He wakes up to the bright light shining against his eyelids, but even before he opens his eyes he knows that can't be right, because his internal clock is telling him it's the middle of the night (or morning, rather), and as soon as he opens his eyes, he knows he was right. The red letters of the alarm clock glow 2:36, and he wonders why anyone is up at this ungodly hour, before he rolls over in bed and finds his answer.
Her nose is buried in a thick book, Eyes darting rapidly back and forth as she reaches to turn the page. Her lip is caught between her teeth, and she is so enraptured by whatever story she is reading that she hasn't even noticed that he has been woken by the lamp she has turned on.
"What are you reading?" He mumbles blearily in Hebrew, since his mind is still to sleepy to properly translate to English.
She looks up, startled, at the sound of his voice, and closes her book with a snap. The cover has two people on it dressed in clothes that are probably from the seventeen or eighteen hundreds, a man and a woman holding hands, and he thinks it's probably one of her silly romances, but he can't make out the title, so he waits patiently to hear it before he mocks her.
"Emma." She turns the book to face him, and he can see the name written in old English script, along with the smaller name of the author.
He smiles ruefully. "I was hoping to mock you about the trashy romance novel, but now I can see that will be impossible. I can hardly make fun of you for reading a classic." He turns his back to the bright light and shuts his eyes again, but when she doesn't answer immediately, he turns back around and gives her another look.
She's still staring at him, but not as if she's angry, more like she's wondering what exactly he is.
"It is a classic, correct?" He ventures, "Because that lady, Jane Austen, she wrote that other one you like, did she not? Um…." He trails off as he searches for the answer to the unasked question. "The one with all of the 'P's' in the title…"
"Pride and Prejudice," She finishes, switching abruptly back to English. "Yes, she did write that one also. It is my favorite book."
She still is looking at him as if he walked out of the pages of the book she was just reading, top hat and all, and he looks down to make sure he hasn't turned orange while he slept.
"Should I have known that?" He asks. It is entirely plausible that she is angry at him for something, but he can't remember anything amiss the day before, so he doesn't think that is the case.
"No. I do not think anyone knows that," she dismisses him as she opens her book and resumes her reading.
"What is it about?" He asks, still trying to rectify the situation, whatever it is.
"A girl named Emma," she says, playfulness returning to her face as he rolls his eyes at her obvious answer.
In a quick flash of movement, he seizes the book from her grasp and searches for the plot summary, but it is neither on the back nor the inside cover, so he hands the novel back to her and looks pleadingly at her.
"She falls in love with her best friend," she says, "And I was merely thinking that the idea of falling in love with someone you have known for years, someone who has been there every day, and then all of a sudden, something changes in the way that you look at them… It is beautiful, is it not?"
Her eyes have gone soft in the golden lamplight, like she is thinking of someone special, and he feels slightly queasy at the thought of her thinking of someone else. Else? No, thinking of someone at all. Because she is too young, she is not ready. Right?
"Leah," he starts cautiously, "Is there something you want to tell me? About someone?"
"Like who?" She asks him, her eyes changing back from molten emerald to plain old olive, "You mean am I romantically involved with someone? Because the answer is no. Not at the moment."
And then she closes her book again, shuts off the lamp, and within minutes she is breathing softly, leaving him sitting upright in bed in the dark, pondering her answer. Not at the moment. Does that mean she has someone in mind? A prospect? He lays down again, knowing that he won't fall asleep again, because her answer will aggravate him all night, while she slumbers like an innocent little lamb.
One of the things he has always envied about her is the ability she has to lose herself. In sleep, in a book, in music or a movie. She immerses herself so deeply in the other world that her problems from this one disappear for a while. Leah has always been the one to find solace in another universe, Samuel has always been the one to stew over events for days, rethink situations over and over and try to make something go differently. Leah gets so involved in someone else's universe that sometimes she loses her way in her own, Samuel buries himself so deeply in his own problems that he has trouble paying attention to anyone else's.
They are so opposite in many ways that it is easy for them to be themselves, and know that the other will take care of their weaknesses. She will be blunt, he unfailingly polite. He will make friends, she will seem standoffish. She will act her way out of any situation, he will find a logical way to get out. His feelings simmer beneath the surface, hers are easily readable on her face. But when she gets lost in another world, he draws her back to this one, and when he gets lost in himself, she lets him see the brightness of the world again. They are magnets, North and South coming together and sticking, changing each other's world, because they are perfect opposites.