Being Human

Foreboding

Chapter 7

Foreboding

           Later that night, Emile knocked on my door as I was doing my Geometry homework. “Hey, Louis,” he said, poking his head in. “Can I come in?”

          “I see no laws that say you can’t,” I said absently as I tried to figure out the measurement of angle six in the given figure. This homework is so frustrating; I don’t understand why anyone would want to know why angle six was wedged in the middle of two parallel lines. I mean, really. How is this useful in real life?

         “Fifty-six.”

         “What?”

         “That angle,” Emile said, pointing to my homework “has a measurement of 56 degrees.”

          I narrowed my eyes at him. “How did you know?”

          He pointed at the symbols on the lines. “They’re parallel, see? These two are congruent,” he said as he encircled the angles, “by the very definition of corresponding angles, and so by extension if this is fifty-six then this also fifty-six.” He put down the pencil, and gave me a little smile.

        “Thanks,” I said, filling in the last blank in my homework.

        “Your number three is wrong,” Emile said, frowning.

         I looked at it, trying to understand. “What?”

         “That’s an isosceles triangle, not equilateral. Those are two different things, “Emile said, pointing at the figure. “By definition, a—okay, never mind,” Emile said as I raised my eyebrows.

        “Thanks for the Geometry help, but I’ll tackle this later. What do you want?”

        “I uh, I want to apologize for my behavior this morning,” Emile said.

         “Was that before or after I drove the car?” I inquired.

         Emile glared at me. “You cannot be serious. I’m not sorry I taught you how to drive-“

         “Yeah, me too-“

            “-and I kind of meant that I’m sorry for my unpleasant remark about Megan and your feelings.”

          “Oh,” I said, feeling a bit of anticlimax, “that.”

           “Yeah, well, I realized it’s not really the best thing to say. After all, this is your first time to experience this kind of feeling, you can’t help your attachment. Look, I-“

           “Hang on.” Something in his words stirred something in my memory. I racked my brains for a moment, then I recalled Father’s letter. “Are you saying that this isn’t your first time to be here, to actually be in love and-“

          “Oh, so you love her?” There was no trace of a joke in Emile’s voice.

          “I-I guess I do. I can’t stop thinking about her. And she amazes me in a way that I can’t explain, like there’s a light that follows her wherever she goes, and I just keep following that light because being where she is makes me feel so happy and so….alive.”

          “Is that light because of her red hair? Because I can color mine and make it look like a lava lamp and it’ll shine in here like a fire in the middle of Hell,” Emile said, cocking his eyebrows.