Chapter 79. Long awaited reply
Chapter 79. Long awaited reply
I let the phone face-down again. Lara’s messages felt different—no subtle tests, no emotional landmines. Just: Here are notes, here is soup, like the world’s simplest transaction. Yet it still carried weight. Maybe because she’d anticipated what I’d need before I did. Maybe because she didn’t try to leverage the favor into private time or a kiss.
But I couldn’t deny a spark of guilt: Relief that Irene hadn’t breezed through this house with her rogue grin, expecting instant forgiveness. Relief felt disloyal. I pictured Irene, probably pacing her room, punching walls (literally, if rumors about her wrapped knuckles were true). The image hurt and comforted simultaneously—confirmation that I mattered, mixed with fear we’d become mutually destructive.
I set the soup aside and unfurled the lecture notes. Lara’s handwriting curled slightly at the tail of every letter—almost calligraphic. Headings in indigo gel pen, sub-points in hunter green. Arrows marked light intensity test delayed due to Turner absence. My name in her precise loops looked like something worth preserving, not a burden.
The rye seeds glinted inside the plastic. I rolled the packet between my fingers. In class, Lara always talked about symbiotic systems—fungi trading phosphorous for sugar, lichens colonizing bare rock, mutual benefit with clear boundaries. She joked that romance was “just symbiosis with hormones and bad poetry.” Maybe she wasn’t wrong: good partnerships feed both parties; bad ones parasitize.
And yet the calm Lara represented also scared me. Because sometimes calm is emptiness hidden under manners, and storms at least prove the sky is alive. Was I addicted to Irene’s weather because it made my own pulse feel relevant? Or because buried inside the hurricane I felt chosen—special enough to be the eye?
I pressed the packet of seeds over my heart, imagining sprouts pushing through soil. Slow, steady, unstoppable if given the right light. Did I want slow and steady? Could I even recognize safe love after Josh, after getting used to apologizing while bleeding?
The phone buzzed again—Alice this time, a cartoon of a bunny bulldozing a heart-shaped snowbank. Caption: Snow removal team activated. I grinned, snapped a photo of the soup bowl, typed feeling 17% more human; credit to soup fairy. Alice heart-reacted.
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Mom insisted I try solid food. I reheated leftover risotto, pushing grains around the plate as she folded laundry at the table. She noticed the rye packet. “Friend from school?”
“Lab partner. She’s—organized.”
Mom smiled in that knowing way. “Organized is underrated.”
Later, I shuffled to the bathroom. Steam fogged the mirror while hot water thawed aches. I washed my hair with rosemary shampoo—the one Irene insisted smelled like star-nights. The scent curled around my face, bittersweet. Fresh tears pricked. I let them fall, let shower water disguise them. Grief wasn’t linear; fever taught me that.
Back on the couch, I opened Irene’s chat. My thumb hovered over the keyboard. I typed hi. Stared. Backspaced. Instead I tapped the unread cat-meme she’d sent days ago. It expanded—a kitten spinning on a Roomba. Cute, meaningless. Underneath I wrote:
Me: Still sick but improving. Just letting you know.
Three dots popped, disappeared. Typing, stopping. Finally:
Irene: glad you’re okay. rest.
No heart emoji, no question, just five words. I set the phone screen-down again, but this time it didn’t sting as sharply. Maybe the distance gave both of us room to figure out weather patterns.
I tucked the rye seeds on the windowsill beside my drooping spider plant—a small, tangible promise of renewal. Outside, dusk smeared violet over the roofs. Inside, the house smelled of matzo soup and rosemary.
Tomorrow I’d transplant the seedlings in our science tray, message Lara about the fungal symbiosis metrics. Tomorrow I might even search Irene’s name long enough to see if she’d actually wrapped her hand, and what story her eyes told in the hallway video snippets everyone posted.
Tonight, though, I was allowed to rest—fed by soup, wrapped in fleece, heart still cracked but held together by unexpected kindness. Calm wasn’t boring; it was a different frequency of care, one I hadn’t tuned to before.
And as the fever faded another degree, I wondered if the best experiments weren’t explosions in a lab, but seeds sprouting in silent soil long after the storm has passed.