Sprout

supervise they do a half-assed job.” He winked at Ian. “If I catch you trying to sneak out before 4:35, I’ll tie your butt to the chair with a jump rope.”
    And then he was gone too.
    I looked out the window. The last buses were pulling out of the parking lot. The sound of badly tuned diesel engines faded like distant thunder, giving way to the electrical whine of cicadas as they shrieked their way through their twenty-four-hour existence. I wondered how I was going to get home. My dad hadn’t bothered to put in a phone yet, and we lived five miles away.
    A more mechanical drone added itself to the cicadas’ whine, and I felt a faint vibration through the soles of my now-banned Vans. I was hoping it might turn out to be an earthquake, but then I realized it was just the buffers that were putting the wax on the gym floor.
    For a while that’s all there was, the cicadas and the buffers and the inescapable tingle of dust in my nostrils, and then I heard a quiet thump. Even though I knew I shouldn’t have, I looked over at Ian. Miss Tunie had seated us a few rows apart in those dumb grade-school desk-chair combos where the chair and the desk are welded together so you can’t ever get comfortable, since you can neither scoot your seat in nor shove it back. Now I saw that Ian had stood up a couple of inches without getting out of his chair, so that the desk part rested on top of his thighs and the four rubber-soled legs floated just off the floor. Scooching around, and making sure to hit as many desks as possible, he crabwalked his way across the room until his desk was right in front of mine, where he set it down with a final ominous clunk.
    “Don’t mind me, newbie, I just have to do my exercises.” He pushed his Yankees cap back on his head, as if it might get in the way, and then he started making big exaggerated kissy faces at me, pursing his lips so that he looked like Mick Jagger after a fresh round of collagen, then opening his mouth so wide that he looked like the stretchy faces from that old Soundgarden video, or maybe Terrance and Phillip on South Park . In between pursing and stretching, he would stick out his tongue and waggle it up and down and back and forth like he was trying to pick an imaginary lock.
    Of course, what I should’ve said was, “What’re you doing, practicing ?” But instead what I said was, “What’re you doing, practicing ?” which might look like the same thing, but it’s not. Not when your voice cracks, and you’re the one who ends up blushing.
    “Uh,” Ian said, which I think was supposed to be “Yup,” although maybe it was “Duh.” It’s hard to make consonants with your tongue sticking three inches out of your mouth. “Uh ay-ees uv ih.” I’m guessing that was “The ladies love it,” but you’d have to ask Ian to be sure.
    I tried watching the clock over Ian’s head, but how long can you stare at a clock—especially one that doesn’t have a second hand? I tried looking out the window, but it was Kansas, so there wasn’t much to look at. And plus Ian added slobbery noises to the weird facial movements. I tried staring him down, but Ian turned out to be a master at staring contests. Before I knew it my eyes had slipped to his spittle-bordered lips. He must’ve been getting tired, because his mouth wasn’t opening quite as wide now, and the lip pursing wasn’t quite as exaggerated and gross. It looked less like a cartoon, I mean, more like he was yawning, or maybe hungry. Hungry, and blowing kisses at me.
    The only thing worse than saying something that makes you blush is blushing when nobody’s said anything, because then only your thoughts can be the cause. Ian suddenly stopped making kissy faces and squinted at me from beneath his Yankees cap.
    “What?”
    “What?” I parroted, but I could still feel the heat migrating across my cheeks, crackling and popping like tiny electrical charges.
    Ian stood up out of his chair and hooked a leg over my desk just as Mr. Balzer had with Miss Tunie’s. He was wearing pants, though, not shorts, and the denim pulled tight around his thigh from the knee all the way up to the top of the well-worn inseam. He leaned over my desk and used the bill of his Yankees cap to tap me on the forehead, twice.
    “ What?
    ”
    “Nothing,” I said. Except, since I still had my Long Island accent at that point, I heard myself say “Nuttin’,” which only made me blush more.
    “I think it’s sumpin’ ,” Ian