A flush tinged Kenji’s neck. “Just a bunch of goofy drawings.”
He sat next to her, and they flipped through the book, laughing over his caricatures of their former classmates. There was even the dreaded Coach Harkness as a cartoon villain with laser eyes and horns.
A snort bubbled out of her nose. “I forgot about the old windbag. He really had it out for me.”
“He had it out for everyone.” Kenji tried to take the book back. “The rest aren’t so good.”
Marigold didn’t let go. “What, you’re not going to show memypictures?”
“Who said I ever drew you?”
“You used to slap your sketchbook shut whenever I passed by. Probably gave me four slimy eyes with razor lashes and warty tentacles coming out of my chin.” She gave him a look over her glasses. “I know I would’ve.”
“There’s only a couple, they’re not very good—”
Marigold flipped forward several pages, landing on a drawing that brought her up short.
There she was, sitting at her desk, readingA Wizard of Earthsea.She wasn’t a villain; she wasn’t even a caricature. She was sketched in careful, thoughtful pencil, somewhere between a memory and a dream. She looked prettier on paper, the intensity of her gaze softer, her often-pursed lips rounded into a gentle almost-smile. Her hands especially—elegantly wrapped around her book, every crease of her gloves captured in wisps of graphite. The picture was titledBright EyesMari, 1969.
Marigold was speechless. She swallowed before finding her words. “I thought I told you not to call me Mari.”
“Do you know what it means in Japanese?”
She shook her head.
“Truth.”
The word sparked her fingertips, a twinkling sensation traveling across her skin. “Okay, I like that,” she admitted. “But bright eyes?”
“Sometimes when you were reading a library book, the light would reflect off the laminate and make your eyes, you know, shine.”
Marigold’s heart skipped a beat. She felt how close Kenji was sitting, their fingers almost touching on the sketchbook. She took three quick sips of her Coke that she prayed might chase away the heat rising to her cheeks. “You’re smooth.” She laughed awkwardly. “No wonder all the girls liked you, Yamamoto.”
“Notallof them liked me.” He was looking at her intently.
Her mouth went dry. What was she supposed to say to that?
Kenji downed his Coke in one long gulp. “Fireball’s open. I’m going to start a game. Coming?”
“Soon.” She kept turning the pages, finding more drawings of herself. They were mundane slices of classroom life: She was raising her hand to ask a question, she was fidgeting with the screw on her glasses, she was tutoring a freshman in the library, then—Marigold turned to the last page in the series.
It was the only drawing in the book that was in color. She faced herself at sixteen. Her glasses sat at a crooked angle on her nose, her mouth pursed in concentration. She was holding the hand of an unseen patient, wrapping a finger with a roll of white gauze.
Clearly the drawing had been rendered by an older, more accomplished Kenji than the rest of the book. There was a tenderness to each stroke, a care that even Marigold’s untrained eye could appreciate.
The stub of a pencil had been carefully taped to the side of the drawing.
She fidgeted with her gloves, feeling the urge to touch the pencil and read what secrets lay beneath. But she was too much of a coward.
She took the sketchbook to where Kenji was playing pinball. “Why’d you keep the splint?”
Kenji glanced at the sketch. The blinking lights from the game cast a scarlet glow on his face. “I might have had a little crush.”
“We hated each other.”
“You hated me, I never hated you.” His bangs fell over his eyes as he slipped a quarter into the machine for her. “Ready?”
Her heart had become a restless drum. She could hardly breathe as she gripped the plunger. “Do you still have that... little crush?”
