Page 67 of If You Stayed

I slammed my door shut quickly before I could hear anything else.

***

“What is it?” Gabriel asked, opening his bedroom window that I’d been pounding on for the past minute or so.

I shoved the duffel bag his way. “Here.”

“Oh. Thanks.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “You all right?”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “But my mom told me I should ask you if you were all right.”

“I don’t want you to just ask if I’m all right because your mom told you to ask me.”

“Fine, pretend I didn’t ask.” He went to close the window.

“Wait!” I yelped, darting my hand through his window to stop him from shutting it. “I have something else for you. One second.”

I hurried back to my window, climbed inside, and grabbed the plate of cookies Mom made for me from my desk. I darted out the window and headed back to Gabriel. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

“Period cookies.”

His eyes widened with complete disgust. “You made cookies with your period?!”

“What? No, weirdo. My mom made cookies to celebrate me getting my period. It means I’m a woman now.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Oh.” He picked up a cookie and bit into it. “Cool.”

I wasn’t sure what else to say to him, so I said, “Whatever. Bye, dick.”

“Bye, Penguin,” he replied before snatching another cookie. He shut his window as I climbed back into mine. Then I thought about him all freaking night.

***

The next month, there was a knock at my window. I went to open it to find Gabriel standing there with a plate in his hands.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Cookies. For…you know…”

I scrunched up my nose. “How do you know I need cookies now?”

“Because I guess that thing happens to girls every month around the same time, so I made cookies with my mom so you wouldn’t become a grumpy ogre.”

“Oh…” How sweet and kind of mean? I didn’t know. Gabriel confused my mind more than any other person ever did. I took the cookies and I bit into one. “Thanks.”

“Are they good?”

“Yes, but I like oatmeal cookies the best.”

“Nobody likes oatmeal cookies the best, except for old ladies who live with fifteen cats.”

“And me,” I said, taking another bite. “With raisins. But these are good, too.”

“Okay.”

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