As Selah led James to the hospital entrance, he noticed his phone screen lighting up. It was a message from Dave in the main group chat consisting of James, Carter, Andrew, Dave, and Gary.
Jimmy Neutron! Dave said, using the nickname he came up with ever since James started taking Calculus. Before James could roll his eyes, Dave said, we’re at the school gym, wya??
James tried to think up a lie. What would he be doing on a Wednesday after school? Sorry, I got a doctor’s appointment. He was technically at a hospital anyway.
You don’t hang out w/ us anymore, Andrew said, followed by a sad-face emoji.
James grimaced as he came to a stop at the front desk with Selah. Was it bad to admit he enjoyed spending time with Selah more than with the guys? There was no way he’d ever tell them that, though.
Can you hang out tomorrow? Gary asked.
James remembered needing to study for the Calculus test on Friday, so he said, Yeah but just a little cuz I gotta start studying for a test on Fri. They didn’t need to know he’d been studying since Tuesday.
An elbow nudged his arm, and he looked to his right to see Selah gesturing toward the entrance. Putting his phone into his pocket, he said, “Why are we leaving?”
“Harper just finished chemo, so they moved her back to the nursing home across the street.” They made it to the sidewalk.
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “You volunteer at the hospital and the nursing home? And you’re friends with all the patients?”
“Well, most of the time I’m at the hospital, but I do switch between them. And yeah I talk to the patients, but I’m closest to Harper.”
“And she literally asked you to be with her?”
Selah looked confused. “Yes? What’s wrong with that?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just...you’re so nice.” She was probably the nicest person he’d ever known.
With the late-afternoon sun shining on her now flushed skin, she said, “You mean I’m being Princess Selah when I volunteer for old people?”
“No, you’re Princess Selah when you rescue animals. Like that chipmunk you saved last week.”
“It was a squirrel. And I didn’t save it. I got its foot out of that plastic cap, and two minutes later it got run over.” Selah had felt sad for the rest of the day and James treated her to ice cream to make her feel better. “So no, I didn’t save it.”
He cracked up. “As your animal sidekick, sorry I’m making a big deal out of your good deeds to squirrels.”
Smiling, she shook her head.
Then he noticed the street was void of cars, and he didn’t feel like waiting for the light at the crosswalk. “Let’s make a run for it,” he said.
“What? No!” she exclaimed. “Just use the crosswalk. Look, there’s a car coming right now!”
“Because you didn’t run when I said to.” Lifting his shoulders with his dramatic sigh, he went to the crosswalk and pushed the button while she followed. “You’re no fun.”
“‘Cause I don’t wanna get run over.” She rolled her eyes.
He smiled. “Admit it, you like it when I make you do stuff like that.”
“I don’t always follow through.” But she smiled. The rate of his heartbeats increased at the corners of her lips lifting and her long wavy hair flowing with the wind.
A few minutes later, they crossed the street and entered the nursing home. He followed her like a lost puppy as she greeted some nurses and punched in a code to enter one wing of the building. After they walked down a few hallways, she came to a stop at one room.
It had two patients in beds with a curtain separating them. Selah walked to the patient closer to the window, who he assumed was Harper. Streaks of sunlight shone on her pale scalp and small blue eyes that lifted to Selah approaching her. One moment the old woman was hunched over and miserable, then the next moment she was relaxing her shoulders and smiling at Selah.
Now that James thought about it, Selah did have a way with making the people around her feel better.
“Selah!” Harper said, holding out her arms.
Selah leaned in for a hug. “How are you feeling? How was chemo?”
“It’s tiring, but I’m still living. And they’re still sticking these awful things in me.” She gestured to her arms with needles connected to some machines. “They’re gonna take me back to the hospital over the weekend.” She let out a long sigh.
“Have you had dinner yet?” Selah asked as she glanced at the alarm clock on a cabinet next to the heart rate monitor.
Harper shook her head. When Selah disappeared to get the food, James felt the old woman’s burning gaze.
“And what’s your name?” she asked, holding out a hand.
He stepped forward to shake it. “James. I’m Selah’s friend.”
“Just her friend?”
He gripped his elbows and started to sweat. “Yeah.”
Crossing her arms, she said, “I would’ve pegged you two as a couple! You look so adorable with her!”
His cheeks burned up. She probably thought that because they were both Asian, yet he was glad there was someone who thought they could be a thing.
“Now tell me,” she said, looking around as if someone was watching when there was just her sleeping roommate. “Do you like her?”
He froze. “How did you know?” he blurted out before he could keep the words in.
She clapped twice. “I knew it!” When she noticed his shocked expression, she laughed. “You think I’d believe that a bad-looking boy like you wants to volunteer at a nursing home? If anything, you’re here for this girl.” She winked, and he faked a smile while feeling clueless as to what to say. “Have you told her?” she asked after chuckling.
He shook his head. “Can you not tell her yet?”
“Don’t worry darling, I won’t tell her. And what’s holding you back?”
There were plenty of reasons why, but with Selah about to come in at any moment, he decided to say, “It’s complicated.”
“Ah, well, you’re better off telling her before it’s too late. I’ve had my fair share of ‘what if’s my whole life.”
He was simply speechless. Yet, despite feeling painfully awkward by the woman’s words, he could see why Selah was close friends with a cancer patient whose spirit was infectious.
Before he or Harper could say anything else, Selah walked in with a tray of unappetizing hospital food. James awkwardly leaned back against a wall as Selah pulled out a table spanning across the bed and put the tray in front of Harper. They talked about Selah taking her parents to a hiking trail this weekend, but as Harper started talking about her grandkids, James stared off into space and thought back to what Harper had said.
Almost every day since the Grease movie night, he hurt too much from being just a friend to Selah. But after hearing all of her depressing stories and knowing she was inexperienced with romance, he didn’t want to scare her away. He would’ve rather kept what they had now, though it still pained him to not be able to kiss her or hold her.
Harper was right; he did need to tell Selah. He just didn’t know when. A part of him was afraid it could take even years, as she was the type of girl to need all that time.
As the sun started to set, Selah stood up. “James and I have to go study for a Calculus test. I’ll see you next week.”
“Alright, good luck on your test!” Harper said. When Selah turned away, Harper winked at James. He instinctively smiled and waved her goodbye.
The test turned out to be harder than he’d expected, but he surmised that he got at least a C. People that finished early had to stay in their seats quietly, and since James finished five minutes before the end of class, he packed up and stared into space, occasionally glancing at Selah’s direction. She tended to be one of the last to finish.
The bell rang while a few people, including Selah, were still writing. He felt glad he wasn’t the only one thinking the test was hard. As she stood up to turn in the test, she gave him a grim look and he couldn’t help but chuckle. He took out his phone to pass the time while she returned to her seat and packed up.
“So that was bad,” she said.
“The extra credit question though! I was like, fu--I mean...I just totally gave up on it.” James rarely cussed around Selah, and when he did, he caught himself way too late. It just felt awkward to cuss around someone that never did. Or he just thought Selah didn’t deserve to be tainted by his crassness.
She laughed at him, as she did every time he slipped up. “Maybe the curve’ll save us.”
“I'm just glad we're done.” Then he got a random idea. “You know what we should do to celebrate?”
“What?”
“I heard about this new pho restaurant. Wanna try it with me after school?”
Her eyes widened. “Sure, I love pho! We could take my car.”
He almost let out a breath in exasperation at her constant offer to lend her car when going out. Any other time he would’ve instead offered his car that he shared with Dad, but Dad needed it for all of today. So James said, “Okay. But I’m paying for gas.”
“I don’t think it matters--”
“It does to me,” he said, trying to not sound too harsh. “And the place is kinda far anyway.”
He expected her to look surprised by his outburst, but instead she smiled. “I can’t wait.”
His heart thudded faster at her smile, but like always, he had to ignore what it meant.
For the rest of the school day he managed to ignore his fast heartbeats from thinking about seeing Selah again. And when he stood near the parking lot after Physics, his last class, he smiled at her emerging from the English building.
Since he knew where the pho restaurant was, he took the wheel of her Volvo as she stared out the passenger window. The radio station switched to a slow-moving pop song.
With her right elbow on the door, she rubbed her eyes with her hand and yawned. “I’m so tired. I stayed up super late just to study.”
He sighed. “Same.”
“I’m not getting enough sleep as it is with all the night--” She stopped before finishing, her eyes still glued to the window.
James came to a stop at a red light as he finished her sentence in his head. “You mean nightmares?”
She bit her lip, which was usually not a good sign.
Knowing she might change the conversation, he said, “How often do you have nightmares?”
A painfully long silence followed, but he was willing to stand it as long as she was willing to be honest with him. Then she said, “Usually once a week.”
“Oh,” he breathed, his eyes widening at the road. “That’s...a lot.”
“Sort of. I mean, I’m used to it. When I can’t sleep I just sit in the balcony and watch YouTube videos. Then I do that breathing technique and some stretches. You know, like the ones I showed you that one night when I was at your house.” She smiled at the same time he did.
He remembered that night so clearly that it could’ve happened yesterday. But he also realized that when he texted her at the time he hadn’t expected her to be up so late. He gulped as a new realization hit him. “Did you have a nightmare that night?”
He glanced over at her when she nodded.
After another moment of silence, he figured he was better off changing the subject, but she said suddenly, “It’s always the same nightmares. Like when I O.D.’d in my bathroom. And when I was with my first adoptive mom. Amelia Wallace.” She stared ahead of her, seeming lost in thought. “She seemed like the perfect mom, but she made me wear all these baby clothes and she was mean like my real dad.” She shuddered, and James immediately felt bad. She looked out the passenger window again. “She made me start cutting,” she whispered.
Selah didn’t say anything else after that, and he decided it was definitely time to drop the subject. While he appreciated her opening up, he also knew it was extremely nosy and demanding to keep asking her about herself. He just wished she talked about herself more, including parts of her life he was completely unaware of.
She was far from perfect, and while that would’ve been a turnoff to some people, it didn’t stop him from feeling the way he did about her. And the fact that his feelings kept getting stronger with each passing day continued to shock him.
He didn’t want to shock her just as well. In the meantime of waiting to tell her, he just had to impress her, even though nothing about him could.
There was also the fact that he needed to tell her the bullshit he pulled on her parents shortly after she left for homeschool. And after all this time, Paige was still loyal enough to not disclose to Selah his rumor in middle school about sleeping with Paige when he never did.
He could never impress Selah, even if he used every fiber of his being.
After he pulled up in the parking lot next to the restaurant, they entered the building to meet a lanky Asian guy that took them to a table next to a window. In the entire time they gave their orders to a young woman with a thick Vietnamese accent, James still felt awkward about the conversation in the car.
When the waitress left, Selah said, “She’s so nice. I wanna pay for her tip.”
He smiled, having already expected her to say that. “How much?”
“Maybe ten percent.”
“You know, we could split the tip.”
Selah seemed to think, then she took out her phone to use the calculator. “So our orders add up to sixteen...so if we split ten percent, this is how much each of us pays for tip.” She showed a number that was bigger than he’d expected.
“You sure?”
“I think.” She redid the calculation and got the same number. “I double-checked and everything.”
“We need a pen and paper for this,” he said as he waved at their waitress standing near the kitchen.
Selah scoffed yet smiled as the waitress arrived at their table and he asked for a pen and paper.
When the waitress left, Selah shrugged and said, “I don’t know, maybe you’re right. I’m honestly done with math after that test.”
“If I’m wrong, I wouldn’t be surprised,” he confessed. “Sometimes I can’t do the easy maths, and I’m taking Calculus.”
The waitress came back with a pen and paper, and Selah wrote down a few calculations. At one point, she made a quick, random scribble, making her release a breath in irritation. She moved the pen next to the scribble to start over. He was used to seeing that when she wrote, but he figured he’d ask her about it after she was done calculating.
When she finished and showed it to him, he checked over her work and realized she was right. “Oh, I thought the number was too big,” he admitted sheepishly. “See? I’m taking Calculus and I can’t do the easy maths.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Even I forget how to do the easy stuff sometimes.”
He was about to exaggerate how he was worse than her at math in general, but as she pushed aside the pen and paper, he remembered her random scribbling. “By the way,” he said, taking the paper back and pointing at the scribble, “you do this a lot. Why?”
He didn’t like how nosy he sounded and was about to explain he was just genuinely curious, but she surprised him when she laughed.
“I was actually wondering when you were gonna ask me that,” she said.
He smiled, feeling less awkward. “Really?”
The waitress came back with two glasses of water. After sipping from her cup, Selah said, “After my overdose I had problems with writing and drawing, so I had to relearn everything. My writing’s back to normal but I get muscle spasms in my hand sometimes.” Stretching her hand out above the table, she shrugged.
“Oh.” He never thought a drug overdose would have lasting effects like that, but with all the times he’d spent with Selah, he kept learning more and more interesting things about her. She went back to sipping water and looked at her phone. At least she didn’t seem uncomfortable about what she just told him.
The mood went back to normal when they got their bowls of pho, and he would be lying if he said he didn’t instantly salivate at the smell of beef broth and spices.
After twenty minutes of just eating and talking about random things, James looked outside to see the late-afternoon sun blocked by a building. Then he got a random idea. “Let’s go to the beach!”
She almost spit out the noodles in her mouth as she cracked up. After she wiped her mouth with a napkin, she said, “Sorry, that was just so random.”
“You down?”
She nodded and smiled.
With the way the sun shined on her long, dark hair and chocolate brown eyes, he was close to just staring at her until it got awkward. But his phone on the table made a buzzing sound, and he leaned over to see a Facebook message from Gary that said, Dude you disappeared after Physics! Where did you go?
James came up with a lie and texted, I just went home.
Can you go to the gym with me?
James froze. He thought Gary was just wondering where he was, but apparently he was free to hang out today. Maybe Dave was starting to get extra serious with Abby, who was some girl James barely knew. James made a face, but then he regretted doing that when Selah’s eyes were on him. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
He leaned back in his chair. “Oh, it’s just Gary. He wants me to go to the gym with him.”
“You should go if you want to.” She sipped a spoonful of soup.
“Are you sure you don’t wanna hit the beach?”
Seeming to think, she said, “The three of us could go to the gym.”
“You sure?” he asked, feeling stuck in the conflicting pile of shit he put himself into. He’d never invited Selah to hang out with any of his friends. It was like bringing together completely different people, and most of the time he lied to his friends about where he was anyway.
Then the phone buzzed with another message from Gary. Please? I’m bored…
“What did he say?” she asked.
“He said he’s bored.”
“Aw, come on. He can hang out with us. And I’ll just ask Paige for her membership card. She’s always telling me to buy a membership.” She smiled.
He let out a long breath. “Okay.” He texted Gary, Sure, but I’m not getting there till an hour from now.
Ok!
After he put away his phone, he started eating fast. “Sorry but we have to get there in an hour. I told him I’m at home, so he’ll be sus if I get there a lot later.”
“Oh.” She drank some water, probably feeling awkward about the reminder that he was living some kind of double life. The bulk of his time with Selah had to revolve around Calculus, and he already got shit from Dave by being called “Jimmy Neutron.”
As the pair stood up to leave, James mentally braced himself for the ultimate moment when one of his friends would see how hard he’d fallen for a girl they least expected. But at least it was just Gary, who was the nicest out of all of them.
He could keep this between just the three of them, right?
ns 18.68.41.137da2
