WAVERLY

The weather is frigid now. The week is long and gray and vacant.

I’m changing. I can feel it like a continental drift. My territories are shifting. If I just let go, I could stop being me, stop holding on so hard, guarding my borders like a country under siege.

I’m scared to disturb the balance, though—that delicate equilibrium. Marshall and I can only exist in the narrow spaces where I’m not me and he is not him.

So I do my homework. I focus on how to survive without cross-country. An earlier Waverly would have called life without motion impossible, but I’m finding the rhythm of it. I’m learning to exist without the numb, faceless miles—the daily expanse of parks and city blocks, until I’m too wrung out to feel my bones.

I spend my afternoons in the library or the student council room with Maribeth. In the evenings, I lounge on Autumn’s bed while she makes plans and invitations for her Autumn-themed party. I don’t mention Marshall to anyone. I don’t look at him. I wish for him on every penny and star and eyelash.

This preternatural self-control doesn’t last, though. It can’t. On a foggy, drizzly Tuesday night, my resolve begins to weaken. I do homework until my eyes blur. Until I can’t stand myself anymore. I’ve finished one problem set, two four-page papers, a Spanish handout, and there’s nothing left. Since the dance, I’ve kept the candle far back in my desk drawer. Now, I sit with my hands tucked tight between my knees and try to ignore it, but it’s like starving for something that’s right in front of you. I might be made of wires, but I’m not made of stone.

It isn’t even nine yet, but I turn out the light and get into bed.

The days are so much colder and night comes early now, but it’s still strange to be sitting in the dark before the neighbors’ lights go out. This is the earliest I’ve been in bed since I was seven, but the only place I want to be right now is the one where I get to be the person I am when I’m with Marshall.

With the candle lit, the little pool of wax scorching next to me in its glass dish, I force myself to lie still.

It’s so hard to focus, though, to just dissolve. I feel made of amphetamines.

I keep my eyes shut anyway, yank hard on the power cord to my brain—count and count and count.

I get there in the end.