School Night- Part 1
The hallway was almost empty by the time Stella managed to spot Malcolm among the last tickles of students settling into last period freedom as they sorted themselves like clockwork into the appropriate classrooms. Stella was not among them; neither was Malcolm. This time, though, she was the one to initiate contact between them: grabbing the crook of Malcolm’s elbow as he stuffed his left hand into his jacket pocket and pulling him a step back so that they were standing side by side.
He seemed genuinely surprised, privileging her with a soft,
“Woah there.”
Before regaining his usual, unruffled composure,
“Hey there, Bats.”
She ignored the pet name and evened her gaze with his one visible eye,
“Listen, I need to talk to you.”
“Interesting. Though, I can’t think of anything I’ve done wrong, at least, in the past few days…”
“Wow, cool. I’m not gonna ask what you mean because I don’t really care.”
Malcolm’s smile widened. He always seemed to focus more attentively on her while she was vocal and resistant to him. Mostly, it pissed her off but, if nothing else, she could always ensure that he was listening. Spite was her one spark and Malcolm’s moth eye was all too eager to follow its wicked little flame.
“Alright then,” he spun himself around so that he was facing her, “What’s the dirt you’ve got to dump on me?”
“Jesus, Mal, it’s always bad with you. Like people only get you privately if they’re gonna reprimand you.”
She shook her head and side stepped around him and out of the small shadow the overhead lights projected from his shoulders and onto her. Now she was walking down the empty corridor and Malcolm was walking beside her. The transition was so smooth, and she felt the insides of her chest buck behind her ribs; that faint-enough-to-be-obnoxious butterfly flutter that the songs of her preteen years insisted indicated her desire to kiss him. Kiss the boy, kiss the blond, fuck the mission, and keep your body buzzing with the pleasure of striding side by side with the closest she had come to childhood fantasy.
Yesterday, the inclination might have taken her and she would have seized his rough hands and lead them through the double doors and out into the newly sewn pollens of spring, but, today, she was wiser. Today, she was too firm to buckle to the way that someone so strong and so sly could move without touching the ground.
Despite this, she glanced up and over at his face and saw his eye darken.
“My track record with people in a singular setting is…” he tossed his head, “Unpleasant, at best. Only counting conversations though.”
He closed his visible eye quickly and Stella couldn’t tell whether it had been intended as a wink. They were keeping an even stride, their arms swinging wildly by their sides like characters in a teen flick. Stella’s hand brushed against Malcolm’s and he caught it before the sensation could pass. There was no resistance, their pace quickened, and Stella’s heart thundered smugly in her right breast. She wouldn’t, she told herself, she—
“I need to use your razor,” She managed, but barely because the words ran together front to end, “I’m gonna—“
Her blood reminded her of the romance.
Her mind felt numb but it could still tell her that her blood, and the organ that sent it shooting through her veins, were full of shit.
“I need it to shave my head.”
“Okay.”
“You’re responding to that with ‘Okay’?”
“I’m assuming you were expecting some form of resistance to the idea? A reaffirmation regarding the quality of your hair?”
He laughed suddenly, bringing his hand away from hers, and up to his mouth as if he were trying to return the sound to the back of his throat. This was unsuccessful, though, and he leaned into the wall, bracing himself against the force of his own delight. She eyed him, unable to decipher whether the sound was malicious or not, but he continued to chortle into the back of his hand for half a minute more before,
“I- I’m sorry, it’s just…”
“What?” Stella said, the indignation in her voice too evident for her liking.
“It’s just…” he cleared his throat and pushed himself back to his full height, laying his palms flat against the tiling that covered the lower half of the wall.
It looked like plastic in the harsh light, but still cool to the touch, and she suddenly wanted to feel it against her own fingers. Her left hand felt like reheated soup; she wanted to plunge it into ice. Into the cold tile of the wall Malcolm was pressed against. Leftover soup, she thought, is disgusting. She thought of Jeffery, suddenly, and felt like vomiting.
“Yeah.” Malcolm said.
“What?”
“You can borrow it, Bats.” A smirk, “Just come pick it up when you have a free moment. And you can return it when ever you need to.”
He drifted back towards her, as if guided by the deep and invisible currents of waters so bright they were invisible to the human eye. He tapped his thumb against the underside of her chin and ticked his head up, ever so slightly. Their eyes, his bright lilac one and her Cyprus wood two, met. She tried to remember the greasy film that formed on old soup after a day. She grasped at the image of Jeffery’s sullen eyes and graying hair. She repeated ‘I’m gonna puke, I’m gonna puke’ in her head as if it would repel the other things bouncing around in the flared chemicals of her brain.
Malcolm dipped his head in, she closed her eyes and waited, but the only pressure she felt was his lips brushing against her ear as he said, in a manner so intimate and delicate that she thought it was only her own breath at first,
“You’d look good with short hair.”
And when she finally opened her eyes, the first boy was gone.
Someone else was staring from behind the cover of a doorframe further down the hall, but they were gone before she could match their face to her memory.
It had been Jeffery, though. She knew that for certain.
“I’m going to shave my head.” She shouted after him, “And you can’t stop me, you creepy fuck.”
And the lukewarm taste of old clam chowder rose in the back of her throat.
