He turned, shaking his head and wagging his finger like it was all a big joke. “A witch doesn’t admit she is one.” He let out a small, wistful laugh. “Miles tells the same kinds of jokes. I guess it’s funny when you’re young and haven’t spent your whole career learning about all the horrible things the witches did to us.”
“But I’m — ”
Agent Mertins slammed the door closed on his SUV before I finished getting the words out. I went back inside, confused, and changed for a run.
* * *
Running was the only activity I’d participated in at school. I loved it more than I hated being on a team. I loved the way my calves ached, the wind in my hair, time sailing by on a breeze.
I ran a few miles around my neighborhood, not stopping until the sun beat a little heavier and my loose T-shirt clung to my two sweaty sports bras layered underneath. I slowed to a jog when I reached our well-shaded street and sighed, happy to be back under the thick awning of green summer leaves.
I was lucky to grow up here, in a tidy neighborhood where neighbors maintained their lawns, and the window shutters — all agreeable shades of red, blue, or black — were periodically repainted so they never looked worn or faded. Everything was in perfect harmony, the two-story houses modeled in that symmetrical New England style that made each one lookpleasingly similar to the next.
Most of my run I’d spent replaying my conversation with Agent Mertins and wondering about the “rumors” he’d referenced. I wondered if I was too reclusive. If that gave me away. If I should have tried harder to hang out with people my age. But I hadtried, a long time ago, and no one was interested.
Nearly home, I rounded a final bend, my jogging pace petering out and slowing to a walk. I lifted the hem of my shirt and blotted my forehead with it, completely unprepared to be met by a laugh so hearty, it shook away every previous thought.
My stomach twisted with equal parts excitement and dread, the infectious sound of Gray’s big, joyous laughs nearly enough to make me forgive him. I didn’t want to see him, not after the last time we slept together became the last time we talked. But I might’ve wanted him to seemea little bit. And I couldn’t avoid him. We were adults. We lived on the same street. We were going to encounter each other.
I walked up to the sidewalk in front of my neighbor’s, where Gray was sitting, drawing with chalk with the little girl who lived there. She’d been going by the name “Lion” for the last week.
Gray wasn’t babysitting. He just did stuff like this. He was kind to everyone, a postcard of the word “neighborly.” He rebuilt our mailbox after I backed my car into it. He filled the little library in front of his house with brand new books. And for our married neighbors, who were always fighting, he purchased flamingo lawn ornaments and planted them around their yard for them.
Angling my body slightly away from his, I focused on Lion, who sat with her legs crossed and smiled up at me. Her cropped light-brown hair fluttered in the breeze.
“Hey, Lion,” I said, pretending to be unaffected by Gray’s proximity.
“Hey,” she replied, equally coolly. Then she dug her bright pink chalk stick into the sidewalk. She made zesty strokes, darkeningthe lines as she went over them.
I stooped for a closer look at her picture.
I wasn’t acknowledging Gray, which I had to admit was ridiculous, in part because he was wearing a plastic Viking costume helmet. It looked like Lion had abandoned her pointy princess hat to the grass, but Gray, not one for giving up a bit, would probably go home in his hat and wear it all the way through dinner.
“Did you come from the track?” Gray asked. He meant the one at the school that I didn’t run to anymore.
“No,” I answered neutrally. There was more I could’ve said. LikeI stopped running to the school a while ago. I didn’t have a reason, only that I’d reach the fork in our street, get an eerie feeling, and sprint the other way.
“Ember?”
Slowly, I turned and looked down at him. My heart did a stupid thing. “Hi,” I sighed.
Lion stopped her doodling to stare.
Gray grinned, bright, wide, and enchanting, his body at ease and relaxed. “Hello.” No one should look good in Viking horns, but he did.
It didn’t matter that he was only a few inches taller than me. Gray was the most attractive guy in this part of Pennsylvania, and everyone agreed. His eyes were a dangerous silver-blue, ice and freeze and a gray horizon, but his smile always warmed me. He laughed deeply, tossing his dark-brown hair as he threw back his head. Gray was the sunshine in a storm as much as he was the weather fronts that caused it.
He’d moved in with his aunt and uncle across the street when I was ten and he was thirteen. He never spoke about why, but frequently said things like:Can’t lose what you never had.And I knew. What happened to Gray Fallsdown’s parents was the first thing that came up when you searched his name on the internet.
But knowing he’d lost his parents in an accident didn’t make it any easier for me to accept he’d never let himself get close to me. It should have. My body should’ve been able to learn what my mind knew, that my feelings were trivial compared to what he’d been through. But it wasn’t easy when Gray left, when he let in distance, followed by more distance, when he chose backpacking through Spain, or when he left for six months to take a random architecture class in Germany. It hurt every time, like shrapnel tearing apart my chest, and most nights, when sleep didn’t come easily, I had to shut my eyes and remind myself of our history. Gray didn’t always come back to anyone else, but he always came back to me.
I put a hand on my hip, once again looking at Lion’s drawing because I couldn’t stomach looking at Gray anymore. “Who are you drawing?” I asked her.
Lion shrugged. “Gray’s girlfriend.”
The air felt heavier. My chest clenched. Gray’s girlfriend, obviously, was not me. When Lion drew me, she used yellow for my hair and drew long, waving lines with it, not short, thick streaks of bright pink.
“Gray has a girlfriend?” It wouldn’t be the first time, but the words emerged as a pathetic squeak regardless.
