Friday morning began with that deceptive blue in the sky that looked like spring, even though the air still smelled like winter.
I pulled my sweater tighter, my fingers clutching the necklace as if it could tell me how to get through this day.
Why? I had asked.
No answer.
Only silence – loud, pulsating, like a second heartbeat in my head.
In school, everything rushed past me. Teachers talked, chalk squeaked, board drawings were erased as if they had never existed. Voices laughed, breaks filled with noise. I wrote notes without reading them, drew lines in the margins of my notebook.
During each break, I looked down at the courtyard, searching under the hoods, among the faces, for him.
For shoulders I knew, for a gaze that simultaneously held me and let me fall.
But he didn't come.
He was in his world.
And tomorrow he would fight.
"You're somewhere else."
Fiona's voice pulled me back. She dropped into the chair beside me, set down her tray and pushed her fork toward me.
