Losing Grip

Chapter 29➷ Take It One Page at a Time

Victoria sat on the seat next to her. They started chatting about dance and sports, and I watched them, stunned.

"Am I seeing this right?" Brooklyn asked me, making a gagging face.

Arson turned to Brooklyn by reflex the second she spoke, as though her voice was a shrill alarm that could wake him from the deepest of slumbers. Her ears reddened and she stopped talking.

Mr. Andrews finally came in with a sheepish smile, wiping the sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief. "Sorry I'm late," he said, setting down his bag on the desk. "Okay then, are we ready?"

He received groans as a response, but that didn't deter him.

He walked to each desk, placing a thin paper slip face-down on each one.

As he walked, he continued to speak, "So, it's been a month. I can only assume you guys remembered the assignment, especially with the number of emails I get daily—longer than your essays, by the way—explaining why you guys should get to pick your own partners."

The students laughed and he walked to the front of the class to lean against his desk.

"You can look at your slips now. This is randomized for the most part, though I may have been a little biased about a few. What can I say? I'm human. So, does anyone want to start?" he asked, optimistic.

I don't know if he actually expected any answers but he received none.

I glanced down at the slip in front of me, hoping it wouldn't be Victoria because I still didn't know her well. I turned it over and Jayce's name was scribbled in Mr. Andrews's familiar handwriting. I sighed in relief.

I looked around to try to figure out which of my group mates had my name, but their expressions gave nothing away. I didn't miss the anxious glances that Arson and Brooklyn exchanged and I wondered if they had gotten each other's names.

"Everyone remembers the directions?" Mr. Andrews asked and received a few affirmative nods. "Good."

As students stood and presented, I stared down at the name on my paper. The letters faded and Riley's name emerged where Jayce's name had been.

I fiddled with the ballpoint pen on my desk. It was easy to figure out what would have represented her accurately. A pen. She wrote her own story and she didn't ever need to use a hesitant pencil like I did. She was bold even with her illegible handwriting.

"Riley, you do realize that there are at least ten errors in just this one paragraph, right? I can barely even read the words. What on earth is this?"

She would continue to scratch hastily on her paper, barely staring at the lines. "No time to erase."

And that was her attitude with life as well. Too busy moving forward to look back on past mistakes.

I put down the slip of paper that hosted Jayce's name once again and noticed Arson stand up from the corner of my eyes.

He picked up a marker from his desk and turned to Brooklyn with a deep sigh.

"Lyn," he started and perhaps I was even more nervous than she probably was. "You're a highlighter," he said and some students burst into fits of laughter at the deadpan look on his face.

Even Mr. Andrews looked amused as we all waited for Arson to explain what he meant.

"You light up the room when you walk in." He closed his eyes and looked as though he was banging his head against some figurative wall at his own words. "You make everything brighter... better. You're full of energy and you make all my scribbled notes much clearer."

She grinned at the silly description as he sat back down, but he didn't turn to her.

"Ms. Hernandez?" Mr. Andrews called her and she stood up, searching through her pouch.

She held up a correction pen. "I think you're like a Wite-Out," she said. "You forgive easily," she added this part tentatively as to ask him if he forgave her.

He kept his eyes trained on his notebook in front of him and didn't look up.

"And it's convenient because I mess up all the time," she continued. "I make the stupidest mistakes and you don't hold them against me. That's why we are such good... friends. If you had only been an eraser, you wouldn't have been able to ignore the boldly-written in pen and all-caps mistakes I make every day."

She sat down, dejected at his expressionless face. He was still upset and I couldn't blame him.

By the time it was Matthew's turn, I already knew he had my name because of the odd stares he shot me every so often like he was analyzing me. It made me anxious. I knew Matthew would be honest. And I wasn't sure I wanted to hear it.

I heard his chair shift and squeak next to me and my heart creaked along with it, pounding with uneasy anticipation.

He turned towards me and held up the sticky notes that he had probably borrowed from a classmate because he never came to class prepared.

Not a trace of his usual humor or mischievousness was left on his face.

"I know that these have a specific meaning for you—" he said, spinning the sticky notes in his hand— "but I also thought they were convenient for a different reason."

He paused to collect his thoughts and I nervously waited for him to go on, suddenly very aware that thirty-something pairs of eyes were fixed on us.

"You like to have your entire life annotated for you with specific tips and guidelines because you don't trust yourself to find your way alone. So, it disorients you when you get to a chapter you're not familiar with. No notes. No tour guides. No shortcuts."

His eyes never left mine as he spoke. "And that's what you're going through right now, unfamiliar territories. But, you know, that's most of life. We don't really get any walk-throughs. But no worries, there's no rush. Take it one page at a time."

One page at a time.

I repeated the phrase in my mind, trying to imprint it in every corner of my brain.

Matthew fell onto his seat again and leaned against the backrest of the chair. He returned my smile and for once, it seemed to be an authentic smile, free of pretense and jokes.

It was a simple smile in an 'I know you' sort of way and it concealed nothing behind it.

Soon, it would be my turn to speak and I knew what I would say about Jayce. My hand browsed my bag and found a glue stick, hiding in between the books.

I would say that she was a much stronger glue than this one in the way she held us all together. She stuck to her friends, even the least friendly ones, and she didn't give up on them no matter what they did. She knew who they were even when they didn't seem to know themselves.

I wouldn't add that my friends all mirrored glue in my life, holding me together, picking up and uniting back the scattered pieces of me I didn't notice I lost.

I wouldn't add that they had appeared when I really needed them, that I loved them, and that I would always be grateful for them.

I wouldn't add all that because this was still a public presentation and it had gotten much too weird already. I could only guess that love confessions in the middle of class would be frowned upon.

But as I glanced at the familiar faces that stared back at me, I knew they knew.