THE STARS ARE BEAUTIFUL - WATTYS AWARD NEW ADULT WINNER 2019

Callum | Chapter 2

CHATTER GREETED ME as I opened the door to room 221. Everyone was talking to someone except for Everly, who sat quietly all alone at her desk in front of the class.

Everyone shut up when Brighton entered the room. He wrote notes on the dry-erase board behind Everly and then called on Logan, who had his hand raised.

"Are we allowed to do tests? Like blood work and stuff like that?"

Brighton replied, "Can you do them in five minutes?" And the rest of the class found this mockery humorous.

But I only stared at her quietness.

Logan tried again. "Could we split up the time over a few days?"

"If you'd like to waste it, sure." He didn't wait for Logan to try another approach. "Now, today, you will be split into the groups you see on the board. Everyone on your group must agree on the diagnosis and formulate a treatment by semester's end. You will be graded half for the diagnosis and half based on your patient log. You will elect one person from your group to speak with the patient from here on out. You'll have ten minutes after today, since it's collective. Spend them well."

I scanned the board. Fuckin' Logan was in my group. Small blessing: he wasn't elected to ask her the last round of questions after I convinced this cute Italian girl named Cecily to agree with me about an eating disorder, even though that's not at all what I believed was Everly's condition. Nonetheless, they bought it, and I was elected to ask questions. We made a list, and I decided then that Logan was an even bigger asshole than I'd originally pegged him for. He, of course, wanted me to ask her questions that had very little to do with forming a diagnosis and everything to do with a weak attempt to embarrass me.

The ten seconds it took to reach Everly felt as if time stretched on forever. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, pulled the sleeves of her sweater around her fingers, looked anywhere but at me. My palm was turned upward when I sat, the list buried in my coat pocket.

"May I?" Nervously she rested her hand in mine. "Everly Anne, your fingers rival popsicles." I stared at our hands. Yin and yang. My long fingers to her short. My skin smooth against the scars of her old wounds. My study-bitten nails to her carefully filed ones.

I clasped her hand between both of mine in an effort to warm her up. The scars lined her skin, and it was impossible to not notice the top portion of her left pinkie was amputated.

Everly cleared her throat. "You know I'm just... so tasty. I can't help myself sometimes."

In some ways, I was better prepared for today's differential, and in others, I was completely lost. I knew I had a log of questions I was supposed to ask, in addition to the list my group had compiled. Lines I should have filled in carefully with meticulous notes, but the "just" stared me in the face every day I sat in class and watched Logan and the others lead one torturous round of meaningless questions after the next. So I just had blank spaces and voids where they had generic answers. But I also had Everly's hand and interest, and, at that exact moment, I couldn't decipher which was more important or telling.

"Is there anyone who would refute that?"

She rolled her eyes. "As if I'd share."

"No one worthy? Or are you just too young and your Pop won't let you date yet?"

"I'm an adult. Nineteen whole years under my belt." She scanned the desk for my laptop, but it was only us. "But no." She looked up at me. "There's no one worthy, either. Not yet."

It was a gift from the Just God that Timothy Brighton wasn't grading based on overheard differential questions that weren't on his log. "Just what exactly would make a person qualified to taste you?"

"Well," she began, "he'd have to be okay with cold hands, for one."

I shrugged. "Seems easy enough to fix." My hands held hers firmer.

"And not care about my cannibalism habits. He'd have to be a sharer."

"Is that why you were too full to eat your cake in the hospital? Snuck too many finger appetizers beforehand?"

"No, I stopped chewing off body parts when I was a child. One doctor—he was a really wonderful man but doesn't practice any more—used to make me wear oven mitts on my hands. Apparently I found my fingers to be particularly scrumptious. That bothered... some of the other doctors. Their treatment for that was a little more severe."

I leaned closer, my fingers inching further up Everly's arm to her wrist, under the cuff of her sweater. "Any other parts of you taste good?" So much for Logan's plan to humiliate—Everly's eyes deepened as she looked at me, unbothered, ultra-touched by my willingness to play a game and drop the interview-style probing bullshit she despised.

Half of me wanted to look over my shoulder and make sure Brighton wasn't listening. The other half wanted to shout my questions across the room so Logan could hear me ask them and Everly answer without a single bit of hassle, let alone hesitation.

"My lips," she answered. "I used to bite my lips a lot."

I stared at her as she looked up, tracing over her face until I reached Everly's mouth. One of my hands slipped from hers, which allowed my index finger the freedom to touch the faint scar under her lower lip.

"Time," Brighton called out.

But I couldn't leave right away. I stared at her for a moment longer; my hand gave a squeeze to hers. "You feel much warmer now."

"I'll have to take your word for it, I guess," she admitted quietly.

"You can't feel the warmth of my hands?" I asked.

"I feel your warmth just fine." She closed her eyes for a moment. "I guess I can see how that word gets under your skin."

"No," I told her, "you're right about it. What you wrote for me is right."

"But it's not the truth."

"Then why did you tell it to me?"

She looked down. "You have to go back to your seat."

Brighton stared sternly. I rose from my spot, but she quietly called my name. "Do you know where the old train line is?"

I nodded.

"You can find a lot of answers on old trains," she said. "History leads to stories, and stories lead to wonderment. Wonderment is the Christmas of life."

As Everly sat with the other four groups, I pulled up New York's old train line on my laptop. From back when everything was needful and crafted. Back when women crossed their legs and had gentlemen suitors. Back when steel was magic, lightning-fast, and the only way.

And once again, I had seen this place before. My family had been the sturdy foundation that rode trains and traveled towns. Fallen in love on shooting stars and gulped dreams. I was once a part of this world built on hope, faith, and creation.

But one day... it all just fell apart.

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A/N: Thank you for reading! Please ***STAR*** and comment if you like what you've read :)