If He Had Been with Me

Of course, my black eye causes a stir at school on Monday. I compromise with Jamie by telling the story the way I accidentally told it in the kitchen, allowing everyone to have the wrong impression for half a second. When Alex is there for the explanation, he gives a detailed third-person narration of the accident; it almost sounds poetic the way he describes Jamie and I crashing.

“…and then as they were twirling and twisting through the air, Jamie’s head snapped back just as Autumn was beginning to descend, and they collided with a sound almost like rocks crashing together.” He holds his hands apart and smashes them together to demonstrate, and his audience laughs in appreciation.

By the time the bruise is beginning to fade, everyone has heard the story and no one is asking about it anymore. Now they want to tell me how much better it looks. I have a running update by the hour, yet each classmate thinks that they are the first person to tell me this, just as they all asked me on Tuesday if I picked out the dark purple tiara to match my bruise. I smile and say thanks, but by Friday I am sick of talking about my stupid black eye.

It’s on Friday that I run into Sylvie in the restroom.

I’m washing my hands when I hear a stall door open behind me. I instinctively look up, and I see her standing behind me in the mirror’s reflection. I keep my face blank and look down at my hands as I rinse them. It’s between classes; we are the only two in here.

“Hi, Autumn,” she says. I look up at her reflection warily. I’m not sure what she could want from me; Finny is at school today.

“Hi,” I say. She smiles at me. I’m too surprised to return the courtesy.

“Your eye looks a lot better,” she says.

“Yeah, thanks,” I say. I’m confused and worried this is going to be some kind of trap. In the back of my mind, I wonder if this is how she felt when I spoke to her on the Fourth of July, except back then no one was stealing tables or trying to spread pregnancy rumors. Or hurting Finny. I turn away and pull a sheet of paper towels from the roll. She sighs behind me.

“Look,” she says, “I’m trying to be friendly.” My hands pause their drying for a second.

“Oh,” I say. Even though at school her friends are pretty much publicly recognized as our enemies, the social conventions of the larger world stop me from saying what I really want to say: Why?

She seems to understand my thoughts anyway.

“Finn asked me to,” she says.

“Okay,” I say. Once again my thoughts do not match my reply; again, I want to ask her why. This time she does not answer my question.

“So…” she says. She wants me to say something. Our eyes meet in the mirror again.

“We can be friendly,” I say. If that’s what Finny wants, I think.

Sylvie smiles. I turn one corner of my mouth up for her. I’m too confused to manage much more. I leave as she turns on the faucet to wash her hands. Neither of us say good-bye.

***

At lunch, as we hunch protectively around our round table, I tell Jamie and everybody about Sylvie in the bathroom. We try to guess what this could mean, but they are as stumped as I am. Of course, since I didn’t tell them that Finn had asked her to be nice to me, it’s probably my fault that no one guessed the answer. Maybe if I had told them the whole truth, they would have realized what Sylvie being nice to me meant. I didn’t though, and so it wasn’t until I walked into Mr. Laughegan’s class that it all made sense.

Finny and Sylvie are back together. She’s sitting on his desk facing him, their fingers twined together as they talk. I walk to Mr. Laughegan’s desk and sit down. He’s reading more Dickens, Dombey and Son. I pick up the book and pretend to read.

Trying to be friendly, she said. That’s the same word he used when I gave him her card on Valentine’s Day; he asked if she had been friendly to me.

I’m surprised when my heart leaps as I realize that he doesn’t like his girlfriend laughing at me or spreading rumors about me.

Sylvie laughs and I can’t help looking at them from the corner of my eye. She looks happy, and I can’t deny that he does too.

And then she kisses him. And I start reading.