I laugh. “You were right about the player profiles. That’s what he liked the most.”
“Of course I was,” she says, handing me the flower she’s holding, a pretty round puff with dozens of pale-pink petals, getting smaller and smaller as they near the center. “It’s a peony. It means good luck and fortune, but I guess you kind of don’t need that now.”
“Can never have too much good luck.”
She smiles and leans back to get a better look at me. “You look cute, by the way.”
I smooth out my sports coat, smiling back at her. She’s never said anything like that to me before. “Why, thank you. Maybe not exactly the best thing to wear for flying a kite, though.”
“I haven’t flown a kite in years,” Marley says as she smooths a hand down my lapel.
“I thought it might be fun,” I say, holding it up. “You mentioned you used to love to do it when you were little. And… it’s super windy today.”
As if on cue, the wind tugs at her hair, whipping it this way and that. She lightly touches the thin wood of the kite frame, nodding in agreement.
It takes a lot of work for us to get the kite going. We unwind some of the string and take turns running across the grass, the breeze catching it and then letting it go just as quickly, the kite nose-diving into the ground.
Finally, on my fifth run, it lifts smoothly into the air.
I whoop as the string slides through my fingers. The kite tugs right and left, the wind making it dance across the cloudy autumn sky.
Once it’s steady, I pass the tiny wooden bar to Marley, watching as she stares up at the kite, her face beautifully open.
“You got any plans for Halloween next Saturday?” I ask.
“Not really,” she says as the kite dips. She pulls back on the string, steadying it. “Other people… aren’t really my thing.”
“Well,” I say, unsurprised. “My mom is going out of town, so I could use a little help handing out the candy.”
She looks over at me skeptically.
“It’ll be fun,” I say. “We can wear Halloween costumes and everything,” I add, really trying to hype it up. “I mean, what’s not to love about that? You can be anyone or anything you want.”
I see her mind working, thinking it all over.
“Okay,” she says finally. She presses into me and I kiss her forehead. “But only because you seem really into the dressing-up thing. I’d hate to crush your fantasies.”
Her small, teasing smile is too much. I pick her up in a huge hug, the both of us laughing as the rest of the string unfurls from around the tiny wooden bar, the kite drifting, untethered, into the clouds as I kiss her. Her lips are cold, but the rest of her body is warm, and she wraps her arms around my neck.
“We lost the kite,” she sighs after we come up for air.
I laugh. “I’d rather hold on to you anyway.”
A drop of rain lands smack on my forehead, and we pull apart, laughing as we run along the path back to my car, the rain pouring down all around us. We’re almost there when Marley yanks her hand from mine.
“Wait!”
She bends to pick up something from the ground. I get closer to see a trail of tiny dots on the path. They’re baby snails, and Marley’s picking them up one by one and moving them off the path.
“What are you doing?” I ask, squinting at her through the downpour.
“I don’t want anyone to step on them,” she says as we slowly make our way up to the car, me redirecting runners and walkers around us as Marley moves every single one of the snails out of the way.
Every life, even the life of a snail, matters to her. My heart is full as I watch her, the both of us getting drenched. When we make it safely into my car, she looks at me, and without saying anything, I lean over and kiss her. I’ve never met anyone quite like her before, and I don’t need peonies to tell me how lucky I am that I did.
20
I sit on the front porch holding a basket full of candy. The fog machine next to me lets out another puff of smoke, clouding my vision. I wave my hand to dissipate it as another horde of kids come screaming up to me, their parents lingering on the streetlight-lined sidewalk.
“Trick or treat!” a tiny ghost shouts.
“Uh, treat?” I say as two Elsas greedily dig into the candy before scurrying off and out of sight.
I put the basket down on my lap and pull off my football helmet, quickly checking in my phone camera that the zombie makeup my mom helped me apply is still in place. My scar is now an oozing gash across my forehead.
I almost asked Mom to take it off when I saw it, and honestly, I still can’t look at it without cringing. All I can see is my reflection in Dr. Benefield’s glasses the night of the accident, when my head was actually broken open.
But I’m trying not to run from it anymore.
I tense as my vision blurs, and for a moment I can hear a voice, whispering to me, telling me not to let—
“Boo!” a voice says, pulling me safely out of the flash before it can completely overtake me.
I put my phone down to see…
What on earth?
Marley’s voice is coming toward me up the stairs; she’s almost swallowed whole by a lumpy brown snail costume. It’s got it all. Long antennae, a big, swirly shell, everything about it identical to the snails we picked up on the path a few days ago.
Laughing, I stand up and reach out for her. She wiggles away and swings her shell around to whack me in the side.
“Hey, I’m not laughing at you.…”
She glares at me, crossing her arms over her chest, her antennae even staring me down. “All right. Fine. I won’t say anything.” I smirk and turn an invisible lock on my mouth while she rolls her eyes, looking adorable.
Never thought I’d be attracted to a giant snail, but here we are.
I unlock my mouth and clear my throat. “Wait, I just have to say… you’re the cutest damn snail I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, sure,” she says, but she softens and does a tiny twirl. I move to hug her, but her giant shell is in the way, blocking my arms from wrapping completely around her.