Chapter 4 Shattered glasses

We started walking together from English to math. Tiny, ordinary things his shoulder brushing mine in the choke-point by the science wing, the way he waited half a second longer than necessary when a door swung shut between us, how he listened when I spoke, like the sentence had a second half I hadn't found yet.

He told me he used to fix broken radios with his grandfather. "He said listening was fifty percent of fixing. Otherwise you're just guessing at the problem."

"Does that work with people too?" I asked.

"I think so," he said, eyes moving over my face like a careful ear. "Sometimes."

We fell into a pattern. The kind that feels accidental right up until you realize you'd defend it with your life.

On Thursdays we tutored middle schoolers in the library because extra credit and because he signed up and because I signed up after he did. Our kids were siblings who fought over a single mechanical pencil like it was a crown. When he separated them with a joke instead of a lecture, the girl laughed like she believed him, and I felt something shift under my feet, a new gravity line.

On Fridays, there was the stadium with its peeling paint and its ritual noise. Vivienne, of course, lived for pep rallies, megaphone, glitter, the whole public performance of joy. I went because she asked, and because sometimes the lights made the outside match the inside noise just enough that I didn't feel defective.

Victor went because people invited him and he understood the math of showing up.

One of those nights, he found me at the top row, knees pulled to my chest, pretending to care about the game.

"Can I sit?" he asked.

"You already did," I said, because my mouth is 80% reflex by then.

We watched the field. The crowd surged and fell like the ocean on anxiety meds. Vivienne, down front, whipped the cheer line into a perfect pyramid. She sparkled. She always sparkles, it's a physics I don't understand.

"You were right," Victor said after a while.

"About what?"

"Burning." His eyes were on the field, not me. "Light is complicated."

I swallowed. "And shadows aren't always bad."

He glanced then. "I didn't say they were."

We didn't touch. Our arms rested close enough that the skin between them went aware. I could smell the soap on his hoodie, something clean, not a cologne that tries too hard, just... the absence of dirt. (God, Ivy, romance novelist much? Calm down.)

Vivienne caught sight of us on her way back up the bleachers, cheeks flushed, hair coming loose like the good kind of storm. She flopped down next to me, breathless and grinning.

"You're missing the part where I'm incredible," she announced.

"I can see you from space," I said. "NASA called."

She laughed and leaned against my shoulder, already reaching around me to tap Victor's knee. "Are you coming to the party after? My place. My parents are in Aspen pretending to love each other, so we have permission to drink responsibly and make poor choices."

Victor's smile was half-startled, half-in. "Maybe. I said I'd help my mom with a thing."

"Bring your mom," Vivienne said, as if that solved logistical, emotional, and sociological barriers in one glittery sweep. "Ivy, you're coming."

"I'm..." I started, but Vivienne was already standing, all motion and intent.

"Don't be a ghost," she tossed over her shoulder, not unkindly. Then she was gone, swallowed by the hot stadium light.

Victor didn't say anything, and neither did I. But I felt that old word swim up (ghost). The stadium roared. The night was a bruise you could walk inside.

He spoke first. "Do you want to go?"

"No," I said truthfully. Then, because truth is a boomerang, "Yes."

He nodded like he understood both. "If you go, I'll go."

It shouldn't have felt like a promise. It did anyway.

At Vivienne's, the party was already a painting gold light on glass, a song with bass heavy enough to rearrange organs, someone's laugh spilling down the hallway. Her house is always too big, like it's allergic to being full.

I hovered by the kitchen island, which is where shy girls go to pretend the hummus needs protection. Victor stood with me. He didn't try to pull me into the current. He stayed where I was.

"Is this your thing?" he asked, voice low enough that the question was just mine to answer.

"No," I said. "But sometimes it's easier to be lonely in a crowd. You can borrow other people's volume."

He nodded. "I get that." He picked up a grape, turned it like a planet, and then put it back down gently. Even the grape got the careful-hands treatment.

Vivienne materialized, cheeks bright, eyes brighter. She slid an arm around my waist and tugged us towards the living room. "Dance with me," she demanded, and c'mon, who says no to joy when it chooses you?

We danced. Badly. I laughed for real. Victor watched from the edge, smile tucked in like a note in a locker. Every time I looked up, his eyes were on me, not the room, and I tucked that away too, a small light I could use later if the dark got greedy.

But later, when the crowd thinned and the music softened, Vivienne pulled him into a conversation near the fireplace. I couldn't hear them over the soundtrack of people pretending they weren't waiting for something to happen. I saw him listen to her the way he listens to everyone, full attention like a gift, not a debt. She flicked her hair and said something that made her own mouth curve, and his curve answered, just a little.

It wasn't a moment. It was a seed. Future-tense. Still, I felt its shape.

I stepped onto the back patio to breathe. The night air was cool and honest. My phone buzzed.

Victor: you disappeared.

Me: ghost things.

A beat. Then

Victor: come back?

I stared at the text until the edges went soft. Vivienne's laughter floated through the open door, bright and beautiful. The seed sat in my throat, unplanted.

Me: coming.

He was waiting by the kitchen, hands around a glass of water like it was important. When he saw me, something in his shoulders unstuck.

"Hey," he said softly. "I was..." He didn't finish. He didn't have to.

"Hey," I said back, my voice steadier than my hands.

We ended up on the staircase, the party moving around us like water around stones. He told me about the star his grandfather used to point at, a patient thing that always appeared if you knew where to look.

"What's it called?" I asked.

"I don't know," he admitted, and then he smiled at himself. "He didn't care about the name. He cared that it was always there."

"That's corny," I said, my heart doing its best teenage drum solo.

"I know," he said. "It's true anyway."

The front door opened then and a rush of colder air swept the entryway. Vivienne's silhouette cut across the light. She saw us and grinned, the kind of grin that revs a plot.

"There you are," she said, like she'd been looking. "My favorites."

I pretended my heart didn't flinch at the plural. Victor didn't move. Our knees were almost touching. Vivienne flopped down on the step below us, leaning back until her head was on my knee like a crown.

"You two are so quiet," she said. "It's like you're communicating with eyebrow twitches."

"We're talking about stars," I told her.

She turned her face up to me. "Make a wish," she said, and closed her eyes.

I watched her lashes tremble, watched Victor watch her, watched myself watch both of them, and I made one.

Not for him to choose me. Not even then. (I know, I know. But I've never been greedy with the universe. Or maybe I didn't want to owe it anything if it said yes.)

I wished for the courage to be seen even when the light turned away.

I didn't get it that night. Courage takes longer than a wish and more work than a star.

But for a while, sitting there between his quiet hands and her bright laugh, I believed it might be possible.

And belief, it turns out, is its own kind of first light.