What to Say Next(11)

“Can I ask you a question?” Kit asks. I refrain from pointing out that she just asked me a question by asking me if she could ask me a question. When I noted the same thing to Miney recently, over our thrice-weekly prearranged FaceTime call, she said, “Little D, why are you so freakin’ annoying?” Which is, of course, also a question, but a rhetorical one.

“Sure,” I say now to Kit.

“Why do you always sit alone?”

I shrug, which is not something I often do, and it feels funny, that up-and-down shimmy of the shoulders. A little exaggerated. Like a confused person in a play.

“I’m not sitting alone right now.”

“You know what I mean,” Kit says. She is eating an egg roll and her lips are glossy with its grease. Only Kit Lowell could turn food into makeup.

“There aren’t that many people at this school I’d like to sit and eat with,” I say, proud of myself for not adding what Miney would call “too much information”: When I say there aren’t that many people, I really mean only you, Kit.

“We’re not all terrible, you know,” she says, and makes a hand gesture that I take to mean there are a lot of people here to choose from, though it’s entirely possible she is just shooing away a gnat. I put the odds at eighty to twenty I’m right.

“Did you know we will spend one hundred eighty-five and a half hours in this cafeteria this school year alone? That seems like a lot of time to spend with people with whom I have nothing in common except for three insignificant coincidences. One: We, like millions of other people, were born in the same year. Two: We happened to be raised in the same small town. And three: Our parents chose to send us through the Mapleview public school system.” While talking I count the numbers one, two, and three on my fingers, which my mother claims is obnoxious, and on reflection, I agree, but it’s a hard habit to break. “On the parental level, I can see how this is enough to form a friendship, given all the shared choices—where to move, when to have kids, et cetera—but for me, particularly because I didn’t choose any of this and wouldn’t have chosen any of this if I were given any say in the matter, which I decidedly wasn’t, it’s not enough commonality. And a lot of these people you claim are not so terrible tend to be not so nice to me. So to answer your original, but not first, question—I think it might have been your third, actually—I have better things to do with my time than to waste it on…” After erring on the side that it was a gesture and not a swat, I copy Kit’s wavy hand motion, which also feels a little theatrical, but appropriate and also very, very Kit. “These people.”

“Nice speech,” she says. “I feel that way too sometimes. Not the people-not-being-nice thing so much, but the nothing-in-common thing. Who knows? Maybe everyone feels like that. I didn’t ask you what I really wanted to know, which is, I guess, my third or fourth question: Do you get lonely sitting here? Being by yourself all the time?”

I look up at her, meet her eyes. Green, green, green. Today she’s not wearing a man’s shirt. Instead she has on a sweater that looks soft, the kind that when I was a kid I would stop and pet whenever my mom forced me to go shopping. It’s light yellow, the color of a baby chick. She wears a thin gold necklace with a big scripted K charm that she massages a lot with the rhythmic rubbing of forefinger and thumb, like it’s a cross or rosary beads. Her jeans are ripped and her knees peek out of the holes. I wonder if they are cold.

The cafeteria is loud, so much louder without my headphones, which I took off when I first saw Kit head toward me and this table. I remember now why I like to wear them.

“You’re up to five questions,” I say. “And, yes, of course I get lonely. Just like everyone else.”

“See, you have more in common with us than you thought,” she says, and smiles, like what I said was something happy, not sad, which is weird, because I thought it was quite clearly the latter.

“My turn for a question,” I say. A declarative statement, albeit a superfluous one. “What made you pick my table?”

“Honestly? I knew you’d leave me alone if I asked you to. I’m not dealing so well at the moment, if you hadn’t noticed.” I hadn’t noticed, actually, but I don’t say that. She looks fine to me. Much better than fine. Luminous, even. “And I just can’t take everyone, you know, watching me all the time. Like if I were eating this in front of Vi and Annie, they’d be all judgy about me eating my feelings about, you know, everything, which of course I know I am. I really don’t need them to hint that I don’t want to get any fatter.”

“That would imply you are already fat,” I say. “And you’re not fat. I mean, you’re not skinny either. I’d say you are average weight for your height, maybe five pounds above average in your legs.”

She laughs. This is the second time I’ve made her laugh, and it feels just as good as the first.

“Thank you for that,” she says. “I guess straight-up honesty was one way to go.”

“You’re welcome. You shouldn’t worry about your weight. You’d still look beautiful fat. You have plenty of room to grow.” I try to make eye contact again, but this time she’s the one looking away. Her cheeks are flushed.

“Are you warm?” I ask.

“It’s freezing in here.” It’s approximately sixty-six degrees inside, but maybe it feels colder to her because of her bare knees.