“Wow,” Clark said, shaking his head. “You weren’t kidding.” He looked over at me, and I felt my eyes straying involuntarily to his mouth. I took a small step closer to him as he looked away, down at his watch. “I should probably get you home,” he said, giving me a half smile. “I don’t want your dad to hate me.”
We walked away from Winthrop, and I turned back for just a second to see him, arm still extended toward something, cape forever billowing in imaginary wind. When we reached the road again, I pointed for us to go left—otherwise known as the longer way around to the gatehouse—praying that Clark had a terrible sense of direction like Toby, and he wouldn’t notice this.
“It’s just this way,” I said, as Clark paused.
He raised an eyebrow at me, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Really,” he said, not exactly phrasing it as a question.
“Uh-huh,” I said, walking with purpose now, knowing that what I’d tried to do was completely obvious but not really caring. But I wasn’t ready for this—Clark, the falling darkness, walking next to him—to be over yet. We walked in silence, and I noticed that he was right by my side, closer than ever. Even without turning to look, it was like I could feel his presence next to me, aware of every step he was taking. Our hands were both down by our sides, and they were so close to touching, I could feel the tiny breeze made by his arm as it swung, the night air cool on my skin.
“I don’t think you can just decide you’re done with writing,” I said when I realized that Winthrop had interrupted a pretty important topic. “You don’t think you could tell me a story, right here, right now?” Clark shook his head, and I knew he was about to tell me why I was wrong, but before he could, I jumped in. “Look, I’ll start you off. Once upon a time . . .” I gestured for him to pick this up, but he was just staring back at me, clearly waiting for me to continue. “Once upon a time, there was a guy,” I continued, when I realized this was on me.
“A guy?” Clark asked with a laugh. “There aren’t guys in my world. There are Elders and mages and princes and orcs, but . . .”
“But this isn’t your world. We’re just making up a story that doesn’t matter, for fun.” Clark didn’t say anything, and after a moment I asked, “You don’t think you can do it? I’m getting us started, and I don’t even read.” Clark stopped and looked at me, and I could see something in his expression—like he was fighting a competitive instinct. “Once upon a time,” I said again, feeling like he was on the verge of joining in, “there was a guy. Named Carl.”
“Carl?” Clark said, incredulous. I shot him a look, and he threw up his hands. “Okay. Fine. But it’s Karl, with a K.”
“What difference does that even make?”
“It makes a huge difference,” Clark said, with enough authority that I decided to take his word for it. “Okay, and Karl . . .” There was a long pause, and I bit my lip to stop myself from jumping in, making myself listen to the slap of my flip-flops against my heels, the cicadas in the grass all around us, the occasional crunch of leaves beneath our feet. I was practically willing him to say something, to jump in with the story, to try. “And Karl . . .” He took a shaky breath, then went on, all in a rush, “Karl was a wanted man. He was on the run.”
I smiled but tried to tone it down as we rounded a bend in the road. “Because he’d stolen something,” I said, “something . . . valuable. With lots of value.”
Clark laughed, and it was like I could practically feel him relax next to me. “But he didn’t know that he’d been spotted stealing the valuable thing with lots of value. Unbeknownst to him, an assassin named—”
“Marjorie,” I supplied, and Clark stopped dead in his tracks.
“The assassin can’t be named Marjorie. It’s bad enough we’ve got a Karl.”
“What’s wrong with Marjorie?”
“Assassins aren’t named Marjorie.”
“Really good assassins probably are. Because nobody would think they were assassins.”
Clark inclined his head toward me. “Well played,” he said. “So. Okay. Karl and Marjorie—”
“Marjorie the super-assassin—”
“Are in the woods, on a moonlit night,” he said, the words coming more quickly now. “Karl thinks he’s gotten away with it.”
“But he hasn’t.”
“Not even close. Because he’s about to meet Marjorie. And she’s going to change his life.” I took a breath to continue the story when Clark’s hand brushed against mine, and all the words left my head.
I wasn’t sure if it was an accident, so I kept my hand stretched down by my side, within easy reach, and what felt like a lifetime later, Clark’s hand brushed mine again, sending a spark through me that I felt all the way in my toes. He kept his hand touching mine, and then, moving a millimeter at a time, curved his fingers around so that they were resting against my palm, just brushing it, so lightly. Then he moved up, over the curve of my thumb, and ran his index finger over the inside of my wrist in a slow circle. I could feel my pulse fluttering beneath his fingertips, and I had to remind myself that I knew how to breathe, that I’d been doing it my whole life. And then our palms were touching, perfectly lined up, though I could feel how much bigger his hand was than mine, feel his fingertips curving over the tops of mine, despite what Bri had always called my “weird large tree-frog hands.” We stayed that way for just a moment, and then, like we’d talked about it before, like we’d mutually picked the time, our fingers interlocked and we were holding hands.