Eight

The odds of my beating Bane to the cafeteria were nearly nil, considering we were coming from the same place. I had on my side the fact that I knew this school like the back of my hand, and Bane had only been haunting it for one day. He had on his side the fact that—the constant thorn in my cousin’s side—I walked slowly. And besides, I’d had to go to my locker. I wasn’t going to beat him there.

And, because I wasn’t going to beat him there, which meant that I would have to go sit with him, I was going to be made to look like his subordinate. Even though I technically was his subordinate, I didn’t want him to have that idea fixed in his head.

Or, maybe because I would most likely be making him wait for me, I would look really important, like so many people wanted to have lunch meetings with me that I could keep one or two of them waiting if I wanted to. Of course, this really wasn’t the image I wanted to give off, either. I wasn’t particularly eager to have Bane cut me out of the magazine completely because he thought I was nasty and self-important.
But, probably I was just over thinking this whole thing. I have this tendency to over think. I think (there I go again) that this is because I keep all my thoughts inside my head, instead of letting them out. I’ve been told that saying things aloud helps you sort them out, but I’m not entirely sure I believe it.

My brown paper bagged lunch in hand, I made my way down that final stretch of hallway, with its endless and timeless dull green lockers. I looked out over the sea of students, feeling that it must be impossible to find a single face among them. Brunette was the most common color of hair, being the most dominant in the gene pool, I knew courtesy of AP Bio last year. And Bane didn’t have any really discerning physical features, despite apparently being “gorgeous.”

“There you are,” said a voice in my ear. My eyes widened—I was startled at the voice’s proximity—but I’m proud to say that I didn’t jump or squeal or any of that other nonsense that I’ve seen other girls do. I turned slowly to see Bane, standing at a reasonable distance, leaning down towards my ear slightly. He had been looking for a reaction, I could see. Disappointment shone through assessing eyes.
I made no move to respond, and Bane’s open smile wavered ever so slightly. Before me, I knew, I had a boy that was used to being liked. He had charisma, and a bright, friendly personality. He was used to winning people over, and was angry that he couldn’t get me. Are you willing to step up to the challenge, Bane Morrison?

He made a gallant gesture at a nearby table, which had two open seats across from each other. “Shall we?” he asked in an overly proper tone. If I had been the giggling type, I may have giggled at that. But, as things stood, I merely sat where he had indicated, putting my lunch on the table between us, yet making no move to open it. Bane, it seemed, didn’t have lunch, or was going to go buy one.

“I forgot lunch money,” he explained, answering my unformulated question. Silently I pushed my brown sack towards him; it wasn’t like I was going to eat it, anyway. I wasn’t often hungry. I pulled the hand I had used for this wordless offering back into my lap. “Oh, no,” Bane protested. “I couldn’t eat your lunch.”

I said nothing. Even if he didn’t eat it, I wasn’t going to, and then it would just go to waste. I didn’t much care either way. Pancake-peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches aren’t exactly my favorite. A couple of minutes of silence passed, Bane fidgeting with nervous energy. I sat in infinite patience—sitting still wasn’t something that bothered me. In fact, I was an expert. I could sit without moving for hours.

“You don’t do much of anything, do you?” Bane asked suddenly. I didn’t move—I was already watching him, though, so it was okay. In my head, this had become a competition: Who Could Move the Least. I was winning by a landslide. Again, this was okay, since Bane didn’t seem to need much prompting. “You don’t talk, you don’t move, and you don’t eat, either. Do you do anything, Deirdre?”

Well, there was a direct question. I was going to have to answer, which meant I had to move. So much for my competition. “I do speak,” I said quietly. I think I disliked Bane already.

Bane snorted, reaching for my lunch. I’d known he was hungry. “Fine, you talk. And I guess you move sometimes—you walked here. And you must eat sometimes, otherwise you’d be dead. But you don’t talk much. And you move so slowly.”

Observant little thing, wasn’t he? At least he clearly thought he was, if that self-satisfied look meant anything. So what? It didn’t take a genius to notice that I was pretty quiet, and that I didn’t waste my energy with stupid little twitchy movements. And the eating comment was just so grossly misconstrued that it didn’t even merit a response, even inside my own head.

He narrowed his eyes, watching me. “You only answer questions,” he said slowly.
Wow, that was actually pretty good. I definitely disliked him. “You don’t talk unless it’s to answer a question, do you?”

“Not really,” I replied truthfully. So what if he thought I was a basket case? The entire rest of the school already did, so it wasn’t like I was facing anything new. I could deal with Bane’s judgments.

He pulled out my sandwich. Well, I supposed that it was his sandwich now, seeing as I’d given it to him. “That’s going to make it a bit difficult to work together,” he said with the genteel mien of a Southern gentleman of old. “I mean, if you won’t talk to me, it will be hard to get things done. I can’t put a magazine out by myself.” I didn’t see why he couldn’t. I had.

He took a bite of the sandwich, and then looked down at it in surprise. “What kind of bread is this?” he asked, staring at the sandwich like it had sprouted legs.

“Pancakes.”

Bane was seemingly impressed. I don’t know why—pancakes as bread is a rather disgusting transition. “That’s delicious,” he muttered. Liar. He looked back up at me. “It’s also progress. You’ve now said three words to me in exchange for the hundred or so that I’ve said to you. The ratio is improving.”

He wanted movement from me? I would give him movement; I narrowed my eyes into a malevolent stare. He was so obnoxious. And “gorgeous.” So why did I, the only girl in the school who had no appreciation for that, have to get stuck with him?
This is yet another sign—one of many—that my life is so deeply unfair.

Just then, Katy plunked down into the seat next to me, providing an excellent reason to just ignore Bane. Uncharacteristically, my typically boy-crazy cousin ignored him, too. Perhaps, then, he wasn’t as “gorgeous” as Dirty Blonde and Brunette had led me to believe.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m staying after for practice, Deirdre,” she said, not addressing the presence of Bane at all. It was extremely childish, I knew, but at that moment, I really loved my cousin. Take that, Mr. Editor-in-Chief. I could have snapped my fingers at him so easily at that moment. “I already got Molly to get a ride with someone, because I didn’t want her taking the bus, and I would let you drive yourself home, but I need some way to get home.”

That was sweet of her, to consider offering up her prize to me. “Promise me that you won’t take the bus.”

Katy didn’t like it when I took the bus because I always sat in the seat across from the crack head, and she was afraid that he was going to sell me drugs, or slip something into my drink (her idea, not mine—because what would I ever be drinking on the bus?), or something equally heinous. Personally, I just liked sitting across from him because he was always too high to ever attempt to make conversation. Which is why I really hated it when he got drug tested and got suspended for two weeks. Katy loved this, because she was actually a very sweet girl, all in all, and seemed to genuinely care about my well-being. She’d always been like this, really.

I was about to insist that I could walk home—which probably wouldn’t be the most fun experience of my life, seeing as it was ninety degrees outside and I was dressed all in black—when Bane interjected with, “I’ll take her anywhere she needs to go.”

We both turned to look at him, Katy whipping around, I turning more slowly. So maybe Bane’s observation about my moving slowly had been accurate. I preferred to think of it as having some modicum of physical restraint. Bane shrugged, looking like he considered us nuts. “What? It’s not a big deal,” he protested.

“Who are you?” Katy demanded. I recognized the signs; her motherly instincts were kicking in, and she wouldn’t pawn me off to just anyone. I was her charge as much as her cousin, the way she saw it sometimes, anyway, and she would ensure that I had a way to get home.

Bane stuck out his hand and Katy shook it, looking at me oddly. I shot her back a look that said I understood—Bane was a weirdo, wanting to shake everyone’s hand. It was very polite, sure, but also extremely odd. Katy raised an amused eyebrow before turning back to Bane. We’d perfected the art of unspoken communication years earlier. When you spend half your lives living in the same room, these things just happen, I suppose.

“Bane Morrison,” he introduced himself. “I work with Deirdre on the literary magazine.” Katy looked at me, and I averted my eyes, as if to say, ‘whatever.’
There were worse things than being driven home by Bane, I supposed—like walking. Walking would have been thoroughly unpleasant. And, besides, how much could he bug me in the ten-minute drive home?

Katy shrugged. My acceptance was good enough for her. “Thanks then. And nice to meet you…Bane.” I got a sick sort of glee at the fact that she paused before his name. Because it wasn’t really a name. “I’ll see you at home, Deirdre.” I nodded once.

“Your sister seems nice,” Bane offered when Katy had walked away. I didn’t bother to correct him. What did it matter, really, if Bane thought that Katy was my sister instead of my cousin?

When I didn’t make any move to answer, Bane leaned forward, elbows on the table. By now he was done with my sandwich, and had pulled a cupcake from the bag. If I’d known there was a cupcake in there, I never would have given him my lunch. “Here’s the thing, Deirdre,” he said in all seriousness, usual smile gone. “I need you. You’ve been here for four years, and you know how this magazine works. You know everyone on it. You know where we’re going to get willing work, and where we’re going to have to beg for submissions. You’ve got everything that I don’t.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “In fact, the only thing that I’ve got that you don’t is that I talk.” Clearly he didn’t know about the charisma. “What I’m saying is that you’re gonna have to work with me on this one. We can work on this together, right?”

I turned my head away, settling my gaze on one of the school’s many murals. After a few seconds of this, I heard Bane sigh. It probably would have been more mature of me to say something like, “Okay, Bane (which is a weird name), we can do this together!” or some other peppy comment. But I wasn’t entirely sure I was up for talking. This pseudo conversation with Bane was the longest I’d had in a while, and I’d only said, what, three, four words? Anyone I who knew me also knew that I didn’t really talk, and so didn’t engage me in conversation. I didn’t think I could go reverse Cold Turkey like that.

The bell signaling the end of lunch rang, and I hefted my bag onto my shoulder. Bane crumpled up my lunch bag, having finished the chocolate cupcake that should have been mine, and tossed it in the garbage can on the way out the door. “I’ll meet you outside the front doors three minutes after school’s done,” he said. Then, he seemed to reassess the speed at which I was moving. “Five minutes.”

I nodded once, as per my usual.