The Difference Between You and Me(48)

“Oh.”

“That’s what I got busted doing.” Jesse gestures with her thumb to Snediker’s closed door, a little swagger in the move.

“Great.” Emily nods briefly. “Thanks.”

Jesse stands there a minute in the narrow hallway, considering Emily. In some ways, this is an even more public moment for her and Emily than the student council meeting. Any second now they could be caught here alone together. What if she grabbed Emily’s hand just as Snediker was opening the door? What if she bent down to kiss Emily right as Ms. Ewing, the director of instruction, came around the corner to make a photocopy? What would Emily do? What would Jesse do? What would change in the world if this secret came out?

Tempting fate, Jesse leans in close to Emily to whisper in her ear. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”

The thrilling fruit-and-flower scent of Emily wafts over Jesse, intoxicating her. She closes her eyes and breathes deep, lets it suffuse her completely.

But Emily pulls back. “Actually… I don’t…” Her voice is so low it’s barely audible. “I don’t know if I can come this Tuesday.”

“Oh.” Jesse straightens up. “Okay. The Tuesday after, then.” But somehow she already knows what Emily’s about to say next.

“I don’t know, I feel like… I’m just so busy right now?” Emily’s whisper is regretful but vague. “The dance is taking up so much of my time, and things are so crazy in my life… I feel like I’ve been spreading myself too thin, you know?”

“No.” Jesse says this at full volume, and Emily shushes her silently, one delicate finger to her lips.

“I just…” Now Emily beckons Jesse closer. Jesse bends down mechanically. The familiar smell of her moves over Jesse again, but sharper this time, tangier, like a cleaning product. “I think maybe we should take a little break, just until things get calmer for me.”

“When will that be?”

“I don’t know, but soon.”

“Like a year from now?”

“Of course not.”

“A month from now?”

“I don’t know.”

Jesse nods. It’s too awful to keep asking questions.

“Soon, I promise.” Emily smiles at Jesse then, sweetly, encouragingly. “I’ll email you as soon as things get back to normal, and we can start up with our regular Tuesdays again.” She reaches out and runs her fingertips along the neckline of Jesse’s ringer tee.

In her chest, in her throat, Jesse’s heart burns.

From inside Snediker’s office comes a scraping noise, the sound of a chair being pushed back from a desk. Emily sits bolt upright in her seat. With the same hand that was just caressing Jesse, she pushes her firmly away.

“Please,” she begs as Jesse staggers back a step. “Go. You can’t be here when she calls me in.”





15





Esther


The first difference between Joan and other saints—girl saints anyway—is that Joan did stuff. She took action.

Most girl saints are all about waiting, enduring, sacrificing. They live for twenty years in a stone cell eating only bread and water and contemplating God through a tiny window, or they quietly take care of lepers until they themselves die of leprosy, or they get tortured by heretics and never renounce their faith even while they’re being disemboweled or whatever. Those things are awesome, I totally admire those things. Frankly, I would love to work with lepers someday. But what I love about Joan is that she did things. She made big decisions, and she made other people carry out her ideas. She didn’t wait for permission. She just acted.

Her voices told her, “Get yourself to this neighboring village and dress up like a boy soldier”? She did it. Her voices told her, “Go inform the true king of France that even though you’ve never been to battle or ridden a horse and you are a skinny seventeen-year-old girl, you are his new general”? Done. They said, “Liberate the city of Orléans, which has been under siege by the English for months and which no other armies have been able to free”? Boom: she did it. At so many moments along the way she could have been like, “Wait a second, this is a terrible idea. This is going to end in tears. I’m out.” But she never did. She never stopped taking action.

The first night Joan slept in her new armor, it was so heavy and she was so small that she woke up covered in bruises. She looked her body over, splashed her face with water, got up on her horse, and rode toward battle.

When someone in your family gets sick, really sick, you spend a ton of time waiting, doing nothing. It starts to be your main family activity. You’re always waiting in some salmon-colored vinyl chair under a fluorescent light, waiting in a line to fill out an intake form, waiting for your name to be called, waiting in the kitchen for your parents to get home, waiting a week for the results to come in. People are always telling you, “We’re waiting for this screen to come back,” or “We have to wait to schedule the next treatment until your levels go up.” Meanwhile, all the time, the clock is ticking.