Page 6

My last year of high school rolled around with an unexpected surprise.

The juniors and seniors shared a lunch period.

Ricky was thrilled for the extra time to spend with his girlfriend, Molly.

And I got to meet Laura.

Now, I had met Laura Jensen before, but that had been years ago, when we were still in junior high—when she had been a sixth grader with braces and I had been a seventh grader with little interest in anything but disappearing into fictional worlds.

I hadn’t been given the time to get to know her then, not that I would’ve taken the opportunity.

But now, at seventeen, she took my breath away the moment she walked up to our lunch table.

And somehow, just like that, there was light illuminating the corners of my dull, sad little life the moment I saw her smile.

I guessed those braces had paid off .

Or maybe I just hadn’t noticed how beautiful she was back then.

“Earth to Max.”

Ricky’s elbow jabbed at my ribs, and I jolted with a start, my cheeks on fire.

“Wha-what?” I stammered, tearing my eyes from Laura to look at Ricky’s taunting smirk.

He barked with a laugh, slinging his arm around Molly’s shoulders. “Oh boy,” he said, shaking his head as he took a bite of his apple.

“What?” I repeated, sliding my eyes back to the spot across the table, where Laura sat, her cheeks bright red and her bottom lip trapped between her teeth.

“Oh, nothing, bud. Don’t even worry about it.”

I sighed and picked up my half of Ricky’s sandwich. Ever since that day last year, he’d made it a point to share his lunch with me. I still brought my own, just in case he happened to change his mind one day. But so far, he hadn’t.

He really was a great friend.

But on that first day of our senior year, I was quick to realize that there was a problem with having Molly and Laura join us for lunch, and that was Ricky’s inability to multitask.

With his attention solely on his girlfriend, I felt I had little to do, and Laura didn’t seem to care much to have a conversation with me as she focused entirely on her lunch.

So, I opened my backpack and pulled out my favorite book.

Dracula .

Since my fourteenth birthday, I had lost count of how many times I’d read it. It was worn and well loved. The pages were now as familiar as the friend who’d given it to me.

It was my most treasured belonging, and I protected it as fiercely as I protected my sisters.

I opened it to the beginning, took a bite of my sandwich, and began to read the words I had nearly memorized over the past few years. The sound of Ricky and Molly giggling and sneaking kisses faded into the din of the cafeteria, and I was somewhere else. Somewhere far away.

“What are you reading?”

The soft, sweet voice tore me away from Transylvania, and I looked up to find Laura watching me.

Her lips were curled in a demure, bow-like smile, and her eyes were round and innocent. She was like Mina Harker in Bram Stoker’s gothic novel, alive with vivacity and intelligence, and I was all at once enchanted by her attention on me.

“Um …” I stammered stupidly as I lifted the book, not at all looking away. “ Dracula .”

“I haven't read that one,” she admitted, almost embarrassed.

“Oh, uh …” I began to slowly close the pages. “Would you like to? You can borrow it … if you want …” I asked almost hesitantly.

I didn’t want her to borrow it. It was mine, it was special, and if something were to happen to it, my heart wouldn’t survive.

But in that moment, I was also conflicted.

I wanted to share a piece of myself with her.

I wanted her to know this bit of my soul, and I didn’t know how else to explain it without her knowing the words.

Then, to my horror, she began to stand. Oh my God, I’d barely spoken to her, and I was already scaring her away.

But suddenly, she was walking around the table and taking a seat beside me, pressing her thigh close to mine.

“I could just read it with you,” she said with a barely there curve of her lips, and I wanted nothing more than to kiss her.

Instead, I nodded, opened the book, and said, “Okay.”

And that was how we spent every lunch period for the first month of school. We sat as a quartet instead of a duo. Molly beside Ricky, Laura beside me. We would eat and read while our respective best friends made out between bites of food.

When we finished Dracula , Laura brought her favorite book— Pride and Prejudice —from home, and we started that one.

She hadn’t cared for Dracula , and I didn’t care much for Pride and Prejudice .

But I cared for her . I cared for my time spent with her, the calm her presence and scent and voice brought to my life.

I carried it with me through the duration of my time at school, on the walk home, and during the night while I endured the never-ending abuse from my father and the indifference from my mother.

That forty minutes at lunch was the best and most precious time of my days, and on the weekend, time slowed to a crawl as I waited to be near her again .

Until one day, when I was outside mowing the lawn, she showed up.

“Hi, Max,” she called to me, standing at the end of the driveway, right behind my father’s car.

Startled, I turned, saw her there, and halted abruptly, releasing the control bar.

The mower stopped, and I looked toward the house with wide-eyed panic.

Dad would hear that I had stopped. He would come out to check the job I’d done.

He would critique and criticize and have me do it again and again until he was satisfied, just as he always did every Saturday when there wasn’t snow on the ground or rain falling from the sky.

I had to get her out of here before he saw her.

He couldn’t know about her. I wouldn’t let him. Because if he knew, he’d do whatever he could to take her away.

She smiled as I hurried over to her, fists clenched at my sides.

“I saw you out here, so I thought I’d—"

She gasped when I grabbed her arm and tugged her forcefully behind the enormous oak tree in the middle of the front yard.

Being this close to her, being this alone, outside of school, should’ve done more for my raging teenage hormones than it did, but I was too damn scared—of what he would do, what he would say, if he caught her here—to think of the things I’d like to do if he wasn’t here at all.

I wished I could’ve found it in me to look at her now the way she was looking at me.

She smiled up into my eyes. Funny that I could sit next to her every day for months and not realize how small she was or how big she’d make me feel. When I stood like this, she made me feel powerful, strong, and I longed to feel like that always.

“Hi,” she said, her voice quiet against the gentle fall breeze.

I opened my mouth to say hi back when I remembered why I’d pulled her behind the tree in the first place.

“Laura, you have to leave.”

It broke my heart how quickly the smile left her face.

“What? Why? I-if you have to finish mowing the lawn, I can wait. I—"

“No,” I said, shaking my head adamantly. “I’ll see you on Monday. I—"

“Maxwell!”

Oh no. Oh no, no, no . NO!

Air was trapped in my lungs as I gaped at Laura, terrified as I listened to my father’s thundering footsteps clomping against the porch stairs.

She tried to look around me. “Is that your—"

“ Shh ,” I hissed, pressing my finger to my lips, but what was the point?

Dad was already coming. She couldn’t leave without him seeing her, and I wanted to cry at the thought of him ruining something else.

“Maxwell! Where the hell—” He came around the tree to find me standing there.

I turned to meet his eye, saw the anger and obvious disapproval there, and then his focus shifted to the girl beside me.

“Well, what do we have here? ”

My stomach churned with disgust as my father’s head tipped and his gaze softened with interest.

“Aren’t you a pretty little thing? I can see why my son ”—his eyes flicked back to mine for a split second—“would be distracted.”

I sidestepped in front of Laura, blocking his view. His glare widened with surprise, then dissatisfaction.

“Are you going to introduce your father to your little friend, Maxwell?” he asked with a curl of his lip.

I didn’t know what came over me as I sneered back and said, “I wasn’t planning on it.”

For a moment, he was taken aback. He stepped away, as if I’d just punched him in the gut, only to return with his face in mine, our noses nearly touching.

“Do you want her to see what happens when you speak out of line?” he warned, his voice low.

“You wouldn’t,” I said, curling my lips into a little smirk of my own.

Because that was one thing I understood about my father. He never liked his image to be sullied. He could scold me, but he’d never lay a hand on me. Not when others could see and know what a wicked man he was behind closed doors.

He held my glare for a second more before blowing out a hot stream of air through his nose. He stepped away again, this time putting more distance between us.

“Finish up your little visit ,” he spit out. “I’m giving you a minute to say goodbye and get back to work. Any more than that, and I’ll show you what I’m willing to do. ”

He stormed off without so much as a second glance at Laura or me. With him out of my sight, embarrassment flooded in. She had witnessed that.

God!

Not even Ricky had met my father.

What was she going to think of me now? Would she ever want to sit and read with me again?

“Max,” she whispered from behind me.

She laid her hand against my back, and emotion clotted in my throat. I needed to turn around and make her leave, but right at this moment, I didn’t want to lose the feeling of her touch. It grounded me. It pulled me in and held me closer to a place of relief than I’d ever been before.

“You gotta go,” I found myself saying, my voice gruff.

“I know,” she said. “I-I’m sorry. I—"

I turned on my heel to face her, and she dropped her hand from my back. My hands clasped her cheeks, and I pressed my lips to hers, all to keep her from apologizing for making my miserable life a little bit better.

The kiss lasted all of two seconds, and when I finally pried myself away, my hands still holding her face, her eyes danced between mine as her fingers brushed over her parted lips.

“I’ll see you on Monday,” I said.

She nodded, dropping her hand to her side. I couldn’t help it; I leaned down and kissed her again. Quickly, less than a second, and it was over. But now that I had done it once, I never wanted to stop.

“Go,” I said, letting my hands fall away .

She nodded again and bit her bottom lip as she took two steps back, then turned and ran.

Whether she was running from my father or me, I wasn’t sure. But I wished I had run with her. I wished I had run and run and run … and never ever looked back.