Page 10 of Talk to Me

I replied with a thumb’s up emoji.

Thinking that was the end of the conversation, I was about to slide my phone into my pocket once again, when my phone began jingling at me. Collin’s face appeared on the screen and I saw that he was trying to video chat me. With a sigh, I accepted the call and held the phone up level to my face to greet him.

“Why would she send all that crap?” Collin squawked through the phone. “She knows I try to eat healthy now!”

Knowing Collin’s history from late-night chats over the last two school years, I couldn’t say I exactly blamed him for his response. He’d grown up a chubby gay kid. If he wasn’t being bullied for his weight, he was being bullied for being gay. I could see how the box of calorie-dense snack foods could be triggering. However, also knowing the mentality of mothers, I had to assume his own was simply trying to send some comfort from home. No ill will intended.

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “She’s just trying to be nice, I guess?”

“Ugh! She does this every year!”

“And every year you end up eating some of it and nothing bad happens and then you realize she loves you and misses you,” I said. “Let’s not have another meltdown for the third year in a row, okay? Just accept the kind gesture in the spirit in which it was intended or I’m going to wipe my ass on your pillow. Okay?”

Collin cackled and I smiled at him.

“Fine. Just fine.” Collin smiled back. “I’ll shut up. How was American Lit?”

“Oh?” I plopped down on his bed next to the box. “You have time to care about my life, do you?”

He rolled his eyes and said nothing. Behind him on his screen I saw band posters and some embroidered wall hanging in a darkened room. Obviously, he was hanging out at Dylan’s place. Wherever that place happened to be on campus. Or off-campus. It occurred to me that Collin could have been in a sex offender’s dungeon and I’d be none the wiser.

“Drop me your location when you get a chance,” I said.

He laughed. “Yes, father!”

“I mean it,” I said, then continued before he could say something else smart. “It was fine. American Lit. We didn’t really do much. First week, ya’ know?”

“Mm. I’m glad I got that out of the way freshman year. Boring.”

“Yeah.” I agreed. “I don’t think it’s going to be a life-changing experience. But I get to read and talk about books, so it’ll be one of the funner classes.”

“More fun!”

“Funner,” I said. “Look it up. It’s an informal comparative adjective but not grammatically incorrect. Merriam-Webster says—”

Collin was rolling his eyes again, so I changed course.

“Oh,” I said, “that Theo guy is in that class with me, too.”

My friend was suddenly sitting up straight, giving me his full attention on the other end of the video chat.

“I thought that would interest you,” I said with a laugh. “He sat at my table with me. Probably because he was the last one into class and it was the last seat left.”

“Last seat because you’re a studious geek and no one wanted to be seen with you.”

I ignored his jab.

“Anyway,” I said dismissively, “that’s something to report.”

“Did he talk to you? Was he a total asshole or what?”

“No,” I said. “He didn’t talk to me.”

That was the truth. Theo hadn’t said a word to me.

“I said ‘hello’ or whatever, but he didn’t seem interested in making new friends,” I said, laughing again, amused at the memory. “He seemed standoffish. But I didn’t have the most thorough shower this morning, so that might have had something to do with it.”

Collin chuckled, but his brow was furrowed.