Chapter Twenty. Rory
Rory
Rory was bent over his usual table in the library, his finger sliding down a page, when someone coughed next to him.
He glanced up.
A girl about his age was standing next to his table, black hair and pale hands made even paler against her orange wool sweater. “Um, sorry to bother you,” she said, her voice pitched low.
He startled. It was almost disconcerting to hear a girl his age speak instead of sign.
“Mrs. Finnebone—the librarian—said that you might have Bauer’s Fundamentals? Is there any chance that I could have it when you’re done with it? I’m sitting right over there.” She gestured at a clump of larger tables on the other side of the room.
“Oh, um, sure,” Rory stammered. He dug through one of the piles and emerged with a blue-bound book. “Here, I’m already done with it.”
“Thanks.” The girl eyed him speculatively. “Are you studying for the entrance exams?”
“Uh, no. Are you?” He had to remind himself to look at her face and not at her hands as he waited for a reply.
“Yeah.” She dimpled. “I’m studying for next month’s. We all are.” She gestured toward a table near the window, where two boys and a girl were in the middle of some animated, hushed conversation. “I’m Hanna.” She thrust her palm forward.
“Rory,” he said, gingerly shaking her hand.
“So, I’m guessing you’re a student already?”
“No. I’m here for …” What to say? How much to say? “A personal project,” he finished, echoing Mrs. Finnebone.
“Oh, wow. That’s cool. Having a personal project at our age. Wait, are you our age? How old are you?”
“Sixteen next month.”
“Me too.” Hanna smiled again, full red lips curving, and leaned her hip against his table. “So, are you from here? I think I saw you around before.”
“No, I’m from up north, just by Ashford.” At her vacant expression, he added, “It’s about an hour east from Shrewsbury.” Hanna’s stare was still blank. Fighting not to fidget, Rory added, “About three hours by train from here?”
“Oh,” Hanna started. “That’s far.”
There was a moment of silence. Rory felt unhabituated. Even after five visits here, he was no more used to conversations with strangers, or with strangers his age, or to conversations with words, really. He fumbled for something to say. “Are you from here?”
Hanna’s dimple flashed again. “Yeah, we all grew up here. It’s so cool your parents let you come to the city all by yourself.”
He let the parents bit go uncommented. “I’m staying at my sister’s, so it’s not really alone. She’s a student here.”
“Nice.”
Another bit of silence, but a more comfortable one. Hanna rapped on the table once and straightened. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Nice meeting you, Rory.”
“You too, Hanna.” There, that was the right thing to say, wasn’t it?
She flashed him another smile over her shoulder and was gone.
Winter evening hung heavy outside as Rory made his way out of the reading room. Though instead of the deep, velvety darkness of home, this darkness was a gray, timid thing, almost unrecognizable.
“Hey, Rory.” Hanna waved from her table, half kneeling, half leaning on her chair. “Do you have plans for tonight?”
Sitting in the living room in his sister’s flat, reading one of the paperbacks he was pretty sure Wynne tried to hide, featuring half-dressed women and barely dressed men. “Not really.”
“Oh, great. We’re heading out for ice cream, and we were thinking, since you’re new to the city, you probably don’t know a lot of stuff to do around here. Wanna come with? We’ll show you around a bit.”
Rory hesitated. But what was his other option?
Sitting alone in the apartment all evening, missing Daye?
Thinking about things he had no business thinking about?
Calling again, just to hear her knocking on the receiver twice to let him know she was still okay?
Or worse, having it ring again and again with no answer, and then spending the whole night obsessing over it, even though he knew Daye preferred to be outside the house in winter, that her not picking up meant nothing at all?
He eyed the three kids at the table behind her, who would surely expect him to know what to say and how to—
“Don’t worry, they’re really nice,” Hanna said, misreading his concern. “I promise.”
Behind her, three pairs of eyes looked at him expectantly.
And now Rory had no possible answers but “Sure, thanks. That sounds fun.”
And so he found himself eating ice cream on a cold, gray January evening while old snow piled sooty and crumpled at the edges of the sidewalks.
The four of them walked him around the city.
They twined through favorite alleys and pointed at best-loved cafés, sweet shops, a pizza place exhaling greasy fumes in puffs of warm air.
Maggie, flippant and bright, and her brother Elliott, elfin and exuberant—the two of them too similar to be mistaken for anything but twins.
Noah, dry and amused at Elliott’s antics.
And Hanna, hand resting solicitously on Rory’s, her touch light through the layers of wool and gloves.
They were all illuminated in a checkered sort of way: pools of streetlamps and stripes of window light mixing with puddles of darkness where cats yowled behind garbage cans. The evening city was a different, unknown creature, even more foreign than the morning kind.
He didn’t talk much that first evening, unsure how to behave with people his age. People that weren’t Daye. Acquaintances? Possible friends? So he listened, smiled, and let their old arguments and private jokes wash over him, leaving him feeling drowsy with warmth and laughter.
He walked back to Wynne’s in a daze.
In the library the next morning, Elliott waved him forward, calling his name in the sort of whisper-shout that was somehow louder than plain talking.
And before Rory knew it, Elliott and Noah were helping him transfer his piles to their table, and Maggie was offering him an illicit candy bar, and Hanna was admiring his notebook and asking if he was really going back Thursday, and when did he plan to come back to the city next?
And just like that, Rory had friends.