And They Were Roommates(18)

“Please, call me Tutor Jasper. Per your previous stated terms, I’ll convince my aunt to find me another room.”

I stare at the three moles below his thumb shaped like a constellation. The last hand in the universe I want to touch.

“Please choose the inscribing instrumentation that resonates with you most.” Jasper shoves the pile of writing materials into my arms. I grunt. “One lesson with me. That is all I ask. Then you may decide if we make the brilliant team that I believe we would.”

Two pens slip out of my grasp and hit the floor, where Jasper’s books have spread to the door. I look to the ceiling posters of Jasper, then the cardboard version of him between our beds. “You really chose to bring your life-sized cutout? Out of everything?”

“It was a gift from Poetic Fortune Digest. What else was I supposed to pack?”

“Gee, I don’t know.” I kick one of his books. “You have stacks of a certain something all over your desk. And your floor. And my floor.”

Jasper blinks. Potentially genuinely.

“A bookcase,” I say through clenched teeth.

Jasper surveys the empty space between our beds. “Oh. I see, von Hevringprinz.”

“You know you can just say my first name, right?”

“But your last name is beautiful.”

Spit lodges in my throat. I cough it out. “It’s long.”

“Could be longer. Consider Oscar Wilde’s real name.”

I thought I was the only one who knew this. “Oscar Fingal O’Fflahertie Wills Wilde?”

Jasper’s dimple pops. “Not as beautiful.”

I grin back until I realize what I’m doing. A serial heartbreaker like him has called a hundred other people beautiful too. We could never make a brilliant team.

But a bedroom of my own. Logically, that may be worth sucking it up and writing love letters with the one boy who broke my heart—and who can’t figure out who I am.

Jasper’s face falls. “Something the matter?”

“N-no,” I say quickly.

He squints back at me, like he’s trying to find an answer in my body language or facial features instead. “You’re quite evasive, you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Evasive. It means not straightforward. Avoidant. Hiding your thoughts.”

“I know what it means,” I snap, but my voice nearly warbles from the nerves shooting through me. One day in, and Jasper can already tell how desperately I’m trying to avoid him.

If I keep running from Jasper, that may only look more suspicious. Knowing him, he might try to dig deeper into my life than he already has.

“One lesson,” I say, even though it’s the last thing I want. “I’ll try it. No promises.”

Jasper’s face lights up again. “Wonderful!”

I bend over to spread the writing materials along the rug. What did Jasper say? To find what resonated? Well, no resonation detected. I follow my head instead of my heart when I avoid the pens and pick the first mechanical pencil I spot—how is Jasper confident with permanent ink?—and a standard composition notebook. When I look back up, Jasper’s arms are crossed.

“Write a poetic love letter and recite it,” he says. “Within five minutes.”

This is happening. I’m being told to recite a love letter to my long-dead crush. My stomach tightens. “Don’t I get a prompt?”

“You need one?”

“It’d help?”

“I see.” My desire to strangle him over how confused he sounds intensifies. “Imagine what typical adversities a couple would face when split by such an evil, towering, gated wall.”

That’s barely a prompt.

I go sit at my desk with my chosen pencil and notebook. I scribble down a first line, but the curtains rustling in the breeze are too distracting, and the scent of fall leaves mixing with the room’s explosion of cinnamon and floral fragrance is too overbearing. My brain floods with camp memories of Jasper, raising his hand with more meaningful questions and gaining more praise from guest speakers than I ever did.

Jasper snatches my pencil. I reach for it, but he tucks it behind his ear. “Time’s up.”

I glare at his wrist, devoid of a watch, even though Valentine repeatedly told us to bring one. “How would you know?”

“It felt like five minutes.”

“How are you surviving here?” I gesture to his empty wrist. “All we have is the bell tower. Neither of us even brought a clock for our room.”

Jasper points toward the curtains. “I can tell based on where the sun or moon is in the sky. You can’t?”

“No?”

He hums. Judgmentally. “Stand and read.”

I look down at my paper again.

Roses are red, violets are blue I

Pushing in my chair, I debate lighting one of Jasper’s candles and setting the notebook on fire. Jasper is Rank One. He can’t see me fail already.

Think, Charlie. “Roses—”

“Look at me. I want to feel the emotion.”

I do, and the pressure skyrockets. Jasper’s eyes are such a familiar piercing blue, gazing back the same as when we’d write by the lake and he’d ask me to recite what I’d written for workshop. He always wanted to hear mine.