“Same here,” he says.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I actually, uh ...didn’t start it until Sunday morning.” He rubs the back of his neck.
I burst out laughing, and he purses his lips, tilting his head. I wave my hand. “I’m not laughingatyou! I started it Saturday morning and then forgot about it until you texted me.”
He nods slowly, lips curling upward again. “Niiiiice.”
“School is just a lot sometimes,” I say, biting into my apple.
“Agreed.” He leans backward in his chair until the front legs lift off the ground, then lands with a thump.
“So. About the exhibit,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about it. How about on Friday, we bring it to the meeting and get everyone’s input, vote on what we want to include, and figure out when we can have a work party to put it together. Maybe this weekend? My house is too small for a big group, though.”
“I can host,” Forrest says, then pulls a face. “Actually ...no, yeah. It’ll be fine. I’ll host.”
I tilt my head. “What do you mean?”
He waves a hand. “Nothing.”
“Are you sure?” I say. “I don’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
“It’s all good. It’s just my parents.” He rolls his eyes.
“Oh, are they strict?” I ask.
“Not really, not with friends,” he says, then lets out a long sigh. “They’re getting divorced. And they fight. A lot.”
“Oh.” I didn’t expect Forrest to tell me something like this, and my brain scrambles, trying to think of the right thing to say.
“Yeah.”
“We can go somewhere else if it’s awkward,” I say.
“No, it’s really fine.” He scrubs his face with his hands. “I think my dad is out of town on business this weekend anyway.”
I watch him, with his face still buried in his hands. I want to tell him something comforting, and the impulse surprises me. He exhales and sits back, hands coming down, face blotchy from where he rubbed it.
“Sorry,” he says. “I know we’re not friends or anything. You don’t need to hear about my family drama.”
We’re quiet. I look down at my notebook, at a small flower I doodled on the cover. When Mom and Dad divorced, I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, because I didn’t feel close enough to the few friends I had to say anything. I thought if I did, I would just bring them down, or even worse, maybe they wouldn’t care at all. Now I have Jayden and Anna and Makayla, and I can tell them anything. And most of the time, I do.
But their parents are happily married, and they don’t know what it was like to live in a house with two adults on the brink of breaking down, where every moment felt like a held breath. Forrest and I may not be friends, but I know what he’s going through, in my own way. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t have imagined even listening to, let alone caring about, whatever was going on with him. And now ...well. It’s not that I care, exactly. But I don’tnotcare. If my parents were still together and fighting the way they used to, I’d feel hesitant to have friends over too.
“I’m really sorry,” I say. “My parents divorced when I was eleven. It sucked.”
“Thanks,” he says quietly. “Yeah. They were fighting more, but I didn’t really think they’d actually do it.”
“Mine fought, like, all the time.”
“That’s rough.”
“Yeah. I didn’t think they would get divorced either, though. That was something that happened to other kids, you know?”
He nods slowly and heavily, staring at the table, tracing the grain with his finger. The bell rings, signaling the end of lunch, and the stampede to fifth period, but we both just sit there for a minute. I don’t know how to move out of this space, this weird and quiet pocket we’ve fallen into.
And I don’t know if I want to. It was surprisingly easy to talk with him this way. Nice, even.
