Think of NYU.
And on April first, I’d finally learned my fate.WAITLISTED.
I wasn’t good enough to automatically accept, and now that my waitlist status had stretched on over two months, I knew it was only a matter of time now before they updated the portal to give me a label they’d always meant to.REJECTED.
Now, every time I walked into my bedroom and saw my walls, it was a sort of painful reminder that vision boards didn’t always work. And when they didn’t, they just became a shrine of dreams you weren’t good enough to achieve.
I couldn’t bring myself to rip the papers down, though. Even though they made me feel sick, the thought of bare walls made me even sicker.
I shut and locked my door behind me, but it didn’t do much to muffle out the noise that leaked through thefloorboards. A low-grade headache that’d been following me all day reared its head now, pulsing behind the eye that Junie had used for target practice this morning.
I thought I recognized that fiery hair.
Dalton’s familiarity was what ate at me more than the words themselves. As if we’d parted on good terms. As if we’d never dated at all. As if he hadn’t broken my heart.
Standing still in the middle of my room, truly alone for the first time all day, the darkness slowly crept in around me. It stretched its arms out as if reaching for a hug.
I all but fell to the little desk in the far corner of my room, grabbed my headphones, and reached for my sketchbook. And, pulling in a big breath, I poured the black feeling out onto the page.
I’d been drawing my whole life, but I’d only started taking it seriously after Dad died. It’d been January, and I’d been in the eighth grade, and he’d been coming home from work when a truck slid into his lane on the highway. Gone in a blink. Just like that, everything had imploded. Mom went from being a stay-at-home mom to scrambling for a job to keep us afloat, and I’d taken over her role as much as I could with one-year-old Theo and the other littles. Neighbors had helped some with meals and babysitting, but the helping hands didn’t hold on long.
I’d felt so many things, but had no idea how to express them any other way than drawing them. But I’d been a horrible artist as a thirteen-year-old, so I drew in every single second of spare time, forcing myself to become better so that I could finally get my true feelings across.
Now, as I chased the darkness away, I sketched out apicture of my original character. I’d created him a little into freshman year, when the therapist Mom signed me up with suggested I create a “comfort character” to draw. I’d named him Kit, and Mrs. Tubs had been right in one regard—hewascomforting to draw.
Which was funny because I rarely drew him in a happy scenario. Sometimes he was bleeding to death, or sometimes he was missing limbs, or sometimes he was in a car about to veer off a cliff.
Mrs. Tubs would’ve had a field day with me if I hadn’t stopped going to therapy.
But Kit was invincible. I’d always put him in life-or-death scenarios and drag him through my dark feelings, but he would never actually die. Something about that made me feel better.
I sketched him in a very much alive scenario now, with his slender, long limbs, jagged hair, and even sharper eyes. I drew him leaning against a brick building, eyes shifting sideways as people walked past him.
Maybe I’d draw a piano about to fall on him. Or a venomous snake at his ankles. It was still up in the air.
Part of my NYU dream had always included Kit. One day, I wanted to create a graphic novel with him as the main character. I’d spent all of high school practicing by drawing him over and over, waiting until college—until my skills were finally good enough—to start it for real. Jamie had promised he’d help me write it. Back when NYU still felt certain for both of us, he’d called it our future project.
Another dream abandoned, but not just by him this time. By me.
My music suddenly cut off as a call came through, and I picked my phone up from where I’d set it on my desk to check the caller ID. Quickly, I pressed answer, readjusting my headphones. “Hey, girl.”
“Hey,” Nellie responded, but there was no hint of a smile in her voice. “I can’t believe you let me go to schoolalonetoday. I expected as much from Jamie, but from my best friend?”
“Nell, I love you, but going to school for you? That’s crossing a line.”
“You should’ve seen it. Oh, it was soawkward.” The last word came out almost like a wail. “I was the only one in all the classes, and since we’re already done with exams, there was nothing to do. It was basically seven hours of me just chatting with the teachers. Mrs. Houser even started showing me her vacation pics from Hawaii.Horrible, Daisy. Horrible.”
“That’s what you get for being a good student. You could’ve had ice cream, but instead, you chose to bond with Mrs. Houser.” I couldn’t even imagine being in her shoes. I would’ve faked sick at the nurse’s office. “Wait. I thought you were grounded. You have your phone?”
“I’ve paid my penance.”
“More like your parents took mercy on you and felt bad for grounding their golden child.”
“Jamie would take offense to that, but I agree.” Nellie chuckled, but the sound quickly melted into something more complicated. “Jamie said you two got ice cream. He also said… Well, he mentioned that—um, that?—”
“That Dalton showed up?”
Nellie was quiet, and I sat back in my seat, staring at Kit’s half-drawn face. Nellie, Jamie, and I had been best friends since the start of freshman year, and while we were the kind of friends that shared practically everything together,feelingswere usually exempt. At least in the romantic sense. For example, Nellie never really told me what happened between her and the bad boy she’d been friends with four years ago, and I never really told her why Dalton and I had broken up.
