Willa stared at her long and hard, but Carmen only lifted her chin into the air, with an unwavering smile on her face.
“Not all of them are players, then?” Willa asked, her tone suddenly taking a cautious tone.
Carmen smiled. “No, Asa isn’t like that,” she said.
Willa’s cheeks grew pink. “I didn’t ask about Asa!” she retorted, glaring at Carmen.
“You didn’t have to.” Joyce giggled. “The way you rant about him ever since your first day here is pretty obvious.”
“That’s because he pisses me off!”
“Why though?” Carmen tilted her head to the side, searching Willa’s eyes with curiosity.
“I don’t know!” she groaned, exasperated. “He just does. His stupid smirk and his stupid face. Ugh.”
“Asa has a very nice face.” Joyce smiled, letting out a sigh of longing.
“Amen to that, sister.” Lottie grinned.
Carmen didn’t say anything. What was there for her to say? Could she agree with them, when all they could say about Asa’s face was nice?
To her, Asa’s face was more than nice. More than pretty. More than…
Just more.
His cheekbones and jawline were something artists would spill blood over to sketch. Asa himself was a thousand shades of brown and gold. The boy with coffee eyes and rich, dark cinnamon hair that made Carmen’s hands shake with the aching need to draw him.
Asa wasn’t something as ordinary and simple as nice, no. He was the muse to the artist in Carmen. And she could sketch his face an infinite amount of times, but would never learn to perfect it.
11.
A Frozen Sun & A Broken Moon
Asa emerged out of the school’s pool, his palms pressed flat against the floor of the swimming complex to haul himself up.
He loved it here. The building was cut off from the main school building, housing the huge indoor pool of Reichenbach High which meant a lot of privacy from the other students.
The water dripped down from his body, his swimming trunk clinging to him like a second layer of skin, as he grabbed a towel from a seat in the bleachers nearby.
Someone whistled from behind him.
“Sure you don’t want to just walk out of here like that?” Isla’s familiar voice said. “I’m pretty sure a lot of students would appreciate the sight.”
“Don’t you have anywhere better to be, Isla?” Asa asked, drying his face and hair with the towel to hide his smile.
“A million places, actually,” she countered. “But you know how it is. When you’re the queen, you’ve got to spare some of your precious time for the peasants too.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” Asa dragged out dryly, opening his drawstring sports bag and grabbing his set of dry clothes to take with him inside the locker room. “Seriously though,” he said, meeting her eyes, “everything okay?”
She smiled, soft and warm, a rare sight. “I’m fine, relax. Just wanted to borrow your history book. Lord knows I don’t pay the slightest attention in that class.”
Asa chuckled, then nodded towards his backpack sitting next to his sports one. “You’ll find it in there. It’s the blue notebook.”
Isla zipped open his bag, her hands slipping inside as she searched book after book.
“Hmm,” she said, sounding curious. “What’s this?” And then she pulled out a familiar-looking hardcover spiral book.
Carmen’s art journal.
All humour drained away from Asa’s face.
“Put that back.” It came out sounding like an order, abrupt and firm.
Which was obviously the wrong way to address Isla because she only raised an eyebrow in defiance. “Was that an order?” She smirked. “You’re telling me what to do, Ace?”
Asa pinched the bridge of his nose before staring at her right in the eye. “Isla. Seriously. Put that back. Right now.”
Her eyes only gleamed in response, and her fingers flipped open the book, watching him challengingly. Her eyes dropped down to the journal. “Carmen West,” she read, before looking up at him. “What is this?”
“For god’s sake, put it back!” Asa snapped at her, his heart racing in fear of the tiny possibility of her going through it and his inability to snatch it away from her in case he tore any of the pages.
He may have taken it from Carmen and, he did hate himself for doing it, but he was not going to invade her privacy by actually going through the contents of her journal.
Isla flinched, clearly taken aback at his tone. Something like hurt flickered in her eyes before she masked it with anger.
“Fine, whatever.” She scoffed, throwing the book onto the bleachers. It landed on Asa’s towel. “What the heck do I care, anyway?” She turned around, storming away with her head high and her eyes narrowed into slits.
Asa sighed deeply, wanting to go after her and offer some sort of explanation. Maybe apologise even. But he’d been around Isla long enough to know that she wasn’t the type of person who wanted someone to chase after her when she was mad.
Deciding to just go and take the shower he’d been planning to before he was interrupted, he absentmindedly pulled at his towel. He felt something heavy slide along with it and realised too late that the journal was on top of it, the book falling to the floor with a slight thud and opening to a random page.
He bent down, hand outstretched in front of him, his fingers almost brushing the edge of the pages. Then his eyes caught the wild splash of colours inside and there was no longer looking away.
The page seemed to be separated into two by entirely different settings. The left half of the page was painted in thick strokes of black like the night sky, a bright moon .
