The tension of a potential kiss dangles like a string above the center console, but he can’t do it. He can’t give her what she wants. He needs to feel magic, and there is none.
At least, not with her.
“Thank you,” he says. “You don’t know how much I needed this.”
Nancy opens her mouth, a smudge of red lipstick on her front tooth.
“I think we should just stick to a professional relationship,” James says as he opens the door. The dome lights wash out Nancy’s confused face. “I really did appreciate this date. I loved the show. See you Monday!”
He waits in his truck for her to leave the parking lot, unable to wipe the giddy grin off his face as he backs out and drives off, out of the square. Not toward his parents’ house on Anderson Street, but right toward River Road. Then down Blackwood.
To a house with a mailbox markedQuill.
Nelle scrutinizes herself in her vanity mirror. She ties her blond hair up, pink bow dangling like bubblegum strings, then takes it down so it falls in thin, blond locks over her shoulders. She puts it up again. With a groan, she yanks the ribbon out and shoves it in a drawer. Silver glints beside it, a chain that dangles and shimmers when she plucks it up.A glass pendant hangs on the end, holding soil from the lake behind Father’s childhood cottage.
If she tries to write for herself, she will die.
But he never said what would happen if someoneelsewrote for her.
Nelle dumps the tablespoon of dirt into the drawer and pricks her finger with a sewing needle until a black bead blooms, and the little vial is full. Holding the pendant makes her feel powerful and guilty at the same time. Other than talking to James, siphoning off her own ink is the most directly she has ever disobeyed Father. Shaking, she hides the pendant beneath a sheaf of drawings in the drawer.
A muffled tap beats on the windowpane.
Nelle’s chest swells with an uncharted emotion, a feeling she has read about but never experienced. She carries her vanity stool to the window and unlocks the pane, wincing at the resistant groan. James stands on the other side, beaming up at her. He takes off his red-and-brown flannel, revealing long arms, gold from the summer sun, a stark contrast to the gray of her own skin, lifeless from hiding in the shadows.
Her relief unspools. “You came back.”
“I came back,” he says through a smile. It’s infectious, and suddenly she can’t wipe a smile off her own face.
“I didn’t scare you?” She doesn’t want to tiptoe around the truth, not if this night is going to end with James telling her that he never wants to speak to her again. She wants to rip the rejection off like solidified wax, in one painful yank.
Hope inflates her as James says, “Youdidscare me, but here I am. For some reason, I believe you, and for some reason, I just ...”
“What?” Nelle rests her arms and chin on the windowsill. The air outside is drenched in pine and manure. The smell of Lincoln. “You just what?”
“Want to be around you.”
Nelle watches the bulb of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. He is really here. He came back. For the first time in her life, she has a friend. She feels it with him. Trust. Connection.
And for the first time in her life, she might have a way out of this prison.
“Do you have any questions for me? About ... you know ... what I am?”
“You say you’re not human, that Quill wrote you into existence,” James starts. “What does that actually mean?”
“Father was married a long time ago. He had a wife and daughter that he loved.” She looks above the spiky treetops to the stars. “Bianca and Eleanor. They died in a house fire. Like I told you, it started as a way of coping with his grief. He wrote about having an infant daughter. And one day, he woke up to find me inthisroom in a pink bassinet. Screaming and crying like a real newborn baby.”
“So your creation was ... accidental?” James asks.
The idea of Quill creating herpurposefullyhas never crossed Nelle’s mind. He only ever treated her like a mistake.
“I don’t know if he wrote about a baby because he wantedme,” she says, “and honestly, I don’t want to know.”
“Sorry if I crossed a line there.”
Nelle shakes her head. “It just makes me wonder why he’d treat me the way he does if heaskedfor me. And I don’t want to go down that road.”
“He’s an asshole, that’s why.” James sticks his arms through the sleeves of his flannel, and Nelle mourns. “Anything else I should know about your ... condition?”
