“Yeah, because there’ll be so many other pretty sketchbooks. It might get self-conscious.”
His expression was blank, some of his brown hair falling into his eyes from the slight breeze. “Have I ever told you that you’re the weirdest person I know?”
“Oh, please! Did you not hear yourself sixty seconds ago?” I scoffed hard. “I’m weird. Says the boy who carries his ownvessels of creativityeverywhere he goes.”
“It’s called a book, Daze. When’s the last time you picked one of those up?”
My jaw dropped, and Jamie’s neutral expression split apart into another grin. This time, no teeth, no dimple, but it still brightened his eyes. He’d successfully rage-baited me. The jerk.
“What happened to your face?” he asked suddenly.
I lifted my head, slapping my free hand to my cheek. “My face?”
“Your eye. It’s red.”
“Oh. Ha. Junie was trying out to be a pitcher. Of course there’s a mark. Because why wouldn’t there be?”My voice lowered as I continued my muttering. My marker tore a little on the napkin. “First, I sleep through Skip Day, then the art store is closed, then my eye is red… Or, I guess, first my eye is red, then I sleep through Skip Day, then the art store is closed—or, wait, the art store has probably been closed for a few days now…”
Jamie reached across the table, squinting as his fingertip grazed the skin near my temple. The brush was barely there, almost as if he was nervous to really touch. I shivered a little, a combination of the ice cream and the breeze. “It looks like it’s probably going to bruise.”
I scoffed, reaching for my spoon in my ice cream cup. It was melting fast, turning more into soup. “Just my luck.”
While Jamie’s fingers were near my temple, he pushed my red hair back out of my face, hooking it around my ear. “Your hair is getting into your cup.” And then he sat back, using his knuckle to nudge his glasses up his nose.
I studied him in the silence. He’d brushed his hair since this morning and put on a New York University hoodie he’d bought when we toured the facility last summer. The violet color looked vibrant against his pale skin, but pretty—and then, with that thought, my stomach tightened.
Last summer, Jamie had trailed after me while I’d practically danced all around campus, bouncing from the mere thought of attending next fall with one of my best friends at my side. He’d grinned, and he’d nodded along to my dreaming, and never once corrected me.
Even after he’d paid the deposit to Columbia, he hadn’t corrected me. He’d let me be blindsided.
College was a forbidden topic between us. An unspoken line neither of us crossed. Specifically, NYU. Ultra-specifically, Jamie’s acceptance—and subsequent betrayal—and my waitlisted-slash-soon-to-be-rejected status.
“Here.” I shoved my napkin at him. “To commemorate our day of fun.”
Jamie took the napkin carefully, angling his head to peer at my drawing. “It’s… two bananas in a trash can?”
“Apparently I’m a worse artist than I thought if you can’t tell.”
Jamie glanced up, amusement in his eyes. “It’s our ice cream.”
It’d been a simple sort of drawing in an even simpler style, and horribly done, since the napkin was a material that the marker bled into easily. “Throw it away if you want,” I told him, going back to stirring my ice cream. “But I’ll take it to mean that you hate me and think I’m untalented.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“You love that about me.”
Jamie just shook his head, folding the napkin up and tucking it into the pocket of his NYU hoodie. “I’m surprised. I didn’t think you drew anything that wasn’t death and gore.”
“I didn’t think your weak stomach could take it.”
Jamie, refusing to be ragebaited, only rolled his eyes.
There was something comforting about drawing death in graphite or marker, where the blood pooling on the ground was a result of aggressive lines, and, uncolored, itcould’ve been anything. A pool of nacho cheese. A goopy glob of maple syrup. Blood that’d drained out of the body it sat beside.
And like I’d said, it wasn’t like Ialwayssketched dead bodies. Sometimes I drew flowers.
I only drew dark stuff when the weight on my chest became too much. If I hadn’t gone to Jamie’s this morning, I was sure I’d have added a new scene into my sketchbook.
“It’s weird without Nellie.” I leaned my fist onto my chin. Jamie was trying to scrape an M&M from his cup, and his mouth was a little tight with concentration. “It feels like we’re on a date.”
