Free Maybe One Day by Melissa Kantor Page B

I just shook my head. It wasn’t until she called, “Cal vin ,” that I realized he was standing almost next to me.
    “See you inside,” he called back. Then he started walking toward the entrance.
    Watching him go, I thought about how he’d barely talked to me in the car. It started to make me feel a little uneasy. Maybe what he’d said about how everything was going to be okay was idiotic, but it had been a little bitchy of me to laugh at him like that. I flashed forward: If when Livvie got better she still liked Calvin and they started going out, the last thing I needed was my best friend’s boyfriend thinking I was a total asshole.
    “Hey!” I shouted.
    Calling after him made me feel a little like one of the cheerleaders.
    He stopped and turned around. But he didn’t say anything or walk over to me. I covered the distance between us.
    “So,” I began. “I . . . uh.” I chuckled nervously. “I feel kinda bad about how I acted when you came over to me. You know. The other day. At my locker.”
    “Okay,” he said. His arms were crossed over the word Wamasset on his gray T-shirt.
    “That’s it?” I crossed my arms also. “Okay?”
    “Gee, Zoe, I’m sorry. I mean, I want to be good for a laugh. I just don’t know if we have the same sense of humor.”
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the cheerleaders head into the rec center, Jake holding the door for them. Stacy and one of the Bailor twins had their arms around each other’s waists.
    I thought of Olivia and how before she got sick, I’d told her I wouldn’t teach the dance class with her.
    All at once I felt incredibly tired. “Just . . . just forget it, Calvin. Whatever.” I took a step toward the building, but he put out his hand to stop me.
    “ ‘Whatever’? You’re kidding me, right?” He gave an incredulous laugh. “Let me get this straight—Tuesday night, I’m at Jake’s house. His phone is ringing off the hook. Aunts, uncles, grandparents. Fucking Emma alone calls, like, fifty times. And I’m just hanging out, watching him talk to the ten million people who are checking up on him, and suddenly I’m like, ‘Wow!’” He made his voice thoughtful, reenacting the realization itself. “‘I’ve never been in this house without Olivia and Zoe being here.’ And then I’m like, ‘I wonder if anyone iscalling Zoe,’ because it seems to me that you two don’t hang out much with other people, and I don’t know if you have a lot of other friends or anything. So Wednesday morning I decide to find you and see if you’re okay, and the next thing I know, you’re making me feel like a total dick.”
    “Look, I said I was sorry, all right?”
    “Actually”—Calvin held up his index finger—“you didn’t say you were sorry.”
    “Well, I’m sorry , okay? I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry.” I threw my arms wide. “Please, Calvin, will you forgive me?”
    He cocked his head to the side and looked at me for a count of three. Then he smiled. “Yes. Zoe, I accept your apology.” With that, he turned and walked into the building.
    And even though there was objectively nothing left to say, I felt somehow that our conversation wasn’t over.
    Small letters on a plaque by the front door read THE REGINALD B. HARRIS COMMUNITY RECREATION CENTER . Inside, the walls were painted a creamy yellow, and there were black-and-white artsy-looking photos of Newark hanging everywhere. Next to the entry foyer was a sitting area with comfortable-looking overstuffed couches and armchairs. I could have been standing in the lobby of one of the swanky apartment buildings the girls at NYBC lived in.
    I followed the signs to the main office, and when I explained who I was to the secretary there, she directed meto a door with a small black-and-white plaque that said RUTH JONES, DIRECTOR . I knocked, and a woman’s voice told me to come in.
    Ruth Jones—if this was she—was an older African-American woman a little bit shorter than I was,