Chapter Text
He is sitting alone on a bench pushed up against a brick wall, picking at the red lacquer covering the metal.
“I’m gonna go over there,” Devi says, twirling the end of one of her braids around her finger. “He looks lonely.”
“What if he wants to be left alone?” Fabiola asks, wrinkling her nose and studying the chess board she and Eleanor had set up.
“Or what if he’s contagious?” Eleanor suggests, sticking her tongue out. She moves her rook, blocking in one of Fabiola’s knights.
Devi frowns, and eyes him suspiciously. She thinks his name is Ben, or Brian. Something with a B. “What would he have to be contagious with?”
“Cooties,” Eleanor says.
“Toxoplasmosis,” Fabiola blurts, without looking up from the chessboard.
Devi and Eleanor look at her strangely. “What’s toxoplasmosis?” Eleanor asks, furrows her brow. Devi nods in agreeance with the question.
“It comes from cats,” Fabiola answers, sighing and moving a pawn up a square. “If he has a cat, he could have it.”
“What does it do?” Devi asks, her palms suddenly sweaty.
“Oh, nothing bad,” Fabiola says, waving a hand. “I think it just, like, makes you think cats smell good—wait, where are you going?”
Devi ignores her, tossing her braids over her shoulders and marching up to Ben-or-Brian. She stops in front of him, and suddenly, realizes she did not wait to make a plan of what to say to him once she got here. She scuffs the toe of her shoe against the pavement.
“Hi,” she finally says, forcing herself to meet his eyes. Her last teacher evaluation said she needs to work on making and maintaining eye contact, and she filled your goal sheet in with eye contact as her primary objection,
Ben-or-Brian does not make it easy. “What do you want?” He asks, looking just past her shoulder, like he is deliberately trying to undermine her attempt to make good on her goal.
“You looked lonely,” Devi says, sticking out her bottom lip. “But I think you might just be mean.”
Ben-or-Brian makes a face, something swirling behind his eyes like a tiny storm. “Why do you think I’m mean?” he asks, and this time, his voice sounds sad instead of angry.
Instantly, Devi regrets calling him mean, a sharp loathing feeling rolling up in her stomach. “I didn’t mean it,” she blurts, shaking her hands in front of her face, “I just got annoyed with you.”
“Annoyed?”
She feels herself blush. “I’m trying to get better at making eye contact, but you won’t look at me, and you also said what do you want instead of hi or nice to meet you and it just sounded a little rude.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again. They are quiet for a few, long moments. She rolls pocket lint between her fingers. “Hi,” he finally says, smiling. There is a gap where his front teeth are missing. “Nice to meet you.”
She smiles, and steps forward, dropping onto the bench next to him and pulling her knees to her chest. “I’m Devi.”
“Ben,” he says, then furrows his brow. “I kinda thought your name was David.”
Devi rolls her eyes, angry in a very specific way that she cannot describe. “That’s because Mrs Foster called me David in roll call,” she says, digging her nails against the lacquer. “It’s so annoying.”
“I’m sorry,” Ben says, frowning and looking down at his hands. They are quiet again, the moment stretching out for ages. Devi watches Eleanor put Fabiola in check, and watches Fabiola get out of it, only to be put in check immediately afterward.
“What’s your favourite colour?” he asks, turning to face her. “Mines orange. Like, the colour of oranges orange.”
She purses her lips as she thinks. “Blue,” she answers, “the blue that people picture when they think of the ocean. Something really dark.”
“The ocean isn’t really that blue, though,” he says, making a face. His mouth turns down at the corners, and his eyebrows crinkle together. “Like, it’s blue, but it isn’t sapphire blue.”
“Yeah, that’s why I said the blue people think of when they imagine the ocean,” she tells him, rolling her eyes. “Duh.”
“You don’t have to be mean,” he says, frowning.
Her eyebrows push together. “I wasn’t being mean.”
“Duh was mean.”
“Oh,” she says, deflating. She picks at the rubbery part of her shoe. “I wasn’t trying to be mean. Just funny.”
Ben shrugs. “It’s okay,” he says, “I’m used to it.”
Something hot and angry and wholly unrecognizable goes through her. “What?” she says, dropping her feet back to the ground, as if contact with the asphalt will make her be rid of the unwanted emotions.
“It’s not like I have friends, David.”
“That’s not my name.”
“Why can’t I call you that? Like a nickname.”
“Because,” she says, grasping at straws for a reason, “it’s a white people name and I’m not a white people.”
“Fine,” Ben says.
“Why don’t you have friends?” Devi asks, unable to stop herself. Her amma says that her inability to keep her thoughts to herself is going to get her into trouble someday, but she knows how to throw a punch. She is not really that worried.
But then, Ben makes a face just short of heartbroken, and she thinks that maybe her big mouth has gotten her into trouble after all.
“I don’t know,” he says, and shrugs. “Maybe I’m just not the kind of person who has friends. I’ve read about them…like, in newspapers and stuff.”
Devi blows a raspberry, awkward. “I mean, I’ll be your friend, but then you’d be losing out on your branding as the guy without friends,” she teases. The tips of her fingers shake, giving away her nerves. “Really, it’s up to you.”
He smiles, his whole face lifting with it, a glow like the sun. “Yeah, I want you to be my friend—or, I want to be your friend, I-I want us to be friends.” The words come out in an awkward stammer, and he gestures wildly, hands fluttering.
“Good,” she says, and reaches under the bench, grabbing her lunchbox. She had not eaten the apple her amma sliced for her during lunch, and she pulls the Tupperware container and a packet of caramel from the hidden compartment in her lunchbox. “Wanna share?”
“Please,” he says, reaching for a piece once she cracks the container open. “I usually eat these with peanut butter.”
“Is that good?” she asks, dipping her slice into the caramel sauce. “The textures are so different.”
“It works so well, though,” he says, “the flavours really blend together. You don’t even notice the difference in the textures.”
“I’ll have to try it sometime,” Devi says, smiling at him across the bench. “Maybe you can come over to my house to play and I’ll have my amma make some.”
Ben smiles, exactly the way he did earlier, his eyes crinkling at the corner. “I’d like that, David.”
The nickname does not grind at her nerves the way it used to, but she cannot tell him that. “Dude, you were so close to saying something nice, then you ruined it with the David thing,” she complains, rolling her eyes. “How would you like it if I called you something stupid?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Like—like…Baloo!”
The name has the opposite of the intended effect; he tosses his head back laughing, his face tilted towards the sky. “That’s really the worst you can come up with?” he asks, dropping his head back down. “Baloo? Like the giant humanoid elephant?”
“I had short notice, okay? It was the best I could do.” She crosses her arms over her chest, faux pouting. “If you call me David, then I’ll call you Baloo.”
“Fair enough, David,” he says, smirking.
“Eat your apple, Baloo,” she tells him, scuffing the bottom of her shoe against the asphalt.
“Whoa, there’s a seed in this one,” Ben says, sounding nothing short of thrilled. “My dad told me once that they’re good luck.”
He extends his hand out to her, a single apple seed in the center of his palm. It does not look like good luck to her, just like a seed, brown and shiny.
She smiles at him regardless. “Keep it,” she says, and gets brave. She reaches out, and closes his fingers over the seed. “Plant a tree and get some seeds, so you can have more good luck.”
He smiles at her, gap toothed and perfect. “I think I already have enough.”
Without really understanding why, she blushes, and looks down at her hands, staring at the lines criss-crossing her palms. She is about to say something, when the recess monitor blows a whistle.
Ben jumps up from the bench. “I’ll race you back to the door,” he says, bouncing up and down from his heels to his toes.
She stands up, blush entirely forgotten. “You’re on.”