As time wears on, the novelty of Trow seems to wear off for basically everyone but me. Sophie and the pack girls stop squealing around his desk every morning, which is good, because it means I can have him to myself, but I'm frozen in this weird inability to not sound stupid when he talks to me. This is new for me, because I'm not usually like that. In fact, I'm never like that.
But I guess I don't usually spend a lot of time trying to talk to people. Actually, now that I think about it, I've never really exerted effort into getting to know someone before. That makes me sound like a snob, and I'm not, really. I just…was happy how I was. I never met someone before who I looked at and thought, You. I want you to be part of my life.
And that's how I feel with Trow.
I try to read my stars for signs, but I feel like my stars are a mess. Actually, I can't see anything at all. I run the astronomy charts, and I turn over the tarot cards, and I sprinkle salt and pepper the way Mom taught me, and everything is fuzzy and unclear.
Every once in a while, Mom says, "How are things going with that boy?" and I'm torn between wanting to die of embarrassment and wanting to ask if she reads anything clearer in my stars and cards and spices than I do. But most of the time when Mom says she reads things clearly, what she says is stuff like, It's pretty clear the crow will fly counterclockwise. Unless he doesn't because the river is by the blue car.
Mother is intrigued by "the boy," but I refuse to talk about him. Because now that I haven't done anything further when it comes to him, I wish I hadn't mentioned anything to Mom at all. If I had a time machine, I'd go back and stop myself from ever mentioning Trow. These are the things I'd do with time travel. It's probably why human beings shouldn't invent it.
Trow comes to his seat in homeroom most mornings. He's absent a lot, but on the mornings when he's there, he comes in and he says hello to me and he usually manages one of his gorgeous smiles, and I say hi back—usually only once, so I suppose that's an improvement—and then that. Is. It. I know: it's super humiliating.
And then one day, what happens is this: Trow finds me meditating.
I don't really eat lunch in the cafeteria. I don't like it in there; it always feels too close and humid and loud, too much nervous energy being expended while people try to flirt with each other across tables and friend groups. To me, navigating the cafeteria is like trying to dash across a six-lane highway. Good luck with that.
So I have an apple and I meditate. I think the principal lets me do this because she thinks it's part of my religion. She seems to think we are Wiccan or something like that. We're not, but when I said I wanted to meditate during lunchtime, she acted like it was a religious requirement and agreed to allow it. (I didn't lead her on in this; I just didn't correct her. I'm not the daughter of a lawyer for nothing, I'll have you know.)
I'd like to meditate outside. Outside is the best place to meditate for me. But we're not allowed outside during the school day for safety reasons, so I just duck into a classroom and meditate there.
And that's where Trow finds me.
I'm not really meditating. I'm supposed to be, but I'm sitting in a classroom, thinking about Trow.
And that's when Trow walks in. I would have thought I'd summoned him if I didn't know that I have absolutely no witchy powers. No useful ones, anyway. Because being able to read messy stars is neither a witchy power nor useful.
Trow draws to a stop two steps into the classroom, spotting me. "Oh," he says. "I…didn't… Sorry. I'll—"
"No," I blurt, and I'm pleased that finally I was able to get out something to him other than mumbled greetings. "You can stay. I mean. Yes. It's fine." Why can I not stop talking and saying stupid things?
Trow regards me for a second. Then he says, as if making a decision, "Okay." I'm sitting at a desk; he walks over to the teacher's desk and perches on top of it, so that we're facing each other.
I smile at him (Operation Trow chief ingredient/surgical instrument: smile at him) but I can't think of anything else to say. This is apparently my curse when it comes to Trow.
"So." He sends me that smile he has again. His smile is slow, his lips curling into it a half second after it lights up his eyes. It is also almost always weary, like he smiles reflexively because if it took any more effort, he wouldn't bother. "What are you up to in here?"
Thinking about you is the real answer, but at least my mouth is finally intelligent enough not to say that. "Meditating," I reply.
Trow lifts his eyebrows at me above his brown-green-blue eyes. "Meditating," he repeats. He sounds a little bit amused, but not in a mean way, not like he's mocking me.
"Yeah," I say. "Meditating. Have you ever done it?"
He shakes his head at me. "Where did you pick up meditating?"
"It clears your brain," I tell him. "Gets rid of the clutter so you can think." I do it a lot. In fact, I have to do it before I sit and try to read my stars. If I try to read stars without clearing my brain, I just get a muddle. Granted, my stars have been in a muddle for a little while now, but it used to be that I could at least get pretty clear feelings from them. Like how I knew this was going to be a good year: I saw it in the stars. And then I met Trow and it seemed like it was going to be a good year and then the stupid stars shut up.
"Huh" is all Trow says.
Maybe he sounds curious. Does he sound curious? I can't tell. I wish I could tell when it comes to Trow.
"Come and try it," I hear myself say, and then I try to pretend I'm not shocked by the words coming out of my own mouth. Shouldn't I have control over that stuff?
But Trow says, with one of his slow-curling smiles again, "Okay."
Okay. He said okay. What the stars am I supposed to say now?
He slides off the teacher's desk and comes to sit in the desk next to mine, and I stare across at him. I'm so used to sitting behind him, to seeing nothing but the back of his head. Now I'm right next to him and I can see every freckle across his face, every individual color in his rainbow eyes.
It's easier sitting behind him, frankly. I half expect, in my crazy blurting-out state, to say to him, Could you turn around? I prefer to face your back—your front is too distracting.
But what I manage to say finally is "Oh," and I wonder how long I've been staring at how beautiful he is. I clear my throat and try to remember how to meditate. Yeah, sure, Mom taught me how to meditate when I was still an infant, she claims, and I still do it every day, but Trow makes me forget how to do basic things like breathe, never mind meditate.
"Close your eyes," I say.
"Okay," he says, smiling again, and closes his eyes.
Well, good. That makes things a little bit easier, not having that gaze on me.
"Are you closing your eyes?" he asks.
"What?" I say, alarmed. I don't want to close my eyes. I want to have the luxury of sitting here and admiring him without being worried about him looking back at me.
"Are you closing your eyes too?" he repeats, eyes still closed.
"Why would I close my eyes?"
He opens his eyes now. "Aren't you going to meditate too? Isn't this your meditation time?"
"Well, I don't have to—"
"I don't want to sit here and meditate by myself while you stare at me. Seems weird." He does look vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect. He doesn't squirm but he looks like he could.
"Okay," I say slowly. "Yeah. I'll meditate with you." I close my eyes.
"Are you cheating?" he asks good-naturedly.
"No," I say immediately. "Are you?"
"Uh-uh."
I squint one eye open to see. His eyes are closed. Feeling a little better, I close my eye again and say, "Okay. Take a nice deep breath and hold it. And then, when you exhale, empty your lungs all the way, all the way out. Every last drop of oxygen, squeeze it out of you. Better to start with lungs full of fresh, new air."
We are silent for a moment, letting the air move in and then out of our lungs.
"Now," I say, "on your next inhale, pull the air in deep. Start by expanding your stomach and then filling the air all the way to the very tips of your lungs. Hold it, and then let it all out slowly."
I can hear Trow following my directions. I've never done breathing exercises with just one person before. Well, outside of my mom. And one person who is sitting so close to me. I feel hyperaware of the rhythm of the oxygen moving in and out of his body, keeping him alive and slowing him down all at once. I am so aware of Trow's rhythm that I am having a hard time finding my own, making the air fill me up and go out as easily as I normally do. I end up trying to match my rhythm to his, just to try to force my frantic heartbeat to calm down.
"Again," I say, making my voice even softer, following his breathing across from me. "And again. Keep doing it, breathing this way, and clear your mind. Wipe it clean. Think of nothing but your breathing. Focus on it. Focus on the air as you draw it down into you and as you release it from you. In…and out. In…and out. If you have a thought, it's okay. Recognize that it is a thought, and then push it to the side, and then focus again on your breathing. In…and out. In…and out." I am practically whispering by this time. Clearing your mind is always so much easier said than done. I am normally very good at it, but right now I am hyperaware that my mind is filled right to the brim, and what it's filled with is Trow. I feel like I can feel him next to me, even though we're not touching. I feel like if we kept doing this, this breathing next to each other, I could almost climb into his head, like we could just be one together.
When the bell rings, signaling the end of lunch, it startles me harshly, interrupting my rhythm. I open my eyes and don't look at Trow immediately, because I don't feel like I can. Instead, I blink around the classroom, getting used to the level of light. The hallways start filling with noise, and any minute now, this classroom will be invaded by other people, and this whole spell will be broken.
I look at Trow. I don't know what I want to say, but I know I want to be able to stop time. I wish I had the magic power to stop time.
Trow has a strange look on his face. I can't read it. "That was…" he says.
I don't know what the end of that sentence is going to be. And I want to know so badly.
But Trow just says, "Thanks," and stands up as the next class starts to spill in all around us.
· · ·
The next day in homeroom, I have a plan. A better plan than Operation Trow has turned out to be so far. A plan with actual steps. I made myself come up with it the night before and, let me tell you, it was super hard work and I am very pleased with myself. I get to homeroom ready to implement my new plan like I am a military tactician, Napoleon or Julius Caesar or whoever was really good at battles.
But Trow's not here.
He's so frustrating, not doing exactly what I want!
That night, I decide I want to read my stars. Reading my stars is such a habit with me. I think I used to do it the way other kids used to suck their thumbs, but then they all grew up and grew out of it, but my habit wasn't visible to other people and so I never did. But reading the stars fulfills the same mindless comfort that I think thumb-sucking must do to babies, and most of the time I think it's just as pointless. I do it because it's familiar, and because I can't quite kill the hope that one day I will look at them and actually see what Mom seems to think I should see. That I will look at them and there, written in the stars, will be my future. You will do great things. You will have great loves. You will be happy. But instead I look at the stars and all I get from them, if I'm lucky, are general feelings. Vague unrest there, something exciting happening here. It's like reading fortunes in a fortune cookie or something. And they've just been a mess lately, like my stars can't make up their minds about anything.
And still I keep reading them, compulsively, hoping for the day when my stars stop being as scatterbrained as I feel and provide some actual help about what I ought to do with my life.
I shove open my bedroom window and my screen, and climb half out, perching on the windowsill. Mother hates it when I do this, but she's never been able to get us to stop it, me or Mom.
I sit there and tip my head back and look up at the stars over my head. Here's the secret about stars that a lot of people don't bother to pay attention to, I guess: if you narrow your eyes and look through your eyelashes, the stars swirl into clouds, into the Milky Way, and they dance over your head, and in that dance can be a message. I don't always read my stars this way. Sometimes I just chart an astrology chart, or I flip the tarot cards, or I scatter the salt and pepper, or I peer into the dancing dust motes. Mom's taught me innumerable things around me to "read," even though I think mostly we're just imagining all of it. But the thing I love most is this: I love to make the stars dance. And I love to see if they have anything to say.
Tonight the stars are the same stubborn mess they have been for a while. They dance over my head, through my eyelashes, but I can't feel anything from them. And definitely nothing about Trow. Trow feels to me like he is not the stars: he is the dark of the night sky between them.
Trow's in school the next day, and I don't give myself time to think myself out of it. I launch myself into the plan he delayed with his absence the day before.
"So," I announce.
He turns in his chair and smiles at me. He looks tired, but then he always looks tired, and that never diminishes the power of his smile on me. "What's up?" he asks.
"You should come to my yoga class." Yes, I think. Good job. Super straightforward and hopefully charming as a result. Nailed it. Definitely.
He regards me for a moment. Then he lifts an eyebrow in evident confusion and says, "Is that a euphemism for something…?"
I feel myself blush hotly. "No! It's a…not-euphemism. A real thing. I teach a yoga class. Not really meditation, but, you know, you might like it."
"You teach a yoga class," he repeats, as if he can't get his head around this.
"Yeah. My mom owns a yoga studio."
He glances at my rainbow hair and his smile quirks at me again. "I shouldn't be surprised about that, should I?"
"So you should come."
He hesitates. "Yoga…isn't really my thing."
"Have you ever tried it?"
"No," he admits slowly.
"Then how do you know? You liked the meditation," I remind him and then wonder, Did he like the meditation? I guess we never really talked about it. I just assumed. Maybe I'm being too pushy. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Maybe I am the world's worst military tactician. Maybe I'm the anti-Napoleon. Maybe I should order some kind of retreat. "I mean," I correct myself, "did you like the meditation? I thought you liked the meditation—"
"It was fine, it was… Thanks for the invitation."
I can tell when I'm being politely brushed off, and it stings. It stings more than it should. It's not like my life is riding on whether or not this boy comes to my yoga class. This is not actually military tactics. He's just a boy and it's just a yoga class.
But I feel irrational when it comes to Trow. And I feel annoyed by that. Mother always says that I am composed of yin and yang, warring together. There is all of her practical pragmatism warring with Mom's star-gazing intuition. I came from only one of them, but they are both raising me, and I cannot help that they seem to both sit inside my heart, frowning at every choice I make for being too risky or not risky enough. I have acted a lot like Mom when it comes to Trow; maybe it's time to act like Mother.
Objectively speaking, he is just a cute boy who sits in front of me in homeroom, and I am being ridiculous.
