Walking toward her, I felt clumsy, like the only thing bracing my bones at the joints was some old, shot elastic. If I didn’t concentrate, my forearms would fall off my elbows. If I didn’t lay my weight down in just the right way, then when I took my next step I’d leave a foot on the floor, and then the other foot so I’d be walking on my ankles, and then my shins would get left behind and I’d be on my knees, and next my thighs and I’d be on my waist, and then I would be bouncing, destroying my sack, and I wouldn’t even notice any of what happened until my shoulder-socket dropped my last piece of arm and I couldn’t put my body back together again. All I would have to defend myself would be the teeth in my head.
June touched her hair to push it behind her ears and it changed in darkness. Her hair had at least seventeen shades of red in it. The coat she was wearing to detention showed many of them off. She wore it over my hoodie. It was a long red overcoat made of wool. It had a hood of its own and five wooden pegs on leather strings that shoved through the buttonholes to close it for protection. The red of the wool was the same red as rich blonde women’s lipstick in old movies. There was nothing on June’s head that was the same color as the coat.
I sat down on the bench on the other side of the table from her. I sat forward like I would eat, instead of like a cowboy. It was hard to figure out where to put my hands and my arms; if I should put them in my lap or on the table. If I put them in my lap, they would be under the table, and if they were under the table, it would take a lot of movement to touch her hair, and also it would look pervy in the meantime. If I kept them on the table, though, then they would be between us, doing the movements my hands do when I talk, which is distracting to some people because I point a lot with my pointer finger and sometimes raise the thumb to make a harmless gun-of-flesh that I jab in the air or swing around in a fast way with snaps from the wrist when I am saying something important. I didn’t want to scare her with wild hand movements and I didn’t want to look pervy, so I balanced it out by keeping my right arm on the table and my left arm in my lap. But maybe I looked perved out and scary at the same time.
“A penumbra is a part of a shadow?” June said to me.
The lighter part, I said. On the border.
“It’s a pretty word.”
I took the half-pad of hall-passes from my pocket and set it on the table. I said, I got you these yesterday, so you can go anywhere.
June said, “I’m worried about you.”
I said, I won’t get in trouble. I’m stealth.
She said, “I know you’re stealth. I’m not worried about you getting in trouble.”
I told her, I missed you.
“And maybe you’re crazy.”
I said, I like your coat because it shows off how many different reds you are.
Her face blushed and she turned away from me, pulled her hair into a ponytail. When she turned back, she was wearing two hoods.
I said, The color of your blushing is exactly the same as the color of the freckles on your face. I was thinking that the freckles were red until I saw you in your coat. Now I know the color of your freckles and your blushing is actually a very light pink color. What’s amazing is when you blush your freckles disappear. I’ve never seen that happen before. It’s beautiful.
“No one else thinks it’s beautiful,” she said.
I told her, Everyone thinks it’s beautiful. Everyone thinks you’re beautiful.
She said, “No one ever tells me.”
No one? I said. Really?
“No one I trust,” she said.
I said, I’m telling you. I said, I think that what happened is that when you were a baby, when you knew some words but you couldn’t talk yet, you were just as gorgeous then, and everyone who saw you would say how gorgeous you were and you knew what it meant, but you couldn’t say anything because you didn’t know how to speak, and so you blushed because you knew how to do that, and you knew it meant thank you, even though you’ve forgotten now. And so one day—
June said, “Gurion,” = “Stop/Go on,” and then she smiled like she was getting tickled and she liked getting tickled but she didn’t want to like getting tickled.
I said, One day your mom took you out somewhere, like to the beach, to Oak Street Beach, and you were on a striped blanket the size of a bath-towel and it was such a hot day that half of Chicago was there and so people kept walking by you non-stop, thousands of them, and they all saw you and said how gorgeous you were and you kept blushing to say thank you, and that is how you got your freckles, because you blushed so much that the freckles got left behind permanently, like the wrinkles my father has at the sides of his eyes from squinting while he reads. It looks like he is always reading and it looks like you are always saying thank you.
“Shh.”
I said, The reason people don’t tell you how gorgeous you are without cease is that they think you can read their minds because of the way your freckles make you look like you’re always saying thank you, which is lucky for you, since I’d imagine that conversation would get old fast.
I took a breath.
“So you don’t think I can read your mind?” June said.
I said, No one can read my mind, June. Not even God. Maybe you can read my face, though, like Him. But even if I knew you could read my face, I would still tell you you’re gorgeous. Because you make me into a kind of sissy is why I tell it to you. Because I am scared not to tell you because I am scared that if I don’t tell you, it will cripple me from the inside not to tell you and I’ll become a tyrant because I am in love with you.
She said, “Stop.”
I said, And plus your hair is no less than seventeen separate shades of red.
She said, “Stop it, Gurion.” Then she took the barrel of the gun of my hand and closed it and then she closed the thumb so I had a fist and she pushed the fist down onto the table between us and turned it over so the fingernails-side was up. She undid the fingers and pressed both of her hands on top of my open one.
It was quiet and it would have been the perfect time to start trying to kiss her by touching her hair with my hand that was under the table, but I was way too nervous to reach it up. We stared at each other very hard in the eyes, but not like a staring contest, and mine got heavy in the sockets and then numb and then I was about to start crying, but June started crying first, so I didn’t. But it was not like a crying contest.