Our Song by A. Destiny

weirdly thought were awesome. But the one I’d injured in the blacksmithing barn.
    â€œIt was,” I said haltingly. “I mean, it is. I mean . . . whatever! It’ll only take a few minutes.”
    Jacob paused for a long moment. He seemed to be searching my face.
    I’m sure he didn’t find anything clarifying there. I myself still wasn’t sure why I’d made the offer. Now that I had, I didn’t know if I believed what I’d said, that teaching Jacob that fiddle trick was no big deal.
    In fact, maybe I’d just done something momentous.
    â€œI’ll take those minutes,” Jacob said. “How about tomorrow after class? Do you know that little river at the end of the Sap Hill trail?”
    Just as I nodded, the Hobart beeped shrilly.
    I quickly turned my back to Jacob and hauled the door open, happy to hide my half-giddy, half-panicked face in the resulting billow of steam.
    Over on his side, Jacob got back to work too. For the rest of our shift, we didn’t talk much. But we did seem to get in sync as we stacked, sprayed, washed, and unloaded the supper dishes. By the end of the evening, we’d reached a rhythm you could almost call musical.

ChapterNine
    T en minutes before class ended in the barn on Friday, most of the guys were putting away their tools. But I was still pounding away, determined to finally get somewhere after an entire week of blacksmithing fails.
    Maybe I was also obsessing about my ironwork so I wouldn’t fixate on the fiddle lesson I’d promised Jacob.
    The fiddle lesson that wouldn’t come until the end of a very long day in the barn.
    The lesson for which I’d carefully straightened my hair and planned an outfit meant to look entirely unplanned (yet still adorable).
    I still didn’t know exactly why I wanted to look adorable. It wasn’t like there was anything remotely romantic about teachingsomeone how to bend the bones in his forearm. Washing 150 sets of dishes seemed equally uninspiring.
    And yet . . .
    There was something about washing dishes with Jacob that threatened to turn me into a puddle of yearning. It could make the next three weeks at Camden that much more torturous.
    Or, said a voice in the back of my head, the next three weeks at Camden could be magical.
    But that seemed unlikely. What hope did I have if even Annabelle couldn’t make the stars align for herself and Owen? When we’d gone to bed the night before, she’d admitted that she still hadn’t talked to him, despite my little pep talk in the dining hall.
    â€œThere was just something about the post-dinner vibe that wasn’t right,” she’d told me as we’d lain side by side in our twin beds. “You have to listen to what the universe tells you. . . . There’s a saying from the I Ching that goes like this . . . soul mates . . . destiny.”
    I drifted to sleep while Annabelle went on and on. I didn’t need to listen to understand what she was saying: liking a boy was agony. It required superhuman powers of self-distraction.
    Thus, my immersion in my ironwork.
    Over the course of my day in the barn, I’d finally found a rhythm to my smithery. I pulled my chunk of iron from the forge, then hammered it so hard I felt the jangle travel up my arm and rattle my shoulder in its socket.
    Next, I dunked my lump into the water bucket. Sssssss.
    Then I examined it and noted the infinitesimal changes I’d made with my pathetic Olive Oyl arms.
    Then I did it all over again. And again. And again.
    Except a funny thing happened the final time I squinted at my metal chunk. It didn’t look so chunky anymore. My side-stroking blows had elongated it. My regular turns had shaped the resulting stem into a not-terribly-lopsided cylinder that culminated in a point.
    At its other end was a cap that was pretty lopsided, but was also unmistakably flat and round.
    â€œCoach! Come