On an Edge of Glass

clouds. 
                  I could go back to sleep, or I could stand up and walk into my bedroom and close the door.  I could do a lot of things.  But what I actually do it this: I lift my hand and push aside the rumpled dark hair that has fallen over his cheeks. 
                  And everything is different.  It’s changed somehow in the moments between sleeping and waking. 
                  “Hi,” he says softly.
                  “Hi,” I echo, my voice just as airy as his.
                  He shifts closer.  “Hi.”
                  The mask is gone—thrown off.  Discarded.  And I know that he is going to kiss me.  I can see it all playing out in his eyes. 
                  This time I’m not looking for oblivion.  I don’t want to get lost.  I want to be found.
                  With my eyes open, I move closer.  Ben moves also.  His head tilts.  So does mine.  And I think about that art project we did in kindergarten where you drizzle paint on a piece of paper and then fold it in half and smush the sides together.  Symmetry.    That’s what Ms. Simon had called it. 
                  Symmetry.
                  I’m so focused that at first I don’t recognize the sound of my own name.  Then she calls it again, scratchy and weak. 
                  Ben’s forehead creases and he looks over his shoulder into the dark hall.
                  I close my eyes and take a breath.  “Payton,” I whisper to him.  “She needs me.”
    If this were a movie then things would go like this: I’d help Payton flop back into her bed, and I’d stay with her until she falls asleep, and then I’d go back to the living room and find Ben waiting up for me.  We’d laugh and then we’d pick up right where we left off. 
                  But, this isn’t a movie and that’s not how things go.  I end up falling asleep sideways across Payton’s bed and I don’t wake up until many hours later.  A crunchy streak of dried drool runs down my left cheek and my hair is going a million different directions, like an exploded firework.  
    Ben isn’t waiting for me on the couch.  He’s not even home. 
                  And , I think as I eat a piece of toast coated in peanut butter and honey, maybe the things that happened in the early hours of the morning were part of a dream, or the kind of magic that vanishes in the light of day.
                  I get dressed and make plans with Mark.  Stepping outside the house, I see that the afternoon sky is filling with billowing grey clouds.  The biting wind shifts toward me.  I pull my hood up around my face and glance up at the sky again.  This time, when I look, I see that the clouds mean snow.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    The Chunky Monkey’s Out of the Pint
     
     
    I still have questions.
                  Lots of them.
                  I’m guessing that Ben does too.
                  We’ve been dancing around each other all week.  Not friendly exactly, but not indifferent either.  So, that’s something.             
                  On Monday, while I was eating breakfast over the kitchen sink with crumbles of strawberry frosted pop-tart on my bottom lip, he passed by.  Instead of keeping his head down, eyes on the floor, he smiled and waved to me before pulling his coat on and heading out the front door.  It wasn’t much, but it was a definite improvement from six weeks of acting like I don’t exist.
                  He ate dinner with us Tuesday night.  Ainsley had a hankering for Chinese and mentioned it to him when he walked in from band practice.  I thought he’d shrug off, but he stopped, tucked his hair behind his ears, and asked her to order him Kung Pao Chicken with extra fried rice.
                  By Wednesday, we were up to a real conversation.  Sure, it was about a stupid cat video that went viral on the internet.  But, it was a conversation with sentences made up from a collection of words.  Actual words.  Maybe they weren’t the right ones.  I didn’t say: hey, what’s with you being engaged and not telling me?  And he didn’t reply with: why did you push me away?  But, we watched the video on my laptop and we laughed.  Then, we watched it again. 
    Not too long ago, a