“Adam’s brother has a condom in his wallet,” Gloria announced, as soon as she reached the white bench at the back of the schoolyard. She stood in front of her best friend Rashida and grinned as she said it. “Charlotte just told me in the bathroom. Her sister’s in his class. She said he took it out and showed it to her when their teacher wasn’t looking.”

“Eww,” Rashida said, trying to look both disgusted and unsurprised. She didn’t want Gloria to know that she didn’t know what a condom was. All she knew was that it had something to do with sex, but she didn’t really know what sex was either. Anything to do with it was off-limits in her head. 

Her parents weren’t super Catholic, but they were Catholic enough to bring her to church on major holidays and put her in Sunday School when she was growing up. She learned that Adam and Eve had committed the first sin, Jesus had turned water into wine, and sex was something you did after marriage. Her parents told her to close her eyes and plug her ears whenever they were watching television and a dirty scene came on. They had a parental control setting on the computer that prevented her from going onto dirty websites. Not that she would even know what websites to go to. 

“Right?” Gloria said. She sat down on the bench next to Rashida. “But he’s in grade 10, so it kinda makes sense.” 

The two of them met at the bench every recess to discuss the latest gossip. It also had the best view of the entire schoolyard. Gloria loved keeping tabs on everyone, and Rashida never protested. She had never met Adam’s brother, but between the condom and his age — 15 to her 12 — he already sounded intimidating. Anyone older than Rashida intimidated her. Adam did, too, but only because she kind of liked him. He had picked her first for dodgeball one time during gym class, making her believe he kind of liked her, too. She went home that night thinking about them sharing a slice of pizza under the red slide on the playground. He was there a lot with his friends during recess and she always wondered what they were doing. If they were together, she’d get to hang out there, too.

Gloria swung her legs beneath the bench. “Do you think all guys in high school do that?”

“I dunno. Maybe.” Rashida didn’t really care; she wanted to talk about something else.

“It’s kinda weird, but I guess it’s kinda cool, dontcha think?” Gloria said. “At least they’re being safe.” Gloria knew more about sex and dirty things and the Internet than Rashida did, and spoke about it so casually sometimes that Rashida didn’t know how to respond. Most of the time she just agreed to make it look like she knew what she was talking about. Rashida knew Gloria was smart, so if she said something like condoms in the wallets of high school boys was cool, then it must be.

“Yeah,” Rashida said. “Super safe.” 

They watched kids run around the schoolyard a little while longer until two girls from their class walked by. 

“Heather!” Gloria called out, and Heather turned. Her right arm was linked with her best friend Kelly. Gloria gestured furiously for them to approach the bench. Heather and Kelly walked towards them as if they were Siamese twins, walking with the same leg forward and keeping their other hand in their pocket. When they were close enough Gloria shouted, “Guess what?”

“What?” Heather asked.

Gloria dropped her voice. “Adam’s brother has a condom in his wallet.”

“A what?”

Gloria rolled her eyes. 

Rashida jumped in. “A condo…with an ‘m’,” she said. 

“Oh,” Kelly said. She looked at Heather. “That’s not really a big deal. My older sister said they put them on bananas in health class.” 

“Well, forget it then,” Gloria said. “Forget we ever told you, if you already know all about them.”

“I don’t know all about them. I just — ”

“Whatever,” Gloria said, and looked at Rashida. “So, do you wanna come over after school today?” She did this very obviously, to make Kelly and Heather go away, and they did. “You can actually come over if you want,” Gloria added, once they had left. “I’m not just saying that.”

But Rashida wanted to go home and sit on MSN instead, to wait for Adam to come online and notice she was online, too. She didn’t say this to Gloria because she knew it’d make her sound lame. So she said, “No, I have my tutor after school,” and Gloria nodded.

At 3:37pm, Rashida arrived home, ran up to her room, dropped her backpack onto the floor and switched on the family desktop computer. She logged into MSN and updated her status to her current favourite song lyric from Justin Timberlake’s Summer Love. She added three hearts after it before checking to see if Adam was online. He wasn’t, but it was still early. 

Adam lived only a couple of streets away from her. She knew this because her mom drove her to school, and she saw him walking by every morning and afternoon as they drove by. Rashida stared at Adam’s screen name for another five minutes before pushing back her chair to grab her backpack.

She had done about fifteen algebra problems when she heard a bing come from her computer. She looked up and saw the little man next to Adam’s screen name had turned green. Every day, unless she was at Gloria’s or actually with her tutor, Rashida stared at Adam’s name until he logged off. She would chat with her friends, of course, but she’d always keep an eye on his avatar, willing him to message her about something, anything, because she knew he wanted to. Why would he pick her first for dodgeball that one time if he didn’t?

Gloria’s name popped up in a message box: How’s tutoring?, with a winky face at the end. Rashida ignored it; maybe Gloria would actually think she was busy if she didn’t reply. Then there was another bing. Rashida looked over and saw Adam’s name. She froze. It couldn’t be. But there it was, a chat box with Adam’s screen name (AdamTheMan91) and his opening line: hey. Rashida wanted to message Gloria about how to proceed, but she was still embarrassed about her lie. Instead, she stared at the message for six minutes, trying to play it cool. 

Hi, she wrote, and then erased it. Hiii, she wrote again. Erased. Hiiiii. Deleted. She slumped back into her chair, her wrists propped up on the table, fingers hovering over the keyboard. Rashida had watched Gloria start MSN conversations with lots of boys in their grade with some variation of hi. But she didn’t want Adam to think she was copying Gloria, or that she was exactly like the other girls in her class. She settled on a simple hey.

What’s up? Adam wrote back almost immediately. Rashida blinked. She couldn’t believe her strategy had worked. The problem now, though, was that she never knew how to respond to this question. She figured that because he had responded quickly, she was allowed to do the same. Not much, she replied. Doing math.

LOL, he wrote back. Same. 

The cursor blinked in Rashida’s message box as she tried to figure out what to say next. She still couldn’t believe this was happening. The cursor blinked for another five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. Rashida kept checking the bottom of the chat window, to see if it’d say AdamTheMan91 is typing a message. Nothing. She made the window on her screen as small as possible and turned back to her homework.

Adam was still online when Rashida was called down to dinner at six o’clock. She ran downstairs and ate quickly so she wouldn’t miss a message. 

“Slow down,” her mother said. “You’re going to choke on something.”

“Sorry,” Rashida mumbled, trying to chew slower, but the butterflies in her stomach made it difficult. She cut up her piece of chicken into five smaller pieces and counted ten whole chews before putting a new piece into her mouth.

“Rushing back up to study, I hope?” her mother asked, as Rashida tipped a whole glass of milk into her mouth and pushed back her chair.

“Yeah, lots of homework,” Rashida said, and ran back upstairs. A new message glowed on her screen: How’s the math going?

She sat down, heart pounding. Good LOL.

Immediately: Can you help me with it?

Rashida hiccuped from the milk, almost spitting it up. Was he really asking her that? Sure, she wrote. If you want, she added, quickly. 

Ok cool. I don’t rly get what we’re supposed to do, he wrote. I’m nervous about the test on Friday. U got the highest grade in the class last time, rite? Do u wanna come 2 my house 2moro to study? 

It was all happening so quickly. Rashida had stared at this boy’s screen name for months, hoping he’d message her these exact words (or words close to them). Now they were on her screen and she couldn’t tell if she was dreaming. She decided to wait three minutes to make it look like she was considering it. She hoped he was sweating on the other side of the screen. Then she typed: OK. 

Cool, he wrote. See you 2moro. And he went offline. 

Rashida lay in bed that night fantasizing what Adam’s house looked like, what his room looked like, what his parents were like and whether they’d invite her to stay for dinner. She wondered if his brother would be home and what he looked like. She wondered if his parents knew about the condom in his wallet. 

When Rashida went to class the next day, she couldn’t help but stare at Adam more than usual. He sat two rows up and all the way across the room, far enough that he would never know she was staring. Gloria teased her at morning recess for not replying to her IMs, but all she could feel were the nerves that bubbled in her stomach. At lunchtime, she broke.

“He what?” Gloria said. They were sitting on their bench and her mouth was agape. “No way. I don’t believe it.”

“I know,” Rashida said. “I didn’t even think he liked me like that.” A lie, she knew, but she wanted to play it off. 

“Yeah,” Gloria said. “That’s crazy.” Her eyes followed a student in the schoolyard, running across the asphalt in a game of Tag. “Do you think he’ll have a condom?”

“Oh, ew! I dunno. We’re just doing math.”

“That’s what he wants you to think.”

“Ew, stop. If he does, I’ll just say no, thank you and leave.”

Gloria laughed. “Rashida, you’re such a baby.”

As the final bell rang, Rashida took her time packing up her things, putting on her jacket, organizing her desk. When she finally looked up, Adam was standing in front of her. There was no one else in the classroom. 

“Hey,” he said. “Ready?” 

Rashida nodded. Her mouth was dry and she couldn’t think of anything to say. They walked outside; Adam walked in front of her as he led them down the main street, before turning left onto his block. His house was the white one, the only two-storey among a handful of bungalows. 

The front door was unlocked. After taking off her shoes, Rashida followed Adam towards the kitchen. He dropped his backpack at the foot of the kitchen table and walked over to the fridge. 

“Want something to drink?” 

“Sure.” Her mouth was still dry. She tried to swallow but ended up coughing instead.

Adam looked at her. “You okay?”

She nodded, eyes half-shut as she coughed. She felt her face growing hot and turned away from him. 

Adam opened the fridge. “Any preference?”

“Do you have milk?” she managed to say.

He took the carton out and took two glasses from the kitchen cupboard. Rashida sat in a wooden kitchen chair and took her math textbook out of her backpack. Adam brought the glasses over and sat down across from her. 

“The test is just on algebra, right?” he asked. 

Rashida nodded. 

“I hate algebra,” he said, and smiled.

“It’s not that bad,” Rashida said. She was still trying to take in the fact that she was in Adam’s house, talking to him from across his kitchen table. “What did you need help with?”

Adam disappeared from view, leaning over in his chair to unzip his backpack on the floor. “I just keep getting the wrong answer,” he said. He pulled out his textbook and a notebook, some pencils and an eraser. “And it’s really annoying because I don’t know why.” He flipped to a blank notebook page. “I’m glad you can help. I’ll even pay you, if you want.”

Rashida paused. She didn’t know what to say to that but didn’t want to ask, in case that was a normal thing Adam said to people who helped him with math homework and she’d look dumb for not knowing. Instead she said, “Do you have a bathroom?” and Adam pointed towards the front hall. “It’s upstairs on the right.”

Once inside, Rashida looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair wasn’t a mess, her skin was clear and her lips weren’t chapped, but she felt exposed and ugly, like Adam was studying her every pore. She washed her hands for no reason, just to feel the water. She wiped her hands on the front of her jeans and walked out into the hallway. She was about to go back downstairs when she noticed one of the bedroom doors ajar. She told herself not to snoop, but she couldn’t help it. The lights were off, so she couldn’t see much: an unmade bed, the duvet pushed to the footboard; a movie poster for The Godfather on the wall; a window that glowed white with afternoon sunshine amidst the darkness. But as she turned away, her eye caught one last thing: a bright yellow stuffie, in the shape of a banana, wearing white and blue striped pyjamas was sitting amongst the mess of the duvet. Bananas in Pyjamas had been her favourite show when she was younger. She wanted to ask Adam about it, but didn’t want to embarrass him. She went back downstairs.

They jumped straight into their math problems once Rashida sat back down at the table. She explained BEDMAS, how to calculate it, and reminded Adam to take his time when figuring out a problem. In her quasi-teacher role, Rashida suddenly felt more at ease around him, like he was her little brother. Sitting so close to him, she was able to see his face more clearly. Sure, his eyes were pretty, but he also had boogers in his nose, and the tufts of brown hair around his ears were greasy. She took a sip of milk and sat back in her chair. 

“I think I’m getting it,” Adam said. He was hunched over his notebook, his face practically touching the paper. “My head hurts though. Does yours ever hurt?” 

“Sometimes.”

“What about, like, your tits?”

“My what?”

“You know.” He gestured to his chest, two hands holding up invisible breasts. “Your tits. They’re pretty big. You could be on Girls Gone Wild or something. Do they ever hurt?”

Rashida’s face started to burn again. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t think her boobs were that big; there were a lot of girls in class who had a similar bra size. She didn’t wear low-cut tops or anything like that. And what was Girls Gone Wild? Then she caught herself: the boy she liked noticed something about her. That was nice of him.

“Um, no. They don’t.” 

“Huh,” Adam said, and leaned back in his chair. “Cool. Wanna see my room? I have CDs in there we can play.”

They pushed back their chairs and went upstairs.  “I share a room with my brother, though, so he might be in there,” Adam added. Rashida nodded, but she felt frozen inside. Was that the room she had peered into? Why hadn’t she seen anyone earlier?

When they reached the second floor, the room in question had its door closed. Adam walked right up to the door and knocked. Silence. He shrugged, turned the knob and pushed the door wide open. Rashida hesitated, but even from where she stood, she could see him. 

On the far side of the room, Adam’s brother was sitting cross-legged on his bed with a laptop in front of him. The lights were off and the screen light was white against his face. Greg had earphones in, but the volume was turned up so loud that Rashida could practically hear what he was listening to from the hallway. She thought it sounded like a robot: a deep voice was explaining something, and Greg watched the screen carefully, unblinking. He was wearing shorts, and Rashida could see the thick dark hairs on his calves and ankles. As he watched his screen, Greg’s hands fumbled with something small and rubbery that looked to Rashida like a deflated balloon. There were a couple half-ripped, shiny wrappers strewn across the duvet along with other balloon-like things. The Banana in Pyjamas stuffie sat alone among the chaos, smiling. 

It took Greg three seconds to realize the door was wide open, and one second for him to yell at Adam and Rashida to get lost. Adam ran downstairs, each step a heavy thump thump thump. He raced into the kitchen and slid under the hardwood table, Rashida at his heels. They were crouched on their hands and knees, peering towards the hallway around the kitchen chairs, but neither heard Greg stomping after them. A door slammed upstairs and Adam let out a breath. 

“Sorry,” he said. “He’s kinda weird.”

Rashida shook her head in a, it’s not your fault, don’t worry, sort of way. She was breathing hard, coming down off the adrenaline of running. They stayed under the table for a few more minutes before crawling back out and finishing their homework. When Adam’s mom got home from work, she was nice enough to drive Rashida back home, even though she didn’t live that far away.

“So?” Gloria asked Rashida the next day. They were sitting on their bench at the back of the schoolyard. “How’d it go? Must have been juicy if you refused to tell me this morning.”

Rashida looked straight ahead. Adam was wearing a bright orange shirt today, and she could see the speck of him where the baseball diamond was, at the other end of the yard. 

“It was okay,” she said. “I basically taught him math. He’s kinda dumb.”

“I could’ve told you that.” Gloria rolled her eyes. “But that’s it? He didn’t pull anything on you?” 

“Well.” Rashida blushed. “He said my boobs were big. Like on Girls Gone Wild.”

Gloria’s eyes widened. “Ooooo. So he does like you.” 

“How do you know?”

“You know what he was talking about, right?”

Rashida paused. “No,” she admitted. She thought about the parental controls on her computer. “Can you show me?” she asked, but Gloria was already grinning at her.

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Maia Kowalski (she/her) is a writer from Toronto, Canada. She has been published in Flash Frog, ellipsis… literature and art, White Wall Review, and Montréal Writes, among others.