Page 78 of Fractured Ice

The crowd's energy goes from entertained to something louder, and then they're in the straw beneath the ladder, and I'm watching two grown men wrestle in carnival straw while someone's little sister cheers and the booth operator reaches for what I assume is a radio. From three different directions I see people start moving toward them, Dylan's teammates from one side and Knox and someone I recognize from the hockey house from the other.

It takes about forty-five seconds to separate them.

During those forty-five seconds I pick up my bag, find the gap in the crowd while everyone is looking at the straw, and leave.

The route I take home is one I haven't tried before, longer, through the east edge of campus where the botany department keeps its greenhouse. It's quiet and there's no chance anyone follows this way without knowing where I'm going.

I walk and I let my heart rate come down. I don't think about anything for a few minutes, just the path, the late afternoon light on the glass of the greenhouse, and the distant noise of the fair getting farther away.

Then I reach into my pocket and take out the pen.

The crystals catch the light the same way they did at the booth. Blue and silver, a little bit unnecessary, and somehow exactly right.

Useful and a little bit beautiful.

I turn it over as I think about cotton candy, lollipop trades, and the automatic left turn into the shade. The way he said she always smiles when she's concentrating… like it was nothing, like it was just a piece of information he'd had for years and kept somewhere in case it was useful.

And I think about the two of them in that straw.

My first read is the one I've had all afternoon, that they’re two athletes in each other's vicinity, competing over everything because that's what competitive people do. I've been around enough sports environments to know how that works. It's not about me, it's about the game. Whatever game they've decided this is.

That's the obvious explanation.

I roll the pen between my fingers.

Dylan's been exactly what Dylan always has been today. He was charming, attentive, a little bit performing, and pleasant to be around. The arm touches and the close standing and the steering conversations. All of it has the quality of someone doing what works.

Ethan's been something else. Pink cotton candy. Lollipop trades. The shaded path. The smile when I'm concentrating. A pen from a carnival wall when there was a giant bear available, because I like things that are useful and a little bit beautiful.

Either he's extraordinarily good at this and everything is a calculated move, which I've considered and which makes sense given his history, or he's been paying attention to me for a very long time and the things he knows aren't strategy, they're just things he knows.

I can't figure out which one is true.

Behind the kissing booth tent he kissed me like I was the only girl in the world. I have now kissed two men in the last week, and only one of them is the reason I'm walking home through the botany greenhouse path instead of the main route.

I click the pen once. Twice.

I put it back in my pocket.

I don't know what any of it means, and I'm not ready to find out. I've got at least ten more minutes of walking to do something useful with my thinking, and what my brain keeps returning to, no matter how many times I redirect it, is the same single question.

Ethan Walker has his pick of anyone.

So what, exactly, is he doing with me?

18

Sienna

The house is quiet when I get home, which is not the usual condition of a house with so many women in it, but it's a Saturday and most of them have people to see and things to do.

I close the front door behind me and stand in the entryway for a moment. The living room is tidy, although it's always tidy, we have a house rule about common spaces that everyone actually follows, which still strikes me as something of a miracle. Someone left a candle burning on the mantle, the vanilla one that Emma bought in bulk from somewhere, and the light is low and warm and the whole place smells like vanilla yumminess.

I drop my bag by the stairs.

Emma is on the kitchen counter. Not at the kitchen counter. On it, sitting cross-legged with a bowl of cereal at ten in the evening, reading something on her phone with focused attention. She looks up when she hears me.

"You look weird," she says.