Page 27 of Seven Days in June

“How do you know I’m not normal? We just met.”

“What are you, then?”

Genevieve rested her chin in her hands, her elbows on her thighs. She didn’t know how to answer. Whatwasshe?

She was tired. Tired of being sick, tired of her mouth getting her into trouble, tired of moving, tired of fighting off the kind of men who thought mothers and daughters were a package deal, and tired of hating who she was.

Maybe she shouldn’t tell him the truth. It was too ugly. But maybe honesty was what it took to make a real friend.

Be nice. Be good.

“I’m not nice,” she admitted quietly. “Not good.”

He nodded slowly. Then he scratched his jaw, peering down at his Timbs.

“Neither am I.”

That was how it started. That small confession. Genevieve had never told anyone she wasn’t okay, and it sounded like he hadn’t, either. She turned her face toward him to speak. And froze. Because his eyes were already on her.

Something crackled between them, an understanding, a mutual pull—and it was so extraordinary, so involuntary, Genevieve actually gasped. Stunned, she parted her lips a little. And then she couldn’t breathe at all, because slowly he dragged his drowsy, drugged-out gaze from her eyes to her mouth and then back up to her eyes. A sure, satisfied smile crept across his face. Hesitantly, she smiled back.

Then it was over. He went back to his book, like that incredibly intimate look hadn’t even happened. And Genevieve’s world was knocked off its axis. But of one thing she was certain.

I’m supposed to know him, she thought.

“Soooo,” she breathed, “what’s your name?”

“I told you, I don’t have friends. Let me brood in peace.”

“Don’t fight it. What’s with the cast?”

He sighed. “I keep breaking my arm.”

“Damn. Calcium deficiency?”

“No. I do it on purpose.”

Genevieve gawked at him. The bell rang. A baritone voice shouted something over the loudspeakers, and the bustling student population filed into the redbrick building. Neither one of them moved.

“You don’t break your own bones,” she whispered. “You’re just antisocial and trying to freak me out so I’ll go away.”

“Is it working?”

“No.” Genevieve was thunderstruck. “What’s wrong with you?”

He sighed. “A lot.”

“I can’t imagine doing something so sick.”

“No?”

She followed his eyes, which had traveled down to her right arm. Her men’s shirt had slid off her shoulder. And the rows of shallow, horizontal slices on her upper arm were visible. A few were covered with Band-Aids, the rest were scabs, and some had grown into scars. Genevieve wore her big shirt daily to hide this—but it had slipped at school a few times. She’d always been prepared to say it was eczema. No one had ever asked.

She yanked her sleeve back up on her shoulder.

“You don’t know what my life’s like,” she spat.

“Try me,” he said, his galaxy eyes eating her alive.

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