Page 91 of Mad Mabel

“Moussaka muncher.”

They weren’t especially clever or funny slurs, though you wouldn’t know it the way Christos laughed. I knew he did it to not allow anyone the satisfaction of hurting him, but he was pretty convincing. Sometimes, he even clapped back.

“Jeez, Billy, somewhere in the world there’s a tree working hard to produce oxygen so that you can breathe. I think you should go and apologize to it.”

I snickered.

“What did you say?” Billy said, getting up.

“Oh, you didn’t understand?” I said. “I’d explain but I don’t have the time or the crayons.”

Now Christos laughed.

Billy just looked confused.

It was nice having someone to hang out with, other than Daphne. Christos and I sat by each other in class. We walked to and from school. At school, we ate lunch on the bench outside the library, and Christos would tell me about what he was eating.

“This,” he would say, “is my mum’s spanakopita. Best spanakopita in the world.”

Every meal his mother made was “the best in the world,” and indeed, I hadn’t tasted a bad one. “Is that so?”

He grinned. “Come over for dinner sometime,” he said one day. “Then you can try Mum’s moussaka.”

No one had asked me to come over for dinner before. Certainly not a boy! And now here was Christos, suggesting it as if it were completely normal. I wondered what Cess would say.

“I’d love to,” I said quickly. “Especially if the moussalata is half as good as the spanakopita.”

“Moussaka,” he said with a laugh.

I snorted. “Sorry. Moussaka.”

Christos looked me dead in the eye. “Did you just… snort?”

I couldn’t help it, I snorted again. Christos burst out laughing. “You did it again!”

“Hey, it’s not as bad as Daphne,” I said. “She farts when she laughs.”

Christos doubled over laughing. It was like a drug. I was addicted.

We spent the entire lunch period laughing. A few people stared, one made a rude comment. Christos and I just laughed. It wasn’t until we were walking back to class that he said: “Is Daphne your friend?”

I nodded.

“You should tell her to join us sometime.”

I said I would. But I didn’t.

The first time Christos kissed me was at the beach. There was a little cove that he knew about that you had to climb over the bluffs to get to, which meant it was secluded and we were the only ones there. He brought fish-and-chips and a bag of Greek sweets his mother had made. I brought a blanket that we lay on in the afternoon sun.

It was so different from Mr. Loukas. Then, I couldn’t talk at all. With Christos, I talked and talked and talked. I couldn’t stop. I told him about my father, and how much I hated him. I told him about Cess and Ness, and how much I loved them. I told him about my mother, about Kitty. He told me about Greece, about his brothers, about his parents and cousins and uncles.

When we finished the fish-and-chips, he asked me to close my eyes while he fed me the treats his mother had made. They were delicious, as I knew they would be. More delicious, though, was the feeling of his fingers brushing my lips. It was bliss. It was agony.

I opened my eyes. “Good?” he asked.

“Very good.”

He grinned. And I knew I’d found him.