Georgia
Alexa texts me on a Saturday morning, something simple and easy: coffee, the place on the corner, my treat. I say yes mostly because I could use an excuse to get off campus for an hour, away from the notebook still sitting in my desk drawer with its blank title and its unanswered question pressed into the bottom of the page. I need one morning where I don’t have to think about ledgers or golden eyes or the sound of something moving through the trees.
The coffee shop sits just outside the school gates, small and warm, mismatched chairs and the smell of something cinnamon baking in the back. It feels almost aggressively normal, and I find myself grateful for that, for the chipped mugs and the hiss of the espresso machine and the ordinary hum of people who have never heard the ice groan under their own feet. Alexa’s already there when I arrive, tucked into a corner table with two mugs in front of her, like she ordered for both of us before I’d even confirmed I was coming.
"I guessed," she offers, sliding one mug toward me as I sit down, her voice light. "Vanilla latte. Figured a skater probably doesn’t do much straight black coffee before noon."
"That’s a little too accurate."
"I have a gift," she says, smug and teasing, and the smile that follows makes the whole shop feel smaller and cozier just by being aimed at me.
We talk for a while about nothing important. Her classes, my classes, a professor we apparently share who’s notorious for pop quizzes nobody sees coming. It’s easy in the way conversations with Alexa always seem to be easy, like she’s constantly reading the room a half second ahead of everyone else in it, adjusting exactly how much space to take up, exactly when to lean in and when to let a silence sit comfortably instead of filling it. For a moment I almost forget to be careful around her, and that unsettles me more than anything she could have said.
At one point I mention, without really meaning to, a railing near the east stairwell that looked bent out of true when I passed it that morning, curved in a way that metal shouldn’t curve without a machine involved. Something shifts in Alexa’s face, subtle but real, a flicker of focus sharpening behind her eyes like she’s caught the scent of something underneath my words that I didn’t say out loud. I watch the shift happen and immediately wish I could take the sentence back.
"You noticed that," she says, her tone gentle, careful, no judgment in it at all.
"Hard not to. It looked wrong." I keep my voice light, testing the water, watching her face for any reaction the way I’ve started watching everyone’s face for reactions since I got here. "I’ve been noticing a lot of things lately. The quiet at night. The tree line past the rink. Now that."
"The howling," she says, matter-of-fact, like she’s confirming a fact rather than guessing at one.
"Yeah. That too." I wait, hoping she’ll say more, hoping this is the moment someone finally gives me a real answer instead of another smooth deflection. My pulse ticks up, foolishly hopeful.
Instead she reaches for her coffee, takes a slow sip, and when she speaks again it’s to ask about my old rink, what competitions I used to skate, whether I miss the ice back home. The redirect is so graceful I almost don’t catch it - away from the railing, away from the howling, toward something safer, without ever making it feel like a dodge. I answer anyway, because some small, tired part of me doesn’t mind being led somewhere easier for a while, and because I’m learning that the redirects themselves are answers, if I pay close enough attention to their shape.
It happens again ten minutes later, when I mention the twins - something offhand about how smoothly they moved during registration, like their joints worked differently. Alexa’s whole posture shifts, a careful stillness settling over her before she smoothly redirects into a story about Bella and Bianca’s family throwing an elaborate party every year that apparently nobody quite understands the point of, her words quick and bright. It’s a good story. It’s also, I realize halfway through it, not actually an answer to anything I asked. I laugh at the right places anyway, because the alternative is watching her carefully constructed calm come apart, and I don’t think either of us wants that today. I file the pattern away instead: railing, howling, twins. Three questions, three exits, no answers.
I don’t call her on it. There’s something about the way she does it, warm and careful and genuinely kind, that makes it feel less like being managed and more like being protected from something she doesn’t think I’m ready for yet. It’s different from Liam’s deflections, which always come wrapped in a joke, light enough to laugh off and forget by the next hallway. Alexa’s feel gentler. Heavier, somehow, like she’s carrying the weight of every question she can’t answer and doing her best not to let me feel the strain of it. I find myself wondering, not for the first time, what it must cost her to keep doing this - to like someone and lie to them in the same breath.
She looks at me now and then in a way that’s different from how anyone else at this school looks at me. Not curious, not assessing, not cataloging me against some invisible file the way Bianca did at registration. Careful. Attentive. Her eyes linger a beat too long, like she already knows something about where all of this is heading, and it makes her sad on my behalf before I’ve even gotten there myself. It’s the kind of look you give someone standing at the edge of a cliff they don’t know is there, and it makes my stomach tighten every time I catch it.
We finish our coffee slowly, the conversation drifting into easier territory - her sister’s terrible taste in music, the mural on the wall behind the counter, anything soft enough to fill the space without meaning much. Just as I’m gathering my things to leave, thinking the whole visit is winding down into something ordinary and uneventful, Alexa’s hand stills on her cup.
"You’re safe here, you know," she says, her voice gentle but underscored by a strangeness that doesn’t match the casual moment we’re in. "Whatever else is true."
I go still, my bag half slung over my shoulder. "What do you mean, whatever else is true?"
Her expression softens further, sadness moving in behind her eyes, quiet and immediate, like she said more than she meant to and is already regretting it. For a second she looks almost young, the easy confidence gone, replaced by something uncertain and tired that she’s clearly used to hiding better than this.
"Ask me again later," she says, her smile staying in place but turning sad at the edges, worn thin in a way that makes it clear this isn’t a subject she’s going to budge on, no matter how I try to push.
I try anyway, leaning forward, keeping my voice low like that might coax something loose. She shakes her head, gentle and immovable, and her fingers wrap tight around the ceramic mug, knuckles pale with the effort of holding something back. I know pressing won’t get me anywhere - the same way I’ve known with Liam, with Mandi, with every half answer I’ve collected since I got here. Only this time it hurts a little more to let it go.
Back in my room that night, I pull the notebook from my desk drawer and add a single line beneath the last entry, my handwriting small and deliberate:
*Alexa knows. Won’t tell me. Ask me again later.*
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