I yank the Star from the target fabric and don’t respond.
Eliza stores her epee. “Because if you did . . .” She trails off. “I think you’d find a better use for your time.”
Her eye catches something at the door. Will is leaning against its frame, watching. Just one look is all it takes for me to know that it’s still him, will always be him, who I want.
I tuck my practice Stars away. My muscles have begun to ache pleasantly.
“I think I just did,” I say, and walk to where Will is waiting to accompany me home.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I pull the red hood of my coat over my hair and follow Will outside, where snow is falling in thick wet clumps. Will dusts me with a handful of Embers. The cold recedes, and we walk in a halo of pleasant warmth.
“You and Eliza look pretty good in there,” Will says.
“Thanks.” I glance at him and smile. I’m tired of nursing my grudge against him for liking Eliza, and it’s nice just to be near him, talking again. He seems to relax, too, realizing that I’m done with freezing him out. A gust of wind sweeps my hood back and finds the uncovered skin at the base of my neck, but it is devoid of chill.
“Can I ask you a question?” Will plunges his hands into his pockets. “What is it that you and Miles are always saying to each other? Something about Finland?”
“Finland?” I look at him, confused.
He adds, “Or Finnish words?”
It takes me a moment to put it together, and when I do, I start to laugh. I laugh and laugh until my stomach hurts, harder than I have in ages, and probably harder than I should, but I always feel a little lightheaded around him anyway.
When I’m able to speak again, I wipe away a tear. “You think they teach us Finnish in Gardner?”
“All right, rag on me all you want.” He rubs the back of his head, the line of hair that fades into his neck. His hair is short again. He must have just cut it. I like it best when it’s starting to grow out, a week away from the way it looks now.
“It’s called the finishing word,” I explain. “Finishing—?like last, final. It’s just a silly game we used to play with my mother. Sort of a bridge she invented between her interests and mine. She liked puzzles, and I liked words. So if you were able to come up with just the right word for a situation or a person, it was like fitting in the finishing piece of a puzzle.”
“The game applies to people, too?” He cocks his head. “Does that mean that I have a Finnish word?”
Yes, I think. It is captivating. Considerate. Unattainable. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
He flashes the crooked tooth at me, and a thrill shoots up my back and out into my fingertips.
“My mother used to make the winner a crown out of dandelions,” I say, twisting my tingling fingers out together in front of me. “I had a perpetual yellow stain on my forehead two summers ago. Basically, I won so much that it made me a loser.”
His laugh materializes into a puff of air. He clears his throat. “Do you miss it? Gardner, I mean?”
I think of Cass’s attic nook. Mother in the garden. How horrible the quiet was after she was gone. “I miss what it used to be.”
“I think about what it would be like to leave here sometimes.” Will makes it sound like a confession. “More than sometimes. Not for forever or anything. Just to see what else there is. We used to go places when I was younger. The coast. The mountains. And that time my mother took me to visit you in Gardner.” He exhales. “But we leave here less and less now. It gets harder, I guess, with each Disappearance.”
He shrugs. The snow swirls around us. I don’t say anything. I let the silence build between us so that he will keep talking.
“At the strangest moments, even when I’m racing on the water, I find myself worrying about everything I haven’t seen yet,” he says. “Because who knows what will go next? The taste of food? The sight of all colors, beyond just our paints and pens? Living here is like being inside a ticking bomb.”
His eyes are a dark, marbled blue. His voice carves into the air with a sudden edge. I nod, encouraging him to continue. “If I had a fortune,” he says, “I’d rather spend it traveling the world than building a big house or having a lot of things. I’d rather build memories instead. Because those are the things you carry with you always, everywhere, things that can’t be destroyed or taken.” His face flushes with something more than cold.
I want to tell him I’ve never heard someone else’s thoughts come so close to my own. To reach for his hand, intertwine our fingers. Instead, my breath billows out, white and soft. “Yes” is all I manage.
“But it’s kind of nice to have a dream to chase,” he says. “Something to look forward to, I guess.”
I nod. “Better than always looking back.”
“So are you chasing something, then?”
