Inside Out by Grayson Cole

long wooden planter. Crowded shrubs strained against each other above and around her head. She closed her eyes and envisioned the greenery reaching out to wrap around her, hiding her in its lushness. When she was little, she’d imagined this kind of thing all the time. She thought that if she closed her eyes and concentrated on being part of the surroundings, making herself small, no one would notice her. Tracey would be invisible. But that was when she was a kid. Most of her friends were white, and most black kids didn’t like her anyway.
    Tracey hadn’t seen Rett in more than two weeks. She didn’t know why or why she should care. She did, though. She cared a lot and didn’t know what she could do about it. He hadn’t been by the house once, nor had he so much as called or texted. She’d seen him on campus a couple of times but he hadn’t acknowledged her. All kinds of things crossed her mind. Maybe he had made some sort of bet and getting her to kiss him was the end of it. Maybe he had freaked out because he’d kissed her and couldn’t deal with seeing her again. Maybe he just didn’t care. But, dammit, she cared! Tracey hated him right then.
    So when she saw him, she felt something move all over her, making her skin crawl, making her entire body warm, making her think she was losing her mind all over again. And after all that, she felt like the proverbial fish in a barrel. Garrett. He looked alive, healthy, and well. She checked his arms. They looked completely capable of lifting a telephone receiver. He was walking in through a mall entrance behind a less than beautiful girl. She had to be his girlfriend, Kim. Tracey knew she was because he had described her. In his description he was much nicer than Tracey ever would have been, though.
    She wanted to be angry instead of hurt. She didn’t want to watch him. But she just couldn’t help herself. A person who has been starved can’t help eating. Besides, she was only doing what she had always done, really: watch him and want him. There wasn’t any more denying it. Whether she would ever act on it didn’t matter anymore. Tracey hadn’t slept the entire time he was gone. At night when she was up studying and listening to jazz, he was on her mind. She caught herself lingering around the law library. She dialed half his number and hung up. She didn’t know what to do.
    Tracey wondered if he would see her, and if he did see her, what he would do. She didn’t know what she wanted him to do. She didn’t know what she would do. The worst of it was that she didn’t even know when this thing had happened to her. She didn’t remember getting attached. And at that point, she didn’t remember much of anything, except for the fact that she had never in her life been kissed the way he’d kissed her.
    Maybe her thoughts of Garrett were so strong he sensed them. He glanced toward her and her heart started to tick like a bomb. Then he glanced away and that bomb exploded. How could he not have seen her? Did he see her and just ignore her?
    If that was the case, the right thing for her to do would be to just roll up on him and tell him what she thought about his behavior. Tracey was no one’s dirty little secret. Oh damn, that wouldn’t be right either. Even if he did see her, he wasn’t doing anything different than they had done before. He wasn’t doing anything she hadn’t asked him to do. He wasn’t treating her any different than she had treated him. She started to massage her temples. Her emotional reaction was giving her a headache.
    He checked the movie listings above the ticket box, and Tracey wondered what he wanted to see. Ironically, she knew his tastes. But because they had never been out in public together, she didn’t have the slightest idea how he was on a date. Would he want to see whatever she wanted to see? Probably. He was always asking what she wanted