Page 173 of Across His Line

On Halloween, I walked three doors down and knocked on her door at midnight because she’d ignored me in a kitchen. I didn’t think twice. I didn’t think once. And I can’t ask a girl across a hallway if she wants to watch TV.

I think about the ice. Not in a way that means anything. Just what happened. Her skate going one way and the rest of her going the other, and my hand on her elbow and my other hand flat on her waist through her coat. Her up against me, close enough that the top of her hat touched my chin.

She didn’t freeze. She went soft. She held onto my sleeve. She looked up at me. And then, after, when I let go, she went red. And I don’t know what that red was.

I know all the others. I could tell you what each one meant. That one, I don’t know.

I’m still sitting there, not knowing, when my mom calls up the stairs that dinner’s ready.

Dinner is in the small dining room, the one off the kitchen with the round table, not the long one. My mom made a roast. There’s a bowl of green beans, a basket of bread, and a dish of potatoes with the skins still on. My dad is already sitting when we come down with his reading glasses pushed up on his head and a glass of red wine.

Tessa sits where my mother points next to me. She sits down and puts her napkin in her lap and folds her hands on the edge of the table and waits. The potatoes go around. My father takes some. My mother takes some. I take some. They come to Tessa, and she holds the dish and passes it to my mother without taking any.

“Tessa,” my mom says. “Take some.”

She takes some. A small spoonful.

The beans go around. Same thing. She waits until everybody else has some before she takes hers. The bread, the same. She takes the smallest piece in the basket. I sit there and watch it, and I realize she has rules for being in other people’s houses. Rules nobody gave her, that she made up herself, somewhere. Take last. Take least. Don’t be the reason the dish runs out.

I pass her the bread basket again without saying anything. She looks at me. Then she takes another piece.

“How are you finding Woodbury, Tessa?” my dad asks. He asks it the way he asks about a quarterly report. Interested, but in a way that means he’s keeping track.

“I like it,” she says.

“Business, Rafferty said.”

Her eyes stay on his. “Yes.”

“What do you want to do with it?”

She hesitates. I watch her look at her plate and think.

“I’m figuring that out,” she says.

“Good,” my father says. “That’s what college is for. The people who walk in knowing are usually wrong.” He cuts a piece of roast. “What are you taking next semester?”

She tells him. Accounting. Macro. A marketing class. Writing.

“And sophomore year?”

“Assuming I’m there,” she says.

I look at her.

She says it easy, like it’s nothing. Like it’s something everybody already knows. She takes a bite of potato.

“Why wouldn’t you be?” my father asks, and I listen because I’m curious.

She chews. She swallows. She puts her fork down on the side of her plate.

“My scholarship was a first-year award,” she says. “It was the biggest one they had. That’s why I picked Woodbury. But it’s only for freshman year. After that, they give continuing students a different package, and it depends on GPA and what money the business school has, and they don’t tell you until January.” She picks the fork back up. “I can cover some of the difference. I’ve been saving, but not all of it.”

I don’t move.

I didn’t know that.

I didn’t know any of that. I’ve been sitting in Corvin for three months thinking about next semester, next year, the year after that, the hallway and the lounge and three doors down. Like it was a fact. Like it was just there. And she’s been sitting three doors down, the whole time, waiting for an email in January to tell her if she gets to stay.