sugar dealer

Day 9 – 

Claire’s new route made her late for three classes.  She didn’t like calling attention to herself, which made the late arrivals excruciating.  All the teachers treated Claire gently.  It was more the attention than the consequences that caused Claire such pain.  After the third lateness, Claire resolved to carry all her books all day long.  That way, she would avoid locker trips (dangerous) and have better luck getting to classes on time.  She also resolved to speed up.

That afternoon, after the bathroom-stall-hiding vigil, Claire decided to apply her  speed-up resolution to  her long walk home.  It looked like rain.  She owned neither a raincoat nor an umbrella.  She had only a plastic grocery bag for protection.

The faster pace made her tired, but she wouldn’t slow down.  She wanted to at least reach the commercial artery, the Pike, before the rain started.  That way, she could duck into an office building lobby if she needed to.

Just as Claire turned onto the Pike, the rain came.  It didn’t just come, it exploded.  The wind picked up, then huge, dime-size drops raced from the sky.   They pelted Claire’s bare head and shoulders.  By the time she’d reached the nearest office building her shirt and hair were soaked.  Drips tumbled off tendrils of her long,  curly hair and her cotton T-shirt hung heavy and sodden.   As she ducked into the air lock between the lobby and the building’s façade, Claire kicked herself for not having her plastic-bag protection ready.

She stood shivering.  She watched for some moments as the raindrops hit the pavement and bounced back up in tiny droplets.  She let the sound and sight fill her up.  Frrrrr! went the drumming of the rain on the street, soaking, enveloping all in a tap-tapping embrace.  The gray light gave the world a softness and luminescence from behind the curtain of rain.  Claire paused.  Then, in the first act of true pleasure Claire had ever made, she stepped grinning back into the rain.  She smiled up.  She spun around.  She even let out a little Woo!  Woo!  She felt the rain wash her spirit.  She felt the heaviness of life lift just slightly.  Claire was losing weight.

Day 10 – 

Another storm came that day.  Claire stopped in the same airlock of the same building.  She’d actually made it there before the storm reached its peak.  She chose to take refuge in this same building again not because it was special or even different from any other midrise office building on the Pike, but because it was familiar.  She had been there the day before, and Claire was not one to seek out change.

Day 15 -   

Another storm came.  She took refuge in her building again, only this time, instead of watching the storm, something made her turn to view the interior of the building.  A sign hung over a high round desk.  It read Cross Pharmaceuticals.   At the desk, to Claire’s surprise, was a boy about her age.  He was looking straight at her!  Claire turned and quickly left the air lock, fleeing, embarrassed, out into the pouring rain.

Day 16 – 

Next day, another storm.  Despite her fear of being chased out by security now that she had been discovered, Claire entered the airlock of Cross Pharmaceuticals.  Maybe she was a little curious about the boy.  Clearly, she was drenched and needing refuge from the peak of the storm.

She stood, facing the storm.  Even when she felt the boy looking, she faced away.  Even when she heard the quiet, brushing slide of the interior lobby door open, she faced away.  She was tingling.

“Hi!” she heard him say from right behind her.  She turned.  The sight she saw next reached directly inside Claire.  It was one of male beauty and tenderness.  It was of a tall, brown haired boy, standing close, offering her the fluffiest, whitest towel she’d ever seen.  “I thought you might want to borrow this,” he said, holding it out in an awkward, tentative gesture.

Claire was grateful, excited and embarrassed all at the same time.  She blushed.  This embarrassment was none like she’d ever experienced.  It wasn’t full of humiliation or apology.  It even kind of felt okay.  She crinkled her brow, smiled, and reached for the towel.  Her voice was a whisper.  “Thank you,” she said, “It’s… raining.”  Again she blushed.

“Yes, I can see that.  Wanna come in and warm yourself up?  Our lobby is… well… nice… I mean it’s better than the air lock, I guess.”

Claire beamed.  This rare expression for Claire made her whole face change.  Her blue eyes shone, and her white teeth sparkled.  Even in the gray light of the rainstorm, Claire was radiant.  Jeff smiled back.  Taking Claire’s expression as consent and feeling rather gallant, he pushed the interior door back open and held it for her.

The lobby tour was brief – lots of marble and high ceilings.  There was a sitting area with expensive carpet and chairs in the corner, but Claire felt ill-at-ease sitting on them.  The pair found themselves quickly at the reception desk.  “And this is where I work,” said Jeff.  

“Nice, what do you do?”

“I’m the receptionist.  I sit in this chair and greet people who come into the building… I was supposed to also answer phones, but the boss wanted me to be able to concentrate without interruptions.”

“Concentrate on greeting people?” Claire asked mockingly.

“No, on this,” Jeff replied, pointing to a stack of books open on the semi-concealed work area some eight inches down from the counter.

“Hey, calculus!  It’s my best subject,” Claire commented.

“Really, it’s my worst.”

“Do you mind if I look?”

Claire reached for one of the papers.  On it was a perfectly drawn diagonal parabola in the first quadrant. 

“Wow, you do neat work!”

“Yeah, but does it match the formula?” Jeff replied, believing it did.

“Actually, the height of your drawing is one square short.  See?” she said pointing, “The constant is 7, not 6.”

Jeff gave a little shake of his head in disbelief.  He used his finger to count the grid lines.  She was right.  There were only 6.

“Oh, Man… I can’t believe I have to change this!  If it were on computer, it would never have been wrong in the first place.”

“Doesn’t this thing have a graphing function?” said Claire pointing to the receptionist computer.

“It does, but Dr. Griggs doesn’t want a simple printout.  He says we’ll learn better if we have to graph the points ourselves.”

“Where do you go to school?” asked Claire.

“Brighton.”

“Well, Brighton offers some pretty advanced math!  We haven’t even covered this stuff yet in my calculus class in public school.”

“You mean to tell me that you never had this in class and you could glance at the graph and tell me what was wrong with it?”

“It was not as hard as you think.  The +7 at the end of the equation gave it away.”

There was a pause as Jeff stared at his paper, digesting.  The pause grew longer, long enough for Claire to remember how people didn’t like her when she showed how smart she was; people didn’t like her when she had the answer before everyone else.  Her feelings of worthlessness came flooding back to her.

“Thanks for the towel,” she murmured, putting it on the desk and quickly heading for the door.  Before Jeff could look up, she was half way across the lobby.  He called after her, “Hey!  Where are you going?”  “Home!  The rain has stopped,” she replied without turning.  With a quiet swish of the lobby door, Claire was gone.