Chapter 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 said simply, 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 me to 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 into something—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 the start of English. Nick appeared his usual millisecond before the bell and slid into a front-row seat.
She had no idea how he did that—acted as though she didn’t exist. Especially when her entire being realigned in his presence
like iron filings around a magnet.
Mrs. Hayes started talking, but Aubrey’s stare didn’t budge. A month ago, she’d looked at Nick and seen frailty. Now she understood
there was nothing wasted when it came to him, nothing extra. He was all longing and fire and fight, a lit furnace that incinerated
anything unnecessary.
She just hadn’t understood what she was looking at, at first. She hadn’t realized how breathtaking he was.
Aubrey let five whole minutes pass, then raised her hand. “Mrs. Hayes, can I move? This desk keeps wobbling. It’s making it
hard to concentrate.”
Mrs. Hayes expelled the world’s longest sigh, probably because Aubrey never concentrated. But the puzzle book had stayed at
home for the past few weeks, which hopefully counted for something.
“Be quick,” Mrs. Hayes snapped. “And no interruptions from anyone else hoping to play musical chairs, please.”
Triumph coursed through Aubrey’s bloodstream as she toted her things to the desk beside Nick’s. She sat, then stared at him
so hard he would have no choice but to feel her laser concentration boring into his skin.
Mrs. Hayes turned her back, squeaking some kind of chart onto the markerboard. Nick studiously refused to acknowledge her.
“Hi,” Aubrey whispered.
He mashed his lips together and hunched over his notepad. The handwriting there kickstarted her heartbeat. She could have
traced it in her sleep.
Still, not a glance.
“I need to talk to you,” she breathed. “Tonight. I’m cheering the boys’ basketball game, but I can find you afterward, if
you’ll come. Please?”
Nick closed those beautiful, elongated eyes of his, as if in pain. When he reopened them, he looked straight at her, and she
had the most ridiculous urge to fist-pump the air.
Incredible. A boy had looked at her, and she may as well have gold-medaled in the Olympics.
“Fine,” he said.
Victory dawned inside her. She gathered her breath to answer, but Mrs. Hayes’s strident tone sliced through the quiet. “Is
there a problem, Miss MacLean? Because if this desk wobbles, too, I’m sure the desks in the principal’s office are more sturdily
built.”
Aubrey ducked. “No, Mrs. Hayes. Sorry. No problem at all.”
In a show of contrition, she actually took notes for the rest of the period. But she fisted a hand against her mouth the whole
time, trying to hide her grin.
The gym stank. Mostly like sweat, but also like the limp, boiled hot dogs the chess club was hawking in order to raise money
for the state championship at year’s end.
Aubrey had bought one of the rubbery things in the first quarter, if only to support a game so blatantly based on mathematics,
then promptly dumped it in the trash. Now, with the second quarter running down, she huddled on the bottom row of bleachers
with her squad.
As Megan chattered about the halftime routine, Aubrey resisted the urge to look around again. She hadn’t spotted Nick, but
he could have been anywhere amid the sea of colorful jackets filling the gym. Or not there at all.
The timer buzzed. As the basketball team jogged off the court, Aubrey sprang up. The band blared as her squad took to the floor.
Raucous cheers sounded. She burned with the need to scan the stands, but as one of the bases for Megan’s liberty, she couldn’t
look away, not even for a moment. The stunt required her total attention.
Aubrey lifted, tossed, caught. The heated atmosphere scorched her lungs, her muscles catching fire. Megan came down safely,
then tumbled away.
Finally, finally, they made it to the dance portion of the routine, and Aubrey whipped her gaze across the bleachers, seeking—
There.
Nick sat in the top row, his elbows draped over his knees, staring at her with such intensity she swore she felt a thunk when their eyes connected.
The crowd dissolved to a wash of color. Time slowed to a trickle.
Then it didn’t just feel as if she performed for him, she did perform for him. The dance couldn’t come close to reciprocating all he’d shared with her, but with every pull of muscle and
lift of her body, she scripted a response to his letters. She told him every last secret she’d ever kept. She sank her whole
self into the routine in a way she never had before.
Those infinite eyes never looked away. Aubrey swore she glimpsed words within, calligraphy scrawled atop itself until the
ink bled black as midnight.
The band blasted to a crescendo. Her squadmates cheered and cavorted, but Aubrey stood motionless, locked in communion with
this incredible boy who dreamed of her at night.
Abruptly, Nick stood. He wove down the bleachers and loped out through the gym’s side door, letting it slam behind him.
She nearly shrieked her frustration. “Wait, what?”
She spent a precious moment deliberating, then broke formation. Megan called after her, but Aubrey flung open the side door and shot through without looking back.
Outside, the cold bit into her bare skin. Orange sodium lights flooded the alley, gilding her exhales and illuminating emptiness
in both directions. A scream rushed up her throat, but she throttled it.
Nick couldn’t have gone far. She just had to find him.
Which she would. There was no way in hell he was getting away from her again.