“Uh.” He flushes as red as his plaid overshirt, which probably wouldn’t button up all the way if I were to try it on. He’s skinny as a needle, and I spent my summer losing my best shirts to puberty. All of my friends who are boys don’t know how to act around me anymore; I’ll walk by and they’ll start punching each other’s ribs or try to show me how they can staple their socks to their pants.
“Suit yourself.” I pluck his candy bar out of the white plasticbag and start piling his stuff up on top of the bagging carousel. He doesn’t look at me, twisting to survey the busy store, the other two registers beeping nonstop as my coworkers and I rush each shopper through the line. His hands fidget with his pockets, in and out and in again.
“Thirty-eight seventy-two,” I say. Then say it again, louder, because he still doesn’t turn back toward me.
“Oh, right.” He fumbles with a credit card, sliding it the wrong way at first. I raise my eyebrows. My parents would never trust me with a credit card. I’m sixteen, so the only money I ever get is crumpled green bills that I end up spending on bowls of baked mac and cheese at Our Little Secret.
Alex wears his hair like a privacy curtain, golden brown ringlets hanging in his eyes. He sits near me in world history but doesn’t talk much. All I know is that teachers adore him because he makes straight As and doesn’t give them any trouble. (Like I do.) My friend Yasmin and I got paired with him for a group project freshman year and he did all the work while Yasmin and I sprawled on my bed, trading magazine quizzes. All he said during the two hours he was in my house was “Do you have any markers?” and “I’ve never been in a girl’s room before.”
“Thanks, bye,” he tells me, ducking his head as he grabs all his stuff and holds it to his chest. One of the Red Bulls slips out, lip denting when it hits the floor. A slow dribble of reddish liquid seeps out onto the linoleum tile.
“You want to grab a new one real quick?”
His reply is barely audible. “Nah, it’s fine.” He picks up the drink, which begins leaking down his arm. I’m both fascinated and disturbed by his weird behavior, just standing there with his wounded drink, pretending he doesn’t notice it’s getting all over him.
“I think you need a bag.”
I can tell he agrees, but that he’s going to double down on the poor decision out of embarrassment. He glances at the line of people behind him, carts full, attention magnified. He blushes again, throws the Milky Way at me. I watch horror spread through his wide eyes when the candy bar catches me on the chin.
“Oh god! Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to hit your face.”
“Why did you throw your candy at me?” I try to hand it back to him, but he swerves it for some reason. Confused, I place it on the ledge next to the credit card machine.
“I’m so sorry.” He drops the Windex. “Crap. Sorry.” I don’t know why he’s apologizing to me for dropping the Windex. Maybe he’s apologizing to the Windex.
“Do you need some help?” the lady in line behind him asks.
“See you,” Alex murmurs, then runs off without the Windex.
“Probably tomorrow” is my reply, since he comes by the store just about every day after school and sometimes multiple times a day on weekends, but he’s too far away to hear me. He must have plenty of money to burn on snacks. When he reaches the automatic doors, he dashes through theENTER ONLYside, another one of his items tumbling from his grip right as somebody walks in with a cart, wheels crunching this poor kid’s jalapeño chips. The expression on his face is pure misery as he casts a hasty glimpse at me over his shoulder, apologizes to whoever ran over his food, and is gone.
Chapter Five
FERN:
You have deprived me of your heart and left mine a wilderness.
Alex King is here.
Because of course he is. Alex King’s mom is getting married to Trevor’s dad. This coming Sunday. If I am given any more surprise information today, I will fade into the wind like a leaf.
His voice has aged like deep, oaky mead, with a laugh that rumbles just beneath. In my memory, Alex’s timbre is frozen at eighteen years old. Still cracking when he got nervous, then a rough scrape when it was just us alone, hands on skin. It was amusing then, to see how quick I could spin him from bright-eyed boy to feverish, flushed, raspy, pupils devouring all light.
He is preternaturally still, absorbing every speck of me in so thorough a visual inspection that it’s astonishing I don’t start voluntarily stripping my clothes off to make it easier for him. Wonder flashes through me, hot and luminous. But when it burns away, all that is left behind is pain. No matter how bad it hurts, though, I can’t rip my eyes from that gaze, just as striking as I remember—beautiful blue with sun flares of green-yellow aroundthe pupil. A million brilliant thoughts spinning behind them like a many-colored pinwheel.
His power to reach into my throat and halt its functions is still fully operational. “You have to stop staring at me like that,” I finally say, unnerved.
He looks faint. “You have flowers in your hair.”
I pat it gingerly. “Yes.”
“Your hair is white.”
“It is.”
He indicates, swallowing. “You have tattoos.”
“I do.”
