This Is What Happy Looks Like(16)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

Graham’s eyes met hers, and he shook his head. In the dim lighting, his face remained neutral, but there was a smile just below the surface, and his eyes were giving him away.

“Nope,” he said, and Ellie’s head felt suddenly light. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing emerged.

Graham was smiling now as he watched her. “Wilbur,” he said quietly, “is my pig.”

Ellie nodded. “Wilbur is your pig,” she mumbled, trying to force her mind to catch up. She drew in a shaky breath and looked at him carefully. It was like the simplest of math problems; the answer was right there in front of her, but even so, a part of her was still having trouble believing it.

All this time, it had been him. All those e-mails, all those late-night conversations. All those silly details about school and her mom and everything else. All that thinly veiled flirting. All this time, she’d been writing to Graham Larkin.

She’d told him about the poems in the frames, and how she liked to pretend to be a tourist sometimes, falling into step behind large families with cameras. She’d written about how she learned to juggle this winter when there were no customers at the shop. She’d babbled on about the location of her locker and the unfairness of her chemistry teacher, the reasons she liked winter better than summer and her failed attempt at planting flowers this spring. She’d confessed that she loathed her freckles and that she hated her toes. She’d even admitted that she didn’t really like lobster.

And now here he was, standing on her front porch with his thousand-watt smile and his perfect hair and those eyes of his, which seemed to go right through her, and she knew what she was supposed to do. She’d seen the movies. But to her surprise, Ellie didn’t feel ecstatic or lovestruck or even incredulous.

What she felt instead was embarrassed.

“You should’ve told me you were you,” she said, her cheeks hot. “Were you trying to make me look stupid?”

Graham stared at her, unable to hide his surprise, and Ellie couldn’t help taking a small amount of pride in this. Most girls probably tiptoed around him, but she wasn’t one of them. She might have been duped, she might have been made to look like an idiot, but at least she wasn’t some kind of groupie.

“No,” he said, and then he said it again: “No. Not at all.”

“Then what?” Ellie demanded, meeting his gaze with a level stare.

“It was just an accident, and then I didn’t say anything because—”

“Well, you should have,” she told him. “If you had, I never would have…”

Graham raised his eyebrows. “You never would have told me all that stuff?” he said with a little nod, then lifted his shoulders. “Exactly.”

His voice was so hollow then that Ellie could think of nothing more to say. Her heart was still pounding, and she kept a hand on the doorknob to steady herself.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I should have said something. But believe me, I wasn’t trying to make you look stupid.” He paused, flashing a little grin. “You could never look stupid.”

In spite of herself, Ellie smiled at this. She studied him there in the dim lighting, trying to work out whether he was being genuine or whether he was just a genuinely good actor. She could see a thin moon-shaped scar just above his left eyebrow, and with a jolt, she remembered him telling her about this; it was from when he’d jumped off the roof of a van. At the time, she’d been picturing a sandy-haired boy in a leafy suburb, and then an older version of that same gutsy kid, more self-conscious now, perhaps even a little bit nerdy, but with a hint of his former boyish grin as he parked himself behind a computer to open her e-mails.

Now she closed her eyes and tried to edit this image, placing Graham Larkin there instead, writing about his mother’s oatmeal cookies and his obsession with Wii tennis and his complete inability to throw his socks in the laundry basket at the end of the day.

All this time, it had been him.

All this time, she suddenly realized, he’d been writing to her too.

She opened her eyes, and her hand slipped from the doorknob. The screen rattled, and from the other side of it, Bagel scrambled to his feet with a gruff bark, and then another. Ellie turned to placate him, but it was too late. Through the screen, she could see Mom’s bare feet on the stairs, and seconds later, she was standing beside the door in a pair of moose boxers and an I MAINE T-shirt. Bagel danced around her, his tail whisking the air. Ellie turned to look at her through the screen, blocking the door.

“He needs to go out, El,” Mom said.

“Give me a minute, okay?” Ellie asked, flashing her a meaningful look that seemed to get lost through the screen.

“What’s up?” Mom said, pushing the door, and though it opened only partway, Bagel slipped out and went barreling over to Graham. Ellie gave up with a sigh, and Mom stepped outside too, her mouth forming a small circle of surprise.

Graham was stooped to greet the dog—who had rolled onto his back in sheer joy over the prospect of meeting someone new—but now straightened and extended his hand.

“I’m Graham Larkin, Mrs. O’Neill,” he said. “I’m sorry to come by so late.”

Ellie was waiting for Mom to make a joke about how nine o’clock is the Henley equivalent of midnight, or how Bagel was always happy to receive guests at this hour. But instead, her eyes strayed out to the yard behind them, raking the darkness for signs of anyone else, and Ellie shifted uncomfortably.

“He just stopped by…” she began, but wasn’t sure how to finish that particular sentence.

“I just stopped by to introduce myself,” Graham said, looking suddenly boyish, less like a movie star and more like a regular kid caught out after curfew. “But I guess I should get going.”

Mom forced a smile, her instinct for customer service kicking in despite her wariness. “Well, it was nice to meet you,” she said. “And welcome to Henley.”

“Thanks,” he said, then nodded at her shirt. “So far, I heart Maine too.” His eyes slid across the porch to find Ellie’s. “I’m really glad someone told me about this place.”

Then, with a little wave, he turned and walked down the porch steps and out into the dark of the yard. Bagel threw his head back, letting out one crisp bark that seemed to echo across the quiet neighborhood for far too long. Mom was staring at Ellie, waiting for some sort of explanation, but it was hard to imagine what she might say. All she could think about was that she was the one who had brought him here.