I opened it to the beginning, took a bite of my sandwich, and began to read the words I had nearly memorized over the past few years. The sound of Ricky and Molly giggling and sneaking kisses faded into the din of the cafeteria, and I was somewhere else. Somewhere far away.
“What are you reading?”
The soft, sweet voice tore me away from Transylvania, and I looked up to find Laura watching me.
Her lips were curled in a demure, bow-like smile, and her eyes were round and innocent. She was like Mina Harker in Bram Stoker’s gothic novel, alive with vivacity and intelligence, and I was all at once enchanted by her attention on me.
“Um …” I stammered stupidly as I lifted the book, not at all looking away. “Dracula.”
“I haven't read that one,” she admitted, almost embarrassed.
“Oh, uh …” I began to slowly close the pages. “Would you like to? You can borrow it … if you want …” I asked almost hesitantly.
I didn’t want her to borrow it. It was mine, it was special, and if something were to happen to it, my heart wouldn’t survive. But in that moment, I was also conflicted. I wanted to share a piece of myself with her. Iwanted her to know this bit of my soul, and I didn’t know how else to explain it without her knowing the words.
Then, to my horror, she began to stand. Oh my God, I’d barely spoken to her, and I was already scaring her away.
But suddenly, she was walking around the table and taking a seat beside me, pressing her thigh close to mine.
“I could just read it with you,” she said with a barely there curve of her lips, and I wanted nothing more than to kiss her.
Instead, I nodded, opened the book, and said, “Okay.”
And that was how we spent every lunch period for the first month of school. We sat as a quartet instead of a duo. Molly beside Ricky, Laura beside me. We would eat and read while our respective best friends made out between bites of food.
When we finishedDracula, Laura broughtherfavorite book—Pride and Prejudice—from home, and we started that one.
She hadn’t cared forDracula, and I didn’t care much forPride and Prejudice. But I cared forher. I cared for my time spent with her, the calm her presence and scent and voice brought to my life. I carried it with me through the duration of my time at school, on the walk home, and during the night while I endured the never-ending abuse from my father and the indifference from my mother. That forty minutes at lunch was the best and most precious time of my days, and on the weekend, time slowed to a crawl as I waited to be near her again.
Until one day, when I was outside mowing the lawn, she showed up.
“Hi, Max,” she called to me, standing at the end of the driveway, right behind my father’s car.
Startled, I turned, saw her there, and halted abruptly, releasing the control bar. The mower stopped, and I looked toward the house with wide-eyed panic. Dad would hear that I had stopped. He would come out to check the job I’d done. He would critique and criticize and have me do it again and again until he was satisfied, just as he always did every Saturday when there wasn’t snow on the ground or rain falling from the sky.
I had to get her out of here before he saw her.
He couldn’t know about her. I wouldn’t let him. Because if he knew, he’d do whatever he could to take her away.
She smiled as I hurried over to her, fists clenched at my sides.
“I saw you out here, so I thought I’d—"
She gasped when I grabbed her arm and tugged her forcefully behind the enormous oak tree in the middle of the front yard. Being this close to her, being this alone, outside of school, should’ve done more for my raging teenage hormones than it did, but I was too damn scared—of what he would do, what he would say, if he caught her here—to think of the things I’d like to do if he wasn’t here at all.
I wished I could’ve found it in me to look at her now the way she was looking at me.
She smiled up into my eyes. Funny that I could sit next to her every day for months and not realize how smallshe was or how big she’d make me feel. When I stood like this, she made me feel powerful, strong, and I longed to feel like that always.
“Hi,” she said, her voice quiet against the gentle fall breeze.
I opened my mouth to say hi back when I remembered why I’d pulled her behind the tree in the first place.
“Laura, you have to leave.”
It broke my heart how quickly the smile left her face.
“What? Why? I-if you have to finish mowing the lawn, I can wait. I—"
