The Reunion of Hearts

The first day of sixth grade smelled like new crayons and floor wax, and Luna Carter stood frozen just outside room 204, clutching her sketchbook to her chest like a shield.

She had chosen her outfit three times that morning—a yellow sundress, then jeans and her favorite paint-splattered sneakers, then back to the dress before settling, finally, on a soft green shirt with a tiny embroidered cat on the pocket. Her mother had said she looked lovely. Luna had spent the entire car ride convinced the cat was somehow the wrong choice, that everyone would take one look at it and know she didn't belong.

Middle school. The words alone made her stomach twist into the kind of knot she usually reserved for her shoelaces. Elementary school had been small and familiar, full of teachers who knew her by name and hallways that never changed. This building was different—bigger, louder, full of strangers who all seemed to know exactly where they were going while Luna stood rooted to the same square of tile, willing her feet to move.

She smoothed the cover of her sketchbook, the one with the water-stained corner from the time she'd left it out in the rain because she'd been too absorbed drawing…

By October, the leaves along the edge of the blacktop had turned the color of the crayons Luna used least—burnt orange, rust, the deep brown-red she always saved for last in the box because it seemed too serious for everyday use. The air had that particular crispness that made everyone run faster at recess, like the cold itself was daring them to a race, and Luna had discovered, somewhat to her own surprise, that she no longer stood at the edge of the blacktop clutching her sketchbook like a life preserver.

She still brought it, of course. But most days now it stayed tucked inside her backpack, forgotten for whole stretches of twenty minutes at a time, which was a kind of miracle she wouldn't have believed possible back in September.

The change had crept up on her slowly, the way most real changes did, with Jake Miller at the center of nearly all of it. He had a way of pulling people into things—games, conversations, ridiculous debates about which cafeteria pizza slice was superior—without seeming to try, and somewhere in the last six weeks Luna had gone from watching those orbits at a careful distance to somehow, impossibly, becoming part of one.

"Kickball," Jake announced…

Eighth grade had crept up on Luna the way most important things did—slowly, then all at once—and by the time June arrived with its heavy, honeysuckle air and the promise of a summer that would end in high school, she had run out of excuses.

She'd counted the days without meaning to. Nine left of middle school. Then six. Then three, the number shrinking like something alive and frightened, and each morning she woke with the same thought pressing against her ribs: *If you don't tell him now, you never will.*

It wasn't that she hadn't tried before. There had been a dozen almost-moments over the years—at Priya's pool party in seventh grade, when Jake had splashed her and grinned that same lopsided grin and something in her chest had risen up so fast she'd nearly said it right there, chlorine dripping from her eyelashes. At the winter dance, when he'd asked her to save him a slow song and then gotten distracted arguing with Tommy about a soccer match and forgotten, and she'd stood by the punch table rehearsing words that never found their way out. Each time, the sentence had risen in her throat like something with wings, and each time, she'd swallowed it back down, terrified of what…