Luke wasn't supposed to be dreaming. He wasn't even supposed to be asleep. He was supposed to be adjusting the focus on a darkroom enlarger. Instead, he kept pressing the button on an inoperable Poké Ball, trying to recall Zoe from where she lay prone. Deep, bleeding cuts covered every inch of her body.

But she wasn't "out" yet—not according to the referee. She strained to push herself up.

Stop. Please. Stop.

The Typhlosion's claws came down once more, knocking her flat again and drawing even more blood.

The Poké Ball still didn't work.

Please. Stay down. Stop moving. Please.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. Wendy was there—hazy, but there. Now twelve, now fifteen, nothing the same from moment to moment except the eyes and the smile, taking in the scene like nothing was wrong.

Her lips moved. "If you can't take it, just leave." It was Aaron's voice.

Chapter 9

Going over Photos

November 6th, 1993

Luke shook and started from sleep. The red-lit surfaces in the darkroom swirled before his eyes as they readjusted. When he could finally see, he checked the wall clock. Twenty minutes had disappeared. He hung his head.

What a mistake it had been to make a habit of thinking about Wendy and her letters before sleep. After giving him three good dreams, and all it had done since was seep her into his nightmares. An even worse decision, downright inexplicable, had been how he told Wendy she'd featured in a dream of his. That, no doubt, was what had emboldened her to broach the subject more decisively in her latest letter:

A meeting.

A meeting which under no circumstances could he allow to happen.

This couldn't go on. It was impossible for Wendy to remain a source of relief for his anxiety while she was also its chief cause. She had to cease to be one, the other, or both. "Both" was the only option that seemed realistic. All he had to do was stop writing back and let the passage of time do its work.

He stood up, shaking his head at his hollow reasoning. If there were any way to forget about her, he would have managed it by now. He knew he was going to write back. He knew he wouldn't go a day without re-reading one of her letters. He knew that every time he kept Zoe in her Poké Ball at night to give her a break from the nightmares, he would spend the following day stumbling around like a worthless zombie, and that was that.

It was time to get back to work. He turned on the enlarger's light, projecting the negative onto the table. After securing a dud sheet of photo paper in place, he set the focus-finder on top of it and looked through the lens. With a few too many clumsy touches to the enlarger's height knob, the grains were sharp.

He turned the light off, swapped the dud for a test strip, and covered seven eighths of the strip in a motion he could repeat with his eyes closed, which was essential on a day like today when he couldn't keep them open. Light on for three seconds of exposure, uncover another eighth of the strip, repeat. He managed it without drifting off again.

Moving the test strip through the tubs containing developer fluid, stop-bath, and fixer respectively was even more automatic for Luke than the exposure phase. When it was ready, he took the strip out the door and around the two light-proof corners into the well-lit section of the co-op studio for examination. The nine-second swath was a hair too bright, while the twelve-second one was well too dark, so he decided to go with nine and a half seconds for the full print. It didn't look like he needed to change the contrast filter, either.

Soon, back in the darkroom, he had the print exposed, and it was on to the tubs again. Fifteen seconds into agitating the developer tub, he found himself bending down and reaching for the envelope on top of his pack. There was no helping himself. He read the contents again in the dim, red light.

October 26th, 1993

Dear Luke,

I must admit, I'm envious of dream-me for how she got to see you. I'm glad she was a good conversationalist as dream-people go, but I hope dream-you returns the favor and comes to see me one of these nights. If we could go back to Mt. Moon, maybe taking advantage of the dreaminess to make the hike faster and easier, that'd be the perfect dream for me. Dreams aside, I still have the picture of the moment Sharpy evolved, and it's still my favorite ever. That's the one I go back to over and over.

Something I think more about now is how much could have gone wrong when we pulled that off. We could have missed the day of the full moon, or misjudged how much time we needed to climb the mountain, or Sharpy could have gotten lost, or your camera could have broken… We bet a lot of time (and walking…) on a lot of things going right. I don't remember really worrying about the what-ifs at the time, though. It was almost like an anti-Aesop story, one where I took it for granted that I could absolutely count on you, myself, and Sharpy, and I was proven right and everything was perfect. And I mean everything: I remember you had a lot to say about how much better the picture could have come out, but I still think it's perfect.

Okay, I guess that's enough about my favorite subject lately. Back to the subject of pressure, thank you for sharing that with me. I know it can't be an easy thing to talk about, but I think it's important that we do, so I appreciate it. I'm really, really sorry I missed how much this was hurting you, and I wish we had fixed it before things got where they did.

I know what you want to write now because you wrote it before regarding Nadine—that I shouldn't beat myself up over things I didn't see or handle well when we were all younger and stupider. It was very kind and comforting of you to write that, but I also know that not seeing when other people are having trouble is a problem I still have, and I don't want it to be a problem in the future. Just, like, being able to tell when "I'm fine" doesn't actually mean "I'm fine." And if I can't do better at that by myself, I want the people in my life to know, "If you're hurting, I might miss it, so please, please tell me about it, because I want to help."

Well, along the lines of talking more, I should cut to the chase: Now that I know something of the part stress about training, battling, badges and everything had in all this grief we went through, I think it would be good for all of us if you, me, and Aaron could meet in person and air things out. I know that's asking a lot. I don't want to push you, but I really think this is something we can put behind us for good if we all talk. It already means the world to me that you and I have each other again through these letters, and it would mean the universe if it could be all three or even all four of us someday. I don't believe we need to have these scars on us for life.

I'm going to be in Goldenrod for two weeks to help out at the JCS offices. I hope you get this while I'm in town, and if you do, that we can see each other. Until then, I hope dream-you pays me a visit.

Yours,
Wendy

After he pulled the print out of the last tub with the tongs and laid it in a tray, Luke read the second paragraph again—the one about the mountain. There was no other event in his life that brought to mind such a wide range of emotions as evolving Sharpy. And when it came to remembering the most important picture from that night, he was always torn between what a miracle it was to have been there to take it at all—much less how he timed the exact moment right—and how nothing about it as photography was particularly good.

He brought the wet print out of the darkroom and into the light, then slapped it onto the wall, where it stuck. To his genuine surprise, he liked it. The Ariados's web in the foreground popped right off the page, and the trainers walking up the hill behind it in half-focus just barely suggested the idea of caught flies without being too cute. It just needed one more pass so he could burn a few spots that were too bright.

He bet Wendy would like this one. She may not accept that a random shot from the National Park's weekly Bug-Catching Contest was plain better than the one that captured the most magical moment of their lives… but she would still like it.

December 16th, 1990

"You weren't kidding about 'no light at all,'" Luke heard Wendy say. She was sitting on a stool a few feet from him in the darkroom behind his family's store.

"If these were black-and-white, we could have a red light on," he explained. "Black-and-white photo paper basically ignores red light, but color pictures need colored light to work, so any light at all messes them up."

"Ahhhhh, I get it now. Sounds a lot harder."

Luke shrugged, not that she could see it. "You get the hang of it."

That was enough of playing the tour guide. It was time to suck it up and face the music. He put the negative tray in the enlarger and, holding his breath, turned it on to decide how to crop the final image. He adjusted the focus enough to tell what he was looking at.

Terrible.

There was no need to even make a test strip. He covered his eyes and couldn't stop himself from groaning.

"What's wrong?" asked Wendy, her voice intolerably full of earnest concern.

"…It sucks."

It had been obvious enough from the roll's contact sheet that it wouldn't be good, but it was different to see just how bad it was. Exposure, composition, depth of field…. nothing about it was even okay.

"Really? Won't it look good when the colors aren't backwards?"

Luke couldn't bring himself to answer. Six weeks of walking that nearly crippled him and left him sore for weeks after… endless grief from Aaron for putting them so far off course… hours and hours of extra training to placate him… the final hike up the mountain and every care taken to get the shot just right…

All for nothing.

A blind hand touched his arm. "Luke?"

He took a deep breath. Obviously, it wasn't for nothing: It was for Sharpy. And for Wendy. Even if the picture was junk, it was for her, so he had to print it. He wiped his eyes, hoping she couldn't tell.

"I'll see what I can do with it."

It took nearly two hours. Over and over, he had to reframe, rebalance, dodge, and burn the thing until the test prints began to approach acceptability. Finally, after one last redo to correct his mistake of leaving it in the first tub too long for the developer-temperature, it was as ready as it would ever be.

Still, Luke took close to five minutes staring at it in the studio. He needed to be surer than sure there was nothing more he could do for it. All the while, he was aware of Wendy looking at it over his shoulder. He could tell she was itching to offer her opinion, which he knew would be positive. But she'd held it in since the first test print, when he'd made it childishly obvious that he didn't want to hear it. That had been almost as embarrassing as this was about to be.

"…Okay. It's this one."

Wendy clapped, jumped up and down, and let a sound escape her lips that approached the limit of human hearing.

"Hey, how about these?" asked Amanda.

Wendy and Amanda were picking out photos for the JCS's quarterly magazine from a pile strewn over their shared desk. While Wendy was busy comparing the merits of a pouncing Persian and a snoozing Snorlax, both more for the alliterative potential of the caption than anything, Amanda had turned her sights on the envelope by Wendy's bag.

"I mean, these are really cool," said Amanda, flipping between Wendy's favorite picture in the world and likely third-favorite, which Luke had left for her in Olivine. "Wish they were both in color, though."

"Uh…" said Wendy, stepping over and gently taking them back. "No, we can't use these. They don't belong to me."

Amanda looked confused. "What, did you steal 'em?"

"No, no, I mean… My friend took these. He gave them to me to have, not to put in a magazine."

"Oh, right. Your pen-pal."

Wendy blushed a little. "Yeah. That's him."

"Can I take another look? I'll be careful."

Wendy nodded and handed them over, but she kept her eyes on them while Amanda laid them out. She supposed there was no hurry about the magazine.

"So, wait…" said Amanda, the gears in her head apparently turning. "That's Sharpy in the center, there?"

Wendy grinned.

"How have I never heard about this?" Amanda must have noticed the slight change in Wendy's face, because she immediately added, "Sorry, right, you don't talk about back then much. But seriously, like, this is amazing. I know loads of people who don't even think it's a real place."

"Well, that's on them," said Wendy. "They flew a helicopter over it in like, the fifties. Luke said there's been pictures from up close before, too."

He'd also said the other pictures—the ones taken by adults working for universities and newspapers—were leagues better, but she felt no need to mention this. She didn't doubt he was "right" by whatever criteria photographers chose to obsess over. What said more to her, though, was how out of the dozens of pictures on the table—many of them donated by professionals—Amanda, an uninterested party, had still gravitated toward a picture Luke had never been satisfied with. Whatever the mistakes were in its making, the result spoke for itself.

She found herself wishing for a time machine just to tell twelve-year-old Luke about this.

Not long after Luke was done printing the best picture in the world, Wendy found herself together with him in his small bedroom. Much of the scarce wall space was covered with maps and flags of various countries. There was also a dramatic poster for the 1986 Indigo League Tournament featuring an Onix towering over a Gengar, which she now understood to be Mr. Andersen's own photograph.

It was strange how conscious Wendy was of being in a boy's room. She'd never thought twice about being in Aaron's room, but being in Luke's was "being in a boy's room" for some reason. She didn't even know why it was supposed to be any kind of big deal. Maybe she had heard and read the words together often enough that she couldn't help but be aware of it.

Luke pulled a small album from the bottom of a cardboard box. "Okay, here it is." The oldest pictures he'd ever taken, per her request. He opened to a random page. "See? It's all junk. May I put it back now?"

"You can't get off that easy," she said, sticking out her palms.

Luke sighed and surrendered the book. Wendy sat on the edge of his bed and started from the first page.

As Luke had warned her numerous times, these were all from disposable cameras. Even she could feel a difference between them and the pictures he'd printed himself over the course of their journey. Everything was either too dark or too bright, and a lot of it was blurry. The first few pages were all from Christmas—she seemed to remember they would be from a camera he'd been given that day. There were pictures of lights, decorations, several of Mr. and Mrs. Andersen, and a few with unfamiliar faces.

"Who's this?"

"That's my uncle. He only comes over once a year."

A few identifications later, Wendy came across a snowy landscape. Christmas pictures were nice, but this was what she was looking for: Luke's eye for nature. "Where's this?"

The photo was upside-down from Luke's perspective. He turned his head. "That's a few miles south of town. I was…" He trailed off. Wendy waited for him.

Outside, the wind scraped a tree branch against the side of the building. The house was empty except for them. The store downstairs was closed on Sunday, Luke's parents were out shopping, and Aaron was off exercising his team. So, it was Wendy in a boy's room along with the boy it belonged to and nobody else nearby. She remained unsure of why this felt significant to her.

Luke continued. "…I was trying to take a picture of that boulder in the middle of the frame, I think. I didn't get close enough, so you can't really tell."

Wendy could see it. She had paid more attention to the mountains in the distance and pine trees up close, but the boulder had a neat shape. "Well, I like it. The rest is still good."

"The rest is an accident. It's not bad-bad, but it doesn't count."

"Why not? Didn't you say you have to get lucky, sometimes?"

Luke scratched the back of his head. Again, he took a while to answer. "It's not enough to be lucky. You have to know what's lucky when you see it. You have to be ready for it, know what to do with it, and be really, really patient for it. Otherwise, you won't be lucky often enough."

Wendy considered whether this made sense. She struggled to wrap her head around the idea that luck wasn't just luck.

"Here," said Luke, turning again to the cardboard box. "Let me show you what I mean." He knelt to dig.

Wendy set the pictures aside and stood behind him. She bent over to see better, putting her head closer to his than she really had to because she felt like it. Some of her hair fell on his shoulder in the process, so she brushed it behind her ear.

Soon, Luke came up with another album and flipped through it. "Okay, this one." He pointed to a stark, black-and-white photo of a Farfetch'd swatting away a Raticate with its leek.

"Ooh, neat," said Wendy. She reached down, and he passed the album to her.

Predictably, Luke began with self-criticism. "So, I botched the development and that's why the midtones are missing, but the point is that the Farfetch'd hung around for like, thirty minutes before it did anything interesting."

Wendy stood upright and studied the picture up close. The motion was only a little blurry. The delightfully fierce expressions on the faces of both Pokémon remained clear.

Luke continued. "So, what I mean is that even though you have to be lucky since you can't control the Pokémon, if you can wait that long, and you recognize what'd be a good shot, you'll get lucky before someone who…"

He trailed off again. She tried to guess the words he was looking for. "Someone who gives up?"

Luke looked away. "…Yeah."

Wendy wondered what had him distracted. There was nothing where he was looking except bare floor. She tried to bring him back to the topic at hand. "Well, no wonder you get all this good luck! You stick to things better than anyone I know!"

Luke said nothing, and continued to stare at nothing. It puzzled her.

Then, as happened more and more often of late, something told her to get closer: to touch his arm, his shoulder, any part of him. It was the very thing to do for a friend in a moment like this. It was also—if she was honest—strangely, inexplicably appealing to her.

Her hand moved almost on its own, but she pulled it back again. A simple, friendly nudge suddenly didn't feel like nearly enough. All she could think about now was how to get as much of her as close to as much of him as she could find a reason to.

Whim took over. She flipped through the second album for a picture that interested her enough to ask about. As she searched, she flopped backwards onto his bed. Then she rolled over and propped herself up by her elbows, still holding the album in her hands. Soon, a lovely shot of a snow-covered cabin came up that demanded a story. "Hey," she said over her shoulder, "tell me about this one."

This got Luke's attention again. He stood up, but she kept the album in front of her at an angle he couldn't see from there. That was fair, wasn't it?

She patted the spot on the bed beside her.

Luke was stuck on the fifth paragraph. He was sitting at a table in the Goldenrod Public Library with a pen in his hand and his back to a corner. There had to be some way of telling her they couldn't meet in person which didn't amount to saying goodbye all over again. There didn't seem to be any option besides willfully misinterpreting her words. In any reading but the most litigious of her last letter, it was clear she had asked to see him even if Aaron wasn't there, too. It was easy to veto a meeting between all three of them, so he might be able to get away with turning that down while remaining silent on the point of the two of them alone. It just meant swallowing some bile.

He let his forehead fall to the table. She was in the same city. He could look up the JCS office's listing in the nearest phone book. She would be over the moon if he did. But he wouldn't. He was going to leave her a letter, then leave town right after that. All to keep a status quo which he knew couldn't last.

Lifting his head up, he turned the paper over and forced himself to think about something else for a while. He stared at the ceiling; he got up and paced back and forth; and he looked at the row of foreign language instruction books again.

The thought had come to him earlier that afternoon and kept resurfacing: The only reason he could keep up this just-distant-enough correspondence with Wendy was because, as a trainer, he was nearly impossible to reach. When he had an actual permanent address again, a home phone number, and maybe an office number, what then? How was he supposed to stay exactly this far away from her?

He couldn't. It was either get closer, which was impossible, or go where she couldn't reach him. So again, he found himself pulling the Introductory Galarian textbook off the shelf.

Galar or Unova would be far enough. Every kid learned the alphabet and a handful of useful words before age ten, and he'd gotten further than most of the kids in his class. He could learn enough to survive in either region in a few months, and his chances of getting work as a photographer would be the same no matter the local language. Flipping to a random page, there were already several words he recognized and even a sentence he could read.

He could have thrown up on the spot.

The book went back on the shelf. He took his seat again, flipped the letter right-side-up, and put his head in his hands. It was the same thing all over again: planning to leave someone he couldn't stand to be without, much less tell her it was over.

Wendy patted the spot on the bed beside her. Luke couldn't muster the willpower to tell her to get up herself and just hand him the album, so he played along and lay down next to her, propping himself up on his elbows in a mirror of her posture. She moved the album in front of him and pointed at the picture in question with her far hand, leaning her left shoulder into his right to stay balanced. "This one."

It was a fisherman's cottage near up near the Lake. This one had been a pain to print, so Luke could still remember each thought that went into shooting it. He gave Wendy the rundown on auto-pilot as other, worse, unignorable thoughts ran roughshod through his mind.

Why, why, why did Wendy have to say he was good at sticking to things? Had she never noticed how whenever she said something to that effect, never once did he thank her for it or even acknowledge it? Did she honestly not know this was the last thing he wanted to hear, especially from her?

Of course not. If she knew, they wouldn't still be friends. The question would then come up, "Why don't you like being told you're not a quitter?" The answer would be obvious: Because I am. It was the same reason he couldn't tell her what honesty demanded he tell her right now.

When you and Aaron went to the Gym yesterday, I didn't have an urgent errand to run for my parents. I lied. I wasn't there because I'm never stepping foot in a Gym again. I don't want to put Zoe or Shane or any of them up against another trainer as long as I live. They can't handle what it takes to reach the Indigo League, and neither can I. I don't care if I promised.

I quit.

Wendy flipped the page and asked about a picture of a waterfall. Again, Luke knew it well enough to explain it without paying any real attention.

He was trapped. It had been like this for over a year. The pace was killing him, but losing Wendy would also kill him. The thought of her not liking him anymore, that she might leave him alone and friendless again, sat like a rock in his stomach.

Everything she might say if he openly gave up went through his head.

"How can you even say that?"

"This isn't who I thought you were."

"You can't just quit now!"

There would be anger, then tears, then nothing. It would be over. There would be no goodbyes—only go-aways or I'm-leavings.

His breath caught in the middle of whatever he was saying. It didn't have to go that way, did it? Couldn't he keep faking it, keep shielding his Pokémon in secret to stay with her—to not lose her laugh or her smile? Wasn't that more important than even his own health?

Wasn't she worth it?

"Luke?"

Wendy's voice didn't bring him back to whichever picture he'd been talking about, but to something he'd missed. Becoming aware of it was like licking a nine-volt battery.

It wasn't just his shoulder now. Her left loot crossed his right. He felt her hip against his. Their hands had found their way to each other. She was right there, all up and down. Blood rushed through Luke's body in ways he wasn't used to.

He turned his head. She was staring at him. From inches away.

All words vacated his brain. Sight and touch crowded out everything else. The way her hair fell in a sheet from her tilted head. The feeling of her hand resting on his like she wanted to hold it instead. The sense of expectation in her wide-open eyes. Her lips, closed before, now parting as her face leaned closer.

It felt like he was supposed to do something. And he wanted to. He was about to.

From outside came the sounds of a car door shutting and his mom talking to his dad about dinner.

Three steps away from the JCS's front door, Wendy stopped in her tracks as she remembered the longest ten seconds of her life and the anticlimax that followed. It beggared belief how the conclusion to… that… could have been she and Luke walking downstairs without a word to help Mr. and Mrs. Andersen carry in groceries.

Thinking back, she could see how and why she had buried the memory.

First, later that evening, Luke's parents had offered to host them for Christmas and New Year's when they came back from training at the Lake of Rage. That was exciting enough to let her stow the preceding… something… in the back of her mind to reckon with later.

Second, everything had blown up within a week, after which she had every incentive to forget about it. And since she never learned whether it had amounted to Luke as anything more than a momentary invasion of his personal space (regardless of how intense it had felt to her), she could easily recateogrize it as a passing misunderstanding. Not one worth remembering.

But now, having unearthed the memory again, and with the benefit of a little more life experience, her earlier self-deception stood exposed as absurd: "Even 'crush' feels like a strong word," she had told herself not long ago.

Ridiculous. In that moment at least, it had been closer to a crush and a half.

She knew perfectly well by now what it meant for something to be "just" a crush. There had been Dennis in the first group she joined after the disaster, funny guy who could run like the wind, then Jake in the next group, thoughtful sort whom she'd convinced to hold hands a few times. The latter boy was an okay memory, the former a good-riddance. Neither held any kind of hold on her now.

Luke was different. She didn't know when exactly the hormones first entered the picture, but they had a lot to work with when they did. All she and Luke had done with each other, all they had done for each other, all the space he had taken up in her heart before she knew what that could mean… all this had let the hormones punch well above their weight when they decided they were done being subtle. When they ambushed her in his bedroom and made her lean into him like that, hoping he'd gaze into her eyes, give way, and—

Wendy suddenly recalled what her mother had said over the phone on her twelfth birthday:

"Everyone talks about thirteen, but don't sleep on twelve. Twelve's more like thirteen for a lot of girls. Definitely was for me. If things get weird, give me a call."

Thanks, Mom, she said in her head now. Best kind of advice: nice and cryptic. I'll remember that the next time I'm twelve.

She started walking again, shaking her head at herself every block or so. It was back to the Pokémon Center for the night. As had become routine, the first thing she'd do was check for a letter, ignoring the knowing glances from the nurses who had long since gotten the picture.

Today though, far more than a letter, she hoped Luke himself would be waiting there. He could say something to the effect of how she was right about it being time to meet up, and how he figured he'd find her here.

Pure wishful thinking.

She rounded the last corner, and the red roof came into view. As she passed through the automatic doors, she looked all around the lobby. No Luke—no surprise. With a sigh, she approached the front desk, where there was no line this evening.

The nurse spoke up first. "Wow, great timing." She reached below and pulled up a large envelope. The promise of not only a lovely letter but another photo lifted Wendy's spirits at once, but then the words "great timing" put her on edge, somehow.

"Young man dropped this off about three minutes ago."

Wendy slammed her palms on the counter and pushed off toward the door at a full sprint. The nurse yelled something about waiting or not running, but she didn't listen. Two other trainers came through the doors at the same moment, so she didn't have to slow down. When confronted with left vs. right, her instincts picked left.

Block after block, she dodged pedestrians. With each turn, she thought it would be the one that brought Luke into sight. She tried to guess how far he could go in three minutes. She wasn't fast, but she could run for hours. She would catch him eventually. Even if she was running the wrong way, she would find him. She had to.

A cyclist almost sprawled her out on the sidewalk, but she stayed upright and ran on. Her heart pounded. This wasn't working. But it had to work, so there had to be something else she could do. She could call Luke's name as loud as she could.

She breathed in. Her lungs had all the air ready.

And then, her brain caught up to her. Not only did she not call Luke's name, she slowed to a stop, then leaned against a telephone pole.

There was no point in letting Luke know she was there. If he wanted to see her at all, he would have been at the Pokémon Center. Or he would have looked up the office and shown up there. For that matter, he would have entered Ilex Forest back in July and kept an eye out for her instead of walking over a hundred miles in the opposite direction. If he heard her on the street now, he'd just keep his head down and walk faster. And if he would do that, there was no point in catching him unaware, either.

A few passing strangers stared at her, which was what she got for crying in public.

Later, she again approached the Pokémon Center, no longer in the mood to read the letter waiting for her there—not when what had seemed like the luckiest break in the world turned out to be nothing of the sort. Even if she had gotten there three minutes earlier instead of standing around thinking about him, nothing good would have come of it. It made her think of what he used to say about the importance of recognizing good luck when you saw it. If she couldn't do that, maybe she was simply doomed to be unlucky. It must have been Nadine's good luck back in Olivine.

And it well could have been Luke's good luck that made her miss him today. He was the real master of it, after all.

As she walked through the doors, she was tempted to head to a corner and hide there until morning. She knew she'd want to read the letter eventually, though, so she approached the front desk. If her eyes were still red, the nurse didn't mention it.

"First, again, no running in here, please."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Second, I was going to say you got two letters today. Another young man was here around noon."

The nurse placed both envelopes on the counter, the second smaller than the first and bearing her name in unfamiliar handwriting. So complete was Luke's grip on her mind today that it took a moment to realize this was the other letter she'd been waiting for. Aaron had finally written back.

After offering the nurse sufficient thanks and apologies, Wendy found a seat. Aaron's letter came first, of course. Luke's had earned a time-out.

When she was about to open the envelope, a sudden wave of apprehension froze her fingers. What if all it said was "Stop leaving me the same letter over and over?" Was she ready to read that? And what would she do then?

She took a deep breath. Whatever it said, she had to read it. She slid her finger under the seal.

I get the point. I'm on my way to Ecruteak, going to be in the area around there through the end of November. I'll be at the small-time gym north of town every mon/wed/fri evening. If you want to talk that bad, meet me there. – Aaron

Wendy laid back, closed her eyes, and exhaled. Just like that, some real, honest-to-goodness luck for her. At least one of the two was letting her find him. She would have settled for anything better than active avoidance at this rate.

She read the thing one more time, not that there was much to read. Now that she'd had a minute to relax and be grateful, the absence of a date, salutation, and proper valediction bothered her more than seemed reasonable. Even Luke's first letter had shown that minimum of care, and much more in content besides.

In any case, she knew where she was headed tomorrow. She tossed Aaron's note in her bag and gently picked up Luke's envelope again. A nice photo would help make her less upset with him.