Not Like I'm Jealous or Anything by Marissa Walsh

Author:Marissa Walsh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307433596
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2009-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

SHE’S MINE

Jaclyn Moriarty

I just want a boy to hook his pinkies in my ears.

I’m not sure why.

“My Eustachian tube is not a guitar string,” I pointed out to Kara. “Leave it alone.”

“Not until you leave my cochlea alone,” Kara shot back, very cold.

She didn’t even have to check the ear diagram. She just remembered the word.

We both looked up and found the cochlea, just above the Eustachian tube.

It was shaped like a snail.

“DON’T YOU EAT MY COCHLEA!” Kara yelled, before I got the chance, and then we nearly fell off our chairs.

“Okay now,” said Mr. Bayley, but he said it in a happy way. I think maybe he was proud that his ear diagram had made us laugh.

What I really wanted, though, was a boy to hook his pinkies in my ears.

I thought about that on the way to assembly, which is after biology on Tuesdays.

I didn’t care when it happened. It could be at assembly, right now.

Only I had to be leaning back, lost in thought, and the boy had to approach from behind, stealthily, and place his little fingers in the upper part of my ears. (I mean the part that curls inward like the edge of a Frisbee.)

And he had to tug on my ears as if to suggest, humorously, that he could lift me up and into the air, with nothing but his pinkies in my ears.

Another thing: the boy had to be Nero Belmonte.

At assembly, the chief librarian told the school about some amazing innovations in her borrowing procedures. A group of thin students played their flutes for us. The principal followed up with some amusing small talk, which I did not quite catch, as Kara was crunching on corn chips.

I didn’t want any corn chips because I wasn’t hungry.

I was angry.

Here’s why: Nero Belmonte was way across the auditorium, leaning against the window ledge, making no effort whatsoever to put his fingers in my ears.

And I didn’t think he ever would.

Unlikely things do happen, see, but not if you imagine them first. If you imagine them, you make them so unlikely they evaporate. And it was clear to me that this was Mr. Bayley’s fault: if he hadn’t taught us The Ear that day, I wouldn’t have gotten the idea about Nero’s little fingers, and if I hadn’t gotten the idea, well, maybe it would have happened on its own.

I fixed my gaze on Mr. Bayley. He was sitting up on the stage with the other teachers, his cleats stretched before him and his soccer ball resting on his lap. He’s the soccer coach at lunch times. He noticed me staring and waved, then shrugged to show that he, like me, found school assemblies boring and stupid. I gave him a mean sneer. That startled him.

Then I felt guilty, so I started pulling strange faces, as if the sneer was just a part of my repertoire, and he seemed relieved and laughed. He even tried a half-hearted clown face of his own, and tossed the soccer ball into the air.

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