Free Althea and Oliver by Cristina Moracho Page A

possible semantic variation on this sentiment, and in the end decided all that mattered was that when he finished his brief speech he would lay his palms delicately upon her cheekbones and pull her face to his.
    But Oliver hadn’t materialized the rest of the weekend, and now she’s exhausted, with a whole day of school in front of her and the kind of headache that makes her eyes feel full of grit. If he couldn’t be bothered to sneak into her house and say he was sorry, she decides, then fuck him. He can take the bus to school.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    By lunchtime she’s edgy. What if he wasn’t running late this morning but purposely avoiding her? What if he is actually angry with her for some reason? She checks the cafeteria, then the back field, and even the library, but she can’t find him. She’s making her third pass by his locker when she runs into Valerie, drinking a Dr Pepper, a book tucked under her arm, wearing a shirt that looks like she screen-printed it herself, a skull with a knife and fork where the crossbones should be. It reads BON VIVANT in curvy letters.
    â€œIf you’re looking for Oliver, I don’t think he’s here today,” says Valerie. “At least, he wasn’t in English.”
    They meander the halls together while Valerie drinks her soda.
    â€œWhat are you reading?” Althea asks.
    Valerie flashes the cover of the book, which gleams under the fluorescent lights. “Minty Fresh told me to read it. It’s about the diamond trade. That industry is so totally fucked. The diamonds are all in a vault at De Beers, and they’re not even worth anything. But people buy them because they see some ad that tells them to. Their value is completely invented.”
    She spends some time elaborating about the wars that erupted among diamond sellers a hundred years ago, how De Beers emerged victorious and ran a monopoly so unapologetic, they had to keep their offices overseas in London, where they declared their goods “conflict free” even though their origins usually couldn’t be traced, and doled out gems to distributors in small amounts. Althea pictures the vault, underground and elusive, metal drawers lined with imperial blue velvet, opening soundlessly to reveal their treasures. She imagines the tall diamond baron with a pocket watch who slips into his vault on lonely nights to caress and count his jewels. As Valerie goes on about the misallocation of the world’s resources, the flaw in the system that allows that place to exist, Althea nods but thinks if such a thing were hers, she would never give it up, either.
    â€œSomeone figured out a way to make diamonds in a machine,” says Valerie. “Can you imagine? The technology’s still rough, but maybe in another twenty or thirty years they can put De Beers out of business.”
    â€œI like your shirt,” Althea says.
    â€œI can make you one sometime. I still have the screen.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œCome over one day next week, when school’s out.” Valerie pauses in the middle of the hallway, tossing her empty soda bottle into a trash can several yards away. “Is Oliver the only person who calls you Al?”
    â€œMy dad, sometimes. His mom, sometimes. I try not to encourage the Al thing. People already think I’m a tomboy because I’m best friends with a guy. Having a boy’s name doesn’t help.”
    â€œYou think there’s something wrong with being a tomboy?” Valerie says.
    Althea realizes she’s made a misstep here, Valerie being something of a tomboy herself. “It’s just not true. If I were a tomboy I’d probably be cutting school right now to go build a tree fort by the river. Which would be great.”
    â€œMmm,” says Valerie in a noncommittal tone.
    Althea redirects. “So you’re calling him Minty Fresh now, too?”
    â€œHe asked me to. Says he likes it better than