and simple. I want Journal Number Twelve to be heat and moments. Condensation gathering on Starbucks cups with my name spelled wrong. White people almost kissing. Boyfriend inplaid. Hot dog legs and sunshine.
Ander leans a bit more. This is important, the leaning, because it makes my heart beat so hard it feels like itâs going to break a rib. If I die of a heart attack or something one day (GOD FORBIDâI will not die of something boring, I wonât ), it will have been caused by this moment. The corners of his mouth quirk and he shows his gorgeous teeth again, and my insides go all soft because our babies would be the most perfect babies in the history of ever.
âHey,â he says again, catching sight of my sketches. He pushes my hand back to look at the scribbles, the universes and wings and stars, and I freeze. âThatâs really pretty. Needs a rocket ship, though. Vroom.â
No. You donât get to look , angel boy. You donât get to push my hand aside.
But I donât snatch it away. I swallow and Iâ
What do I do?
I add a rocket ship. I add a goddamn rocket ship.
(Side note: did he say vroom ?)
âNow go write your paper,â I say, bumping my shoulder against his. Not even to touch himâokay, a little bit to touch himâbut to angle myself away.
But arenât boyfriendsâwould be, will beâsupposed to be like this? Peeking over your shoulder and grinning their lopsided grins, faking interest in your stupid littlescribbles. I wanted this so badly when I was dating Jeff Martin, who only ever wanted to make out, which would have been fine if he didnât nibble so much.
âMr. Carter,â Mr. Markus says sharply. âWhy bother coming to class at all? You show up late, and you make no effort at all to even pretend to work. Your classmates, at least, give that much. I can only assume that youâre finished with your paper, as you and Mr. Dewey seem far more preoccupied by rubber bands than your education.â
Micahâs head snaps up. His entire head this time, not just his eyes, and it looks painful. Everything Micah does looks painful. He moves too quickly, and everything looks like a flinch. I canât decide if Micah is cute or not, but once I heard a couple of sophomores saying that he has bedroom eyes.
Not that I was jealous or anything.
Itâs just thatâwell, we had already drawn lines on our soul and stabbed our little flags into it. We had claimed. Him: music and reality and all the words too shy to be spoken. Me: art and dreams in Technicolor and everything that had ever happened in sunshine and all the secrets exchanged in moonlight. We agreed on all of that before even the dinosaurs stomped around, and he isnât allowed to change that now.
And itâs not like they noticed before. Before his acnecleared up and the barber gave him that undercut (which I maintain is really a Hitler Youth haircut) and hipster glasses were suddenly in. I did. I always knew that his best feature was his eyelashes. And that his glasses prescription is wrong, so when heâs squinting and his eyelashes get all tangled and he does that rapid fluttery blinking thing, itâs because he canât see, not because he understands you, stupid little sophomores.
But anyway.
âUm,â says Micah. His rubber-band gun drops onto his desk.
Next to him, Dewey mutters, âYeah, rubber bands trump this shithole.â
âFantastic,â says Mr. Markus, leaning back in his chair and motioning for Micah to go to the podium in the front. âThen, please. Read us your papers. Weâll have group critique.â
Dewey claps Micah on the shoulder. âAll you, man.â
I can see Micah swallow from across the room.
It takes him an eternity, two, to make his way to the front. His throat clenches and his paper wrinkles in his hands, and someone giggles. I glare in the general direction. My glare razesâIâve spent