Page 51 of You + Me – Against the World

I try one more time.

[I haven’t told anyone your

secret. I’ve got no idea who could

have done that or how that graffiti got there.

You have to believe me , Vadim]

Hitchcock heaves himself up laboriously, takes a few steps, and comes to press himself against me, slumping back down again with a thud, this time resting his big head on my thigh.

“No, sausage, no! Go sleep over there. Ugh, you’re drooling! Go see Daddy. Il est où papa?”

“Alma, are you talking to yourself or are you trying to teach Hitch French?” Abrams asks, popping his head around the door. “He’s extremely smart, but he only understands English.”

I reluctantly pet the dog’s long ear, which has flopped across my jeans. It’s surprisingly soft and silky.

“Well, he seems to like you in any case!”

“Is that true, sausage?”

Four hours of labeling, six trash bags, five hundred dust-induced sneezes, and seven new unanswered texts to Vadim later, Hitchcock has almost become my best friend. My only friend, actually. He has kept me warm and seems to have approved of my dual chronological and alphabetical filing system.

During a “little break” that stretched on for a long time, Mr. Abrams treated me to a sandwich and two coffees, while he told me about his career path. He talked about cinema with passion, anger, and self-deprecation. For an hour, he almost made me forget the graffiti. He spoke with regret about his broken marriage and his son Caleb, who is about the age of his students and whom he mostly only sees every other weekend, sometimes not for three or four weeks at a time. And I remembered that there are other boys on this earth besides Vadim Arcadi.

Using the excuse of a pressing need to pee, I lock myself in the bathroom to write one final message. The one I should have sent from the beginning, if I’d had the courage.

[If you make fun of me,

if you repeat it to the whole school, and if

tomorrow there is graffiti about me,

then too bad, but… I love you, Vadim.

I love you, and I never would

have done this to you.]

As I lean against the bathroom wall with its ugly, brown wallpaper, my heart pounds. Blood pulses in my chest, in my temples, all the way to my fingertips. I can’t believe it. Someone else must have written this text for me. There’s no other explanation.

I’ve never said that to anyone.

Never written these words before.

Let alone felt this roller coaster of emotions, this infinite fullness, followed by this immense emptiness in my chest.

It’s too soon, too fast, maybe too impulsive, but he is there, everywhere, all the time. He has woven himself into my thoughts, under my skin, into my heart. Vadim came in uninvited… and ever since, he has taken up all the space.

If he doesn’t answer me, my life is over.

My cell phone vibrates in my hand, the buzzing traveling up my arm. My whole body tenses. I open his message and close my eyes for a moment before looking at his response:

[Prove it.]

18

“We can’t do this, Clem!”