Ellee and I squeeze our interlocked fingers together like a secret grin. Our teacher, Ms. G, cluck-clucks. The bell has rung, girls. Please take your seats.
Our hands are stuck together, Ellee says, her voice bright and clear like a cloudless day. If I look at either her or Ms. G, I know I’ll giggle, so I look instead at Mandy, who peed herself last year during silent-reading time because she didn’t know how to get the teacher’s attention without speaking.
Mandy sees me staring at her. Are your hands really stuck together? she mouths. I nod.
I swear, Ellee says to Ms. G, we can’t get them apart.
Ms. G turns to me. Celia? she says.
I nod, look at the ground, embarrassed. But not as embarrassed as I’d be if I peed myself.
And just at that moment, I feel it happening again. Like magnets. We learned about them in science last year. North and south poles. And suddenly our elbows are stuck together.
And now our forearms.
Ms. G insists we’re just playing. She pulls. Pries. Tries to peel. Girls, what have you done? she murmurs over and over until it’s a rhythmic refrain.
What have you done? What have you done?
And now our hips and thighs. I stifle a wheeze of laughter.
All I can think is how ludicrous it is. My mom’s favorite word. Ludicrous. Absolutely ludicrous.
What have you done? What have you done?
We were just walking to school, Ellee says, and poof! I think it was at Campbell Street. There wasn’t a crossing guard.
Another cluck-cluck from Ms. G, who then asks Mandy to go get the school nurse.
What have you done? What have you done?
And now some of the other kids, restless and intrigued, reach to the person next to them. Let’s try it, let’s see. A few pull their Elmer’s out of their desks. Sean, who had told Mandy last year that if she sweated enough, she’d never have to pee, and then dared her to try it, loudly theorizes that if anyone’s hands get sweaty enough, of course they’ll stick together, he’s sure of it.
But he’s wrong now like he was then.
And now Ellee and I stand cheek fused to cheek, our smiles stretched but supple.
–
Jessica Klimesh (she/her) is a US-based writer and editor whose creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cleaver, trampset, Atticus Review, Brink, HAD, The Dribble Drabble Review, and Complete Sentence, among others. She is currently working on a collection of linked flash stories.