I Fell in Love with Hope(8)

“I have an agenda,” she says. “Not to mention, I like exploring one thing at a time.”

“You’re exploring the roof?”

“I’m exploring you.” Hikari hooks her chin on her shoulder, her mischief grinning back at me. “Didn’t you know, Sam? People have stories written on them, around them, in their past, in their futures. I like to unravel them.”

As invasive as that sounds, the wind catches her scent and distracts me with it, a sweet yet forceful thing. I almost lean into it before catching myself, but Hikari notices. She smirks, and I’m starting to realize, as she eyes me like a book she wants to tear off a shelf, that she may be more of a trouble maker than any of my thieves.

“Sam,” she says, not to me, to the sky, testing my name, like a lyric she can’t place. “It’s funny. I feel like we’ve met before.”

My heart leaps into my throat. I swallow, unable to speak in anything past a whisper. “Maybe in a past life.”

The wind disturbs us, knocking the glass bottles into each other. Hikari’s gaze drifts to the ash marks and spilled alcohol at my feet.

“You stole those cigarettes and beers, right?”

“Technically, Sony and C stole the cigarettes and beers.”

“So you’re just an accomplice,” she says, her suave nature replaced by a long sigh. “Well, it looks like you’ll have to do.”

Without another word, Hikari flips her hair into a ponytail and treads to the door.

“Wh-where are you going?”

“I’ve got something to steal. And you’re going to help me.”

“I–but–” I stutter, but ultimately the gravity of my infatuation is stronger than that pesky shadow on my shoulder telling me this is a bad idea, so what can I do but follow her? “Where did you say you were from?”

“An infernal little town in the middle of nowhere.”

“Nowhere?”

“The kind of place everyone wants to know everyone else’s secrets.”

“Well, that sounds like everywhere.”

“Where are you from, Sam?”

That’s a question I often find difficulty answering. Not to mention following Hikari down the stairs and waiting for an elevator, there isn’t much to do except look at her and every time I look at her, my thoughts no longer begin or end, they jumble together until I’m an incoherent mess of flustered attitudes trying not to stare so long that my cheeks flush and butterflies make a funhouse of my stomach.

I clear my throat. The elevator arrives, and Hikari leads the way into it, pressing the button for the ground floor.

“I’m from here,” I say.

“The city?”

“The hospital.”

A less amused expression finds Hikari. She holds onto the back railing as I do. So little distance remains between my hand and hers that I wonder what it would feel like if they kissed.

“Sam.”

“Hm?”

“What do you have?” Hikari asks, and for such a serious question, it is so softly said.

This is a scripted moment between sick people. A rule of sorts. It states that when you meet someone within these walls, you are to ask one thing. What do you have? Who is your killer? It’s a different outfit, but it’s the same question. What she’s asking is why I’ve been confined to the hospital for so long that I view myself as an extension of it. She wants to know to what degree I’m dying.

Looking at her bandages and the otherwise healthy nature of her being, I want to ask her the same, but–

“You’re not supposed to ask that,” I lie. And rather than nod or say she understands, another easy fit of laughter shakes Hikari’s chest. Three beats again. As if her heart is laughing with her.

“What, like prison? What are you in for, Sam?”

“Apparently, I’m an accomplice to petty larceny.”

“Good,” she says, the word paired with flirtatious endnotes. “Then this won’t be your first time.”

The elevator doors open, but neither Hikari nor I make a move.

I told you I like to watch people, but sometimes I struggle talking to them. When you’ve lived in the same place as long as I have, you find that people don’t know what to say to someone they think is dying. People feel awkward around the sick, so they pretend the sickness is invisible. They avoid the elephant in the room so blatantly that you can tell it’s all they’re thinking about. They create distance without even meaning to because distance is comfortable.

But not everyone gets stuck in that pattern. Hikari thinks I’m dying. I know she is. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be here needing a tour guide who’s been convinced to help her commit a crime instead. Yet somehow, whatever distance I create, Hikari wants to close it—with her curiosity, her teasing tone, her pretty looks, and her even prettier language.

“You’re not very skilled at conversation, are you, Sam?”

Crap. I was staring again.

“Um–I–sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” she asks.

We step out of the elevator’s mouth onto the ground floor. She stops to sightsee the atrium, the light pooling through the windowed ceiling, and all the faded colors to pair it. When she looks at me again, that playful manner returns to ghost over her smile. “I’m plenty good at it for the both of us, and it’s actually kind of cute how nervous you are.”