Sam
On the afternoon of the accident, Ari’s ride home is late.
It is one of the rare times when Sam gets to idle with him after the bell rings, so they linger by the front doors of their high school as other students, their shoulders hunched and hoodies pulled up, stream by around them. It is a soggy spring, and rain pours down in a relentless sheet, the deluge of water a gift that the land would have appreciated six months earlier.
Ari squints at the curtains of water pouring down over the entrance’s overhang. “You don’t have to hang around,” he tells her. “I’ll get picked up soon.”
Sam savors the cold, damp air. “Well, I have to wait for this to let up, anyway,” she replies. Like everyone else in the city, she doesn’t own an umbrella. “So what now?”
Ari nods down the main corridor. “There’s a spot at the back of the library where we can wait.”
“Lead the way.”
He smiles at her, and it lights up her whole heart. How tall he’s grown this year, like a plant that has suddenly taken root. When he passes through the hall at school now, eyes always flicker to him, but he always looks shyly down, as if he can’t bear the growing attention. She has seen the way girls crane their necks and straighten their hair, the way boys either linger feverishly on his face or pick on him out of spite. It prickles the envy in her heart, although she isn’t sure if it’s because she wants him to herself or because she wishes she were him. What’s it like, to be so noticed? Why does she even care?
They head inside through the emptying corridors until they step past the double doors leading into the library. Here, in a corner, is a tiny nook made by two adjoining shelves, a bit of carpet that ends against glass windows facing the empty visitor’s lot, the wet pavement outside stained with a carpet of leaves and rose petals.
“You come here often?” she asks him as he settles into the nook and pulls out a notebook.
He nods. “Lunch period.”
She scoots in beside him, and they sit together in silence. From here, they get a view of rows of flat-roofed bungalows behind the jacarandas, all fading into the blue mist of rain. Her eyes drift to his notebook and his elegant hands. He’s drawing a picture of the closest car to them, sketching in a patch of dripping orange poppies growing by the tires with long, efficient strokes. She didn’t know he could draw so well, and she adds it to her growing list of mysteries about him. Maybe the strange black car that picks him up every day takes him to an art class?
“Ari,” she says. “You’re really good.”
He glances at her through his lashes, smiles, and looks back down. “Just an easy view to draw.”
He doesn’t sound like he wants to dwell on it, so she gets too shy to ask him about where he goes every afternoon. She just nods and says, “This is a good spot.”
“I’m good at finding hideouts.”
“You have other ones?”
“Sure.” She gets lost for a moment in his eyes. “I found one last week, down in the South Bay. There’s a secret beach there. You have to go through a tangle of bushes, but once you’re there, you’re by yourself.”
“You like being by yourself.”
“Don’t you?”
She doesn’t answer, because she’s not sure. She likes it only when she is the one choosing it. “Speaking of being alone,” she says. “Library’s closing soon. They’re going to kick us out if they see us here.”
“Ah,” Ari replies, glancing idly toward the entrance. “Maybe no one’ll notice.”
“You?” Sam laughs a little. “Not a chance. Everyone pays attention to you.”
She says it automatically, like a truth, but he smiles and looks away, his cheeks flushing, and she realizes with a start that it might have come off as flirting. Her heart jumps in panic, her own cheeks turn pink, and she starts to shake her head.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean—I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “I didn’t mind.”
She looks back out at the rain. “It must be nice, to be noticed all the time.”
Ari turns to her. After a moment, he puts down his pencil and holds out his hand so that his palm faces up. Sam stares at it. And as if she knows what to do, she instinctively presses her own palm down on his. A shiver dances through her. She realizes that she’s never touched a boy’s hand before, but it’s too late to withdraw now. And besides, he feels nice, his skin smooth and warm. There’s something comforting in this touch, as if he knows her and she knows him, and they are the only two people in the world who understand each other.
Ari uses his other hand to trace a circle against the skin of her hand, then a dot in the center of it. The nape of her neck tingles with pleasure. She looks questioningly at him.
“It means perfection,” he says. “It means, I like you the way you are, Sam.”
