She didn’t exactly do anything differently, but the air around her seemed to press in as she watched him go.
“Problem?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. But she didn’t elaborate. She does things like that a lot.
She came over last night for dinner. It was my mom’s idea. Actually, she just couldn’t handle not meeting Maya for another second. No matter how many times I tell her we’re just friends. She’d just smile in that annoying way she always does, like she knows something I don’t. Then she’d wink.
I hate winking.
I made macaroni and cheese from scratch with broccoli and chicken. I didn’t want to go too fancy, even though I make a wicked béarnaise sauce, because I didn’t want to look like a douche. Anyway, Maya seemed to really like it.
“So, Maya, how did you and Adam meet?” Paul asked. My mom threw him a sharp look. I’d made her promise not to ask too many questions, and Paul had just wasted one that wouldn’t give her any new information. Or so she thought.
“You saved her from drowning?” my mom shouted a few minutes later when Maya finished telling the story.
“Well, that actually wasn’t the first time we met. I got lost on the first day, and she walked me to class,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Paul. “That’s the more interesting story. You should lead with that.”
Maya and my mom laughed, and I shrugged.
“You didn’t tell me anything about this!” Mom protested, looking at me with indignation.
“Can’t imagine why. I did kick him in the face while I was flailing around, so it’s a good story,” Maya said.
“Maybe he thought you’d ask too many questions, dear,” Paul suggested lightly, sipping a glass of wine and raising his eyebrows at my mom. It wasn’t nearly as awkward as I imagined it would be, and before long, Maya and I were shooed out of the kitchen so we could study for Academic Team.
I was responsible for straight memorization. Books, facts, dates, pop culture—the soft stuff. Maya would handle science and math—anything that needed to be figured out. Her eyes flicker over equations like they’re works of art.
“Okay, you’ve seen the movie. Name the Vichy French police officer who helped Rick foil the Nazis’ attempt to capture Laszlo and Ilsa at the end of Casablanca,” she asked.
“That is not a question.”
“It absolutely is a question.”
“Well, it’s really stupid. Why would anyone ever need to know that? How is it relevant to anything?”
“Do you know the answer or not?”
“Captain Louis Renault.”
“Why would you criticize the question if you already know the answer?” she asked.
“Principle.”
She rolled her eyes, but not the way other people do it. When Maya rolls her eyes, it looks like actual work. Like her eyeballs actually journey to the back of her skull before coming back to their sockets, and her hands sort of flutter like they’re reaching for something less absurd. It means something when she does it. She’s saying: You are too stupid for words.
“Name the play that the musical My Fair Lady is based on.”
“Pygmalion. Do you think they’d actually ask that one?”
“Yes, it’s one of the sample questions.”
“Do you think they’d ask what insults Henry Higgins used to describe Eliza?”
“No. I don’t.”
Silence.
“What insults?” she asked.
“ ‘Deliciously low’? ‘Horribly dirty’? ‘Squashed cabbage leaf’? ‘Heartless guttersnipe’?” It was my grandma’s favorite movie. I could recite it from start to finish.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said, scanning the quiz book. “Name the religion whose shrine often features barriers of rope called shimenawa to keep out demons.”
She gave me a look that made me want to laugh. She meant it to be threatening, to remind me that we were studying for a reason, but it wasn’t even remotely intimidating.
“Shinto.” I said it with a straight face.
It was easy to annoy her when she was trying to be serious, but she never lost her temper. It went on like this for a while. She’d ask questions, I’d try to distract her, and then we’d end up talking about something else. The something else was my favorite part. She rolled her eyes a lot.
“Favorite movie?” I asked her.
“When Harry Met Sally,” she said without missing a beat.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I like the last scene,” she said. “The line where he tells her he loves her.”
“But it’s not…I dunno. Not what I expected you’d like.”
To be honest, I’d pictured Maya liking something a little bit less romantic. Something practical, solid. A documentary, maybe. Not something so cliché. It’s one of my mom’s favorites, which is why I’d seen it a few dozen times. Not seen it as in actually watched it, seen it as in absorbed it into my brain whenever it was on TV because my mom always liked to have a movie on for background noise.
“All women like that scene,” she said without looking up from her flash cards. “If they say they don’t, they’re lying.”
She says exactly what she means or she says nothing at all. But I still think it’s odd that she can relate to Sally in the movie. Maya is serious and methodical. Not the sort of person who would fake an orgasm in a deli.
We text every day now. Nothing important. Sometimes it’s just random facts I come across when I’m studying for Academic Team.
Me: Ben Franklin liked to take air baths for his health. He would sit in front of his window in the nude, presumably to get the full effects of the increased airflow.
A few seconds later, Maya texted back.
Maya: Ben Franklin was a sexy beast.
I really like her.
—
We got a new cross for the bell tower this week. Apparently the negotiations for the cross had been under way for months. Parishioners donated money to get it here from Italy. Even the local news station had agreed to do a piece on it when it arrived. Let it be known that religious people spend a lot of money on stupid shit.
Because this was an auspicious occasion (but mostly because the sisters wanted to watch, too), we were all allowed to gather outside the church as the cross was loaded onto the crane with care. Maya, Dwight, and I stood outside our history class in the center of the courtyard.
“Oh man, they’re gonna drop it,” Dwight kept saying under his breath. One of the nuns shushed him.
“Shut up. They’re not going to drop it,” I said.
“Man, it’s going down,” Dwight whispered.
Father Benjamin blessed it, of course, and was leading all of us in prayer when one of the cables snapped and the cross fell onto the roof with a deafening thud.
“I told you!” Dwight hissed. Maya stifled a laugh.
The news cameras kept rolling. No one spoke for several minutes. The man operating the crane looked like he was going to crap himself. It might have been the most exciting moment of our Catholic school education.