When we pulled apart, we gazed at each other, as though memorizing each other’s features. He traced my brow, my cheek, my lips.
“I love you. We’ll see each other soon,” he said, and disappeared.
I slumped, a visceral ache striking through me at his absence. Where he had been, I could see straight through to waving trees and flowers. There was no more heat, no press of his skin on mine. Only the lingering scent of him.
My vision blurred, and I closed my eyes. In two months, the school year would be over. Summer would be here. He would be back. He had promised. He had my red string bracelet, and I had his ring. We had each other, even if we weren’t beside each other anymore.
When I’d recovered, I went down to the Lyceum. Campus was normal today, people carrying on like usual. Leah would be in her art history class, which took place in the basement classrooms of the Lyceum’s museum, located on the Arts Quad. I climbed the steps of the grand marble building and sat, offset from the entrance so I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. Before me, picnicking students filled the lawn. The sky was brutally blue, no sign of the storm from two days ago. I watched a row of blackbirds feasting upon beetles with almost an obscene zeal.
The bells tolled, the classes changing. When I saw Leah, I called her name, and she came over, plopping down next to me on the steps. “What’s wrong?” she asked immediately.
“He’s gone.” I clutched the scarf I was wearing, the one he had made me, burying my shaking fingers in the pink and teal yarn.
“Oh, Naomi.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
We watched the birds swoop, watched how they filled the trees and their songs the air. I would never take them for granted again.
A warm wind danced past me, carrying the green scent of new growth and of fresh soil and of delicate, unfurling buds. In the distance, a flag I had never seen before, blue with pink-and-yellow trim, was being hoisted up the weather pole. In the distance, gold glowed on the horizon, the kind of light you only saw right after dawn or right before dusk—a golden light, a magical light, and it was spreading toward us with all the warmth of a parent’s embrace.
I turned to Leah. “Is this…?”
Her face was raised, her chest lifting as she inhaled. I could see the gleam in her eye, hear the quiver in her voice as she answered. “The Maestril. It’s finally here.”
I reached out and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back, and we sat there for a while, breathing in thespring.
