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EVERYTHING’S A RISK
CARLA’S SMILING AT me like she knows something I don’t know. She’s been doing it all
day whenever she thinks I’m not looking. Also she’s been singing “Take a Chance on Me”
by ABBA, her absolute favorite band of all time. She’s breathtakingly out of tune. I’ll have
to ask Olly the probability that she could miss every single note. Shouldn’t she hit one
just by random chance?
It’s 12:30 P.M. and I have a half hour for lunch before my history tutor comes online.
I’m not hungry. I’m basically never hungry anymore. Apparently a body can exist on IM
alone.
Carla’s not looking, so I tab over to my Gmail. Thirteen messages from Olly since last
night. They’re all sent around 3 A.M. and, naturally, he doesn’t write a subject. I laugh a
little and shake my head.
I want to read them, am dying to read them, but I have to be careful with Carla in the
room. I glance over and find her staring back at me, eyebrows raised. Does she know
something?
“What’s so interesting on that laptop?” she asks. God. She definitely knows.
I draw my chair closer to the desk and place my sandwich on the laptop.
“Nothing.” I take a bite of the sandwich. It’s Turkey Tuesday.
“It’s not nothing. Something is making you laugh over there.” She inches closer,
smiling at me. Her brown eyes crinkle at the corners and her smile reaches the edge of
her face.
“Cat video,” I say through a mouthful of turkey. Ugh, wrong thing to say. Carla lives for
cat videos. She thinks they’re the only thing the Internet is good for.
She comes around, stands behind me, and reaches for the laptop.
I drop my sandwich and hug the laptop close to my chest. I’m not a good liar, and I say
the first thing that pops into my head. “You don’t want to see this one, Carla. It’s bad. The
cat dies.”
We stare at each other in a kind of shocked standoff for a few seconds. I’m shocked
because I’m an idiot and I can’t believe that I said that. Carla’s shocked because I’m an
idiot and she can’t believe that I said that. Her mouth drops open comically, like a
cartoon, and her big round eyes get even bigger and rounder. She bends over at the waist,
slaps her knee, and laughs like I’ve never heard her laugh. Who actually slaps their knee
while laughing?
“You mean to tell me the only thing you could think to say was that it was a dead cat?”
She’s laughing again.
“So you know.”