Talk by Kate Wayne

Author:Kate Wayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature
Publisher: Kate Wayne
Published: 2021-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

Imbroglio

12



My first crush in High School came late—not till Grade 11—and it was a fairly useless crush since Cliff Abyasa was an exchange student from Indonesia who would return at the end of the school year to Surabaya. We were never going to be a thing. Still, I couldn’t help but appreciate so much tenderhearted kindness all rolled into one absolutely rock solid, russet brown, dark-eyed man. I’d harboured that silent crush for weeks before letting anyone in on my secret, and truth be told, the only reason I let the cat out of the bag was because Miles and I caught each other drooling over him one morning during assembly.

“You too?” he asked in a whisper, leaning close to me as I stared dreamily at that perfect specimen of masculine humanity.

I ducked my head to cover the flush that shot up my neck and cheeks. I was still shy, still new to the community then, though I’d been grafted in rather painlessly.

“Well,” he ducked his head too, but he wasn’t all that quiet, though the video on whatever was adequately camouflaging our unauthorised conversing, “it’s kinda hard not to notice.”

In a brief mental quandary, I wondered what it might be like to compete with a boy for a boy, and how that might work for Cliff, but I dropped that line of thinking and turned to Miles with reality between us.

“Never gonna happen,” I said, shaking my head.

We had caught the attention of Mrs. Silken standing at the end of our row, and she was holding her index finger to her thin lips, giving me the eye to shut up. I directed my attention back to the whatever instructional video screen at the front of the room.

“He’s not staying in Canada,” I muttered sideways. “He goes back to Indonesia in the summer. He’s only here for his last year.”

“Oh,” Miles’ hand flew to his heart as though I’d just broken it. “The unmerited travesty of it.” I rolled my eyes. I had almost instantly liked this Miles kid, and he and Hazel had become fast friends.

And then this year, Onjo Elijah transferred in by the second week of October and Miles had to pick my jaw off the floor. Of course, Onjo was never going to look at me in this tank of dazzling belles. What was I? A mere orange dandelion in a garden of brilliant sunflowers, fiery roses, and a rainbow of blazing Gerbera daisies. I was petite and missable against the likes of these blossoming women: the carefree strawberry blond Dutch valedictorian, both brain and beauty, Mila Jansen (no, Mila’s hair was actually the colour of a summer peach and cascaded around her head like a mermaid’s underwater); Madeleine Laurent, need I say more on that subject? Hazel Vashto, while possessing a sharp sense of scathing humour that endlessly entertained, also bore a striking resemblance to that incomparable Nefertiti; Maxine Liang, kind and rich and generous and disarmingly cute, but cute’s not the word they used

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