Page 39 of Catch and Cradle
The only empty seats I can spot are singles, so once we have our drinks in hand, Becca and I head for the bench outside. It’s padded with red cushions and gives us a view of the tree-dotted lawn across the street.
For the first few sips, we don’t say anything, but there’s no awkwardness to the silence. It feels like we’re letting the moment settle over us. Part of me is still trying to catch up with how normal this feels, how right, like Becca and I have been getting coffee together for years. It shouldn’t be possible to be so calm after what happened in the locker room just twenty minutes ago, but that’s exactly what I feel: calm.
She makes the world stop for a while, like everything beyond this bench can wait.
“How’s the lavendery lavender?” I ask once I’m halfway through my mocha.
“I thought my hazing was done, or are you still making fun of me?”
“This isn’t hazing anymore. This is just regular making fun of you.”
“Oh, I see how it is.” She lifts her chin up. “I’m going to sit here and enjoy my lavender latte whether you make fun of me or not.”
“I admire your perseverance.”
We’re both struggling not to laugh. I take another few sips as I grin around the edge of my cup.
“Are you looking forward to your courses this semester?” I ask as a girl passes by on the sidewalk, staggering under the weight of an armload of textbooks.
“Mostly,” Becca answers. “I don’t have many courses for my minor this term, and those are usually my favourite, but the kinesiology ones still seem like they’ll be good.”
“Remind me what your minor is again.”
“Environmental science.”
“Right, yeah.” I nod. “If it’s your favourite, how come it’s your minor?”
Her forehead creases, and I hurry to backtrack. “That was kind of nosy. You don’t have to answer that.”
“No, no.” She shakes her head. “It’s a good question. I...I’ve actually asked myself that. Kinesiology has always been the plan, and I do like it. I just didn’t know how much I would like environmental science too. I’ve thought about switching to a double major a few times, but I’m always so busy with captain stuff, and it’s a little late to make the switch now anyway. ”
It’s the first time I’ve heard her sound anything besides obsessed and elated about being captain. There’s almost a hint of regret in her voice.
“Mhmm.” I nod, watching her. “What do you like about environmental science?”
“I—” She cuts herself off and drums her fingers on the side of her cup, staring over at the lawn for a few seconds before she turns to me. “You really want to know about this?”
“Of course.” I slide my glasses up my nose and smile at her. “If you want to tell me.”
“I do.”
We stare at each other for a moment, and I can feel my smile fading as something starts to flicker and heat up between us again. I want to hear more—about her, about what she likes, what she doesn’t, how she sees things, what she feels. It’s like I’m taking an Intro to Becca course and it’s the most fascinating thing I’ve ever studied.
“Um, well...” She takes a sip of her drink and goes back to staring at the lawn. “My environmental science classes sort of feel like...like learning to see, you know? It’s like becoming aware of all the puzzles wrapped in puzzles wrapped in more puzzles that make up everything around us. Or maybe puzzle is the wrong word. Maybe it’s more like paintings. It’s like those art historians who do all those intense scans and investigations of famous paintings to uncover all the layers and techniques and all the ways the painting changed as the artist was making it, only the painting is...the world, and we’re figuring out how it was made so we know how best to preserve it.”
Her whole face has lit up with passion and a breathtaking confidence. When she’s on the lacrosse field, she always looks like she could set everything around her on fire through sheer force of will, but in this moment, she looks like she is the fire.
I know I’m staring, but I can’t help sitting there blinking at her until the silence really does get awkward.
Becca lets out an embarrassed chuckle. “That was kind of a weird explanation. I know—”
“No!” I interrupt. “No, not at all. That was...inspiring. It made me want to sign up for environmental science courses.”
She chuckles again and stares down at her cup in her lap.
“That’s actually kind of similar to how I feel about economics,” I tell her, “except for me, it really is like a puzzle within a puzzle within a puzzle. It’s a way of taking it all apart and putting it back together again. There are so many parts that work together in all these unexpected ways. I’m not, um...I’ve never been super into reading and writing.”
I don’t know why I can’t make myself say, ‘I’m dyslexic.’ I’ve said that exact sentence to dozens of people without breaking a sweat or even thinking much about it. It took a few years after my diagnosis to stop seeing dyslexia as a badge of shame, but eventually I realized it doesn’t define me any more than people are defined by a food allergy or being left-handed. It’s just a thing my body does, and sometimes it makes my life harder, but other times it makes my life really cool too.