Autumn

He said her voice was beautiful today.1

And the wind blew, and all the golden brown leaves, exactly the color of his corduroys, danced across the concrete building. The pattern reflected in her eyes, in the slight, nearly suppressed upturn of her lips, in the bubble that was building inside of her. She watched his shoes carefully, watched the old beat up chestnut leather being pushed up by his toes as he wiggled them (just like she could always see in class when he’d sit with his legs jauntily extended in front of him as he slouched in the chair). The clunky soles, which at the beginning of the year had been the same color as the leather, were now scratched and caked with mud from the last of September’s showers. 2

The concrete rose all around them, lifting to the sky the way only I.M. Pei could make it grow, creating a short but high-ceilinged tunnel, the Echo Chamber, at the end of the huge brick terrace. She knew that this was where he finished his last song with the boys a cappella group every Tuesday and Thursday, and could always press her ear against the cold glass of her dorm room window to listen to the reverberations. His voice was autumn personified, a warm tenor with enough schoolboy left to bring back all the times she’d sat confined in school meetings listening to him solo. She wanted to join him, knew all the songs by heart from listening to rehearsals, could harmonize at the drop of a hat to whatever he was humming. She usually did under her breath, her eyes focused not on the teacher but at the spot where his chocolate hair spiraled out of his head. The hair was always a little unkempt, windblown, the kind girls with confidence and a cup size could caress back into place. She would never do that, could never find the exact dress to make her pretty enough to step up and brush away his cowlicks, but she could harmonize.3

That day, the day her voice was beautiful, she had forgotten to hum under her breath with him. That day the quiz was so easy that she was mouthing the words before she knew what she was doing, was singing full tilt a third above him exactly in unison. That day he had turned around, his amber orbs filled with surprise, but hadn’t stopped singing – instead he finished and said that her voice sent chills down his spine. He smiled a little at her, not knowing that he’d just ruined her utterly and completely, that she wouldn’t do her homework that night, or the next, or the next after that. 4

And that day, as she stood outside the building last period blankly humming his music in the Echo Chamber, he’d stopped and smiled at her for a moment, shook his head, and walked past.5