Page 25 of Our Secrets and Scars

He regards me for a long moment, chewing on his bottom lip as if deep in thought. “No,” he says finally and takes off walking again, not bothering to check that I’m following because he already knows that I am.

“You must know that it looks that way though, right?” I ask, catching up to him. “You keep turning up everywhere I go.”

“I’m not following you, Violet,” he says, his voice gruff and deep. “I guess the universe is playing a joke on us.”

I eye him skeptically. “You believe in that stuff? The universe and all that?”

He’s silent for a little while, running his hand through the short scruff on his chin in a movement I’ve noticed he often does when thinking. “I don’tnotbelieve in it.”

That surprises me. But then, I should have known better by now than to keep making assumptions about him.

“Do you?” he asks. “Believe in that stuff, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” I say slowly, drawing out the words as I think through my response. “Like, it’s nice to think thateverything happens for a reason, que sera seraand whatever, but what if it doesn’t? What if sometimes life just shits on you for no reason? Sure, it’s comforting to think that the universe has plans for you when that kind of thing happens, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, it probably doesn’t.”

I stop talking and suck in a breath. Holden looks down at me with a puzzled expression on his face.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says. “Guess I just find it kind of sad that you feel that way.”

I shrug. “I guess the universe has just never given me a sign that it’s looking out for me. Maybe when it does, I’ll start believing in it more.”

“It’s never looked out for me either, though it’s fucked me over a fair few times.”

“Then why do you still believe in it?”

“I don’t know,” he whispers. “I just have faith that it will someday and maybe everything that’s happened until that point will suddenly make sense.”

It’s strange, his outlook on life. I’ve always gotten the feeling from him that he hasn’t lived an easy life. I don’t know what it is about him that gives it away. The storminess of his eyes, perhaps, or how he paints his skin in symbols that have little significance to me at first glance but probably mean the world to him.

He must only be a couple of years older than me, yet he seems experienced beyond his years. As if he’s lived through things a guy in his early twenties shouldn’t have and is still somehow able to look at the world with such optimism. Guess I could stand to learn a thing or two from him.

I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t notice we’re standing in front of the college dorms until he clears his throat. I look up at the building in front of me and sigh, not wanting the evening to end. The disappointment of having to say goodbye swirls inside of me and makes me contemplate momentarily inviting him up to my room.

I look at his lips, at the ripeness of them and their deep pink coloration. I want to kiss him. I want to press my mouth against his and learn if his lips are as soft as I imagine them to be. I want to know if he kisses like a gentleman or a man barely on the brink of control.

I hopeit’s the latter.

But I don’t find out.

Because, as if having heard my thoughts, Holden looks down at me like I’ve sickened him. It’s a hard expression, one that hurts to see. It’s not unlike the looks I’ve been given before, the ones I got at school when photos of my face, that were taken the day after I had my skin graft, were leaked senior year. It was awful to deal with back then, and it’s even worse now.

He must have seen my scars.

“You should stay away from me, Violet.”

And though my brain screams a thousand curse words at him, I say nothing. Because I can feel tears heating my eyes, and Iwill notallow myself to cry in front of him. Not when he’s looking at me like that. Like he can’t wait to get as far away from me as possible.

I put him out of his misery, turning on my heels and sprinting into the building. I hear him calling after me, but I don’t stop until I’m safe inside my dorm room with the door closed.

And then, for a while, I just stand and cry in the dark.

You should stay away from me, Violet.

His words haunt me like an echo that doesn’t end. I hear them even as I shower the night off my skin. Even as I haul myself into bed and pull the covers over my head.

I thought that coming to Salt Lake City would be a new start for me. Somewhere that I could reinvent myself as someone without baggage. Somewhere I could pretend I’m just a normal teenage girl, where no one cares about the scars covering my face.

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