Near the corner of Baker Street and Crawford, the odds really took over. Sadie Mae Jackson walked out of Boots pharmacy just as I was walking past. If one of us had been looking down or even out at traffic, we might have pretended not to see each other, passed without acknowledgment, and carried on with our lives, as we did whenever school forced our proximity. But that day our eyes met directly when we were mere feet apart.
I was taken once again by their disarming shade of amber—the very thing that had made me stare at her that first day we’d met. Maths, of course. As was typical, I was done with our class work when we still had a half hour of class left, and with nothing to do, I glanced around, tried to see if I could guess when the rest of the students in class would be done as well. I’d only noticed her eye color when she’d given the equations scrawled out on the side chalkboard a strangled look. I grinned at her expression, and she caught me staring.
“Or you could just keep sitting there like a possum playin’ dead,” she’d said, as if we were in the middle of a conversation, not the beginning.
I was pretty sure I hadn’t missed her saying anything else. Her eyes weren’t that disarming. “Or what?”
“I thought you were fixin’ to help me with this impossible graphing nonsense, but if you’d rather stick with the possum eyes . . .”
That’s when she’d bugged out her amber eyes, evidently like a possum, and I’d narrowed mine. I helped her, though, even when it meant meeting after class to explain all the math theory behind the problem dating back to the beginning of the school year. She’d offered to help me with literature, and I let her, despite the fact that I’d done all the reading months prior. She was keen on paying back a favor—not that I ever felt that Sadie owed me anything.
She definitely didn’t owe me anything outside of Boots on this day. And she almost immediately looked past me, which for a moment made me think we were going back to pretending, but then her body moved toward me, like I was pulling a lifeline secured around her middle. When she moved close enough for me to recognize the smattering of darker brown freckles that didn’t quite blend into the brown of her skin, I noticed she was still wearing the locket her grandmother had given her before she left America. Her hair was longer now, the soft spirals falling around her ears rather than spiking out from her scalp in what had been her signature look all last year.
We stood awkwardly for a few fidgety seconds that felt like eternities before she spoke. “Somebody ought to say something, I s’pose. Might as well be me.”
Say something, I echoed bitterly in my mind. As if saying something now would erase the six months of nothing we’d had. Sadie had been the closest to a best friend I’d ever known. She’d come to England for what was supposed to be just a single school year. She’d stayed on, though, to try for A-levels and a spot at university. At least, that had been her plan before. I had no idea what she was planning now.
I tried very hard to shrug and walk away, but her too--familiar American drawl tugged something loose in my mind until all my favorite memories of her filled all the empty gaps between my thoughts like sand pouring through stones in a jar, shifting away the time we’d spent apart like it was nothing. I grinned, despite the ache of that.
My smile was seemingly all the encouragement she needed. She said, “I shouldn’t have stopped calling, and I know that, I do.” She twisted her shopping bag until the canvas handles creaked, then watched as it spun loose. “I told myself I was giving you time and space, but then the not calling came easier than the calling. Truth is, I didn’t know what to say.”
There was nothing to say—that’s what I wanted to tell her right then, but the aching got worse with the thought of the nights I’d spent wishing the phone would ring to help me escape. And by the time the words tumbled out, I said, “You don’t have to say this.”
“Now, Mori, I’m trying very hard to apologize, as my nana would have me do. You don’t want me to get in trouble with my nana, do you?”
I attempted a flat grin. “I assume she’s still in America.”
“Yes, indeed. And while you’ve never been subject to her Talking-To, I will tell you it has a longer reach than the Atlantic Ocean.” Sadie smiled. “I’ve missed you something awful.”
I nodded, because I’d missed her too, but I couldn’t seem to say it aloud. Perhaps it was harder to make up with someone when you haven’t fought, really. Just drifted. Even though it appeared we were going to take one step back toward each other in front of Boots, one step doesn’t cross a six-month chasm all at once. Especially not the six months I’d had.
I was silent too long, and Sadie Mae started up again, like she always did. She couldn’t stand quiet between us. There was something comforting about her prattling on, though. Perhaps we’d taken more than one step after all.
“I won’t keep you, ’cause I know you have your studies. But I’ll look for you at school tomorrow, if that’s okay. I do hope that’s okay?”
I nodded. “I’d like that.”