Not Doing

Chapter 7: Read It

Leo got an 83 on the chemistry midterm.

Mr. Dunn read the name off the top of the paper twice, then looked over his glasses at the back of the room, where Leo sat with his arms crossed and his face carefully blank, and said, "Well. Somebody's been studying."

Leo didn't say a word. But under the desk, out of sight, his fist was pumping so slowly and so quietly that only I, two rows over, could see it.

By Monday afternoon, Mrs. Alvarez was flagging me down in the hall, mug in hand, oatmeal cardigan flapping. "One-point-nine," she whispered, like it was a state secret. "Two weeks left. He's close, Emilia."

"He'll make it."

"You sound very sure."

"I have a spreadsheet," I said, and she laughed so hard she had to steady her coffee.

I was still smiling when I got to the library on Wednesday, which is how I knew I was in trouble. Nobody smiles at a chemistry packet.

I'd barely unpacked when someone cleared his throat beside the table.

"Emilia. Hey."

Nate Adeyemi, debate captain, honor roll, owner of a truly remarkable collection of sweater vests. We'd shared four AP classes and a mutual, respectful terror of Mr. Dunn. He was nice. He was sensible. He was, by every measure on my mental list, the correct kind of boy.

"I know this is last minute," he said, "but the Fall Formal's on Saturday, and I thought, if you're free, maybe we could go together?"

I opened my mouth.

At that exact moment, the library door swung open, and there was Leo, on time, 3:15 sharp, backpack over one shoulder and the smile still hanging on his face from the hallway.

It went out like a light.

"I—" I said, brilliantly.

"You don't have to answer now," Nate said, kind, oblivious. "Think about it?"

"Sure. I'll think about it."

I don't know why I said it. Panic, probably. Nate nodded, beamed, and left. Leo walked to the table and sat down so slowly it was almost a work of art.

"Nice guy," he said.

"He is."

"Great vest."

"Leo."

"Sorry, I'm just saying." He pulled out Macbeth and flipped it open so hard the pages cracked. "You've got a lot of options. It's good. Go. Have a great time. Wear something that matches your highlighters."

"What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing. I'm thrilled."

"You are gripping that book like it owes you money."

He put it down. He put both hands flat on the table, and I watched him breathe in, out, in, like a boy counting seconds on a penalty clock.

"You said you'd think about it," he said.

"I panicked."

"So you don't want to go."

"I didn't say that."

"So you do."

"I don't know! I don't know what I want!" The girl two tables over looked up again. I lowered my voice, but the heat stayed. "And what does it matter? You don't get to be jealous, Leo. You haven't said—we haven't—"

"I know."

The words fell into the space between us like a dropped glass.

"I know I don't get to be," he said, quieter. "You think I don't know that? Guys like Nate take girls like you to dances. That's the story. I'm the guy people take pictures of in parking lots and then say nice things about at a distance."

"That's not fair."

"It isn't. It's true, though."

The radiator hissed. Somewhere behind us, Mr. Okafor turned a page very loudly, an act that, for him, was practically a shout.

"You keep doing that," I said. My throat hurt. "You decide how it ends before anyone else gets a say."

He looked at me. Really looked, gray and unguarded. For a moment, it seemed like he might say something enormous.

Instead, he reached into his bag.

The black notebook came out slowly, battered edges, tape-scarred cover. He set it on the table and pushed it across, the same way I'd pushed the diagnostic on the first day, except that this time his hand was shaking.

"What are you doing?"

"Read it."

"Leo, I promised, I'm not going to—"

"I know you're not." His voice was rough. "That's why. Read whatever you want. Not the last page. Just... not that one." He swallowed. "You're the only person I've ever wanted to read it."

I don't think I breathed. I touched the cover as if it might burn.

"Are you sure?"

"No," he said. "Do it anyway."

So I opened it.

The handwriting slanted across the pages in three colors of ink, and under all of it, faint as a watermark, was a hundred small crossed-out starts. He rewrote everything. Sentences begun and abandoned and begun again, like someone laying track in the dark.

I turned the pages slowly. Near the middle I stopped.

My mother sleeps in daylight like a sailor home from a war she won't describe. I cross the house in my socks so the floorboards can't tell on me. I know every loud place in that house so I can be quiet in it.

Maybe that's why I like the ice. Out there, if I'm fast enough, nothing can be loud at me.

I read it, and my eyes stung, which was ridiculous, because it was only a paragraph. It was only a boy walking through his kitchen in socks.

But it was the loneliest, most tender thing I had ever read, and somebody had trusted me with it.

"Well?" Leo said. He was staring at the table, at his hands, at anything but me. "You can say it's bad."

"It isn't bad."

"Hart."

"It's the best thing I've ever read." I meant it so completely that it came out barely a whisper. "I mean it. I'm not being nice. You're—you're a writer, Leo."

He flinched at the word, then went very still, as if he'd been handed something he wasn't sure he was allowed to keep.

"Nobody's ever said that," he said.

"Then they were wrong."

His eyes came up. They were wet at the edges, and he didn't hide it. That was the part that undid me. He didn't hide it.

We sat there in the amber light with the radiator ticking and the notebook open between us, and there was nothing else in the world. Not the scholarship, not the grades, not the school and all its stories. Only his hand an inch from mine on the table, and the slow, dangerous certainty that one of us was going to close the distance.

"Library's closing in ten," Mr. Okafor announced, without lifting his newspaper. He said it with great tact, like a man who'd seen this sort of thing before and would prefer to see it somewhere else.

We both jumped.

Leo shut the notebook and stuffed it in his bag. His ears had gone scarlet. "Right. Ten minutes."

"Ten minutes."

"Chemistry."

"Chemistry," I agreed, and neither of us said anything else until we left.

I told Nate no the next morning. I did it gently and told him it was the scholarship essay, which was true enough that I almost believed it.

But at lunch, I sat with Priya and stared at my untouched sandwich, hearing one line in my head, over and over, like a song I couldn't turn off.

Out there, if I'm fast enough, nothing can be loud at me.

I had the horrible, wonderful feeling that I was no longer the one holding the pen.