Outside the admin building, rain plinks against the crooked awning. The quad has emptied out, with only a handful of stragglers taking shelter from the rain beneath the canopy enveloping the lunch tables. In the sea of gray cement and grayer skies, I stick out like a sore thumb in my brightblue coat, its bronze buttons shinier than a polished coin and matched to the pink sweater underneath. Paired with my striped leggings, it’s an outfit Rainie once referred to as the manifestation of a twelve-year old’s Pinterest board.
As soon as I step out from under the awning, water soaks into my hair, dripping against the back of my neck. I walk fast, barely watching where I’m going. Aida’s sketchpad weighs heavily inside my coat. All I want is a warm shower and a blanket three times the length of my bed.
Mid-shiver, I slam directly into a firm body. I careen backward, my ankle twisting painfully beneath me, but a quick grip prevents me from cracking my head open on the concrete.
Jesse frowns down at my ankle, still holding tight to my arm. “We’ve gotta set up some kind of traffic signal around you.”
“Or,” I growl, shaking him off, “you could start watching where you’re going?”
Like a switch, my aggression summons Jesse’s wicked smile from its storage unit in the depths of hell. “Maybe Iamwatching where I’m going.”
Despite the fact that my toes have surrendered all feeling and the moisture in my hair has unleashed my frizz quicker than sticking a fork in an electric socket, I still summon the energy to glare.
“I know what you’re doing.”
Jesse clicks his tongue. “Don’t have a clue what you mean, Sour Patch.”
A raindrop runs down his cheek. Shoring up my courage, I step close to Jesse and catch the raindrop with my thumb. In the same movement, I sweep the skin over his cheekbone, trailing my fingers over the regal line of his jaw. A shudder goes through Jesse, and my stomach tightens. So many invisible fault lines in this contradictory, beautiful boy. One tiny shift, one wrong collision, and the quake would break him apart.
And here I am, pressing. Trying to see what it would take to breakhim. Gouging, piercing, looking for the cracks in the layers of protection between him and the world.
My fingers travel as far as his throat before he seizes my wrist.
Rebuke burns in his eyes, disappointment close behind it. He swallows.
“I get it, Mansour. I understand how it feels to be furious with the world. To want to lash out and claw back some of what it’s taken from you.” His grip on my wrist softens, and he twines his fingers with mine for half of a heartbeat. With the same hold, he tugs me closer. Even a drop of rain would struggle to squeeze between us, finding itself trapped between my pounding heart and Jesse’s.
“Don’t turn me into collateral damage,” he murmurs. “If you want to hurt me, choose another way. Choose something I can recover from.”
He releases me and steps back, tucking his hands into his pockets. “How did it go?”
It takes a minute to process the array of shame, confusion, and disappointment clashing inside me. “The audition? It was fine.”
Jesse seems prepared to press for more, but his gaze catches on something over my shoulder. His features slacken in disbelief. “Unbelievable,” he snarls, with such menace that I nearly step away.
When I try to turn and see what he’s glaring at, Jesse grabs my coat’s lapel. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.” He pulls me forward, holding on to my coat like a leash.
“Wait!” I swat at his arm, wriggling in a futile effort to dislodge him. What doesn’t he want me to see? “Jesse, let go!”
As a last resort, I pull my arms out of the coat, leaving him with an armful of empty blue cotton. I spin around. Squinting through the gray haze cast over the half-drowning campus, I search for the culprit behind Jesse’s sudden rage.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Everyone is in sixth period, so only the athletes mill around the quad.
The basketball team runs laps on the track fenced in next to the parking lot. Tucked behind the bleachers, Alex puts his arms around a tall blond I vaguely recognize as Diane Rigmore.
“Huh,” I remark. I probe around for any hurt and come up empty-handed. My relationship with Alex seems like a relic from a lost age. Honestly, I’m glad he moved on. The girl he was waiting for doesn’t exist anymore.
Jesse, usually eerily adept at reading my mind, misses the mark by a mile. “He’s been going around playing the heartbroken puppy, you know that? And then he pulls this crap with you? In front of everyone? The little prick.”
Pushing my coat into my arms, Jesse stalks toward the fence.
On a late Thursday afternoon, Nadine Mansour stepped out of Borg El Arab Airport in Alexandria and nearly fell to her knees. People bustled around the motionless woman, throwing their bags in taxis and greeting their loved ones. Busy, distracted. They didn’t stop to appreciate the magnificence around them. The setting sun’s trail of blazing red, like a thumb dipped in paint dragging across the sky’s clear canvas. The dry breeze, wrapping around her in a welcoming hug.
Tears tingled in Nadine’s eyes.
She was home.
“Ma’am, do you need a taxi?” a boy in a cheap button-down and poorly knotted tie asked. He couldn’t be older than eighteen. He offered a gap-toothed smile, likely hoping to charm the peculiar tourist away from the shiny cabs lining the airport’s exit.
