back of his head.
"Maybe he got sick like us," Theo suggested, but I knew it was more than that.
For the next week, he acted distant. He brought his thick fantasy books to class, kept them open on his lap under his desk, reading. He sent me a text on Tuesday to let me know that he couldn't do tutoring anymore. It interfered with his schedule, he claimed. Although it shouldn't have been a surprise, it felt like the final blow.
I got the picture. It was a bleak one.
A loud banging noise woke me up. I began to panic before I even opened my eyes.
"Not again," I whispered, sitting up on my bed in the dark. My room had been peaceful for weeks, with no strange occurrences or vanishing lights. But the sound wasn't coming from my room, it was coming from out in the hall. Pulling my door open gently, I stepped out into the hallway. It was pitch black and chilly. The furnace groaned gently at my back.
The noise again came again. A fist on the glass door was my best guess. I crouched and grabbed a weight from Claire's still-untouched exercise room, sitting just inside the door. I made my way through boxes and around the pool table with its canvas cover, to where I could see outside.
The motion detector light was activated and someone lurked just outside the door. A dark figure like in an alarm company commercial. I stifled the urge to scream. As my eyes focused, I recognized Henry's face, peering in and using his hands as binoculars.
I sped over to the door, unlocked it, and pushed it open.
"What in the hell are you doing here?" I hissed, wrapping my arms around myself to keep out the frigid night air.
"Are you going to hit me with that?" Henry asked, gesturing to the hand weight and leaning back.
I tossed the weight on a nearby chair. "I needed to talk to you," he said urgently. His cheeks were flushed from the cold.
"And you couldn't find a better time than three in the morning?" I asked skeptically.
"Well, I knew you would be free," he said, in a shadow of his old good humor. He rubbed his arms through his sweatshirt and complained, "It's cold out here. Are you going to invite me in or am I walking the long walk home?"
I hesitated. This was so against the rules. But the pleading look in his eyes and the thrill of having him here for me won out.
I stepped aside and swept my arm out. I was suddenly acutely aware of my cupcake pajama pants and frizzy bed hair.
"Thanks," he breathed, the air expelled from his lungs like vaporous ghosts. He stepped in and I pulled the door shut as quietly as I could.
"You have to be really quiet," I whispered. "If my parents knew..."
"Understood," he whispered back, holding his hands up like stop signs.
I couldn't believe this was real. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was just another dream. And that made me remember my long ago dream that wound up in my room, and I blushed in the shadows. We were right by the same couch.
"Follow me," I whispered, and led him down the hall. Being out in the main basement felt too open, like we were just waiting to get caught, but when I stepped into my room and turned on the lamp, it felt too intimate.
"Have a seat," I said.
Henry sat down in my desk chair. I sat on the bed, aware that the floor was my only other option, and that would put me in an even more awkward position.
"What was so important that you needed to walk to my house in the middle of the night?" I asked.
As he dropped his hood, I noticed that his hair was disheveled, like he had been lying down, tossing and turning while trying to sleep. He stared at the floor before speaking. "Do you trust me?"
That was out of left field. "Should I?" I was beginning to have reasons not to, but I didn't speak them aloud.
He worried his full bottom lip with his teeth.
"Do you trust me?" he repeated, more emphatic.
"I don't know," I said automatically. "I used to."
I remembered how soft his lips felt on mine when we kissed for the briefest moment at the dance, his hands on the small of my back. I looked away.
"I want to be able to prove to you that you can," he said.
"Why? To start with, you haven't spoken