Bliss Adair and the First Rule of Knitting by Jean Mills

Author:Jean Mills
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Deer Press
Published: 2023-06-05T13:20:02+00:00

29. Conversation at The Beanbag

Bethany has no answers. She doesn’t know Taz any better than I do, but she thinks it’s cute that he came to see me at my locker.

“James told him to do that,” she says.

That doesn’t help, actually. It means he needs instructions. I hate to think what it’s going to be like when we get to the dance and the music starts and we’re out on the dance floor. Are Bethany and James going to be shoving us together and saying, Okay, kids. Now go dance?

I’m trying not to look too far ahead, but I also feel as if I’ve been presented with a Level III math contest problem that needs solving, and I don’t know where to begin. Maybe the solution is to develop a sore throat the day before the dance, act my way into staying home from school, and offering Taz, James, and Bethany (and Sydney and Anderson) a heartfelt apology for not being able to go? It could work. Pretty sure Anderson would see through it, but he wouldn’t say anything . . .

“Are you going to the school dance?”

It’s like Finn Nordin is inside my head.

I blink a few times to bring myself back to our table in a corner of The Beanbag.

Monday afternoon, after school. Math contest prep up on our laptops, papers spread around in front of us with in-progress solutions. (Also doodles.) His Beanbag mug of coffee. Or maybe it’s a latte? I don’t speak coffee, so I’m not sure what he ordered. My Beanbag mug of Orange Pekoe. When it comes to tea, I’m not very adventurous.

We met up on the sidewalk in front of the school after last class and walked here. No sign of Karlee or Adele. Anderson has volleyball practice, but a creepy feeling on the back of my neck tells me Bethany and Sydney are somewhere—maybe at the window in the science lab?—watching me walk out to join Finn on the sidewalk. His smile and wave, and his comment about how he’s dying for a coffee and his mom will be jealous because The Beanbag has the best, and, Really? You don’t drink coffee? And how happy Wenzik was when Finn told him we were doing prep today . . .

We talk all the way to the cafŽ. School stuff, math contest, Ava and her knitting.

“She was so excited about it,” he tells me. “She couldn’t wait to show Mom. They dropped me at the arena—I had hockey practice—and she was still talking about it.”

“Oh, that’s adorable. She’s so sweet. And smart, too. She picked it up so quickly.”

“She’s smart, all right,” he laughs. I wonder if he’s thinking of how Karlee did not pick up knitting that quickly, which is, weirdly, what I’m thinking about.

It’s a few long blocks from Central to downtown and the little street of shops where String Theory and The Beanbag sit across from each other. I’ve done this walk every day since starting Grade 9, and this might have been the fastest ever.

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