Carter
Sure let’s talk
The message is just three words long, but I can’t stop rereading it.
My desperate nudge worked.
Layla Banerjee finally wrote back.
“Dude,” Bodhi says, jabbing an elbow into my side. “The point of coming to the girls’ basketball game to take pictures for
the yearbook is to take pictures of the girls’ basketball team for the yearbook.”
“Oh, yeah, totally,” I say, looking up from my phone and remembering that I’m in a packed gymnasium, cheers and hoots ricocheting
off the walls, the aroma of dirty socks and Sun Chips wafting around us. We’re sitting in the first row of bleachers, Lizzy
on the other side of Bodhi, and Tatiana Robinson next to her. My fancy-ass camera is on a strap around my neck.
“Janessa Suher just had the most amazing finger roll of all time,” Bodhi says, “and you completely missed it.”
“Oh man, I suck. I’m sure she’ll do something else cool.”
“Also,” Bodhi adds, “instead of being all up in your phone, maybe you want to sit over there with Tatiana. At some point.”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“What were you even doing? Randomly scrolling?”
“No. I just got a notification because . . . Big news. Layla wrote back.”
“Whoa, for real? Old Layla who you dumped?”
The crowd erupts again. Janessa Suher just stole the ball. I lift my camera to my eye and snap a shot of her heaving it down
the court to her sprinting teammate. I pull the camera down to check out the view screen. It’s a blurred mess. You can’t even
tell it’s a basketball game.
“Yeesh,” Bodhi says, peering over my shoulder. “You need to focus the lens.”
“I know, I know. I’m not used to action shots! It’s different than taking pictures of you and Robbie walking past a tree.”
“You’ll get better. You did last year, anyway.”
“Right. Maybe.” It’s weird feeling jealous of myself.
“So, that Layla lady, huh? What did she say?”
“That she’s down to talk.”
“Dude!”
“I know.”
“That’s not big news, it’s humongous! She finally hit you back!”
“I nudged her again last week. So.”
“Persistence! I like it. So what’re you gonna tell her?”
“I’m gonna say yes, let’s find a time to talk ASAP.”
“Ooh, yeah. That’s a good response.”
There’s a groan in the crowd as a towering girl on the other team blocks a shot from Ridgedale’s star forward, Elise Alexander.
“It’s good you didn’t take a picture of that,” Bodhi says. “That would be embarrassing for everyone. Especially Elise. Imagine
showing your yearbook to your grandkids and being like, ‘Oh, and here’s when I got dominated in the paint and felt horrible
about myself.’”
“There should be a whole yearbook of bad memories,” I say, laughing. “Just everyone’s worst moments of high school captured in one book.”
“Here’s when I failed my geometry test.”
“Here’s when my crush told me they just want to be friends.”
“Here’s when I got cast as a cactus in the spring musical.”
“Here’s when I woke up and found out I was stuck in a horrible nightmare, reliving my sixteenth year over and over again.”
Bodhi stops laughing. So do I. “Aw man,” he says. “Don’t worry, dude, this Layla thing is really promising.”
The buzzer sounds, and the second quarter ends.
“What were you guys laughing so hard about?” Lizzy asks, smiling, and I realize she and Bodhi are holding hands. They might
not be concerned with labels, but everything they do in public seems like it should come with a giant one that reads, We are a couple!
“Mostly how bad I am with this camera,” I say, holding it up.
“Oh!” Tatiana hops up and comes around to the open space on the bleachers next to me. “Gimme.”
She holds out her hands. I take the camera off my neck and pass it to her.
“My mom is all up in the world of photography,” she says, staring down at all the buttons and dials. “So I know a lot of shit.”
“Oh. Amazing.”
She scrolls through the images I’ve taken so far. “Huh. These are . . .”
“Bad. I know. You can say it.”
Tatiana lets out a loud laugh and leans her shoulder into mine. “I was gonna say photographically challenged, but okay, yeah, if you’re gonna let bad fly, let’s go with that.”
Tatiana and I have had this flirty relationship ever since Shana’s party where—so I’m told—we made out. She’s really cute and smart and fun, so I could see us making out again, though, to be honest, I’m not feeling it as much as I want to be.
But Maggie is probably kissing Chord on the cheek and/or mouth at this very moment.
“I’ve been getting better at pictures where people aren’t moving fast,” I say, “but once people are running or jumping, I
have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”
“Guess it’s lucky I’m here, then.”
Tatiana proceeds to take me through every feature on the camera, different speeds, how to focus the lens to create a variety
of effects and styles. The whole time our bodies are close to each other, and Tatiana keeps putting her hand on my arm, and
she smells like an ice cream sundae intermingled with lilacs, and if we weren’t in the stands at a basketball game, we’d probably
be kissin—
Maggie.
Not in my head. Actual Maggie.
I’d glanced to my right to see if Bodhi and Lizzy were still here (they’re not; they must have gone to get snacks or something),
and instead I see Maggie sitting alone farther down the bleacher just behind us. Staring at me. I don’t think she was expecting
me to turn my head at that moment because her eyes are open deer-in-headlights wide. She gives me a wave without smiling.
I cautiously wave back, in case she’s actually waving at someone behind me.
She lowers her hand. She was waving at me.
Our first interaction since the concert. Which was more than a month ago.
I’m turning my head to look back at Tatiana, who’s now also looking toward Maggie, but Maggie raises her hand and gestures for me to come over to her.
I point to her like, You want me to come over there? To you?
She shrugs, like, I guess I do, yeah?
“Tatiana, just hold on a sec,” I say.
She was in the middle of showing me two variations in depth of field on shots she just snapped of the empty court. “I’m gonna
go say hi to, uh—”
“Yeah, I know,” she says. “It’s cool.” But it doesn’t sound like she’s so cool with it.
“Um, okay.” I feel kinda bad, but I can’t ignore Maggie’s beckoning. “I’ll be right back, this’ll just be a second.”
I slide down the bleacher toward Maggie.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hi,” she says.
“I didn’t think we were, like . . .”
“No, I know, we haven’t been, but I just thought . . .”
I don’t finish her sentence because I don’t know what she thought.
“That we could, like, say hi for a second,” she says, looking down at her Chuck Taylors. “Since it’s been a little while.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Definitely. Hi.”
“Hi.” Maggie scrunches her mouth to one side and flicks her eyebrows up, like, Well, this is kinda weird! It’s really adorable, but I try not to think about that.
“Are you here . . . alone?”
“No, with Shana. But she went to pee. She and Janessa are friends. The point guard?”
“Oh yeah. I know. I was there when she caught the speaker at Shana’s party.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I don’t fully either, actually. I just have a vague memory. A speaker fell, I guess.”
Maggie awkwardly runs a hand through her hair. “Speaking of that party . . . You and Tatiana have reunited, huh?”
“Oh. Well.” My face goes full beet farm. “She’s just showing me how to use my camera.”
“Gotcha.”
“Yeah.” I don’t really know what the point of this conversation is. But since we’re here . . . “I saw you and Chord. On his
profile.”
“Oh. What? Oh.” Now Maggie’s cheeks turn tomato. “That was . . . I told him not to post that, but he liked it. So.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“No, I was fine with it. I mean, things with Chord are going great. But I’m just more private about . . . I don’t know, it
doesn’t matter. I’m sorry if seeing that was . . .”
“Seeing it was totally fine.”
“Okay. Right. Yeah.”
“Ahem.” Shana steps onto the bleachers behind me, then sidles past Maggie and sits down on her other side. “Well, hello, Carter Cohen.”
“Hey, Shana,” I say. “I was just leaving.”
“Don’t go on my account,” she says. “I just didn’t think you two were even talking.”
“We haven’t been. But Maggie waved me over.”
“It was an accident,” Maggie says, as if talking with me is a huge mistake. It pisses me off.
“Yup. Total accident,” I agree. “Incidentally, though, you might be interested to know that I finally heard back from Layla. You remember, right? Layla Banerjee?” I say the last part real sarcastically. Can’t help it, I’m so annoyed. Seeing Maggie’s face go pale is both gratifying and horrible.
“Who’s Layla Banerjee?” Shana asks, her face contorted like she’s just gotten a whiff of someone’s fart.
Maggie doesn’t tell her, so I don’t either.
“Anyway,” I say, toning down my hostility, “Layla said she’s down to talk, so I’m gonna apologize to her. Like, who really
knows, but maybe that will end all . . . this.” I gesture to myself. “So thank you for your help.”
Maggie nods. “Yeah. You’re welcome. But . . .”
“But what?”
Maggie looks to Shana, then back to me. “Nothing. That’s great. I’m glad for you.”
I nod a few times. “Okay, then. Peace out!”
I move thirty steps across the bleachers toward Tatiana, Bodhi, and Lizzy as the basketball gets inbounded and the second
half begins.
“Carter!” Maggie says. Nearly shouts, actually.
I turn back.
“I’m not . . . I’m not sure apologizing to Layla would actually work. To, you know, unstick you.”
I walk closer to her, doing my best to crouch so I don’t block the view of the people behind me. “Well,” I say. “Whether it
does or doesn’t, it can’t hurt to try and make things right. Right?”
Maggie opens and closes her mouth a couple of times before words come out. “I guess. Making things right is probably good.
So. Yeah.”
It looks like she might say more, so I hover there, waiting.
“Sit down!” some girl behind me shouts.
Maggie gives me a silent shrug. Weird. I give her a shrug back and skitter to my seat in between Bodhi and Tatiana, just in time to see Janessa Suher fire a pass to Elise Alexander that’s so powerful, it bounces off Elise’s fingers and tumbles out of bounds.
I do not get a picture.