The gall of this kid! Yasmin and I exchange exclamation mark faces.
My attention ricochets between Mrs. Chevis and Alex. Another detention will cut into my work shift, which will cut into my slowly accumulating savings. The day I’m legally an adult, it isGoodbye, Ohio! “Forget what you saw,” I tell him ominously.
“Sorry, can’t do that.” He’s doing that thing again, gaze flickering briefly up at the teacher’s notes, then expelling an entire paragraph onto his paper. His handwriting’s better than mine. Heat flares up my neck, tingling in the tips of my ears for some reason. Is Alex my nemesis now?
“But.” I am at a loss. Yasmin’s eating this up, and I admit I’m enjoying the end-of-the-school-day drama. World history isusually when I nap behind my binder. Or ditch to see a matinee. I haven’t been able to convince Yasmin to join me ever since we wound up in the same theater as her mom when we were supposed to be giving an oral report I’d neglected to prepare for. I’m hanging as far out into the aisle as I can brave without spilling from my chair, eyes intense on his every flinch, the way his knee won’t quit bouncing. High color slashes his cheekbones, and a rapid pulse thumps below the hard angle of his jaw. “You can’t call that number.”
“I’m going to.”
He says it so firmly, and my god. Where has this boy’s voice been? All I can do is stare. He doesn’t look at me again, but his neck gets redder. He shoves his notebook into his backpack as if worried I’ll dive for it. The thought hadn’t occurred to me.
Yasmin covers her mouth with her hands to stifle a giggle.
“Then I won’t answer,” I tell him.
“I’ll text.”
“I won’t read your texts.”
He holds my stare. “You will.”
Holy shit, I think I’m blushing. It is the most horrible sensation to have ever happened to me. My skin is being dipped into boiling oil.
“Romina!”
I whip around to face the front. Mrs. Chevis isn’t too tired to put me in my place, unfortunately. She’s told me twice so far this year that I am one of the “most inattentive and disruptive students she’s had the joy of teaching” to which I pointed out that she’s only been teaching for three years. Get back to me when you’re mid-career like Ms. Linden andthenevaluate how bad I’ve been.
The bell rings. By the time I’ve collected my stuff, Alex is already ducking out the door into the hallway’s swell of students. A Milky Way sits on my desk.
I pick it up: The wrapper is warm, like it’s been in his pocket, and I’d bet anything the chocolate inside is gooey and melted. I am not going to answer a strange boy’s texts, but I suppose I’ll take the candy.
Chapter Twelve
PURPLE LARKSPUR:
First love.
NOW
There’s a story inAs Evening Fallsabout a woman who picked a magic purple flower to give to a man she loved. After she accidentally dropped the flower on her way to see him, it was scooped up by a lark, who flew away. Every so often, she would see this lark, still with the flower in its beak, fresh as the day it bloomed. As the weeks went by and she gradually lost interest in the man she’d fancied, she enjoyed searching for the lark and her stolen flower. “Until one day,” I tell Alex, “after she had fallen completely out of love, the lark transformed into a young, beautiful earth god. He’d been waiting for her heart to be her own again so that she could then give it to him. After she gave him her love, he returned the flower, which she wore in her hair, and its magic kept her young with him for hundreds of years.” The story claims that they live together beneath the swift-moving waters of Twinstar Fork, which is why larkspur grows in such abundance along its banks.
The sun is a low fireball flinting off the water of TwinstarFork now, trees losing their green as they darken to silhouettes. The cooling air clings to my lungs.
I bend forward, plucking a stalk of purple larkspur. “Not symbolism,” I tell him. “A story.”
He shifts closer, examining it. His eyes, haltingly beautiful, slide to mine. He has dark limbal rings, and looking into them, I feel as if he takes something; as if, every time I meet his gaze, he siphons off a little piece of me to keep.
I don’t have time to stand here on a riverbank and pick larkspur with him. Don’t have time to eat calzones with him, or snipe at each other.
Next Monday is May Day—Beltane—one of my busiest workdays of the year. I have hundreds of artificial flower crowns to make in advance (fresh flowers for an occasion like this would take up all the room in my fridge). It’s also when the night market is supposed to launch, which we’re not nearly prepared for. Which begs the question: What the hell am I doing?
“My mistake,” Alex says softly. His gaze is sharp and glittering as the night. “I suppose I have you to fault for flower symbolism being on my mind.”
I can’t breathe as he holds my stare. “Of course you would blame me.”
His head slants as though he heard me say something completely different. “When we were in the gas station, Trevor told me that you two live together. That you both live in the little house out back behind your shop.”
I blink away my stupor. “Right. Yes.” Lovely of Trevor to not run this by me first. How are we going to keep our story straight? “That is true.”
