“I’m so sorry about that,” she said as she sat back down. “It seems I accidentally almost killed half of my son’s kindergarten class.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I’m glad everyone is okay.”
“Me too,” she said. Then she reached for her notebook. As she did so, I realized that I’d left it oriented facing me. I watched her notice it, saw her eyes flick back to me. She opened her mouth, as if to ask me about it. I kept my face as blank as possible. Then she shook herself a little, like a dog coming in from the rain, and closed her mouth again.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about, Jess?”
“No,” I said. “That’s the only thing that comes to mind.”
That first time, we’d been alone, inside—contained by walls.
The second time, it was out in the open. His hands on me on the bleachers as I waited for Lily to come out of the locker room. The risk of it, the audacity, made it seem like he’d lost control, like we’d both lost control.
Lost control. It feels good to phrase it like that. Like control is something that fell through my fingers, leaving me blameless.
THE NEXT DAY, I SAT on the bleachers with a book perched in front of me, doing my best impression of reading. I wasn’t, though. Nor, for once, was I focused on Mr. Matthews, who sat a few rows down from me, waiting for the basketball team to finish doing laps. I wasn’t even thinking about the graffiti, Anna, or Mrs. Hayes.
Instead, I was watching Nick run.
Watching how the thin layer of sweat on his arms and neck made him look like he was made of liquid glass, and thinking about how, depending on the light, his eyes ranged from the color of root beer to the color of bark after a rain.
These were unusual thoughts for me.
Highly unusual.
Still, I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to happen between us. Anything physical. I honestly didn’t know if I wanted him to touch me at all. At the same time, I was…curious about touching him. His arm, his shoulder, the knob of bone on his wrist. Something. To touch him and not immediately move away.
The bleachers began to vibrate under the weight of someone’s footsteps. I turned to see Sarah banging her way up toward me. She sank down beside me, giving me a funny sideways grin.
“So who is it?” she asked as she flipped her head over to put her hair into that perfect ponytail of hers. She could do it almost in a single motion, but when I tried to replicate it once it did not end well.
“Who’s what?”
She flipped her head right-side up again, ponytail complete. “Who are you staring at?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, making a production of closing my book. “I’ve been reading.”
“Ha. I’m pretty sure reading involves you actually looking at the pages, not just having the thing propped in front of you while you drool over someone.”
My fingers moved toward my mouth.
“Figurative drooling,” she said. “Not literal. Oh God, you are so busted.”
At that moment, Nick turned onto the stretch of track closest to where I was sitting. He looked up and waved. Without even thinking, I waved back.
I expected that exchange to elicit further teasing from Sarah. Instead, she looked thoughtful. “Oh,” she said. “I was just teasing. I didn’t know you and Nick were actually a thing.”
“We’re not. We’re just friends.”
She raised one of her eyebrows. “Friends?”
“Friends. Really.”
“Okay,” she said. “Good.”
“Okay.” I paused and mulled it over. “Wait, why is that good?”
“I don’t know,” she said awkwardly. “It’s just, you hear stuff sometimes.”
“About Nick?”
“Not specifically. But he’s on the basketball team. And I’ve heard…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I go to games sometimes, and they’re kind of vicious. Plus, they party pretty hard. Doesn’t seem like your scene.”
“Okay,” I said. “Nick’s not like that, though.”
“You sure about that?”
I thought of Nick, of how he’d shaken his head when Charlie offered him the flask at Anna’s funeral. Thought of his smile. Thought of his face when he talked about Anna.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“All right.” She looked at me closely, closely enough that I started to blush. “You’re starting to fall for him, aren’t you?” It was as gentle as anything I’d ever heard from her.
“It doesn’t feel like falling,” I said slowly.
“What does it feel like?”
I watched Nick slow down to a jog as the basketball coach began to usher everyone off the track. “It feels more like I’m starting to wake up.”
A FEW DAYS LATER, I lay on my stomach in the grass and stared at Nick as he idly picked at a small batch of flowers by his side, rolling one of the buds around between his fingers. I wondered what I’d do if he let it go and moved closer, if he reached toward me. Would I remain still? Or would that familiar feeling of panic rise in my chest, leading me to flinch and move away? I wondered if it even had occurred to him to try, or if I was only his weekend running partner, the awkward twin of the girl he’d liked—someone too messed up to seriously consider.
“It’s just a flower, Jess.”
I started. “What?”
“You’re looking at this”—he lightly tapped the flower with his index finger—“like it’s a Magic Eight Ball about to reveal your future. What are you thinking about?”
Whether you want to touch me, I thought. How it might feel if you did.
“Nothing, really. It’s just been a weird week,” I said. And I thought back to sitting in Mrs. Hayes’s office, hearing her talk about my finding a path. Thought about how strange, how uncomfortable it had felt. “I used to be able to coast along without people paying too much attention, or at least I didn’t notice if they did. And now it’s like there’s a spotlight on me and there’s no rest from it. It’s like they’re
