Sick Geometry

fiction • short story - PART I

Mara and I had little in common besides Arthur Pendleton. He picked on me for my high-water jeans and her for her glasses.

Arthur did not invent meanness, but he practiced it with the dedication of a priest. He had sharp elbows, which he used to bulldoze his way to the front of the snack line, and a mouth that leaked contempt for anything soft or seemingly undefended. Last year, for show and tell, I brought in my favorite stuffed animal. Arthur trampled it under his big foot on his way to the bathroom.

So yes. Mara and I were two mismatched birds who had found their way into the same nest, sharing nothing except Arthur's shadow.

Mara sat two desks over from me. She made odd drawings in the margins of her papers, never embarrassed to share them with anyone who wanted to see. She had a knack for not caring.

"Sister Ingrid," I said.

She didn't look up from her grade book. I caught my own reflection in the crucifix-shaped mirror above her desk while she held onto her red pen.

"What is it, Baker?"

"It's Arthur. All he does is make my life harder, and he doesn't abide by the rules set forth in our school oath."

"Oh, Baker. It's just because he likes you."

She smiled.

Likes me?

I pulled at the hem of my uniform, turning her words over in my head, trying to arrange them into an order that made sense. I couldn't. Why did his liking feel like a rip in my favorite pair of jeans on the first day of school? And how was a holy woman so certain that malice equaled affection? It was sick geometry. Or algebra. Or whatever we were learning in math that day.

"I don't think he likes me," I told the empty classroom after she waved me away. "And quite frankly, I don't care."

I didn't want to be desired if it required me to be dismantled first.

"Do you want to go outside?" Mara asked, puncturing the safety of my own thoughts.

"Sure," I said. But I lied. There was nothing to do outside except play tag, and who wants to run after something that's running away from you? Kid games. Just silly. I ran anyway.

Sometimes Mara and I had real fun. We'd find a space behind the brick walls of the gymnasium to build empires of retaliation: elaborate schemes involving slip-and-slides greased with sticky glue, carefully drafted letters to the principal, mysterious calls home to his parents. We plotted until our pens ran out of ink, treating our fantasies of justice like blueprints we'd execute any day now.

But the bell always rang. Recess always came to an end.

And years later, there I was, daydreaming about those same justice fantasies during what was supposed to be a romantic dinner.

I was sitting in the shadows of a dimly lit booth across from a man who had spent the last forty-three minutes taking a scalpel to carve question marks into the quiet confidence I'd spent years building. He leaned back, smirked, and let out a final remark about my life, waiting for the familiar, witty comeback I usually gave.

The old script flared to life in my chest.

"Oh, it's just because he likes you."

I looked down at his hand touching my wrist, then up to his face. Before I could think another safe thought, my hands acted for me, and I emptied the contents of my drink straight into his face.

"What on earth?" a woman at the next table gasped.

I grabbed my coat and got out of there as fast as my hand had flipped the glass.

"Oh, goodness," I chuckled to myself on the sidewalk. "Maybe I like him."

I rolled my eyes, pulled out my phone, and immediately dialed my old friend's number.