Mr. Brandolini's Assignment

v. quenched thirst

He was a very just, fair, King Ashoka kind of team captain. I mean we had like three obese people on our team and he was nicer to them than he was to me even though they couldn’t even hold the plank position for like five seconds, and I know that’s mean but we shouldn’t be nice to fat people just because they’re fat. That’s more discriminatory than just treating them like how you would treat anyone else, which, in my case, is with punk-rock indifference seasoned with a touch of sardonicism.

 Omar’s niceness pissed me off, even though a lot of it was directed at me and he called me Palm Tree instead of Leena, which was the lamest thing ever. And he high-fived everyone when we won a round and he got us like forty points when he did thirty fucking sets of dolphin push-ups and consequently became the hero of the class. Ultimately, our team won because of mainly his effort, and I provided a fair amount of support in the endeavour. Omar let me hoist the trophy with him, which means that I just placed a finger on it as a figurehead representation of my efforts as he held it high above his head as if it was the biggest accomplishment in the world.

 As everyone was dispersing, he put it back on the shelf on the wall. I wiped my forehead with my towel and rolled up my mat and said bye-bye, see you next week to our other team members.

 ‘Do you have water?’ I asked him as he started to roll up his mat. He shook his bottle up and down.

 ‘Nope, all finished.’

 I made a face. ‘They forgot to change the bubble top on the dispenser today too.’

 He stood up once he was done packing up his stuff and followed me out of the room. ‘How did you get here?’

 ‘Bus,’ I told him, picking up my phone from the Distractions basket, which was this wicker basket in the lobby where we put our phones and iPods and things like that. I had four messages from Jürgen and zero missed calls from my mother, which meant she wasn’t awake yet, or she was awake and just hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t in the house, which, considering the actual amount of time I spent in the house, was understandable.

 I was hovering over Jürgen’s messages and Omar was saying, ‘I live pretty close by, you could come over and have a drink before heading back.’

 I decided to open them later in case they of the variety that didn’t let you stop grinning even if you like run over a butterfly with your Harley Davidson by accident and then the whole world thinks you’re a heartless bastard. Then I processed Omar’s invitation.

 ‘Come over as in to your house?’

 He blinked.

 ‘I thought my sentence made the location amply clear…’

 That was it. That was the moment.

 ‘Wait, how old are you?’

 Okay, so it sounded a bit non-sequitur. But I couldn’t help it.

 His eyes narrowed. ‘Before I answer, you do know that have a drink isn’t code for anything that doesn’t mean pour some liquid down your throat so you don’t die of dehydration, right?’

 ‘The world is full of beautiful, incomprehensible innuendos, Omar,’ I said. ‘You never know. Plus, have a drink could mean myriad things, like –’

 ‘I’m eighteen,’ he said, cutting me off successfully because it wasn’t an answer I had been expecting. ‘I also don’t make it a regular practice to call over strange girls for drinks at nine in the morning, so you can rest assured that I am not a). a rapist, b). a noontime alcoholic or c). just a general creep.’