Elias is waiting for me after school on Monday.
Not outside — inside, at the library table we have both come to treat as our table without ever saying so, his copy of Middlemarch closed for once in front of him and a folder of printed documents sitting beside it with the caution of someone who prepared this in advance and thought about how to present it.
I sit across from him.
“You wanted to tell me something,” I say.
“You wanted to know something. There’s a difference.”
“What’s the difference?”
He looks at me. His grey eyes have the quality of someone who thinks carefully before he opens his mouth and doesn’t apologize for the time it takes. “Wanting to tell you something means I’ve decided it’s mine to tell. Wanting to know something means you’ve decided it’s yours to have. Both ar
