“So. School starts tomorrow. Are you ready?” Lisa sat in Ben’s bedroom, on his bed, and kicked her heels back and forth while he sat at his desk in front of his computer and read through her latest opus.
“Uh-huh. Yeah.” He answered so absently that she almost asked again. But then he pointed to a backpack leaning up against the wall. It was stuffed so full the zipper wouldn’t close. It was like a gaping reminder of the hateful responsibility foisted on incorrigible students at summer’s end.
“Can I look?” She hopped off the bed.
“Yeah. Sure. This part where the girl squishes the alien doesn’t work.” He pointed at the computer screen.
“I thought you’d like that part.” Normally she’d have been leaning over his shoulder, pointing and arguing. Today, she was more interested in his school schedule. She dipped a finger into his gaping backpack.
“I think it’s that thing Mrs. Audrey said about emotional arcs and all? It seems too easy. I mean, the girl does everything right. I wouldn’t change any of this dialogue. But… make it more… um… smooth?”
“Smooth?” Lisa paused with her fingers half way through ticking off all the blank, shiny new spiral bound notebooks and tried to get her head into her own story. “Oh, I get you. Like I need more detail about how she does the killing.”
“Right. Right. And like how she feels about it and all.”
“Got it. I’ll fix it later.” She’d found his schedule and pulled it out. “Mrs. H. must think you’re going to take a lot of notes. She put in like twenty mechanical pencils in here.”
“Oh. Right. I should take some out. It’s for the whole year.” He left his desk.
English, Algebra I, Recent History, PE, French, and Line Art.
“Oh, good. We have four classes together! I was afraid we wouldn’t have any.” Lisa put the paper down with a sigh of relief.
“You mean they aren’t all together?” Ben took the sheet in hand with a concerned wrinkle to his brow. “I mean, I knew we wouldn’t have PE, but….”
“You have no idea how lucky we are. The school is huge! The graduating class is around a thousand, you know. There are probably lots of Algebra I classes, and I didn’t even sign up for Art at all. I’m taking Digital Media instead.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess you did say something about that.”
“The main thing is that we get the same lunch shift. So we can always have lunch together.”
“Right!” Ben looked as much relieved as glad.
“Were you even thinking about any of this when you signed up for classes?”
“No. I… That was weeks ago. I wasn’t thinking. I guess I thought it would all work out the way it did in middle school.”
“It’s a bigger school. Five times as big. If we’re going to be a couple still, we’re going to have to work at it.”
Ben nodded, his expression far more solemn. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”
“Well,” She put his schedule back into his pack and zipped it closed. “We still have a few days. What I need right now is your help with the music video for Malaprop. Got any more story ideas you’d be willing to let me use?”
“Yeah! Lots!”
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