The Words We Keep

I wait until 12:45 a.m. to slip out.

Margot has crept into my bed again, so I have to ease out. Alice is cocooned across the room, thank goodness. Didn’t want to have an awkward hey-you’re-sneaking-out-too moment.

I walk to the school through a springtime fog that gives the night an eerie sheen, the smoky billows blanketing the houses and the path ahead. But I’ve run these roads so many times, I know the curves by heart. I wind my way down the loop toward the school and the shore, and tonight the memories from the Night of the Bathroom Floor leave me alone.

As I get closer, the rhythmic breathing of the ocean fills the world. I inhale deeply, filling my own lungs with the cool night air. Micah is waiting in the parking lot, doing figure eights on his orange bicycle. Seeing him there, ethereal through the fog, waiting for me, makes my heart jump slightly. Not in a pending-panic-attack way, but in a way that tells my body to wake up, to be ready, to take everything in.

“So what’s this grand plan?” he asks, hopping off his bike.

“Okay, so I was thinking about what Friedman said, about connection.” My idea falls out of me, fast and excited. “So, what if the words aren’t mine, or yours, or anyone’s? What if the words are everyone’s?”

I hold up the bucket of chalk sitting in the parking lot by Micah’s feet. “We take my poetry and your art to the people, and leave space for them to add to it.”

Micah nods along.

“I like it. Very Bob Ross of you,” he says. “So where do we create this masterpiece of the masses?”

I look around. “Parking lot?”

He shakes his head. “Auto-ped liability.”

“Side of the building?”

“Vandalism.”

Both our eyes land on the massive sidewalk right in front of the main entrance. Micah looks at me through the fog.

“Bingo.”

—

We start without a plan.

I write out my monster poem, line by line in front of the door. Micah stands behind me, watching the words form on the sidewalk.

He’s gonna think you’re a head case.

He’d be right.

“I haven’t edited it or anything,” I say, feeling again like I’m standing naked in front of him, exposed by my words. I have to restrain myself from erasing the poem, running home, and hiding my notebook under my mattress. “It’s a rough draft. Definitely a work in progress.”

Micah kneels down on the ground next to me, reading my words, his lips moving as he does, which is so adorable I can barely stand it.

“Well, it’s real,” he says. “And, by the way, we’re all a work in progress.”

He taps a piece of chalk to his chin and then starts drawing next to my poem: a girl with demons perched on her shoulders, yelling into her ears. Her eyes are shut tight, and one of the monsters is covering her mouth. It’s dark and moody. But it’s also beautiful, a mix of light and dark, just like Micah. He makes the girl come alive, shading here, lightening there, until she pops off the sidewalk, fully formed. Her monsters look like they, too, could leap into reality.

He asks me to help him shade in the rest, and we work side by side like we did on the beach, in comfortable silence, putting ourselves—our art—into the world. And I don’t know if it’s Micah’s arm brushing mine or writing my words on the ground, where everyone will see them, but an electric chill rocks through my body.

Micah’s eyes focus fiercely on the chalk, the muscles in his arm flexing as he draws.

Stop staring at his biceps, you weirdo.

You’re just project partners, remember?

You made that perfectly clear.

He looks up through his curls.

“What’s up, creeper?”

I turn back to the sidewalk, thinking about the way his face fell in front of Damon in the hallway. I can’t let that happen again. I can’t lead him on.

“You’ve got chalk on your face,” I say, standing without looking at him, because if I look, I’ll see that scar on his eyebrow. I’ll wonder where it’s from. I’ll wonder about this boy and his past, and he’ll take up more space in my brain. Space I don’t have to give.

He swipes at his cheek but totally misses the bright blue swatch. “Just looked like you might be coming awfully close to violating the whole just-partners policy.”

“You’re one to talk,” I say. “With that little raised-eyebrow smolder in the hallway.”

The corners of his lips fight a smile. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.”

“Am I doing it right now?” he asks, jumping up next to me. “I mean, I’d hate to be walking around, inadvertently smoldering at people.”

I fake punch him, and he grabs my wrist, igniting electricity where he touches me.

“Fine,” he says. “For the sake of our partnership, I will try to rein in my natural sex appeal.”

“How generou—”

“But you”—he points at me—“have to stop doing that thing where you bite your lip when you concentrate.”

“I do not.”

“You do, and it’s very distracting.” He clears his throat, rocking back on his heels. “Speaking purely from a partnership standpoint, of course.”

“Of course.” I crouch down so he can’t see the heat in my cheeks, because holy crap, are we talking about my mouth right now?

I add a final line beneath my monsters poem: My greatest fear is…

I leave the bucket of chalk right next to it, and we stand back to admire our work.

“I guess this concludes the first official meeting of the guerrilla poets of Ridgeline High,” I say, trying to draw the attention away from sexy smolders and lips.

“Not so fast.” Micah dusts his chalky blue hands on his pants. “First you have to answer. What’s yours?”

“My what?”

“Greatest fear.”

I laugh, and my voice rings out in the empty space. “Just one?”

“Yep. Greatest. Numero uno.”

How do I narrow my list? I fear Alice hurting herself again, and me not stopping her. I fear my brain betraying me. Not getting into Berkeley. Not being all that Dad wants.

“Then I guess”—I crouch to pick up a piece of chalk—“letting everyone down.”

Micah squinches up his face. “Who have you ever let down?”

“Alice,” I say before I censor myself. “I’m still letting her down.”

I’ve made zero progress on my make-Alice-Alice-again plan, which means I’m just as useless to her now as I was the night she reached out for me in the bathroom. Micah takes a step toward me, like he’s going to hug me or touch me, but then stops, and looks about as awkward as I feel, so I quickly say something.

“Your turn. What does the great Micah Mendez fear?”

His chest expands, then empties slowly. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Nuh-uh. I told you mine. Now spill.”

He smiles, tapping his finger to his chin. “What if I show you instead?”

I wipe the blue streak off his cheek.

“What exactly did you have in mind?”