When Aiden tells me to meet him at 5 pm outside of City Hall, I’m a little concerned. I mean, I drink coffee at 5 pm because that’s just who I am as a person, but it seems like a bit of a late hour for a coffee meet up.

The sun is dropping lower and lower in the sky, turning everything a bright coppery orange and casting long shadows. City Hall sits before me, a two-story brick building with a set of white colonnades lined up along the entrance. The late afternoon sunlight chases along the rows of windows, and the breeze makes the trees planted along the lawn’s edges dance. Aiden isn’t here yet, but my mind is all over him, bouncing back and forth between excitement and nervous dread. I’m still thinking about what Kasey said. In the week since our talk, I’ve found myself falling back into memories that I’ve done my best to avoid for years. There’s one in particular that won’t stop creeping back into my thoughts.

I was a freshman, and he was a sophomore. It was close to the start of the school year. At that point, I already knew a few hard facts about Aiden: that he was a seriously unpleasant guy to be around, that everyone in school either worshipped him or was scared of him, that Melanie was a permanent fixture at his side. Ralph, Noah, and Grant were always at his back, sneering and nightmarish, towering over me like I was something to be stepped on.

It was a hot day, and Kasey was in detention for mouthing off to our biology teacher, so I was alone waiting for her. School had let out, and most kids were either kicking around in the parking lot or already departed. I was perched on a picnic table with my journal open against my knees, my pen scratching at the paper. I had been trying my hand at poetry - as sad ninth-grade boys sometimes do - and was rereading one I was particularly proud of. I mean, I couldn’t tell if it was actually any good, but it was clearly the best one I had written.

A tall shadow fell over me, and before I knew what was going on, Aiden leaned over my shoulder.

I jumped and scrambled around to face him, my cheeks reddening. I was mortified at the possibility that he had been reading over my shoulder, and nervous as hell: even then, Aiden had movie-star good looks, sharpened by long hours of practice with the soccer team. He was all glossy brown hair and broad shoulders and loose soccer shorts. He was also an upperclassman, and a scary guy generally, and I just - let my journal slip right out of my hands.

I had to jump down from the table to pick it up, but Aiden got there first, scooping it out of the dirt and brushing it off. It was the kind of journal with a strip of fabric demarcating the page in use, so he was able to flip it right back open to the poem. To complete the nightmare, it turned out Ralph was with him, lurking just behind his shoulder. As always.

“Give that back!” I insisted, lunging towards Aiden. He glanced up and froze me in place with one look.

“What is this shit, Keane?” he drawled, running his eyes over the poem.

“Shouldn’t you be with Melanie?”

“She’s pissed or something. Apparently I haven’t been paying enough attention to her.”

“What is this?” Ralph asked, leaning over Aiden’s shoulder to see. “Are you writing poetry, Keane?”

I still remember how that one word sounded so stupid coming out of his mouth. He may as well have said are you being pathetic? and it would have had the same impact. I could only stand there, growing redder and redder as Aiden read the full length of the two-page poem that had seemed pretty good to me moments before, and which I now considered one of my darkest personal failures. Even more mortifying, it was about a boy I had a crush on at the time. At least I had kept it genderless, out of fear that the journal might be lost and all the secrets of my fragile ninth-grade heart revealed. A fear I’d previously told myself was irrational.

Either Aiden was a slow reader, or he read it twice. When he was finished, he looked back up at me, an eyebrow raised.

“It’s good,” he said, shocking me to my core.

“What -?”

“It’s great, Keane,” Ralph added, exchanging a sidelong glance with Aiden. “What’s, uh. What’s it about?”

I wondered if I hadn’t been extending these two enough credit. After all, I’d had few run-ins with Aiden and his group. Most of the bad things I knew about them at this point I’d heard second hand. My mom’s warm voice floated through my head: It never hurts to be kind, Jamie.

“It’s about someone I like,” I tried tentatively. “We just, um. Had a moment this past summer. I wanted to sort of, you know, channel my feelings.”

“Gotta channel your feelings somewhere,” Ralph agreed, his lip twitching. “What do you think, Aiden?”

Aiden flipped my journal around and pointed to my scrawled handwriting.

“What’s this part about?” he asked.

“Oh.” I quickly reread the lines, my dark mood lifting slightly. “There was just a moment where I kind of felt like we were speaking to each other without talking. It’s hard to describe, that’s why I used, um, metaphors.” I paused. “You guys really like it?”

“Totally,” Ralph said, pressing his lips together tightly.

“Can I keep it?” Aiden asked abruptly.

No, I should have said. It’s my favorite one and it’s about something super personal and I don’t know if I’ll ever write anything like that again and I don’t have it anywhere else. Instead, I was jumping with nervous excitement. Someone else had read something I wrote and thought it was good. And not just someone else. Aiden, notoriously apathetic and disinterested Aiden. So:

“Sure,” I said. “I mean, if you really like it.”

It was only when he and Ralph were walking away that they burst into wild, malicious laughter, and I realized. Apparently the situation was funny enough that Ralph almost doubled over. By that point it was far, far too late for me to do anything but go home and burst into tears and bury myself in my covers. The prospect of what Aiden might do with my poem was too horrifying: images of thousands of printed copies all over school haunted my thoughts all night. The only thing I could think of was to destroy the evidence. I snuck into the kitchen when I knew my parents were asleep, put my journal in the sink, and dropped a lit match on its pages. Then I went back to my room and lay awake all night, wondering what the hell Aiden was going to do with the ammunition I had just willingly handed him.

I was surprised the next morning to find no copies of my poem and no mocking sneers. I worked through the crowd to my locker, my heart leaping at irregular intervals, my eyes snagging on every face for a sign that they knew what happened. I had one tactical advantage: my locker was right next to Melanie’s, and she never seemed to notice me there. A possible source of badly-needed intelligence. I lingered until she came coasting down the hall with her friend Dahlia.

“So what happened with Aiden?” Dahlia asked, as Melanie opened up her locker. “Did he apologize?”

“Oh my god, babe, I haven’t even told you yet!” Melanie smiled brightly. “He totally came around. He was like… Do they shower down on you in your bed, do you smile in your sleep when they find you, the thousands of kisses I send from my dreams…”

An exact line from my poem. I nearly dropped the textbook I was holding. Dahlia, apparently, was equally as shocked.

“What? He said that? But he barely ever… I mean… says anything.”

“No, he didn’t say it. Would you believe this? He wrote me the sweetest poem. Like, I cried when I read it. I might let him get to third base tonight, honestly.”

“Time on for good behavior,” laughed Dahlia. “Wow, who knew he had such a sensitive side?”

So, yeah. That was the last poem I ever wrote, and the last time I dared to keep a journal. It’s far from my worst interaction with Aiden in high school, but it stands out starkly among the others, because it was the first time I realized that I could, under no circumstances, ever trust this person again. And, just as importantly: avoid at all costs.

“Jamie!”

I turn, dragged back to the present from my shit-awful memory. Present-day Aiden is striding down the paved path from City Hall towards the spot where I’m standing on the sidewalk. Right, I think, trying to shake off the memory. He doesn’t call me Keane anymore. I raise a hand to wave as he comes to a stop before me.

He’s holding two steaming macchiatos in his hands.

“Oh, I thought we were getting coffee together,” I manage, wishing I hadn’t let myself go down the rabbit hole of my unpleasant memories.

“We’re having coffee together,” Aiden corrects. “I figured you wouldn’t mind taking the coffee to go?”

He holds one out, and I accept it.

“So?” I ask, fitting my fingers around the cup. “Did you get me my orchid yet?”

“I’ve made contact with my people in Algeria and Tunisia,” he answers, taking a sip of his coffee. “They’ll get the ball rolling. I’ll be choppered in later. When the time is right, of course.”

“Of course. Obviously.”

“Are you okay? You seem a little…” Aiden pauses and tilts his head to the side. His smile flickers out. “Oh. Second thoughts?”

I think about lying to him, and I think about telling him the truth. He shifts uncomfortably, then quickly says:

“It’s really fine if you don’t want to come.”

“Where are we going?”

“There’s something I wanted to -” He breaks off, fidgeting, and then says, very quickly: “Look, if you don’t want to stay, you can go, but there’s something I’ve been kind of excited to show you all week. Will you just come look really quickly? We’re not going farther than right there.” He uses his coffee to gesture towards City Hall.

“We’re going to City Hall?”

Aiden holds up a white plastic badge with his picture and name printed neatly on its surface, along with the state seal.

“I work there now.”

I’m still hesitating, honestly, but my curiosity is starting to overcome everything else. The memory is finally clearing away from my mind; it was clouding my vision before, but now I can see Aiden clearly. All the things about him that are different. He’s in a nice pair of slacks and a black crewneck sweater, with the collar of a dress shirt peeking out. There’s a dark area of stubble on his cheeks and chin where his beard is already attempting a comeback. But the biggest difference is in his expression, how he’s looking at me. The part of me that balled up in my memory unwinds slightly, and I wonder if it’s possible that he really was thinking about me all week, waiting to show me something.

I’m probably going to die if I don’t find out what it is, so.

“Lead the way, then,” I tell him, and his smile returns at once.

~~~~

Our shoulders brush as we make our way into City Hall. It’s late enough in the day that most people are on their way out. There’s a general flow of employees headed towards the door, pressing us closer together. We head all the way down the hallway, to a door at the far end. Aiden falls silent, but he seems strangely excited. He keeps glancing at me and away, his hands bouncing at his side until they’re busy unlocking and opening the door.

He lets us into a small, square office. There are two tall windows against the back wall, letting in the last few sunbeams of the day. Stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes sit closed against the wall to our right, and a desk against the one to the left. There’s a laptop on the desk; next to it, a bunch of equipment that’s unfamiliar to me. Aiden’s bag is on the chair, and I can see a corner of his map sticking out from one of the pockets.

Aiden shuts the door behind us. He crosses to the windows and lowers the blinds on both, then closes them, plunging us into darkness.

“Um.” Alarm bells begin ringing faintly in my head. “What are you - what?”

I can just see through the darkness that he’s pulling on a pair of what appear to be gloves made of white cloth. He steps up to the desk and presses a button. A dim light flickers on from one of the machines, casting a pool of buttery light onto the desk’s surface.

“Put your coffee anywhere but on the desk,” Aiden instructs.

I’m now legitimately wondering if I’m about to get murdered or something. I set my cup down on the windowsill, then linger there in case I need to leap through the glass and make an escape. Aiden is holding an envelope and shaking something out of it. He twists to look at me over his shoulder.

“Come here,” he says, and lord help me, I do. Aiden gives me an amused look as I slowly make my way over to his side. This is a small office and a small desk, and I have to sidle up kind of close to him to see what he’s doing.

I blink in surprise, looking down at the area under the dim light. Aiden has a number of photographs laid out in neat rows, all in black and white. He offers me my own pair of gloves, and I pull them on. They’re made of soft cotton, as it turns out.

“You can pick them up, but be careful.”

I pick one at random and hold it a little closer to the light. It’s a shot of a group of men clustered in front of some small wooden houses, evergreen trees towering behind them. Two of the men are in aprons, but the rest wear suspenders, hats, mustaches, and collared white shirts. I set it down and pick up another: rows of white houses, tiny from the high-up perspective of the photographer. A sloping mountain covered in trees is in the background. The next photo is of a wooden bridge across a river, wrapped in a thick blanket of conifers. A woman stands in the middle of the bridge, holding the hand of a little child.

“What are these?” I breathe, my voice low. I feel like there’s something reverential about them, and I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“It’s Ketterbridge,” Aiden explains, and his timbre matches mine in the darkness. “I’m digitizing the city’s archives. I thought you might like to see these, because, you know, you love Ketterbridge.”

“Seriously?” I look down at the photos again, floored. “I had no idea our town was so - old, I guess. Look at this!” I take up the group shot of the men again, staring. “Look at these mustaches! You could grow one like this, I bet.”

“Trust me, just-the-mustache is not the look for me.”

“I can’t believe this is Ketterbridge,” I murmur, half to myself.

“So…” Aiden looks at me appraisingly. “You like it? Good surprise?”

“It’s fucking amazing!” I blurt out, and Aiden’s expression collapses into a wide smile. For some reason, we both burst out laughing.

He’s standing close to me and he smells like the caramel from his coffee and Kasey’s voice is ringing in my ears: this is an entirely new way that he could mess you up, Jamie...

Oh, god, I think helplessly. Oh, no.