Shift

FOUR YEARS LATER

“You ready to blow out your candles?” Tommy holds a pan filled with yellow cake and fudge icing in front of me. Behind him, my parents, cousins, and friends are all gathered, singing to try and embarrass me. My brother is just tired of holding my dessert.

I force my smile in place. I’m seventeen today—the same age as the boy I love, but only for the next six weeks. Dustin turns eighteen at the end of next month, and then I’ll go back to being his best friend’s baby sister. Flirting will be inappropriate because some law somewhere states those ten and a half months make kissing someone illegal. I’m probably imagining things between us anyhow—the lingering hand on my arm, the thigh pressed against mine in the back of the truck during long rides, the few times I’ve caught him staring at me in the one class we have together.

If there’s anything there to believe in at all, Dustin would be here right now, standing alongside everyone else important in my life. He’d be up front, in the most important place. But he’s not. He hasn’t been around for days. And I’m a foolish girl with a crush caused by years of proximity and shared experiences. I’m the victim of biological and social science, and that is all.

“Happy birthday, dear Ha

I close my eyes and blush with my smile as everyone drags out the end of the song. I inhale and pause, filling my lungs to blow out the seventeen candles Tommy randomly spread around the cake Mom made. I open my eyes and blow while my head swivels from side to side, spraying the fudge topping with my germs. This is an incredibly stupid tradition, but since it’s my cake, joke’s on everyone else, I guess.

“What’d you wish for?”

His familiar voice sends a rush of goose bumps down my spine, up my neck, and over my shoulders, pouring down the center of my chest like warm liquid. I’ve gotten good at hiding this reaction from the rest of the world, but I savor the way it feels. As for hiding the playful banter that’s become a habit between Dustin and me, that’s another thing.

“Aw, now, if I tell you, it won’t come true,” I tease. I catch my brother’s glare as I turn to face our friend. Tommy is constantly reminding me that Dustin is not the sort of guy I should doodle about on my notebook with hearts and arrows. He’s right; Dustin’s not. He’s the guy who keeps me up at night with worry, the one who makes every other boy at North Highland High look juvenile and weak, and the only one I think about when I make wishes over fire and cake.

What my brother means is the three of us are friends and that’s as far as everything goes, not that I’m much of a part of their anything anymore. High school, it changed those dynamics. So did Colt moving back in.

“Happy birthday, Ha

My eyes slide up the length of his chest, up the wrinkled collar of his button-down shirt that only barely masks the deep red marks left behind from someone’s hand—a chokehold, I’m guessing. I’ve taught myself not to linger on these marks. It only pushes Dustin away when I notice them. I don’t dare speak of them.

“For me? You shouldn’t have,” I say, putting on a fake southern accent as I touch my free hand to my chest, a gesture to show how touched I am.

The contents of the bag jingles, so I figure it’s something like an Arizona keychain or a flashlight-slash-glitter pen. My parents have taken the cake away, and most everyone in the room has lined up to get a piece. Even at seventeen and eighteen years old, cake is a hit. My brother is just over my shoulder, so I keep the act up as I reach into the bag and pull out my gift, which it turns out is nothing I expected.

Tiny copper pipes are tied together, each one dangling from a swirled blue and gold metal wire that’s balled up to look like the moon. A faint, haphazard melody sounds as the small pipes clink into one another. The entire piece is the size of my palm, but the sound it produces is magical.

“Do you like it?”

My eyes drift from the miniature chimes to the boy who brought them. Hazel eyes, tired from never getting sleep, sit deep amid the sharp lines of his face. The baby fat that I used to pinch on Dustin’s cheeks disappeared two years ago, and now his skin is smooth, minus the rough scruff that grows in every two days. His lips raise on one side, pushing into his cheek and carving out the dimple that reminds me I know this boy. It’s the one thing that has remained the same on a face that has grown and survived and changed.

“I do,” I answer.

This wasn’t some gift bought at a drugstore last minute. I don’t have to ask him to know. Dustin made this. He made it for me. The moon and stars and the sound of angels. Something I bet he’s proud of and embarrassed by all at once.

Maybe I am not imagining things after all.