I snort and roll my eyes.
Next to him is Mom, her chin-length hair rich brown threaded with auburn like mine, her eyes crinkled cheerfully at the corners. Bea and Jules stand beside her, looking around thirteen and almost identical still, like they did until they hit high school. You can see the first signs of Juliet’s beautiful curves, and a pen-drawn tattoo adorns Bea’s right hand like a premonition. Then there’s me, holding Puck, the family cat, who’s looking much spryer in this picture, with his fluffy, long white fur, his pale green eyes twinkling with mischief. I’m about eleven in this photo. Scrawny, squint-eyed, freckled.
And wearing my fucking orthodontic headgear.
“That asshole.”
I set the photo back on the desk with a thunk and glare at it. Of course, of all the photos he has, it’s one where I have more metal in and on my head than there is in an aluminum factory.
Annoyed, I decide that if Christopher’s going to keep a photo of me looking my all-time worst, it’s time to find some dirt on him. I yank open the middle top drawer, surprised it’s not locked. I’m met with an anticlimactic sight: blank notebook paper, blue, black, and red pens, a tiny pile of paper clips.
Next, the first drawer on the right. I open it and poke around. Two prescription bottles that I don’t look at or read—yes, I’m doing a little snooping, but give me some credit—mints, mint gum, and a thin stack of thank-you cards that have the Edgy Envelope logo stamped on the back.
“Boring,” I mutter, shoving it shut.
Opening the second drawer, I riffle around. A slender leather-bound notebook that looks promising. A condom that upon further inspection accordions out to ten condoms.
“Ew.” I drop the condoms and scoop up the notebook, which my gut tells me is some kind of diary or journal.
A decision is before me, a proverbial fork in the road. Do I read it? Do I not?
I’m annoyed at Christopher. I’m wary of whatever he’s been up to the past few days . . . But the thought of violating his privacy makes my stomach sour.
“Dammit,” I grumble, exasperated with myself.
I miss my reckless wild side. But this is growing up, I think. That and my ADHD meds, which I’ve managed to take pretty regularly lately, helping me with my impulse control, like metaphorical brake taps that slow my brain from acting on its natural inclination to press the pedal to the metal.
Still, this is even more than recognizing my maturity, the impact of my meds. This is caring. And I don’t like it. I just can’t seem to override it, either.
Sighing, I drop the notebook back in the drawer, then freeze when I notice something that’s slipped partway out of it.
A faded bit of paper-white cotton with a poorly stitched deep blue border.
My stomach drops.
That looks eerily like my first, frustrated attempt at embroidery. Like a handkerchief I abandoned a decade ago.
Slowly, I slide out the fabric. My stomach plummets down, down, down.
In the corner, just like I knew it would be, is a terrible rendering of forget-me-nots. Uneven stitches of periwinkle and midnight blue form lopsided petals, silvery white and yellow gold knotted in lumpy pistils. Lime green leaves hover too far from the flowers, floating aimlessly.
A lump forms in my throat.
I made this on the tenth anniversary—what an awful word to use for such a sad occasion—of Christopher’s parents’ death. But I never gave it to him. I hated it. How inadequate it felt, how poorly done. I pricked my finger so many times and lost my patience, and after I’d deemed the handkerchief a failure, I shoved it God-knows-where, threw out the embroidery hoop, and settled on knitting when my hands needed to be busy and I wanted to make something for someone I cared about.
How did he get this?
Why does he have it?
As I sit back in his office chair with the handkerchief, my thumb dancing across the bumpy threads, a new voice carries out in the hallway.
Christopher’s.
I drop my feet from his desk, shove the handkerchief hastily back inside the drawer, and bang it shut. I might have been ready to see him for these corporate headshots five minutes ago, but five minutes ago, I was not holding a humiliating reminder that （1） I used to not only foolishly care about Christopher but also try to make him care about me, and worse, （2） he has that proof carefully tucked away in his desk drawer.
Frantically, I scan the room for an escape until my eye snags on another door besides the one I used when I found his office. Voices come from the other side of it, reassuring me it leads toward a viable escape.
That’s when I do what anyone would when their snooping’s got the better of them—