Katie is mad at me. I am sure of it this time. I am sure that Katie is mad at me because she did not stop at my locker this morning even though I saw her walk into the building with Jane and eat her cream cheese raisin bagel with Jane outside the art room and pretend not to see me when I crossed the courtyard to get to my locker—which had no Katie waiting at it—because Katie was talking with Jane by the art room with her cream cheese raisin bagel. I do not like cream cheese raisin bagels. I do like Katie. Katie blows her nose at the front of the classroom during quiet hour and knows the middle names of fourteen prime ministers and rescues mice from her stepdad’s glue traps. Katie is the closest thing I know to a saint, and I tell her so, not often but sometimes, in her trundle bed on Friday nights, both of us tuckered from soccer practice, red with sunburn and sharing nerds rope like the spaghetti dogs from Lady and the Tramp. The two dogs kiss at the end, but Katie and I don’t. Instead we keep our noses about a half an inch apart. We look at each other with watery wide eyes until I feel like I’m about ready to pass out. When I tell her I’m tired, she huffs and turns away. I can’t explain it, and neither can Katie, but maybe Jane can, Jane who is standing about a kiss apart from Katie by the art room with a little bit of cream cheese on her lip.
Katie and Jane
