The Rains That Fell Before Us

003 | The Pen He Never Uses

He put it on the desk when he sat down.

Just placed it there beside his notebook, same as before apparently, and didn't touch it again. The teacher started talking about unreliable narrators and Nora wrote the date at the top of her page and the lesson title and then stopped.

She lasted four minutes.

Then she was looking at the pen again.

It sat there untouched the whole class while he listened with his chin on his hand and his eyes somewhere between the board and nowhere. Not writing. Not pretending to write. Just absorbing things in that way he had, like information was weather and he was just standing in it.

She wrote in the margin of her notebook, small: he has a pen he never uses.

Stared at it. Crossed it out. Wrote it again even smaller.

Hana, sitting to her left, leaned over. "You've written like four words."

"I'm listening."

"You're staring at the back of the room."

"I have good peripheral vision."

Hana made a sound and went back to her own notes. Nora added a fifth word to her page and looked at it and decided that was enough and actually paid attention for the rest of class.

Mostly.

The bell rang and people started moving and she was still putting things away when she looked up and he was in the doorway. Not waiting in an obvious way. Just not gone yet.

"You don't have to walk with me," she said.

"I know."

She zipped her bag. "Sora's probably not around right now."

"Probably."

She looked at him. He looked back with that quality of stillness she was already starting to recognize. Like he'd decided a long time ago to stop performing things he didn't feel and had never found a reason to start again.

"Okay," she said. "Let's go."

They walked out into the hallway and fell into step without discussing it. The corridor was loud, lockers, someone laughing too hard, shoes squeaking on the floor.

"Can I ask you something," she said.

"Sure."

"The pen."

He glanced at her.

"You had it on your desk the whole class and didn't touch it once."

A pause. "You were watching me."

"You're two rows behind me."

"That's not how rows work."

"I have good peripheral vision." She adjusted her bag. "The pen."

He was quiet for a second. Actually thinking about it.

"It was my dad's," he said. "I don't use it because I don't want to run it out."

She didn't say she was sorry. She got the feeling he'd heard that too many times for it to mean anything.

"That makes sense," she said.

"Most people think it's weird."

"Most people don't think about what things mean."

Something moved in his face, quick and small.

They reached the stairwell and she stopped. "I go this way."

"I know. I've seen you."

"Right. Two rows behind."

She stood there for a second. The light through the stairwell window was doing the pale washed out thing it always did at this time of morning.

"I'm going to write about the pen tonight," she said.

He raised an eyebrow. "Why."

"Because it felt true." She said it simply. "Those are the details that make tomorrow-me trust the entry."

He looked at her for a moment. Something in his face that wasn't quite open but was less closed than before.

"Yeah," he said. "That's fine."

She nodded and started down the stairs.

She was halfway down when she heard him say, "Nora."

She stopped. Looked back up at him.

He was still at the top, one hand in his jacket pocket, not quite looking at her.

"The two pages," he said. "At the front of the journal. You went to them first this morning before the daily entries." He paused. "I wasn't trying to read it. I just noticed."

She went very still.

"What's in them," he said.