Colby
I’m sipping my coffee as I go over a few last-minute things for today’s lesson. I found a new article that I want to show to my students. I think most of them will find it almost as interesting as I do. I’m startled from my studies when the door to my classroom flies open and bangs against the wall. Norah stands in the doorway, looking like a bull ready to charge. Her mouth is pinched, her cheeks are red, and a piece of paper is crumpled in her fist. Ah, I know what this is about. My cheeks twitch, desperate to laugh at the unadulterated rage on her face.
She steps into the room and closes the door behind her. I stand from my chair, preparing to make a joke, as she walks to stand on the other side of my desk. She slams the paper down on my desk and says, “This is crossing the line.” Her voice is wobbly, and I finally take a moment to look at her face. Her eyes are slightly red, and her cheeks have almost imperceptible streaks on them.
The smile on my face vanishes as I try to understand what’s happening here. After all she’s done to me since she moved back last month, she has the audacity to cry about a couple of silly paragraphs I typed out in five minutes before I went to bed last night. This doesn’t affect her life at all. Her class wasn’t interrupted. I didn’t invade her space. I didn’t force her to spend an hour of her free time pulling sticky notes off every surface of her classroom and then another forty-five minutes scrubbing the sticky residue from everything, as if I have that much time to easily spare.
All she had to do was read it, roll her eyes, and then hopefully get the message that she’s driving me to the brink of insanity and stop the madness.
“It was just a silly way to beg you to please end whatever ridiculous game you’ve got going on,” I explain because she clearly didn’t get the joke.
“An obituary is not silly!” she shouts. I don’t understand what’s going on in her head right now, why this has her so worked up. I thought I would get on her level of ridiculousness, that maybe she’d get a chuckle out of it and then come talk to me about it. I’ve apparently made a miscalculation somewhere. Maybe my humor is a little on the dark side.
“Why are you making this such a big deal? If you don’t find it funny, then throw it away and forget about it! I’m not threatening your life or anything. It never mentioned death,” I say, holding my hands out in front of me in a placating way.
“You don’t get it at all. I’ve just had the worst year of my life, that very well could have ended with my name and picture in an obituary. So, no, it’s not silly, and it’s not funny to me.” Her eyes begin to pool with tears, and she turns and storms out of the room before I have a chance to see any of them leave more trails down her cheeks.
I’m stunned, to say the least. I knew it was bad circumstances that brought Norah back to Waverly, forcing her to live in her parents’ home. It would have to be. No thirty-one-year-old chooses to live with their parents if they have other options.
I had no idea that it was a life-or-death situation, though. All the Waverly gossips have been running wild with their theories for weeks. Everything under the sun has been mentioned as a possibility: eviction from her home, gambling debts, hiding out from a crazed ex-stalker, fired from her job for miscellaneous reasons. There’s even a theory that Norah moved back because one of her parents is having problems. I’ve always ruled that one out because both of her parents look as spritely as ever.
If I had known that her situation had been so dire, I never would have dreamed of making light of an obituary. Dread courses through my body. I try to join in on her ridiculous prank war one time, and I manage to royally screw it up. This is why I never try with women—dating, friendship, or anything in between. I can never get it right. Not that I want to be friends with Norah Sullivan.
She’s too happy, too bubbly, too friendly, too funny. Her body is too curvy and inviting. She’s too…everything. She always has been. The first time I saw her, I thought she smiled too much, but then, after watching her and getting to know her better for six years, I realized that she doesn’t do anything in half-measures. When Norah does something, she puts her all into it. When she laughs, it’s a full-out, throw-your-head-back, slap-your-knees, hold-your-belly laugh. When she’s your friend, she protects you, loves you, brings you treats because she knows they’re your favorite. When we were younger, she used to make Seth these amazing-looking blondies every few weeks just because she knew he loved them. Of course, she knew I wanted one and refused to bring any for me. Because when she decides to hate you, she does that full out as well.
I find Norah in the workroom, making copies of test papers at the end of the day. Most of the students have already left. Some still wander down the halls, going to extra-curricular activities. Play practice, club meetings, tutoring, etc.
She shoots daggers at me with her eyes when she notices me coming into the room. I glance behind me to make sure there’s no one around to overhear what I’m about to say. I’m swallowing a lot of pride here, and I don’t exactly want an audience. I clear my throat and pull on the collar of my shirt. It’s suddenly very hot in here.
“Did you need something, or did you just come here to annoy me?” she asks as she taps her papers into a neat stack. She takes four times as long as the task requires.
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?” I ask. She rolls her eyes and juts out a hip as she hugs the papers to her body. “Listen, I’m sorry about the fake obituary. I realize now that it was inappropriate. I didn’t realize your situation.”
She watches me for a moment before she bites her bottom lip and nods her head. She stares at the floor between us, not saying anything. I have no idea what she’s thinking. She always has something to say, so why is she so quiet now? I don’t know why, but I’m desperate for her to forgive me. I just want her to smile at me again, laugh at me while I’m stewing in anger again. She won’t even make eye contact with me right now, and that’s almost torture. I need her big brown eyes to pierce down into my soul the way they normally do.
“Okay,” she says in a quiet, almost whisper. She starts to move forward to leave the room, but I step in front of her and place my hand on her upper arm. Her entire body tenses up, and I drop my hands back down to my sides as she takes a shaky step away from me.
I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not even thinking. I only know that I don’t want to end this one-sided conversation or have her leave this room still angry with me. She has to know that I didn’t actually mean anything by it. If I could go back in time and burn that stupid piece of paper before I ever gave it to her, I would.
“So, are we good again?” I ask. She finally looks up at me, confusion written all over her face.
“When have we ever been good?” she asks. Nothing else she could have said would have hit the mark quite so hard. Stunned speechless, I nod my head, and she moves around me. Before she leaves the room, she turns to look back at me. For one short moment, I think she’s going to tell me everything’s fine, but she just takes a deep breath and walks out without another word.
I dig both hands into my hair and give it an angry tug. I hate that she’s sad, and even more, I hate that I’m the one who made her feel that way. I have to make it better. I have to put that gloriously bright, sunshine smile back on her face. But how? The only time I’ve ever made her smile was when she knew she was driving me insane and I was on the verge of cracking.
Over the past few days, I’ve tried to make peace with Norah. I’ve held doors for her, I wrote out a long apology letter, and I’ve left sour gummy worms on her desk every morning this week. They’re her favorite candy. I know because she used to eat them by the ton in high school, and she would make a huge mess with the sour sugar that coated them. I swear she must have purposely dumped the stuff into my backpack when I wasn’t looking. All my notebooks were perpetually covered in it.
She hasn’t even acknowledged my peace offerings. I’m half convinced she has thrown it all away. I tried sitting with her at lunch yesterday, but she scarfed down her food in record time and high-tailed it out of the lounge without bothering to so much as look in my direction or say anything to me.
It’s fine. I don’t care all that much. It’s not like we were friends before this, anyway. I was starting to think that maybe we could be heading in that direction, but I was delusional. There’s no way that Norah and I could ever get along for longer than ten seconds, which is really unfortunate, considering I have to go oversee the club meeting with her in five minutes. Is it too much to hope that the kids will take the lead and get down to business so Norah and I can sit in silence without having to speak to each other? Probably. The kids never do what they’re supposed to without my prompting them into action. They treat these meetings like hangout time. I refuse to stay an hour after school just so they can gossip about who’s dating, and who broke up, and how cute Billy's new haircut is. No, thank you. I have a pile of tests that need to be graded, and I’d like to get them done before the weekend.
I stand in front of the cafeteria doors, trying to mentally prepare myself for Norah’s impending iciness. I take a few deep breaths, roll my neck and shoulders a few times, clench and unclench my fists…
“Umm…Mr. Stuart,” a quiet, nervous voice says behind me. I whirl around and see two students standing a few feet away, waiting to go into the cafeteria for the meeting. One girl looks like she’s two seconds from busting out laughing, and the other looks thoroughly confused and maybe a little scared. Who can blame either of them? I, myself, am confused by my behavior. Since when do I get anxious about seeing Norah? Angry, annoyed, peeved, distressed? Yes. Anxious or nervous? Never—until this week, after I managed to completely bungle everything up. She hasn’t shown me an inkling of emotion. She can’t ignore me for the rest of our lives, though. Actually, now that I think about it, Norah is just stubborn and outrageous enough to do something like that.
I step to the side and hold the door open to let the girls go in and then follow behind them a moment later. Norah’s already inside, sitting at a cafeteria table, chatting with a few girls. I watch as they all throw their heads back, laughing at something Norah said. I wish I could know what it is that’s making her happy. It’s the first smile I’ve seen from her in days and days. I don’t even know why I care.
I walk to the table and toss my things down, and Norah’s table of girls gets suspiciously quiet. I turn to see what’s happening, and they’re all staring right at me. I raise an eyebrow, and they immediately turn back to each other, whispering secrets and giggling amongst each other.