6. Aeron
CHAPTER SIX
AERON
After class, Dorien catches me in the hallway before I can disappear into the stairwell.
“Hey. Carter’s meeting me for food,” he says, slinging a canvas bag over his shoulder. “You should come.”
I’m… speechless.
He’s been coming to my house since I was a kid. All those years, yet he’s never once invited me anywhere.
“You don’t have to,” he adds, misreading my silence. “Just figured since you’re here.”
“Sure,” I say as casually as I can. I should act like the kind of person who gets invited to places all the time and doesn’t think twice about it. That’s who I can be on the outside, especially around someone as cool as Dorien.
Inside, it’s like someone is moving furniture into a room that’s been empty forever.
We walk in silence across campus. Dorien seems perfectly comfortable not speaking, while my heart is jackhammering in my throat. I’m not used to silence since Mom and June are always talking loudly about something.
To distract myself from my awkward feelings, I let my eyes wander.
The late afternoon light does something to Alaria that I’ve never gotten used to.
The stone buildings go from gray to gold in the space of an hour, the ivy on the older halls catching the sun so the walls look alive.
The cobblestone paths throw long shadows from the gothic spires, and the shadows are better than the buildings themselves, stretched and distorted, turning the architecture loose.
We pass through a courtyard where a fountain is running, the water bright on the side facing the sun and nearly black on the other.
A few students sit on benches reading or talking, lit from one direction, and I notice the way the light picks favorites even here, landing fully on some people and leaving others at the edges.
Carter is waiting at a table outside the dining hall, sitting the way Carter sits: sprawled, legs extended, taking up the space of two people with the ease of someone who’s never once questioned whether he’s allowed to be wherever he is.
He’s wearing a Hargrove swimming hoodie and joggers. On Carter, it looks cool because he’s so fit.
“Hey, little man,” he says, grinning when he sees me.
I frown because he’s always calling me that. “I’m only an inch shorter than you.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re little to me.” He kicks a chair out with his foot, angling it toward me. “Sit.”
I sit even though I don’t like being ordered around. But I want to have aura, especially in front of Dorien.
Carter leaves to get food from the campus grill. Dorien and I sit in more silence, but again, he’s not bothered at all, pulling out his phone to mindlessly scroll. I figure this is normal, so I pull out my sketch book and start drawing a bird hanging around a trash bin.
Carter returns with burgers and fries. Me and Dorien have regular burgers; Carter’s is wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun. We sit at the outdoor table and just eat. The late afternoon light stretches long shadows across the brick path.
Carter starts telling a story about his kinesiology professor, a guy named Dr. Aldrin.
“So he’s demonstrating a hamstring stretch, right, and he’s looking around the room for someone to demonstrate on, and everybody is avoiding eye contact.
” Carter puts his burger down and mimes staring at a desk.
“Every single person suddenly very interested in their notes.”
“As they should be,” Dorien says.
“But Aldrin doesn’t care. He picks this girl in the front row, just taps her shoulder and goes, ‘You. Stand up.’ And she does.
He positions her leg on this table and starts pushing her forward into the stretch.
Her face is just...” Carter scrunches his expression into something between agony and disbelief, and Dorien lets out a short laugh through his nose.
“But he pushes her forward more and her stomach is kind of squished and—” He cuts off to laugh hard at his own story, without giving us the punchline.
Dorien exchanges a look with me and I smirk.
“Uh-huh,” Dorien says. “Do we get to hear the rest?”
Carter is laughing so hard he has to wipe his eyes. He forces the rest out between gasps. “Bro… the teacher put her in this awkward stretch… and she farted. Like, really long and loud.”
Dorien and I laugh. I can’t imagine how embarrassing that was for the woman.
“I’m guessing the teacher will give her an A for ruining her social life?” Dorien asks.
Carter is laughing too hard to speak, so he just shrugs. He continues to laugh and Dorien gives me another side glance.
“He’s stupidly into fart humor,” he tells me.
Carter is finally calming down enough to speak. “I don’t know why you guys don’t find that funnier. It was fucking hilarious. She’s a cheerleader too, and she just rips one out in front of everyone.”
“Guess we had to be there,” Dorien says.
I laugh, and I can’t remember the last time I laughed like this.
At some point Dorien mentions a commissioned piece he’s been asked to do, a decorative bowl, and the way he says “decorative bowl” sounds like someone describing dog poop they found on their lawn.
Carter tells him to just take the money and be happy for the extra cash. Dorien says he’d rather eat cement.
My smile grows wider even though I keep waiting for the moment when they exchange a look that says, okay, fun’s over, the kid should leave now because he doesn’t belong.
But it doesn’t come. Carter steals fries off Dorien’s tray.
Dorien asks me about my other classes. Then he encourages me to tell Carter about the sculpture piece I’m working on.
Carter wipes his mouth with a napkin then leans forward. “Yeah. What is it?”
I shrink in my chair a little. Carter has never been mean to me, just teasing. Sometimes his teasing goes too far, but when I’ve spoken up, he’s apologized and stopped.
But I don’t talk “art” with him. And I don’t want him talking to June about my art because she goes into teacher mode, like just because she’s older means she knows so much more than me.
I look across the quad and watch some couple walking hand in hand. “It’s just a concept,” I say.
“Everything starts as a concept,” Dorien says. “Then it becomes a thing.”
Carter lightly punches Dorien’s shoulder. “Deep, man. You should put that on a poster.”
Dorien smirks. “You should stop stealing my fries. Doesn’t that affect your performance at the gym?”
“Naw. I have a great metabolism.” Carter grins and the warmth of it reaches all the way to the corners of his eyes.
I sit in the middle of their easy back-and-forth and feel something unfamiliar. Like standing in a doorway and realizing the door is open and nobody is blocking it.
Whatever this is, I’m just glad the focus is off my art.
While Dorien and Carter go on with each other, my gaze wanders again.
There’s a group of students crossing the far end of the quad, backpacks slung low, their shadows trailing behind them longer than they are.
A guy on a bench is reading with his headphones on, half his face lit by the sun and half hidden behind the book he’s holding too close.
Then I notice her, but she doesn’t notice me. She never does.
Cinna is crossing the far end of the quad with her purse slung over one shoulder, blonde hair catching the last of the good light.
The sun outlines her in this thin, shimmery border that makes her edges glow, and I swear she’s the only person on this campus that light actively seeks out.
She’s walking with a woman I don’t recognize, maybe some classmate, and her head is tilted toward the person, listening with her full attention, like that woman is the most important person in the entire world.
When she smiles, it takes over her whole face, soulful eyes crinkling, beautiful lips spread wide in joy.
She does that with everyone—makes them feel important.
I know because I’ve watched her do it with June, with professors, with strangers. Everyone.
Everyone except me because I’m invisible to her. She never sees me, not unless June is there, because I’m not someone Cinna looks for. Maybe I’ve been around for so long, lingering in the background, that I’m like wallpaper.
But even though I know she’s simply friendly with everyone, each time she tilts her head toward someone new, the irrational part of my brain gets jealous.
When do I get to be that person?
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and laughs at something the other woman says, and the laugh carries faintly across the quad.
I’ve heard that laugh a thousand times and I never get tired of it.
I was nine the first time I saw her. June brought her home after school one afternoon and the three of us sat at the kitchen island coloring with markers.
Cinna shared her good markers with me without being asked, the ones with the fine tips that all the kids hoarded, and when I drew a lopsided dog she told me it was the best she’d ever seen.
She was lying, obviously. It looked like a potato with legs.
But she said it with those eyes, completely sincere, and something in me decided right then that she was the most important person I would ever meet.
I was nine. I didn’t have the vocabulary for what I felt. I just knew that when she left that afternoon, the house felt dimmer.
Over the years I watched her from the sidelines.
I observed when she came over to study with June.
Or stayed for dinner. Or showed up at birthdays and holidays and random Tuesday afternoons, and every time she walked through our door, she brought this warmth with her that had nothing to do with politeness. It’s a warmth that comes from her soul.