Our Song by A. Destiny Page B

distracting people that day. While pounding out my ridiculously large nail, I’d truly forgotten about the fiddle lesson with Jacob.
    And now, I was late.
    There was no time to go back to my dorm and shower. No time to restraighten my hair or put on that perfectly imperfect outfit.
    I rolled my eyes, shoved my spike into the back pocket of my cutoffs, and used the barnyard pump to splash some water on my face.
    Oh well, I sighed as I hurried away from the barn. I guess that’s another way to avoid obsessing about a boy—show up at your romantic meeting place looking sooty, sweaty, and frizzy-haired. If there was a spark there, it’s going to go out as soon as he lays eyes on me.

ChapterTen
    I felt short of breath as I hurried up the steepest but quickest trail on Sap Hill. The pine sap that gave this hill its name smelled uncomfortably sharp. My nose and throat were already a little dry and raw after my day hovering over the forge.
    But the trail through the endless skinny pine trunks was so peaceful and pretty that I couldn’t help but calm down.
    Maybe this is for the best, I thought, noting that my cuticles were ragged and black, rounding out my grimy appearance just perfectly. If Jacob finds me not at all attractive, it takes the pressure off. I can be around him without feeling like a swoony spaz. I can breathe.
    With every step through the woods, I felt more certain about this conclusion. More calm. More remote.
    Endless iced coffees and ice cream cones with my friends,bouncing from the city pool to impromptu backyard parties, then back to the pool. Clothes shopping in all my favorite thrift stores. Being allowed to spend entire days in the hammock because I’d be working my way through my school summer reading list.
    I got so absorbed in my back-home reverie that I stopped seeing the golden sunlight beaming through the pines. I no longer heard the eerie echoes of birds and bugs, or the burble of the creek up ahead of me. I was lost in the rhythmic crunch, crunch, crunch of my boots on the pine needle path until—
    â€œI worked in a cotton mill all of my life
    Ain’t got nothing but this barlow knife
    It’s hard times, Cotton Mill Girls,
    It’s hard times everywhere.”
    That was Jacob’s voice. Jacob’s voice singing one of Nanny’s favorite songs.
    I stopped in my tracks, just a few feet from the point where the trail and trees ended, opening up onto the sandy, sun-drenched riverbank.
    Jacob was done singing now and was playing the same stanza on the fiddle. This was another technique I recognized from Nanny’s class. She always made her students sing their songs before learning them, then continue “singing” in their heads as they played.
    He sang again.
    â€œUs kids worked fourteen hours a day
    For thirteen cents of measly pay
    It’s hard times, Cotton Mill Girls,
    It’s hard times everywhere.”
    My breath quickened. Hearing Jacob sing about being a put-upon mill worker should have been funny, right? Pathetically adorable, maybe. It definitely shouldn’t have been hot.
    But oh, it was.
    I fisted my fingers and scrubbed my nails on my cutoffs, trying to buff the black off my cuticles. Then I smoothed and smoothed my hair back with sweaty palms before taking a gulp of piney air and stepping out of the trees.
    â€œSorry I’m late,” I called. It was supposed to come out all cheerful and breezy. It was supposed to say, Of course I didn’t just hear you singing “Cotton Mill Girls .”
    Instead it sounded more like a nervous bark.
    Jacob had been facing the river. When he heard my voice, he spun around to look at me and . . . well, his face lit up.
    Like he’d been waiting all day to lay eyes on me.
    Part of me wanted to hover at the end of the riverbank, shadowed by the trees and far enough away from Jacob that he wouldn’t be able to see what I looked like (and maybe smelled like) up close.
    I