“So… seven o’clock tonight, right?” Lisa asked hopefully as she sat in her U.S. History desk in the back corner of the room, her miniscule admiree perched in the soft seat of her upturned palm. The low hum of drowsy whispers filled the room as students begrudgingly filed into first period.

                “Yep. You’ve got my address, right?”

                “Uh-huh. All written down. In two different places.”

                “Good,” the five-inch freshman nodded. “Can’t wait.”

                “Neither can I,” she responded, though the slight gritting of her teeth suggested she harbored at least some nervous energy over the impending evening to be spent with Peter’s mother and sisters as well for a Friday game night, as a way to help the boy’s anxious family ease into the idea of him dating someone with such a distinct height advantage.

                The moment was silently cut short for both as the girl’s emerald irises snagged on the doorway, prompting the boy to look over his shoulder. Sharon had entered the classroom, with Amy and Kimmy shuffling behind on the way to their desks. Stormy eyes flashed in their direction, only inspiring a moment of cold in his bones before their attention was diverted to respective cell phones.

                “I’m sorry it went like that yesterday, Peter,” Lisa groaned as she looked on. “I heard people talking at lunch that something was happening with your group, like something went wrong, but I couldn’t find you then.”

                “It really wasn’t a big deal,” Peter sighed as he rested a shoulder against the redhead’s thumb. “Well, to me anyway…”

                “Your mom didn’t take it well, huh?”

                “Not at all,” he said, resignedly patting his own palm against the pad of Lisa’s fingertip. “Though, she… I mean, she actually took it… better than I was expecting.”

                “What do you mean?”
                “She actually… wanted to know what I thought about it. Which was great. For forever, she’s just kind of done what she thought was best for me… and now I have Jessica doing it too, and she’s been like my biggest supporter, but ever since all that other crap she’s treating me so different and… God, it’s just a lot sometimes,” Peter rambled, hardly noticing the words tumbling from his lips, but stopped himself as he looked back up to Lisa, her patient green eyes unblinkingly observing him. “Sorry.”

                “Don’t be,” she said. “Sometimes you have to let it out. I understand you’re getting frustrated.”

                “You’ve got that straight,” he chuckled meekly, bowing his head and subtly nuzzling his cheek against Lisa’s thumbprint. He studied the intricate sworl with its uneven edges that still coalesced at the pale center so beautifully.

                “But she trusted you to decide, then?” Lisa said. “Your mom?”

                “Y-Yeah. Yeah, I think so,” he admitted. “She asked me what I thought was best, if I’m still safe being here with… everyone who’s not used to me.”

                “And do you?”

                “Yes,” he insisted immediately, once again choosing to ignore the distant subconscious voice of niggling doubt in favor of a far greater sense of need for purpose and general human-being treatment.

                “Okay, then,” Lisa whispered reverently. She shifted her thumb, running it against Peter’s cheek with startling care, with only the tenderest tip of her spiraling fingerprint brushing against his skin. “I’m glad to hear that.”

                Peter was actually grateful for the telltale alarm of Mr. Browning clapping his hands for the start of class, because if the stupid grin the boy was currently sporting grew any stupider in Lisa’s presence, he was going to have to move to a different county.

                “I… better take you back to your spot,” Lisa murmured, rising from her chair with barely a shift in her hand’s passenger as her fingers curled protectively up around him.

                As the petite ginger navigated between the desks toward the opposite end, both she and Peter’s gaze fell to Sharon, Amy, and Kimmy again, all with sightlines trained upon the pair, their lips equally rigid and pinched.

                “What about them?” Lisa questioned out the corner of her mouth.

                “I’ll be fine,” Peter said. “I’m getting the hang of handling them. I think.”

                “All right,” she said, finally reaching the empty desk and setting her hand down upon it for Peter to disembark. Her eyes remained locked to him, entirely blocking out the silver siren, her tanned amazonian henchwoman, and the strawberry-blonde hanger-on. “See you in bio.”

                “See you,” he answered, hopping off the ends of the girl’s narrow fingertips and giving her a wave as she wove back through the desks to her own corner.

                Peter politely faced forward as Mr. Browning instructed the class to retrieve their notebooks from their backpacks, rummaging through his own for his pencil tip. Already he could feel Sharon’s pupils burning right through his skull and into the paper scrap in his hands, not to mention a palpable glower from her second in command. Commentary couldn’t be far behind.

                “I think it’s interesting how you’re totally cool with Lisa holding you, but not us, your best friends from the very first day of class,” Amy said, passive-aggressiveness dribbling from her every syllable as she poised her jaw against her knuckle. “Not like it’s a big deal, Peter. It’s just… funny to me, you know? The first people who were nice to you, and what do we get?”

                “I said I was sorry,” Kimmy moaned from her desk, leaning dramatically across it, arms extended and fingers clawed as though she’d entered a death scene monologue. Her pigtails seemed to deflate across her shoulders as her squat face sunk into the tabletop, rebounding off her conjured sniffles of faux-apology.

                “What has she got over us, huh?” Amy whispered, and suddenly Peter could feel her hot, vaguely minty-morning breath wafting against the nape of his neck. He shivered, though the actual temperature inspired a thin line of sweat along his brow.

                Now wasn’t the time to prove his mother’s worst fears correct.

                “I guess… I mean, Lisa… asked me,” Peter stammered, gaining confidence as he turned around to face the brunette’s simpering countenance above. “Nicely, I mean. For permission first.”

                “Shortstuff’s got you there, Amy,” Sharon said icily.

                “So I’m a little too pro-active,” the towering girl said. “That’s what my mom says, anyway, and my coach. But I’m just saying, you’d be way safer with me holding you than little miss chicken bones over there.”

                Peter frowned, opening his mouth to protest.

                “It’s just a joke, dude, relax,” Amy shrugged, waving a hand that swung so near to Peter’s face he had to suck in a gasp of air to avoid her lanky fingertips sweeping along his ribs. “Nothing against her. Nothing against being all book-y, I guess.”

                “This really isn’t worth getting into,” Peter said, still hoping to find middle ground here without compromising his agency. He jabbed his leaden pencil tip against the paper scrap. “We should probably, um… you know, notes-”

                “But just look at how much safer you could be,” Amy pressed, bulldozing right past Peter’s quiet rebellion. She flattened her tricep against the tabletop, curling her fingers into a fist and concentrating all the taut muscles beneath her golden skin together.

                Peter couldn’t help but gulp as he watched the iron-strength might of Amy’s bicep bulge into a rotund hill beneath her flesh, earned over countless volleyball drills and conditioning. She wasn’t exactly bluffing.

                “Um… yes, I can see you’re… strong,” he said as nonchalantly as possible.

                “Just letting you know, shrimp,” Amy whispered before unflexing her limb and swiping up her pencil to rejoin the process.

                “Don’t feel pressured, shortstuff. No matter where you fall, I’ll always have your back,” Sharon uttered, the sickly dulcet notes of her voice carrying easily into Peter’s ears despite hanging just above a whisper, and he had the odd suspicion that no one else could hear but him.

                “What’s eating you, Peter?”

                At this particular phrasing, the handheld freshman’s distracted attentions were instantaneously affixed to the mouth on the bespectacled face of his curly-blonde Algebra teacher as she carried him to fifth period English.

                “W-What?”

                “Sorry. Do the kids not say that anymore?” Ms. Tritter giggled as she turned a corner in the empty hallway, her palm steady on every long stride. “They used to say that all the time when I was in high school, and I never got it. Maybe it was just a joke.”

                “Oh. Ha,” Peter said, forcing a chuckle, and knew his fellow after-school thespians would feel some deep shame in how convincing it sounded.

                “What I mean is, what’s wrong? Bugging?” the young educator continued, adjusting her thick, black-rimmed glasses on the bridge of her nose. “You just look so far away, like your brain took the afternoon off.”

                “Um, maybe “bugging” is accurate,” Peter muttered. The woman was incredibly kind, to be sure, providing him with a lift to class when Erica had such a tough time commuting, but most of these daily rides had been silent save for the usual greetings and pleasantries. He wasn’t quite calibrated to engage with his admittedly beautiful teacher in standard conversation, especially not today. “Sorry.”

                “Well, you don’t have to be sorry. Everyone has those afternoons. I just thought maybe there was something that could be done.”

                “Right,” Peter managed. He peered over the cusp of Ms. Tritter’s arched fingertips, seeing the English classroom off in the near-distance: something that, for him, would’ve constituted a stroll of several minutes, but for his teacher in her muted black boots, could be accomplished in a matter of steps. “I mean, it looks like we’re pretty close to the room.”

                “So? We can take a detour,” the woman shrugged. Her voice lowered to a hush as students began to pass her by on their way to class, some gawking momentarily at Peter, but most too engrossed in their friends or cell phones. “Not that I… want to keep you from learning, of course. But if you want a little more of a breather between classes, I can write you a pass. It’ll be fine.”

                “I don’t really want to be getting special treatment,” the boy said earnestly as he crossed his legs in the woman’s palm, curling subconsciously into himself.

                “I totally get that, and I can absolutely drop you off in this room right now. But believe me, I do this for other students too, if they look like they could use just a couple more minutes to let their brains catch up with how fast the day’s clock is ticking,” she continued amiably. “You just seem like you could use a break. A quick one, but a break.”

                Peter gave a last glance to the English class door, knowing Sharon was probably already inside with her metallic scrutiny cooking his awaiting desk with toxic expectation.

                “Okay,” he breathed. “Sure.”

                “Awesome,” Tritter beamed, pivoting away from her path toward the door and instead reverting into a narrower hallway that cut off from the central quad of language rooms.

                A moment later Peter realized he was in a segment of the school he hadn’t yet seen: a white-washed tunnel with the occasional office window blocked off by mini blinds, and luminescent bulbs dotting the lengthy thoroughfare. Comfortingly, no one appeared to be around. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been his first reaction, given he was in a near-stranger’s hand and isolated from most of the rest of humanity, but somehow it seemed impossible in Ms. Tritter’s care.

                “So about that bugging,” the math teacher said as she walked, purposefully more sluggish this time than on her way to the English hall. “I know I don’t really know you so well, Peter. And I’m not trying to treat you like I’m your counselor. But you seem like a good kid. I just didn’t think you should have to trudge through the day if I could do anything to help. Whatever it is.”

                Peter couldn’t help but let a smile cross his concern-etched face at this. The woman really did seem as benevolent as she wordlessly professed in gentle action and soft demeanor. All he had to do now was try not to get flustered over those half-hipster-half-angelic features of hers, capped by a twinkle in her eye and those bouncing halcyon curls.

                “Nothing’s really going wrong today, I guess,” the teen sighed. Relaxing slightly, Peter leaned in against the heel of Tritter’s creamy palm, to which she didn’t seem to object. “It’s just a lot of… bigger stuff.”

                “Bigger stuff?”

                “Like, going to school here,” he fumbled. “I guess that’s really… most of the stuff.”

                “What about going to school here?”

                “My mom’s… well, really my whole family… gets pretty freaked out about what happens to me here, and like if I’m safe and everything,” Peter explained.

                “Ah. I see,” Tritter answered, fully sincere. “They’re your family. I’m sure that’s natural.”

                “It… it is. I know it is. And I’m glad they care a lot, but it also… I mean, sometimes…”

                “They care a little too much?”

                “Yeah.”

                “I’ve been there,” the woman said. “I know not quite there, since I’m guessing our childhoods were just a little different from one another, but with the kind of neighborhood we lived in when I was about your age… well, my dad never wanted me to leave the house without another person. And he was probably right sometimes, with the crime rates, but… it still got to me sometimes. Like he didn’t believe I had any power just because I might not have been able to handle some of the things I would run into. Does that sound about right?”

                “Yes,” Peter heaved as he collapsed deeper into the woman’s cupped palm, feeling bizarrely closer to Ms. Tritter in this moment than just about anyone else in a one hundred-mile radius, despite how little they truly knew each other.
                “I thought so.” Nearing the end of the hallway, the teacher-turned-unofficial-psychologist turned right back around and began pacing in the other direction again.

                “I get why they’re worried, I seriously do… I mean, I’ve had things happen in-” Peter muttered, stopping short of admitting anything incriminating with regard to his anonymous ambusher. He bit his tongue, almost drawing a prick of blood. “…happen in my life before, but still… if I can’t at least try, and learn how to get past the things I can get past, then…”

                “Then you’ll just be stuck where you are, forever,” Ms. Tritter said.

                “Yep,” he resounded.

                “That’s how it felt for me, too,” she continued. “I doubt some of that is going away anytime soon, Peter. That’s just how family is, and there are certain things about you that are always going to worry them. But that doesn’t mean you have to let those things get you down.”

                “How?” he croaked, clearing his throat. “I can’t do anything about it if Mom pulls me out of school.”

                “Maybe not, but you can still make use of the time you have,” she said. “You can’t control everything. No one can. Just make do with what you’ve got. You’re already doing that, just by being here in this school at all. I think that’s pretty cool. That couldn’t have happened overnight with your mom, but here you are. It just takes time.”

                “Y-Yeah,” he said, raising an eyebrow as he propped himself higher in the woman’s massive hand. “I guess so.”

                “I hope that soon you’ll know so, too,” Ms. Tritter said as she returned once again at her gradual pace to the hallway’s entrance. She flashed a look to her watch, noting the latest click of the minute indicator. “And speaking of being here at this school, I’ve already robbed you of enough English knowledge. What do you say we get you back there?”

                “Sure,” Peter said with renewed confidence. “I’m ready.”