39: Uranium, Argon, Copper, Tellurium

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

Peter

I trace my hand across the library stacks, pulling a book from its shelf. I drag my feet, trying to find a place to sit.

There's an assembly scheduled for this afternoon; I've been speed-reading books during my free period while I wait for Nicole to get out of class.

The double doors swish open as I flip through the pages of my book. The light reflects on the floor and in the view of my glasses.

I peek out from the row of shelves. Evan rounds the corner; his half-smile flashes his dimples as he approaches, lightly knocking his shoulder against my side.

"You're not going to the assembly?" he asks.

I make a show of glancing back at the book in my hands, and I scan the back cover without reading any of its contents. A smile creeps up on my face. "You are?"

He leans against the bookshelf. "I'm not going home if that's what you mean."

"I guess it is and isn't," I say, sliding the book back into its spot. "You can come with me if you want."

Without needing to think about it, he replies, "So, where are we headed?"

We talk for a bit about my plans for the club's schedule, and that I'm stuck waiting for Nicole. He finds a desk near the library's door; it's occupied by Willow, who grabs an extra chair for me to join them. Closing her laptop, she returns to the poster board in front of her, grabbing a pair of tiny scissors and snipping off a sheet of construction paper. She continues cutting out citrus orange hearts as they tumble onto the poster like leaves in late autumn. By the looks of it, it's for a student council project—since her faint handwriting at the top reads, A gift for a friend: buy a candy gram!

Evan passes her the glue and asks, "What are you doing?"

Pasting the cutouts onto her poster, Willow sighs. "I should have finished this last week. I'm behind on club events like you wouldn't believe. I'm supposed to be getting ready for the end of the year, but I'm stuck on this candy thing we're doing in February." She stretches her wrist, cracking her knuckles repeatedly. "The road to purgatory is literally made of construction paper hearts."

"We can help," Evan says.

I peer at him. "We can?"

He takes the scissors. Using his left hand, he has to push them open with his thumb. He distracts from the (ever-so-slightly awkward) display by nodding. To Willow, he says, "The writing on your poster doesn't rhyme."

Willow pauses. "If you want to find something that rhymes, be my guest. But I already spent the past hour trying to find one that works. I started with romance-related puns, but that got me nowhere."

"Damn, buy a candy gram," Evan says with a gruff laugh.

She rolls her eyes at him. From the doorway, Nicole enters and rushes towards us. When she arrives, she beams at me, saddling her arms on my seat so that it teeters dangerously close to falling over.

"Oh! I just remembered," Willow says, "I came up with a chemistry pun. Do you want to hear it?" She waits for Nicole to say sure, not that it matters, and Willow recites, "Uranium, Argon, Copper, Tellurium."

The silence envelopes the library. Evan smiles like he always does. It sticks on his face before I blink, and then it's suppressed.

Nicole guesses, sounding out the letters, "You are cu-tee?"

"You are a cutie, too," Willow says, winking at her.

(Which is not a synthesis reaction, it's just a list of chemical elements, but we'll move past that.)

The three of us head to my car. Nicole calls shotgun, forcing Evan in the back while I drive her home. He switches to the front seat after she departs and unlocks his phone. I notice, mostly since an account followed me recently (suspiciously named like Neva, from Nicole's game) that he's downloaded the blog's app.

"So," I say, itching to fill the emptiness, "where are we headed?"

When he looks at me, he forms a reply without uttering a word. It's in the way his cheeks flare, in the way he chuckles, recognizing that I'm turning the question back on him.

"Actually, yeah—I have an idea. You might think it's stupid, though."

I veer out from Nicole's street. The snow has mixed in with the gravel, and the asphalt takes on a sheen, like the waves at midnight. Evan hugs his arms over his sweater; he must be cold, wearing no coat, and no mittens. He says to me, "I've never gone snowboarding, and I kind of want to try it."

It's like the way he asks permission before he moves, almost. But there's a request hidden inside of what he's saying—he wants me to notice it, instead of simply saying, Can we go? I much prefer it when he asks, so I don't have to try determining the subtext behind it.

"Are you saying you want to go? Right now?"

One hundred (and ten) percent serious, he asks, "Why the hell not? Have you got anything better to do?"

I am so unbelievably baffled by the proposition that I agree. Evan uses the GPS on his phone to search, and he reads off the first result—a resort about an hour and fifteen minutes out of town.

"Well, we had better get going," I tease. And I start driving—the colours fade into a mess of prismatic tints as we pass the town sign. The image plastered on the front is an elegant, twisting tree against a sun during its zenith. From the back, its curly font tells me, You are leaving Northwood. We hope you come back soon.

It brings a smile to my face. As Evan flips through the radio channels, he changes the music from the various news reports to the country stations that plague the region, then back to the popular songs of the year. Finally, he sighs when there's nothing worth listening to.

"Do you mind if I sync my phone's playlist to your car?" he asks.

"Sure, if you can figure out how." And there he goes again, with the constant questions. It's as automatic as the smile painting his cheeks. By now, I expected it would stop—that maybe he was only doing it for my benefit, but maybe that isn't the case. (That maybe the pinch in my chest is the feeling that I don't mind.)

It takes a few minutes for him to play with the settings, and as he scrolls through his music with his thumb, he's telling me, "I know my music taste sucks, but please bear with me, because it's not actually that bad once you get used to it."

He starts playing a song that I don't recognize. "My sister loves this one," he shouts over the beat. I can't exactly tell if it's the strumming of the guitar, or the bass in the background, thumping like the beat of my heart. (One of my recent posts for the blog was about this, in fact. Music with a crescendo, an upward movement—gradually increases heartbeat and breathing along with it. It's a synchronized response; an uncontrollable reaction. It's a connection, like how if two people had a heartbeat rising and falling at the same time.)

Either way, I listen with rapt attention to the singer's voice. Searching for the meaning—when the chorus connects it—and when a song tells a story that goes something like a confession that I wouldn't dare to speak out loud. There's a structure to the repetition of music that makes it blend into the background, and it doesn't overwhelm my ears. The melodies and harmonies are playing their roles instead of acting in competition. It makes it easy to put it on repeat until each verse blends together, and I squeeze all the feeling from it.

After the first chorus, I know what Evan's going to sing; he seems to know all the words. And this process goes on for some time. He'll play a song, and he tells me the story behind it, sometimes hurriedly typing in the name of an artist to watch the music video, or to compare it to another song. Halfway through the drive, I offer some of the French songs that I want to hear, explaining the lyrics to him afterward. Between shouting the words at the top of our lungs and dissecting their meanings, the drive flies by.

(I expected, somehow, that Evan would have a soft, perfect singing voice. He doesn't; it's scratchy, and I don't think he knows how to sing, but neither do I.)

As I pull into the turn for the skiing resort, I have to crane my neck to take in the sight of the snowy landscape. A rolling hill is stacked in front of me, hiding behind a wooden cabin with triangular glass windows near the base of it; from this distance, it's merely a dot in the distance. Evan leans over to look out the windshield, his eyes widening at the sight.

"This is fucking awesome," he says.

Save for the few cars in the spaces reserved for staff parking, there don't seem to be many other people on the hillside. Besides some skiers twisting through the crisp, white snow, the ski lift is completely empty.

Inside the cabin, the heat lulls me into a sleepy haze. In the entryway, electric fireplaces are crackling with flames next to beanbag chairs and an array of couches. I approach the woman at the front desk, who smiles brightly at us.

"Welcome to the resort!" she greets, in the kind of customer service voice that I can never quite master. "Are you here to ski?" As soon as Evan nods, she explains, "You can rent two sets of equipment for each of you. I'd also recommend that you buy some heavier clothes. You'll want a hat, and maybe a coat with a thick lining. It doesn't seem that cold right now, but trust me—the temperature can drop pretty quickly when you're out there for a long time."

I give Evan a sideways look. It was his decision, after all.

The woman from the front desk—Maria, by her name tag—quotes a price. I think I catch Evan visibly gulp as I complete the transaction. Maria shows us the way to the resort's clothing store, saying that we can come back when we're ready to proceed onto the hill.

As we travel through the resort, Evan digs into his pockets, and, (like he's trying to get out of it) he says, "I'll pay you back."

"Don't worry about it, okay?" I reply softly. "It's not a big deal—really."

His mood doesn't improve as we reach the resort's store. I grab a coat from its hanger, posing with my body in front of the mirror. A fluffy hat made with faux fur and adorned with pompoms graces my head. I whirl towards him and flash my finger guns. "I'm ready for the bunny hill."

Evan punches me on the arm and laughter rings out of him. "Stop it. You look like such an idiot."

"Fine by me." I grin wickedly and drop a coat into his hands. "Try it on. Come on, you know you want to."

He shoves me out of the way, pulling his arms through the sleeves of his coat. It hugs his shoulders, showing off his wide frame. A multicoloured pattern of soft orange and blue traces down the sides, making him look like he's competing in the Olympics. He chooses light blue pants to match, a pair of black gloves, and a plain helmet with goggles.

While he tries it on, I take my time deciding on a navy blue coat, along with a pair of goggles similar to Evan's. When we reach the counter to pay, I refuse to let him search for his wallet.

"You can't pay for everything." He shuffles his feet against the floor, clasping the coat close to his chest. The smile has faded now, leaving only the embarrassment behind it.

"You can buy me a coffee sometime," I suggest to combat it. It doesn't compare, and it doesn't work completely to make him quit on his path to self-destruction, but he seems pleased enough to have a contribution.

We head back to Maria, who escorts us to the main section of the resort. The heat rises to the changing rooms, where most of my time is spent tearing off the tags off of my new clothes.

When I exit, the sun cuts through the window in three prongs. The clearing separates the rolling hill on either side, locked by a fence.

Evan decides to head out first, and I follow suit.

Using my skiing poles to keep my balance, I try to slide my boots into the binding, like Maria explained. I start by placing my toes into it until I transition into placing my heel into the cup. Walking with skis makes my balance unsteady, and I have to push myself along the flat snow towards the sign for the easiest slope. Then I move into position, bending forward. I look at Evan, who nods.

"Ready?"

"Probably not," I reply, my heart humming in my chest.

He laughs, pushing himself closer to the bunny hill. The short slope travels down gently for a while and ends in a wide-open space at the bottom. I let Evan go first, and I edge over the hill after him. Hoping to glide gradually, my hands turn clammy when I catapult forward.

I keep my eyes on Evan, who almost immediately tries to turn to his side. He veers towards a jump, and for a precious moment, his feet leave the air. But it doesn't last long—and he plummets back to the ground, and lands face-first into the snow.

I dig the back of my skis into the hill, attempting to slow down, but I zoom past him, hurtling down the hill. Despite Evan's failed attempt, though, when he finally finds me at the bottom, he grins. His cheeks are covered in fresh snow.

"That was..." His grin is like a ray of sunshine. He searches for the right word before he bursts into laughter. He holds his chest with the ache to keep it inside, and after a moment, I join in. Tentatively, he says, "That was the best damn thing ever! Did you see that?" I nod a little, and he grins even wider. "Can I hug you?"

"Sure, you can."

He waits for me to finish before he throws his arms around my neck, still trying to quell his oncoming fit of giggles. Droplets of snow stick to his clothes and rogue snowflakes melt in his hair. It's the closest he's ever gotten to me—with our bodies merely inches apart. I'm completely still, unable to move; even though I should put some distance between us.

Evan breaks away, grinning and unbothered by his defeat. He winds up trying the beginner's hill again, and with each time, his turns become sharper, and his laughter fills the air.

Once I'm sure he can finish the hill without dying, I let us graduate to the next level, even cheering along with him when we both make it to the end unharmed.

"Look, we get to use the lift." He points to the ski lifts, where an operator waves us towards it.

"Nice day for this, isn't it?" the operator asks.

"Totally!" Evan replies. Once we're both saddled into the lift, it moves upwards, allowing me to see the expert-level hills and the drop beyond it. From this vantage point, staring down into the jaws of it gives me a little vertigo.

"It's a good thing that you agreed to come, you know that?" Evan says with a smile.

I reply, if only to distract myself from the thought of plunging from the ski lift and into the vast void of snow, "Really?"

"Hell, yeah! I don't think I would ever have come here otherwise."

"Are you thanking me?" I say lightly.

"Maybe so."

I scoff as we clamber out of the ski lift, heading back to the cabin to switch out of our equipment.

I enter the changing room first, taking off the heavy gear like it's a brick that weighs me down and pulls me into the current at the depths of the ocean. By now, the shirt that I was wearing underneath it is slick with melted snow.

I huff, expecting to wait for Evan to get dressed—but he's already back in the entryway.

His hands clasped into tight fists, he stares at the sauna across the hallway. In front of him, an unopened bottle of champagne was left behind, as it certainly isn't meant for us.

"Evan?" I ask, and it seems to shatter the trance that he's in. The colour drains from his face. He looks like he's been punched—it's the same expression he had on his face after the hockey game—and I don't know how to react.

"Fuck," he whispers, so quietly that I almost don't catch it. He injects feeling into that single word, into that singular emotion. "It's fine."

I evaluate him for a minute, pushing at the frame of my glasses. Evan watches me back.

"Are you sure?" I croak.

He chews on his lip and sighs, and it sounds like he's about to scream. Or maybe that he's going to burst through the resort wall and dash into the trees, and I'll never see him anymore.

"Look," he starts, "it's a long story."

I feel a smile on my face. "It's a good thing that I have time."

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net