Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 107949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
After the eight billionth person’s head turned to look at him, though, he started to tighten up. It probably just read as good posture to the casual observer, but to me it looked like he was trying to pull into himself. As if by making himself stiller he could escape notice, a gazelle on the plains freezing to elude the chase.
When he shoved his fisted hands into his pockets, though, I pulled him into a little café, seated him facing the wall, and bought him a coffee. And I watched him slowly relax.
He looked tired and still wasn’t very talkative, but he seemed happy to listen, so to distract him, I told him about Milton and Charles, and about Gretchen, this awesome girl on my hall, who was the calmest person I’d ever known. Seriously, just being around her made me relax. I’d met Gretchen because we were in a tour group for people who hadn’t already visited campus the previous spring. Our tour guide was a sophomore who seemed so jaded that he could hardly raise his voice loud enough to be heard, but clearly took a great deal of pleasure in making us nervous.
When we’d gotten to the lobby in the library, he pointed a languid thumb behind his shoulder and told us that from the fifth or sixth floor looking down, the mosaic tile was laid out to look like spikes rising out of the ground in an attempt to deter students from throwing themselves over. Because before the administration added the cage around the opening, they did that, he told us. A lot. He made eye contact with each of us in turn, as if he were making a toast. I let out a nervous laugh.
The girl next to me, tall, with curly hair so blonde it was nearly white and strangely colorless eyes, cocked her head at the mosaic and said, “That’s so odd. If people wanted to commit suicide, the promise of spikes would hardly be a deterrent would it?”
“Oh gosh,” I said. “You’re totally right.”
And that, I had quickly learned, was really all it took to make new friends the first week of college.
I told him about classes. How my favorite was this physics class that was blowing my mind. Especially the parts about astrophysics. Physics was like a cheat sheet to the universe. Things that once just were suddenly had explanations, a logic all their own—except not all their own because they resonated with other things and forces throughout the universe. I might have gotten pretty excited talking about Newton’s second law.
And as long as I was talking and Will was paying attention to me I felt like I could do anything. Like he was a magnifying glass refracting the light of the whole universe onto me in a beam so intense and so warm that every molecule of my being was illuminated and seen. The threat of being burned alive was always in play, but the risk felt totally worth it.
Two girls at the counter lingered over doctoring their coffees, sneaking glances at Will and giggling. Will let out an exasperated breath.
“They stare at you because you’re so beautiful,” I told him, nudging his coffee with mine.
“Ugh, who fucking cares,” he said, flopping backward in his seat and closing his eyes, like if he wasn’t able to see people, then they couldn’t see him.
I snorted. “Easy to say when you are. I bet everyone wishes they were. Or, most people, anyway,” I corrected myself. It drove Daniel batshit when people made generalizations and whenever I did it in front of him I’d get an earful.
“You shouldn’t wish for that. You’re fine as you are.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, but secretly I was a little thrilled even at the faint praise. Will hardly ever gave compliments.
“Whatever, you’re fucking adorable. Don’t fish.”
“I don’t get it, though. You like it sometimes, I know. The power it gives you over people. I mean, you use it to, like… meet people, right, so you can’t tell me you don’t like being so hot—”
“Yeah, at a bar or a club—when I’m trying to pick someone up. Not at work or buying a fucking newspaper, or”—he nodded to our surroundings—“drinking a damn coffee. Not when I can’t control it. You think it’s great to look like this? To walk down the street and have everyone stare at you so you can’t even trip on the damn sidewalk without an audience. To constantly have people talking to you and smiling and acting all nervous or insecure or like you’re better than them?”
He cut himself off with a quick look around, suddenly realizing he’d started ranting.
“Whoa. I guess… I didn’t think about that part of it.”
“Yeah, nobody ever does.”
He took another sip of his coffee and made a face. “Ugh. Overextracted.” He was quiet for a while, pushing a finger through the light spill of sugar to leave a trail. “I just…,” he said quietly, then shook his head.