The Words We Keep

My fingers find my still-healing scabs in my sleep.

I wake with blood caked on my stomach and a pounding headache. When the sleeping pill finally kicked in, it hit me hard, so even though I slept for the first time in weeks, my body aches and my head is fuzzy.

“What’s wrong with you?” Margot asks when I almost speed through a red light on the way to her school. I slam on the brakes and stick my arm out to stop her from flying forward. She’s got her fingernail between her teeth, chewing off a hangnail.

“Just stressed.”

Like I’m going to tell my ten-year-old sister the truth. Guess what? Your second sister is losing it, and everybody is about to find out. Plus, bad news, Fairview cost a small fortune and Alice is using up what’s left on projects she’ll give up on in a week. Good luck at school today! Not that it matters one flying rat’s ass.

Instead, I slap on my everything’s-going-to-be-fine face (I learned from the best, after all) and practically peel out when the light turns green. As I pull into the school drop-off lane, Margot tells me how the key to fighting a Dementor is something called a Patronus. “Alice does seem better, but we need a plan,” she says. “Just in case the Dementors come back.”

Without thinking, I tilt my head back on the headrest and groan. “Margot! Enough with the Hogwarts!”

My regret is immediate, as is the hurt on her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just—let’s talk about it after school?”

“If you have time,” she says. “I know you’re busy.”

She hops out of the car and slams the door behind her.

—

I don’t even see Micah coming.

I’m lost in my thoughts as I walk the hallway, when he comes out of nowhere, grabs my shoulders, and pushes me through an open door. I catch a flash of his smile before he slams the door behind us.

“This is it, isn’t it?” I say in the darkness, which is can’t-even-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face black. “This is the part where you kill me?”

Micah laughs. I tune into the sounds around me. His breathing. The sound of a boiler hissing nearby.

“Where are we?” I whisper.

“Janitor’s closet.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be in here.” (As if there aren’t enough rumors about us flying around already.)

“You didn’t message me back last night.”

“I know. I—”

“No worries,” he continues. “It’s better this way. I can tell you in person.”

“Tell me what? What’s going on, Micah? You’re freaking me out.”

He inhales deeply and takes my hand in the darkness, rubbing the side of my palm with his thumb, his touch setting my skin on fire.

“Artistic indiscretion?” I say, whispering now because whatever is happening here has sucked all the air out of my lungs. He moves closer to me, and my heart speeds up like it did on the cliff, dancing with him in the art exhibit, like it does whenever we’re together, no matter how hard I try to deny it.

“Not this time.” He erases any space between us. “A few days ago, I told you to stop hiding. But I’ve been hiding, too, because I’m scared to say how I really feel. Because I don’t know if you feel the same, and we both know I’ve been wrong before, but I think you do. And what is all this about, this whole project, if not facing your fears? Putting yourself out there? I guess what I’m trying to say is, I know you’re scared, and I’m scared, too, but I also know that if you let the world see the real you, they’d love her. Myself included.”

Heat rushes to my face. “You did not just confess your love for me in a janitor’s closet.”

“I did not.” His black curls graze my nose. “I confessed that I know you.”

He takes my other hand in his and pulls me closer, and I let him, and our hands are intertwined and I can’t see him in the dark but I’ve spent enough time trying not to think about him to know the curve of his jaw and the exact location of his lips. And he’s holding me against him, chest to chest, cheek to cheek, and he smells like pencils and paint and beach and sunshine.

“You know me?”

My pulse speeds up as his breath warms my face. “I know you can rock a planner like nobody’s business.”

He presses his lips to my forehead softly.

“That you want to take care of everyone.”

He brushes his mouth down my cheek.

“That you have a lot to say, even if you’re scared to say it.”

My other cheek.

“And you want to be perfect.”

My nose.

“And you’re funny.”

His breath traces down my jaw.

“And smart. And already…” He pauses, his hand under my chin, his thumb pulling down my bottom lip slightly. “Perfect.”

He’s going to kiss me. I know this as surely as I’ve known anything in my life, and all my misgivings about him—about us—give way to the feel of his breath on my skin and the roller-coaster-drop feeling lurching inside me as he leans in.

And for all of two seconds, my mind is quiet, out-screamed by the sound of a thousand explosions erupting in my chest, my mind, in every nerve ending. His body presses into me, and his hands wrap around my waist. He tugs me even closer to him, his fingers hooked into the top of my jeans, and the tips of his fingers graze my skin.

The skin you picked in your sleep.

He’ll feel the scabs.

What if he’s not okay with all your secrets?

And just like that, the monsters worm back in.

What are you doing?!

More rumors is not what you need right now.

Are you seriously this much of an idiot?

THIS IS NOT PART OF THE PLAN.

I pull away.

“I’m sorry. I—”

I can only vaguely see the outline of Micah, but I can hear him exhale, hear him take a step away from me, too. He swears under his breath.

“I’m such an idiot,” he whispers.

“No, you’re not. I—”

“You’re what, Lily? Because I thought—I thought you—”

“I do. I just—can’t.”

“Can’t what?” His voice is louder now, with an edge I’m not used to. “What is it? What are you so afraid of?”

Everything?

Ev

er

y

thing.

That if I lose focus for one millisecond,

I’ll let everyone down

and my crazy will be out there,

real,

clear and large and undeniable.

“This.” I gesture between us, but he can’t see me. “Us. The contest. I can’t do any of this, Micah. I’ve been trying to tell you.”

The silence in the darkness is unbearable.

After an eternity, Micah speaks. “Are you more scared of people knowing the poetry is yours, or that you have feelings for me?”

Why did you let it get this far?

“You don’t get it, Micah. I’m the good one. The one who holds everything together. It’s one thing to write these poems at night, when no one can see me. No one can know these are my thoughts. You’ve seen what they do to people on the Underground.”

“Who cares what they think?”

“I care, Micah! I care. Aren’t you listening? None of this is part of my plan. And now I find out, I need to win this summer sponsorship more than ever, but winning it means that Dad, everyone, will know I’m a mess, and I—I just should never have done any of this. I’ve worked too hard to hold everything together, and if people know about me, about my poetry, about us, I’ll…I’ll unravel. And so will my family. It’s just not as easy for me as it is for you.”

Even though I can’t see him, I feel him pull farther away from me, feel the space between us grow wide.

“You think any of this is easy for me? Having you ignore me in the halls? Like we’re super-secret friends no one can know about?” His voice wobbles. “Reading what they write about me on the Underground? Hearing what people say about me every single day?”

“But it’s different for me, Micah. People like you—”

“I’m sorry. People like me?”

“That’s not—what I mean is—”

“It’s pretty clear what you meant,” Micah says, his voice like poison. In the dark, I hear his hand turn the doorknob.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I say. “This is coming out all wrong. I just mean, this is serious for me. I don’t have time—”

He throws open the door. The light floods the room, illuminates the sharpness in his face that’s turned him into someone I hardly recognize. But worse than the anger in his clenched jaw is the hurt in his eyes. The hurt I’m causing.

“You know, they say when people show you who they are, believe them the first time,” he says, his eyes dead level with mine. “So, really, this is my fault. And you know what? I don’t have time for people like you.”