CHAPTER 21 #2
“Tell the kids I said bye,” he said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans, starting down the driveway. “And tell Penn thanks for helping me fix the pothole.”
My eyes darted to the spot in the driveway where the pothole should’ve been, finding a dark patch of still-drying concrete in its place.
The sight of it caused my chest to crack further, even more when he walked past it.
That was why he’d skipped book club—to fix the hole in our driveway that’d been there since winter.
I bit down on my lip to keep from calling out to him, the panic and dread swirling around me.
Ivy and Penn were in the living room watching TV when I opened the door, and immediately I could hear dishes clinking in the kitchen. Then came Mom’s voice, alongside Junie’s soft laughter. Happy—worlds different from the atmosphere outside.
Worlds different from the atmosphere when I left. I wanted nothing more than to disappear again.
“We just finished dinner,” Penn began hesitantly, lowering the volume on the TV. “Mom made a plate for you…”
I didn’t wait for her to finish before climbing the stairs, my body feeling heavier with each step.
I kept the light off as I stepped into my room, looking at the posters and pictures on my wall.
The images were haunting in the dim light, or maybe it was because I just felt so hollow inside looking at them.
It had to be some form of self-torture, leaving them up as long as I did. Surely.
Something on my desk caught my eye, though, and I took a step closer, the sinking feeling in my stomach worsening.
It was my sketchbook, with a yellow sticky note on the cover. Junie used my hairdryer to dry the pages. I’m sorry some of the pages got ruined. I took a personal day from work tomorrow, so let’s talk more then. -Mom
I couldn’t tell if there was any hidden meaning between the lines. The pages had a slightly wrinkled edge to them, having been soaked and then dried. I thought about Junie taking a hairdryer to it, carefully sorting through the pages as she’d dried them.
My breath started coming faster, but the oxygen in my lungs felt less and less.
I flipped the cover open and rubbed the stiff paper between my fingers.
The earlier pages weren’t as wavy as the ones toward the middle, where the water immediately seeped in.
I found the piece of paper Jamie had given me pressed between the pages, as if they were trying to flatten it with the pressure.
The face was gone, the graphite having blended into a smudge. No one would’ve ever guessed the image was supposed to be Jamie.
It would’ve been fake, the same way these past few weeks have been.
The dark feeling I’d always run from crept closer now, like a friend putting their hand on my shoulder.
Mom took a day off work because her eldest daughter couldn’t keep it together.
Junie had to dry my sketchbook with a hairdryer because she’d felt bad.
Theo had cried because I’d yelled. Jamie had agreed to be my fake boyfriend because I’d loved a boy who probably never really loved me back.
Mistake after mistake, failure after failure.
I let out another breath, this one shaking. I couldn’t draw another breath in. The pressure building and building in my chest snapped, like a rubber band, leaving behind raw pain in its wake.
My body moved on autopilot, and my hand shot out and pulled one of the New York pictures I’d taped to the wall above my desk.
The tape gave way, the page fluttering to my desk’s surface.
The choking feeling in my throat only tightened, squeezing like fingers pressing in, and I snatched another picture off.
This time a thumbtack clattered somewhere in the dark. And then another. And another.
It was a blind sort of feeling, moving through the darkness that was threatening to swallow me whole. I bit down on my lower lip hard, trying to trap the sob building in my throat. I went from one wall to the next, because once I started, I couldn’t stop. Not until my walls were bare.
And when they were, I gasped in a loud, shuddering breath, as if I hadn’t breathed the entire time I destroyed it all.
The pictures that had been my dreams for years were all scattered on the ground, crumpled and torn from how fiercely I’d ripped them from the walls.
I stood in the ruin, eyes watering, but not a single tear falling.
I dropped to the floor, curling my fingers around a picture that’d fallen closest to me. The sight of the blank white walls was almost worse.
Worse. The word echoed in my ears. There was one way it could be worse.
With a strange sort of intuition, it was like I knew. As I crawled over to my desk and pulled my laptop off the surface, I just knew. I knew what I’d find when I loaded my email, but I looked anyway, as if some cruel part of me wanted to twist the knife further.
And, eerily enough, I’d been right.
I had one unread email, and the subject line was in bold. NYU ADMISSIONS.
I should’ve sucked in a breath. My heart should’ve jumped in my chest. Something. Instead, an icy feeling settled over my skin as I tapped the email, and if I hadn’t been emotionally wrung out, I might’ve felt something more than just the cold.
Dear Daisy,
Your admissions decision is now available for you to review. Please log back into your status portal to view your decision.
Sincerely,
NYU Office of Admissions
I stared at the email, at the words, at the timestamp. This morning, before I’d yelled at the kids, before Jamie had caught me with Dalton, before all my dreams fell apart.
The email gave me no hint of what their decision was, but like a sixth sense, I knew what I’d find if I logged into the portal. Rejection. The icing on the cake for the worst day ever. I didn’t even have to look.
Really, I didn’t have the strength to. I closed my laptop lid and set it down amongst the scattered scraps of photos and sketches, falling back to stare at the ceiling.
I didn’t move for a long, long time. Not when I heard the kids come upstairs to get ready for bed, not when I heard a soft knock low on my door, and not when the house had finally fallen silent.
I didn’t think I could face anyone ever again.