Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer Page B

school.
    I went to the third floor’s standardized-test section because it was deserted. Also because the books were big enough to reach the fronts of the shelves, so when I sat and leaned back against them, it wasn’t like leaning back against the top of a picket fence. Sometimes I wanted to say to someone—and the someone was always my mother—
Look. See? It isn’t all the time. I can help myself. I’m not a danger to myself or to others. There’s no reason to send me away. Look at me just sitting here. Look at me trying to be comfortable.
    The week before, I’d read a whole book on mushrooms, and later I’d said something to my mother about morels and she’d said, “Hey now! Look at you, daughter of my heart.” My chest tingled with bubbles until she went ballistic on the phone to one of her sous-chefs, who’d quit. And on a Saturday. If I’d picked up first I would have told him that it was not a good idea and that he should trust me because if I knew anything, I knew my mother. After that, she said she couldn’t even speak. She turned on the TV so loud that I had to move some of the pieces in Aunt Lou’s porcelain poodle collection so they wouldn’t shimmy off the dresser and shatter. The sous-chef debacle cut off my morel story before it had even begun.
    I also sat here because Blot’s desk was no more than ten steps away.
    I had plopped down in a nice little spot where I could see him. My pulse did jumping jacks. He was in charge of this section—self-help, test-taking,
libros en
español.
He had blond hair, flushed cheeks, and roughed-up leather boots that looked like they belonged to a different century. The bottoms of his pants were stained with black but he rolled them up so that it looked like dark cuffs. It occurred to me that maybe this was intentional, like he was too busy reading to take the stuff to the laundry. He wasn’t dirty. A number of times, I had imagined myself smelling his chest, but I tried to stop thinking that way, realizing how insane it was. He kept a book in his back pocket and a pencil behind his ear. His hair was long enough that he was always touching it, swatting it away from his face like some kind of stubborn bug. I wondered what it looked like wet, if it stuck to his head like a little kid’s, like mine. Now I imagined him leading me to a very secret place in Central Park with the biggest trees you’ve ever seen and a twig canopy. He’d read from a book and for some reason it was in Portuguese, which for some reason I understood. I told myself to get a grip, which is like trying to sear scallops in liquid.
    He wore his nametag on his collar, and I loved how his name was stranger than mine. I liked to think it was a loving nickname, maybe from his baby sister who couldn’t pronounce Blake or Blaise, though he didn’t look like either of those. He used to have a skateboard that he tooled around on until his manager said, “Hey.” I could tell, though, adults couldn’t stay mad at him. In that way, he was the opposite of me.
    He carried a huge stack of shiny books wrapped in plastic, and when he walked by he gave me a little wave, keeping his elbow tight to his side. I looked around. There was no one but me. Me? I looked at my lap. I looked up. He was waiting. It was the first time he’d waved. Usually, he’d tighten his lower lip, a kind of acknowledgment, as I’d been here a thousand times. I’d tighten mine back. I practiced it in the mirror to be sure I didn’t look like a duck.
Now what,
I thought. I had already done my lip thing. Or had I? I couldn’t remember now. So I did it again but my mouth was stiff like I’d been sucking on frozen peach slices. I was relieved when he started walking again. At least I hadn’t done something hugely ridiculous like yelling a
Hey, Blot!
and waving with octopus arms. It occurred to me that I’d been staring at him for far too long. Probably he had to wave. Probably he was just being polite.
    I needed to start