Chapter 3 First Light

The first thing I noticed about Victor wasn't his face. It was his hands.

They were quiet hands, steady, careful, like they belonged to someone who'd practiced holding breakable things without letting them know they might shatter. The kind of hands that could coax a stuck window open, or untangle a necklace chain without judging you for the knot.

I met those hands on a Wednesday in September, the kind of morning that smells like pencils and new rules. Junior year. The halls at Riverview High were loud with somebody's Bluetooth speaker and the slamming of locker doors and that fake-chill laughter people wear the first week back.

I was carrying a box of homeroom sign-up sheets because Mrs. Keating decided the quiet girl should be the one to "help." (Apparently if you barely take up space, adults think you have infinite space to give.) The box tilted at the corner of the stairwell, paper clipping towards disaster.

Victor stepped in like he'd been waiting for this exact moment. One hand under the box, the other steadying my elbow. Nothing dramatic. Just enough pressure to tell gravity it could try again later.

"Got it," he said, voice low and even. "You okay?"

I was, technically. But his eyes were this impossible brown, dark and warm with a ring of honey near the pupil, and my brain did that thing where it forgets basic verbs. I nodded. (Powerful contribution, I know.)

He smiled, just a little, like he didn't want to scare me with his teeth. "I'm Victor. Sorry if I startled you."

"You didn't," I lied. (I startle like a feral cat. Ask anyone.)

We walked the next flight together, side by side, our steps falling into that accidental rhythm two strangers sometimes find. He kept his hands on the box until we reached Keating's door. When he let go, I felt the ghost of his steadiness leave with them.

"New?" I asked. His backpack was too clean, the straps still stiff, not yet punished by textbooks and bad decisions.

"Yeah." He shifted his weight. "We moved here last month. My mom thinks a fresh start is a cure-all." The smile edged wry. "I'm not sure I'm curable."

"You don't look like you need curing," I said, surprising myself with the honesty of it.

He tilted his head, like he was putting that sentence somewhere careful, a place he might want to find again.

"Thank you," he said, and then Mrs. Keating swept in, all bangles and command, and I was the volunteer again, and he was the new kid finding a desk. I thought that was that. A moment. A nice one.

But then he said my name.

"Ivy, right?" he asked at the bell. He said it like something soft, not like a plant that strangles trees but like the thing that turns brick beautiful.

"Right," I said, and the box felt lighter.

By Friday he was in my English class, two rows back. He didn't raise his hand a lot, but when he did, it was to say something that changed the oxygen in the room. (The kind of comment that makes you underline a sentence you didn't know needed underlining.)

We got partnered for the first essay, it was not fate, just seating charts and Mrs. Keating's title as Head Matchmaker of Unwilling Teens. Vivienne slid me a look across the room, eyebrows raised. Cute, her face said, even though her mouth didn't. I rolled my eyes back at her, a silent stop that meant absolutely nothing.

We met in the library that afternoon. He'd already pulled the book we needed. He'd already flagged a passage. He'd already written a rough thesis that actually made sense.

"You did homework for fun," I accused.

His laugh was quiet, the sound the ocean makes when it thinks no one's listening. "I read," he said simply. "It's like leaving without explaining to anyone where you're going."

"Exactly," I said, relief like a warm coat. "Everyone else thinks it's just words."

He glanced at me, and it wasn't a glance that skated over, he rested his eyes on me the way you rest your hand on something living. "Not everyone," he said.

I had to look away before my face did what it always does and told on me.

We didn't talk about personal things, nothing big, not yet. Just breadcrumb stuff. He likes old movies where the lighting is shadows and secrets. His mom works nights at the hospital. He makes tea because coffee turns him into a faulty firework.

"You don't seem like a firework," I told him.

He looked at our open book instead of me. "I'm trying not to be."

We finished the essay just as the librarian clapped the "five minutes to close" rhythm my entire body has memorized. Victor stacked our papers in a neat square, again with those careful hands, and I had the ridiculous urge to put my throat under them too, like here, steady this.

We stepped into the hallway and ran straight into Vivienne.

"Hi!" she sang, because she doesn't do hello in lowercase. Her hair was in a high ponytail that made its own rules. She looked at him first, and of course, clocked the newness and the cheekbones and the quiet before she looked at me. "Introduce me."

Some girls ask. Vivienne doesn't ask. She drafts.

"This is Victor," I said, and I hated that my voice felt like a whisper next to her neon.

Vivienne stuck out her hand, bracelets chiming. He took it, and the entire fluorescent hallway paused like it was watching.

"I'm Vivienne," she said. "Ivy's best friend since birth, practically. If you're nice to her, you can sit with us at lunch."

I nearly choked. "V."

"What? I'm building community." She flashed a smile at Victor that could probably charge a phone. "Are you nice?"

He didn't flinch. "I try to be," he said, and there was something in the way he said try that I liked. Honest. Like he knew the distance between a goal and a person.

"Great," she said, already bored with the concept of trying. "See you Monday!" And then she zipped away, leaving the smell of her coconut lotion like a signature.

Victor watched her go. Just a beat. Not long. Long enough that it lodged somewhere in my ribs and waited.

"She's... a lot," I said, trying to make it a joke.

"She seems good for you," he said softly. "Like light."

"I burn easily," I said, and we both laughed, and the beat shifted into silence.

He texted me that night at 12:07 a.m. (I remember because I'm always awake at a time that feels like a secret I'm keeping from myself.) The message went like

Victor: are you awake? probably not. the poem you mentioned in class, you know the one about brightness not always being kindness? do you have it?

Me: Awake. It's Ocean Vuong. I'll bring it on Monday.

Victor: thanks. Also I am sorry if this is weird.

Me: it is, objectively. But I don't mind.

Victor: cool. goodnight, ivy.

Goodnight, Ivy. He spelled my name like an answer.

I put my phone face down on my pillow and pretended I didn't hold that text like a glass bird.