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It’s so unfair, right? That someone so breath-stealing can be so rotten.
I don’t know how he can sleep with that sun glaring down at him but I’m going to count my blessings and leave.
But I don’t leave like I should. Like the policy is to not disturb when the occupant of the room is sleeping.
Because my eyes land on his backpack and his clothes from last night. They are lying in a heap at the foot of his bed.
Without volition, I move toward them.
The backpack’s black and it’s open. Going to my knees, I widen the gap and look inside. His clothes smell of fresh laundry but they are all wrinkled up and shoved inside, as if in haste. Kind of like how I’d do it, sloppily and messily.
In the next compartment, I find his wallet, keys, some toiletries and a book.
A book?
I pull it out without thought.
Zach isn’t into reading and stuff like that. Nope. He’s not the kind of asshole where he’s all tough on the outside but secretly harbors love for the written word.
I’ve seen him tearing out pages from a textbook and making planes out of them, sitting on bleachers. One time he tore a book in two because a teacher asked him about homework. Granted, I only heard about that but I believe it.
So why would he have a book inside his bag? A book about the stars. Written in the Stars.
I forgot that you could see the stars up here.
I flick through the pages. There are constellations, described and drawn, along with their origin and the stories behind them. It’s clean and crisp. Almost untouched, but somehow, I have a feeling that it’s not. Not really.
Zach has touched these pages. But that doesn’t make sense.
I always thought that stargazing and watching the sky is something that poets and philosophers do. People who have depth.
Zachariah Prince is no poet nor a thinker. He has no depth. All he is is a rich, bored guy who amuses himself by tormenting others, namely me.
But then, I come to the end of the book and all my thoughts get channeled into the fact that it’s a library book. It’s overdue and it’s from New York. NYPL: New York Public Library.
I was right.
He wasn’t in the UK, going to Oxford. I don’t know how but I can say for sure that he’s been in New York for the past three years.
I glance at him. He’s still sleeping heavily, probably dreamlessly too. I wish that I could ask him about the city, about all the places he’s seen.
But I can’t because I hate him and he thinks I’m a plaything.
Such a fucking waste.
I quickly look through the rest of his stuff and a good thing too. Because I hit the jackpot with the pack of cigarettes. A double pack, at that.
His stash, maybe?
Staring at the Marlboros, I smirk. He has no idea what’s coming.
I clutch it in my hands and stand up, ready to get out of here. But then, I hear a sound. The worst sound in the world. Worse than a bomb blast.
A grunt.
Then, a groan.
“Fuck.”
