“Did that real y happen?” Eli says. He’s stil tapping his fingers, but now against his arms. It’s like he’s playing the piano on his skin or something.
I nod. “Just about every guy in school tried out for Romeo as soon as they found out Tess was auditioning for Juliet.”
“What if she hadn’t gotten the part?”
“See, now you have to wake up,” I tel Tess. “Show him how there’s no way anyone else could have gotten it. You were the only one who could ever play a girl people would die for.”
“Were you in the play?”
“Huh?” I say, startled.
“The play. Were you in it?”
“Who’d want to see me onstage?” I say. “Plus, because everyone knew Tess was going to try out, they didn’t even open the auditions to freshmen.”
“So you’re a junior now, like me?”
“Yeah,” I say, surprised he’s figured out what grade I’m in. “But you’re clearly way more ready for col ege and stuff than me.”
Eli glances down at his hands, which are stil moving, and then blushes.
He even makes embarrassed look good. He doesn’t turn bright red or anything, but two spots of color appear right below his cheekbones, making them appear more prominent. Making him look vulnerable, and almost accessible to someone like me.
And he sees me looking. I can tel because he stil s for a moment, staring right at me. Damn, damn, damn.
I turn back to Tess, watching her stil face.
“Say something else, please,” I tel him, because I don’t know what else to say, and I don’t want to think about him catching me looking at him.
“Like what?”
“Talk to her like you would if I wasn’t here,” I say. “Just pretend I’m part of the wal or something.” If he acts like I’m invisible, I wil be, and then things wil be normal again.
He’s silent for a moment, and then he says, “I don’t know how I’m supposed to pretend your sister is part of the wal , Tess. She’s very … she’s like a dragon, sort of.”
That hurts. But I asked him to act like I wasn’t there, didn’t I? And got cal ed a big scaly fire-breathing monster. Fabulous.
“See?” I tel Tess, and make sure to keep my voice light. “He clearly needs to be protected from me. So wake up, okay?”
Nothing. I pul my knees up to my chest, curling into the chair, and fiddle with the laces on my sneakers.
“Sorry,” Eli says.
“Oh, she’s just flirting,” I say, and force myself to uncurl, to sound unconcerned, but what more does she need? “You’l see when you get to know her. The summer before she went to col ege, she was working over here, in Organic Gourmet, and guys from Milford would actual y ride the ferry over to Ferrisvil e just to try and get her to talk to them.”
Wel , one guy. Jack.
“You don’t like Organic Gourmet?”
“What do you mean?”
“You made a face when you said it,” he says.
I shrug. “That’s what us dragons do.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay,” I tel him. “I know what I look like. What I … what I am.” As soon as I’ve said it, I look at Tess again, but she’s stil unmoving. Stil silent.
Stil not ful y here.
“We should go now,” I say, and get up. I force myself to say good-bye to Tess, to not act like how he’s gotten me to admit what I am—and how I did it in front of her—has rattled me.
I force myself not to look at him.
Outside her room, I walk out of the unit and head for the elevators. I don’t look at him when I say, “Same time tomorrow?”
I expect him to say he doesn’t think it’s working, that having me sitting there is annoying or weird or both, but he just says, “Okay.”
I don’t look back when I leave, and I don’t think about him on the way home.
I think about what happened the summer before Tess went to col ege, when she was eighteen and I was fifteen, instead.
I think about Jack.
She’d gotten a scholarship to col ege of course, not because of her grades but because she
