Part VII #3
But Vi wanted Connor to be perfect, not annoying.
She loved love. She was desperate to experience romance.
Ever since she was young, she’d loved fairy tales and romantic comedies and especially romantic songs.
She made her LEGO Friends figurines go on dates, and there was always a happy ending.
But Vi’s boy LEGO Friend would never call up the girl LEGO Friend with all his buddies around and say, in a voice that sounded like he was trying to hold in a laugh, that maybe they were better off “like, not doing the together thing anymore.” Nor would he hang up before they even talked things through or reminisced about all their great times or went through who got to keep what.
That VR headset they bought together at that garage sale, for example—who had custody of that?
Okay, bad example—that was Connor’s, for sure. VR gave Vi motion sickness.
“I just wish I would have broken up with him first,” Vi blurted. “I wish, like, a Magic Eight Ball would have told me it was coming so I could have done it to him before he did it to me.”
“I’m not sure Magic Eight Balls work that way.”
“Well, they should.” Vi sniffled.
“So what’d you do, trash his locker?” Max asked. “Pour maple syrup all over his gym sneakers? He’s the reason you’re in detention, right?”
She sighed. “I didn’t wreck his stuff.”
“Spread a rumor about him?”
“…Define spread.”
He studied her for a moment, then nodded sagely. “You wrote something about him. A…one-act play?”
She laughed. “An essay for Mr. Costello’s class. Turned it in instead of a paper about Charles Dickens and his use of symbolism.”
“You sacrificed a grade in English in order to air your grievances?” Max whistled. “Impressive.”
He hid a smile. She wasn’t sure if she should defend herself.
It wasn’t a mean essay, per se. It did air a few grievances, though—like how Connor always took his friends’ side over hers; how, when she scored higher than he did on the SAT, he didn’t speak to her for three days; how he had a compulsion about eating hot Cheetos every day after school and then he got his red fingerprints all over everything, including her favorite T-shirt.
She’d used a lot of figurative language.
She even included a line from Dickens: Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts, which didn’t really go with the rest of what she was saying, but Mr. Costello had required at least one quote.
What she’d hoped would happen was that Mr. Costello would praise her writing skills, sympathize with her heartbreak, and then call her and Connor into a meeting to get them back together like a meddling busybody from a Victorian novel.
If not that, then Mr. Costello could read the paper aloud to the class and Connor would shrink in humiliation and it would help warn the girl who might date him next.
Vi liked that idea—women supporting women and all that.
What happened instead was that Mr. Costello organized a meeting with Vi and himself and Ms. Carlson—no Connor to be seen—where he said sternly that English class was not the place for Vi to pick on another classmate.
Vi burst into tears and called Mr. Costello everything that’s wrong with the patriarchy for not automatically taking her side.
She’d immediately retracted the statement… but it earned her detention anyway.
“You want to show it to him, though, don’t you?” Max said after Vi told him a little of this. “You want him to know what you wrote.”
Vi bit her lip. “Yeah. Kind of.”
“You think it’s gonna make you feel better, but it won’t. Trust me.”
“How do you know?”
Max’s mouth twisted. “Experience.”
“You…wrote an essay about someone?”
“A poem. Last year. Long story. TL;DR: You’re better off taking the high road.”
Vi groaned. “I always take the high road. I am tired of the high road.”
“It’s definitely torture,” Max agreed. He smiled at her sadly, like they were on a long, arduous journey together, maybe on said high road—but it was okay because they’d get there eventually.
“Were you writing a poem when I first came in?” she asked shyly.
“Maybe,” he said.
“What’s it about?”
“I don’t know. Song lyrics. Feelings. Sometimes I steal poets’ styles. It’s all probably terrible.”
“My writing’s probably terrible, too,” Vi said.
He looked at her. “That shouldn’t stop you from doing it.”
Vi felt a little flutter. “You’re probably right.”
The bell rang then. They both looked at the ceiling, where the sound was coming from. It kind of broke the moment.
“Well,” Vi murmured.
“Well,” Max said too.
Max said he’d submit her incident report through the proper channels. Vi thanked him. She considered shaking his hand, but she held back, doing a weird half wave thing and then rapping the hall pass against her open palm.
“It’s a thermodynamic cycle,” Max suddenly added as she was turning to go.
She looked back. “What?”
“How the drinking bird operates. When his head is in contact with the water, it raises the pressure inside the bulb, which makes his head rise. But then the water evaporates, and the pressure inside his head drops, so his head lowers, he dunks down into the water, and the process starts all over again.”
“Yeah,” Vi said. Then she felt a guilty jolt. “Wait, are you in my physics class, too?”
“No, I just have a drinking bird at home.” Max added, “I like mine a lot.”
VI.
The next day was Friday. The last day of Vi’s detention.
Vi walked into school with Cassidy, Lila, and Ramona like she usually did, but she felt a little different.
When she’d woken up, Connor hadn’t been her first thought.
She hadn’t listened to her to?p ten saddest love songs just to get through the drive.
She hadn’t burst into tears simply at the sight of the auxiliary parking lot where Connor parked every morning.
She even thought about telling her friends about the essay and getting in trouble.
It was actually funny. She’d told Mr. Costello that he was what was wrong with the patriarchy! It was kind of badass.
And then, when she got to the detention room, she noticed that the message on her desk was gone.
“Wow,” she said to Mr. Hill. “They cleaned that up fast.”
“Yes, well…” Mr. Hill folded his hands. “I had to call down—they said you never showed up to report it.” He gave her a stern look.
“I trusted you with that hall pass, Violet. You’re a good kid.
And while I know there was a fire drill, you can’t just wander around.
I have half a mind to add on another week of detention because you didn’t follow the rules. ”
“But…I did report it,” Vi said. “To Repairs—I went there. The little room in the tech hall? There was a guy with a typewriter. He typed out what I told him.”
A peculiar smile spread across the teacher’s face. It was the kind of smile teachers got when they weren’t sure if a kid was joking or sort of delusional. “Repairs is in the front office, Violet,” he said slowly. “And I’m pretty sure they’re not using typewriters.”
Vi blinked. “You told me it was in room one twenty-four.”
“No, I told you room B twenty-four. As in the front office.” Now he looked at her a little pityingly and waved his hand. “It’s fine. It’s fixed. I won’t give you extra detention.”
But Vi’s heart was banging. This didn’t make sense. She’d gone to that little room. Max told her she’d been in the right place. He’d listened, he’d typed, they’d talked.
The bell rang, and Mr. Hill told her to take her seat. All the other detention students rolled in, too, and proceeded to fall asleep.
Vi pulled out her laptop to start her econ homework, but the words jumped all over the screen. She moved her computer to the side and squinted at the desk until she could just make out a tiny shadow of the words that were there yesterday. Forget him. The G still made an indent in the wood.
Maybe she’d written that message to herself?
Maybe she was the Magic 8 Ball? She’d been in such a state, so angry, and while she thought she’d innocently done her schoolwork during the period, she now had a vague memory of zoning out, digging her pen into the desk’s soft wood, her subconscious maybe telling her what she needed to hear…
But Max—that had happened. Hadn’t it? She hadn’t just…imagined Max out of poetic loneliness, had she? Sitting in his little room, typing out his poems, telling her what she wanted to hear…
She stood up, walked to the front of the room, and plucked the ruler-shaped pass from the hook.
Mr. Hill raised his eyebrows. “Violet? Where are you—”
“I’ll be right back.”
VII.
She stepped into the hall before he could stop her, turning left and bounding down the staircase, passing her name on two posters and her picture on one. Down the tech hallway to the little door marked 124. It was still there. Same door. Same knob. Same everything.
She used the hall pass to knock, but no one called for her to enter. She tried the knob, but it didn’t turn.
She stood back. She almost felt ready to cry again.
“Vi?”