Ashley Cooper's Arc

Chapter 11 of 37

Mike had chosen Ashley once. He wrote the letter. He held her bone hand in the hall. But he had never once seen her reach for him first. She carried that doubt for a week after the lunch with Katie. He had done all the choosing. She had only let him. She wondered if he could tell. Wednesday, she found out he could. Mike met her at the school steps, under the silver spires. He wasn't smiling. "Katie asked me something today," he said. "She asked if you even liked me back. She said you never act like it." He looked at the ground. "I've been wondering the same thing." Ashley's stomach dropped. He was right. She had let him carry everything because that felt safer. If she never reached, she could never be dropped. "Give me until lunch," she said. "Please." At lunch, the cafeteria was loud. Susie and Lucie held court at the center table, the new twins with one body and two heads, blonde and impossible to miss. Half the room watched them the way the room used to watch Ashley. Katie sat near Mike, her tattooed arms crossed, waiting to see what Ashley would do. Ashley walked to Mike in front of everyone. Her whole life she had hidden. Now she made herself do the opposite. She pulled her sleeve up to the elbow, showing the bare bone of her arm on purpose. Heads turned. Susie and Lucie both stopped talking. "You wrote me a letter," Ashley said. "You told the whole hall my arm was awesome. You held this hand when I was scared to let you." She lifted the bone fingers. "I never told you what that meant. So I'm telling you now. I like you, Mike Henderson. Not because you chose me. Because I choose you back." She took his hand with her bone one. Then she did the thing she had never done. She kissed him, right there, in front of the twins and Katie and everyone. Mike blinked, stunned. Then he grinned wide under his mustache. "About time," he said. Katie whooped and pounded the table. A few kids clapped. Susie and Lucie exchanged a look, four eyes narrowing at once, unhappy that the room had turned back to Ashley. Walking out, Mike still held her hand. "You didn't have to do that in front of everybody." "Yeah, I did," Ashley said. "You needed to see it. So did I." He squeezed her fingers. The doubt that had followed her for a week was gone. For the first time, she believed he would keep choosing her, because now she was choosing too. But across the cafeteria, the twins were still watching. Ashley had just made herself the center of the room again. And she could feel that Susie and Lucie did not plan to let her keep it.