Beautiful Secrets (Cranksepticeye Fanfiction)

~9.24~ The Last Three Rows

You know that expression, "It hit me like a ton of bricks"? It's true. The minute he turned the car around and ended up on my doorstep in his green pajamas, that's how I felt about Jack.
I knew it was coming. I just didn't know it would feel like this.
Since then, there were two places I wanted to be: with Jack, or alone, so I could try to hammer it all out in my mind, I didn't have the words for what we were. He wasn't my boyfriend; we weren't even dating. Up until last week, he wouldn't even admit we were friends. I had no idea how he felt about me, and it wasn't like I could send someone to find out. I didn't want to risk whatever we had, whatever it was. So why did I think about him every second? Why was I so much happier the minute I saw him? I felt maybe I knew the answer, but how could I be sure? I didn't know, and I didn't have any way to find out.
Guys don't talk about stuff like that. We just like under the pile of bricks.

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"So what are you writing?"
He closed the spiral notebook he seemed to carry around everywhere. The basketball team had no practice on Wednesdays, so Jack and I were sitting in the garden at Greenbrier, which I'd sort of come to think of as our special place, thought that's not something I would ever admit, not even to him. It was where we found the locket. It was a place we could have out without everyone staring and whispering. We were supposed to be studying, but Jack was writing in his notebook, and I'd read the same paragraph about the internal structure of atoms nine times now. Our shoulders were touching, but we were facing different directions. I was sprawled in the fading sun; he sat under the growing shadow of a moss-covered oak. "Nothing special. I'm just writing."
"It's okay, you don't have to tell me." I tried not to sound disappointed.
"It's just . . . it's stupid."
"So tell me anyway."
For a minute he didn't say anything, scribbling on the rubber rim of his shoe with his black pen. "I just write poems sometimes. I've been doing it since I was a kid. I know it's weird."
"I don't think it's weird. My mom was a writer. My dad's a writer." I could feel him smiling, even though I wasn't looking at him. "Okay, that's a bad example, because my dad is really weird, but you can't blame that on the writing."
I waited to see if he was going to just hand me the notebook and ask me to read one. No such luck. "Maybe I can read one sometime."
"Doubtful." I heard the notebook open again and his pen moving across the page. I stared at my chemistry book, rehearsing the phrase I'd gone over a hundred times in my head. We were alone. The sun was slipping away; he was writing poetry. If I was going to do it, now was the time.
"So, do want to, you know, hang out?" I tried to sound casual.
"Isn't that what we're doing?"
I chewed on the end of an old plastic spoon I had found in my backpack, probably from a pudding cup. "Yeah. No. I mean, you want to, I don't know, go somewhere?"
"Now?" He took a bite out of an open granola bar, and swung his legs around so he was next to me, holding it out toward me. I shook my head.
"Not now. Friday, or something. We could see a movie." I stuck the spoon in my chemistry book, closing it.
"That's gross." He mad a face, and turned the page.
"What do you mean?" I could feel my face turning red.
I was only talking about a movie.
You idiot.
He pointed at my dirty spoon bookmark. "I meant that."
I smiled, relieved. "Yeah. Bad habit I picked up from my mom."
"She had a thing for cutlery?"
"No, books. She would have maybe twenty going at a time, lying all over our house - on the kitchen table, by her bed, the bathroom, our car, her bags, a little stack at the edge of each stair. And she'd use anything she could find for a bookmark. My missing sock, an apple core, her reading glasses, another book, a fork."
"A dirty old spoon."
"Exactly."
"Bet that drove Anna crazy."
"It drove her nuts. No, wait for it - she was - " I dug deep. "P. E. R. T. U. R. B. E. D."
"Nine down?" He laughed.
"Probably."
"This was my mom's." He held out one of the charms suspended from the long silver chain he never seemed to take off. It was a tiny gold bird. "It's a raven."
"For Ravenwood?"
"No. Ravens are the most powerful birds in the Caster world. Legend has it they can draw energy into themselves and release it in other forms. Sometimes they're even feared because of their power." I watched as he let go of the raven and it fell back into place between a disc with strange writing etched into it and a black glass bead.
"You've got a lot of charms."
He pushed the hair out of his eyes and looked down at the necklace. "They aren't really charms, just things that mean something to me." He held out the tab of the soda can. "This is from the first can of orange soda I ever drank, sitting on the porch of our house in Savannah. My gramma bought it for me when I came home from school crying because no one put anything in my valentine shoebox at school."
"That's cute."
"If by cute you mean tragic."
"I mean, that you kept it."
"I keep everything."
"What's this one?" I pointed to the black bead.
"My Aunt Twyla gave it to me. They're made from these rocks in a really remote area of Barbados. She said it would bring me luck."
"It's a cool necklace." I could see how much it meant to him, the way he held each thing on it so carefully.
"I know it just looks like a bunch of junk. But I've never lived anywhere very long. I've never had the same house, or the same room for more than a few years, and sometimes I feel like the little pieces of me on this chain are all I have."
I sighed and pulled on a blade of grass. "Wish I'd lived in one of those places."
"But you have roots here. A best friend you've had your whole life, a house with a bedroom that's always been yours. You probably even have one of those doorjambs with your height written on it." I did.
You do, don't you?
I nudged him with my shoulder. "I can measure you on my doorjamb if you want. You can be immortalized for all time at Nestor's Landing." He smiled into his notebook and pushed his shoulder against mine. From the corner of my eye, I could see the afternoon sunlight hitting one side of his face, a single page of his notebook, the curling edge of his dark hair, the tip of one black Converse.
About the movies. Friday works.
Then he slid his granola bar into the middle of his notebook, and closed it.
The toes of our ratty black sneakers touched.