame, fastening it directly to the locker door. Then she did the opposite corner, pulling each strip tight before smoothing it flat. Debbie watched with increasing disbelief as the whole operation became less of a repair and more of an occupation. Isabelle added another piece along one side, tested the frame, added another at the bottom, and pressed both thumbs firmly over the edges. The clear tape shone under the fluorescent lights. It looked terrible. Debbie loved it immediately and hated herself for loving it.
She shifted the books against her chest and Isabelle moved closer to reach the far side of the mirror. Their shoulders nearly touched. Debbie went completely still, because touching Isabelle by accident would somehow be worse than touching her on purpose. The corridor had mostly emptied by then, leaving only scattered voices, slamming lockers, and the squeak of trainers farther toward the stairs. Debbie could smell Isabelle’s shampoo. She recognized that too, which felt unfair. She recognized too many things about her for somebody she was supposedly furious with.
The trouble with being angry at Isabelle was that Isabelle had failed to become ugly.
Debbie had not really expected her to, but it would have helped. It would have been convenient if two days of irritation had suddenly made the red barrette in Isabelle’s hair look stupid, or made the little wrinkle between her eyebrows annoying rather than familiar. It would have been useful if Debbie could have stopped noticing the way Isabelle pushed her sleeves up when she was concentrating or the way one loose piece of hair kept falling near her cheek. Instead Debbie had spent the past two days noticing all of it from a distance and being increasingly offended by the fact that her own feelings apparently had no sense of loyalty.
Isabelle smoothed another strip of tape with the side of her thumb. Debbie looked at her hand. Then she looked at Isabelle’s face. Then, very unfortunately, she looked at her mouth.She wanted to kiss her.
The thought appeared so suddenly and so completely that Debbie forgot about the mirror for a second. She just stood there staring, books held against her chest, while Isabelle remained bent toward the locker and completely unaware of the disaster occurring six inches away. Debbie wanted to kiss her. Not later, after they had made up. Not in some distant theoretical future when neither of them was angry. Right now. She wanted to catch Isabelle before she straightened, kiss her quickly, and find out whether Isabelle would make that little surprised noise she sometimes made when Debbie did something first.
Debbie’s face went hot. She looked straight into the locker. This was ridiculous. They were fighting.
She had spent two whole days being furious. She had refused to look at Isabelle in English. She had deliberately taken the long way to lunch because Isabelle had been standing near the stairs. She had even refused one of the strawberry sweets Isabelle had passed along the row during assembly, despite strawberry being the best kind, because taking one would have meant touching Isabelle’s hand. Debbie had suffered for her principles. She had eaten no strawberry sweet. Now apparently all of that could be undone by Isabelle applying tape to a mirror.
Debbie risked another glance. Isabelle was still working. The urge returned at once.
Debbie pressed her lips together and looked away again, annoyed with herself now as well. She knew what kissing Isabelle felt like, which made matters worse. There was nothing mysterious about it. Isabelle tended to lean in too fast. Sometimes their noses bumped. Once Isabelle had started laughing halfway through because Debbie’s hair had caught in one of her rings, and then Debbie had started laughing too, and neither of them had managed to finish the kiss properly for nearly a minute. Remembering that now was an awful idea, so naturally Debbie’s mind supplied the entire memory in perfect detail.
She stared hard at her history textbook. There were probably facts in there. Sensible facts. Dates. Presidents. Railroads. Things that did not have mouths.
Isabelle leaned back slightly to inspect her work, and Debbie’s attention snapped straight back to her.
The mirror was now secured at all four corners. Isabelle pushed it with one finger. It moved slightly but remained in place. She pushed harder. Still there. Then she took hold of the locker door and swung it partway closed before opening it again.
Debbie’s books rattled. She gave Isabelle an offended look. Isabelle glanced at her for the first time since arriving. Their eyes met.
Debbie felt the whole argument come back at once. Not the details. She had been trying very hard not to think about the details while standing here. It was simply there between them, huge and hot and important. Two days of pointedly not looking at each other could not disappear because of tape. Debbie was still angry. She could tell from Isabelle’s face that Isabelle was still angry too. There was the slightest stiffness around her mouth, the stubborn set Debbie knew well enough to recognize. Neither of them had won anything. Neither of them had apologized.
Debbie still wanted to kiss her. That was becoming extremely inconvenient.
Isabelle looked away first and gave the mirror another experimental shove. Debbie nearly laughed at how serious she was being, caught herself, then nearly laughed because she had caught herself. She lowered her face toward the books to hide it.
The mirror stayed. Isabelle waited, Debbie did too. Nothing fell.
Isabelle pressed one final strip of tape over the top edge, ran her thumb across it, then stepped back. Her hand brushed the sleeve of Debbie’s jumper for perhaps half a second.
Debbie’s stomach turned over. She wanted to grab Isabelle’s sleeve before she moved away. She did not. Instead she stood there behaving like somebody completely normal while her heartbeat made a determined attempt to escape through her ribs.
Isabelle gathered the loose scraps of tape into one hand. One strip had stuck to her finger and she struggled with it for a moment, shaking her hand once before finally peeling it free. Debbie had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. Isabelle noticed anyway. Debbie could tell because her eyes flicked upward and caught Debbie’s before Debbie managed to rearrange her expression.
For a second neither of them did anything.
Then Isabelle smiled. It was small, not the broad grin that usually meant she was pleased with herself, and not the sharp one she used when she thought she had won an argument. It was only there for a moment, warm enough to make Debbie’s chest hurt in a completely different way.
“No problemo.”
Debbie stared at her. Of all the things Isabelle could have said after two days, that was apparently what she had chosen.
Debbie tried not to smile. She failed almost immediately. It was only the corner of her mouth, and she pulled it back under control at once, but Isabelle had already seen. Her own smile widened just slightly before she looked down to collect her bag.
Isabelle stood, swung the bag onto her shoulder, and remained there a moment longer. Debbie looked at the red barrette in her hair, then at the green ring, then at her mouth again because apparently she had learned nothing. The wish to kiss her came back so hard that Debbie had to curl her fingers around the edges of her books. She could have done it. Isabelle was close enough. One step, maybe less.
Debbie stayed where she was.
The thought of Isabelle pulling back made her stomach drop, and the thought of kissing her while they were still angry felt somehow wrong even if Debbie could not have explained why. More importantly, she had spent two days not speaking first and she was absolutely not going to lose the entire thing by suddenly launching herself at Isabelle beside the lockers.