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The last thing inside is the beginning of a bridge for a song I haven’t named yet. Three lines about fucking up something good, written badly enough that I closed the book halfway through the fourth, and shoved it out of sight.

Usually, feeling like this would make me write until my hand cramped.

I don’t know how to write that I finally got everything I wanted and would trade the feeling for one smile from her.

* * *

The exam is in Hartley, the same building where I first met Bea.

Back in January, I walked in here late, unprepared and irritated that a degree I didn’t want was standing between me and the Trust. I couldn’t name half the bones of the hand. I thought anatomy was memorizing labels long enough to dump them onto a page, and I assumed the tiny pre-med assigned to tutor me would give up after three sessions.

Now I’m early.

They’ve put us in the main hall, with rows of single desks spaced far enough apart to make cheating require professional equipment. There’s a clock on the wall and a woman at the front reading rules from a laminated card with the gravity of someone explaining an emergency evacuation.

A couple of students recognize me on the way in.

I give them a nod and find the desk marked FOX, C.

Then I sit down to retake my A&P final.

The nerves hit almost immediately.

Different from going onstage, but close enough that my body doesn’t seem to care. Tight stomach. Restless hands. Too aware of the clock.

The past few weeks have been a mess of LA flights, demo sessions, Mabel’s hospital stay, and trying not to turn up at Bea’s house. I studied, but not as much as I should have. Not as much as I would have if she were still sitting across from me, tapping a red pen against my notes every time my attention drifted.

Without her here, I’m suddenly not sure how much of this belongs to me and how much only made sense because she was the one explaining it.

Now there’s just me, a black-and-white answer booklet and the knowledge that passing this year still matters.

Apex might still walk. Harrison’s new manager is in renegotiations but not a deal yet, and if the label decides the leaked version matters more than the band, the Trust is the only money I know is coming.

I still owe each of the boys every cent I lost after Cascade. Whatever happens with Apex, I want to be the man who keeps his word.

I need this.

“You may begin,” the woman says.

I open the booklet.

Question one is a diagram of the human heart.

Of course, it fucking is.

It was the first thing Bea taught me. She drew it in red across a page of my notebook and made me trace the direction of blood flow until I stopped mixing up the pulmonary artery and vein.

I can hear her now.

Start with where the blood came from, hotshot. Don’t just guess because the label looks familiar.

The ache arrives with the memory, but I push it down and look at the diagram.

Right atrium. Tricuspid valve. Right ventricle. Pulmonary artery.

I know this.

I fill in every label. My handwriting is still designed for lyrics—fast, slanted, written before the words have a chance to disappear—and it looks slightly deranged on a science diagram.