kat—what?”
She flushes. She didn’t really mean to make conversation.
“It’s a tree. You have it in the garden. When the leaves change color, they smell like brown sugar.”
She glances at my arms, bare beneath the sleeves of my t-shirt. Those expressive eyebrows of hers draw together, and her lashes sweep up and down like fans as she examines me.
“What?” I say. “Irish mobsters have tattoos, don’t they? Or have the Griffins evolved beyond that?”
“We have plenty of tattoos,” she says, unoffended.
“Not you, though,” I say.
“Actually, I do.” She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, turning her head so I can see. Sure enough, she has a tiny crescent moon tattooed behind her right ear. I never noticed it before.
“Why a moon?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “I like the moon. It changes all the time. But it also stays the same.”
Now she’s looking at my arms again, trying to decipher the meaning of my tattoos. She won’t understand them. They’re dense, convoluted, and they have meaning only to myself.
Which is why I’m shocked when she says, “Is that from the map in The Hobbit?”
She’s pointing at a tiny symbol concealed within the swirling patterns on my left forearm. It’s a small delta, next to the barest suggestion of a line. Camouflaged by all the ink around it.
Nessa’s bright green eyes are scouring my skin, darting from place to place.
“That’s the edge of the mountain,” she points. “So that’s the river. And a tree. Oh, and there’s the corner of the spider’s web!”
She’s like a child hunting clues, so pleased with herself that she’s failing to see the outrage on my face. I feel exposed as I never have before. How fucking dare she spot the things I hid so carefully?
Worse still, she keeps going.
“Oh, that’s from The Snow Queen,” (she points to a tiny snowflake), “That’s from Alice in Wonderland,” (a medicine bottle), “And that’s . . . oh that’s The Little Prince!” (a rose).
It’s only when she looks up at me, expecting me to be likewise impressed with her observation, that she sees the shock and bitterness in my face.
“You must like to read . . .” she says, her voice trailing away.
The symbols from those books are tiny and obscure. I took only the smallest and least-recognizable parts of the illustrations, hiding them inside the larger work that means nothing at all.
No one ever noticed them before, let alone guessed what they meant.
It feels violating. Nessa has no idea how she’s blundered. I could strangle her right now, just to stop her speaking another word.
But she has no intention of saying anything else. Her face is pale and frightened once more. She sees that she’s offended me, without knowing why.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“How did you see that?” I demand.
“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m good at picking out patterns. It’s why I can learn dances so quickly. And lang—” she breaks off, not finishing that sentence.
My skin is burning. Every tattoo she named feels like it’s on fire.
I’m not used to being unnerved. Especially not by a girl who’s barely an adult. Not even a fucking adult, in the American sense of the word. She’s only nineteen. She can’t buy a beer or rent a car. She can barely vote!
“I’m sorry,” Nessa says again. “I didn’t realize they were a secret. That they were just for you.”
What the fuck is happening?
How does she know that? How did she know what they meant?
The last person who could guess the thoughts in my head was Anna. She was the only one who could ever do it.
Anna was clever. Good at remembering things. A lover of books.
No one has ever reminded me of her.
Nessa doesn’t, either. They don’t look alike or sound alike.
Except in this one thing . . .
To change the subject, I say abruptly, “Are you almost done with your ballet?”
“Yes,” Nessa says, still biting her lips nervously. “Well, halfway through anyway.”
“Is it a whole show?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever made one before?”
“Well . . .” she frowns. “I choreographed four dances for this ballet called Bliss. It was supposed to premiere . . . well, right now, I guess. But the director, his name’s Jackson Wright, he said my dances were shit. So he didn’t put my name in the program . . .” she sighs. “I know that sounds silly. It mattered to me at the time. It hurt my feelings. I kind of felt like he stole my work. But he might have been right.