The Difference Between You and Me(12)

The hippiemobile pulls away, heading for the side parking lot, and at the same time up the access road a figure comes loping, hunched over, hurrying. As it gets closer, Jesse can see it’s a girl. She’s wearing a shapeless navy-blue overcoat and a long black skirt that reaches halfway down her shins, and she’s carrying a big lumpy black tote bag over one shoulder. Her dark hair is braided in two rough braids, the left one substantially thicker than the right. As she runs—almost lurches—up the hill, her canvas slip-on shoes fall half off her feet with every step. Jesse recognizes her dimly from around school, but she’s never seen her up close. The girl comes to a panting stop in front of the bench, her cheeks rosy from exertion, coarse hairs flying loose from her braids, which seem somehow to be undoing themselves from their rubber bands in real time as Jesse looks at them. The girl’s eyes are cool blue in her overheated face. She doesn’t smile.

“ASP?”

Jesse nods.

“I’m Esther.”

“Jesse.”

“Is Huckle not here yet?”

“Who’s Huckle?”

The girl looks around her impatiently.

“I ran here and Huckle’s not even here yet?”

Esther blows the hair off her damp forehead, wipes the sweat off her upper lip broadly with the sleeve of her coat—somehow the gesture reminds Jesse of an old man—and sits down heavily on the bench next to Jesse, dropping her tote bag on the ground and immediately slipping her bare feet out of her black canvas shoes. The heat from her body hits Jesse in a wave. She smells sweet and clammy, like red peppers left too long in a Tupperware container.

“He’ll be here,” Esther assures Jesse, not looking at her. “He sometimes has time-management issues.”

Esther rummages in the tote bag by her feet and pulls out a thick, battered paperback book. She brings her legs up under her so she’s sitting cross-legged on the bench and tucks her skirt around them so her knees are completely covered, like a statue of the Buddha. She opens the book with her left hand and holds it right up to her face to read, chewing at the nail of her right thumb absently. As suddenly as she arrived here, she’s gone—disappeared into the book that she holds five inches away from her face. Jesse can’t help but stare at her.

Esther bites down hard on the skin at the corner of her thumbnail, gnaws at it, sucks blood out of it. Jesse blinks.

“Hey, miscreants,” calls the elf from behind them. Jesse turns to see him waving from the corner of the school building, holding a pair of rakes with his left hand. “Let’s get cracking.” He grins.

“Huckle,” Esther says, an explanation. “Our supervisor.” She snaps her book shut and shoves it down deep into her tote bag, slips back into her shoes and heads over toward the elf, leaving Jesse behind.

“It’s gravel raking again,” Huckle is saying to Esther regretfully as Jesse reaches them. “Sorry.”

“Fine by me,” Esther replies. She turns to Jesse. “They get deliveries of these big heaps of gravel out at the edges of the athletic fields and it’s our job to spread them out evenly in the ditches. To collect the rain drainage, right?” She directs the last to Huckle, who shrugs amiably.

“Do I look like I know about rain drainage or whatnot? Am I a groundskeeper of some sort?” Huckle is wearing slouchy striped Guatemalan pants under his nubbly woven poncho-hoodie. As he talks, Jesse notices that one of his front teeth is gray. “I just check y’all in and sign y’all out. All I know about gravel is that spreading it looks like no fun.”

“It’s not fun,” Esther agrees, businesslike. “But it’s meditative.”

“You’ve done this before?” Jesse asks her.

“Who, Meinz?” Huckle points at Esther. “This one? This one’s been here almost every week this year, haven’t you, Meinz?” Esther shrugs noncommittally. “Meinz is my main ASP buddy. If Meinz doesn’t come on a Saturday, I get lonely. What’re you in for this week, Meinz?”

“Protesting the mandatory spirit assembly,” says Esther.

“Hey, me too.” Jesse smiles, but Esther gives her a puzzled look.

“Really? I didn’t see you in the office.”

“Oh…” Somehow, suddenly, Jesse knows that the real story of her spirit assembly “protest” will not impress this girl. “I was, um, somewhere else,” she fumbles.

“Spirit assembly?” Huckle laughs. “Now you’re even protesting spirit assemblies? What do you have against spirit assemblies, Meinz?”

“Spirit assembly supports football. Football is a war simulation. I don’t support war in any form, real or simulated.”