inches from her, his lips parted in sleep, black curls shadowing his eyes,
dark lashes against fair cheeks.
Once, the darkness teased the girl as they strolled along the Seine, told
her that she had a “type,” insinuating that most of the men she chose—and
even a few of the women—looked an awful lot like him.
The same dark hair, the same sharp eyes, the same etched features.
But that wasn’t fair.
After all, the darkness only looked the way he did because of her. She’d
given him that shape, chosen what to make of him, what to see.
Don’t you remember, she told him then, when you were nothing but
shadow and smoke?
Darling, he’d said in his soft, rich way, I was the night itself.
Now it is morning, in another city, another century, the bright sunlight
cutting through the curtains, and Toby shifts again, rising up through the
surface of sleep. And the girl who is—was—Jess holds her breath again as
she tries to imagine a version of this day where he wakes, and sees her, and
remembers.
Where he smiles, and strokes her cheek, and says, “Good morning.”
But it won’t happen like that, and she doesn’t want to see the familiar
vacant expression, doesn’t want to watch as the boy tries to fill in the gaps
where memories of her should be, witness as he pulls together his
composure into practiced nonchalance. The girl has seen that performance
often enough, knows the motions by heart, so instead she slides from the
bed and pads barefoot out into the living room.
She catches her reflection in the hall mirror and notices what everyone
notices: the seven freckles, scattered like a band of stars across her nose and
cheeks.
Her own private constellation.
She leans forward and fogs the glass with her breath. Draws her fingertip
through the cloud as she tries to write her name. A—d—
But she only gets as far as that before the letters dissolve. It’s not the
medium—no matter how she tries to say her name, no matter how she tries
to tell her story. And she has tried, in pencil, in ink, in paint, in blood.
Adeline.
Addie.
LaRue.
