A Little Something Different (2 page)

“Oh, subbasement classes. Yeah, I’ve been there. They’re in many fables, but few have experienced them. I heard there’s a clan of mermaids who live in one of the bathrooms.”

I’m surprised when Gabe laughs out loud at that. It’s really not a great joke to begin with and he hasn’t been a big laugh-out-louder recently. He just hasn’t been Gabe. I’ve tried to explain that to our mom, but I don’t think she gets it. I think she assumes there’s more she could or should be doing, but the secret is that there isn’t. This is something Gabe needs to deal with in his own way.

“Anyway, the professor seems cool and the other kids seem okay. It might not be so bad.”

As we approach the diner, I want to get one last sentiment out, even though I know he’s going to sort of hate me for it.

“You’re allowed to talk about it, you know.”

He rolls his eyes. “I promise I know.”

Squirrel!

I notice the girl eating peanuts. I love nuts.

Nuts, nuts, nuts.

Acorns!

I hop across the grass, trying to be as cute as possible, hoping that maybe if I’m lucky she’ll drop one. And her loss will be my gain.

She sees me and smiles.

I’m in! Hooray!

She purposefully drops a peanut on the ground and I eat it up.

Then she drops one on the bench next to her.

Is this a trap?

I take my time eating the first one, watching her, trying to see if she has a net or a cage or a brown bag that she’s going to capture me with.

I decide it’s all clear, so I hop up on the bench.

She watches two boys walking away across the lawn.

“Do you think they’re brothers?” she asks. “They have the same eyes, and maybe the same nose; it’s hard to see from here.”

I sit up straight. She’s talking to me. No one ever talks to me. Oh, how I wish I knew human and could answer her.

Instead I nibble on my peanut.

Victor
(creative writing classmate)

I hate everything about this stupid class. We’re only a week into the semester and it’s already the bane of my existence.

I hate the professor’s dumb jokes, I hate the location, I hate the other people in it. In particular, these two idiots who insist on sitting near me every freaking class make me want to stab my own eyes out with my mechanical pencil.

I take a couple of deep breaths. I need to calm down. I need to make it through this semester. This was the only lit class that fit in my schedule; I need it to graduate. I do not want to worry about taking a lit class next semester when I want to be concentrating on my kickass internship.

But seriously, I thought the people in my own major were awful—the comp sci guys can be pretty annoying—but these English majors are the dopiest bunch of assholes this side of the Mississippi. They think they’re so deep and filled with meaning. They are not.

And if this dude behind me kicks my chair one more time, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I know I probably couldn’t take him physically, but I would definitely win in a battle of wits.

As I’m thinking that, he kicks it again and I turn to give him a death glare. He sits up straight, moves his freakishly long legs into the aisle, and begins his assault on the chick sitting next to him. Or at least, an assault on her bag. He kicks the shit out of it.

I’m not shocked. He has the biggest feet ever. I suppose they go along well with her abnormally long neck.

Does he realize he would be a lot more effective helping her pick up her bag if he would bend his elbow? He’s like Frankenstein’s monster over there, all jerky movements and no movable joints.

I tune it out as Big Foot makes random noises of apology and the Giraffe squeaks that it’s not a big deal.

I hate them both so much.

How many days until the semester is over?

Bob
(a bus driver)

I have hundreds of kids getting on and off this bus every day. Some kids are real sweethearts and some kids are complete jerks and some kids are neutral. Some are loud in a good way, some in a bad way. There are always a couple who stand out. Sometimes it’s because they’re just noticeable looks-wise, or sometimes it’s a simple case of logistics, like they always get off at a weird stop. My wife, Margie, loves to hear about all of them.

Lately I’ve been telling her lots of stories about these two kids, a boy and a girl. There’s something different about them.

I noticed the boy because he grips the standing bar awkwardly. It’s a funny thing how you can be an expert on gripping the standing bar, and this kid is doing it all wrong. He’s awkward and it kind of looks like it hurts. I want to give him in a lesson in making it less painful.

And then a couple days ago, I realized that he does it so he can sort of hinge into her personal space every once in a while, because I see him do it even when the bus is almost empty. But he doesn’t ever want to get close enough to her to sit near her; it’s like he’s happy to lurk.

The girl is a different story. I always notice the readers on the bus. I can’t read when a bus or car is moving. I get motion sick.

But she’s always reading. And he’s always holding on like it hurts his arm. And I’m sitting up here thinking about them.

I make the next stop and they get off together, though they don’t talk to each other at all. Both of them thank me, and they’re the rare kind. Makes me happy, makes me think that maybe they should talk to each other, but I suppose I don’t have any control over those things.

I watch them walk until they part ways, her going toward the cluster of dorms, him veering off toward the student center. Then one of them little devils in the back calls out, “Are we going already?”

Some of these kids are just dicks.

Casey
(Gabe’s friend)

I’m sort-of-almost napping when there’s a knock on my bedroom door. I swear to God if it’s that new guy from the room off the kitchen again I’m going to go postal on him. I’m not doing anything in my room; I’m napping, there’s no way I could be thumping around. He acts like I’m a moose or something up here.

I flip over on my bed and throw myself to the end to open the door. I have to say the best part of having a tiny room is being able to open the door without getting out of bed. I find Gabe standing on the other side. He’s looking straight ahead and makes a confused face when there’s no one standing in front of him.

“Hey, man!” I say, sitting up straight and throwing the door open wider for him. He looks down and smiles.

“I couldn’t figure out how the door opened,” he says, dropping his backpack and taking the computer chair. “I was thinking you rigged it somehow.”

“I’m not that kind of engineer,” I say.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“Not much. I was napping.”

“Oh, damn. I’m sorry, I should have texted. I’ll go,” he says as he stands up. That’s the kind of guy Gabe is. He’s always so worried about stepping on other people’s toes that he doesn’t even notice if you want your toes stepped on. Or like, I don’t ever want my toes literally stepped on, but my point is, I like having Gabe around even if he is interrupting my nap.

“No. Sit.”

He obeys, because that’s also the kind of guy Gabe is. The first time I met him, my freshman year, after I had already been roommates with his brother, Sam, for a couple of months, I was shocked by how different they were. Gabe came to spend a weekend with us to check out the school for himself, and knowing Sam, Gabe was not who I expected.

Where Sam is loud and nearly shameless, Gabe is easygoing and sarcastic. But even with his quieter vibe, it was boring around here without him. I made sure I told him that every time I went to see him last year.

He chews on his thumbnail.

“How’s everything going?” I ask, leaning against the wall behind my bed.

“Pretty good. I was just in my creative writing class and there’s this girl who has totally … captured my attention.” He smiles.

“That’s cool, but you know that’s not really what I was asking.” I know he’ll talk about everything if and when he wants to, but I like to let him know that I’m around when he’s ready.

“No, but that’s what I feel like talking about,” he says.

“All right, that’s fair,” I say. “Tell me about this chick.”

“She’s not a ‘chick.’”

“Tell me about this skirt, broad, gal Friday.”

“You’re the worst, you know?”

“I know.”

“She’s just in my class and she’s cool and I keep thinking I should talk to her because she’s always chill about everything in class. Like the other day I knocked her backpack over and instead of giving me a dirty look she was all smiling and telling me it was no big deal.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lea.”

This is weird. Gabe and I don’t usually talk about girls. Or I talk about girls and he nods and listens and reprimands me for being kind of a dick about girls. I thought maybe he was asexual or something for a while, but then I realized he was so shy he didn’t really know what to do about girls so he kind of ignored them.

“Are you going to talk to her?”

“How do you know I don’t already talk to her? Maybe she’s outside waiting for me in a pimped-out Lamborghini and we’re going to ride off into the sunset.”

I raise my eyebrows at him. “You would never buy a Lamborghini. Who even owns Lamborghinis anymore?”

“All right, you caught me,” he says, putting his hands up in surrender. “I haven’t talked to her. Not really. I kind of mumbled sorry when I kicked her bag, but we haven’t exactly conversed.”

“You should probably converse.”

“Maybe. Could also be fun to like her from afar and make up stories about her in my head and pretend that we’re dating.”

“So, stalk her?”

“You call it whatever you need to call it,” he says with a straight face.

“Listen, I don’t want to go all big brother on you,” I start.

“By the way, please refrain from mentioning this to my ‘big brother,’” he says, using air quotes. “I’d rather not have to deal with Sam about this yet. He’ll totally make fun of me. Or worse, he’ll tell our mom and she’ll start picking out floral arrangements for the wedding.”

“Fine, but it’ll be tough seeing as I share a room with him.”

Gabe stares at Sam’s empty bed. “He’s not coming back anytime soon, is he?”

“Nah, he has work or something.”

“All right, so what’s the brotherly advice?”

“Just that she needs to know you exist and that you like her, if you want anything to happen. If you don’t want anything to happen, then it doesn’t matter. But you probably shouldn’t stalk her.”

“That’s reasonable. Thank you,” he says, and then changes the subject.

Maxine
(a waitress)

People always ask me, “Maxine, how are you still waitressing at the diner this far into your seventies?” What I tell them is that it keeps me young. What I don’t tell them is that I’m already eighty. Working in a college town like this, kids in and out all hours of the night, always hungry, always saying, “Hey, Maxine!” when they see me. I feel like I have a million grandkids without all the trouble of regular kids.

It’s a nice, quiet Friday night for coming toward the end of September. That first month of school always flies by. It’s busy, people in and out all the time. But things are calm tonight.

There’s a group of girls in one booth, and a group of boys in another. I know some of them, particularly the boys. They’re all on the baseball team together, and they can get a bit rowdy at times, but they’re good boys, nice manners. They’re the kind of boys who girls don’t mind being around.

Maybe next time I’ll have to accidentally sit them all together. I’ve done that in the past and it always worked out. But my boss doesn’t like it much. Says I can’t go messing around, playing with table seatings like that. And to him I say, “Ptooie! This ain’t Buckingham Palace!”

Both groups are so polite, which warms my cold heart. Lots of “pleases” and “thank yous.” I even get a couple of “ma’ams,” which is nearly unheard of these days. Back in my day, it was a pretty standard thing. I had it drilled into me.

But I digress.

I notice two of these cutie pies in particular, because they’re making moon eyes at each other every time they don’t think anyone’s paying attention. And as soon as the other notices, they look away.

It’s all so darling I don’t know what to do with myself.

So I bring them free pie and hope that’s enough to bring them back here again.

Yes, indeed, I hope they come back around here soon.

Danny
(Lea’s friend)

“What’s up, buttercup?” I ask, coming up behind Lea and patting her ass.

“Danno!” she cries, turning around and hugging me long and hard. “I missed you so darn much.”

“Why did it take us weeks to have time to get together?”

“I have no idea.”

We take a seat on the nearest bench, both carefully avoiding the dried bird crap. We’re on our way to meet up with high school friends for dinner, but we have some time to waste before the meetup. Lea and I did a lot of theater together back then and I was thrilled to hear she was going to the same university as me. We’ve seen each other a few times since I graduated, but it’s always pleasant to have a little Lea time.

“So, how’s life?”

“Good,” she says, smiling wide.

“You look like eighty-five million dollars,” I tell her.

“This old thing?” she asks, swishing around the cardigan she got on super sale with me at Old Navy last winter.

I laugh.

“How about you? How’s the life of an upperclassman?” she asks.

“Good. I don’t know that junior year is going to be much different than all the other years. You know, new semester, new classes, all that crap,” I say, letting my eyes roam. “Oh my God!” I yell, clutching her arm.

“What is it? A bug? A rat? A cockroach?”

“No,” I whisper, leaning close. “The boy of my dreams.” I take her head and turn her in the direction he’s walking.

“Gabe Cabrera is the boy of your dreams?” she asks.

“Oh, totally. He’s amazing. One of my housemates lived on the same floor as him freshman year and sometimes we end up at similar gatherings. One time he totally flirted with me,” I brag.