Page 8 of Old Acquaintances

Kids were gawking. Laughing. Whispering. Feet kicked up the bits of paper.

I heard a teacher comment, but my ears rang too much to hear clearly. I saw red. Tears began to prickle the corner of my eyes. I spun around and stared at Tucker.

I wished at that moment that I’d liked him the way our mothers wanted. I wished he cared about me like a friend or a sibling or a family member. Because I looked at him and I knew him -really knew him- and all I could think was how cruel he had been. To me.Not some random girl butme, the girl he shared a birthday cake with every year.

“I’m going to kill you!” I screamed.

His eyes went wide, and he pushed past his laughing friends as I chased him down the hallway. A male teacher caught him around the arm, and I went straight to his face, rearing my hand back to punch him on the jaw, when an arm landed across mystomach and pulled me back. The guidance counselor, my Aunt Zoey.

She corralled us into chairs in her office and demanded, “What is going on?”

“Thiswild thingchased me around the school like an animal!” Tucker yelled.

I gripped the arms of my chair. “Because he flooded my locker with love notes!”

Aunt Zoey shrugged. “Since when are love notes a bad thing?”

“He’s not in love with me, he’s just messing with me to be mean.”

She looked at him. “Is this true, Tucker?”

He paused, then dropped his head sheepishly and shrugged.

I twisted around and shoved my face into his, forcing him to cower backward. “What is wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry,” he grumbled and rolled his eyes.

“That’s not the face of someone who is sorry!” I begged for help. “Aunt Zoey - fix him!”

He snapped back, “I don’t need to be fixed!”

She said, “What needs to bechangedis the way that you two interact with each other. I thought you were friends?”

“We are not friends,” he and I responded.

She sighed. “Okay. Tell me this, at least, Eli - why are you sending Ella love notes?” I was about to interject when she shushed me. “Let him talk.”

He straightened up and threw me a mean look. “Yes, for once, letmetalk.” His hands went to his lap. “I don’t know why I do it. I was just teasing her.”

Aunt Zoey tilted her head. “Teasing implies that the person on the receiving end might think it’s funny, too. Ella doesn’t think it’s funny.”

“It’s never been funny,” I said. “He knows that.”

“Okay.” He grimaced. “It started as teasing, but I don’t know…I guess I liked having this thing between us. Like this game.”

She nodded. “A connection?”

He shrugged again.

I wanted to lay into him, but my father’s warning eyes shone through my aunt’s.

He continued, “We’re not friends, but we have friends that are the same, so, I just…I just wanted this thing that was betweenus. Like just you and me.” He threw his hands up, eyes still on the ground, and mumbled, “But I’ll stop.”

Aunt Zoey asked, “Ella, is that what you want? For him to stop?”

I didn’t understand any of it - what he was saying or what I should say back. I responded, “I want him to stop making fun of me.”

That night my aunt and her psychology degree came over and my mom forced me to listen to her analysis.

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