Admit It

16; 'now past surmise.'

For some reason, when Camila came into their final period of drama, she sat next to Shawn again. After yesterday, he was more than apprehensive of what to say to her, if he were to even say anything.

I hope it doesn't show, he thought to himself when she settled her things about two feet away from him, but he was well aware of the way he caught his bottom lip between his teeth, his left hand fingering chords to an invisible guitar.

After pulling the curtains open for the first scene rehearsal, Shawn sat down and reached in his backpack for his homework. He had a lot from previous days' assignments he had procrastinated over, but he knew he couldn't focus if he could still see her was sitting there with her book and pen in hand from the corner of his eye, so he took out the novel from his backpack instead. Camila glanced at him as soon as he did, and they both smiled just slightly.

'Do you like it?' she typed into her Notes app with a small smile. Only her pure, kind nature could smile at him like that, in that stupid way that made him feel valued. 

"Yeah," he said, "although, I don't know much of what's happening."

Camila knit her brows. 'You're nearing the end, aren't you?'

Shawn laughed quietly. "I am, but I... I think I just like seeing the little things you wrote in the margins. I don't know. I've always been more of a music person, I'm not that great at reading." He paused for more than a few seconds, his contemplating, pensive stare falling to the edge of a page that he'd opened. "Can I show you something?"

She nodded. He pulled out his phone and opened it to a saved photo.

'What's that?'

"I found a poem the other day. You might like it."

'You like poetry?' Camila asked, and smiled in such a way that made him completely forget for a moment what he'd done on Saturday night. He wanted to curse and thank the universe all the same, for letting, or making, him meet a girl who made him purer than what he was when he wasn't with her, a girl whose silent words and soft smiles blended so easily into his without even trying. 

"I do. I don't read much, goes back to the bad at reading thing," he chuckled, carefully moving a few inches closer so she could read the words on his phone, "but I always seem to find such... such lovely poems when I do read them." 

'I never thought you much the poem type,' Camila half-lied. Since she'd met him, she'd thought of him as the poem itself. Not the reader or author, but the beauty and grace personified. 'But I guess it makes sense.' 

"What makes sense?" he asked, and handed her his phone. 

'To-day or this noon 

She dwelt so close, I almost touched her; 

Tonight she lies 

Past neighborhood - And bough and steeple - 

Now past surmise.' 

Shawn watched as her lips spread further as she drew her eyes down the poem, taking much longer than she needed to read it, and thinking about the colors each and every word painted into her dreams. 

'Emily Dickinson fan, are you?' she asked after nearly a minute of comfortable silence. 

"You've seen this poem before?" 

'I must have,' she responded. 'My brother loved poetry and especially Emily Dickinson long before me. He probably showed me on one of those nights. But I could probably recognize her art anywhere.'