THE HUNT
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crazy smart even though you try to hide it. That even though all the girls whisper about you, you’ve never so much as dated a single one. They ask if we’ve ever been together, and I tell them no.” My eyes flick to hers. She holds my stare with a kind of quiet desperation, as if afraid I might break away too quickly. The air between us changes drastically. I can’t explain it, other than it feels like both a hot quickening and a calming softness. “I wish I had more to tell them,” she whispers. “I wish I knew you better.” She sags her body against the window as if suddenly fatigued by an invisible weight. It is this leaning—it looks like a surrender—that cracks something in me, like ice splintering on the first day of spring. Pale in the moonlight, her skin is a glowing alabaster; I have a sudden strong urge to run my hands down her arms, to feel their cool clay smoothness. For a few minutes, we gaze outside. Nothing moves. A rind of moonlight falls on the distant Dome, bejeweling it in a glint of sparkles. “Why is it that this is the first time we’ve really talked?” She reaches up, tucks some loose hair strands behind her ear. “I’ve always wanted something like this with you, you must have known that. I think a hundred of these moments have passed us by.” I stare outside, unable to meet her eyes. But my heart is beating faster and hotter than it has in a long time. “I waited for you that rainy night,” she says, her voice barely audible. “For almost an hour at the front gate. I got completely drenched. What, did you sneak out the back entrance after school? It was a few years ago, I know, but . . . have you forgotten?” I fix my eyes on the eastern mountains, not daring to meet her eyes. What I want to tell her is that I have never forgotten; that not a week goes by that I don’t imagine I made a different decision.
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10/24/12 2:23 PM