Find Beauty in a Message

Chapter 3

Meet after class.

At my locker.

-Boris

At first Will doesn't think the note is for him. The chicken scratch scrawl is worded in a way that sounds far too familiar to be passed to a stranger, but when he tries to hand it back to the pretty girl beside him, she refuses to take it.

"It's for you," she whispers waspishly, like he's stupid.

Will just nods, refusing to look at her, or at Boris. He studies the handwriting instead. Small, and spiky and sloping to the right. He's mortified. The note doesn't include a locker number, just the assumption that Will already knows where it is, which means that it's been noticed just how much he's been watching the other boy.

This suddenly feels like the worst Monday of his entire life.

He wants to crawl under his desk and disappear. Will's brain is filling with catastrophic what-if scenarios faster than he can fully comprehend them. What if Boris makes fun of him for how he's been acting and Lenora becomes another Hawkins, where he's just the fairy again? What if he's angry and he beats him up? Will's not a fighter. He's never been in a fight.

He feels seconds away from either tears or hyperventilating, all over a stupid note and a stupid boy.

Will takes a deep breath through his nose and tries to slow his heartbeat. Tells himself he's being absurd. The other day in class, Boris had seemed friendly enough. Maybe that's all this is-making a friend.

He looks at the handwriting again with new eyes. Thinks this time that it looks less messy and more unpracticed. He tucks the paper into his textbook for safekeeping, and class drags on.

Boris is already at his locker by the time Will approaches. He spends a few moments dawdling, hands already clammy with nerves, which he thinks is ridiculous, but he also can't help it. He doesn't know what it is about this stranger that makes him respond this way, because it can't just be the passing similarities to Mike. If he was truly like Mike, Will would feel more comfortable, and less like he's been electrocuted.

But Boris is an enigma is so many ways, and Will is drawn to it like a compass pointing north.

He takes one step. Two. Four. And then, he's there, right there beside Boris, who looks at him with something that is both cheerful and intense.

"William! You came. Didn't think you would," he says.

Boris's voice has a lilting, heavy accent that Will can't place, one that he didn't quite pick up from the whisper he heard at the back of the classroom. It is both melodic and guttural, as if someone placed several accents from around the world together like puzzle pieces.

Will doesn't know what to say, because he didn't say he would come. He never wrote back. And he doesn't want to say 'you told me to,' because that doesn't sound right either. His tongue feels glued to the roof of his mouth, his brain moving too fast for his lips to catch anything. So, he shrugs.

Boris laughs, a loud "HA!" sound that almost makes it feel like his voice is exploding over you.

"Always so quiet, yes? Weird for an American. Everyone here is talk, talk, talk, but you, not a peep."

He closes his locker, books inside, as their last class had finished out the day.

Will has so many questions. Where is Boris from? What does he think of America? Of school? What's his family like? But none of them seem to reach his mouth. He's oddly paralyzed in front of Boris, hypnotized by chaotic energy of him. His hair is cleaner today, falling over his face more in curls than the stringy mess it had been on Friday. He has bracelets on, some colorful and some dark, some leather too. And Will notices that he has large hands, with long fingers and thin, birdboned wrists. It's all he can do to stand and let Boris continue.

"You have those eyes though," he says. "See everything."

Boris lifts a teasing brow.

"I've seen too."

Seen you watching me, Will's brain helpfully rewrites, and he wants to disintegrate.

"So I figure, if we're both seeing, and nobody is talking, then I will talk, yeah? I'm good at that. Didn't used to be good at that, was once just a shy thing. But Judy in Karmeywallag, in the Northern Territory, she taught me my English, see? Now I never stop!"

He finishes with a smile, and Will finds that he wants to learn all about Karmeywallag and the Northern Territory. He wants to know all about what it was like to learn English. He wants to know Boris. He's eccentric and magnetic, and Will hasn't said a single world to him which makes him feel so ridiculous, but this boy is a wild bundle of energy, and Will...he loves it.

"Uh...only my Mom calls me William, and only when she's angry. Like, really angry." Will finally says, for lack of anything better.

Boris still looks pleased.

"And your dad?"

"He's...not around."

"Dead?"

Will shakes his head.

"No, just gone."

"Ah, one of those dads. Plenty of those dads. My mother is dead."

It shocks Will how casually he says it.

"I'm so sorry," and he genuinely means it.

"Nah, she was alkie, fell out of window. I was only small. Means nothing to me. I live with my dad now. We travel all over the world. He builds mines. But that makes people mad, because they promise it won't fuck up the environment, and then mine fucks up the environment!"

Will is kind of reeling from how easily Boris shares things, doesn't know if he's always like this or if he considers Will a friend now and someone to confide in.

"You should come over sometime," Boris continues. "Watch movie. I don't live far. Walk to school every day."

"I'd like that."

He really would. His traitorous brain starts to conjure up the image of him and Boris on a sofa, legs tangled together like he and Mike used to do, and he immediately tries to erase it. He's never met anyone less like Mike than Boris, and it's unfair to keep comparing them.

"Today?"

"I can't today, my brother and sister are outside waiting for me."

"Oh, you come from big family!"

Will nods.

"But, maybe tomorrow?"

"Perfect," Boris grins, more alive than Will has ever seen him, and that's truly saying something.