But she had seen him. She had spied him from her upstairs bedroom window when he came knocking at the kitchen door below, toting his earnest bag of tools—a blond boy so carefully combed. She had peeked at him through the mahogany railings carved with grapes as he entered the front hall and hung his coat in the closet beneath the stairs—his eyes so blue, his skin so fair. Taut and trim, collar, tie and cufflinks. Like a china figurine. Imagine touching his hair. Imagine if he blushed. She watched him cross the hall and disappear through the high arch of the big front room. She followed him.
She paused in the archway, her weight on one foot, and considered him a moment. Thought of plucking his suspenders. GRinned to herself, crept over to the piano and hit C sharp. He sprang back with a cry—immediately Materia feared she’d gone too far, he must be really hurt, he’s going to be really mad, she bit her lip—he clapped a hand over one eye, and beheld the culprit with the other.
The darkest eyes he’d ever seen, wet with light. Coal-black curls escaping from two long braids. Summer skin the color of sand stroked by the tide. Slim in her green and navy Holy Angels pinafore. His right eye wept while his left rejoiced. His lips parted silently. He wanted to say, “I know you,” but none of the facts of his life backed this up so he merely stared, smitten and unsurprised.
She smiled and said, “I’m going to marry a dentist.”
She had an accent that she never did outgrow. A softening of consonants, a slightly liquid “r,” a tendency to clip not with the lips but with the throat itself. What she did for the English language was pure music.
“I’m not a dentist,” he said, then rushed pink to his ears.
She smiled. And looked at the loose piano teeth scattered at his feet.
She was twelve going on thirteen.
Ann-Marie MacDonald
