Every Little Thing

13

There are twenty minutes to go until the trolley makes a return, and Reed and I haven't exchanged a word since. Instead, he watches the world from inside, fingers rapping absentmindedly against the windowsill, and I watch him, caught up in the way a dimple cuts into his cheek when he smiles, the way his glasses shield those baby blue eyes, the way his skin is tan even in the midst of a blustery New Jersey autumn.

And then I think of myself, with my brown hair and brown eyes and not-so-memorable face. I'm not beautiful, but I'm not ugly. I'm just—plain. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

But he just countered that. He just called me a flocon de neige. It doesn't make sense; I've never thought of myself that way. I've always thought of myself as a normal person who just hangs around beautiful people, like Georgina and now Reed, maybe just trying to imitate them, maybe just trying to fit in, maybe to just have her presence noticed. But I've never been one to stand in the spotlight, or need attention, or anything. Hell, I hardly get attention from my own mother. Why would I want it from anybody else?

But am I unique? Is there more to myself than I'm allowing myself to see?

I don't know.

________

Reed checks his watch and smiles over at me after a while, gesturing me forward.

"Come on," he says, and in the distance, I see the trolley rumbling its way up the path. We delve into the cold, and the second I'm back outside, my entire body clenches up, the warmth seeping from my skin. Reed pushes me forward, a hand at the small of my back, the other rubbing my arm as if to get some feeling back into it. We hurry up to the trolley, and once we're on board, I breathe a sigh of relief.

"Bad idea?" He asks, and I just roll my eyes. He laughs, leaning back on the wooden bench. "Alright, well, I've got a new one."

"And what might that be?" I ask.

"You, me, Georgina and Hale should take a bus to New York City."

I laugh, incredulous. "Reed, that's two and a half hours out of town."

"So?" He says, folding his arms behind his head, "That's the fun part. We can make it a kind of road trip, you know? Leave really early and get to the city by sunrise, then spend the whole day having fun in the Big Apple. And it doesn't have to be soon or anything, it's just an idea."

The truth is, it does sound fun. And it would be a pretty awesome day. I just don't know how my mom would react, or anyone else's. It's not extremely practical to leave four high-schoolers in the middle of the second-largest city in the world.

"I'll have to see," I say, tentatively, "But that sounds incredible."

He smiles to himself, as if in satisfaction, and I feel my heart warm at the sight of it.

Can you smile like that all the time?

As if reading my thoughts, he turns to me, tilting his head to the side.

"What are you thinking about?"

You.

Out loud, I say,

"Nothing. Well, New York, actually."

And there it is. That goddamn precious smile.