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“Asta?” Hana asked.
“Asta?” Hana asked.
“She’s a grade lower than me,” Neil
said, “A freshman this year. I don’t know if you know her.”
Mary thought about Asta but what she
could remember of her was little. A quiet girl. Never talked much. They hadn’t
had any classes together. There were rumors that she was insane; that she never
said anything because she was insane.
There were some nastier rumors about her having killed someone when she was
younger, when she was a toddler, by pushing a radio into a bathtub, but Mary
didn’t believe those rumors. They seemed quite unreasonable. “I don’t know,”
Mary said, “What about her?”
“She called me today for the first
time in forever,” he said, “And then I tried to call her back. And then a
little while after that I got a call from a psych-ohl-o-gist,” he said it
slowly for fear of mispronouncing it. “And I agreed to help with a test that
they’re planning on doing on Tuesday. But I don’t know what the test is.”
“That’s weird,” Hana said.
“Yeah, why would, get,” Mary said,
stammered, “I mean, why would you get a call from a… psycholoman?”
“He said Asta was supposed to get a
close friend to help with the test,” Neil said, “But I don’t really know if I
consider myself a close friend of Asta’s. But he said she considered me one.
And I feel strange because of it. Like maybe no one talks to her. And like,
maybe that’s why I don’t see her hanging out with people ever.”
“She doesn’t talk to anyone though,”
Hana said, “Friendships is two way Neil!”
“I know,” Neil said, “But maybe
they’d have to start conversations with her, and she’d continue them. Come to
think of it, that’s how we used to talk. I’d start the conver-say-shun, every
time. I think that’s why I haven’t talked to her in forever. Because of that.
Man. I feel awful. She hasn’t spoken to anyone in forever I guess.”
“Maybe she has friends outside of
school?” Mary asked. Mary felt poor too. She mostly felt poor because she was
sobering up, and things were more likely to make her feel poor, but she also began
to wonder if Asta could be so bad after all. Maybe, Mary thought, Asta wasn’t
crazy. She just never talked because she was shy. That seemed more likely.
“Maybe,” Neil said, “Anyway, I’m
going to text her and say, that she has me as a friend if she needs a friend.”
“Cool…” Mary said, “That is very nice of you, but, why are you
telling us this?”
“I don’t know,” Neil said. “I just
felt like I should.”
“Cool,” Hana said.
Everything wound down after that.
Neil ended up saying he’d walk home. Mary didn’t stop him. The neighborhood
they lived in was pretty safe. Neil wasn’t very afraid of running into anyone
anyway, but that was mostly because he still had liquor in him and was feeling
confident that he wouldn’t run into anyone.
He didn’t notice the girl who
followed him for a while. He would have been spooked, so it’s probably a good
thing he didn’t.
As he walked onto his lawn, he
heard, soft but distinct, as a mission succeeded. He wondered who it’d been and
then decided that maybe he didn’t care.
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