Page 5 of Sending Love Letters to Animals

Jules slammed her locker shut, spun around, and slumped against the cool metal in a huff. Leisurely, I stowed the books I didn’t need to take home with me in my locker. Ms. Tabatabai’s change of structure in English after lunch had left Jules in a foul mood for the final two classes of the day. Unfortunately, we shared both classes, so, while Ms. Tabatabai had lit the fuse, I was the one who had to deal with the fireworks.

Chemistry and Spanish were lit up like the Fourth of July. My best friend grumbled and mumbled and snapped her way through another two hours of our school day like someone had stolen her winning lottery ticket. Though I wanted to sympathize with Jules for basically getting a zero on her essay—it’s hard to get anything but a zero if you don’t have anything to turn in—it was her own fault. I’d been telling her for months that she needed to start being more responsible with her weekend English essay. Ms. Tabatabai was lenient for the most part, but she was no fool. Eventually, I knew she’d get tired of watching Jules scribble away at her desk on Monday afternoons while she tried to do her lecture.

“She did that on purpose,” Jules said. “Just because I called Connor a fool. Power trip. That’s all that was.”

“Give it a rest, girl. She couldn’t have done that if you had gone ahead and done your assignment.”

“Whose side are you on?” Jules snapped.

“Yours. And Ms. Tabatabai’s. You’ve been getting away with that crap forever, so I don’t know why she decided to make an example of you. But—”

“That’s what it was! She was making an example of me! That’s…harassment or something, right? She was singling me out!”

I laughed.

“She targeted me, Ryan. That’s, like, some Geneva Convention shit.”

“I guess high school in America can be considered ‘armed conflict,’” I said, “but I don’t think the Geneva Convention will apply. You’re screwed.”

Jules slumped against her locker.

“I wouldn’t know who to contact to make a complaint anyway.”

“Any state, an international court, or The United Nations,” I said as I closed my locker. “Do you pay attention in any class?”

Jules pushed away from her locker with a groan and followed me down the hall. “Retaining stuff like that is pointless. I study the night before every test. I do fine.”

“Imagine your grades if you actually tried.”

“Get off my junk, all right? It’s only Monday.”

With a chuckle, I draped an arm over Jules’ shoulders as we walked down the hall. She reached up to hold my hand lightly.

“Just skip Journalism Geek Squad and hang out with me,” Jules said. “Defy the power, Ryan.”

“Ms. Tabatabai doesn’t need to be mad at both of us,” I said. “So don’t try to pull me into that mess with you.”

“Mess?” Jules scoffed. “I’ve never been messy in my entire life!”

The two of us side-eyed each other before bursting out in peals of laughter. As we approached the Arts hall and Jules yanked her arm free of mine, her laughter didn’t abate. She gave me a quick wave and pushed her way out one of the glass front doors of the school. Sighing, I pulled my eyes away from her disappearing form and ducked into the Arts hall. I could already hear the voices of my fellow club members drifting down from the far end of the hall as I pulled my backpack more tightly up on my shoulder and trudged along the lonely corridor.

Down in the meeting room, all of my fellow club members were acting out the mating rituals of Capuchins. So, it was a pretty standard day in the journalism meeting room. Ben Sanderson—prodigious nerd, yet self-proclaimed “ladies’ man”—was leaning over the table where Jillian Pascal was trying to ignore him while she wrote in her notebook. Barry Westbrook and Marcia Carver were minding their own business, getting a head start on their homework while we waited for Ms. Tabatabai to start our meeting. Davud Hasani was seated at the small round table at the front of the room, his nose in a book, per usual.

As was typical, I joined Davud at the front of the room and slid into the chair across the table from him. When I’d first joined Journalism Club during my freshman year, the group of students writing for The Word Around Whitemane numbered ten. Over three and a half years, as members graduated and few students showed interest in joining, our club began to shrink. Of the six of us left, Davud, Jillian, and I were all set to graduate at the end of the year. I had to wonder if the Journalism Club would manage to stay afloat while Ms. Tabatabai desperately searched for new members.

I pushed that out of my mind. It wasn’t really my business to worry about. Not that I’d hated my high school experience, but other than my friends, there wasn’t much about A.M. Whitemane that I’d miss after I walked across the stage and received my diploma.

Stowing my backpack on the floor to the side and out of the way, I extended my foot and nudged the right wheel of Davud’s chair. Like every other day, Davud had forgotten to put the brakes on his wheelchair and he rolled back from the table a few inches, his book falling from his hands to the table below. The resounding “thump” made everyone else give us a glance, but they all quickly returned their noses to their own business. Davud looked up at me, his face scrunched up in unfocused annoyance.

“Every day, Ryan?” He sighed.

“You keep forgetting the brakes, man,” I said with a grin.

Davud rolled his eyes and reached down to roll himself back up to the table before setting his brakes. Quickly, he went about finding where he’d lost his place in his book, used the front flyleaf as a bookmark, and closed the book. Lacing his arms atop the cover, he stared blankly across the table at me. I stared back.

“Well?” He asked after a few moments.

“’Well,’ what?”