Page 112 of What You Wish For

“Is that a real thing though?”

“It’s a deliberate kind of joy. It’s a conscious kind of joy. It’s joyon purpose.”

Duncan squinted like he really wasn’t sold. “In clown socks and a tutu.”

“I’m telling you. I know all about darkness. That’s why I am so hell-bent, every damn day, on looking for the light.”

twenty-one

That night changed everything.

Nothing like a near-death experience, a walk on Seawall Boulevard, and a little adrenaline-inspired oversharing to promote interoffice bonding.

When I got to work on Monday, Duncan was friendly.

Friendly.

He greeted me pleasantly, the way nice people greet each other, and then he walked with me toward the courtyard. And that’s when things got really crazy.

The courtyard…

Was full of children…

Blowing bubbles.

I froze. I frowned at Duncan. “What is going on here?”

Duncan just smiled.

I reached over and poked my finger into his shoulder, as if to check that he was not a hologram.

Confirmed: flesh and blood.

I had woken up that morning with a terrible oversharing hangover, aghast at the amount of talking we’d done, the things I’d confessed to. I didn’t go aroundchattingabout my epilepsy. It wasn’t something I shared with people—especially not people who were… complicated.

I’d wondered what it would be like to see him again.

Duncan was truly impressive at compartmentalizing. No matter how much fun we had doing Babette-mandated activities outside of school, he remained totally wooden and impersonally professional at school. Sometimes, after we’d had an especially fun time, he’d be extra cold the next day, as if to get us back to neutral.

Fair enough. As long as he didn’t paint anything else gray, I wasn’t going to complain.

Getting dressed that morning, I went extra cheerful, as if to confirm visually that he couldn’t get me down: a pink-and-red sweater set and a blue-jean skirt—and red knee socks with little pom-poms on them.

I’d spent the whole morning holding my shoulders back and battening down my emotional hatches to prepare myself for whatever glacial, stoic, all-business expression I was about to encounter on Duncan’s face.

He wasn’t going to disappoint me, dammit. I was going to be un-disappointable.

But now here he was,smiling. And waiting for me to smile back.

Standing in a courtyard full of bubbles.

Every single kid had a colored bottle—red, blue, orange—and a little wand. Some were blowing, and some were running around, trying to harness the wind. The teachers were there, too.

And, of course, Chuck Norris was running around like a lunatic, trying to catch the bubbles in his mouth.

“What is going on here?” I asked.

Duncan shrugged, suppressing a smile, and said, “We’re blowing bubbles,” almost likeWhat about bubbles don’t you understand?

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