Chapter11
1057 Words
He finds me at the track on Friday morning.
Not Coach Marsh’s session — that’s by six, and this is seven-fifteen, the window between the session and school where I run extra because I’ve found that my body needs two doses right now, one structured and one for me.
I’m on my fourth lap when I hear him on the track behind me.
His stride, which I’ve learned the same way I learn all the sounds around me, specific enough now to be distinguishable from background.
He doesn’t try to match my pace.
He runs his own pace, which is good for a human, and falls in about fifteen feet back, and we do two laps like that before he says:
“Can I ask you something?”
“You were going to regardless.”
“True. But I’m asking anyway.”
“Go ahead.”
He is quiet for another quarter lap.
When Jasper is quiet, it means he’s weighing something — I’ve learned this too, the way his default easy chatter winds down when he has something real to say.
I slow slightly without meaning to.
“Do you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“The — I don’t know what to call it. The pull.”
He says this the way someone says a foreign word they’re not sure they’re pronouncing right.
“Toward you, specifically. Like something I can’t trace.”
I don’t change pace or look at him.
I think about the bond-hum I used to carry in my sternum and what it felt like when it was there — low and resonant and certain.
I think about the five threads in my dream.
I think about Roman’s offer and Elias’s paper and Damon’s amber eyes and the feeling of Caden three feet behind me on a sidewalk.
“How long have you known?”
“Since I sat down at your lunch table.” He says it matter-of-fact, like he’s reporting something that happened to him rather than something he did.
“I thought it was — I thought it was just that I was new and you were the most interesting thing in the room. But interest fades. This hasn’t.”
I run.
He runs.
The track loops us around and around and the morning light comes through the chain link in strips.
“What does it feel like?”
“Like something that was loose got tightened. Like — like when you’re looking for a frequency on a radio and you find it.” A pause.
“That’s a terrible metaphor.”
“It’s not terrible.”
“It is a little terrible.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“No.” He responds Immediately, without hesitation.
“I haven’t told anyone because I don’t know what to do with it and because—” He stops then starts again.
“Because it felt right for you to know first.”
I look at him briefly before facing forward.
I think about the way he’s handled the last three weeks — the terrible jokes, his persistent intrusion of my space, the coffee that was exactly how I take it without me telling him.
The way he doesn’t push.
The way he notices things without me pointing them out to him.
“I don’t know what it is.” I finally respond.
“I do.”
“I’m not in a position to—” I start to protest but he cuts in.
“I’m not asking you to be in any position.” He says this without hurry, without edge.
“I’m telling you what’s true and I’m telling it to you because I think you’d want to know things that are true, even when it’s inconvenient. I’m not asking you to do anything about it.”
I keep running.
The track comes around again.
“Okay.” Is all I can say.
“Okay?” He sounds genuinely confused.
“Okay, I know. And I don’t know what to do with it either.”
He is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “That’s actually really reassuring.”
“How is that reassuring?”
“Because you know what to do with everything. So if you don’t know, it means this is genuinely unusual rather than just me being slow.”
“I don’t know what to do with a lot of things.”
“Name one.”
“Someone left a note on my desk this week that told me my genealogy records were altered three weeks ago and didn’t explain anything further.”
“Okay, that is a genuinely unusual situation.”
“I know.”
“Do you know who left it?”
“I know his name. I haven’t spoken to him.”
“Do you want me to—”
“No.”
“Okay.”
We finish the lap.
He slows to a stop at the gate.
I run another half lap alone and then I stop too, hands on my knees, breathing.
I look at the track and think about the pull he described — the frequency finding the station — and I think about the fact that he told me before he told anyone, and that he said it was mine to know first, and I think about what that means from a person who has been easy and warm and present for three weeks in a way that has not once asked me for anything in return.
I don’t know what this is.
But I know it’s there and that’s enough information for now.
I walk to the gate.
He is waiting, not because he’s watching me, just because that’s where he is.
“Same time Monday?”
“I’m here every morning.”
“I know. I was asking if it was okay.”
“Yes. It’s okay.”
He just nods and we go to school.
I think about the frequency and the radio finding the station for the rest of the day, and I don’t voice what I think about it until I’m in bed that night looking at the east-facing window and the city lights through the glass.
Then I let myself think: yes. I feel it too.
I don’t say it to anyone.
But I let it be true.
- Writer
