Gil and I had worked hard on our
project—and I’d been working especially
hard to make sure that we were on that bus, to make sure that Gil would get to
see Niagara Falls before … I didn't even want to write the words. Putting those
… words (words—too nice a name for
the horror it conveys) … on paper somehow made Gil’s mortality far too real. And
I didn't want it to be real.
One day while Gil was at my house
after school, we were doing the daily photographs of the items we’d left to
sour in my refrigerator. I was putting my digital camera on a tripod so that
the image would be perfectly still and stable when I felt rather than heard
Gil’s silence. I looked up at him.
He was staring at me. I stared
back. And in the river of emotion that flowed between us I could see, floating
on the surface, the certain knowledge that Gil knew. I thought I’d been so clever—so careful—not to reveal myself,
but I’d failed. I was certain of it.
He finally spoke. “You’re not an
unattractive girl,” he said.
“You’re not ugly either,” I said.
More silence.
“And,” Gil said, “you’ve been …
nicer … to me lately.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t intend
to be.” This, of course, was true. “I’ll try to be meaner in the future.”
“That’s nice,” said Gil.
“Otherwise, I’ll thinking something’s wrong.”
Nothing’s
wrong, I thought. Nothing. Is. Wrong.
When I got to our display area (one
of the classrooms), I saw Gil wasn’t there yet. And I wasn’t surprised. During
the afternoon he’d seemed very tired, standing all that time by our project, explaining
to the judges what we’d done (we took turns), answering questions. I’d found a
chair for him, but it didn’t seem to help all that much. By the end of the day
he was very pale; beads of sweat had formed on his upper lip; his eyes were
colorless.
Harriet’s table was right next to
us. She had let Eddie Peacock do the explanation of their project, and she had
answered the all the judges’ questions. “That’s the only way,” she’d whispered
to me. “He doesn’t understand a thing
about what we’ve done, but he can
memorize his lines!”
Their project was quite interesting—and
I’m going to take a little credit for it, too. The night after Harriet had been
so excited about their idea for a project (an idea, remember, she’d discussed
with me earlier that day), she’d called me at home.
“Vickie.”
“Yes.”
“I decided I don’t want to do a
solar hot-dog cooker.”
“Then don’t.”
Pause.
“Why don’t you?” I asked.
“It’s not gross enough,” she said.
Silence.
“I mean,” she went on, “the best
thing about science is when it’s gross, right?”
I couldn’t disagree.
“The dissections, the skeletons,
the smells, the goo—I mean,” she said, “without all of that, I would just go to sleep in Gisborne’s class.”
“You do go to sleep in his class.”
“Well, I’d sleep longer,” she said.
Silence.
“So,” she said, “any gross ideas
for me?”
I had a few … hundred. But I gave
her one.
“I love it!” she said.
Silence.
“And I love you, too, Vickie.” And
she hung up before I could reply.
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