014 | Six Months
934 Words
They came down fast.
Hana led them through the side stairwell and down two floors and out through the back corridor that came out near the administrative offices. She stopped them at the corner and peered around it.
"There," she said quietly.
Sora was standing outside the vice principal's door. Not inside, just outside, talking to one of the school counselors in a low voice that didn't carry to where they were standing. The counselor was nodding, writing something down.
"What is he doing," Nora said.
"I don't know. I saw him go in there after he talked to you and I followed him." Hana looked at her. "What did he say to you? In the corridor?"
Nora told her. Both of them. The rate thing, the timeline, the doctor.
Hana's face did several things in quick succession. She landed on something that was controlled and careful.
"Okay," Hana said. "Okay. We deal with one thing at a time." She looked at Sora and the counselor. "Do you want me to find out what he's saying?"
"No," Nora said. "Leave it. Whatever he's doing it's not my problem right now."
"Are you sure?"
"I have bigger things to deal with."
Hana nodded. She reached out and squeezed Nora's arm once, brief, and then let go because Hana understood that Nora didn't always want to be held, sometimes she just needed someone to acknowledge something without making it into a production.
They walked away from the administrative corridor and found an empty classroom down the hall, the kind that wasn't used until afternoon, and went inside and Nora sat on a desk and Caiden leaned against the wall and Hana sat in a chair and they stayed there for a while just existing in the same space.
"Six months," Hana said eventually.
"Yeah."
"And the rate thing."
"Yeah."
Hana looked at her hands for a moment. "How are you actually doing. Not the managed version. Actually."
Nora thought about it.
"I'm okay," she said. "I'm genuinely okay right now. Ask me again in an hour, it might be different." She paused. "I think the thing I'm most upset about is that I had the wrong number. That every morning for six weeks I've been reading one year and making decisions based on that and it was wrong."
"That's a reasonable thing to be upset about," Caiden said.
"I know. But it's also not fixable. I can update the journal tonight and from tomorrow it'll be right. So." She exhaled. "Forward."
Hana looked at her. "You're better at this than you should have to be."
"I've had practice."
"I know. I just." Hana stopped. "I hate that you've had practice."
Nora looked at her. At Hana's face doing the thing it always did, the not-quite-sad not-quite-fine thing that she'd written about enough times to recognize it from the inside now.
"I know," Nora said. "Me too."
They sat in the empty classroom until the next period bell rang and then they went to their respective classes and Nora sat in her seat and took notes in the careful deliberate way she always did and tried to write everything down that felt important because she had six months and a rate that was accelerating and every day that she could write clearly and fluently was a day she needed to use well.
After school Caiden walked with her to the gate.
They didn't talk much. He was beside her and that was enough.
At the gate she stopped.
"I need to go home and talk to my mom," she said.
"I know."
"And then I need to write tonight. A lot."
"I know."
She looked at him. "The thing we were going to talk about. What the arrangement is."
"Yeah."
"I want to talk about it soon," she said. "Not tonight. But soon."
"Okay."
She started to turn toward the station and then stopped.
"Caiden."
"Yeah."
"When you're walking home tonight," she said. "And it's quiet. And you're thinking about all of this." She paused. "Is it too much? Be honest."
He looked at her for a long moment.
"No," he said. And it wasn't the kind of no that was just trying to reassure her. It was the flat even kind that meant he'd actually considered the question.
She nodded.
She walked to the station and on the train she wrote three pages of notes in her regular notebook, not the journal, just raw notes, everything she needed to transfer into the journal tonight in the right order. The appointment. The rate. The conversation with her mom she hadn't had yet. The roof. The empty classroom. Caiden saying no in the flat even way that meant he meant it.
She was so busy writing that she almost missed her stop.
She caught herself at the last second, grabbed her bag, got off.
Walked home in the early evening and pushed open the front door and her mom was in the kitchen.
They looked at each other.
"Sit down," her mom said quietly. "I'll make tea."
Nora sat down.
And her mom put the kettle on and came to the table and before she could say anything Nora said, "Tell me everything. From the appointment. All of it. I need to write it down right."
Her mom sat down across from her.
And told her.
All of it.
And halfway through, Nora's phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number that she almost didn't read until she saw the name at the end of it.
This is Ren Yoo. Caiden's mom. I think we should meet.
- Writer
