Page 10 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
She smiles at me. We’re about the same height, and even in the dark, I can see the many laugh lines crinkling around her eyes.
“We’re just getting to the good part,” she says.
Chapter 5
MAGNOLIA
1998
Ellery Paige O’Shea. Even her name was enchanting. I’d never met an Ellery before, nor a Paige, and there were definitely no O’Sheas to be found in Indonesia. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m sorry, I get excited when I talk about her, and all I want to do is tell you all the things I love about my Ellery.
Anyway. She said, “Did you hear what I said?”
And I looked up and saw this blond goddess. Blue eyes. Light but not pale. Blue like the LA skies. And so tall. I think her height was what startled me most about her. She was nearly six feet tall, you know. What is that in metric? One-eighty? Izzy, you need to work on your math. Okay, anyway. She was very tall. Certainly the tallest girl I’d ever come across. And shoulders to die for. Underneath a bright red PCC Bookstore vest, she was wearing a T-shirt and it was kind of tight around her shoulders, probably because they didn’t expect women to have shoulders likethat. And her biceps, oh my. She was lean but toned in a very practical way, not the showy kind that you get from the gym, but the kind of lean muscle you’d get from chopping wood or lugging heavy boxes of books around all day. My gaze trailed down her arms—I have a thing for arms, whether it was men or women—and Ellery’s arms were the kind you wanted wrapped around your waist—am I making you uncomfortable? Fine. She was cute, that’s all I’m saying. More than cute. Okay. Moving on.
By now, I’d been staring dumbly at her for so long that she probably thought I was some kind of moron. She said, “Do you…speak English?”
It was a fair question to ask, especially since I’d just been gaping at her like a goldfish, but something about that question snapped me back to the present, and I said, “I probably speak better English than you do.”
The moment I said it, I was horrified. You should’ve figured out by now that at age sixteen, I was just about as mousy as anything. Especially around Iris. But there was something about Ellery that brought out the playfulness in me. It would take me a while longer to figure out what it was. We’ll get to that. Anyway, I didn’t remain horrified for long. Ellery’s eyebrows rose, making those blue eyes of hers widen, and she laughed. It was a low laugh, kind of like a “Heh, heh.” I’m not describing it well. That makes her sound like a witch. It was the most beautiful laugh I’d ever heard, low and comforting.
“Yeah, you probably do. I’m sorry. That was kind of a dick thing to say, wasn’t it?” she said.
I’d fulfilled my sass quota for the day and ran out of wit, so I just smiled and shrugged and mentally kicked myself.
“Do you have your class schedule with you?” she said. “I’ll get the books ready for you while you wait.”
“Oh. Yes.” I took it out of my bag and handed it to her.
Her eyes scanned the sheet. “Psych 001, Psych 021, English 001A, Chemistry 22, Calculus 005A—dang, smarty-pants.”
I smiled and shrugged again.Think of something to say, damn it!
“Okay, you’ve got Calculus in—oh, ten minutes.” She winced. “I don’t think you’re gonna get the books in time.”
My stomach sank. “Am I going to get in trouble?”
She laughed again. “Oh my god. No. It’s the first day of class after Christmas break. No one gives a shit. And anyway—” She lowered her voice and leaned close to me. I was pretty sure my heart stopped working entirely. “You shouldn’t buy the books here. They’re so overpriced. You should go to A Thousand Screaming Voices.”
“A Thousand…what?”
“The secondhand bookstore near Old Pas?”
I stared at her blankly.
“You know Old Pas, right?”
I continued staring at her blankly. God, she was going to find out that I literally arrived in this country two days ago and was the fobbiest FOB that ever fobbed. Belatedly, I said, “Uh…yeah?”
She bit down on her lower lip. It looked like she was trying hard to hold back a smile. “Really?”
“No.”
“Okay.” That low laugh again. “Right. Well, looks like you have an hour between Chemistry and Psych. If you want, I could take you there.”
I don’t want to sound like a cliché and tell you how my heart fluttered or my stomach flipped. Which they did. Nothing like this ever happened in Indonesia. Strangers didn’t offer to take other strangers they just met to secondhand bookstores. And that’s the other thing, words matter. And she didn’t say: “If you want, we could go there.” No, she said: “I could take you there.” And there’s something so sweet about that, the idea of her taking me someplace.
I managed a nod.
