Isla and the Happily Ever After(12)
Author: Stephanie Perkins

His straight face only makes me laugh harder. He glances at me, pleased, and then smiles to himself. We cross the narrow street. Somehow, our strides are in sync despite our difference in height. His entire body is lean and lovely. I want to lace his long, gorgeous fingers through mine. I want to bury my nose against his long, gorgeous neck.

Josh is overly focused on the cobblestones.

Something is happening between us. Is it friendship? It doesn’t feel like friendship, but it’s possible that I’m projecting my own desires. And I’m ashamed for even thinking about him like this after what happened last week. Because I’m not thinking. I’m hoping. People aren’t supposed to be able to change, but…I’ve never bought that. Maybe Josh could learn to like Kurt. Maybe I misinterpreted his actions. There could have been any number of reasons for him to want to escape from Kurt so quickly. Maybe.

“So tell me what you’re working on,” I say.

“Oh, man.” Josh rubs his neck. This seems to be his most frequently used gesture of unease. “It’s always sort of embarrassing to tell someone new.”

“What is it? I promise I won’t laugh.”

“You say that now.” He grimaces and keeps his eyes on the jumble of bicycles and scooters parked alongside the road. “I’m making a graphic novel about my life here at school. A graphic memoir, I guess. There’s not a phrase for it that makes it sound any less egotistical. Unfortunately.”

So it’s true. “How big is it?”

“Um, about three hundred pages. So far.”

My jaw actually drops.

“I really like myself.”

“You don’t have to turn it into a joke.” I shake my head. “That’s incredible. I’ve never done anything like it, that’s for sure.”

“Well, I’m not done yet. One more year of school.”

The colossal white dome of the Panthéon appears before us, illuminated like a beacon. We live on the Left Bank in the bottom of the Latin Quarter, along the edge of a residential neighbourhood. It’s peaceful but – because there are several other schools nearby – it’s not very quiet during the day. But it is magnificent at dusk. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live here.

“Have you always been this passionate about drawing? I mean, a lot of kids are, but then we’re sort of taught to stop.” I look up at him. “You never stopped, did you?”

“Never.” Josh finally meets my eyes, but his expression has turned mischievous. He points at my necklace. “Tell me the real story.”

I stop walking. “Try flipping it over this time.”

“Oh?”

I smile and hold it out on its chain. He takes the compass, angles it into the light, and reads the engraving on the back – first silently and then aloud. His voice is deep, clear but quiet. “Isla. May you always find the Right Way. Love, Kurt.”

“It’s the only sentimental gift he’s ever given me. I suspect his mom helped, but it doesn’t matter. He has this thing about maps and directions and finding the best route. But I like that the words have more than one meaning.”

Josh places it back into my hands. “It’s beautiful.”

He turns contemplative as we trek up the rue Saint-Jacques. Perhaps he is reconsidering Kurt. There has to be a way to approach the subject. I’ll find a way. A siren wails past with its French ooo-WEE ooo-WEE, but it only heightens the return of our silence. I’m relieved when we emerge into a bustling district of retail.

Album is a chain, but this particular location is split into two stores that sit across a busy intersection from each other. One sells American superhero-type imports and figurines. The other sells Franco-Belgian books called les BD, les bandes dessinées. French comics tend to have a better presentation than their American counterparts. They’re hardcover, taller, glossier. They have a wider range of stories and, because of it, they’re also more widely read. Comic shops are everywhere here, and it’s not uncommon to find businessmen and -women browsing their aisles in expensive haute couture.

Without having to discuss it, Josh and I enter the location with les BD. We’re greeted by the heavenly perfume of freshly printed text, and a youngish man with a trim beard gives us an amiable salut from behind the counter. I nod a greeting in return.

“Isla.”

It startles me to hear Josh speak my name. I turn around, and he holds up a book from the edge of the first display table. It’s the new Sfar, of course. I take it, and it opens with the delicious crack of a hard spine being tested for the first time. I’m thrilled to discover that it’s one of his fantastique titles – the pages are filled with woods and monsters and swords and royalty and love. Adventure.

“Yeah?” Josh asks.

I beam. “Yeah.”

He looks happy, and then sad, and then he turns so that I can’t see his face. It worries me. I want to know what’s wrong, but his body language tells me not to ask. But then he turns back around – as if he’d made up his mind about a conversation that I didn’t even know we were having – and blurts, “Does your boyfriend like comics?”

For a moment, I think he’s joking.

The word was a joke. But his expression is serious, and it looks like he expects a serious reply, and I am very, very thrown.

I swallow. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry.” He frowns at the table of new releases. “I don’t know why that sounded so harsh.”

My heart hammers against my chest, but I speak the words slowly. “Kurt. Isn’t. My boyfriend.”

Josh freezes. Several seconds pass. His eyes are fixed on a Tintin reissue. “He’s not?”

“No.” I pause. “No.”

“But…you’re always together. You’re so close.”

“We are close. Best friends close. Practically brother and sister close. Not – not – boyfriend and girlfriend close.”

“But…the necklace. You share keys…”

“Because we’re friends. Who hang out.”

His ears have turned a deep crimson. “So…you’ve never gone out with him?”

“No! I’ve known him since we were in diapers.” My mind is reeling. “I can’t believe you thought we were dating. For how long?”

“I— I guess this whole time.”

A new and terrible panic stirs within me. “This whole time as in this year or this whole time as in since Kurt was a freshman?”