Chapter 201: Through the Glass

Audra Sloane retraced her steps through the exhibit hall, searching the crowd for a familiar white baseball cap. She had only gone a short distance before turning around, but the aquarium was larger than it had seemed when everyone was together. Families stopped to take pictures, children crowded the glass, and visitors drifted between displays, blocking her view of the walkways. Finding Cyrus in this crowd was going to take some effort.

The fork in the path made it worse. She had retraced the route the others had taken, but Cyrus could easily have chosen the opposite one. She might be searching the wrong side entirely.

Audra reached for her phone. Sending him a message would be simpler than trying to predict which exhibit had caught his attention.

A patch of white moved between two people ahead of her. Someone in a white cap was heading toward the other branch, vanishing behind passing visitors. Audra could not see his face, but his height and clothes looked familiar.

She followed at a steady pace, unwilling to call out before she knew it was him. The crowd kept moving between them.

Instead of the broad walls of water on the other side, long, narrow tanks held different varieties of small fish. Some darted between artificial plants; others lingered near the gravel. Visitors leaned close to compare them or stepped back to take photographs.

A camera flash went off nearby. Audra blinked against the sudden burst of light, and the white cap vanished behind the moving bodies again. By the time she reached the spot, she could not tell where its owner had gone.

She found herself standing before one of the narrow tanks. A cluster of fish passed through her view, their movements so closely packed that she could barely distinguish one from another. A small yellow fish with dark stripes drifted past the glass. And there, on the other side of the tank, was Cyrus.

Beneath the brim of his cap, his face was clear through the water. She recognized the stud in his ear, his pale complexion, and the handsome features he usually kept hidden behind his school-day bangs. His mouth curved into a small, unguarded smile. He was smiling at something in the tank.

Cyrus seemed to notice her a moment later. His expression shifted faintly in recognition, and their eyes met across the water.

The chatter around Audra seemed to fade. She could still see the fish between them and the light moving across his face, but every detail brought her attention back to Cyrus. Nobody else in the crowded hall seemed worth noticing.

She had known he was attractive. That was hardly new information. Seeing him unexpectedly like this, smiling when he thought nobody was paying attention, was different from watching him sit beside classmates or exchange a few polite words. Audra wanted to keep the picture exactly as it was.

That sudden desire unsettled her. She ought to move around the tank and speak to him normally. Instead, she stayed where she was, drawn toward him despite knowing she should be cautious. When she finally gathered herself, Cyrus was no longer on the other side of the glass.

Alarm rose so quickly that she barely recognized it. An unreasonable certainty took hold of her, insisting that if she missed him now, she might never have another chance to reach him. She turned to search the crowd, her pulse jumping at the thought that he had slipped away again.

Then his familiar voice sounded beside her, as calm as if nothing unusual had happened. The panic dissolved before she could understand where it had come from.

A few minutes earlier, Cyrus had noticed that he was walking alone and decided it was not much of a problem.

Getting separated did not make them lost. Everyone had a phone, and he could message the others whenever he wanted. Until then, there was no reason to stop enjoying the exhibits. At the fork, he picked whichever route appealed to him and kept walking.

The choice paid off. The narrow tanks were full of small fish, and he found them unexpectedly entertaining. He could watch one display for a while, then move a few steps to find an entirely different collection. Nobody hurried him or paid him much attention.

Two small fish were circling each other near the corner of one tank. One kept following the other, apparently oblivious to its companion's lack of enthusiasm. Whenever the second changed direction, the first hurried after it. Cyrus watched them complete another awkward loop.

The fish being followed apparently reached its limit. It twisted around and flicked its tail directly into the other one's face.

The pursuer went motionless and sank slowly until it settled against the gravel, seemingly reconsidering the choices that had led to this humiliation. Cyrus could not help laughing under his breath. He was still smiling when he noticed someone standing beyond the aquarium glass.

Audra stood on the opposite side, looking directly at him. She was so motionless that she appeared to have lost her train of thought entirely, like a machine that had abruptly stopped working. She reminded him of the fish that had just been smacked in the face.

The comparison was unfair, but it was difficult to resist. He moved around the end of the tank to meet her, giving her enough time to recover whatever had briefly gone wrong.

"Sorry about that. I got distracted and took longer than I meant to," Cyrus said.

"You don't need to apologize," Audra replied, sounding more composed now.

He glanced along the walkway, checking the nearby visitors. There was no sign of Owen or the others, and the aquarium's layout made it impossible to see much beyond the next few displays.

"Where did everybody else go?" he asked.

"They're over on the other side of the exhibit," she said.

Cyrus looked at her again. If the others were still together, then Audra had apparently left them and come all this way on her own.

"Did you come back here looking for me?"

"Yeah, I came to find you," Audra said, giving a small nod.

She seemed a little distracted even now, but the answer was clear enough.

Cyrus felt unexpectedly touched. Human friends were pretty reliable, apparently. He had wandered off, and someone had come looking for him instead of leaving him to catch up.

"Thanks for coming to get me. I appreciate it," he told her.

There was more sincerity in his voice than usual, and Audra appeared to notice.

"It really wasn't any trouble," she said.

Before either could say more, excited voices rose from the nearby crowd. People were turning toward one of the large aquatic displays, where a young man had lowered himself onto one knee in front of a woman. A ring gleamed between his fingers.

The woman covered her mouth with both hands, plainly overwhelmed. Fish moved through the water behind the couple while he held the ring up and waited. Several visitors raised their phones to record the proposal.

She did not answer aloud. Instead, she lowered one hand and offered it to him.

The man got to his feet and slipped the ring onto her finger. The people gathered around them cheered, and the couple leaned together for a kiss while their audience applauded. A few people near Cyrus clapped as well, pleased to have stumbled upon someone else's good news. Even he had to admit that it was a sweet moment.

Humans seemed good at finding occasions worth celebrating. They made surprises out of ordinary days and memories out of private feelings. Cyrus could understand why the people watching looked happy for them. He also knew he would never be able to pull off anything like that.

A diamond ring seemed like an incredible waste of money. The stone was shiny, but why pay so much for a tiny rock? It wasn't food, medicine, or anything else he needed. Even if he could afford one someday, he would never buy it. Spending that kind of money on another person was even harder to picture.

He had enough trouble budgeting for himself. Spending that much on someone else, then making a spectacle of it in front of strangers, was beyond anything he could imagine doing.

Cyrus turned toward Audra, curious whether she had enjoyed the unexpected proposal. She was already watching him.

There was a brightness in her expression he could not quite place. Her attention seemed unusually intent, even though she had said nothing about what they had just witnessed.

Perhaps the proposal had stirred something in her. Then again, she had probably seen much more elaborate gestures. Cyrus remembered the enormous floral display someone had arranged outside the academy gates to confess their feelings to her. This little aquarium proposal was modest by comparison. He kept the comparison to himself.

"Should we go find Owen and the others?" he asked.

"Yeah, we should head back to them," Audra answered.

They started along the walkway together. Cyrus looked ahead for the turn that would take them back to the larger exhibits, leaving Audra to walk beside him with her own thoughts.

She had watched the proposal, but the cheering crowd had only confirmed something she already suspected. When it came time for her to take the final step, she would never choose a place where everyone could watch. Too many people meant too many opportunities for someone to interfere.

Cyrus might refuse her, but Audra judged that less likely than someone interrupting at exactly the wrong time. A stranger might do so accidentally, or someone else might interfere on purpose. Either possibility could ruin what she had planned.

If one careless action could undo all her preparations, she preferred to remove that risk from the beginning. A public setting might make a memorable spectacle, but she had no interest in letting an audience affect the outcome.

Audra tipped up the brim of her cap and glanced at Cyrus walking beside her. He appeared entirely occupied with finding the way back, unaware of the direction her thoughts had taken. She brought her attention firmly back to him and matched his pace.

This time, she would not get distracted and let him disappear from her side without even noticing.