Smoother than a storm;

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

I’m a princess cut from marble smoother than a storm
And the scars that mark my body they’re silver and gold
My blood is a flood of rubies precious stones

It was late in the evening, the sun had set hours ago, and Audrey was still toiling away over a lengthy research paper in the Library. Black coffee steamed from the glossy mug beside her, and the tips of her narrow fingers were dyed dark an excessive usage of jet-black ink. However, one should not think for a moment that the blonde’s handwriting would be sloppy. On the contrary, each letter was written with the meticulousness of a true over-achiever… even if they were only notes on scrap paper. It just so happened that it was borderline impossible to maintain clean hands while penning an assignment on American Isolationism in the 20th century.

Audrey sighed, her head starting to hurt as she felt as though she ran out of ways to dictate the cultural relevance of high fructose corn syrup and the anthropological perspective on its uses related to the 20th century. More than anything else, she wished to backhand her textbooks across the ornate rectangular rug and toss her notes straight into the paper shredder. Fortunately though, the ballerina managed some self-control.

Carefully, Audrey laid her notes out on the end table to let the last few paragraphs sink in before she returned to her work. She desperately needed a moment to collect herself, and perhaps come up with some more innovative ways to impress her teacher… Anthropology of American Life was far from Audrey’s specialty, but she refused to accept any performance that ranked below absolute excellence. If she was to ever get into Princeton, or eventually become a principal dancer in the Princeton Ballet Company, she was going to have to push herself toward academic perfection.

“I’m just so tired…” the slight girl mused to the empty library. Audrey continued to talk to herself, comfortable with the notion that the majority of her peers were already tucked away in some common room and that the library was bound to stay completely empty. ”This semester is going to be fucking miserable.” she groaned to herself, reaching for her piping hot coffee, and bringing it to her pale lips with anticipation.

The steaming drink briefly warmed her from the inside out, although her empty stomach now sloshed with liquid when she made sudden movements. Audrey narrowed her light eyes, placing the coffee back on its original seat on the desk as she returned her fixation to her studies, the project only requiring a few more paragraphs before the planning period was complete. Yes, Audrey wrote out entire papers by hand before even touching her laptop.

Now that it was the final stretch, the slight girl found herself completely dumbstruck, her mind blank as she tapped her ballpoint pen against the arm of the rustic chair. Fuck, fuck fuck.” she thought to herself, chewing at the sensitive skin of her lower-lip.

As she continued to ponder hopelessly, her stomach contracted, and a slight grumble vibrated the flesh hidden beneath her grey thermal. It was at that point that the young girl figured that she probably couldn’t focus due to her gnawing hunger.

“Did I even eat today?” she began to wonder, the calculations spinning about her head, “14 + 16 is … 30 oz, so 30 oz of coffee…” Her wide eyes wandered toward her still steaming cup, ”Make that 38 oz of coffee…”She fidgeted, tapping her spindly fingers against the stained wood of the table, ultimately realizing that she had consumed virtually nothing within the past 24 hours… “Shit…”

Reluctantly she reached into her purse, eyes darting around the room to make sure that only the encyclopedias and almanacs could witness this moment. She fished out an 8 oz bottle Ensure Plus, a high-fat nutrition dense caloric nightmare that she was instructed to consume at least twice a day. “Bottoms up.” She grimaced, uncapping the damned thing and taking it to her lips, sucking it down miserably like cheap liquor. One small step toward recovery, although not exactly a giant leap, at least it was better than nothing.

[Jasper Blackwater]

It was late in the evening, the sun had set hours ago, and Jasper Blackwater had just gotten back from work.

It might have seemed a little cruel for an extroverted person like Jas to be stuck doing most of his work on the weekends, but if he was honest, he didn’t really mind. Although it was true that he worked best amidst the hustle and bustle of other people and their activities, he’d come to appreciate the quiet moments, too. He was having one such quiet moment now: in the school’s library, still wearing his uniform, cradling a pile of books and papers in one arm and critically examining the numerous rows of spines in the history section. He continued having that quiet moment all the way up until he moved to a nearer row, where he could hear a soft voice coming from the direction of the work tables nearby.

He stopped to listen. It was one of his more annoying habits, despite the fact that he never eavesdropped with malicious intent. He couldn’t stand it. He had to know.

Shit, said the soft voice. Jasper could not see her—he was still standing silently behind the bookshelf, still cradling those books. His gaze was glued intently to the tips of his black work shoes, which he could barely see beyond the stretched-out bright blue fabric of his polo. He wondered what she was upset about, and if there was any way that he could help.

Then, his phone rang. Loudly.

His own ringtone startled him so that the books and papers he’d been holding slipped and scattered noisily all over the carpet. He stepped out from behind the bookshelf instinctively, as though he might try to catch them; after a moment, he gave up, pulling his iPhone from the pocket of his black belted slacks and fumbling with it for a few more seconds before he managed to answer it.

“Hello?” he said. He had tried to whisper, but his whispering was as loud or louder than the average person’s speaking voice, which rendered his effort useless. It was his youngest brother, Brandon, calling to say goodnight.

He was silent for a moment. He gave the girl at the table a wide-eyed, apologetic look before speaking into his phone again.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, still faux-whispering. “I love you too. Look, I’m in the library, okay? People are working, so I gotta be quiet. But I love you. I hope you have sweet dreams.”

There was another beat of silence.

“Yeah. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, bud. We’ll talk more then, okay?”

Moments trickled by. Eventually, Jasper ended the call; he looked around at the chaos he’d inadvertently created and heaved out a long, low sigh. He offered the girl nearest him a sheepish half-smile before bending down to scoop up some worksheets.

“Jeeze, sorry,” he said. “My younger brother. I had the volume up so that I could hear it at work, but—” he stopped himself from rambling. It looked as though it required an immense amount of willpower (because, in fact, it did). “Anyway, sorry,” he finished quickly.

He busied himself by collecting the remaining books, not daring to look up again. The plastic surface of his name tag, which was shaped like a sprinkled doughnut, caught and reflected the artificial light.

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

Audrey gulped down the heavy vanilla shake at a steady pace, pausing every so often to catch a breath until a loud ringing noise and a crash of papers suddenly interrupted her established rhythm. Startled, her stomach lurched, and quickly her expression morphed from alarmed to mortified; there was no way she would’ve chugged that Ensure had she known that her company extended beyond the inanimate. As far as Audrey was concerned, being seen consuming calories was the equivalent to having someone walk in on you while you’re taking a shit.

Carefully, she wiped the residual protein drink off her lips with the back of her hand, the small stretch of skin becoming wet and sticky. She then securely screwed the cap back onto the plastic bottle before silently dropping it into her bag at a glacial pace. Corpus delicti, or as we Americans like to say, “No body, no crime.” Still, her cheeks were stained pink, which admittedly was an improvement to their usual pallor.

Audrey attempted to return to her notes, ignoring the boy’s dropped belongings, and making no attempts to help him gather together his things. She sipped her coffee daintily, thumbing the sleeve of her cable-knit sweater, easily becoming distracted by the boy’s apologetic glances and awful stage whisper. She wondered who was on the other end of the line, this person strangely receiving both “buddy” and “I love you.” She decided the conversation was too amiable to be between siblings, too friendly to occur between lovers… Did this guy have a kid? Maybe he’s got a two year old back home… He’s what, about 17? It wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility. No, any guy considerate enough to apologize for taking a phone call would be considerate enough to wear a rubber.

Caught up in a rather amusing conundrum, Audrey’s train of thought spun out freely, unwinding before it was stopped short, an unwanted explanation interrupting the fantasy, “My younger brother…” “Sorry…” “Etc…”

Audrey had always assumed siblings only told each other “I love you” in the context of sitcoms. Weird.

“Ah, I see.” She nodded, absently accepting the apology but purposefully avoiding phrases along the lines “It’s fine” or “Don’t worry about it.” She didn’t like to make people feel too comfortable, god forbid they stick around, but then again this boy might be of some use…

“So judging by the…” the blonde began gesturing toward the teen’s shirt, pale eyes fixed on her mug as her slender finger traced circles around its rim, “I’m assuming you know a thing or two about high-fructose corn syrup, and I’m blanking out for this paper for Anthropology of American Life…”

Audrey waited for a moment, expecting at least a grunt of acknowledgment or some type of response, but as she glanced up to prompt the boy she noticed his expression had shifted to some point between confusion and shame. Did she insult his ancestral traditions or something? Another pause. Oh!

“No, no I didn’t mean it like that!” She blurted out, attempting to compensate for the verbal fumble. “You’re wearing a nametag shaped like a donut, so I assumed you work with donuts and other baked goods and stuff… And usually that whole process involves, like, a lot of high-fructose corn syrup… Which I’m writing my paper about...” The flush returned to her cheeks, a sensation of guilt sinking through to her icy core. Audrey could be callous at times, outright cruel even, but due to her own lengthy history with weight-related suffering she would never instigate that pain in another person. “Please, just interrupt me at any time…”

[Jasper Blackwater]

Jasper aligned the edges of his hastily recovered papers twice, desperate for any excuse to keep his gaze glued to the floor for just a few moments longer. After he’d organized absolutely everything that he could justify organizing, he reluctantly scooped up his things and unfolded to full height.

He looked at the girl at the table again. She was drinking coffee out of a mug—at least, Jasper assumed it was coffee—and writing by hand, surrounded by a fanned-out spread of notes. He opened his mouth, rather dumbly, and quickly shut it again.

He’d apologized once, and she’d casually acknowledged him. Normally, Jasper would have taken this as an invitation to sit down; still, he wasn’t totally shameless. Even he didn’t feel comfortable practically throwing his books at someone and striking up a cheerful conversation afterward.

Indeed, he might have turned to leave a moment later, if she hadn’t spoken again. Her voice gave him another start; it took him a moment to make sense of her words and connect them with her vague gesture at his shirt.

He looked down at his belly. He studied the plastic pearl buttons and uniform machine stitching on his shirt. He let her words sink in for a long, slow moment.

I’m assuming you know a thing or two about high-fructose corn syrup...

His gaze did not lift; he continued staring downward, determined to be polite, even in his humiliation. His fingers tightened defensively around the edges of his books. If nothing else, he thought desperately, at least she was a serious contender for the Most Subtle Fat Joke of All Time award. Most people went straight for “fatass.”

He wanted to run, and Jas didn’t even like to run. He didn’t, though. He didn’t do anything but stand there, perfectly still, until she deigned to break the silence that had fallen between them again.

Her tone had changed—Jasper looked up, studying her with shy-wide brown eyes. He blinked, and then took another look at his shirt, this time at the round plastic name tag pinned over the left side of his chest. His fingers relaxed where they had tightened; when he looked up again, he was smiling a small, sheepish smile that dimpled his cheeks.

“Um,” he said, very eloquently. “Nah, don’t worry about it. I mean—” he chuckled breathily mid-sentence. “Sorry, I misunderstood. It’s been one of those days, I guess.”

He cleared his throat. After another moment, he carefully rested his books one of the few clear spots on the table. He scratched at his hair with the freed hand, presumably thinking about everything he’d ever heard about high-fructose corn syrup.

“But yeah, I work at the Holey Land in the mall,” he said, gesturing vaguely to his name tag. He grinned brightly. “I mostly just take stuff out of the oven and put things in boxes, though, so....”

He rested a hand on the top of the nearest chair, as though he were debating internally about whether or not he should pull it out and sit down.

“I know that it’s cheap,” he said. There was a thought-filled pause. “Because corn is in, like, basically everything. And I know that you can buy it in bottles and use it to make chocolate fondue. Or is that just regular corn syrup? That might be regular corn syrup.”

A pause, followed by an embarrassed laugh.

“I’m in culinary club, so I should totally know this. Sorry.”

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

Audrey nodded her head gently; loose sandy hair sweeping against the surface of the table, creating a benign disruption of her carefully arranged notes. “Clearly, we are both having ‘one of those days.’” She let out a sigh that was equal parts amusement and frustration, pulling a hair band off her wrist and tying up her flaxen hair into a ballerina bun. For most women, this required a mirror and a handful of bobby pins, but for Auds it was just a few quick flick of the wrist and the nimble machination of her fingertips.

Returning her notes to their proper positioning, the blonde listened on as the boy described his work place, which eerily mirrored her conception of hell. Cheap machine tailored uniforms, minimum wage, fatty foods, and awful puns; Hell is other people, my ass.

“Holey Land, that’s… cute.” She scrunched up her petite ski slope of a nose, the saccharine aroma of caramelized sugar invading her nostrils like the Spanish armada. Yuck.

“There’s corn in everything?” Her voice quivered fearfully before she broke out into a throaty giggle, “God, that sounds like the tagline of a horror movie—And in the year 2026,” she waved her palms with gusto, wide eyes bugged out, “we realized there was corn… in everything.” Now that would be a cause for panic.

As she continued to watch the bashful boy’s stubby fingers wrap around the back of a chair, a sensation of guilt sank into her gut; this kid was so sweet, he actually bothered to be of assistance, and she had no business being so rude.

“Oh, excuse my manners…” she started with a once customary but now strange formality, gracefully waving a feminine hand toward the empty seat. “Please, sit.” She straightened her shoulders and elongated her neck, both hands returning to the mug, embracing it with a trained grip. In moments like this, Audrey was an exact likeness of her mother, swan-like and dignified, lips pressed together into the odd smile of gentlewoman. “I’m Audrey by the way—Audrey Vandergraaf.”

Her hands shook slightly as she lifted the mug to her lips, sipping the swarthy beverage in small pulls before setting it down once again. “And don’t worry about it… I’m the asshole that chose the most esoteric topic available.” She poked fun at herself, hoping to lighten the mood when a sharp pain struck, a wince permitted for a second before composure returned. “Don’t mind me, but I’m going to be sort of gross for a minute...”

Audrey hated exposing her feet, but fortunately her legs were swathed in a pair of knit tights, allowing for easy access to the foot without revealing too much of their semi-mangled state. Without much shyness, she kicked off her boots and lifted her left leg, leaning back into her chair before pressing the stressed arch of her foot into the table’s ledge, toes wrapped onto the flat wooden surface.

“Sorry, this is totally weird,” she laughed, pushing harder into the table to release the excess of tension of her tendons, “but I promise, they don’t smell too awful.”

[Jasper Blackwater]

Jasper was still smiling that small, sheepish smile; he kept smiling even as she expertly tied up her hair, as though he were afraid that she would stop liking him if he let his expression fall neutral. Her reaction to the name of his workplace was acknowledged with a brief, amused exhale.

“It’s a decent place to work,” he said. “I usually work until close, so I get to take home any extras.”

There was a pause, wherein he realized belatedly that he’d basically admitted to eating scores of orphaned doughnuts on his own. He opened his mouth to clarify, but her joke about horror movies and corn stopped him short. He laughed, loudly and appreciatively, instead.

“No, seriously!” he said. “Like... basically anything that used to have sugar in it is made with high-fructose corn syrup, instead. Cereal, ketchup, chocolate, cough syrup... I swear to God.”

A beat of silence. Had he just sworn to God about corn syrup? He didn’t even believe in God, and somehow he still felt like this had been overzealous. She offered him a seat a moment later, and his eyes sparkled as though she’d handed him a hundred dollar bill instead.

“Oh,” he said. “Sure, thanks.”

The chair slid back with the reedy sound of wood on carpet; he sat down carefully, as though he were being graded on his technique. She smiled, and he smiled back.

“I’m Jasper,” he said brightly, tapping his name tag for emphasis. “Blackwater. But I go by Jas, usually.”

Quiet fell between them as she paused to sip at her coffee. Jas noticed that her hands were shaking. It reminded him of what he’d overheard earlier—her whispered cursing—and effectively renewed his forgotten concern.

“Well, I don’t think you’re an asshole,” he said. “I mean, there’s nothing assholey about wanting to know what’s in your food.”

There was a sudden, uncomfortable sensation in his foot. He furrowed his eyebrows. Soon afterward, Audrey informed him that she was going to be gross for a minute; Jasper didn’t understand the relevance of her statement until she put her tight-clad foot on the edge of the table.

Realization dawned on him.

“Oh, that was your foot,” he said. His expression shifted from confusion to worry. He did not seem to be concerned about foot-smell. “Do they always hurt like that?”

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

Electing to consume pastries without any coercion was a foreign concept to Audrey; the last time she ate a donut, she was in an outpatient facility and her dance instructor threatened to pull her from the upcoming showcase if she didn’t put on five pounds. Yuck. The boy continued to speak with enthusiasm, and as his words burst into the room with excitement, Audrey couldn’t help but allow her gaze to drift briefly toward the boy’s stomach.

He wasn’t fat by any means, but definitely fell vaguely into the category of chubby, his work shirt revealing this status as it clung to the rounded outline of his belly. It must be nice to eat what you want and not let it bother you… she pondered, unsurprised as the wooden chair creaked softly upon his settling.

Jasper Blackwater. That was an unexpected name; it had a regal sonic quality, although its adjusted shorthand fit the boy well. With just Jas he was boyish and sweet, but with the added surname, the ominous masculinity of the title would overwhelm him. “Well, it’s a pleasure Mr. Blackwater.” The girl teased, her bright eyes playful and her smirk impish.

“And trust me, I am a total asshole.” Audrey mused, stifling a laugh before continuing the thought; “I’ve gotten into verbal spats with five star chefs over the inclusion of heavy cream in ice cream.” She snickered at the breadth of her own shitty behavior. At least Audrey was aware that she was occasionally ridiculous.

Despite the blonde admitting to being an unrepentant jerk, the boy still seemed concerned with the stabbing pain in the underside of her foot. Although, he had an odd way of showing it… “Yes, my foot. Not the spare I keep in my bag for when I get a flat.” Hopefully Jas could take a joke, if not, this jovial acquaintanceship was going to fizzle out just as quickly as it had begun. “But yeah, this is nothing compared to a sprain or something,” she continued to knead with her thumbs, her nose scrunching up as she dug further into the arch, “this is just standard inflammation.”

“While we’re on the subject of pain…” her smile returned, a morbid excitement flashing behind her pale eyes, “This is what’s known as dancer’s hip, or snapping hip syndrome…” And like the masochist she was, Audrey kept her foot on the table but jerked her hip to the side, a loud grating snap filling the air between them as her pelvis ground against the connective tissue of her thigh. “Gruesome, isn’t it?” she grimaced, amused by the repulsive noise of her own aching body.

[Jasper Blackwater]

When Jasper glanced at Audrey again, she had her eyes trained downward. He faltered for a moment; he hoped he hadn’t bored her already.

The chair creaked a little under Jas’s weight, but he paid it no mind—most things creaked under his weight, like bed springs and sofa frames and really anything that wasn’t constructed out of high-carbon steel. He wasn’t obese or anything, but he knew creaks, just like he knew shame. They were background noise—constant companions. He only really thought about them when he was alone.

“The feeling is mutual, Ms. Vandergraaf,” he said, although he hesitated slightly on the first syllable of her surname, as though he wasn’t quite sure he had pronounced it properly. He beamed anyway; the slight upward quirk of her lips had given him confidence.

She went on to assure him that she was, indeed, an asshole. A total asshole, even. There was some degree of finality in her tone; Jasper’s eyebrows formed a skeptical steeple in the center of his forehead, but he didn’t argue again. That would have been rude.

“Five star chefs?” he said. “That’s amazing. That you got to eat there, I mean—not that you had an argument. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with having an argument.”

There was a pause.

“Good chefs are usually assholes,” he concluded. Still, his eyes were sparkling with daydreams of professional kitchens. “I’m sure they deserved it.”

Jasper was so immediately concerned with the knowledge that Audrey was in pain that it took him a moment to realize what he’d said. Her joke about spare foots caught him off guard, and the idea coaxed a giggle out of him.

“Right,” he said. “I just meant—your foot, not mine.”

That didn’t make sense either. He struggled to regroup; he’d relaxed his control of his power slightly, to better empathize with her, and the tingling pain along the nerves of his foot was disturbing his thoughts. He was just about to attempt to explain this concept to her when she decided to enlighten him about snapping hip syndrome.

He realized what she meant to do only a second before she did it; he winced so hard that his eyes closed.

“Don’t don’t don’t don’t—” he pleaded under his breath. Snap. He felt the diluted sensation crawl through his hip; he couldn’t imagine, didn’t want to imagine what the actual pain had been like, couldn’t stand the thought....

Jasper whimpered a bit—a quiet, pitiful mm—and opened one eye.

“Please put it back,” he said. His voice sounded very small. “Please. I can’t. Please.”

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

Audrey watched as the boy’s dimpled cheeks rose with each beaming expression, her mind trailing off to memories of wandering through the aisles in a midtown toy store, her little fingers grazing the plush faces of the cabbage patch dolls.

“It’s really not a big deal.” She shrugged her narrow shoulders, completely oblivious to the fact that most people didn’t have the opportunity to dine in Michelin Star restaurants. Then again, she didn’t actually dine there herself; rather, she raked an unoccupied fork through miniature hills of caviar, crafting Zen gardens on porcelain plates.

“So are you an asshole then, Mr. Culinary Club?” she cocked an eyebrow, feeling cheeky in the presence of such an unassuming boy. Jasper completely lacked the hallmark arrogance of the standard adolescent male with meta human capabilities. It was…. Sweet. Endearing, even.

As Audrey reveled in her masochistic discomfort, she heard the sounds of the boy’s whimpering beneath her cracking bones, his brown doe eyes wincing, his precious face crumpled in pain…

“Oh god, am I hurting you?” she interjected his pleading, readjusting her hips and returning her foot to the floor, her eyebrows furrowed with an expression that was genuinely empathetic.

“How...”

Oh, that was your foot. Your foot, not mine. Don’t.

Suddenly it dawned on her, “Do you feel other people’s pain? Oh God, I am so sorry.”

Audrey then reached over the table and grabbed Jasper’s hand apologetically, big blue eyes focused on his wincing face, cold fingers grasping gently, “Seriously, I had no idea.”

[Jasper Blackwater]

Jasper marveled at her politely for a moment, struggling with the concept that eating in any restaurant that had earned Michelin stars could be not a big deal. Still, she’d said it with such confidence that he felt like he should believe her; clearly, she was far more sophisticated and world-wise than he could ever hope to be.

“Huh?” he said, blinking into her question about whether or not he was an asshole. He’d been thinking about five-star food. “God, I hope not.” He laughed. “I’m not good enough to get away with it yet. When I am, though, I expect you to come argue with me.”

The atmosphere of the conversation shifted abruptly—for Jasper Blackwater, pain could only ever be the center of attention wherever it was present. Her frantic question cut through the fog of his thoughts: Oh god, am I hurting you?

He looked up into the blue-gray pale of her eyes, which told of troubled empathy not unlike his own. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Even without his help, though, she was quick on the uptake. When she asked him if he felt other people’s pain, he offered her a nod and a small, watery smile.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I mean, I’m not wearing a sign or anything, so.”

A brief, shaky laugh. She reached out for his hand; her fingers were long and thin and cool to the touch, and he was filled with silent wonder at how small and elegant and alabaster-white they looked against his own.

He put his other hand over hers, so that he could warm it. Then, he laughed through a sniffle.

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “I just—it doesn’t hurt me that badly, I just don’t like to see you in pain.”

There was a beat of silence. He looked down at their hands.

“Even if you’re used to it,” he said. “I hate that you have to be used to it.”

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

Audrey felt awful upon the realization that she, although inadvertently, had inflicted physical pain on this sweet wide-eyed boy. She was used to hurting people in other ways, primarily through insensitive verbal jabs and manipulative social machinations, but this was an entirely fresh experience. Obviously her feeble fists weren’t good for much, but she managed to encounter the one person that she could strike with tangible suffering.

Jasper’s unyielding kindness made the sting of her guilt sharper, piercing her hardened center with little smiles and understanding head nods, giving her an out for what she believed was a grievous error on her behalf.

“It’s really not okay, I should have been paying more attention to your…” and she let her words drift off, letting go of the remorse into the hanging air. It was like the emptying of her lungs after surfacing from the sea; she held the contrition, her head underwater, but the strange emotion burned at her tissue like a cerebral hypoxia.

Rejecting the emotional response was a survival mechanism, not unlike breath.

Jasper wasn’t going to make the removal easy though, his warm sturdy fingers now enveloping hers, radiating warmth into their frigid exterior.

I just don’t like to see you in pain.

The dancer resisted the sudden urge to jerk back her hand, feeling completely incompetent in the face of the boy’s genuine empathy. Anxious waves of nausea rose from the depths of her throat, but she remained unmoving, oddly calmed by the comforting caress that had instigated her fear response in the first place. She understood that his movements held purpose, that the light squeeze of his touch was only caring… It was terrifying.

“Honestly, it’s not so bad…” Her voice shook, portraying an unusual vulnerability for a girl defined by poise and self-assuredness, “It sort of comes with the territory of dedicating your life to perfecting an art…” She was unsure of what to do with her hands, allowing them to hang limp like dead fish in Jasper’s gentle grip.

“Really, blind pursuit of any art will do this to you, even the less physical ones…”

She didn’t really know how to speak anymore, but her mind was still racing, frustrated with the confusing tidal of emotion. Before she could articulate herself, she blurted out her most obvious thought, her voice still meek but her gaze fixed and heavy, “Why do you care if I’m in pain?”

[Jasper Blackwater]

Jasper seemed to bounce back as quickly as he had fallen; for him, zipping from one intense emotion to another was an Olympic sport. Even when he was on the receiving end of empathy and comfort, he could not deny the urge to comfort in return.

“It’s okay.”

There was warm, quiet strength in his voice now. His eyes were still trained pensively on the center of the table, where their hands were intertwined. The simple and platonic touch had steadied him.

She spoke, and he listened. The tremulous softness of her voice tugged at him in a way that he could not properly describe. He wanted to hug her; he had the feeling that would make her uncomfortable, though, and so he settled for smiling instead. His eyes crinkled.

“I can tell it’s really important to you,” he said. The muscles in her hands had gone lax; he loosened his hold on them, although he did not pull away. At her assertion that blind pursuit of any art could be painful, he nodded.

“You’re right,” he said. He sighed. “I know you’re right.”

He gently slid his hands away from hers and used them to prop up his chin, instead. He studied her for a moment. She seemed a bit flustered; he hoped he hadn’t bothered her. He offered a small, apologetic half-smile at the exact moment that she chose to break the silence between them.

Why do you care if I’m in pain?

Jasper’s eyebrows lifted so slightly that the shift was barely perceptible. The shock in his wide brown eyes slowly evolved into something more purposeful.

“Because...” he began.

A pause.

“People tend to treat other people’s pain like it isn’t real, you know? Like it doesn’t matter because it isn’t theirs. And I think you’re a nice person, and—you know, it matters to me. I don’t want you to feel like nobody notices or cares and then....”

He trailed off for a moment. He was staring at the table again.

“Because I know it’s stupid, and we just met, but,” he huffed out a chuckle under his breath. “Nobody should have to deal with everything on their own. That’s why, I guess.”

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

Audrey was beginning to feel exhausted, each emotive response rolling out like a tumble on asphalt, her little knees lilac and scraped. She could point her toes and kick out left her leg, spinning on one foot, fouettés en tournant, over and over and over again… but an employing an “I feel” statement was infinitely more draining.

Jasper nurtured an intuitive emotional sensitivity that she grossly lacked; his bright eyes always engaged, his chin bobbing at the right moments, his warm fingers knowing instinctively when to loosen their grip. Frankly, she was surprised he wasn’t an empath.

Still, Audrey did feel an unfamiliar longing as his touch was slowly retracted, his hands returning to his jaw as they now supported the weight of his face. He watched her, but not in the way that other boys did; she could feel his eyes on her own, soft and not leering, his gaze steady and making no movements toward the rest of her body.

Every choice he made was unexpected to her, but oddly comforting. Although, the comfort alone reignited her anxieties, her foot tapping listlessly with the urge to run…

Her mouth was clamped shut, but she continued to look on as the boy gave, again, a response that she was unprepared for. A weird sensation of warmth spread through the cavity of her chest, and she tilted her head the side as she listened, realizing that she was one of those people, one of those people that didn’t notice or care… It made her feel sick, like she didn’t deserve the company of someone so kind.

I’m not a nice person. I’m not a nice person.

She didn’t interrupt though; she simply sat politely with her cold skinny hands fidgeting under the table. There was only one statement she couldn’t leave unattended.

“Don’t say that.” Audrey snapped in a tone she hadn’t expected, a maternal voice that previously didn’t belong to her. “I mean,” she gathered herself, “nothing you’ve said is stupid, you are such a kind and insightful person… So please don’t disqualify your worth in that way.”

Her eyes shifted, her brain not believing the vulnerability of her mouth; she felt naked.

“But listen…” her speech was awkward as her hands grabbed at her notes and dumped them haphazardly into her bag, her voice speeding up. “If you want to hang out sometime or something, I don’t know,” she shoved her arms into her jacket and threw her scarf around her neck, pencils and papers poking out of the oversized purse she strung on her shoulder, “Here’s my number.”

She placed a pen between her teeth and uncapped it quickly, leaning forward, placing its ballpoint on the boy’s olive skin; her handwriting was perfectly legible even when it was scrawled in a hurry onto a stocky forearm.

“Nice meeting you!” she called as she sped out of the room, her pitch an octave too high from the ensuing embarrassment, her ceramic mug abandoned on the table.

Still, Audrey smiled with her lips pressed together, her cheeks rosy and pink.