Tyler smiled anyway.
“You gonna make me?”
Ava thought for half a second.
Then answered:
“No.”
Tyler spread his arms.
“Exactly.”
Ava turned around.
Walked through the other cafeteria door.
Sat somewhere else.
Tyler called after her:
“Running away!”
Ava did not look back.
Her friend Mia found her five minutes later.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“That did not look like nothing.”
Ava opened her soup.
“He was being annoying.”
“You should tell somebody.”
“For blocking a door?”
“For bothering you every day.”
Ava shrugged.
“He’ll get bored.”
Mia did not look convinced.
Neither did Ava.
But she wanted to believe it.
She had enough going on.
Her mother, Renee Carter, worked night shifts as a registered nurse.
Her father had died when Ava was nine after a sudden stroke.
Her older brother, Marcus, was away at college.
The family was stable, loving, and tired.
Ava did not want to bring home another problem.
She had also learned something from her father before he died.
Not everything deserves your energy.
He used to tell her:
“You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.”
Ava had carried that sentence for years.
Tyler mistook it for surrender.
Over the next two weeks, he became more persistent.
He knocked books from the top of her locker.
Moved her chair in study hall.
Called her “Mouse.”
Once he stood behind her and whispered:
“Do you ever get mad?”
Ava closed her notebook.
“Yes.”
Tyler smiled.
“What happens?”
“I leave.”
“That’s boring.”
“I know.”
He looked disappointed.
That should have been useful information.
Instead he decided he needed a bigger reaction.
The moment came on Friday.
School had ended twenty minutes earlier.
Ava was waiting outside the auxiliary gym for her mother to pick her up.
Basketball practice had started in the main gym.
The hallway was quieter than usual.
Mia had already left.
Ava sat on a bench with her backpack between her feet, reading notes for a biology exam.
Tyler appeared with two friends.
Ava noticed them immediately.
She closed the notebook.
Tyler stopped in front of her.
“Why do you always leave?”
Ava looked up.
“What?”
“Every time somebody messes with you, you walk away.”
She stared at him.
“Because I want to.”
Tyler laughed.
“That’s not why.”
Ava stood.
She picked up her backpack.
Tyler stepped in front of her.