Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
I tried to give that notion an honest consideration, thinking of any stray memory that might arise from my school days.
Times when I noticed Cole.
Or he noticed me.
“She still has them tiny pink tongs?” she asked as an aside. “Really? Them little … Them cute lil’ pink things …?” She smiled to herself, then rose from my bed and went to the door, where she stopped and turned back. “I’ll let you be for now. But please give it thought. Relationships like yours and Cole’s … they are the envy of everyone in every town and city ever, across the globe. They only come once in a blue moon.”
“That … saying is … misleading,” I said distractedly, my mind lost in the past. “Blue moons occur as frequently as every two to three years and have nothing to do with it literally being blue.”
“Then relationships like yours and Cole’s come once in a literal blue moon,” she amended, “when the moon is literally blue.”
“So they come around … never?”
She gave me an important look. “Exactly.”
I stared back, unable to form a counter, struck by the sincerity in her eyes.
Then she left me to sit there on my bed with my thoughts. It was unusual of me to let my mother’s words affect me so deeply, but I couldn’t help thinking about cookies burning in a classroom, about the sweetness of my dad as a teenager, to eat and enjoy the entirety of one of her charred disasters.
The character one must have, to stand up against mockery and laughter for the sake of someone else’s dignity, to show such valor for another person, to display such compassion …
Traits I recently found myself admiring in Cole.
I suddenly imagined Cole doing the exact same thing for me, tasting a cookie I had burned beyond recognition.
What if Cole was keeping an eye on me all of those years?
Secretly watching my back?
There was one time I lost my math book. I was devastated. But then in my next math class a day later, I found a math book sitting there on my desk waiting for me—except it wasn’t the one I had lost. It was a totally new copy. I always wondered where it came from. I decided it was the teacher who got me a new one.
Even though she denied it.
And didn’t know I was missing my book in the first place.
Could that have been him?
“No,” I decided right then, thinking aloud. “You’re reaching too far for an explanation. That’s why they call it ‘farfetched’.”
With that, I cuddled back up in bed and hugged my pillow to my chest, closing my eyes.
It was barely five minutes later that I found myself thinking about all the times in school I had finally gotten to the front of the snack bar at lunch, after having let so many people go ahead of me (or rather: not stopping them from pushing and cutting in front of me with their friends, as if I wasn’t even there), then hearing they were out of the treat I specifically wanted.
Only to discover that the lunch lady was asked to set one aside specifically for me. And it was paid for already.
And she was told not to mention who did it.
Every time I asked, every time it happened, she kept her lips sealed. I always wondered who was behind the kind gestures.
It’s ridiculous to think that it could possibly have been Cole all those times. The notion never even crossed my mind. Not once.
“No,” I decided, muffled by my pillow. “It wasn’t Cole. It was the snack bar lady herself. She took pity on me. That’s it. Now stop remembering these things and put it all behind you,” I instructed myself, then shut my eyes.
Ten seconds later, they snapped back open as I remembered my birthday junior year. I was certain everyone had forgotten it—only to open my locker after my last class of the day and discover a note falling out of it. I picked it up. “Happy Birthday, Noah!” it read, with tons of different-colored happy face stickers covering it. I thought it was the sweet and thoughtful girl with curly hair whose locker was near mine, but she knew nothing about it.
Could that have been—? “No,” I mumbled to myself, shutting up the mere idea. “That wasn’t him either.”
But each time I said it out loud, I believed it less.
Because I also remembered another time when I missed a day of school, then found notes stuffed in my locker from my classes.
And another time when I thought I left a notebook behind in my Spanish class, only to find it returned to my locker somehow.
Another time when I forgot my umbrella on a rainy day, then discovered one hooked to my locker after PE.
Another time when I fell asleep in the library studying, only to wake up with a mystery blanket gently placed over my back.