Chapter 16
Karla
Ash didn’t show up for first period. When I texted him to see where he was, he told me he woke up late and that he’d see me at lunch. When lunchtime came, though, I could tell something was wrong with him.
Mrs. Rivers sat at her desk wearing her headphones. Sometimes, she liked to listen to and read her books at the same time. She called it immersive reading.
Ash was quieter than normal.
“You OK?” I asked.
He smiled, but it wasn’t warm.
“Ash?”
“My parents officially told me they’re getting divorced. So it’s real now.”
“Oh . . .”
“My dad cried for the longest time, and I just held him.” He kept fiddling with the toy truck.
“I’m so sorry, Ash.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
I didn’t know what else to say, but he asked me if he could focus more on reading than talking.
I let him get back to his book, but after school, when he met me at my locker to walk me to Ellie’s car, I gave him a hug. He didn’t let go for a long time, but I didn’t mind.
I’d hug him forever if he allowed me to.
* * *
The next day, Ash seemed a little less sad.
I brought him his favorite candy bar, a Twix.
He smiled a little as he thanked me. I moved my hair slightly in front of my eyes.
“Why do you do that?” Ash asked me as he picked the pepperoni off his pizza and ate them separately.
“Do what?”
“Hide your face with your hair.”
He noticed? “I don’t like my scars.”
“Why not?”
I narrowed my eyes in confusion. “Because they are ugly.”
“Says who?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Every human ever known to mankind.”
Ash grimaced and stared down at his pizza, which he kept picking at. He didn’t say anything for a while until he asked, “Have you ever heard of the Japanese art form called Kintsugi?”
I shook my head.
He kept staring down at his lunch tray. “It’s a technique for repairing broken pottery by mending the cracks with gold, making the cracks a part of the story, not something to be hidden.” He looked up toward me and shrugged his left shoulder. “I think your scars are like that.”
“You think my face is like a broken bowl?”
“Yes, no, I mean, well, uh . . .” He stumbled over his words, and admittedly, that was kind of cute. “What I’m trying to say is that the scars are beautiful. You’re still you, but just more . . . gold? I don’t know. Never mind.”
I smiled shyly.
Did he just call me beautiful?
He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. “Anyway, I don’t think you’re supposed to hide your cracks. I think you’re supposed to let them be a new part of your story.”
I looked away from him for a split second, taking in his words. I spoke softer. “Ash?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re making it really hard for me to hate myself.”
He grinned but didn’t say another word.
He was making it really hard for me to not like him in a way that was more than friendship, too.
* * *
The following day during lunch period, Ash randomly said, “Tell me something about her.”
“About who?”
“Your mom.”
My shoulders relaxed from his words. Wow. When was the last time I talked about Mom to someone? I thought about her all the time, but speaking about her didn’t happen often.
I felt lightheaded as all the memories of Mom came rushing back to me.
It was like an avalanche of love hitting every corner of my being.
And there Ash was, sitting across from me, asking me to tell him about not only the hard parts of me and my life but the best parts, too.
He was asking me to share all of myself with him, including the stories of Mom.
I cleared my throat. “She loved record players. She had a massive amount of records that my dad dedicated a whole room for in our basement. Each night, we’d pick out one record and play it in the living room.
All of us would dance to one song before saying good night to one another and going to bed.
” I smiled. It was a string of good memories.
“Records and nightly dancing traditions, huh?”
“My favorite tradition.”
Ash smiled.
I loved when he did that.
“Did she have a favorite record?” he asked.
“Diana Ross and The Supremes,” I said. “It was their greatest hits album. Unfortunately, I scratched the record a few months ago when I was upset. Stupid mistake.”
“Mistakes happen. OK . . .” he said as he rubbed the nape of his neck. “Tell me some more.”
The next thing I knew, I was telling him so many things. I was sharing happy stories about my mom along with funny ones. I laughed as I retold them, too. I never thought I’d laugh again from any memories I had about Mom. I thought they’d always make me strikingly sad.
But that afternoon, I chuckled and beamed.
“She ate sixty-five hot wings in one sitting?” Ash asked in amazement.
“Yup. We both love hot wings. She said she could’ve easily eaten seventy, but her favorite number was sixty-five, so it seemed like a good stopping point.”
Ash laughed.
I loved when he did that, too.
“That’s a wild favorite number,” he said.
“Yeah. My mom is wild.” I caught my words swiftly and shook my head. “She was wild.”
“‘Is’ is fine, too,” he said. “Sometimes I talk about Rian as if he’s still here. It’s comforting whenever I get really sad.”
“You still get really sad?”
“Sometimes. Mainly when I have a great moment happen, and I wish I could tell Rian about the moment, too.”
“I get that.” I bit my bottom lip as we sat in the quiet. “Can you tell me about Rian?”
He paused his fiddling hands for a second. Then a tiny grin fell on his face. “For my eleventh birthday, I got in trouble. My parents told me that they weren’t going to give me a birthday cake. To be fair, I did drive their car into our neighbor’s garage.”
“Ash!”
He laughed, tossing his hands up in the air in surrender.
“I know, I know. I was a little shit. Anyway, my parents held up to their threat of no birthday cake. Then after I was told to go to bed for the night, Rian came into my room with three packs of powdered donuts. Each pack had five donuts, except the last one; that had only one left. Rian’s face was covered in powdered sugar, a clear sign that he ate the other four.
He made a donut tower, then pulled out a candle and put it in.
He said he didn’t have a lighter—or firestick, as he liked to call it—so I had to pretend to blow out the candle as I made my wish. ”
I smiled. That was adorable. “He loves you,” I said, speaking of Rian in present tense.
Ash snickered and shook his head before he whispered. “Don’t do that, Karla.”
“Do what?”
“Make my heart beat that fast for you.”
Wait . . .
Did Ash’s heart beat fast at the thought of me the same way my heart beat fast for him? Did he sometimes feel butterflies, too?
Before I could ask him about it, the lunch bell rang, and we were on our way to our next class period. Ash walked me to my class, even though I knew he’d be late for his next one.
“See you at the end of the day,” he swore.
“Yeah, see you,” I replied.
Oh boy. There goes my heart, acting like a wild beast again.
Before he left, he said, “Karla?”
“Yes?”
“I wish I could tell Rian about you.”
I smiled. “I wish I could tell my mom about you, too.”