Georgia
A sharp, dry crack cuts through the room, quiet but unmistakable, right as Mr. Alderman reads down the partner list for our semester-long project, some sprawling assignment on symbolism and transformation in classic literature that’s apparently worth almost a third of our final grade.
"Hale and Steele," Mr. Alderman announces, flat and administrative.
I look up. Across the room, Puck’s face does something complicated, surprise sliding fast into something that looks almost like dread before he manages to smooth it back into nothing at all. I glance toward the sound and catch the edge of his desk, the wood grain along the corner splintered pale and fresh, like something gripped it hard enough to break the finish. His hand is already off the desk by the time I really register what I’m looking at, tucked casually into his lap like it’s been there the whole time.
Nobody else seems to notice. Mr. Alderman moves on to the next pair without pausing. I file it away with everything else I’ve been filing away since I got here, and when class ends, I gather my books and walk over to the desk two rows from mine, because apparently I don’t have a choice about who I’m spending the next four months with.
"So," I say, dropping into the seat beside him. "Partners."
"Apparently," he says, his voice guarded, like he’s already decided this is a problem he needs to manage rather than a person he’s about to talk to.
"You could try to sound less thrilled about it," I say, my tone dry.
"I’m plenty thrilled. Can’t you tell?" he says, a flicker of something sharper cutting through his blankness.
"Not even a little," I say.
We’re supposed to be choosing a text from the approved list, but for the first ten minutes we mostly argue about which ones are worth reading at all. I dismiss a novel I read for a summer assignment two years ago, calling it overrated, and he comes back fast and precise, dismantling my argument point by point with the kind of detail that makes it obvious he’s actually read the thing closely.
"You’re wrong. The ending’s supposed to feel hollow. You’re criticizing it for doing exactly what it set out to do," he says, his certainty edged but not unkind.
"That doesn’t make it good writing," I counter. "Intentional emptiness is still empty."
"Or you missed what it was building toward because you wanted a bigger payoff than the story was ever going to give you," he says, leaning forward slightly.
I open my mouth and find, annoyingly, that I don’t have an immediate comeback. It’s been a long time since anyone’s challenged me like this, matched me point for point instead of backing off the second I push back. He’s sharper than I expected, the kind of mind that catches inconsistencies before you’ve even finished making them. It should annoy me more than it does. Instead there’s something almost exhilarating about it, like sparring with someone who knows how to fight back.
"You’re kind of insufferable," I tell him, my voice more admiring than insulting.
"You started it," he says, a corner of his mouth lifting.
"I did not start it. You broke a pencil in half the second they said my name. Forgive me for thinking that meant you’d be easy to beat in an argument," I say, arch.
His jaw goes tight, and for a second I think I’ve landed something real, hit closer to whatever he’s hiding than I meant to.
"You noticed that," he says, his voice quiet.
"Hard not to. It was very dramatic," I say.
"It wasn’t dramatic. It was an accident," he says, his words clipped.
"Sure it was," I say.
He doesn’t answer that, just reaches for the book we’ve finally agreed on, some collection of short fiction thick enough to double as a doorstop, and slides it across the desk toward the space between us so we can both read the back cover at the same time. I reach for it at the same moment he does, and our fingers brush against the same corner of the cover.
His skin is burning hot. Not warm, not the ordinary heat of another person’s hand. Burning, the way a mug feels right after you’ve poured boiling water into it, the kind of heat that should make me flinch back immediately and somehow doesn’t, not fast enough, my fingers staying pressed against his for one full second too long before either of us moves.
He pulls back first, fast, like I’ve burned him instead of the other way around. In the same motion, the pen in his left hand snaps clean in half in his fist, ink bleeding dark across his fingers, and he swears under his breath and grabs a tissue from his bag without looking at me.
"You should probably get a new pen brand," I say, the words filling a silence I don’t know how to sit in, my hand still tingling from where his skin met mine.
"Yeah. Probably," he says, his voice rough.
We finish the period mostly in silence after that, dividing up which stories we’ll each read first, exchanging phone numbers to coordinate meeting times, all of it stiff and careful in a way our earlier argument wasn’t. He doesn’t look at me again until the bell rings, and even then it’s brief, unreadable, gone before I can figure out what’s actually behind it.
I gather my things and walk out of the classroom into the crowded hallway, my books balanced against my hip, and it isn’t until I’m halfway to my next class that I realize I’m still holding my right hand slightly away from my body, like I’m protecting it.
I touch the spot on my palm where his fingers met mine, right along the edge, and it’s still warm. Ten minutes later, hallway crowded and loud around me, and it hasn’t cooled at all, still radiating heat like a small coal cupped inside my palm, something lit that refuses to go out.