It was like functioning in a world suddenly stripped of birdsong or music. As if the colors had desaturated. Or if all the windows were sealed shut and no fresh air could get in.
And no one looking at him would have noticed a damn thing. Gabe had learned long ago how not to visibly wear suffering.
He knew all about Annelise being out of school, because that cold cut a swath through the fifth grade, and all those parents called the office. Annelise also missed soccer practice, and Eden missed a decorating committee meeting, and Jan roped him into helping, which was how he wound up painting the wordsDunking Booth.
He considered texting her. To commiserate. To check in. To see if she needed anything. But would that be an intrusion? Did he have the right? She hadn’t given him her phone number; it was part of the school records.
No, he decided, this was a long game. It hadn’t played itself out yet.
And boy was this ever a test.
She might not even be thinking about him at all. She might have decided that in light of the chaos life could dish up without warning, a courtship conducted in the chinks of their schedules was pointless. Even foolish.
He would just have to wait.
The Tornado.
That’s how Eden thought of those two weeks. Because tornadoes were seasonal (though of course not really in California), and this one wasn’t unprecedented. They came along now and again and sent her best-laid plans twirling into the next county. Like that scene inThe Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy had looked out of the window of her flying house and saw her wicked neighbor peddling on by through the sky—that’s how she imagined all those little drawings on her whiteboard.
Mostly because, boy, the store-brand cold medicine was potent stuff.
Annelise got better pretty fast.
But Eden caught Annelise’s cold. And it went nice and bronchial on her.
And then Danny caught her cold.
And he was out for a couple of days.
And then her mom and dad spent some time with the cold.
And then Avalon somehow got it.
And it was a mad scramble to keep her life running for those two weeks—to make sure orders at the store were fulfilled and food entered the house and the bills were paid and Annelise got to where she needed to go. Eden was on the phone constantly, sniffling and croaking, planning, rearranging, negotiating favor trades like that crazy agent Ari Gold onEntourage.
And yet through it all some vein of grace ran. Something that during previous tornadoes hadn’t been there at all. Something that felt like hope or peace, maybe? The cold medicine was awfully good; it blurred access to sophisticated thinking, and she could probably lay a lot of the inner calm at its door. But she was pretty sure she could also call that inner calm “Gabe.”
The epiphany was that she’d all along thought she hadn’t room in her life for him. But you didn’t make room in your life for a beautiful song or the weather. It just was there, making things better.
“The last time your heart was bro—”She knew, too, by the end of those two weeks, how she was going to answer his question.
Gabe went still when he saw Eden in the hall, zipping out of Annelise’s classroom into a crowd of kids moving toward their next class.
He had a hunch someone had forgotten her lunch again.
He half smiled.Wow, she looked like hell.
And like an oasis in the desert.
Also: like the very essence of beauty, as far as he was concerned.
A bulky blue sweater worn over a blue-collared shirt that was slipping out of the back of her jeans, like she’d thrown all of it on in a second to get here. She saw him. Froze. Then drifted toward him. There were mauve shadows under her eyes. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and she’d missed a few strands and they were fluttering alongside her chin. The mauve shadows made her eyes look even bluer.
And for a moment they said nothing at all. Just gazed.
He wondered if he looked the same as he had two weeks ago, or if he looked haunted from missing her.
“Give me back my fidget spinner, you big turd, Todd!” some kid hollered behind them.