11.
Seventeen years ago
The new kid hadn’t spoken to Aubrey in three weeks.
On his second day in English, he’d claimed a desk at the front of the room without so much as looking her way. She’d tolerated that for four whole days, then moved up, at which point Nick had promptly relocated to the back and continued to ignore her. When she’d switched again, so had he. And every time class ended, he somehow slipped from the room before she’d even made it out of her seat.
In the hallways, she’d spotted him a dozen times, but whenever she beelined toward him, nothing awaited but empty space. If she went left, he went right. If she went right, he disappeared entirely.
Nick was, very clearly, avoiding her.
Which, under normal circumstances, Aubrey would’ve thought meant he regretted their bizarrely intimate afternoon together. But every morning, when she opened her locker, another letter waited inside.
Nick’s confessions varied in length and content, but they all contained the same painful honesty as the first. One saidsimply,I couldn’t stop thinking about you last night. I fell asleep with your name on my lips.In another, he delved into his hatred for his father.
When I was seven, he wrote,my dad cheated on my mom. Or maybe I should say that’s when my mom found out. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time he’d done it.
I don’t remember how everything happened, at least not in detail. I was too young. But I’ve read the police report enough times, and it says my mom had some painkillers left over from a surgery she’d once had on her ankle. She took too many that day and didn’t wake up.
It wasn’t intentional. At least, that’s what everyone says. She just went looking for a reprieve from her heartbreak, and accidentally went too far.
I barely remember her anymore. But she permeates some level of my memory, enough for me to know that, of my parents, she was the good one. The reliable one, who kept the rent paid and food in the fridge. The one who tucked me in and told me stories and made sure my shoes didn’t have holes in the bottom.
When she died, my life changed overnight. My dad started drinking and hasn’t held a steady job since. He always has some excuse, some delusional plan that involves moving us to a new place where he’ll miraculously start showing up for work on a regular basis.
That’s when he’s speaking to me, at least. Which is rarely. Mostly, he forgets I exist. On the few occasions he remembers, he expects meto take him seriously. As if he didn’t kill our relationship the day he killed my mom.
I wish I didn’t feel her loss so deeply, still. But it’s like a hole in me, a permanent knot in my soul, a rupture where the family I should’ve had was torn out by the roots.
That’s why I write to her so much. And, as fucked-up as it might sound, she’s the parent I’m closest to. My dad is just some asshole I live with. Some guy I’ll never forgive. I’ll never stop hating him, either. And no matter what happens, I’ll never betray anyone the way he did.
Now you know why I spend as little time in that house as possible.
That one brought tears to Aubrey’s eyes. Nick’s agony dripped from the page, staining her soul, and she ached to sit with him on the chesterfield again, to trade her secrets for his. Such a simple desire, but one she couldn’t fulfill, because she couldn’t get anywhere near him.
Meanwhile, the letters kept coming. Just as he’d warned, each one was a window, illuminating some new facet of the darkly glittering jewel that was Nick Thacker. Sometimes he showed her beauty. Sometimes yearning, or shame. He handed himself over fragment by fragment, each letter a piece in a puzzle so vast and intricate Aubrey could barely comprehend its scope.
She thought about him all the time.
Every morning, when she spun the dial on her locker, anticipatory lightning crackled across her skin, and her next full breath never arrived until after she’d finished reading. Then, when she glimpsed tangled dark curls in the distance, frantic wings beat inside her chest.
Yet as January dwindled, Nick continued to elude her. February dawned gray and bleary. In the hallways, Gallant continued to be Gallant, proclaiming to anyone who would listen that the new kid had cheated during their fight.
Aubrey paid no attention. Each word from Gallant’s mouth dissipated before reaching her, no more impactful than smoke on a breeze. Meanwhile, the words in her locker made her bones quake. She reread Nick’s letters so many times they inked themselves on the backs of her eyelids.
Last night, I dreamed of you, he wrote.When I woke, I couldn’t breathe. I’m not sure I even wanted to.
It wasn’t normal, she knew. He’d even said as much in his first letter. But the more he wrote, the less she wanted it to be. What was normal, anyway? Gallant? Megan? Probably. They were predictable. Solvable with a single swipe of the pen. Which had its place, certainly. Aubrey considered Megan an invaluable friend.
But this—this was something else entirely. Nick had spent one afternoon with her and fallen head over heels intosomething—obsession, maybe, or fascination—and she wanted nothing more than to draw closer, to burn herself on the flame of his fixation, because his words never stopped pulling her deeper. And god, how she wanted to hear that raspy voice again, let it roll through her, down to her toes.
She longed to unravel him. The same way he was unraveling her.
So... Nick could keep avoiding her, if he wanted. Maybe he’d even succeed, for a little while longer. But this game of his had failed to factor in one thing.
The lengths to which she was willing to go when she wanted something.
Today, Aubrey sat at the back of the classroom, awaiting thestart of English. Nick appeared his usual millisecond before the bell and slid into a front-row seat.
