☽ Peter ☽

In the silence, I learn a lot about Evan McKenna.

The door to his room remains locked, with the hanger turned to, 'Do Not Disturb,' so I don't pry. On the breaks in my shift, I bring him a snack from Lotus, and I leave it outside the door. And every time, when I return to his room at the corner of the fifth floor, the tray is waiting for me.

On the first day, he leaves it untouched. On the second, he takes a croissant, and by the third day, the tray is emptied.

There is a note written on his napkin. Using the periodic table of elements as a code, he spells out each letter that, when decoded, reads: I am not fine.

I sweep the tray into my hands, carrying it to the restaurant to be cleaned. I have to crack open my chemistry book to form a reply. (I want to tell him he's opening up, and that's a good thing—and I know, and that he hasn't been okay for a long time, but I suspect that might scare him off.)

At the end of my shift, I prepare a glass of ice water and a pot of coffee as options, and Lotus' cooks offer the food. The sweet, light scent of ginger and turmeric fills the room as the yellow rice dish is folded into a box.

Using the blotting black ink of a hotel pen, I reply, I don't know what to say. Some things are not meant to be put into words.

My mother comes to take over for me as I exit the elevator. She must notice that my books are strewn across the desk, since she asks, "Has a storm passed through while I was gone?"

"A lot has happened," I tell her with a short laugh. "A friend is staying here."

Her eyes narrow. She looks at the sheets of paper sitting on my textbooks, upside down, and decorated with Evan's secret code. Messages that I started and scrapped are crossed out like an unfinished homework assignment.

"A friend?" she says, dragging out the word to great lengths. Intentionally, I don't say it in French—if I did, I'd have to clarify, (une amie or un ami) and I don't have the capacity to deal with the implications.

"Yeah," I confirm, a touch too late. "In the corner room. You don't need to knock—I already took care of it for tonight."

☆ ☽ ☆

During lunch hour, Nicole twists the cap of her soda and drops her bag onto the floor. She tips the bottle over to me, and I lift my fist in midair as we both mutter, "Cheers."

"Did you get a chance to play my game?" she asks.

I nod. After my first play-through of Currently Untitled, I found that there were locations I couldn't access. I've been making my way through the dialogue options, hoping to see the different endings. "Yeah, I did. How did you make it so fast?"

Nicole shrugs. "The technology club helped. Kendall wasn't totally useless. Total shocker, I know. He was the one to suggest adding the friendship mechanism."

"I got to the end where I've run out of resources," I say.

"That's the usual ending when you spend too much time building stuff. You have to befriend the characters, Pierre. Everyone knows friendship can save a town from apocalyptic demise."

I chuckle lightly, and reply, "I didn't know it was possible to get Kendall to help. How was that? You didn't murder him, did you?"

She tips back the remainder of her drink and crushes the can. "What makes you think I would confess?"

At the word confession, I bristle slightly. Maybe crushing on someone isn't figurative, after all, and requires a confession after the fact. Nicole ducks out of the hallway to launch her empty bottle into the recycling bin.

When she returns, she gives me an opening. I take it by asking, "What do you think of—"

"—Evan?" she interrupts.

"No, I meant Kendall. But if you want to tell me how you feel about Evan..."

"How do I feel about him?" she repeats skeptically. Her face twists into a smirk. She folds her arms onto my lap and invades my personal space as she watches me like she can download information by looking me directly in the eyes. I almost expect to see lines of code reflected in the lens of her round glasses. "He's, uh... he's Evan."

"Very astute of you, Duford."

She laughs. "He's been wearing the same outfit for, like, days. To be fair, you own three identical NASA t-shirts." Realizing she hasn't answered the question, she says, "Well, I think he's nice. Are you asking me because you don't want to ruin things with the club? Because I think he likes you."

My eyes snap to Nicole's. "What?" I say, and it sounds small.

"I think he likes you," she says, dragging out the word for so long that she has to take a deep breath to continue. "Pierre, come on. You can be so dense. I've noticed, and that means he's really making it obvious because I don't notice anything when it comes to the romantic stuff. And it's not like Evan is going to admit it. He's the king of being cold."

"Dina seemed to think you liked him," I point out.

Nicole laughs, joining in with the sound of the bell chiming over the PA system. She picks up her bag and says, "That's ridiculous."

Over my classes, English and history, I am thoroughly tuned out. I take notes as I listen to the teacher, but I'm not processing the information. As I breeze through the halls, my eyes bounce around the lockers and classrooms, looking for Evan. I caught a glimpse of him this morning as he left the hotel before I could offer him a ride.

I'm not technically working after school, but I check in on the hotel to see how my father is doing. While he's stepped away to clean the first-floor rooms, the phone rings. It cycles through three trilling lines before I sigh, giving in to answer it.

"Hello, Croix Hotel. Français or English?"

Silence echoes on the other end of the line. I can hear the rustle of an intake of breath. It sounds like the rushing of the current.

Like a heavy sigh, Evan's voice says, "Hey." He lets it roar between us. And I have too much to say—the words are jumbled in my head, and my chest ties itself into knots. "I... can you bring fresh towels?"

"Is that all?" I say, a bit jokingly.

He groans, but I get him to laugh. It's soft, and I barely hear it, but it counts. "That's not all. Just... bring them, would you?"

After I hang up, I fetch him the linens from the back room. Remembering that Nicole noticed he doesn't have any other clothes with him, I grab my Astronomy Club sweater, folding it into the towels.

The ride to the fifth floor stretches. I spend it trying to figure out what to say when I knock on his door—usually, I switch between two options, ('Here are these items that you requested.' And, 'I brought you...') It gives me considerably less chance to mess it up, but neither of those would work for Evan.

The elevator reaches the top floor, and I shift on my feet as I consider what to do. My hand lifts, but the door opens before I can move.

There stands Evan, wearing a simple black t-shirt and the same jeans he had on when he showed up at the hotel. The room carries the faint scent of honey soap.

"Here," I say; it doesn't fit in this situation, but I fall back on my default, "can I come in?"

He opens the door, allowing me to see the inside of the room. The corner suites are slightly wider than the middle rooms; Evan ruffles the white bedsheets back into place and says, "Sorry that it's so messy."

"Trust me, I've seen worse." I set the towels in the bathroom, padding towards him. On the side table sits the notepad and pen that stays in every room.

He motions for me to sit down. I position myself at the other end of the bed; in front of me, the curtains are shut, draining the light from the space.

"I brought you a sweater," I say if only to break the solitary silence, "you know, because you don't really... have a change of clothes."

His gaze attaches to the floor. He picks up the TV remote from its position near his feet and holds it for a while before he sets it on the table. "You're not mad?"

"Why would I be mad?" I pause. "Do you want me to be mad?"

"That would help. Because you make it seem like it isn't a big deal. And I—I need to be angry," he admits.

Regardless of what I say, I'm going to analyze how he reacts. I don't want to say too much or too little—somehow; I feel both cowardly and arrogant. But the mist of confusion, like a curtain, falls over my senses, and I'm not sure I'm prepared to pull it back.

"This—to me—isn't a big deal." Letting my guard down around Sam was a mistake. I put the same fail-safe in place for Evan—but I don't think he's gathering facts about me to use as ammunition later. "It is for you. I have boundaries on things I don't want to think about. It's the same for you—and you don't have to tell me right now."

"Yeah, but I should." His fists clench. "My parents broke up. For real, this time. I thought staying here would be temporary. That it would end, and it would go back to normal. But it hasn't. Elaine isn't in Northwood anymore. And I don't even have my clothes, or my charger, or... my drawings."

"Would having a drive help?"

He nods. I take him to the lobby, down to where my car is parked. Evan settles into the seat and reclines on an angle to shield his eyes from the sunshine.

As we reach his apartment building, Evan wraps his hands around his chest, holding his keys like he could use the jewel-encrusted metal as a weapon.

Mounted on the wall above his apartment door is a glowing emergency light. The case protecting it has been removed. While Evan turns his key into the lock, an older man appears from the hall, carrying a ladder. It might be the superintendent—since he sets it up against the side and rises to fix the broken fixture.

Once inside, Evan scans the perimeter and says, "We're good."

"I'll grab as much as I can fit into Europa," I say.

Evan shoots me a quizzical look. "The car has a name."

"It was either that or the Curiosity—like the Mars Rover—so really, it could be worse."

Elaine's room, I notice, is strangely empty. A few of Evan's drawings have been removed; pieces of tape line the walls, which are patched with lighter shades of off-white in the spaces the drawings would have occupied for years.

From underneath her bed, he recovers a wooden box filled with tubes of acrylic paint. The graphite pencils are carefully arranged in order of size, with the smallest pencil being no wider than my thumb.

"My stuff is in Elaine's room," he says, "and she keeps her science books in mine. It's like a tradeoff—we can swap lives if it makes Carolyn happy. As long as it keeps us out of trouble."

Back in his room, he finishes taking the clothes that he needs, his notebook, and the resin pine needles. We wind up in the kitchen, and he stares vacantly at a splash of black paint interrupting the backsplash tiles.

"I could have left," Evan says quietly, like an omission. "I had my chance. I could have stopped existing—I would have disappeared. But I couldn't leave Elaine. I couldn't do it."

Offering a paintbrush to me, he steps over to the black square against the wall. He dots it with spots of white and gold, wavering lines and droplets of silver. Against the canvas, he draws a constellation into a windowless room. The arms of the stars reach out and join together in a game of connect-the-dots.

"Maybe you need to be selfish," I say, pointing my paintbrush at the wall. I trace the enigma of a star into the fabric of the sky.

Evan's paintbrush mixes blue into black, forming the background. Stripes of navy blue give it a touch of realism—as if a comet could cleave across this room and land in the river of a kitchen sink. "I've always been selfish. Staying with Claire was selfish. Getting angry is selfish. That's all that I have."

"Then, you're jealous. Maybe even envious."

He nods, stepping back to evaluate the wall. He cleans the brush and drops it back into the white paint. When I'm not looking, he traces a star onto the palm of my hand. The paint is cold; Evan doesn't linger as he finishes the movement.

"It takes a special kind of person to leave without looking back," I continue.

He tells me, "I know." And we look at the wall—the splatter of paint and the pattern of constellations that I made up along the way, without caring to check if the lines were correct—and it doesn't quite look like Northwood's sky.

He gets me to take a picture of it since his phone is almost out of battery. I tease, "What, like it's going to look different tomorrow?"

Evan rolls his eyes, handing me the paints to carry. "No, but it will be painted over one day."

With the lights off, the smattering of white winks at me. I double-check to make sure we have everything he needs, and then he shuts the door.

And he doesn't look back.