When It All Syncs Up by Maya Ameyaw

Author:Maya Ameyaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Annick Press
Published: 2023-04-28T14:46:12+00:00

14

The next day, I get to school halfway through lunch. For once I slept in since I hardly got any sleep last night. I dreamt about my performance, falling onstage in a horrible drop. The crack in my big toe felt way too real, viscerally similar to my tendonitis when I first started on pointe. The screaming pain shot me awake, my heart nearly going nuclear in my chest. For once I stayed in bed late, since I hardly got any sleep last night.

“Hey,” Ollie says when I walk up to him in our lunch hallway. He smiles the same utterly overwhelming way he did when I was onstage yesterday.

I let out a weird, wheezing laugh instead of responding, and he grins even wider. Christ, I really can’t function when he looks at me like that.

Neil fake coughs and then bursts out laughing. Ebi and Khadija join him.

Damn it, why does he have to make this so awkward?

Giving Neil a deathly look, I sit down between him and Ollie. I change the subject immediately, pretending not to notice Ollie’s whole arm is flush against mine. “What are you guys up to?”

Khadija tells me about some guy from her drama class that she asked out last week. He’s taking her to see a Tarantino marathon tomorrow at The Forum, an old theater that plays classics downtown.

“If he wasn’t so cute, I think I’d bail,” Khadija says. “Tarantino? So basic, it’s embarrassing. That pasty old man was really in Pulp Fiction saying the hard ‘R’ with his whole chest.”

I scrunch up my nose. “Gross.”

Khadija goes on about other reasons she thinks Tarantino should be cancelled, and I tune her out, wondering if she mentioned asking that guy out to nudge me about the Ollie thing.

What would I even say? I feel like such a goddamn idiot. Why is this so difficult? He likes me, and I know he knows I like him. But he’s still so quiet sometimes. He hasn’t even looked over at me since I sat down.

Shifting a little closer to him, I lean over his shoulder to see what he’s writing in his open notebook. He snaps it closed and focuses on me. “What’re you doing?”

“What’re you working on?”

“I have to finish this song for next week.”

“Can I see?” I reach toward the pen he’s used to bookmark his page.

His hand flies out to grab mine when I touch the notebook, keeping it firmly closed. “No.”

Our eyes meet for a beat too long. My stomach lurches downward before catapulting into my mouth. Finally, he lets go of my hand.

I look at him sideways. “Why not?”

He scrubs a hand through his hair. “It’s not done.”

“So? You don’t wanna show me what you have so far?”

He shrugs and opens his notebook again, flipping to a blank page. He jots something down in tiny letters, and I lean in to read it.

When do you think we should talk to Neil?

I let out a sigh. We’d agreed to talk to him after the showcase, but we hadn’t decided on an exact time.

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