When I Bloomed

CHAPTER 1

The Girl Nobody Was Looking For

Before Adrian, I thought loneliness was simply what happened when nobody was in the room with you.

I was eight when I learned you could feel it in a house full of people.

Our house in New York was rarely quiet. My brother, Alexander, and my sister, Amelia, were fourteen then. Twins. Six years older than me and connected in that peculiar way twins sometimes are—as if they’d entered the world already knowing there would always be someone standing beside them.

They fought constantly.

They loved each other absolutely.

They shared friends, secrets, memories, birthdays, jokes I didn’t understand.

And then there was me.

Elena.

The afterthought.

Not an unwanted one.

That would be unfair to my parents.

I was loved.

Very much, I think.

But Alexander and Amelia had arrived together, and somehow life had continued treating them as a pair.

I had arrived six years later and learned early how to entertain myself.

My father worked constantly.

My mother seemed to spend her life moving between schedules, phone calls, appointments, dinners, school events and whatever emergency three children could manufacture on any given day.

Alexander had sports and friends.

Amelia seemed to know everyone.

And I had books.

Books were easier.

Books never looked at me strangely because I used words children my age weren’t supposed to know.

Books never told me to stop overthinking.

They never became bored halfway through one of my explanations.

At school, the adults called me gifted.

Exceptional.

Advanced.

A few months before my eighth birthday, a psychologist used the words profoundly gifted, and my parents looked at each other as though someone had just handed them something precious and terrifying.

I didn’t feel precious.

Mostly, I felt strange.

Children my age wanted to talk about television shows and games.

I wanted to know whether time would behave differently near a black hole.

They liked sleepovers.

I liked prime numbers.

They played tag.

I played chess against myself.

Adults thought it was adorable.

Children thought it was weird.

Eventually, I decided being alone required less effort.

Then Alexander brought Adrian home.

I remember the first time I saw him because of his voice.

I was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework that was too easy and therefore irritating when I heard Alexander laughing in the hallway.

Another voice answered him.

Different.

Not dramatically different.

Just enough.

The words were English, but the sounds underneath them weren’t.

I looked up.

Alexander walked into the kitchen with a boy I’d never seen before.

He was my brother’s age.

Fourteen.

Dark hair that looked as though he’d pushed his fingers through it too many times. Dark eyes. Tall already, or at least tall from the perspective of an eight-year-old.

He was carrying a basketball beneath one arm.

“This is Adrian,” Alexander said.

Adrian looked at me.

I looked at him.

“This is Elena,” my brother added. “My little sister.”

I hated being introduced that way.

Not Elena.

Not my sister.

My little sister.

As though my defining quality was being smaller than him.

Adrian didn’t seem to notice my irritation.

“Hi, Elena.”

There it was again.

The accent.

I stared.

Alexander groaned.

“Don’t interrogate him.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You have your interrogation face.”

“I don’t have an interrogation face.”

Adrian glanced between us.

Then smiled.

“It’s okay.”

I immediately asked, “Where are you from?”

Alexander dropped his head.

Adrian laughed.

“Romania.”

“Where in Romania?”

His eyebrows rose.

Most eight-year-olds apparently stopped after the country.

He answered.

I asked another question.

Then another.

How old was he when he moved?

Did he speak Romanian at home?

Was Romanian difficult?

Did he think in Romanian or English?

Did dreams have a language?

Alexander finally put his basketball on the counter.

“Elena.”

“What?”

“Stop.”

Adrian was laughing.

“She’s fine.”

“Don’t encourage her.”

That sentence would become a recurring theme over the next several years.

I learned later that Adrian had moved to New York when he was eight.

I also learned there was a reason nobody talked about why.

His family had left Romania after his older brother died.

That was all Alexander told me.

“He doesn’t like talking about it.”

So I didn’t ask.

Even at eight, I understood that some questions weren’t mine simply because I wanted the answers.

Adrian started coming over more often.

At first, he belonged entirely to Alexander.

They played basketball.

Studied together.

Played video games too loudly.

Ate everything my mother put in front of them.

But gradually, Adrian started noticing me.

Noticing is different from seeing.

Most people noticed me.

The little genius.

The strange quiet kid.

Alexander’s baby sister.

Adrian saw things.

He saw what I was reading.

He remembered what I’d said the week before.

He asked follow-up questions.

One rainy afternoon, several months after we’d met, he found me on the living-room floor with a chessboard.

I was playing both sides.

He stopped beside me.

“You’re playing alone?”

I nodded.

I expected the usual question.

Why?

Instead he looked at the board.

“Who’s winning?”

I stared at him.

“What?”

“Who’s winning?”

“Me.”

His mouth twitched.

“You’re playing both sides.”

“I know.”

“So you’re also losing.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’m making one side play imperfectly.”

“On purpose?”

“Obviously.”

He sat down across from me.

“Show me.”

Two words.

That was all.

Show me.

Nobody had ever asked me that before.

Not like he meant it.

So I did.

I explained the position.

He asked why I’d moved the knight.

I explained.

He asked what would happen if he moved a bishop.

I showed him.

Then he made another move.

Wrong.

I corrected him.

He accused me of being ruthless.

I informed him chess didn’t reward sentimentality.

He laughed.

And something happened.

Something very small.

Something nobody else in the room would have noticed.

I forgot to feel alone.

Our chess game became a conversation.

Chess became astronomy.

Astronomy became a book I’d been reading about cosmology.

I talked too fast.

I always did when I was excited.

Usually that was the moment people began glancing at their phones.

Adrian didn’t.

He leaned against the couch and listened.

Actually listened.

“You know,” he said eventually, “you’re kind of terrifying.”

I frowned.

“Why?”

“You’re eight.”

“I know my age.”

“And you’re talking about things I don’t understand.”

“You could understand them.”

“That’s optimistic.”

“You’d have to read.”

“Never mind. Too difficult.”

I smiled despite myself.

He pointed at me.

“There. You do know how.”

“Know how to what?”

“Smile.”

I stopped smiling immediately.

He laughed.

From then on, whenever Adrian came over, some part of me waited for him.

I never admitted that.

Not even to myself.

But I learned the sound of his voice in the hallway.

I learned that his Romanian accent became stronger when he was tired.

I learned he hated olives.

I learned he pretended not to care when he lost at chess but demanded another game within ten minutes.

I learned that when he said, “What are you reading, Professor?” he actually wanted an answer.

Professor.

His name for me.

I pretended to hate it.

I loved it.

By nine, Adrian had become my favorite person.

By ten, I had reached what seemed like the only logical conclusion.

I was going to marry him.

I wrote it in a notebook one night beneath a list titled:

Things I Know About Adrian

1. He listens. 2. He remembers. 3. He doesn’t think I’m strange. 4. He’s terrible at accepting defeat. 5. His accent gets stronger when he’s tired. 6. He asks real questions. 7. He makes me laugh. 8. He makes me forget I’m alone.

I stared at the final sentence for a long time.

Then underneath it, I added:

9. I think I love him.

At ten, I didn’t understand how many different things love could mean.

I only knew that Adrian made the world feel less lonely.

And to a child like me, that felt close enough to forever.