Chapter 2 #2
I wasn’t acknowledging Gray, which I had to admit was ridiculous, in part because he was wearing a plastic Viking costume helmet.
It looked like Lion had abandoned her pointy princess hat to the grass, but Gray, not one for giving up a bit, would probably go home in his hat and wear it all the way through dinner.
“Did you come from the track?” Gray asked. He meant the one at the school that I didn’t run to anymore.
“No,” I answered neutrally. There was more I could’ve said. Like I stopped running to the school a while ago. I didn’t have a reason, only that I’d reach the fork in our street, get an eerie feeling, and sprint the other way.
“Ember?”
Slowly, I turned and looked down at him. My heart did a stupid thing. “Hi,” I sighed.
Lion stopped her doodling to stare.
Gray grinned, bright, wide, and enchanting, his body at ease and relaxed. “Hello.” No one should look good in Viking horns, but he did.
It didn’t matter that he was only a few inches taller than me.
Gray was the most attractive guy in this part of Pennsylvania, and everyone agreed.
His eyes were a dangerous silver-blue, ice and freeze and a gray horizon, but his smile always warmed me.
He laughed deeply, tossing his dark-brown hair as he threw back his head.
Gray was the sunshine in a storm as much as he was the weather fronts that caused it.
He’d moved in with his aunt and uncle across the street when I was ten and he was thirteen.
He never spoke about why, but frequently said things like: Can’t lose what you never had.
And I knew. What happened to Gray Fallsdown’s parents was the first thing that came up when you searched his name on the internet.
But knowing he’d lost his parents in an accident didn’t make it any easier for me to accept he’d never let himself get close to me.
It should have. My body should’ve been able to learn what my mind knew, that my feelings were trivial compared to what he’d been through.
But it wasn’t easy when Gray left, when he let in distance, followed by more distance, when he chose backpacking through Spain, or when he left for six months to take a random architecture class in Germany.
It hurt every time, like shrapnel tearing apart my chest, and most nights, when sleep didn’t come easily, I had to shut my eyes and remind myself of our history.
Gray didn’t always come back to anyone else, but he always came back to me.
I put a hand on my hip, once again looking at Lion’s drawing because I couldn’t stomach looking at Gray anymore. “Who are you drawing?” I asked her.
Lion shrugged. “Gray’s girlfriend.”
The air felt heavier. My chest clenched. Gray’s girlfriend, obviously, was not me. When Lion drew me, she used yellow for my hair and drew long, waving lines with it, not short, thick streaks of bright pink.
“Gray has a girlfriend?” It wouldn’t be the first time, but the words emerged as a pathetic squeak regardless.
“I’d say sooo,” said Lion, sounding way too wise for her years.
“I saw her leave Gray’s window like you used to do it.
Today. The other day. A lot.” Something about the way a five-year-old says a lot really makes it sound like a million, impossible to come back from.
“I like how he has a girlfriend with pink hair. Do you think I could change my hair to pink?”
My chest cracked — like it hadn’t already done this — as if it hadn’t already broken, made peace with it, and moved on. It cracked as hard as it did the last time, and all the times before, like it wanted my heart to be wide open and ready for the firing squad.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, not meaning to whisper. “I think you with pink hair would look great.” I turned to face my house. “I have to get some water. I’ll see you later, Lion.” I didn’t bother saying goodbye to Gray.
* * *
Dad cheered, “All right!” when I walked through the door, the footrest of his recliner snapping closed. He always waited for me to get back from my run before starting breakfast, which we always ate together in the kitchen. But today I wasn’t in the mood.
I pressed a glass tumbler to the water spout on the fridge, my throat raw with the feeling of being on the verge of crying, though I knew I wouldn’t. I never did. No matter how sad I was, my eyes refused to water.
Dad studied me for a long second, his energy wilting. “You’re not taking that up to your room, are you?”
I nodded. “I’m just not that hungry today.”
“Well.” His expressive features drooped to his chin. “Sounds like I’ll have less dishes to do.”
Briefly, I checked my phone. No new messages had come through.
I hadn’t really thought they would. And if Gray did text, he still had a girlfriend, so it wasn’t like there was something he could say to make me feel better.
Still, I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist checking my phone for the rest of the day, just in case he remembered he liked me.
My heart jumped as my phone flared with light, crashing an instant later as I realized it wasn’t from a notification but because my clumsy fingers had bumped the phone out of sleep mode.
That rollercoaster of emotion for nothing made me rethink how badly I wanted to be alone in my room.
Maybe I did want to stay and have breakfast.
I set my water down in front of my place at the table. “Dad?” My voice cracked. “Would it be okay if we had mimosas with breakfast?”
* * *
The next day, I spent in bed with a combination hangover, drowsiness, and phantom flu.
The day after, I still couldn’t summon the energy to do anything productive.
I stayed in bed, waiting to be bored back to unconsciousness, the one place I didn’t have to feel red-hot and embarrassed every time I remembered it was just after the Fourth of July, and while everyone else was going to the beach and shooting off fireworks, I was utterly alone, practically refreshing my phone until it was dead, waiting for Gray to break up with his girlfriend.
I was staring out my window with a pillow hugged to my chest when my phone finally decided to vibrate. I reached for it hungrily. I couldn’t help myself.
Gray Fallsdown: Wanna come over?
That . . . wasn’t what I was expecting from him. An apology, an explanation, a life update, an I’m sorry it’s not you this time. You know I always wanted it to be.
I set the phone down, thinking maybe his pink-haired girlfriend was named Emma or Emily, and he’d accidentally sent the message to me. Then the light in his room switched on and off rapidly, our old signal. I went to stand in front of my window and found him at his, grinning and waving at me.
I hated myself for my inability to stop liking him, but I knew no other athletes who read Shakespeare voraciously.
No other pre-med students with a rapt attention for art history.
And Gray was pure joy, his bright, white smile melting the ice around me, one of those people whose presence made your day feel complete.
I went downstairs to where Dad was asleep, snoring deeply. I didn’t want to wake him, but I never left home without telling him where I was going anymore.
“Dad?” I rested my hands lightly on the back of his chair until his snoring broke. His eyes opened slowly, blinking awake. “I’m gonna go to Gray’s.”
Blearily, he eyed the digital clock on the kitchen stove behind me, the time written in neon green. “At eleven o’clock at night?”
“Oh.” I shrugged. “Well, yeah. He kinda just texted me. Do you not want me to go?”
“You can go,” he sighed. “I don’t think he’s that good to you. But yes, you can go.”
I made sure to open and close the front door quietly, locking it behind me. It hadn’t yet hit me that tomorrow was the day the witches were supposed to get me. I’d spent my last two days in the human realm alone in my room, and my last night, I was spending with Gray.