Chapter 3

I couldn't stay away.

It took me a few days, but I went back to the art room after last bell — told myself I needed to work on my project. That it had nothing to do with him.

I'm a terrible liar, even to myself.

The door was cracked open. I pressed my back against the wall and tilted my head just enough to see through the gap. He was there. Same table, same position, same quiet face that didn't match anything I knew about him.

His phone buzzed. Then again. He grabbed it, read the screen, and whatever he saw made him leave — fast, out the far door, sketchpad still open on the table.

The room went silent.

I should have walked away. Grabbed my bag, gone home, pretended I never came back. My hand was on my backpack strap. My brain was saying leave.

But the sketchpad was right there, wide open under the window light, and my feet were already moving.

Don't.

I walked in.

Nora, don't.

I sat down in his chair. It was still warm. Somewhere in the back of my head, a voice whispered weight limit — and I told it to shut up.

The sketchpad was open to a half-finished drawing — a coffee mug on a windowsill, steam curling up, shadows done in soft pencil. It was good. Really good. The kind of thing you'd see pinned up in an art show, not hidden in an empty classroom.

I turned the page. A tree. An old truck. A pair of hands holding a basketball — his own hands, probably. Everything was detailed and careful. Everything made sense.

Then I turned another page.

A girl, sitting at a desk by a window. Seen from behind. Curly hair falling past her shoulders. A soft, round frame — not thin, not small, not apologized for. Just there. Just a body in a chair, drawn with the same care as everything else.

My hand froze.

I knew that desk. I knew that window. Third row from the back, right side. AP English.

That was my seat.

Those were my shoulders. My hair. My body — the one I'd spent years wishing was smaller, drawn on this page like it was something worth looking at.

I turned the page.

Me again. Standing in the hallway, arms full of books, mid-laugh. I remembered that day — Mara had said something stupid about our history teacher and I'd lost it right outside the cafeteria. I didn't know anyone had been watching.

Next page. My hands, close up, holding a pencil. In Art II. He must have seen me through the window.

Next page. Me on the bleachers during a pep rally, knees pulled up, reading a book while everyone around me screamed.

Next page. Me walking away from him in the hallway, the day he knocked my binder out of my hands. Seen from behind. My head down, my shoulders curved in. He'd drawn that too. The aftermath. The thing he did to me — and then he went home and drew it, like it haunted him.

Page after page after page.

All me. All from a distance. Like he'd been watching me for weeks and I never once noticed.

Not a single drawing was mocking. No exaggeration. No cartoon. He'd drawn my arms the way they actually looked — soft, full, with that little crease at the elbow I always hated. He'd drawn my stomach where my shirt pulled slightly. He'd drawn the way my thighs pressed together when I sat down.

And it was — 

I don't know how to explain this.

It was like looking in a mirror that didn't hate me.

Every part of my body I'd ever wanted to erase was right here on this page, in pencil, in his handwriting of lines and shadows, and none of it was ugly. None of it was a joke.

My eyes were burning. My throat was tight. I was sitting in his chair looking at myself through his eyes and I didn't understand. I didn't understand how someone could draw me like this and then walk up to me in class and —

That seat has a weight limit.

Didn't you already have lunch?

At least she's trying, right?

How?

How do you draw someone like they're the most beautiful thing in the room and then spend every day making sure they feel like the ugliest?

I was shaking. I couldn't tell if I was angry or something else. Something worse. Something that felt like hope, and I hated it, because hope from a boy like him was just a setup for a bigger fall.

I should have closed the book. I should have left.

I was still staring at the page — my own face, three-quarter profile, looking out a window, almost smiling — when the door behind me swung open.

Ethan was standing there.

"What are you doing?