Read. No reply.

On Thursday after sixth period, Mila stopped on the stairs in the old building. Through a window she couldn’t see from below, light was falling onto the white wall of the landing, a thin, slanted stripe, like someone had drawn it in chalk. She took four photos of it until the edge was sharp.

At home she sat on her bed with her phone for a long time. Since movie night, she and Leo had been texting, not a lot, but always in full sentences. Every time so far, he had sent the first one. This time she typed it herself: “Where’s the light coming from here? I can’t figure it out.” Plus the photo. She hit send before she could change her mind. Two minutes later, underneath it: Read 6:49 PM.

Then nothing. Mila fed Honey, her golden retriever, helped with dinner, unpacked her camera bag and packed it again. At nine it still said the same word. She opened her journal and wrote down what she knew: He saw it. He didn’t write back. Under that there could have been a list of what she didn’t know, and it would have been a lot longer. Instead she came up with reasons. The photo was boring. The question was childish. The movie thing had just been a team thing after all.

Liv texted: “AND?” Mila wrote back: “Read. And nothing.” “Maybe he has practice.” “Read means he saw it and decided it wasn’t important.” Nothing for a while, then: “Read means read.” Mila didn’t answer that one either.

On Friday at 7:14 her phone lit up. “Sorry, lot going on yesterday. Looks like a light well. See ya.” Three short lines, the way he texted the team, not her. Mila read it on the bus and felt worse than she had the night before with no answer at all. She wrote “Ok.” and nothing else. At lunch Leo raised his hand from over by the hoop, and Mila dug around in her bag for something she didn’t need.

On Saturday she sat with Liv at their usual table in Café Limonaia, Honey stretched out underneath. Outside, Leo stood on a ladder painting fall leaves on the front window, red and ochre, in quick, sure strokes. When he saw Mila, he grinned and painted a leaf around her head from the outside, like a frame. Mila gave a short nod and looked down into her chai. Liv raised both eyebrows. “What was that? You nodded like a teacher at a parent conference.”

Later Leo came in, paint on his fingers, and asked Victoria for a glass of water. He stopped at their table. Honey’s tail thumped. “Hey,” Leo said. “Hey.” “Did I do something wrong?” He asked it straight out, the way he asked everything. “No,” Mila said. “It’s fine.” He looked at her a second too long, said “Okay,” and went back outside. Through the glass, Mila watched him paint a leaf in one single, way too fast stroke and wipe it off again right away.

Liv set her cup down and put both hands flat on the table, the way she always did when something mattered. “Is it fine, or do you just not care?” “He read it. Thursday. And then nothing, and then three words.” “Did you ask him why?” “You don’t ask someone why they didn’t answer.” “Yes, you do,” Liv said. “That’s exactly what you ask.”

Outside it smelled like paint and wet leaves. Mila stood at the bottom of the ladder. “I texted you Thursday.” “I know. The stairwell.” “You read it.” “Yeah.” Leo climbed down two rungs and stopped, like he needed the height. “I read it on the bus on the way to practice. I didn’t want to just send a thumbs-up. I wanted to answer for real. Later.” He rubbed paint off his thumb. “When I got home, Elias was sitting on the floor of his room. With his old basketball shoes. They’re always shoved in the back of his closet. I hadn’t seen them in two years. We sat there till after eleven. My phone was in my jacket. In the hall.”

“What was going on with him?” Mila asked. “I’ll tell you sometime. Not today, okay? It’s kind of his thing.” Mila nodded, and this time it was a real nod. “And this morning?” “Typed it on the bus, half asleep. Then I read it back and thought, that sounds like I’m texting the team.” “It sounded like you were texting the team.” Leo laughed, a second too late, like always.

“I turned one word into a whole evening,” Mila said. “Which word?” “Read.” She looked at the leaves on the window. “All I knew was that you’d seen it. I made up the rest. And none of it was nice. Not to you, and not to me either.” “What did you think?” “That the question was boring.” Leo shook his head like she’d just claimed a house could stand without a foundation.

He pulled his sketchbook out of the backpack lying under the ladder and drew a staircase in a few lines, a landing, an edge above it. “It’s not coming from where you’re looking. There’s a skylight behind that edge. You can only see it from the top. The light hits the other wall first and then bounces over to yours.” Mila looked at the drawing for a long time. “So it takes a detour.” “The best ones always take a detour,” Leo said, and then his ears went red, because it sounded like it was about more than light.

Mila went back inside. Liv didn’t ask anything and slid the other half of her lemon cake across the table. Outside, in the bottom corner of the glass, small, between the leaves, Leo painted a staircase with a bright stripe. That evening Mila texted him: “Thanks for the detour.” Underneath it appeared: Read. She put her phone away and didn’t check it again until morning.