FEBRUARY

Pam (Inga’s wife)

Inga eyes me suspiciously when she catches sight of me through the window in the classroom door. She waves me in.

“Hey,” she says, walking toward me, looking vaguely alarmed. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I was going to wait outside, see if you wanted to go to lunch.” I look around the classroom. There’s a low hum of chatter going on as the students work together. I can see why Inga likes this group so much.

“And maybe spy on my couple?” she whispers between her teeth.

“Yeah, maybe that, too.”

She makes a silly face. “I’m sure you can pick them out.”

I take a good look around the room and she’s right, it’s easy to pick them out after all I’ve heard about them. Their desks are pushed close and their voices are quieter than the other groups around them, but their body language speaks volumes.

I can see why Inga was pulled to them.

“How many syllables in ‘smile’?” one of the kids asks.

“They’re working on a haiku project,” Inga explains.

I watch Gabe and Lea for a few minutes before Inga dismisses the class.

“They’re fascinating,” I say as the door closes.

“They are. She’s really come around to making him laugh and he just lights up anytime she says anything.”

“Finally,” I say.

“Finally,” she agrees.

Bob (a bus driver)

I’m sitting outside the student center on my break when I see my two favorite kids. They don’t seem to take the bus at all lately while I’m driving so it’s nice to see them out and about. The girl walks out the door as the boy walks in.

“Hi, Gabe,” she says.

“Lea,” he responds.

I’m happy to know their names now, it’ll make telling my Margie about them a lot more fun.

They stop in the middle of all the students flowing in and out of the doors and just look at each other.

“Did you…” she starts to say, as he starts to say, “Can I…”

I’ll never know what they were about to say, because someone bumps into him from the side at that moment and they both seem to lose their train of thought.

“I guess I should…” he says, gesturing in the other direction.

She nods and tips her head toward the entrance to the student center.

They definitely remind me of Margie and me except for three differences. We met at a go-go bar, we’re not particularly educated, and she’s not Asian. But if it weren’t for those things, they’d be just like us. I told her about them and now she likes when I tell her stories. Sometimes I make stuff up since I haven’t seen them in a while.

But now I can tell her I saw them, and about how they were happy to see each other, bashful and awkward, but happy. It’s like our own little soap opera that no one else knows about.

They’re gone now, both out of sight, so I go back to reading my paper and freezing out here. But I always need some fresh air after being cooped up on the bus so much.

I see we’re supposed to have a big snow later on this week, biggest in years they’re saying. Hopefully they close the school because I hate driving in that garbage. Call me a bad driver, call me a fraidy cat, but no one should be on the roads when the weather’s bad.

Casey (Gabe’s friend)

I sneak onto the elevator in Gabe’s lobby without calling first and hit the button for the ninth floor. I head down the hallway and knock on his door, hoping he’s around.

“Hey,” he says when he opens the door.

“It’s snowing.”

“I know.”

“We’re all gonna go play football or some shit and I came over here specifically to drag your ass out.”

He pulls up his left sleeve and shows me some gauze wrapped around his elbow.

“What happened?”

“I got the pins out over the weekend. Do you listen to anything I say?”

“I guess not,” I admit. “So that means you can’t come out at all?”

He rolls his eyes. “I probably could come out, but I shouldn’t exactly play tackle football with stitches in my throwing arm.”

“So you could cheerlead. I hear that Lea might be around,” I tell him.

He perks up at that, but then frowns. “Let me go find some layers.”

I step into his tiny room. It’s basically built for a monk and barely big enough for the school-issued bed, desk, and dresser. I look at the pictures he has tacked onto his corkboard while he changes.

When he’s ready to go, he has on track pants and his high school baseball sweatshirt.

“I’ve got layers upon layers and I put a little extra padding around my elbow.”

“Where are you living next year? Have you thought about it?” I ask.

He shrugs, tugging his ski jacket on. “I could do this again maybe. I don’t know that I’m exactly excelling at it, but it was nice of the school to find a way to make up for some of the scholarship I lost. And I’m actually kind of good at it.”

“If that doesn’t work out, I bet somebody will move out of our house. You could move in with me and Sam.”

“You’re staying around here after graduation?”

“I don’t know, probably. We’ll keep you posted.”

“Costs a lot of money,” he mutters.

“You’re too young to worry so much about money.”

Gabe laughs as he pulls his gloves on and shoves a hat in his pocket.

“All right, let’s go.”

“I’m sorry I forgot about your elbow stuff,” I say when we’re in the elevator.

“No big deal.”

“Does it hurt, right now?”

He shrugs. “Not bad like it did after it happened. Mostly the cuts hurt from where they took the pins out.”

“I feel like an asshole for not remembering.”

“I don’t ever really say much about that stuff.” He starts to whistle tunelessly and I take that as a hint to move past this topic.

We walk outside and even though it’s two in the afternoon there’s a weird quality outside like it’s almost dusk.

“Usually snow makes everything seem too bright,” he says, looking around as we walk.

“I think it’s because the clouds are so dense or something.”

“Thank you, Al Roker.”

“That’s funny you bring him up. He’s the one who told me the clouds would be particularly dense during this storm.”

“I think you missed your calling as a meteorologist.”

The walk to the green takes ten times longer than usual because the snow is at least eight inches deep.

“So what’s up with Lea?” I ask.

“Not much.”

“Are you going to like … ask her out or something?”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“You say, ‘Hey, Lea, let’s go out sometime.’”

“I don’t have a car.”

“So?”

“It’s not like I could take her to the movies.”

“Think outside the box a little, Gabe. You’re so full of self-doubt. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“We’ll see what happens if she’s here today.”

We come out on the green and there’s already a group of people there, including Bailey and a bunch of my roommates. He jogs over to us.

“You ready for some football?” he asks.

“We forgot about his bum elbow,” I tell Bailey, gesturing toward Gabe.

“Oh, man.” Bailey slaps his forehead. “What are you doing here? We should put you in bubble wrap and send you to bed.”

“You sound like my mom.”

“Yes, I’d imagine that Mrs. Cabrera would be a big proponent of that idea.”

Gabe rolls his eyes. “Well, I’m here because maybe…” He glances around and he smiles before he even finishes that thought. Across the green are Lea and her friends, picking their way toward us.

“Bailey set that up for you. He got Bianca’s number a couple of weeks ago,” I tell Gabe, patting him on the shoulder.

“I’m gonna freeze my balls off,” Gabe grumbles.

“Lea will keep your balls warm,” I say.

“Now go be a good cheerleader and sit on that bench,” Bailey adds.

“The bench that’s completely covered in snow?”

“Yes. Clean it off and maybe the girls will join you.”

He groans but walks over there, pulling his hat onto his head and putting his hood back on before scooping the snow off the bench and plopping down.

“I feel kind of bad,” Bailey says.

“He seems okay about it,” I say, looking at Gabe thoughtfully. “Come on, let’s get this going.”

Sam trots over to us.

“Why didn’t you tell us Gabe was getting the pins out of his elbow?”

He makes a face. “I totally forgot. I am the worst brother ever.”

Bianca comes over by the boys and wants to play, but Maribel and Lea take a seat by Gabe. I’m happy to see Lea sitting right next to him. Unfortunately Gabe is sitting as far away from her as possible, basically hugging the arm of the bench.

I lose track of them during the game and eventually it seems like everyone is having a snowball fight rather than following any of the rules of football. I glance back over by the bench and Gabe is sitting by himself and apparently talking to a squirrel.

I’m a little bit concerned.

Bench (on the green)

Well, well, well. Looks like someone’s finally cleaning me off. Probably just gonna use the snow to make snowballs or a fort or something. But it’s nice to feel the wind at least, sort of refreshing after weeks of being under ice.

What’s this? Are they actually sitting down, too? And is it possible that this is my favorite butt from way back when? This day has gotten a lot better. Considering I thought it would be another in a long string of lonely days on this tundra.

He seems a little tense.

Oh, damn, it’s because he seems to have some lady friends joining him. Terrible. And they’re making the whole structure off balance and he’s turned all wrong. Go away, ladies, you’re ruining the perfect butt.

“Hey, Gabe,” they both say with varying levels of enthusiasm. If you’re going to talk to this great ass, at least be excited about it.

He doesn’t say anything in return but I think he might at least wave or something.

“What’s up?” one of the girls asks.

No response.

“Not a big football fan?” the other one asks.

I can feel him shrug, but I’d kind of like to tell him that he should probably talk. Unless he doesn’t like these broads; maybe that’s why he’s so tense.

After what seems like a really long time, too long to wait to respond to a question, he says, “I hurt my elbow.”

“Are you okay?” a girl asks, her voice worried.

He’s slow to answer again. What’s with this kid?

I hope the girls leave soon so he can relax and I can enjoy our time together.

Maribel (Lea’s roommate)

Lea is working really hard to talk to Gabe and he’s giving her nothing to work with. I’m starting to think he’s a lot weirder than I realized. Either that or our voices are getting lost in the wind. I feel bad for Lea.

“Which assignment did you pick for class?”

He kind of scrunches up his face and shakes his head, but I’m not sure if that’s answering Lea’s question or whether he was trying to get the snowflake off his nose.

“So, you played baseball in high school?” she asks, pointing toward the sweatshirt underneath his unzipped coat. I should yell at him to zip it up; it’s freezing out.

He crosses his arms and smiles at her.

“Yeah, I played softball,” she mumbles.

I would think we were bothering him, but he looks at her a lot. It’s like he’s trying read her mind rather than hear what she’s saying.

“It’s cold,” I say. “Come on, let’s play.”

She looks forlornly over at Gabe and then gestures to the group. “We’re gonna go play.”

He does an adorable tip of his imaginary hat brim, so at least I know he has some personality in there somewhere.

“That was painful,” she mutters to me as we walk over to the group.

“I’m glad you noticed.”

“I’m not delusional, Mar,” she says. I just feel bad because on our way here she was so excited and bouncy, and now she’s confused more than anything. The boy you like should never make you that confused.

I roll up a snowball and throw it at Casey. He looks at me with mock surprise and throws one back and then pauses, looking over my shoulder. I follow his eye and notice that Gabe looks sad and small and appears to be talking to a squirrel.

Squirrel!

It’s been so long since anyone came and played on the green and all of these people are here and they’re all playing and I wonder if they know where my acorns are.

I run in circles around them, careful not to get stepped on the way my friend did once. His tail has never been the same. After running up and down all the trees and watching them play for a long time, I notice one of them is sitting alone.

He likes the girl, I can tell. She was sitting by him before, but now she’s gone and he looks sad.

I zigzag over toward him and hop up on the bench. I sit for a while. This is my favorite bench. I’m happy all these people are here, but I’m sad that this boy looks so sad.

“This sucks,” he mutters.

Is he talking to me?!

I look up at him and he looks down at me.

“How’s it going, little squirrel?”

I am overjoyed! Hooray! I’ve made another friend. Maybe he can help me locate my acorns!

“Are you the same one I always see Lea talking to?”

I fluff up my tail, hoping that’s the response he’s looking for.

“I bet it’s not so bad being a squirrel. I bet you’re cooler than I am. Like if the girl you liked spent a half hour sitting with you on a bench you would actually talk to her. But I couldn’t really hear her through my hat, and my hood, and over the wind. And I wanted to switch sides, because that would have been easier, but her friend was over there and there was no way to do it without being conspicuous. And eventually I’m going to have to explain everything to her, but I don’t want her to feel bad for me. And no matter what, I still don’t like talking about it.”

I turn my head to the side to really look at him. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s obviously very sad about it. I try to think of some way to make him happy.

“You ready to go?” one of his friends asks. Or maybe it’s his brother. They both kind of look the same. But the humans all kind of look the same to me.

“Yeah.”

“Want to say good-bye to your new best friend the squirrel?”

“Hey, man. That squirrel’s a good listener.”

“I could be a good listener, too, if you gave me a chance.”

Sam (Gabe’s brother)

Gabe doesn’t say anything for a few minutes and I feel suspiciously like we’re in an after-school special.

“I know you’d listen.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“I just don’t have anything to say.”

I nod. “You don’t have to say anything important. I know everything has completely sucked for the past year and I’m sorry about that.”

“Thanks.”

We walk slowly back to my house. I’d told my roommates to go ahead and get pizza without us. Gabe obviously has something on his mind, so maybe he’ll talk about it if it’s just the two of us.

“I slept through a fire drill the other night.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you even do that?”

“I fell asleep on my good side with an earbud in.”

“Dude.”

“I know. It’s obviously not a good situation. I don’t think I realized how bad it was.”

“You could like … die.”

“I would hope that someone would realize I wasn’t outside and they’d send firefighters in for me or something.”

“Gabe, this is not the time to be glib.”

“I’m not being glib. I’m trying to reassure myself.”

I’m at a loss for anything to say.

“The flashing light did finally wake me up and I stumbled out the side fire exit as everyone was going back in.”

“You should probably get that checked out.”

“I’m definitely coming to terms with that fact.”

“You hungry?”

“Of course.”

We’re about to turn onto my street but instead we walk in the direction of the sandwich place. The least I can do is buy the kid a meatball sub.

Before we walk in to order, he pulls me aside.

“I need to get everything right in my head. Sometimes I get sort of overwhelmed and confused. And then I feel. It’s a lot of … emotions. And I hate it.”

I nod. Those are a lot of emotions.

“I’m still seeing that shrink, and it’s getting better.”

“Good.”

“But today with Lea kind of sucked. It was like everything that I know is wrong became grossly apparent.”

“She talked to you a lot.”

“I couldn’t hear anything she said.”

“It really doesn’t have to be like that.”

“I want you to believe me when I tell you that I’ve come to that conclusion.”

“Cool. Or else I’ll have to pull some kind of big-brother advantage and make it happen.”

He pushes me out of the way and walks through the door, pulling it shut behind him before I even know what hit me.

“You haven’t had big-brother advantage since I got taller than you when we were in middle school,” he mutters as I stand behind him in line.

I don’t say anything.

“I’m going to take your silence as agreement,” he says seriously.

I burst out laughing. I kind of lucked out in the younger-brother department.

Danny (Lea’s friend)

“He works at the library!” I say to Lea as I pull her in for a hug.

“Gabe?” she asks.

“Yes.” I’ve come to terms with the fact that Gabe will never be mine, so I am going to do my damnedest to help Lea woo him. “Let’s go stalk him.”

I thread my arm through hers and we walk in the direction of the library.

“You don’t seem particularly excited,” I say as we get to the front doors.

“Things are sort of weird with him lately.”

“Weird how?”

“Well, they were really good for a while. Like fun and normal and every time I saw him we would talk and even kind of hang out.”

“But…”

“But then I saw him during the snowstorm and I was sitting on the bench by him because he hurt his elbow and he couldn’t play snow football,” she says.

“He hurt his elbow, so precious,” I say, putting a hand to my heart.

She smiles. “I was talking to him, asking him a lot of questions, but like he never answered. He would sort of shrug or whatever but he never talked. I thought we were past that, you know?”

I make my most sympathetic face.

“Anyway, I hate to complain. Because he hasn’t done anything wrong. But I also can’t help but feel like he paid his debt to me that day in Starbucks and now he never wants to talk to me again.” Her shoulders droop. We’re standing near the elevator.

I put a finger under her chin and lift her face up. “Don’t be so sad.”

She pouts more dramatically and pushes my hand out of the way. I grab for her hand and pull her onto the elevator.

“We’re going to find that boy and make him talk to you.”

“That sounds awfully threatening,” she says.

“Okay, so we’ll stake out a table with a good view over by the balcony and you can watch him from afar.”

“I like that idea a lot more.”

We find a table that looks out into the tall atrium at the center of the building. We study for a while, goofing off and chatting more than really getting anything done. At one point, Lea looks down to the first floor and freezes.

“Look,” she whispers.

And there’s Gabe with a cart full of books. I can’t help but check out the way his shoulder muscles move as he pushes.

“I guess his elbow still hurts,” she says.

“He does seem to be favoring the one side.”

Lea puts her chin in her hand, watching until he’s out of sight.

“You like him a lot,” I say.

“I do,” she says. “But it’s dumb. He’s just not that into me. When you’re into someone you don’t sit next to them for thirty minutes in the freezing cold and barely say a word to them. You don’t talk to them in class and then ignore them almost everywhere else.”

I nod. She has a point.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says. “I feel pathetic stalking him.”

As we’re collecting our stuff, the elevator behind us dings and wouldn’t you know, out pops Gabe.

Lea studies him for a moment and he waves. She takes a half step toward him and then slightly shakes her head.

She turns toward me and grabs my arm. “Let’s go.”

I’m quiet as we jog down the stairs and out of the building.

“What was that about?” I ask once we’re outside.

“I don’t know. I think I need to stop torturing myself with him.”

“He obviously wanted to talk to you.”

“Or maybe I would have done all the talking and he would have ignored me again. I don’t like this game anymore.”

I frown at her and then pull her toward the student center. “I think you need FroYo.”

Casey (Gabe’s friend)

“You look like someone killed your dog,” I say to Gabe when he comes out of the library after his shift. We’re meeting up to get dinner. He generously offered me the use of his meal plan.

“I kind of feel like someone killed my dog,” he says, frowning as we head in the direction of the dining hall.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Lea was at the library with some other guy,” he says after what feels like a million years of silence.

“So?”

He shrugs. “So, she saw me and I waved and she turned away.”

“Ouch,” I say, instantly regretting it. I don’t want to fall down this spiral with Gabe. “Maybe you should just ask her about the guy the next time you see her.”

“I don’t know. They seemed close. I didn’t get a good look at him, but he like, touched her face and gave her a hug.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re dating or something. They could be friends.”

“I don’t know, this felt like more than friends.” He gives the dining hall worker his card and tells her he’s using a guest meal, so she swipes it twice.

He doesn’t say much as we get our dinner and locate a table and start eating.

“I was having a really good day,” he tells me as he stabs at his chicken turnover.

“What’s with the act of violence you’re committing on that puff pastry?” I ask. He grimaces in response but ignores my comment.

“I woke up today in a good mood. I was feeling like I could do this. Like life isn’t perfect and it even kind of sucks sometimes, obviously, but things could suck a lot worse. And I’m making money. I have friends, and I’m doing better in my classes this semester. I really like my job in the dorm even. Helping the first-years with their own stuff is really helping me.”

I feel like texting Sam while Gabe is talking to let him know that Gabe is talking, saying meaningful things. I don’t know what to say back though. I’m sort of terrible at emotional stuff.

“I don’t mean to dump this all on you. I guess I finally could see something happening with Lea and me, and then there she was hanging out at the library, getting cuddly with some other guy.”

“It sucks. If I could change it I totally would.”

“Yeah, I know. I appreciate that. I just keep coming back to the fact that if something ever happens with her, I’m going to have to tell her all this sort of pathetic stuff about me.”

“It’s not pathetic.”

He sighs. “I know. I guess I feel pathetic about it, and I don’t want her to think I’m pathetic.… It’s really complicated in my brain. I can’t imagine telling her about what happened.”

“Maybe you should try to start telling people? Other people? About what happened? Maybe that would desensitize you.”

He gives me a questioning look.

“I’m taking abnormal psych this semester to meet girls.”

“Then I should obviously take your advice.”

“I’m just saying desensitization is a valid form of therapy.”

He throws a pea at me.