Don't Let It Break Your Heart

That’s all, really. A girl is in the room. But that’s not all. A girl is in the room and something makes my gut twist. A girl is in the room and I can’t look away from her. A girl is in the room, and, somewhere, something blinks into clarity for the first time.

She’s tallish, just a little taller than me, in ripped jeans and a cropped hoodie. Her hair is dark and curly – curly curly, not like those girls who sleep with braids in, and then talk about how hard their curls are to maintain – wild and hanging over one perfectly winged eye. She’s looking at all of us, carefully, by one, and I jolt. I think she said something.

“Is this the senior student council meeting? Mr. Bremner said I’d find it here.”

“Yes, it is!“ Gray says, standing up at his desk, just a little too quickly, so his chair falls over. “I’m Ethan Gray, senior class president.“

Oh, he’s Ethan now. Of course. I stifle a slightly hysterical laugh behind a cough.

“Tal,“ the girl says I watch her tongue flick down from the roof of her mouth to form the sharp T sound and then I want to slap myself.

“I’m new this year,” she continues. Half our school is new this year, everyone being bussed in from these shiny developments a few towns over. But none of the other new-this-years look like her. None of the other new-this-years have inspired this awful combination of dread-and-longing nonsense going on in my chest right now.