chapter five.

Val - present day

I'm not sure why I'm here again, or maybe I am. Maybe it's that annoying thrumming within my chest, like I know somehow, that he's going to be there, waiting for me. And even if he is—what then? What does any of this matter?

I can't get too excited.

I can't get too excited, but I am anyway. I feel like a teenager again, whose heart flutters at the first word a boy ever speaks to her.

God, I must be stupid.

The diner's bell chimes above my head, and the waitress, Kimmy, looks up from behind the register, her eyes narrowing as she does. I fish around in my pocket until I recover my wallet, and wave it at her. She grunts and goes back to wiping down the counter.

It's certainly not the nicest place to be. At one in the morning, most people are out on the town clubbing or grabbing drinks or taking long night drives. The select few are actually doing what you're supposed to be doing at one AM—sleeping. And much fewer people than that are here, in a 24-hour diner that stinks of grease and weak air freshener, with walls painted the color of toothpaste.

I scan the bright red booths. There's an old man slowly nursing a hamburger. A family of four probably resting from a road trip, guessing by the map spread out between them and the way the dad keeps furiously circling things. My eyes even land on a few fellow college students, most of which are drunk or mentally checked out or both—but none of them have the chin-length red hair or the faraway look in their eyes or the chip-toothed grin that I came here hoping to find.

"Val?"

I jolt at the sound of my nickname, and whirl. Simon's in the booth behind me, looking up at me with an odd sense of hope in his eyes. In his brown fleece-lined jacket and wire-rimmed reading glasses, he looks almost out of place here, like a photoshopped image. God, I think. You really are a nerd.

"Valerie," he corrects all of a sudden, taking his reading glasses off. As I approach, I notice him slam his journal shut. I decide not to ask. "I meant—Valerie."

"Val is fine," I say, sliding in across from him.

"Oh," Simon says, and frowns. "It is?"

I keep looking at him, at the freckles spattered across his nose like paint flicked off a brush, at the mole that kisses his upper lip, at the slightly askew part in his fine hair. I keep looking at him, trying to remember where I've seen him before all of this, trying to pinpoint why it feels like...I know him. "Yeah," I reply with a shrug. A few indolent curls fall into my eyes; I move them away. "Sure."

"Well," Simon says, and smiles gently, without teeth. "Did you bring your wallet this time, Val?"

I toss it onto the table between us. The pages of his journal ruffle a little, and close themselves up again. I catch only a flash of quickly-scrawled ink. "I've gotten a lot more sleep than last time," I tell him. "Now I can actually hold a conversation."

Simon inclines his head. "I'm interested."

"Good," I say, and flag down Kimmy with a wave of my hand. "But first, coffee."

Minutes later there's a mug of black coffee steaming in front of me, and a latte with a blobby heart drawn in the milk steaming in front of Simon. He's pushed his journal to the side, but his fingers are still twitchy, as if just aching for a pen to be pressed into them. Writing is a hobby of mine. A helpful pastime. But the way Simon acts, it's like writing is his very heart—there is no him without a pen.

Needless to say, I'm fascinated.

"Tell me about yourself, Simon," I say, stirring my spoon around in the mug, listening to the clink clink of the metal against porcelain.

"Do your conversations always start like job interviews?" Simon replies, with a chuckle.

"No, but this one does," I say. "I'm waiting."

Simon doesn't hesitate any further, which I like. "My name is Simon St. John," he introduces. "I'm twenty-one and in my third year here at Boston, though I'm from a tinier town in western Massachusetts. I'm the only redhead in my family so they call me Ginger Snap, and I have a goal of tasting all the sushi in the entire world."

"You're definitely not getting the job, Ginger Snap," I say, and he chuckles. "And sushi? Why sushi?"

"It's heavenly. That's why."

"Fair enough," I say. I point to the journal resting underneath his elbow, my next target. "Is that your diary?"

"Not quite. It's the contents of my brain, on paper. Sometimes those contents turn into poems. Most times they're just the musings of a madman," Simon replies, picking up the journal and weighing it in his hand for a moment. Something strange crosses his face—ruefulness, I think, but possibly nostalgia—but it's gone as quick as it was there. He sets the journal down again, and lifts his eyes to me. I didn't notice before, but there are flecks of green among the darker brown, and it's all I can do not to stare. "And your journalistic aspirations. Where did those come from, exactly?"

"What can I say?" I tell him. "I'm in love with the truth. I wanna search for it, I wanna know it, I wanna share it. And being the anchor on your nightly news seems like the only place people will actually listen to me."

Simon frowns again. I swear I have seen this frown somewhere else, and it's going to bother me until I figure out where exactly. "They don't listen to you now?"

"Maybe, but does that really mean any of it's heard?"

"Hey. I'm the poet, here."

I just look at him for a moment. A car honks outside and the family of four jostles back through the doors. The store phone rings; Kimmy hurries to answer it.

I stir my coffee. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay, Mr. Poet. Read me one."

"Oh," Simon says, and shakes his head. "Like I said, they're not really all that—"

"Screw how good it is," I tell him, drawing my legs up in my seat. He blinks at me, stunned. "You made something. Be proud of it."

He chews his lip, and then his face opens up into a smile, chipped tooth and all. I wonder if I'll ever know how he chipped that tooth. I wonder if I'll know him long enough to figure it out. Is this what it is? To be found?

He's flipping through the journal, fingers gliding over the pages, over the words. For a second I close my eyes and listen to the whip of paper through the air and imagine myself in a different place: warm lamplight, a crackling hearth, a cushioned chair beneath me and the world around me.

I hear his voice.

"Leave me in the body

In which I was born.

My skin is worn from changing

My hair is gray from worry,

My eyes are damp from tears.

Ask me: Would you change a single thing

About yourself?

Well, the answer's not the same

For me."

I wait a moment for him to keep talking, and when he doesn't, I open my eyes again. He's watching me with caution, still gnawing at his lip, his fingers shaking slightly as he grips the journal. I don't like the look on his face. Almost like he's expecting me to realize something.

I ask, my voice low, "What's it mean?"

Simon exhales. "It's a metaphor, sort of. For all the masks we wear as we get older, and how exhausting it all gets. That sort of thing."

"Hm," I say, stirring my coffee again. Paper crinkles as Simon folds the journal shut. "I liked it."

"You did?"

I look up at him. His face is twisted with disbelief. "Yeah, Simon. I thought it was...I thought it was kind of beautiful."

Beautiful. Sad. Twisted, in a way. That poem was a lot of things, and a lot of those things are displayed on Simon's face right now. There is a lot to him, a lot I can't see. A lot I would like to see, if he'd let me.

"Beautiful," he murmurs to himself, brows furrowed. He sighs and looks up at me again, something almost dazed in his eyes. "Do you want to go outside?"

"Christ, Simon. It's freezing out there."

"I like the cold. Makes me feel real," he says, dropping a wad of bills on the table. He reaches over and takes my hand. His touch shoots through me like a bolt of electricity, and I'm on my feet before I register much what I'm doing.

I was right. It is freezing out here, and though I'm wearing one of the fuzziest jackets I own, I still have to hop up and down to keep from getting frostbite. We stand just outside the diner's entrance, underneath the buzzing Open 24 Hours! sign. Simon's face is painted in neon, and our breath clouds from our mouths, mingling in the space between us.

Simon reaches out, touching my lanyard, from which my student ID dangles. "Valerie Elizabeth Love," he reads out loud, and when he laughs, his breath plumes. "That's quite the last name."

"I know," I say, as he drops the lanyard again. "You can imagine all the nicknames I've had over the years. It was always either that, or, you know, my face."

"Your face?" he says, and I love the way he does, like he'd forgotten until then, about the pale patches of skin all over my body that have at times glorified and at other times ruined me for my entire life. "Oh, Val, don't—just imagine what the world would look like if it was all one color."

"Simon—"

"Boring, that's what," he says, adjusting his glasses and looking at the ground instead of at me. "I'm not sure it would even be worth living in."

I forget that I'm cold.

I forget almost everything.

"I want to do this again," I tell him, and he looks up, dubiously. "You and me. I want to meet again, just the two of us. For real this time. Not...not at a diner."

For a moment he just looks at me, and I'm worried that it's coming again. The apologetic no. The, You know, I like you, but...

"Okay," he says, and when he grins his smile is bright enough to rival even the stars above our heads. "It's a date, then."