Chapter 3: Dreaming

The rest of the week was very normal. Having no social life, my days were filled with school, homework, and nothing else.

When I walked into Physics on Thursday, I noticed instructions on the board, our first lab since Meenah had joined the class. Since she hadn’t spoken to me since her first day, and seemed to have no intention of changing that, and the fact that I didn’t work in a group very well, I wasn’t at all sure how well we could work together. She’d already gotten the materials from the back table and was setting them up. “So,” I began, with no idea what I would say next.

“Look,” she said, not looking up. “we can do this one of two ways. Either you can do it all, or I’ll do it all. There’s no middle road.”

I started at her. This was new. I was expecting, “why don’t you do it all,” like I usually got.

“We can’t work together?” I asked, my mind working furiously, trying to understand, trying and failing. Why was she always so bitter around me? She didn’t even know me. It had been a week since I had been unintentionally rude to me, surely she didn’t hold a grudge that long. She’d even said that she’d forgiven me. I didn’t understand.

“Was that on my list of options?’ she asked coldly, speaking somewhat slower than usual, as if she thought that I was rather dim.

“It is now,” I answered, reaching towards the equipment. I kind of wanted to do the whole lab, to prove that I wasn’t stupid like she seemed to think I was, but I didn’t want to mess it up.

She sighed. “I’ll take notes, then.”

“So, you want to come over to my house and we’ll work on these?” I asked, trying to sound as friendly as I could.

She said nothing.

“Or,” I said, a slightly threatening tone leaking into my falsely-friendly voice, “I could look up where you’re staying in the phone book and show up there.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” she said, not looking up.

“Ask Brian Palmerson,” I snapped. She was really starting to annoy me.

Meenah sighed loudly. “Fine!” she snapped back. Her anger was the first emotion besides annoyance I’d heard her use today. “I’ll be there. I’d like to see you find my house anyway,” she added in an undertone.

“No, I’m staying with the trip coordinator. Nobody wanted me,” she added, sounding almost happy.

“You want a ride to my house?” I offered.

“No, I’ll wal--yeah, that’ll be fine,” she said. This was the most confusing conversation I’d ever had.

Being the last ones of out of the classroom, it took us nearly twenty minutes to get out of the parking lot. Meenah had rolled her window down when she got in, and sat with her head close to it. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I smelled my hair. It smelled all right to me.

“Do I smell bad?” I asked, finding no polite way to word my question.

She looked shocked. “Why?”

“Well,” I said, wishing that I hadn’t asked, “You just always seem to avoid being near me.” I’d probably offended her again.

“No,” she said, rolling up her window. “You don’t smell bad, not at all. Not bad.” She didn’t say anything else for the entire ride home. Great, I had offended her.

I pulled into the driveway, grabbed my books off the back seat, and headed inside. I was in the kitchen before I’d realized that Meenah hadn’t followed. She was standing just outside the door, staring absentmindedly at the sky.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Nothing, really,” she said. “Why don’t we work outside?”

I glared at her. “Are you just trying to be difficult?”

“No, I’m trying very hard not to be difficult. You know being outside is good for you? It’s a very pretty day.” She gestured at the cloud-covered sky hopefully.

“Beautiful,” I said angrily. “Just come inside.”

“You’re funeral,” she muttered, and followed me in without a backwards glance.

The physics work was hard. We had three very complicated formulas to work with, we had to convert all our measurements before we could work with them, and once you understood what you were supposed to be doing, which I didn’t, it was still a very time consuming process. Neither of us was anywhere close to done by the time Mom came home.

“Study group?” she asked as she threw her purse on the table.

“Physics homework,” I said before quickly introducing Meenah.

“Is she staying for dinner?” asked Mom, looking in the fridge.

“Well, we’re nowhere near finished,” I began, but Meenah interrupted me hastily.

“Thank you, but I cannot, my exchange family expects me home for dinner.” She was suddenly very polite. “I’ll be back afterwards, though, and we’ll finish this.”

“Ooh,” my mom said, excited, “You’re an exchange student? Who are you staying with? Do you like it here? Where are you from?”

“I’m staying with Carol Stanley, the trip coordinator,” she said, closing her notebook and putting it in her bag. “We haven’t found a student home for me yet.” She was at the door. Looking back, she smiled and left.

“Wow,” my mom said. “That girl has perfect teeth. But she did…” she trailed off into an analysis of Meenah’s bicuspids, using a lot of dentist-speak that I didn’t pretend to understand.

I grabbed last night’s Chinese leftovers from the fridge, which we ate cold. The second we’d thrown away the cardboard containers, the doorbell rang. Meenah smiled, and for the first time since we’d met, the smile looked sincere. Not being a dentist, I wasn’t sure what Mom had been talking about, but I did notice that her teeth were almost perfect. They were very white and very straight, only her large upper canine teeth breaking out of line.

“Okay,” she said brightly, “let’s get to work.”

As we resumed our work at the kitchen table, she surprised me by talking. We didn’t actually talk about anything interesting: my mom, her job, my family, my classes.”

“You were doing what?” she asked, as I was telling her about AP US history.

“Making a poster,” I said, laughing.

“What does the AP mean?” she asked.

“Advance Placement. We get college credit for those classes.”

She was quiet for a second, then said, “I think that my history class is harder than yours.”

I laughed. “Yeah, AP history is a bit of a joke. We’re all going to fail the AP test. But, on the bright side, we did invent Notebook Golf in that class.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“You wad up a piece of paper and try to kick it through a upside-down notebook.”

“Your teacher lets you play games in class?” she seemed to be considering the possibilities.

“Yeah,” I said. “Mr. Lewis coaches the golf team, so we can get away with anything as long as it’s in the name of golf. So,” I asked, “What’s your family like?”

“Well, Carol, my trip coordinator, is very nice,” she said.

“And what’s your family at home like?”

“What did you get for number five? I’m not sure if I did it right.” We started discussing the problem, with great animation and enthusiasm on her part. I wondered why she didn’t want to talk about her family. And, more than that, why did she finally decide to talk to me now, after a week of acting as though I wasn’t there? She was strange, there was no doubt about that. In fact, now that I thought about it, she had changed the subject every time that I had asked about her life. Was she just a private person, or did she have something to hide? My mind was full of questions, and I sat awake into the night, wondering.

The next day, Meenah was still talking to me, much to my amazement. As I sat down, she smiled at me, a true smile, and asked, “So, how’s your day been?” I laughed.

“You wouldn’t believe it. Guess what we did today in history.”

“Notebook golf?” she asked.

“How’d you guess? Anyway, Erin, do you know her? Erin Harrington, anyway, she got the best score, only plus five. The golf team wasn’t happy about getting beat by her.”

“So you guys like have a course set up?”

“Yeah, we’ve been working on it for the past couple of days, it’s pretty fun. It’s almost like a mini golf course. Have you ever played miniature golf?”

“A little. I‘m not very good.”

Once again, she avoided any questions that involved her any more than that, but we still found plenty to talk about: my friends, teachers.

“So have you ever had a teacher called Mr. Beckman?” she asked.

“Oh, Mr. Beckman. I had him for chem. last year.”

“Is he always kind of crazy? I had him for Biology before I transferred.”

“Yeah. Did he say anything mean and tactless to you?”

“No, he just asked me if I was in Leadership, and said that he would hate me if I was.” I laughed. She was really a nice person.

“How was school?” Mom was there when I got home, cutting celery into a large pot on the stove.

“Fine,” I said, then added, “You’re home early.”

“Water pipe broke,” she explained. “It flooded the whole front office, they had to close early. They’ll have it fixed by Monday. I decided to make some actual dinner.”

“Chicken and dumplings?” I asked. Chicken and Dumplings was one of the few things that she could cook.

“Yeah. So, you have any plans for the weekend?” she asked, dicing carrots.

“Physics, trig identities, and work on my Rhetoric speech,” I said. She stopped cutting and glared at me.