Julia

Julia

  Copyright 2016 Karleah Olson

  Loneliness was familiar to Elliot. Stacey would sit with him occasionally, making small talk as though it was where she wanted to be. Surely she would rather be in the staff room with all the teachers. She said she was his friend, but he knew it was her job to be there. No one else had a grown-up friend with them in class. She was nice and all, but it wasn’t the same as having a real friend to play with. So he sat alone that Tuesday, as he had every Tuesday before.

  ‘You don’t look very approachable with that sad look on your face.’ Elliot looked up and found the source of the small voice standing by his table. She had sounded out the syllables of ‘approachable’ as though she had only just learned it, which was funny because Elliot had only just mastered the spelling of that very same word, and his mother told him he was driving her mad singing out the letters all weekend.

  She was a skinny, freckled little girl with murky green eyes that reminded him of the frog pond in his backyard.

  ‘No one ever approaches me anyway,’ Elliot mumbled, ‘They don’t like me very much.’ The girl didn’t respond, as though it was of no consequence that he was a complete loner.

  ‘I’m Elliot,’ he announced loudly, so that Brett Turner would hear him from the corner and know he was introducing himself to the new girl before he was. He saw Brett look over his shoulder at them and snigger to the boy beside him, surely jealous. ‘You can sit with me if you want to.’

  The girl smiled widely and swung her leg over the bench opposite him. Her red jeans were scuffed and dirty, as though she’d been rolling down hills. ‘I’m Julia. It’s my first day here but my Mum and I moved a week ago. I’ve been so bored not knowing anyone.’

  ‘Maybe I can ask my parents if you can visit this weekend. We live on a farm.’

  Julia’s eyes lit up. ‘I wish I lived in the country, but Mum and I move a lot. I’ve been to four different schools.’ Elliot’s heart sank. He’d finally made a friend and she wasn’t even guaranteed to stay. Julia noticed the look on his face and smiled. ‘Don’t worry. Mum says this job might be the one. Hopefully we’ll stay forever.’

  Elliot smiled again. ‘I’d like that.’

  Elliot’s grandma and cousins were visiting that weekend, so his Mum promised Julia could be allowed to visit for the next one. They became fast friends in the week and a half between, sitting together on every break and playing games in the library after school while they waited to be picked up. Elliot noticed that Brett and his friends picked on him more than usual, trying to get a rise out of him. He didn’t even care. He finally had a friend and he knew they were just jealous.

  He did notice Stacey looking at him strangely though. She would smile and say hello, but it didn’t look like her normal smile, and she didn’t sit with him anymore. Elliot was sure she would like Julia and they would all have things to talk about, but for now it didn’t bother him all that much. He was too excited about the weekend, and planning lots of things they could do together. His Mum had even promised to make the dough for his favourite sugar cookies so they could roll and cut out their own shapes, and the lemon trees were heavy with fruit for lemonade. Even the job of painting the inside of the treehouse seemed fun with someone to join in, even though he’d been putting it off for weeks.

  The week couldn’t come to an end fast enough.