The Shells Of Chanticleer by Patrick Maura

Author:Patrick, Maura [Patrick, Maura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spiderweb Press
Published: 2014-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Sebastian turned out to be a surprisingly faithful friend in those first days after our meeting at the festival. I would leave Summer Hall in the morning only to find him waiting for me at the bottom of the steps, ready to walk with me wherever I was headed. If I spent the day in the library he’d plop into a chair across from me with his own packet of readings to plow through. More often than not, he’d fall asleep with boredom half an hour later, and that made me laugh. Other times I would catch him staring at me when he didn’t think I was looking, and then he would wink and throw a wadded bit of paper torn from his packet at me.

“What are they making you work on here?” I asked, pulling his packet toward me on the table and reading its title. “What makes you nervous?”

“Not being your friend anymore,” he said, straight-faced.

“You better behave, then, and stop throwing things at me, or I’ll make you sit over there,” I whispered, pointing to a nearby table of younger-looking boys.

“I’m scared,” he replied, with a mock shiver.

“No, don’t be,” I said, my tone turning serious. “I felt pretty lonely here before we met. It’s ten times better having you around. I’m the one that doesn’t want to get dropped.”

He took a quick look over his shoulder and then held my hand between both of his. “You have nothing to worry about on my end,” he said, “But they’ll split us up if we’re not careful; you know that, don’t you?”

“So I’ve heard,” I said. The 700-page thesis on women’s issues was headed my way, I was sure. Still, I made no move to pull my hand away.

“We’re allowed to be friends,” he said, assuring me. “We can hold hands, and they can’t get upset about that if we’re just friends.”

That was better than nothing, I guess, but with each day we spent together I liked him more and more. Being just friends was a little disappointing to me.

If I had coursework, he cared about how it went. When we had free time we wasted it wandering around Chanticleer’s lush and wild landscape, past old abandoned mills, terraced gardens, sham castles built for no reason other than their beauty, rocky grottos wet with natural springs. We crossed over a stream on a crumbling medieval bridge. I got the distinct impression Sebastian was in love with Chanticleer. As for me, he seemed to enjoy keeping me at a certain distance; just friends, he insisted, despite acting otherwise. He would throw his arm around me as soon as we were far away from anyone.

“We’re just friends,” he would say with a wink, “And anyway, my arm feels much better when I put it around your shoulder than when I keep it by my side.”

Or, “It’s natural for friends to run their hands through each other’s hair if they feel like they have a legitimate reason for it, and I think I saw a katydid land on your head a second ago.

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