A week after that fateful day, I found it nearly impossible to avoid Chris.

He had somehow found his way into all of my classes, not that it really hard with only 25 kids in your grade, and he lingered near the only entrance to the cafeteria, forcing me to take my lunches with Ms. Holly.

I was in my psychology class, trying to stop my gaze from drifting to where Chris sat in front of me by tracing the scratches in my desk with my eyes.

"It has come to my attention that students among our population have not been the kind outstanding people I know they are," Mr. Thompson said, drawing the attention of everyone in the classroom. "I'm going to revive a tradition that our school has not participated in for several years."

He produced a battered straw hat from behind his desk and held it aloft. "I placed each student's name on a slip of paper in this hat. Each of you will draw a slip, and for the next month, your fellow classmate will be your buddy."

A chorus of groans echoed through the room. Natalie raised her hand and glared at the teacher until he noticed her.

"Mr. Thompson, may we do an alternate activity instead?" She asked. "Or, if we get stuck with someone we would prefer to not spend time with, are we allowed to switch with someone else?"

"Natalie, I'm requiring every student to complete the assignment to my satisfaction. There will be no skipping out on it, no complaining, and no switching. I do recommend that you put effort into it because it will be worth a quarter of your grade this year."

"That's outrageous!" Mindy, the junior class representative, declared as she leapt out of her chair. "The only valid reason for making any assignment worth that much is if it's a test!"

Mr. Thompson nodded. "That is true, which is why this will be your final for the year. Please keep that in mind when you are interacting with the person whose name you draw. There will be no recovering from this if you failed, and know that I will be talking to everyone about the classmate who drew them."

Ignoring all the other hands that shot up in the air, he started around the room with that miserable-looking straw hat for the lottery to begin. Despite several attempts by students to see the slips of papers still in the hat, Mr. Thompson held it above their heads while they sifted through the contents.

Chris didn't reach into the hat immediately. Instead he muttered something to the teacher under his breath, and I saw Mr. Thompson nod his head once before looking through the remaining slips, handing Chris one.

My breath caught in my throat as I thought about what that small action had likely meant.

Had he chosen me despite the fact that I had been avoiding him for the past week? Was he just as intoxicated at the sight of me, all grown up, as I was with him?

Mr. Thompson came to me last, and he laid the final slip of paper onto my open laptop. I stared at the name written carefully across that white paper, and the hope that had fluttered in my chest quickly dropped into my stomach, dead.

I had been assigned Natalie for my project.

Dread became a horrible darkness that wrapped its greedy hands around my heart and squeezed until it hurt.

The bell rang, but there I remained, eyes still glued to that piece of paper that I longed to pick up with my non-existent hands and toss in the deep dark corner where Natalie deserved to dwell.

Instead, I closed my laptop on top of it and picked it up with my forearms. Mr. Thompson had made it clear that we couldn't exchange, and I wondered for a moment if the assignment had been intentional.

It couldn't have been though. He had taken care to make sure no one would purposefully draw the name they wanted.

Except for Chris.

What had Chris said to the psychology teacher that he had taken great care to find a certain name? What had he said about me, for I knew deep down that it was my name he had received?

I barely remembered lunch with Ms. Holly, and if someone had asked me a question about PreCal or what we were studying in our European history class, I couldn't have helped them.

After school, I raced to my house, ignoring the obvious gawking of the neighbors. I was on a mission, and they already though me strange, so what difference did it make?

Once in my room, I wedged my foot in the crack between my closet door and the wall, shoving it open. Behind my shoes was a box that I hadn't looked in for years, but it still made my heart flutter.

I shoved it out into the middle of my floor before sticking my big toe in the indent where one would normally place their fingers.

The lid flew up with a heavy groan, and as the dust flew up, the memories came with it.

"I found you some tulips," Chris laughed, grubby hands offering out the bouquet to me.

I stared at those hands, knowing that they had done something I would never do. Those tulips were from Mrs. Wenworth's prized garden, and Chris had taken more of a risk than necessary.

Rather than scolding him like I was tempted to, I smiled widely and gestured to the bucket tucked in the crook of my arm. "I'll treasure them forever even after they had faded and the petals have lost their softness.

My eyes found that dried bouquet, tied with a ribbon that he had clumsily knotted as he tried not to destroy the delicate flowers. I had never felt the softness of those petals with more than my eyes, but I had loved them and all that they told me about the seven-year-old who had given them to me.

"It glitters," I whispered, attention fixed on my newest fascination. "Look how pretty it is, Chris."

He gave me a cheeky grin, revealing the slightest dimple. "What, Ava?"

"The rock. The one right by that floating green thing," I told him, frustrated with the inability to point.

However, much like he always did, Chris knew exactly which one I was speaking of. Without another word, he waded into the stream, despite the fact that his mom would scold him for his wet pants, and dug his fingers into the streambed where I'd been looking.

I placed my arm on that tiny stone, the one that reminded me so much of Chris's eyes when he plotted mischief. That day, he had bent to my every whim after our disastrous first week of school, where every kindergartener had wondered what was wrong with me.

Without letting my eyes drift to the largest object in the box, I shut the lid. Chris didn't know that I had kept every single thing he had ever given me, and I had spent too much time in those memories the first year we had moved to Brookview.

Hearing the front door open as it announced the arrival of my parents, I pushed the box beneath my bed and rose to my feet.

My parents were unusually quiet at dinner, the two of them exchanging looks before their gaze turn to me. My dad opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, but every time he thought better of it and clamped his lips shut.

"Raven, we," he finally managed to get out after the first twenty times, but the rest of his sentence was interrupted by the doorbell.

An exasperated sigh escaped my dad before he could stop it, and I watched him push his chair back and clomp heavily to the door.

My mom stabbed her broccoli nervously while the pair of us waited for my dad to return. I felt bad for the vegetables, thinking about their plight to force my attention from what my dad had started to say.

I was sure they were going to bug me about getting prosthetics again. I didn't want those plastic and metal unfeeling pieces that would never truly replace what I had never had.

I didn't want those lumps that were made by people that would never know who I was and didn't really care beyond the paycheck they would receive.

My dad returned but didn't take a seat immediately. Instead, he fixed me with a look that told me who was at the door.

"Raven, do you want to talk to the boy out there?" He asked.

My head nodded before I could stop it, and he took a deep breath, raking a hand through his hair, which I noticed was more gray than sable now.

"You know the rules, young lady. The two of you may talk in your room, but the door must remain open at all times, and if your mother or I suspect something is going on up there, we will come check on you."

I nodded again like I had been born mute as well before pushing out of my chair and fleeing to the front door.

Sure enough, Chris stood in the doorway, his motorcycle parked crookedly on the street in front of my house. At the sight of me, he straightened and a nervous flash dashed through his eyes as he looked at me.

"Ava," he muttered, "you can't imagine what I felt when I saw you in that window a week ago. It's been seven years, but I've never given up trying to find you."

I swallowed hard, taking another step towards him. This time, more comfortable with the situation, I scrutinized him with the eyes of a seventeen-year-old girl who had a boatload of hormones racing through her veins, instead of a ten-year-old girl seeing her playmate.

His shoulders had widened, but he obviously still wasn't really into sports because he wasn't much more muscular than he had been. The ebony hair had gained a bit more curl than I remembered, and there was a new scar faintly cutting through his top lip.

"We're not ten anymore," I stammered out before feeling like a complete idiot.

Not that it had ever taken much with Chris around, but it felt different when I saw how much he had changed.

Rather than him giving me a crazy look, my childhood friend looked nervous, shuffling his feet and seeming to shrink slightly in front of me.

"Yeah, we most definitely are not ten anymore," he agreed. "Ava, I spent almost every day after you left looking for any trace of where you had gone. I had nearly given up when I finally found your name on the honor roll of Brookview High School."

Biting my lip, I choked out. "I wasn't aware you were searching for me."

Chris took step after step until we were nearly touching, and our breaths caught at the same time as we stood a hairbreadth away from each other.

"Seven years I looked for the girl I had told that I loved her, and I never once imagined what I would find. Ava, I have never seen another girl besides you, I have never had a better friend than you, and I most certainly have never imagined doing this with anyone else."

"Doing what?" I asked, watching his eyes darken and his head bend towards mine.

He didn't even bother to answer, and as his lips met mine in a tentative caress, I realized that it was a stupid question.

Something about this boy made my brain fizzle out, but I relished the feeling, deepening the kiss he had initiated.

It was a symphony of hard pressure and soft murmurs, of trying to snatch a breath and ignoring the way your lungs were bursting, of tasting him on your lips and tasting yourself on his.

I gave him everything I dared to, and I felt normal until I reached my non-existent hands to touch that dark, curling hair.

Then reality came crashing down upon both of us, and I remembered that we were standing in the front hallway of my house with the door open, and he seemed to remember that the girl he was kissing was missing her hands.

I addressed the door issue first because it was easier, kicking it shut before prodding Chris up the stairs to my room.

"Why did you come here?" I asked after I had settled onto my bed.

He fixed with that gaze that I remembered so well. It was the gaze of a boy who should have skipped at least three grades, the gaze of a boy who always had ideas running through his head.

"I'm going to accomplish what I failed at all those years ago. Ava, I'm going to give you hands."
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