I frowned at him. “Blackbird?”
“Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.” He smiled his lazy smile, patting the bench beside him. There was barely room for me to sit without pressing against him somewhere; I opted for knee-to-knee contact as the least embarrassing. “You have that storybook quality, Mary.” He took his glasses off and stuck them in the pocket of his shirt.
“Don’t you need them?” I asked.
“I can seeyou.” He was doing that thing again, his eyes traveling slowly over my face and hair, a deliberate perusal that made me feel intensely visible. It was only natural to look back at him with equal focus, noting how the autumn sunlight gilded his hair, and the slight freshness of the breeze brought a hint of pink to his cheeks. If he was handsome in the hallways at school, out here, on a day like today, he could have been a fairy prince, amusing himself by toying with mortals.
An idea danced at the back of my mind, spurred by the gleam in his eyes, the half smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. Could it be that this light made everyone lovely, including me? That would explain his rapt attention, and the stillness that seemed to envelop the two of us. It felt like the universe was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.
Or maybe that was just me.
“You wanted to talk?” he prompted.
I gave a jerky nod to hide my confusion. “I need your help, actually.”
“Anything for you, Mary.”
The familiar teasing came as a relief. At least now I knew he was joking, unlike the silent ... whatever that had been of a moment before.
“It’s about what you said the other night,” I began. “At the game.”
“You’re still looking for a good nickname?”
I shook my head. “The part about chemistry. Spark. Finding someone you actually like, who’s also a sensible dating option. A nice, safe romantic object ... person.”
“Safe as in boring?”
“No! Definitely not someoneblah. Or annoying. But not a criminal either,” I added, thinking of Terry. “I know about the big stuff, like evaluating their moral fiber—judging whether someone is a reprehensible human being and all that.”
“That’s good,” he replied with mock solemnity.
“And I also know it can’t just be about physical attraction,” I continued, ignoring the aside. “Because appearances can be deceiving. A person whoseemsintriguing might turn out to be really condescending and full of himself, for example.”
He brushed at the front of his sweater, a navy-blue cable knit. “I hate it when that happens.”
“I’m asking how you can be sure you’re making a smart choice—going for someone whose company you’ll actually enjoy? Obviously I know love at first sight is unrealistic.”
“Obviously.” He tapped his chin. “They don’t cover this in your books?”
“It’s not quite the same situation. There were a lot of other factors back then.”
“Such as?”
“Bloodlines, property, who has enough cash in her dowry to keep the ancestral estate running. That kind of thing.”
“Romantic.”
“Yes, well. That was the era of arranged marriages. It was basically a financial transaction. But it’s not reallythatdifferent from now, when you think about it.”
He waved at me to go on.
“It seems to me high school is all about the social hierarchy. Everyone’s trying to figure out their rank, only nowadays it’s not just a question of having an aristocratic title. There are other status symbols.”
“Shoes,” he suggested.
It was probably a joke, but I nodded anyway. “The right clothes, how you look, who your friends are, any kind of public notoriety. It all gets taken into account. And then you look for an eligible partner, meaning someone on your level, or slightly above.”
Alex shook his head.
