Then…
“You draw.”
I turned to the side, to March, who’d been walking a step or two behind me—I thought maybe on purpose—but he was now right beside me, eyes on my face.
“How…how’d you know that?” Because I hadn’t said a single word about my drawings…had I?
“Your hand,” he said, looking down between us. “The lines of your fingers. Under your nails, too.”
I raised my hand to better inspect it—and of course, he was right.
“Graphite,” I muttered absentmindedly. The faint gray stains that never fully washed off no matter how hard I scrubbed. I’d stopped noticing them years ago, the same way I’d stopped noticing the callus on the side of my middle finger where the pencil pressed. “I do, sometimes. I draw things.”
Lie.I drewallthe time.
“What things?”
You, I thought, but luckily caught the word between my teeth before it was out there. I wanted to tell him so, so badly, but… “Just things.” Because what if he thought it strange?Iwould have. I’d have found it very strange if someone I didn’t know drew me.
And I hoped with all my heart that he didn’t ask again.
March analyzed the side of my face for the longest time, but I didn’t dare turn to meet his eyes. I just looked at theothers who walked ahead of us, turning corner after corner, talking to one another.
“What you said this morning,” March then whispered, and I flinched involuntarily.Silly, silly Ora… “What exactly did you mean? Do you…remember something?”
Lie, lie, lie.
Ishouldhave and Iwantedto and Icouldhave so easily. I could have just saidno,that I was half asleep, that it didn’t mean anything—I was just being silly, that’s all.
But the pressure. It was too much, coming from within. It wasthewords themselves, desperate to come out of me, so what I said was, “I draw you a lot. Your face, your hair, your hands.” My heart slammed so hard against my ribs I was certain he could hear it. “I’ve been drawing you since I got home, but I don’t know why. There’s just…something about you.”
There.All those words that had been weighing me down were out there now. They belonged to him, too.
Suddenly, March was right in front of me, and I had no choice but to stop walking. To look up at him.
I expected laughter or a strange look, and I expected questions. A lot of question.
What I got was, “You’ve been on my mind since the second I laid eyes on you that day.”
My breath caught. His fingertips touched my cheek just slightly. I leaned in—impossible to help it.
“I know your freckles, the colors of your eyes. I know the feel of your hand in mine. Your lips…I’ve dreamed about them every night. I know all eleven of your smiles.”
Eleven,he said.
My eyes closed. My blood rushed.
“Why?” March whispered, and that small word broke my heart because it was sofull.As full as I was empty.
“I don’t know,” I said, and when he stopped touching my cheek, I looked up at him again.
Disappointed. Sad. A little angry.
March lowered his head. “I keep making the same heart out of glass over and over again. The same one, every night—but it’s neverright.Something’s always missing, and I don’t know what, and I can’t stop.”
Word for word, I knew exactly how he felt—exactly.
So hopeless. So…broken. Incomplete.
