The Apology That Was Hard

Blythe had done something wrong, and she knew it the way you know a rock is in your shoe — it just kept poking and poking and wouldn't let her forget.

It happened on Tuesday, during the best part of the day: free time at the art table.

Maya had been working on a castle. Not just any castle — a castle with seventeen towers, a drawbridge made from a folded index card, and tiny flags cut from sticky notes. Maya had been working on it for three days. Three whole days. She kept it on the special shelf where Ms. Huang let kids store projects they weren't finished with yet.

And Blythe had knocked it off the shelf.

She hadn't meant to. She'd been spinning — which she wasn't supposed to do near the shelf, but spinning felt so good, like being inside a washing machine made of air — and her elbow caught the castle and swept it right off the edge.

It hit the floor and basically exploded.

Maya wasn't even in the room. She was at the drinking fountain.

And here was the part that made the rock in Blythe's shoe poke the hardest: when Maya came back and saw her castle in a hundred pieces on the floor, Blythe didn't say anything. She just walked to the other side of the room and sat down and started reading a book. Upside down. She didn't even notice it was upside down for a whole minute.

Maya cried. Not loud crying, but the quiet kind, where someone's chin goes wobbly and they keep blinking fast.

That was Tuesday.

Now it was Wednesday, and the rock was still poking.

Blythe found Maya at recess, standing by the four-square court. Blythe walked right up to her. She opened her mouth.

"Do you... want to play four-square?" Blythe said.

That was NOT what she meant to say.

Maya looked at her for a second, then shrugged and said, "Okay."

They played four-square, but the whole time, Blythe felt like she was carrying something heavy in her chest, like she'd swallowed a dictionary.

Thursday morning, Blythe tried again.

She saw Maya hanging up her coat in the cubby area. Blythe marched over. She had practiced in the mirror that morning. She had said the words to her stuffed otter, Reginald. Reginald had been very understanding about the whole thing, but Reginald was a stuffed otter, so he had to be.

"Maya, I—"

Maya turned around.

"—like your shoes," Blythe finished.

Maya looked down at her shoes. They were the same shoes she wore every single day. "Thanks?" she said.

Blythe walked away so fast she bumped into a door frame.

Why was this so hard?

Blythe knew the words. There were only three of them: I am sorry. She could say them in her head as easy as anything. She could say them to Reginald. She had even said them to the bathroom mirror, and the bathroom mirror hadn't judged her at all.

But every time she got close to Maya, the words turned into fish — slippery, wiggly fish that flopped right out of her hands and disappeared.

What if Maya got mad? What if Maya said, "I don't forgive you"? What if Maya told everyone, and then everyone would know that Blythe was the kind of person who destroyed castles and then read books upside down while pretending nothing happened?

The rock in her shoe poked harder.

Friday. Last chance before the weekend, and Blythe did NOT want to carry this rock for two whole extra days.

She made a plan. She wrote the words on a tiny piece of paper and put it in her pocket. If the words wouldn't come out of her mouth, she'd just hand Maya the paper. Simple. Brilliant. She was basically a genius.

At lunch, she sat across from Maya. She reached into her pocket.

The paper was gone.

She checked her other pocket. She checked her lap. She looked under the table. She had either lost it or it had escaped, which, honestly, would not have surprised her at this point.

"Are you okay?" Maya asked. "You keep disappearing under the table."

"I'M FINE," Blythe said, too loudly, from under the table.

By Friday afternoon, Blythe was desperate. The rock in her shoe had become a boulder. A boulder in a shoe is very uncomfortable, even an imaginary one.

Ms. Huang gave them free time. Maya went to the art table and started something new — not a castle this time, but a village. Little houses with triangle roofs, cut from construction paper.

Blythe sat in her chair across the room, watching. Her heart was beating so hard she could hear it in her ears.

She stood up.

She sat back down.

She stood up again.

She walked over to the art table and sat in the chair next to Maya.

Maya looked up.

Blythe opened her mouth. The fish were there, flopping around, trying to escape. She could feel them. The words were right there, but they kept slipping and—

"I broke your castle," Blythe said.

It came out croaky, like a frog who hadn't talked in a hundred years.

Maya's hands stopped cutting.

"I was spinning," Blythe continued, and now the words weren't fish anymore — they were more like a faucet that someone had finally turned on and couldn't turn off. "And my elbow hit it and it fell and it broke and you weren't there and then you came back and I SAW you see it and I didn't say anything because I felt so bad that my mouth stopped working, and I've been trying to tell you since Wednesday but every time I try, something else comes out instead, like SHOES, and I'm sorry, Maya. I'm really, really sorry. Your castle was the most beautiful castle I've ever seen, and it had seventeen towers, and I counted them once when you weren't looking because I thought they were so cool, and I wrecked it, and I'm so sorry."

Blythe ran out of air. She just sat there, breathing hard, like she'd sprinted a mile.

Maya was quiet for a moment.

"I knew it was you," Maya said.

Blythe blinked. "You DID?"

"Brianna saw you spinning. She told me."

"Oh." Blythe felt her face get very hot. "Then... why didn't you say something?"

Maya shrugged, the way kids do when something is complicated and they don't have all the words for it yet. "I wanted YOU to say something."

Blythe nodded. That made sense. That made a lot of sense, actually.

They sat there for a second, and the moment felt fragile, like a soap bubble that could pop or float.

"It actually had nineteen towers," Maya said. "You miscounted."

"Nineteen?" Blythe said. "That's even worse. I'm even MORE sorry."

And then Maya did something unexpected. She laughed. Not a mean laugh — a real one, the kind that starts in your belly and bubbles up like soda.

And then Blythe laughed too, because the boulder in her shoe had finally, FINALLY disappeared, and her chest felt light, like someone had taken the dictionary out and replaced it with air.

"Do you want to help me with the village?" Maya asked.

"Yes," Blythe said. "But I should tell you, I'm not great with scissors."

"That's okay," Maya said. "You can do the gluing."

So Blythe did the gluing. And Maya did the cutting. And by the time free time was over, the village had eleven houses, a tiny pond made from blue paper, and a little sign that said "Welcome" in Maya's careful handwriting.

It wasn't a castle. But they'd built it together, and somehow, that made it even better.

And Blythe's shoe felt just fine.