15. June
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JUNE
The coffee shop across from campus has oxblood walls and a ton of succulents on the windowsills, and the light through the front glass is the color of weak tea.
It’s the kind of place that wants desperately to be cozy but overshoots into cluttered.
I like it anyway. The espresso is decent and nobody from Alaria comes here because the Wi-Fi is unreliable, which means Cinna and I can sit in the corner booth and talk without recognizing anyone.
More and more I don’t want attention from others.
Cinna is stirring her vanilla latte with a tiny wooden stick, making slow circles. Her hair is down today, and she’s wearing a cream-colored cardigan that makes her look soft and approachable, which she is. She’s also, I don’t know. Something feels different. She gets lost in thought more.
She’s telling me about a film she wants to see this weekend, a French film with subtitles. I’m half-listening and half-watching the way the light pools on the table between our cups. Lately, I’m getting more and more lost in thoughts too.
“Oh, wait.” Cinna stops mid-sentence and points her wooden stir stick at me. “Did you ever go to the botanical garden with that guy? Tyler?”
“No.”
“He’s been asking for weeks.”
“I know. I just don’t have the bandwidth right now.” I trace a line on the table with my fingernail. “He texted me yesterday, actually. Asked if I wanted to grab coffee. I said I was busy.”
“Were you busy?”
“I was painting, so technically yes.”
Cinna gives me a look that says she sees right through me, but she lets it go and returns to the French film.
My phone buzzes against the table.
Cinna shrugs like she’s okay if I check it, so I pick it up and glance at the screen. It’s from Rachel, a girl from our Visual Studies class who I’m friendly with but don’t hang out with.
Rachel: Someone posted anon that Marcus Deleon plagiarized his exhibition piece from an obscure Canadian artist.
Her text is followed by screenshots of side-by-side comparisons going around, and even though the resemblance is barely there if you actually study the composition, it looks damning at first glance.
Rachel: Teachers are “looking into it.” Yeah right
I’m a little numb about it; here I thought I was going to have a chill, no-drama day for a change.
Nope.
I turn the screen toward Cinna.
She reads the texts and her stirring hand goes still. Her mouth pulls in tight at the corners. “I feel bad for whoever Marcus is, but good,” she says, setting the wooden stick down on a napkin. “Maybe someone will finally stop the asshole spreading rumors.”
“Yeah.” I lock the screen and set the phone face-down. “Maybe.”
But my stomach hasn’t unclenched since I woke up this morning—hell, since I discovered flyers about me— and it’s not going to unclench now just because teachers are “aware.” The texts to me stopped about a week ago.
Dorien hasn’t gotten any more either, which I’m relieved about even though I’d rather eat my own paintbrushes than admit I’ve been checking on him.
The silence should feel like a good sign.
Still… it feels like the pause between the first rumble of thunder and the part where your house gets hit.
No. Not thunder. It feels like waiting for results you already know are bad. Like I’m at the doctor and she’s about to tell me I have chlamydia.
I pick up my coffee and take a long sip. It’s lukewarm now. The taste is flat and slightly bitter.
“You ready?” Cinna asks, pulling her Saint Laurent Sac de Jour bag onto her shoulder. “I have Drawing in twenty and I refuse to be late again. I want a good spot for today’s model.”
“Sure.
I grab my jacket and we head for the door. The bell above it gives a tinny ring as we step out onto the sidewalk, and the aging October air hits my face. It’s cool, dry, and smells faintly of exhaust from the bus stop nearby. The crosswalk ahead is already flashing its countdown. Fifteen seconds.
We step off the curb. Cinna is back to talking about the French film.
I’m nodding, my coffee in one hand and my phone in the other.
It buzzes again. Probably Rachel with another update.
I glance down at the screen while we’re in the middle of the street, one eye on the white lines under my feet and one on the message.
It’s not from Rachel.
The number is the one I’ve memorized against my will. The one with no name attached, no profile picture, no traceable owner. Just digits that have created a permanent space in my nervous system.
The message reads: Everyone sees how you and Carter are together. It’s giving less cousin, more crush. Are you playing out Daddy issues because Mommy couldn’t keep her man? Ask around. People have been talking about it for years.
I stop walking.
I stop walking in the middle of the crosswalk with cars idling at the light and pedestrians brushing past me, and the edges of my vision turn gray until the only thing I can see is the screen in my hand and those words arranged in front of me.
A hand clamps around my upper arm and yanks. Cinna drags me forward, her grip surprisingly firm, and my feet move because she’s pulling me but my brain is still standing in the crosswalk reading the text over and over.
We reach the other side and she spins me to face her. “Oh my God, what’s wrong? Are you trying to get hit by a car?”
I can’t speak. My hands are shaking so badly the phone is bouncing on my fingers, and I watch the tremor travel through my wrists and up my forearms like a current I can’t shut off. I hold the screen toward Cinna.
She takes the phone and reads.
Her lips part and all warmth drains from her expression, leaving behind a pale, hard mask. “What the fuck?” she exhales.
I take the phone back because I need to read it again.
I need to make sure I didn’t hallucinate it, that someone actually typed those words and pressed send and aimed them at me.
Carter is my cousin. He moved into our house when he was eleven because his parents died and there was nobody else, and my mother opened the door and gave him a bedroom, never once making him feel like charity.
He’s family. He’s my brother in every way except blood, and now someone is telling people I have a crush on him?
The nausea rolls up through my stomach and into my throat.
It’s so vile, so deliberately disgusting, that my first instinct is to laugh because it can’t be real.
Nobody would actually think that. But the laugh doesn’t come.
Instead my skin crawls, a slow creeping sensation that spreads, because this text doesn’t just attack me.
It attacks Carter. It takes the one relationship in my life that has always been simple and easy and smears it into an ugly shape I’ll never be able to unsee.
And there’s the dig about my parents’ divorce. Whoever wrote this knows my father left and knows enough about our family to twist the whole picture into a sick joke.
That’s not public information.
That’s someone who’s been inside my life.
“This is sick,” Cinna says. “This person is genuinely sick. Who would even think to say that? What the hell is wrong with people?”
My voice sounds distant from me, like I’m hearing it through a wall.
“I guess someone could’ve internet-stalked me.
But would they go so far as to find records about my parent’s divorce?
Or death certificates for my aunt? I don’t go around just telling everyone those things. I think… I think this person knows me.”
Cinna’s eyes narrow. She crosses her arms, and I suspect she’s sorting through everyone we know and running names against how much they know and possible motives.
“Vienna said something to me,” I tell her. “You know when we went to Food Truck Friday?”
“Yeah.”
“We talked and she said, ‘imagine if it’s someone you know.’ She said the person holding the knife is the one standing close enough to get you.”
Cinna’s mouth drops open. “She said that?”
“Word for word.”
She straightens and widens her stance like she’s ready to brawl.
“And you don’t think that’s basically a confession?
She’s the campus gossip so this totally makes sense.
” I open my mouth to defend Vienna but Cinna raises a silencing palm.
“I know you guys are kinda-sorta-friends, so how much does she know about your family?”
I start to say “nothing,” but remember a party last year where we both got tipsy and over-shared with each other. It’s not like I spilled my guts to her, but I mentioned how my parents split up and something about Carter living with us after his parents died.
Cinna interprets my silence. “See?’ she says, hand on a hip. “She’s the anonymous sender.”
I start walking toward campus so we don’t continue standing here on the sidewalk looking like we’re ready to commit murder. Cinna falls in step next to me, her heels clicking against concrete.
“I don’t know,” I say. “She’s the hardest person to read.
What she said could only be a warning, or she’s being dramatic because that’s what Vienna does.
” My voice wavers because I’ve been replaying that conversation for days and still can’t land on an interpretation that feels right.
“She wants to be a gallery manager and you have to be cutthroat to buy and sell art. She’s perfect for that job.
And… she just takes things too far sometimes. ”
“Like when she keyed her ex’s car? That’s not ‘too far.’ That’s psycho.”
“A little, yeah. But he cheated. I haven’t done anything to her.”
Cinna grabs my arm, gentler this time. “You should call Carter. What if this horrible person texts him next?”