Heartstrings

Chapter 3. Performance

Emma's perspective

I pressed my back against the door to my room and closed my eyes for a second to catch my breath. My heart raced and my head spun with a hundred questions – What was that? Why did he reach for my hand? And then proceed to hold my hand? Had I done something to offend him? Was he confused?

I walked over to my bed and crawled into the covers, trying to shake the look in his eyes. It was as if he had been staring into my soul – searching for some sort of answer inside of me. And his touch felt strangely familiar, but not because we'd known each other for years – if anything, that should have made it weird.

No, it was as if we were two people who'd been intimate and were seeking a comforting touch. And as strange and violating as maybe it should have felt, his touch had actually momentarily quieted all of my tormenting thoughts and nightly anxieties.

My cheeks flushed as I remembered his shirtless figure. I had tried my best not to look down at his bare chest and abs, especially since he was looking so intently into my eyes, but I had allowed myself one shameless millisecond to soak it all up. And needless to say, the view had not gone unappreciated.

As I lay on my back staring up through the darkness at my ceiling, I replayed the scene over and over trying to extract any hidden meanings or reasons for why Jake had done that. But, as the hours ticked by, I couldn't come up with anything besides the resolution to act as if it had never happened at all. And somewhere beyond that thought, I drifted off to sleep.

X

A week passed, and though I'd fully intended on keeping a straight face and acting like nothing had happened between us the other night, I actually ended up avoiding Jake, which was surprisingly difficult to do considering he was suddenly everywhere.

I'd never noticed how many times our paths crossed throughout the day. Our lockers were within 6 feet of each other, we had two AP classes together - English Lit and Calculus, and he all but lived at my house.

Nonetheless, I'd made a valiant effort to steer clear of Jake, and he hadn't made any attempts to approach me. The only noticeable change was that in Lit, he moved from his seat in the back of the room to the front of a row that perpendicularly faced my desk. And while I never dared to look over at him, I could feel his stare throughout class.

One day after Lit, the teacher, a mousy-brown haired mid-twenty-year-old with vintage glasses and a petite frame stopped me on my way out the door. My cheeks flushed with anticipation and a twinge of worry as Ms. Hagerty walked back with me to her desk. She licked her finger and quickly flipped through a stack of essays sprinkled with hieroglyphics of red ink.

After a moment, she pulled out what I recognized to be my essay from the summer reading assignment and in a split second my cheeks turned an even deeper shade of red.

- So, I've been grading through the summer essays, and I found yours particularly interesting. You know... nearly all the other students chose to write about The Hunger Games or The Fault in Our Stars, but I was surprised to see you wrote about War and Peace. Did you like the book?

I nodded shyly and smiled.

- I did. I actually think it might be my new favorite.

- That's wonderful, how long did it take you to read it?

- Mm, I think about a week and a half.

- A week and a half? Really?

I couldn't tell if she was trying to make small talk or if she was just skeptical that I'd actually read the book. I hoped it would be the former, but it wouldn't be the first time a teacher had pulled me aside and raised questions about the originality of my writing. In eighth grade, my English teacher accused me of plagiarizing an essay about Lord of the Flies, and I sat in the principal's office for hours until my dad came to the school and vouched that the paper was, indeed, an Emma Knight original.