I could remember the first poster I’d put up on my walls—a picture of the Empire State Building with a black and white sunset behind it. I’d carefully ripped it out of aTEEN-LYFEmagazine and thumbtacked it to the wall, which Dad hadn’t been happy about. After the fourth thumbtacked poster, he’d bought me wall-safe tape. The Empire State Building loomed over my bed, a reminder of where the dream started before I fell asleep.
A dream I’d gotten myself to stop hoping for, now potentiallyactuallygone forever.
Wrenching my gaze away, I went to my desk, where my laptop was pushed in the far corner. With shaking fingers, I logged into my email. My heart thumped furiously in my chest as the webpage loaded, and I searched all the subjects.
Nothing from NYU. I quickly loaded my application portal and found the same. No update.
I let out a breath, feeling both disappointed and relieved. With NYU, they only gave waitlisted students acouple of days to accept before moving on to other applicants. If I’d missed that window…
But it was stupid to think about, anyway. Even if they did take students off the waitlist this year, there were probably thousands to comb through. I most likely would not be one of them.
I slid my sketchbook out of my bag I’d left propped on the floor. Instead of flipping to the last page I worked on, I flipped to a random one. And then immediately let out a breathy laugh.
I could still remember the day Jamie had slid my sketchbook away from me, using the pen he always kept with his notebook to sketch something in the pages. Jamie had tried to draw me. My hair was simple squiggles, and my eyes were twice the size they should’ve been. I looked like an alien with spaghetti for hair.
He looks at you like he wants to write about you.
I snorted a little at the thought.Maybe, but he draws me like he can’t stand me.
I hadn’t gotten the chance to really talk with Jamie today after everything that’d happened. Even though Nellie had tried to pressure me into getting lunch with them earlier, after the heart attack that was losing Theo, I’d just wanted to go home. Dalton lingered with us longer than he should’ve, trying to pry his way back into the conversation, but my eyes had only found Jamie’s.
And in Jamie’s gaze, I could finally tap back into Bestie Telepathy.We’ll talk later.
I flipped to a new page and found a sketch of Kit from earlier in the year. I’d drawn him smiling, a rare sight forhim, because he hardly had anything to smile about. In this sketch, he was smiling brightly down the barrel of a gun in an amputated hand. From the side profile, I could see a dimple in his cheek.
One that looked just like Jamie’s.
That was why Jamie’s dimple was so familiar that day in Jefferson—I’d drawn it before without realizing it.
Swallowing a sigh, I kneaded my hand to my forehead. I wondered, again, how Jamie would feel if he found out I’d been drawing him. It wasn’t like I’d crafted Kit as some sort of dream boyfriend. He’d been my comfort character. A familiar face to draw when all the other faces hurt too much to look at. A character I could kill off again and again, but he’d always bounce back unscathed.
Even though it was weird, it made sense that it was Jamie. I thought of his hand on my back, his soothing voice in my ear.You’re okay.
I shouldn’t have told Jamie I’d been drawing Dalton. I should’ve been honest.
I never should’ve let college get between us, either. I was failing at every turn.
Setting my pencil down, I pulled my phone from my pocket.
Whatcha doing?
At the exact same time I pressed send, my phone lit up with an incoming call. My heart skipped a beat as I read the name, and for a moment, I stared at the screen as itvibrated in my hand. In a quiet voice, I lifted my phone to my ear and murmured, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Jamie replied, almost as soft. An undercurrent of amusement filled his voice. “Did you just text me?”
“Yeah. I guess we were both missing each other at the same time, huh?”
He gave a small laugh at that, and a smile tugged up my own lips. “It’s that Bestie Telepathy you and Nellie always talk about.”
I traced a fingernail down the bumps of my sketchbook’s spiral, an almost musical noise coming from it. “I guess so.” The page in front of me was Kit-slash-Jamie, still smiling at the gun. “What were you calling about?”
Jamie hesitated, and I wondered if he was going to tell meyou go firstto get out of whatever he planned. A faint sigh filtered through, almost like it was directly in my ear. “I hate fighting with you, Daisy.” I could picture him clearly in my mind. Eyes wide. Soft. Sad. “It makes me sick to my stomach.”
I leaned closer to the sketchbook, elbow planting on the desk. “Me too. I?—”
“Daisy!” Theo bolted into my bedroom, far too much energy for needing to be asleep soon. “It’s time to get ready for bed, Mom says. Come help me pick out some pjs.”
I held my phone away from my mouth. “Can’t you pick out your own?”
