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“Did you get it when you were a teen?” she asked.
I nodded. “Oh yeah. Definitely.”
“What soothed you then?”
I smiled. “Nothing helped but listening to music nonstop—”
Sam. Sam’s obsession with music. Sam’s resistance to any sort of silence.
“Grace? Are you all right?” Dr. Silk asked.
“Y-yes, just thought of something. It’s nothing. Go on?”
She continued to finish up the appointment, giving me the usual parting words. But my mind was running a million miles a minute.
If Sam really was an ink-person from the pages of my wish list, and he really came from my mind…
Did he manifest with my mild OCD at his core?
I whirled through Dr. Silk’s lobby, my mind spinning about Sam. If he was my OCD, would he disappear if I… if I stopped thinking about it? I didn’t want him to disappear, but I also didn’t want him to suffer. And if he was my OCD, what was Noah? Because I was ninety-nine percent sure that Noah was made from my gold list—
“Hey!”
“Ah! Bo! I was just thinking about—”
We stood in the stairwell, facing one another.
I could tell something was wrong from the way his eyes looked. “What’s going on?”
His face hardened. “None of your business.”
I threw my hands up in surrender. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”
He stormed past me, clearly in some kind of mood.
I stuck my nose in the air and kept on my way, marching down the steps past him. When I got to the landing, I turned around and looked up, expecting to see him turning his back and barreling through the door.
But he didn’t. He stood at the top of the stairs, lingering at the door to Dr. Silk’s waiting room, staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said. “Why didn’t you ask me for the pen back?”
I shrugged. “Because I knew you wanted me to.”
He scowled.
I continued. “There’s also nothing I want to change about them.”
Bo’s expression darkened. “You’re trying to tell me your ex hasn’t been all up in your business, telling everyone your secrets?”
My cheeks tingled.
“That’s what I thought. They know everything about you—”
The clock on the other side of the door chimed.
“Look, I’ve gotta get to my appointment. But we should meet up.”
