Chapter Text
Next to Mine
Penny looks down at her feet shod in bright red Converse All-Stars. The feet next to hers, covered in aqua Converse All-stars, swing in an alternating rhythm to hers.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about, Shelly?” She asks her silent companion.
The boy next to her is quiet, a trait he does not demonstrate around her. In the schoolyard he is as silent as a ghost and even in the classroom where most of the time he stares out the window. Only she sits close enough to pick up the heavy sighs that leave him at regular intervals during the school day.
“Oscillatory motion,” he finally says. When he notices her blank stare, one of his familiar sighs escapes him and he begins to explain, “It is motion that is repetitive like a pendulum or ocean waves,” he pauses for a moment, “light,” he adds.
“I see,” Penny nods gravely.
“No you don’t,” Sheldon pouts but nudges her with one of his bony elbows to soften the truth of his words.
“You’re right,” Penny agrees. She crosses her legs. They are finally beginning to show some curve in the calf and narrowness in the ankle. Of course, for them to really look womanly, she’ll have to wait for the scabs on her knees to heal. Or stop climbing trees with Sheldon, an option she doesn’t much care for. “I don’t see why on such a great afternoon when school is still three weeks away; you’re sitting here thinking of exploratory motion.”
“Oscillatory,” Sheldon corrects, flashing a glare of deep blue. “Honestly, Penny, I don’t see why you feign stupidity. It’s tiresome.”
“So is your face,” Penny jeers as she leaps off the wall they’ve been sitting on. Predictably, Sheldon gasps in horror at her bravado. She brushes off her hands and turns back to him.
He is climbing down the wall with all the surefootedness of a newborn colt. Sheldon’s long arms and legs do nothing to enhance his athletic ability which is non-existent in Phys. Ed. Penny’s seen him shoot a gun and a bow and arrow with his father and is pretty sure the boys at school would leave him alone if they saw the carcasses of beer cans in his backyard. Sheldon never misses.
He finally touches solid ground and frowns at the dirt on his palms. Penny knows he’d hightail it back to his house to wash his hands while she waited here, but she isn’t about to let him do that.
He looks up at her and tries to put a neutral expression on his face though his hands are surreptitiously rubbing themselves against the thighs of his khaki pants.
“Where are we going?” He asks.
“Exploring,” Penny wiggles her eyebrows mischievously.
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Penny smiles and tugs him along by his wrist. She’s never let herself grab Sheldon’s hand - wrist or elbow joint only, please, though she does find herself wondering more and more what holding hands with him would be like, almost as much as she wonders why she wonders about holding hands with him.
Sheldon follows obediently behind her, staring at the trees and occasionally writing numbers in the air with his free hand. He doesn’t ask where they are going and Penny finds it thrilling that he trusts her so much. One look into Sheldon’s schoolbag was enough to show her how controlling he could be. Though not with her. Never with her.
They walk along in the stifling Galveston humidity; her breath comes in gasps - she still isn’t used to it. Penny’s only lived here for two years - her dad got transferred and so it was bye-bye Nebraska, hello Bible belt. She started middle school here in Galveston and half-way through sixth grade, she was definitely one of the “queen bees”. Of course, it being middle school, her reign lasted only as long as summer break. Through some mysterious set of rules known only to twelve and thirteen year old girls, the next September found Penny with no close gaggle around her and no one to sit with at lunch. She didn’t try to figure out the reason for her sudden drop in popularity though she had a sneaking suspicion that her brother Tommy’s “activities” at the high school or her father’s recent “late hours” were reflecting poorly on her. What these girls’ mamas whispered to each other over bourbon-laced tea still held a lot of sway.
That September, the only place to sit (other than hiding in the girls’ washroom) was at the same table as “Smelly’ Shelly Cooper. Penny could never figure out why they called him that - his hands were red and chapped from frequent washing and he looked clean enough to squeak. She walked over, ignored the stares of the other kids and dropped her tray across from him. Sheldon looked up at her; Penny tilted her chin, daring him to say anything (her knees shook - if he refused to let her sit here, she’d just die). Sheldon looked around at the pairs of eyes pretending not to watch the two of them. His fingers clenched his sandwich.
“This is my spot,” he muttered, his eyes scanning the area around him.
“This can be mine,” Penny sat on the stool across from him then leaned in to whisper, “please?”
He looked at her and she blinked at the sharpness of his eyes. They were icy, blue and seemed to pierce right through her.
“Welcome to the island of misfit toys,” was all he said before finishing off his sandwich and burying himself behind a Spiderman comic book
They never spoke at school. Gradually, Penny’s popularity showed a slight revival, but was probably hampered by the fact that she insisted on eating with Sheldon everyday. She left school one day after serving detention for getting caught swearing in the hallway. He was sitting there under a tree, reading a book with some crazy-looking white haired guy on the cover (Einstein, she would come to learn). He rose to his feet as she approached; Penny walked right past him.
She paused before crossing the street to head home, “I don’t know about you but if I’m not home by the time the street lights come on, I’m gonna catch it.”
He was by her side in a flash and they began walking in tandem.
“It seems we’ve done this before,” he said after a quarter mile of silence.
Penny looked over at him, walking beside her like some long-legged water fowl. He dressed like the superheroes he read about. He always carried that tan messenger bag with him wherever he went, and the other kids mocked him on a daily basis. Back in Nebraska, she wouldn’t have been caught dead hanging out with someone like him.
“We haven’t,” she finally said as they both stepped around a telephone pole and murmured “bread and butter” softly as they did.
“Maybe we have in another universe,” Sheldon offered.
“There’s no such thing!” Penny scoffed.
That’s when Sheldon began talking.