Page 12 of One Little Problem
“Or never accept it at all,” I muttered.
“True, but you don’t have to expect the worst.” Maybe she had a point. It always seemed like she was two seconds away from murdering me, but she hadn’t murdered me yet, so good things did happen from time to time.
Since I wasn’t totally certain she didn’t have mind control powers and couldn’t just read my thoughts anyway, I told her why this worried me. Not like I was really confessing anything even though it felt like telling a secret, but she might already know, what with the mind control powers and all. “I mean, this can’t go on forever. If they keep making things hard on us, it’s gonna hurt our relationship.” We were going through a good patch now, where Luke didn’t care what anybody else thought, not even his parents.
Could that last forever? They were still his parents. And while everything was totally perfect, I was going to be leaving for the summer. Unless I was super dumb and didn’t get accepted anywhere. I didn’t want big problems hanging over our heads while I left. I was afraid to say that part out loud, like it was a jinx, but Mrs. Sharp seemed to get it anyway.
“Maybe this will bring you closer together,” Mrs. Sharp said. We’d band together against adversity? Seemed more likely it would tear us apart.
I stared at her incredulously. “You can’t believe something so sappy.”
“There’s always a great deal of hope in fiction.” Which didn’t mean she believed it, just that she picked a weird profession for someone so likely to be mistaken for an unfeeling vampire.
“My interests are in science. There’s just how things are.”
“True but humans never work that way.” She would know. What with the way she helped me and Luke out, she might have a soft spot for us. I might tease her about it, but I didn’t actually have a death wish.
One day, when I was old and boring, I might be able to let things go. I could just let things work themselves out, I wouldn’t have to meddle and come up with crazy schemes and feel the compulsive need to do something. But I was a kid, almost an adult but not and certainly not with my heart. My heart was a dumb idiot baby who wanted to hold onto what it had.
All in all, there was probably a different take away I should have gotten from this conversation, but I had to ask, “Can we put lying back on the table?” If I ask very nicely and say pretty please?
“No,” she said firmly.
“You had a good idea. Let’s not dismiss it so quickly.”
“I didn’t tell you that.” Her face looked severe. I hoped she had a soft spot for me. If not, then I’d ruled out getting murdered too quickly.
“Right,” I amended. “You helped me get there on my own.” That was what good teachers did. Pretty sure my fave teacher Mrs. Reynolds had a mug that said something like that.
“Not even close.”
Yeah, she was so right. Lying solved everything.
Speaking of people who were right that were unfortunately not me, Luke was occasionally right. Never tell him that. Then again, the thing he was right about was me, so aww, babe. I was one of the most awkward people to ever live, the spazziest. When there was a choice between letting something go, being chill, letting life work itself… when there was a choice between any of that and not doing any of that, duh. Not doing that all the way.
I liked having problems I could solve. Discovering answers, fixing something broken. Doing something. Like with acceptance letters, it was the waiting, the wondering that was the worst. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. My dad and Luke’s parents had their time to come around to us being together. Time was up, or at least, it didn’t seem like they were going to get there, so all we were doing by waiting for them to catch up was giving them opportunities to make life harder for us, to drive a wedge, whether purposefully or not.
All we were doing was giving life more time for something to go wrong, for our relationship to fail. We had to do something to prevent that.
I was an honor student. I didn’t fail.
* * *
During lunch, my little group sat at a small circular table with Alicia and Lydia on one side and me and Luke on the other. Zach sat at one of the ends, like a king holding court. Maybe that spot worked for him as he was the only unattached one, but he probably liked the king thing too.
Conversation carried on around me while I thought about everything and nothing. Luke’s mom looked at me like I was a particularly persistent fly she wanted to swat. Which was pretty much how my dad looked at Luke. And then there was what Mrs. Sharp said. And the way being around Luke made me feel like I could fly or burst into song or do something else totally unadvisable and die of embarrassment or die of actual death and go out in a blaze of uncoordinated glory.
Being around Luke, life was going right. But life hadn’t always been like that. I could have faith. I could trust in us… I could also take action. I wasn’t an idiot. You couldn’t just hope for the best. You had to make the best happen.
“I’ve solved all our problems,” I announced to the table.
There was a pause as everyone stopped their individual conversations and focused on me. “Like, the problems of the people sitting at this table or globally?” Alicia asked.
Lydia watched me with an amused, superior little smile. “I’m particularly interested in your solutions for world hunger, our current president, and people who take up two parking spaces.”
Zach rolled his eyes. “Smaller scale guys, he’s totally talking about him and Luke.”
Oh yeah, I was at a table of people who wouldn’t hesitate to mock me, which could be bad sometimes when there was stuff about me that was mockable but also this was totally where I belonged, so I had to endure it. However, maybe I didn’t need to share this idea with the whole group. “No, I totally got an idea for that world hunger thing.” Um… “More food.” Nailed it.
