Page 23 of I'll Be Waiting

I answer carefully, because it’s not that kind of story, but to say I never noticed Anton is a lie. I just… didn’t notice him in a good way.

While Anton himself had seemed decent, his two friends were assholes, which had made me wonder whether he was secretly one himself. And if he wasn’t, what the hell was he doing with those losers? The answer was simple. They were popular, and he’d been flattered by their attention.

Anton was easygoing, with his own gentle form of popularity. Even teachers liked him, which bought his friends a certain degree of immunity.

“I noticed him,” I say. “He was cute and popular and…” I shrug. “I was the new girl. We’d been living in a small city. When the local CF clinic closed, my parents moved us to Edmonton. Anton and I didn’t travel in the same circles.”Understatement of the year.“So we didn’t have much to do with one another.”

That isn’t strictly a lie. Anton and I only had brief exchanges. But our groups had interacted, in the way popular asshole guys sometimesinteract with geeky awkward girls. Which is to say that the interaction was not, by any means, a positive one. That wasn’t Anton’s fault, though. Both he and I were on the periphery of our groups and the drama between them.

“Would you rather tell me about when you first reunited?” Dr. Cirillo asks.

I shake my head. “No, let’s do the first time I noticed him. If he’s someplace he can hear me…” My throat constricts. “I didn’t get a chance to tell him at the end, to reciprocate. I’ll do that now.”

I take a deep breath. “Okay then. First time I noticed Anton. I was sixteen. Grade eleven. My parents had hoped to stay in our small city until I finished high school, but the CF clinic closing plus Dad getting a job offer in Edmonton meant we moved the summer before I entered grade eleven.…”

I close my eyes and let my mind slide back to high school. It starts tapping around at first, feeling its way, touching things that set me flinching before I redirect.

Back. Go back.

Back to the beginning.

SEVEN

An empty classroom. The smell of whiteboard marker. I’ve lost one of my earrings. I have a habit of twisting them when I’m focusing, as if they’re radio dials to tune my brain. The most likely place for me to lose one is here, in math class, which I left about ten minutes ago.

I walk in, and there’s a boy at the whiteboard, staring at an equation. He has an eraser brush in one hand and a marker in the other, and he’s too lost in concentration to notice me enter.

I know him. That is, I know him as the guy to beat in my AP math class. Not that I’d personally try to beat him. I might be in advanced math, but I’ll never be competition for…

What’s his name?

Andrew? Alan?

He’s an inch or two taller than me, meaning slightly below average for a guy. Lean bordering on skinny. Tan skin. Dark hair that curls over his ears and the back of his neck. His nose is the most prominent thing about him, and it reminds me of a phrase I’ve seen in books. A Roman nose. I never understood what that meant, but seeing him in profile, I get it—his nose looks like it belongs on a Roman statue.

He’s cute, which is why I may have been going out of my way tonot notice him. A cute guy who’s also a STEM nerd? That should be my catnip, but instead it makes me want to ignore him. Otherwise I might find him attractive and start staring at him and trying to talk to him and— Yep, best to just keep it like this, where I’m not even sure of his name.

I slip in as quietly as I can. I was sitting in the second row, at the back, making it easy to slide past his notice. He’s too engrossed in his work to look up anyway.

What’s he doing?

Don’t look. Don’t try to figure it out. Maybe he’s having trouble with that equation and came back to work on it.

There’s my earring. Under the desk. I crouch to pick it up—

“Hey.”

I jump, like I’ve been caught stealing.

“Janica, right?” he says.

When I nod, he grins like he guessed the right answer on a pop quiz.

“Anton,” he says.

“I lost my earring,” I say. “Found it.”

Yep, I was smooth at sixteen. So smooth.

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