Every Little Detail

Four

I look up at V he's staring at a textbook, but I'm positive he's not even reading it. His eyes aren't moving across the page. He's leaning back in his chair, across the wooden table from me. We're in a bookshop today, we had given up on cafés. The air is still and everything, even the sound of my breath, is muffled. There is nobody else around here that I can see or hear right now. There is a bookshelf not five feet behind him full of books, Manga I realize, and my mind goes to Sakura.

I got another letter today, and I have it with me, but I didn't get a chance to read it yet. I am supposed to be studying right now and if I start reading a letter V might tell me to get back to work. No, he won't, he's too nice, but the letter, it's not worth the risk. What if he asks to see it? What if he asks who Sakura is, and what would I tell him then? "Oh, just a girl who lives in Japan and has never met but has only talked with letters that just show up and somehow also translate the language perfectly it seems. not like Google Translate would."

I wait, and wait, the seconds tick by, and I'm anticipating something, but I'm not sure what. I finally tell myself that V is too absorbed in the lame homework we were given, and I pull out the letter. I start to read it under the table.

Dear Aya,

I just found out there are these girls that know something about this. I'm not sure how they know. But a girl at my school was injured and robbed by them because they said that the reason they did it was because they didn't like that she was a witch or something. That she was talking to someone she didn't know. Just like us. This sounds exactly like what we are doing. But I'm not sure why they are so angry at her. Maybe they are just jealous that someone would be able to talk to someone that they don't know and have a friendship with them. I'm not sure but these gir-

"What is that?" I look up and see V looking right at the paper I'm holding. He taps his fingers on the table lightly.

"A letter," I say, trying to sound casual. I must not sound casual at all because V looks very suspicious.

"Who writes handwritten letters these days?"

"Mrs. Ali had us do that the other week," I say.

"That was for class. And I think it was because we could see the improvement in our handwriting when we read it in the future." I don't tell him I don't have the letter to read in the future.

"Yeah but," I start, but I have nothing to finish the sentence. Rain pours down from the sky out the window.

V starts messing with his wallet, opening and closing it. He had it out to get his library card out and check out some books earlier. He opens and closes it, and opens and closes it. A photograph flutters out like a little leaf in fall. It falls on the table. I look at it. And then the man I am looking at transforms into V in my mind. But more than that I recognize the man. He was all over the news two years ago for murdering three kids. I look at the photograph and pieces fall into each other. The man in the photo must be his father. It makes sense, V moved here about two years ago and now that I think about it, nobody heard much about his family. I doubt anybody did. This must be his father. But . . . V? He is so sweet, a perfect angel, the boy all the girls like with one exception — me. But how is this?

V's face is stricken like someone just slapped him across the face. He's looking at the photograph. But I realize why he is so stricken. He doesn't want anyone to know.

But I stop thinking about that when a speaker of an idea forms in my head and forms into a thought, and then a sentence, "I show you this letter and I don't tell anyone. I won't say who your Pa is." I feel a little twist of guilt threatening V, I might not have a crush on him, but he is really nice.