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i. Kai
Holding tight to his mother’s hand, Kai skipped along the sidewalk and kicked small rocks out of his way. He even kicked air. He would do anything to get his excess energy out, which seemed fit to burst, even though they were on their way to the playground. That’s probably why Kai had so much energy in his tiny body. Excitement.
At one point he kicked a rock and almost sent himself sprawling on the pavement, but his mother made quick work of keeping him on his feet. “Careful, Kai, you’re going to get hurt before we even get there,” she told him.
“Sorry,” he responded, although he really wasn’t. Falling would have made him focus on something other than his thundering heart. Up ahead of Kai and their mom was Jacin, holding hands with their little sister. Their dad took up the rear. Kai looked at Jacin and Jaida and their parents, and saw a nice little family who all looked alike. Blonde and blue eyed (although his dad’s hair was light brown). He was the strange one. His hair was brown, almost black, and his eyes were as dark and his family’s were light. Kai was the different one.
They walked through the gate to the park then. Jacin and Jaida almost took off, but his father stopped them with a little “uh uh”. They stopped and he approached Jacin. “Keep on eye on the other two, alright? They’re prone to get hurt, especially your brother,” he said, nodding towards Kai.
Jacin nodded and pulled at Kai’s shoulder to get him to follow them, and Kai grinned brightly and ran after them. He never felt out of place in his family.
i. Cinder
Pearl was towing Peony behind her as they ran towards the playground. Peony was only three, she didn’t run very well, but Pearl was five and didn’t seem to care. She only wanted to play. Cinder was six, she could have kept up with Pearl and played all afternoon long. But Pearl didn’t want to play with Cinder.
Cinder walked into the park a few steps before their mother and nanny, Iko. They were talking about something that they didn’t want Cinder hear -she could tell because they were whispering even though they were outside- and honestly she didn’t really want to know. Her feelings have been hurt too many times eavesdropping on conversations between her adoptive mother and Iko.
One time Pearl asked Iko why her name was so strange. Pearl wasn’t told that was a rude question, even though if Cinder had asked she would have been put in the corner. Iko said her name was Chinese, and therefore long and complicated, so she just had them call her Iko because it was easier.
Cinder appreciated that.
“Selene,” Adri snapped as they walked through the gates of the park, “Don’t get your clothes dirty. Laundry isn’t until next week and those are the only pants you have. Do you understand me?”
Cinder nodded. Adri waved her hands, shooing her towards the playground. Cinder started towards the playground, but didn’t run like her sisters had. She didn’t want to risk falling and facing her adoptive mother’s wrath. She climbed a little ladder and sat on one of the jungle gyms, just peeking out between the metal rungs. She could see her sisters playing in the sand box.
ii. Kai
Jacin, Jaida, and Kai ran around playing tag for a while. Jaida was the smallest, so she always seemed to get away with never being ‘it’. But soon they all got bored and she begged Jacin to push her on the swing, so Kai went to climb on the jungle gym by himself. He could find a friend to play with no problem.
He climbed up a slide and ran down the center, but almost tripped over someone sitting on the floor. He stumbled, but didn’t fall over. And the girl he almost fell on made a soft “ow” noise.
“I’m sorry!” Kai said, and he meant it this time. The girl was smaller than he was. “Are you okay?”
The girl looked around herself. She looked like she was checking to make sure her clothes weren’t scuffed up. “I’m okay,” she replied quietly.
Kai smiled and sat beside her. She looked to be by herself, and that meant she was in the running to be Kai’s friend. “I’m Kai,” he said brightly.
“My name is Selene,” she replied and looked up at him. Her hair fell into her eyes. They looked like his. “I’m six.”
“I’m eight. I’m bigger than you, but that’s okay,” he said with a serious nod. Jacin, who was ten, always said that when they played together. Sometimes he told Jaida it wasn’t okay she was so small and made her cry. “Do you want to play with me, Selene? Do you like pirates?” Kai continued.
Cinder looked down at her lap. “Can you call me Cinder instead?” she said.
Frowning, he tilted his head. That wasn’t her name. “Why?”
“I like that better,” she said, “Please?”
Kai nodded, although he still had questions. He wondered if ‘Cinder’ and ‘Selene’ started with the same letter, because they started with the same sound. Cinder told him she did like pirates, and he let her be the ship captain and he was the first mate. Then the bandit who tried to rob the ship. Captain Cinder stopped him. And Kai had a lot of fun, because Cinder was good at playing pirates.
ii. Cinder
Cinder liked Kai a lot. She probably still would have liked him if he had gotten her clothes dirty. When they were through playing pirates, they played king and queen too. But Cinder didn’t want to be queen (“Queens are always mean, Kai.”) so she was a knight instead. They had a great time and never wanted to leave.
Too soon Iko came over and called Cinder’s name. “It’s time to go, Cinder,” Iko said when she asked why,
Dejectedly, Cinder turned to Kai. “I have to go home now. I have to finish cleaning my room,” she said. That was true. Cinder only got to leave to go to the park because her sisters had become restless.
Kai frowned. His mom always cleaned his room. “Okay. Will you come back so we can play more?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Cinder said with a smile. But, she didn’t really know. She didn’t get to go out and play very often, not nearly as much as her sisters did. She usually stayed home with Iko. But she wanted Kai to smile again.
He did. “Good! I’ll tell my mom and dad about you so they bring me back,” he said.
She nodded. Iko called her name again. “Okay. Then see you soon,” she said and climbed down to the ground.
Cinder walked over and and Iko took her hand. Adri was already standing by the gate with Pearl and Peony. Peony had tears in her eyes. Cinder turned around, looking over her shoulder at Kai. He was still standing on the jungle gym. She waved at him. He waved back.
iii. Kai
Kai was two grades older than Cinder in school. They were never on the playground at the same time during recess, nor did they share the gym during physical education. However, there was a time, a year after they first met, where they shared a lunch period. That first day of school was probably the most exciting ever.
“Cinder!” Kai shouted over the chatter of kids.
She was standing in line with the rest of her class, and she perked up after Kai called her name. As her class was herded towards their lunch table, Kai got up from his to go see and see her. She didn’t even sit down, instead waited until he approached her and pulled her right into a hug.
“Hi,” Cinder said into his shoulder, hugging him back.
Kai pulled away and gave her a bright smile. “I missed you,” he said. He always missed her. Cinder and Kai’s relationship never seemed to lessen, even though they didn’t get to see each other all that much. After that day in the park, Kai went back almost every day to try and see her again. It wasn’t for another few weeks, after he had given up going back every day, that he saw her again. Cinder was there with her sisters and Iko, no mother. They got to play for what seemed like ages, and at the end of that day she gave him her hair ribbon. She tied it around his wrist, and they promised to be friends forever. That was the first time and so far the only time Kai saw Cinder with her hair loose.
Since then they’d played together a number of times. Some weekends Kai’s parents came to pick up Cinder at her apartment block, and she stayed the whole weekend watching movies and eating popcorn and even braiding Jaida’s hair. Those were his favorite weekends.
Cinder was the one who asked if Kai had been adopted. When he said he was, she said she was also adopted. They bonded over their shared trait.
“You always say that,” she accused, crossing her arms defiantly.
Kai nodded. “Because it’s true, silly. And now we’ll get to see each other even more!” he said.
Cinder smiled, happy for the fact. They met outside school every day to say goodbye, and then Cinder walked home with her sisters and Kai’s dad came to pick them up. “Well, I missed you too. I wanted to tell you that Adri said it was okay if I came over this weekend,” she said.
Kai still didn’t understand why Cinder called her adoptive mother by her first name. But his parents told him it was ‘inappropriate’ to ask so he didn’t. “That’s great! I’ll tell my mom and we can pick some movies to watch,” he said.
Cinder nodded happily. “I should eat my lunch, okay? I’ll see you later before we go home,” she said.
“Okay. See you soon,” Kai said. Before he hugged Cinder again, he pushed her scraggly hair out of her eyes, so he could see them. Her entire face smiled when her mouth did, and he wanted to see that. So he hugged her and promised to see her later.
iii. Cinder
At another one of their sleepovers, the summer after Cinder turned nine, she was laying awake on Kai’s bedroom floor. She came over so often, his parents had gotten a trundle bed for her to sleep on. Mr. and Mrs. Clay were nicer to Cinder than Adri ever was.
She turned her head towards Kai’s bed. “Kai?” she whispered, “Are you asleep?”
Moments later he turned over in bed. “Yes.”
“Stop it, dork,” she whisper-laughed.
She could hear the smile in his voice. “What is it, Cinder?”
Then she frowned. Kai was her best friend, and she should tell him, because it was about time. It’s been years, and he deserved to know. “Kai, do you want to know why I’m called Cinder?” she said.
When he replied, he did not sound sleepy or uninterested. “Yes, I do,” he said.
Cinder bit her lip and squeezed her covers in her hands. “Well, Selene is the name my birth parents gave me, and they didn’t want me. So there’s that. Adri also calls me Selene, especially when she’s mad, and she always seems to be mad at me. And when I was a kid, I remember I liked to fall asleep in front of the fireplace and get covered in ash. Or, cinders. So Pearl started calling me Cinder, and at first I hated it, but then Peony started to use it because she was little and didn’t know any different. It just stuck,” she said, “And I like it now. It makes me feel like Selene and Cinder are two different people.”
Kai didn’t say anything for a while. But then, “Thank you for telling me.”
“I thought it was time, after three years.”
Again, silence. Kai was eleven now, she figured he would ask her about it as his curiosity became unbarable. He was starting to change slowly before her eyes now, in subtle ways like that. He was growing taller than her, and losing the boyish roundness to his face already. She watched the same thing happen with his older brother, Jacin, who now didn’t play with them anymore. He usually sat in his room and occasionally joined them for movie watching.
Cinder was glad she wasn’t a boy. She didn’t want to sit in her bedroom for hours on end.
“Do you ever wish you knew your birth parents?” Kai asked her after the pause.
She wanted to tell him yes. She thought about them more than she wanted to, and more than she should. There were only a few things she knew about them; her father, just like Adri’s husband (the only one of them to actually like her), was dead. And they wanted nothing to do with her. “No. Adri says it’s silly to ask,” Cinder replied, “Do you?”
“Sometimes,” Kai said. She supposed the dark was making them braver. Kai never talked about his birth parents, because he never wanted the Clays to think they weren’t enough, and Cinder knew that. He loved his family. “I’d like to think they were nice. Mom and dad -the Clays that is- told me they both died of disease when I was really young. That’s why they had to adopt me.”
Cinder turned her head on top of her pillow to look at his gray outline. “They had to be somewhat nice to make someone like you,” she said.
“Then so did yours. Because you’re the greatest person I know,” he stated, unafraid. Cinder felt her face heat up, and she pulled the covers over her head as if he could see her.
This conversation was equally the greatest and most embarrassing conversation that she’s ever had with Kai. They didn’t ask each other anymore raw questions, and Cinder could finally go to sleep. She felt that now she could really tell Kai everything, even about Adri and the fact that Cinder only owned two pairs of pants. She liked being able to share her life with someone like him.
iv. Kai
When Kai went to middle school it became hard. The elementary school was on the other side of town, so they couldn’t even say goodbye once the day ended anymore. And now Kai had to ride the school bus. One of his school friends rode with him, but it wasn’t the same without Cinder. She told him all about it on one of their sleepover weekends, which did not change as they got older. Even Kai expected them to start growing apart, when he stopped wanting to play pirates and started playing video games.
But they didn’t. Cinder took his growing up in stride and joined him in whatever he wanted to do. She even helped him practice when he wanted to try out for the baseball team.
And then, when it was Cinder’s turn to come to the middle school, something amazing happened. Cinder skipped a grade. Instead of going from the fifth grade to the sixth grade, like everyone else, she went from the fifth grade to the seventh grade. Now she was only a grade younger than him, and they had gym class together. Cinder told him the first day they had class that her middle school counselor thought she was ‘too bright’ (with air quotes) to learn the same things the other kids of her age were learning. Kai told her seriously that he always knew she was smart.
Now that they had so much time together -on the school bus to school, passing time, gym class, and the school bus home- Kai couldn’t help but notice Cinder’s slight changes. She stopped wearing brightly colored t-shirts and slip-on shoes. Now she wore tight, mute colored tees and black boots. Her hair was still a mess, and it still fell in front of her eyes, but now she tied most of it back into a ponytail. Her face started to take shape, and things like her cheekbones and her lips became more prominent. She also started to write her name as Selene on the top of all her papers. Kai mentally noted all these small changes his friend underwent, but there was one thing that didn’t change. How much they cared for each other. And how much he wanted to protect her from the world.
Cinder didn’t cry. Not in front of him. But in the spring, he was in eighth grade and she in seventh, Kai’s baseball team was going to the playoffs. He wanted Cinder to be there to help cheer him on. “It’s going to be huge,” he told her over the phone one night, “My mom, dad, Jaida, and Jacin are going. You can sit with them, you know Jaida will need someone to tell her what’s going on. What do you think?”
“Sounds fun, I’ll be there,” she promised him. She sounded genuine and he was really excited. Cinder went to almost all his home games, because she was usually at Kai’s house anyway. Three things he loved in one place: baseball, his family, and Cinder. But the next morning on the school bus, he could tell something was wrong right away. Kai’s stop was before Cinder’s, so he watched her walk over and sit down beside him with puffy red eyes.
“Hey,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders, “Are you okay?”
She sniffed and shook her head. “Adri says I can’t go to your game. Iko can’t work that weekend, so I need to take care of the house while Adri’s at work. Plus she says that I’m not doing all my chores, even though it’s Pearl who forgets to clean her dishes!” she said.
Disappointment rose in his chest, but the feeling in the forefront of his mind was to make her stop crying. Tears spilled over her cheeks and right into his shoulder, but he didn’t mind. “Did something else happen?” he asked, quietly and cautiously.
After a beat Cinder nodded. “I asked Adri why Peony couldn’t take on some of the chores now that she was ten. Th-then Adri started yelling at me, told me I was lazy and didn’t deserve to be in a family who gives me clothes and food and a place to live, that she wastes money on me, because I wanted to give my responsibility to Peony,” she sniffed and her shoulders shook, “I just thought it would be fair if all three of us had jobs! I didn’t know… I didn’t know Adri didn’t like me that much.”
Kai shook his head and just hugged her, putting his chin on top of her head. He clenched his fists behind her back, trying to keep them from shaking. He never understood why Adri and her daughter were so awful to Cinder (Peony was too sweet to be mean). Cinder was thoughtful, compassionate, and brilliant beyond belief. She skipped a whole grade! And the family who adopted her treated her like a kid freeloading in their lives.
“Cinder, you know my mom and dad love you. If it’s easier to be at my house, you can just come over,” Kai told her softly.
She sniffed and pulled away, quelling her tears as the bus pulled up in front of the school. “I feel like I’m there too much already. I’m needed at home,” she replied.
“But-” Kai started to argue, but Cinder did something she had never done before. She kissed his cheek. That shut him right up. He stared at her as she rose from her seat.
Smiling softly now, she nodded towards the door. “Come on, we have to go. I’m okay, I promise,” she said. Kai swallowed and got up to follow her. He didn’t think she noticed, but the whole time he did he couldn’t stop thinking about the little kiss and that made his cheeks burn.
iv. Cinder
After Cinder had to miss Kai’s play off game, she tried to spend as much time as she could at the Clay’s house. She finished out the seventh grade with nearly straight As, and she even helped Kai study for his algebra exam. When the year was over, Cinder tried her best to hardly be home. Besides their weekendly sleepovers, she was also with Kai when he had nothing to do while his parents went to work.
That summer Kai’s parents also didn’t let them sleep in the same room anymore. Something about being teenagers (according to them) changed that rule, so Kai gave his bed to Cinder and he slept in the guest room down the hall. For a bit it was weird because they were so used to it, but soon Cinder didn’t mind. She felt like she was surrounded by him sleeping in his bed, and she really loved that feeling.
And then something terrible happened. Cinder went home from Kai’s house one day to find her sisters and Adri all sitting together at the dining table. When she walked in she was ordered to join them, and Adri told them the news. They were moving away from the city.
“Why?” asked Peony.
“New job,” Adri replied, “It will put us in a bigger apartment, and there will be less people.
Pearl leaned forward. “So we’ll change schools?”
“Yes, that’s what moving away means.”
“What about Iko?” Peony added.
Adri held up her hand, wagging it, as if she was glad Peony reminded her. “Yes, Iko’s coming with us. I believe she’s moving in,” she said.
Pearl and Peony brightened, but the whole time Cinder remained frozen in horror. Moving away? That meant new school, new home, new people, and no Kai. No Kai… she didn’t know what she was going to do. Without Kai’s house to go to, she was more than likely going to go crazy. Or get herself thrown out by herself with nowhere to go.
So, Cinder said what any twelve-year-old would. “Do I have to go?”
Adri turned to her as if surprised Cinder would even speak. “You don’t want to, Selene? You would rather stay here in this dump with your boyfriend, holding the rest of us back?” she said.
“He is not my boyfriend!” Cinder snapped in reply, “You expect me to not say anything when you’re changing everything?”
Adri looked indignant and glanced away. “I am the adult and you are the child. What I say goes, and this is what’s best for you and the girls. And don’t worry, you’ll still have Iko.”
Pearl snickered. “Don’t be sad, Cinder, there will probably be a fireplace in the basement you can sleep next to,” she said venomously. Cinder recoiled, and her nickname hurt her feelings for the first time in a long time. After the conversation, she was the last one at the table, and she didn’t know what to do. She had to tell Kai, but she was terrified for his reaction. She was more afraid to think of her life without him, and telling him made it feel that much more real.
Cinder was not at Kai’s house as much as they were both used to that week. Cinder went three days without seeing him, which she figured immediately alerted Kai that something was wrong. When packing boxes started to multiply around the apartment, Cinder decided it was time to tell him before it was too late.
She took it upon herself to walk all the way to Kai’s house, which she has done before, but now it was becoming normal to call Kai and ask his parents to pick her up. Walking gave her time to think of what to say. She was certain her skin was tanned two shades darker by the time she approached Kai’s front door and knocked.
Hid dad answered it. “Cinder! We were starting to get worried. Come on in,” he said with a smile.
Cinder managed to smile back. “I actually can’t stay, but do you think I could talk to Kai really fast? Is he here?” she said.
“Sure is, I’ll go get him for you,” Mr. Clay replied.
He disappeared for a few moments, and left the door slightly ajar. Cinder peered in, trying to memorize the parts of the house she could see for the rest of her life. Then she heard Kai run down the stairs, then he yanked the door open in front of her. She stepped back and he immediately engulfed her in a hug. She buried her face in his chest, suddenly surprised at how much taller than her he had become.
“I missed you,” Kai said, which was customary for him to say as he pulled away and grinned at her, “My dad said you couldn’t stay?”
Cinder shook her head, and suddenly she felt tears well up in her eyes. All she wanted was to stay. “No. I came because I have to tell you something,” she said, and her feelings were betrayed when her voice cracked.
“What happened this time?” he asked, his face falling.
Cinder reached up and wiped one of her eyes that had spilled over. He didn’t press the issue, just waited until she was ready. “I’m moving away,” she whispered finally.
Kai froze. He stared at her, as if waiting for her to say she was joking, and that just made her heart break even more. After a few moments, he swallowed. “You’re moving?”
“Yeah. At the end of the month,” said Cinder.
He was silent for another few moments before he said, “I guess this is it, then. There’s only a couple weeks left in the month,” Kai said.
“I know,” she replied, “So we have lots to do.”
They did indeed. With her inevitable leaving, they tried to do everything they loved in a short amount of time for one last time. They stayed up until sunrise watching movie franchises, they walked to the ice cream parlor and got massive banana splits, and spent every waking moment that they could together. Eventually Adri told Cinder that she needed to stay home for a couple days and help pack, but even on the nights she did that Kai’s parents took her out for dinner. Even Jacin said he would miss having her around, and for a moment the sarcastic-love-hate-sibling relationship they had broke.
The night before Cinder and her family were going to leave, Cinder and Kai sat on the front steps of his house. “You’ll call me, right?” Kai asked her.
“As much as I can,” she replied.
“High school won’t be the same without you. You won’t be able to help me with math, or go to my games, or tell me to read the book for English,” he said, shaking his head. Cinder looked at the sidewalk. “Who am I going to take to prom?” he said.
Cinder looked up, her heart leaping. “You want to take me to prom?” she said.
“Well, duh. It’s always been just you and me, why change it?” Kai said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
She swallowed. “You’ll have to send me pictures,” she said.
He looked over and nodded. “I will,” he promised.
When it got dark. Kai’s mother came out and told them it was time to take Cinder home. The drive was silent, but the two sat next to each other, and even though it was a short drive Kai reached over and held her hand the whole time. He held it all the way up the stairs to the door of Cinder’s apartment.
They just stared at each other for a beat before going in for another hug. And they hugged for longer than they ever had before, the goodbye bitter on the tip of Cinder’s tongue.
Then, “I’ll miss you. I love you, Cinder.”
Now they have said ‘I love you’ before, and also ‘I hate you’ before without either of them taking much meaning. But this time, those words seemed very heavy to her. In fact, it made her tear up all over again, and she considered running out to Mrs. Clay and begging to be adopted.
Instead, through her tears, she decided to just say it back. “I love you too.”
v. Kai
Cinder left. Kai’s best friend in the whole world moved away and left him. For the first few weeks, all he did was sit in his room and be miserable. When it was almost time for school to start again, his parents made him come out of his room. They said he couldn’t waste his summer cooped up inside. He used reading as an excuse, and while it was true, it was just to fill the void.
Kai went into the ninth grade and forced himself to be closer with his friends who weren’t Cinder. In the meantime, he waited for Cinder to call. He waited for Cinder to send him a letter. When he got his own cell phone for Christmas, he tried to find her with that to no avail. For a whole year Kai waited for Cinder to do something while wishing he could communicate himself. He wondered if Cinder didn’t know his address or his number, but she had to after years of calling his house and coming over.
So Kai gave up. It hurt him and it took a long time, but eventually his mind and heart were in synch. At least for a while.
Kai grew in popularity in high school. His baseball prowess and his winning personality pushed him to the top of the student food chain rather quickly. His junior year he became captain of the baseball team, and the same year he got his first girlfriend. Her name was Rose and she made Kai very happy. He kissed her outside the baseball dugout after his first game as captain. She broke up with him right before their last year, claiming that he had walls up that she didn’t appreciate.
Maybe she was right. Something in the back of his head said she was.
His senior year was a mix of emotions. Jacin packed up and moved away to college across the country. Jaida acquired a boyfriend who Kai begrudgingly admitted he liked. He applied to college and university and played his last season of baseball on the team he loved so much. He got accepted to a university that was hours away and his parents took him out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. Jaida expressed her excitement at feeling like an only child.
Kai was excited to go away to college even through the emotions of graduating. He took a pretty girl from the lacrosse team to prom, and they took pictures in Kai’s living room. His mother cried, just like she did on Jacin’s prom night. That was the only night when Cinder was more than an intrusive thought in Trigonometry or an unanswered question while he lay awake at night. Would Cinder have gone to prom with him after all? Would she have worn a sparkly blue dress like his actual date did? Would she have let him touch her thigh and kiss her neck like his actual date did?
The thing was, he knew the Cinder in his mind was gone now. She moved away almost four years ago. She was grown up now, just like he was. She was undoubtedly different than he remembered her. And that fact kind of hurt a little.
Months later Kai was all moved into his college dorm room, and both his parents cried when they hugged him goodbye. His roommate was nowhere to be seen. Kai remembered his name started with a C, but that’s about all he remembered. So, he left the building to go look around and see if he could find his classrooms.
The first one he came across with people in it was the technology room. He needed the credit for general eductation requirements, so he wasn’t particularly interested in this class, but he was curious about the people. So he went in. There were students peppered around the room at computers, but there was a large grouping of guys standing around another computer in the corner of the room. Kai approached them, curiosity spiking once more.
He wasn’t surprised that they were just watching someone fix the computer. The thing he was surprised about was that he recognized the boots and the long, tan legs that were sticking out from under the desk.
“Cinder?”
v. Cinder
Upon hearing her nickname, Cinder jumped in surprise and smacked her head against the underside of the desk. Luckily she had just fixed the problem and was able to climb out backwards from under the desk. She stood up, awkwardly. She knew she looked stupid wearing her boots with a skirt and blouse. But she wasn’t about to wear heels for more than five minutes while she was standing.
So it was Kai. Of course he had to go here. Of course he had to see her looking like this.
“Hi,” she said quietly.
“Hi,” he replied, confusion written on his face. He looked good. Tall, broad from playing baseball most likely. His hair was longer, it went down to his ears. No wonder he recognized her from just her legs. She had hardly changed since the eighth grade.
Mr. Kinney, the computer science professor, piped up from the computer she just hooked back up. “Thank you, Selene, it’s working again like a charm,” he said.
Cinder turned to smile in response, and when she turned back to Kai she met the same expression she expected to. Eyebrow raised, questioning why he called her Selene.
“See you tomorrow, Mr. Kinney,” she said and grabbed Kai’s sleeve, pulling him from the room and towards the exit of the building. She grabbed her backpack on the way out.
Before they made it Kai pulled his sleeve out of her hand. “Cinder, what are you doing here?” he said.
Her nickname made her cringe. No one called her Cinder anymore except for Pearl when she was feeling particularly malicious. “I take computer science and tech classes in the evenings. They approached me after I got an over 100 GPA last year,” she replied.
“Of course you are,” Kai said, shaking his head, “So you skipped another grade?”
“No, I’m still in twelfth grade.”
“You do both?”
Cinder nodded. She thought the impressed looks would stop now that it wasn’t fresh news anymore. It bothered her. And, she could tell Kai was bothered. She knew he had every right to be, because she basically fell off the face of the Earth without an explanation. She used to imagine what meeting up with him again would be like, and it involved a lot more hugs than this one.
Kai huffed. “Alright, you need to spill. Why are you dressed like this, why do you still do you hair the same, you’re going by Selene again, and where the hell did you go for five years?” he said.
Cinder reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone to check the time. Kai glared at it. She had ten minutes. “Walk and talk,” she said, heading out of the door, “I’m dressed like this because I have an interview to work as a mechanic on campus, my heels are in this bag. I do my hair the same because I like it. Selene is my actual name, since you don’t remember. And I was here, in the village a little ways down the highway.”
Kai took her elbow to stop her. “Why did you never call?” he asked her slowly.
Cinder took a breath. “Kai, I can’t have this conversation right now. I have an interview to go to,” she said.
“You’re not getting out of it. I’m staying right here and waiting for you,” he said, and put himself down on the steps.
“Seriously?” Cinder said, “It could be hours.”
“Then you better get going.”
Cinder sighed, annoyed, and took a moment to switch her shoes. With surprising balance, she turned and headed towards the office building, contempt building in her chest. He wasn’t this sassy at fourteen.
Less than an hour later, and sure she would get the job, she met Kai on the steps. He stood immediately. “Alright, we’re talking now,” he said. It didn’t seem like he moved at all during her entire interview.
She nodded and waved for him to follow her. She led him across the courtyard and to the nearest bench. She dropped her bag on the floor, crossed her legs, and turned towards Kai. “Let’s talk,” she said.
“Why didn’t you call me?” Kai said, surprising Cinder. She had expected him to beat around the bush. “I thought I’d be over it. I thought I was, but now I see you here, and… I’m not over it,” he continued.
Cinder didn’t want to tell him. She looked away and swept her hair into a loose ponytail. “I wanted to call you. I wanted to, but when we moved into the new place we didn’t have phone service for a few weeks. And you know I didn’t have a cell phone. In those weeks without a phone, I knew you were starting to forget me. By the time we got a line, I already felt too nervous so I didn’t call you. I thought it would be better to just… stop,” she said, and by the end her voice had become much less confident. Saying it outloud made it sound even worse.
Kai looked at her, blinking. “Stop? You thought you were going to bother me?” he said.
“I don’t know, I was a stupid kid, Kai! I’m still a stupid kid, obviously, trying to explain myself to you,” she said, leaning back on the bench and closing her eyes against the sun.
“Cinder, I waited for you for a year. A year. If you had called me even for two minutes after you got a phone I would have been over the moon,” he told her.
She regretted it everyday. But it was always too late to try and force herself back into his life. “It would have been stupid. There was no way for you and I to be together in any way, shape, or form so it was better the way it worked out. We both grew up separately. And that’s fine,” she said.
Kai sighed and shook his head. “We can’t change what already happened. But, we’re here now, and…” he took another breath. Then he reached over and smoothed her hair behind her ear, away from her eyes. “I missed you.”
Cinder looked over at him. He was still watching her. Her best friend was sitting beside her again, and just saying ‘I miss you’ made her remember why she loved him for so long. He was stable. He helped her forget her life, the things that were out of her control, and showed her that life could be happy. She could control one thing in her life, and that was her relationship with Kai. Maybe it was good that they spent so much time apart. She took what Kai gave her and spun it into something of her own. She hoped that she had even a fraction of the impact on his life that he had on hers.
“I missed you too,” Cinder replied. His grin came so suddenly it was disarming.