The Distance from A to Z by Natalie Blitt Page B

an hour later asking if I would practice for our vocabulary test over the phone with him as he drives back from Boston, his voice tired and craggy. No need to feel anything at all when I fall asleep Sunday night, papers strewn around me on the bed, his voice quietly conjugating verbs in my ear.

EIGHT
    WHEN ZEKE SHOWS UP IN a Red Sox T-shirt the next morning, I give him the evil eye. There was something unbearably nice last night about talking to Zeke without having to see his endless supply of baseball tees. I could almost forget the distance between who he is and who I am.
    â€œIs something wrong with your eye?” Zeke frowns, and I can’t tell whether it’s a joke or not. I mean, I know I’m no expert at the evil eye, but he should be able to tell that I’m angry, at least.
    I try squinting harder, but it only makes his eyes widen. “Abby?”
    â€œYour shirt,” I finally say.
    He looks down as though he couldn’t remember what he’d put on this morning.
    â€œYou have a problem with the Red Sox too? I mean, yes, they did used to be cursed but they’ve moved past it, unlikethe Cubs.”
    I don’t care about baseball, I remind myself, as my insides turn to molten fire at the mention of the curse. I shouldn’t care if he says mean things about the Cubs. I think mean things about the Cubs all the time. Daily, in fact. Even more than daily.
    And this ongoing monologue of seething rage and reminding myself how much I don’t care causes me to miss Marianne’s entrance into the classroom.
    â€œMesdames et Messieurs, bienvenue. Alors, on va commencer.” And class starts with a bang as we plow through our vocabulary test. And while I don’t remember how I know to spell the words I need to spell, apparently I learned by osmosis because when we send our papers up to the front, I’m quite sure I aced the test. But there’s no time to high-five myself because Marianne is handing out copies of this morning’s La Presse Internationale and suddenly we’re in the midst of a debate about school funding and subsidies ( subventions ). And despite the fact that none of us, with the possible exception of Zeke, is fluent, the discussion moves faster than I can keep up with, and I spend most of the first hour of class hastily scribbling down words I don’t understand.
    But what’s more surprising than the fact that I love this back and forth without fully understanding it, and that I’m able to even interject every so often, is that Zeke, with hisleft hand, is writing down translations of almost all the French words I’m listing. All while making comments that are mostly on point.
    Mostly. Because he also directs us into a whole discussion about school uniforms and skirt lengths.
    â€œSo explain to me your problem with my shirt? En français, bien sûr ,” Zeke asks as we settle ourselves on a stone bench under a canopy of trees. I’ve already explained, in halting French, how I don’t enjoy sitting in the sun, how I burn like a tomato, and how when I get dehydrated, I tend to talk too much. Which prompted a forced march by Zeke to the nearest water fountain to fill up our water bottles because it’s hot as hell outside and apparently I’ve been talking nonstop for the past ten minutes. Including a tirade about how much I despise disposable water bottles.
    But I hate that he’s brought us back to his T-shirt, especially as we’re supposed to be working together to mount an argument defending our fictional political party’s position on an ideal vision for public education. I think about asking why he was driving back from Boston so late last night, how he had permission to do that, what he was doing there, but I don’t want to go back to the tense looks he gave me Friday afternoon, so I let us go back to his shirt.
    â€œIt’s ugly,” I spit out.
    â€œEn français, s’il te