Fix by J. Mann (highly illogical behavior .TXT) 📕

me in place.

“Sit the fuck down,”

he said to Jayden.

Obviously pissed.

Obviously already putting up

with quite enough

just being here.

Obviously having no idea

what the hell was going on.

Jayden dumped himself

into his chair, and

once again,

we were separated.

On screen, tropical trees

bent sideways in

hurricane-force winds while

rain pounded a broiling sea and the

blades of a helicopter

beat against the sound system.

The world was being

blown apart and there was

nothing I could do but

watch it happen.

Your heads moved together.

Ear to ear. Cheek to cheek. It was

your voice I heard.

Whispering hoarsely.

In fear.

Fear.

I couldn’t hear the words,

not that they mattered.

What mattered was him.

Jayden of the grin.

He looked down in your lap.

The whispers continued.

The movie continued.

Nick continued to watch the screen,

oblivious of the tension around him.

In fact, he looked relaxed. The movie

making him forget

about me.

Suddenly,

Jayden of the grin stood up and

my heart dropped

to the sticky theater floor. But

he didn’t push past me. Instead,

he leaned deeply over the seats

and retrieved the hat.

For you.

In this small exchange,

I saw your face for the first time.

Triumphant.

You’d taken the chance,

and it had worked out.

Proving once again,

Lidia Banks never needed two hands. Lidia Banks

never needed two hands. Lidia

Banks never needed

two hands. LidiaBanksne

verneededtwoh

andsLid

iaBan

ksne

vernee

dedtwo

hands.

I’ll Be Waiting

LURCHING AWAKE, I QUICKLY WIPE THE DROOL FROM MY mouth and look around to be sure no one saw me sleeping before I stumble inside the school dragging both my backpack and my head.

“Hey, missy.” Ms. Kisner, the school nurse, calls everyone “missy.” “Spine not okay?”

She swooshes back a curtain revealing a cot where I lie down, shoes and all. She talks for a bit, covers me with a blanket. Her voice is kind, high-pitched. Her sneakers squeak now and then as she makes her way around her office. Drawers slide in and out. A crowd hums in the distance… then all is silent. I think I hear the birds again. Chirping. I definitely hear the birds.

And then I feel him.

“Eve,” he says.

I’m smiling now.

I’m happy now.

He’s what I need right now.

I keep my eyes closed, afraid he won’t be there if I open them. I hear him sit in the chair near my cot and imagine him crossing his arms in front of him. He has nice arms. Big arms. I feel them catching me outside of school this morning.

Wait. What? Not his arms.

Those were not his arms.

“What’s wrong, Eve?”

His voice? I don’t know whose voice.

“Nothing.” I sigh, my eyes still closed. “I’m just busy trying to figure out exactly how out of my mind I am.”

“I’ll help you,” he says. “Way out.”

The warmth in his voice makes me feel

close to him. Connected.

The buzzer ends a class period.

“I better go,” he says.

“Don’t.”

Silence surrounds the word,

surrounds us—a silence

neither of us fill.

He leans nearer. I can feel his presence pressing in on me.

“I’ll be waiting, after school. Under the portico.” He whispers it—and I remain perfectly still, experiencing every beautiful syllable.

I hear him stand, move away. And feeling a little braver, although not brave enough to open my eyes, I say, “Don’t show up all cool on a motorcycle or something.”

He laughs. The sound of it tingles down the scaffolding attached to my

spine, and for a second… less than a second even, I’m hoping.

An Exact Replica

MS. KISNER IS GENTLY SHAKING MY ARM, SUGGESTING I TRY attending a class or two.

School.

I’m at school.

Yawning, I roll off the cot and use one of the nurse’s paper water cones to take a Roxy, sipping slowly, putting off the inevitable—going out there.

By the time I arrive at English Lit, the class is in full swing. Miss Mason stops lecturing.

“Hey, Eve, welcome back.”

I nod and take my seat, avoiding eye contact with Thomas Aquinas while attempting to shrug off the attention Mason is throwing my way.

She immediately understands. “Okay, let’s get back to transcendentalism.”

Oh, how I need Thomas Aquinas’s paper! Especially because I most likely am not going to listen to a word of this lecture.

I open my notebook and fuss about trying to find a way to tolerate the hard chair. Then I fix my gaze up at the front of the room… and think about him.

I’ll be waiting.

Like a date.

No. Not a date. This isn’t a date.

It’s just him… in the human form. So I sit in class, walk through the halls, sit in the next class, answer a question or two, pop another Roxy or two—I don’t want to overdo it and end up back in pain, as per my doctor—even throw an opinion out about something. Because he will be there. Waiting. And I smile.

In fact, I spend the rest of the day smiling.

They say your own attitude can change everything. Well, I might have to start believing these they people because they are right. It seems that an Eve flashing her carefree self all through the halls is an Eve everybody needs to chat up. I’m late to every class because I’m extremely busy being greeted by everyone and being told how good I look.

Inside the classroom, I double down on the joy by picturing him waiting outside for me, while the other one sits behind me.

When Mr. Bogdani calls on me in Gov, I confess I don’t know what the heck is going on.

“Good drugs, right, Eve?” Rodney Papageorgiou calls out.

“Yes,” I admit.

The whole class cracks up. Even Mr. B.

I feel a slight kick at the back of my chair and ignore it.

“May I use the bathroom, Mr. B.?

“At your leisure,” he answers.

The hall is eerily quiet.

I meant to head to the water

fountain but take a

wrong turn or two,

or

three.

I’m in no hurry, just

contentedly wandering

when I round a corner and

find myself in front of

Lidia’s locker.

She is there.

Surrounded by a small

crowd, along with

her hand.

Her hand.

I step back against the lockers in surprise.

She is explaining how

the hand is an

exact replica of her

real hand.

How she sent a

million pictures

of her existing hand

to the company.

I took those pictures.

“I can even paint

the fingernails.”

We bought a

shit ton of nail