What Passes For Normal

Chapter 15

Teddy hadn't seen C. J. since meeting her on the bus the previous week. He'd gone back to the big bulletin board to find the Robotics Club sign and checked the email address at the bottom of the sign, but it was for someone named A. Leung—clearly not C. J.—so he hadn't sent an email. She hadn't been on the bus, but he figured she must be staying at her mother's for the week, which was in the opposite direction from campus. He was starting to wonder if he'd ever cross paths with her again when she popped up right beside him in the hall one afternoon after his Comp Sci class.

"Teddy what?" she said.

"Huh?"

"Your last name? It's for the club. I added you but I need your last name. Should probably get your contact info too. For the club."

"Oh, uh, Aiken. A-I-K-E-N."

"Aiken, got it," she said, entering it into her phone contacts. "Here," she said, handing him her phone. "Your digits and email. I don't need your home address unless you want me to stalk you."

It was Friday afternoon and the volume of students at Songhees was thinning, many having started their weekends early. Did she mention stalking because she'd seen him walking past her house on that rainy day? He tapped his email address and phone number into C. J.'s phone. They came out of a corridor into the high-ceilinged atrium of Ogden Hall, the building that housed much of the Science Faculty at Songhees. There were six trees in the atrium in raised-up planters that made the air smell fresh and the benches around the planters were some of the better bad-weather lunch spots on campus.

"I haven't seen you on the bus," Teddy said.

"Cuz I've been driving here in my Bugatti," she said.

"Not because you've been staying at your mom's this week?"

"Whatever," said C. J. "So will you come out to our club meetings? They're pretty great and there's always a really awesome selection of junk food. There was supposed to be a meeting next week but three people can't make it so we'll have to wait until the following week. Are you free the following week? Well not, like, all the following week—I mean the Wednesday night? Can you wait that long to see me again? Probably not, right? Maybe you want to meet for a coffee or something before then so you don't miss me too much?"

"Uh.." said Teddy.

"I know. I can be a little overwhelming," she said. "Sorry."

"Um, I can probably make it on that Wednesday," said Teddy.

"Fantastico!" said C. J. "'K, I gotta go but I'll be in touch!"

Teddy gave her a wave as she dashed off. He tried not to grin like an idiot as he headed toward his last class of the day.

• • • •

"You should get these kale chips," I say to Neea. "They have kale in them."

"Look at the price," Neea says. "People are crazy to pay that much for kale chips when it's so easy to make your own!"

"Oh my god," I say, pushing the shopping cart behind her. "You've made kale chips."

"A few times. Teddy doesn't really like them."

"No surprise," I say.

Neea puts a jar of that heinous organic peanut butter into the cart, the kind with a nasty pool of oil on top that you're supposed to somehow mix into the petrified mass of ground up peanut below. I look longingly at the brand with the bears on the label and the tons of sugar and salt inside. Spread that on a cracker... as good as it gets if you ask me. And when you take a nice glump of the junky stuff and squash it between two crackers you get those little worms of peanut butter squirming up through the cracker holes. No way Neea's brand is gonna do that. I rest my case.