Break the Shell

The bell rang at St. Ignatius Academy, which was called an Academy because the state required a fancy name for grant purposes, and if you did not have the fancy name, you did not get the grant money, and if you did not get the grant money, the roof leaked and the heating did not work and the textbooks were from twenty twelve and smelled like a basement that had given up.

Jules Harper walked into Mr. Kowalski's third-period English and took a seat in the middle row because the front was taken by kids who cared and the back was taken by kids who did not pretend to care, and the middle was where Jules went, because Jules did not do front or back. She did middle. She did existing in the space between wanting and not wanting.

She opened her notebook. The pages were from a different notebook, torn and stapled unevenly, with someone else's handwriting on the first page that she had not erased yet because erasing felt like work and work was something you did when you had energy and Jules had neither energy nor reasons to have energy.

Leo Martinez was three seats over and two rows back. She noticed him the way you notice a fire exit - not because you are interested but because you are assessing options, and the only option available was sitting through fifty minutes of Mr. Kowalski talking about The Great Gatsby in a voice that suggested he had talked about The Great Gatsby many times before and was tired of the sound of his own voice saying Daisy Buchanan.

He was reading something during free reading time. A real book. Paper, dog-eared, spine cracked. Jules read too, but mostly textbooks and the backs of cereal boxes when there was nothing else, and sometimes the labels on the shampoo bottles in her grandmother's shower because reading anything was better than not reading anything, and not reading anything was what you did when you were thirteen and bored and had no phone and no car and no plan.

Mr. Kowalski announced they were doing paired reading responses. Half the class groaned. Jules did not groan. She was used to being paired with whoever was left.

He called out names. Jules Harper. Leo Martinez.

Jules looked up. Leo looked up. Neither of them said anything about it. That was the first thing Jules noticed about Leo - he did not announce things. He did not make things into things. If something happened, it happened, and he dealt with it the way you deal with weather: by noticing it and moving accordingly and not pretending it was personal.

Tasha, walking to fourth period, said: Kowalski paired you with Martinez? Must be karma. You stole his parking spot in a past life or something.

I don't have a car, Jules said.

Then you stole his good fortune. That is worse.

They paired for two weeks. Two weeks of sitting in the library during the assigned pair time, where the library had two functional computers and a carpet that had absorbed every spill that had ever happened in this building and probably some spills that had not happened here but had traveled, because liquids have ambitions.

Leo read fast. Jules could tell because she watched his face the way you watch someone solving a problem in their head, which was a habit she had developed from watching her mother solve problems in her head at the diner, like how to make two dollars of ingredients become three plates of food without anyone noticing that the portions had gotten smaller.

You are reading the annotations too, Jules said.

They are useful, Leo said.

Annotations on a novel? Who has time for that?

You do, if you are trying to understand why the author thinks a semicolon is more interesting than a period.

She laughed. Not a nice laugh. A real one, which is rarer. Real laughter is a form of surrender. It means you have stopped performing and just let the sound out.

They talked about the book. Gatsby. Daisy. The green light. The way the book is about wanting something that is already gone and calling it hope because hope is the word you give to wanting when you want to sound brave about it.

After two weeks of pairing, Jules knew things about Leo that nobody else knew: he ate lunch alone not because he was weird (though he was) but because the cafeteria noise gave him a headache, which was a specific kind of torture that involved every chair scraping against the floor at once and twenty people shouting over each other and the microwave beeping like it was calling for help; he was the best reader in the class but never raised his hand because talking made it worse, which was something he did not say out loud but which Jules figured out by watching the way his jaw tightened when Mr. Kowalski called on him and he had to stand up and speak in front of everyone; his mother worked at the hospital and came home smelling like bleach and exhaustion, which was a combination that existed in nature and was as specific as any perfume.

She did not tell any of this back to him. She told Tasha. Tasha said: You are telling me everything. That is basically confessional.

I am not confessing. I am processing.

Same thing.

A kid in their homeroom - quiet, always wore the same gray hoodie, sat by the window and watched the parking lot the way other people watched television - asked Jules to give something to Leo. It was a pencil. A good pencil. Mechanical, aluminum body, the kind Jules had seen him looking at at the dollar store three weeks ago, standing in front of the pencil rack for longer than was necessary, which is how you know someone wants something that costs more than a dollar even when they do not have the dollars.

Tell him I have too many of these, the kid said.

Jules took the pencil. Held it. Looked at Leo across the room, who was drawing something in the margin of his notebook - a bird, maybe, or a plane, something with wings that could carry it somewhere the heating did not work and the textbooks smelled like a basement.

She walked over. Set the pencil on his desk. Someone said you have too many of these.

Leo looked at the pencil. Looked at her. Picked it up. Tested the weight. Nodded once.

Thanks, he said. And meant it in a way that had nothing to do with the pencil.

She went back to her seat. Tasha whispered: Was that a thing?

It was a pencil.

Same thing.

Fitness Day. The school called it Wellness Wednesday now because the state changed the language but not the reality. The principal read from a script over a speaker system that had not worked properly since twenty nineteen, which meant the script was audible in patches, like a radio tuned between stations, and what you heard was more mysterious than what you would have heard if it had worked.

The event was a mile run. Everyone ran because participation is its own reward and also because not running meant sitting in the gym watching a DVD about nutrition that everybody had seen ten times and which featured a boy who chose broccoli over candy and then became a doctor, which was the kind of causality that only existed in school assemblies.

Jules ran because it was easier than explaining why she was not running. Explaining required words and words required energy and Jules did not have energy to spare.

The whistle blew. Nobody blew it actually - the principal pressed a button on a remote and a digital sound came over the speakers that sounded like a duck being stepped on, but everyone ran anyway, which was the point, because the point was not the sound. The point was that you heard a sound and your body moved before your brain could decide whether it was a real whistle or not, and that was what education was, if you thought about it sideways.

Jules ran. She was not fast. She was not slow. She was just a body moving forward on a track that had cracks in it, cracks that had been there since the pavement was poured and nobody had bothered to fix because why fix something that only hurt people who were already trying too hard.

Half a mile in, her foot caught on a crack. She went down. Not dramatically. Just gravity and bad asphalt doing what they had been planning to do since the pavement was poured.

Her knee hit first. Then her hand. Then her shoulder rolled and something in her ankle said no, we are done here.

She lay on the track for a second. The asphalt was warm. This was the most comfortable she had been all day.

Leo knelt beside her. He was not running. He never ran. He stood at the edge of the track with his hands in his pockets and watched everyone else perform wellness, which was his default position at school events - perform, but from the edge, not the center.

You okay? he asked.

No, she said. And meant more than her ankle.

He helped her up. She leaned on him. He did not make a thing out of it. That was the thing about Leo - he did not make things into things. If you fell, he helped you up. If you were bleeding, he found a tissue. If you were not okay, he did not ask why. He just did the next thing.

They walked to the gym. The DVD about nutrition was playing. It was about a boy who chose broccoli and became a doctor. Nobody was watching the DVD. Nobody ever watched the DVD. It played because it had to play, the way the heating had to heat even when it did not heat, the way the bell had to ring even when nobody was listening.

Leo sat beside her on the bleachers. Did not talk. Just sat. His shoulder was against the bleacher metal and it made a sound every time he breathed - thin, metallic, rhythmic, the sound of a boy who existed in a building that was falling apart and had decided that was just how things were.

Later, Tasha said: That was actually really sweet. Which is annoying, because I was prepared for it not to be.

It was not sweet, Jules said.

Then what was it?

Jules thought about it. He sat with me. That is all. He did not try to fix it. He did not make it into something it was not.

That is called kindness, Tasha said.

It is called not being a complete asshole, Jules said.

Same thing, different vocabulary.

A week later, Jules got home to find the apartment dark. Her grandmother was in her chair by the window, which was where she sat most afternoons, staring at nothing or everything - the difference depended on the day and on whether the dementia was being generous or cruel that particular afternoon.

The heat was not working. Jules knew this the way she knew other things - by testing the vent and feeling nothing but cold air and the smell of metal that had not carried warmth in months. The landlord had said he would send someone. He had said this three times. Each time, someone did not come.

She called the heating company. Held. Held more. Got transferred to someone who said they would send someone within the next forty-eight business hours, which was the kind of answer that meant nothing and everything at the same time, like a doctor telling you that the test results were pending when pending is just a word for we looked at your blood and we do not know what it means yet and we will call you when we do.

Jules hung up. Went to the kitchen. Made toast. Sat at the table where her father used to sit and ate two slices because hunger is a language she was fluent in and she did not need a translator.

There was a knock at the door. She opened it.

Leo was there. He would not know where she lived except that Tasha told him, and Tasha told things the way she told everything - directly, without preparation, like dropping something off a cliff to see if it flew.

Your heat? he said.

What about it?

He held up a box. A thermostat. Digital, programmable, the kind that cost more than Jules weekly grocery budget.

My dad has a contractor friend, he said. He had this left over from remodeling. It fits the system in your building. I think.

Why are you giving me this?

Because when you were on the track, you said no and you meant everything. And I do not think you get to hear no that honestly very often. So when I see you going home to a cold apartment, I can not just walk past it.

That was not an answer.

He considered this. What you just said was not an answer. What I just said was an answer. They are different things. One is a sentence. The other is an attempt at honesty.

Jules looked at him. Really looked at him. She had seen him a hundred times in Mr. Kowalski's class. But this was the first time she had seen him, which was different from seeing him in the way that eyes see faces and bodies and desks and windows. This was seeing him the way you see something when you stop performing the act of seeing and just let it happen.

Come in, she said. And meant it for a different reason than the thermostat.

The apartment was cold. Not dramatically cold. Just cold in the way that cold becomes when it has been present for so long that you forget it is there until someone points it out and you realize that yes, this is cold, and yes, it has always been cold, and yes, you have been living inside it like it was weather and weather was something you did not have control over.

Leo set the thermostat on the kitchen table. Opened the box. Took out the device and the instructions and a screwdriver, which he had apparently brought because he had thought of that too.

You know how to install this? Jules asked.

My dad installed one once, Leo said. I watched. It is mostly turning things. You are good at turning things.

She was. She was good at turning the stove on and off and the faucet and the locks on the apartment door and the pages of her notebook when she was thinking and did not want to write yet.

He showed her where the old thermostat was. It was behind a plate that had been screwed on with the kind of care that suggests whoever did it was in a hurry and did not care about the outcome, which was accurate - the previous landlord had cared about outcomes only when the outcomes involved money, and turning a thermostat did not involve money unless it broke, and if it broke, that was the tenant's problem.

Leo removed the old one. Jules held the flashlight on her phone. The beam was weak and yellow and made the kitchen look like it was underwater.

They installed the new one together, which was the wrong word - together implies equal participation and Jules's participation was holding a phone and saying yes that is the wire and no that one is the other one, but it was the word that felt right, because Leo was turning things and Jules was watching and between them they were making something that worked that had not worked before, which was a form of collaboration even if it was asymmetrical, which most things are.

When it was done, Leo pressed the on button. The vents kicked. Not with a roar. Not with a fanfare. Just a low, steady sound that was the sound of warm air moving through pipes that had not carried warm air in months.

Jules stood in the middle of the kitchen and let the warm air hit her face. It was not hot. It was not the kind of warm that makes you want to cry. It was just warm, which was more than she had expected and more than she had deserved and exactly what she needed.

Leo was packing the box. The screwdriver. The instructions. Things he had brought and did not need anymore.

Thanks, she said.

He looked at her. The apartment was warm now. The light from the window was the color of November over Lake Erie, which is a specific color that exists only in Cleveland in November and looks like gray but is actually a very specific shade of blue-gray that has a name if you look it up, which she would not.

Anytime, he said.

And meant it. Not as a line. Not as something that was supposed to mean something. Just as a fact. He would do it again. He would show up to a cold apartment with a thermostat and a screwdriver and an answer that was almost an apology for giving it.

He left. Jules locked the door. Sat at the table where her father used to sit. The apartment was warm. The grandmother in the chair by the window was staring at something that was not there. Jules made another slice of toast and ate it slowly and thought about the way Leo had said she meant everything when she said no, and what that meant, and whether meaning everything was a burden or a gift or both, the way most things in this apartment were both.

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Author Note & Copyright: