The space between us, across that quiet street, hums with a tension that has nothing to do with traffic. For ten seconds, twenty, maybe a full minute, the world ceases to exist outside the direct line of sight between my eyes and hers. It's not a staring contest. It's something quieter, more fundamental. It's a silent, mutual admission that something is happening here. Something strange and illogical and impossible to ignore.
She breaks the connection first. Not abruptly, not with a flinch of dismissal like yesterday. She just slowly turns her head back toward the town square, a deliberate, thoughtful movement. She stands up, slings her worn messenger bag over her shoulder, and starts walking away, disappearing around the corner without a backward glance.
She doesn't run. She doesn't rush. She just… leaves.
And I'm left standing in the shadow of the bookstore, my heart thumping a slow, heavy rhythm in my ears. She saw me. We shared a moment that felt more real than any conversation we've had in this timeline. And she walked away.
But it didn't feel like a rejection. It felt like a retreat. Like she needed time to process the sheer, statistical improbability of me being there. Again.
This is a good sign. Maybe. Probably.
My brain is a soup of contradictions. The hopeful romantic in me is screaming, She feels it! It's working! The anxious, overthinking part of me is whispering, She thinks you're a stalker, you absolute moron. You need to back off before she gets a restraining order.
I decide to listen to the anxious part, for once. It's usually right about things like this.
I walk home, the encounter replaying in my head. That look. It wasn't just confusion anymore. It was… appraisal. She was studying me, not just seeing me. It's a subtle difference, but it's everything.
The next day at school, on Day 3, I make a conscious decision: I will be a ghost. No "accidental" run-ins. No manufactured gravity. I will stick to my schedule, keep my head down, and let the universe do its thing. I need to give her space to process the weirdness. If this entanglement is real, the connection will hold. It doesn't need my clumsy interference to survive.
This new strategy is, to put it mildly, agonizing.
It's one thing to orbit someone from a distance when you're a stranger. It's another thing entirely when you know that the curve of her smile in a well-lit hallway is the closest thing to heaven you've ever seen.
I see her in the halls between classes, always with Iris, a vibrant, human shield. Sophia never looks my way, but I can feel a change in her posture when I walk past. A subtle stiffening, a heightened awareness. She knows I'm there. She's just pretending not to.
We have art class together again in the afternoon. My stomach is a writhing knot of nerves as I walk into Room 214. The air is thick with the smell of paint thinner and a fresh batch of clay.
She's already at her table, the one in the corner by the window. Her sketchbook is open. Iris isn't in this class. Sophia is an island.
I take my seat at the table behind her, my movements quiet, deliberate. I don't say a word. I just get out my own sketchbook and pretend to be deeply interested in drawing a lopsided cube.
The tension in the room is a physical presence. It's a low hum, a background radiation that I can feel on my skin. Mrs. Gable is talking about negative space, but all I can think about is the two feet of negative space between my table and hers.
I risk a glance up. Her shoulders are hunched, her head bent low over her work. She's drawing with a fierce, almost violent energy, her charcoal pencil scratching a harsh rhythm against the paper. She's building her fortress again.
But a part of me, the part that has spent sixty-seven remembered days cataloging her every mood, notices something else. She isn't just defending. She's wrestling with something. This isn't the cool, detached focus of an artist at work. This is an exorcism. She's trying to draw something out of her own head, to pin it to the page so it will stop haunting her.
I'm so focused on her that I don't notice Mrs. Gable approaching my table until she's standing right beside me.
"Well, Marcus," she says, her voice startlingly loud in the quiet classroom. "That is certainly a… committed cube."
I feel my face heat up. My cube looks less like a 3D shape and more like a building that's melting.
"Just warming up," I mumble, embarrassed.
"Good, good." She pats my shoulder, her bracelets jangling. Then her gaze shifts to the table in front of me. "Sophia," she says, her voice softening. "Let's see what you're working on. Something with that wonderful intensity of yours, I hope."
Sophia freezes. Her entire body goes rigid. I see her hand instinctively move to cover the page of her sketchbook.
"It's nothing," she says, her voice tight. "Just a study."
"Nonsense. All art is something." Mrs. Gable is relentlessly positive. She leans over Sophia's shoulder, peering at the sketchbook.
I lean forward, just enough to see past Mrs. Gable's cloud of floral perfume. I have to see what she's been drawing with such ferocity.
And then I see it. My heart stops.
It's me.
Or rather, it's dozens of me. The page is filled with sketches of my face, from every conceivable angle. Some are just quick, frantic outlines. Others are more detailed, capturing a stray lock of hair, the slight curve of a lip. It's a study in charcoal and contradiction. My face looks haunted in one sketch, hopeful in another, confused, sad, smiling. It's not just a portrait. It's an investigation. It's every possible version of the boy who keeps appearing in her life and in her dreams.
She's been trying to solve the puzzle. And this is her work.
Mrs. Gable is silent for a long moment, taking it all in. Then she gives a low, appreciative whistle. "My dear girl," she says, her voice full of a new respect. "This is extraordinary. The emotion here… it's palpable."
Sophia is beet red. She looks mortified, exposed. She quickly slams the sketchbook shut, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the silent room.
"It's just for practice," she says through gritted teeth, refusing to look at Mrs. Gable. Refusing to look at me, even though I know she knows I'm sitting right behind her, that I saw everything.
"Well," Mrs. Gable says gently, seemingly sensing she's overstepped. "When you're done practicing, I'd love to see a finished piece. You have a real gift for capturing… dissonance."
She pats Sophia's shoulder and moves on to the next student, leaving a wake of crushing, amplified silence behind her.
The air between Sophia and me is so thick now I feel like I'm suffocating. She knows I saw it. I know she knows I saw it. Every unspoken word, every secret, is hanging in the space between us.
For the rest of the class, she doesn't draw another line. She just sits there, her sketchbook closed, her hands clenched into tight fists on the table, staring out the window at a world that suddenly seems far too complicated.
And I sit behind her, staring at the back of her head, my mind a blank slate of shock.
She can't explain me. She can't rationalize me. So she's deconstructing me, trying to understand my mystery by drawing its component parts. She's mapping my face to try and map the impossible feeling in her gut.
The bell rings. This time, she doesn't flee. She moves with a slow, deliberate grace, packing her things as if they're very heavy. She slings her bag over her shoulder, stands up, and for one terrifying, heart-stopping moment, I think she's going to turn around. That she's going to look at me, confront me, demand an explanation I can't give.
But she doesn't. She just walks toward the door.
She's almost out of the classroom when her sketchbook slips from under her arm. It falls to the floor with a loud, flat smack, landing open-faced.
Right at my feet.
Open to the page of a hundred different versions of me.
I look from the book on the floor to her, frozen in the doorway, her back still to me.
This is it. A moment of choice. Not for me.
For her.