A Very Large Expanse of Sea(12)

Today he’d been trying really hard to make small talk—which I guessed was understandable, as it was otherwise awkward to sit around for an hour saying nothing while you picked apart a dead cat—and he said, “So, are you going to homecoming?”

I’d actually looked up, then. I looked up because I was amazed. I laughed, softly, and turned away. His question was so ridiculous I didn’t even answer him. We’d been having pep rallies all week in anticipation of the homecoming game—it was a football thing, I think—and I’d been skipping them. We were also, apparently, having class spirit competitions, whatever that meant. I was supposed to be wearing green or blue or something today, but I wasn’t.

People were losing their minds over this shit.

“You don’t really do school stuff, huh?” Ocean said, and I wondered why he cared.

“No,” I said quietly. “I don’t really do school stuff.”

“Oh.”

There was a part of me that wanted to be friendlier to Ocean, but sometimes it made me really, actually, physically uncomfortable when he was nice to me. It felt so fake. Some days our interactions felt like he was trying really hard to overcompensate for that first error, for thinking my parents were about to ship me off to a harem or something. Like he wanted another chance to prove he wasn’t close-minded, like he thought I might not notice that he went from thinking I couldn’t even meet up after school to thinking I might show up at a homecoming dance, all in the span of two weeks. I didn’t like it. I just didn’t trust it.

So I cut the heart out of a dead cat and called it a day.

I showed up to practice a little too early that afternoon and the room was still locked; Navid was the one who had the key that would let us in and he hadn’t arrived yet, so I slumped down on the ground and waited. I knew that basketball season was starting sometime next month—I knew this, because I saw the posters plastered everywhere—but the gym was, for some reason, already busier than I’d ever seen it. It was loud. Super loud. Lots of shouting. Lots of whistles blowing and sneakers squeaking. I didn’t really know what was happening; I didn’t know much about sports, in general. All I heard were the thunderous sounds of many feet running across a court. I could hear it through the walls.

When I finally got into the dance room with the other guys, we turned up the music and did our best to drown out the reverberations of the many basketballs hitting the floor. I was working with Jacobi today, who was showing me how to improve my footwork.

I already knew how to do a basic six-step, which was exactly what it sounded like: it was a series of six steps performed on the ground. You held yourself up on your arms while your legs did most of the work, moving you in a sort of circular motion. This served as an introduction to your power move—which was your acrobatic move—the kind of thing that looked, sometimes, like what you saw gymnasts do on a pommel horse, except way cooler. Breakdancing was, in many ways, closer to something like capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian form of martial arts that involves a lot of kicks and spins in midair; capoeira made kicking someone’s ass look both scary and beautiful.

Breakdancing was kind of like that.

Jacobi was showing me how to add CCs to my six-step. They were called CCs because they were invented by a group of breakers who called themselves the Crazy Commandos, and not because the move looked anything like a c. They were body rotations that made my legwork more complex, and just, overall, made the routine look cooler. I’d been working at it for a while. I’d already learned how to do a double-handed CC, but I was still getting the hang of doing a one-handed CC, and Jacobi was watching me as I tried, over and over again, to get the thing right. When I finally did, he clapped, hard.

He was beaming.

“Nice job,” he said.

I just about fell backward. I was on the ground, splayed like a starfish, but I was smiling.

This was nothing; these were baby steps. But it felt so good.

Jacobi helped me to my feet and squeezed my shoulder. “Nice,” he said. “Seriously.”

I smiled at him.

I turned around to find my water bottle and suddenly froze.

Ocean was leaning against the doorframe, not quite in the room and not quite outside of it, a gym bag slung across his chest. He waved at me.

I looked around, confused, like maybe he’d been waving at someone else, but he laughed at me. Finally I just met him at the door, and I realized then that someone had propped it open. It happened, sometimes, when it got really hot in here; one of the guys would wedge the door open to let the room breathe a little.

Still, our open door had never attracted visitors before.

“Uh, hi,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

Ocean shook his head. He seemed, somehow, even more surprised than I was. “I was just walking by,” he said. “I heard the music. I wanted to know what was happening.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You were just walking by.”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “I, um, spend a lot of time in the gym. Anyway, I honestly didn’t know you’d be in here. Your music is just super loud.”

“Okay.”

“But I figured I should say hi instead of standing here, watching you like a creep.”

“Good call,” I said, but I was frowning. Still processing. “So you don’t, like, need something? For class?”