I’ve backed myself into the furthest corner possible. “Nothing is wrong with it.”
“But there are things you’d change?”
“No! I mean, yeah, but…small things. You know?” Stop talking. “It’s not a big deal. All books require a little bit of editing.”
The street lights cast Josh in shadow. I can’t see his expression, but it doesn’t feel nice. He remains silent. Waiting.
“Okay.” I gulp. “Well. There was this one flashback that was in a weird place. When you get your tattoo? That scene…it just didn’t flow with what came before and after it.”
“All right.” It comes out like ice.
“And your parents. They were, like, this big deal in the beginning, but by the end, it was like you didn’t even have parents. They completely dropped out.”
“Because they live in another country.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t in your life any more. Even if it’s their absence that matters, it’s still something that should be acknowledged.”
His jaw is clenched. “Anything else?”
“Um.” My voice lowers to a near whisper. “There were a lot of drawings of Rashmi. In the middle.”
“Shocker.”
“No,” I say quickly. “I mean, there were a ton of one-page panels that were just…there. Completely unnecessary. They didn’t contribute anything to the story.” I can’t believe that I’m saying this – all of this – aloud. A good girlfriend would keep her mouth shut. “And then sections of your junior year were really crowded. You needed more variation between the panels. More space.”
“More space.”
“Um, yeah. Spaces. Breaks. For the reader to contemplate things. To figure out what’s important, on their own.”
“Spaces,” he says. “To figure out what’s important.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m drowning in a river of my own making. “I didn’t say anything earlier, because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. It’s great, I promise.”
“You’ve used that word to describe it in the past. And yet, I still don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry.” I say it again, my voice desperate.
“Are you sure you aren’t just pissed off? Maybe because it isn’t about you?”
“No!” The shame is overwhelming. “I wasn’t even in your life until this year. I know that. I know I’m not an important part of your story.”
For the first time in several minutes, Josh is thrown. “What do you mean, you’re not important to my story?”
“I haven’t been around that long. And you had this whole life before me, and you’ll have this whole life after me—”
“After you?” His voice gets an octave higher. “What do you mean after?”
“Vermont. Your school. Your future.”
Josh is baffled. “But…you’re coming with me.”
“Am I?”
“When Dartmouth accepts you—”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I say.
He punches his fist against the seat. “Stop saying that. Why are you always putting yourself down? You’re gonna get in. There’s no way that you’re not getting in.”
“Tell that to Columbia.”
And now he’s thrown again. “What?”
“I didn’t get in.”
“What? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I can’t look at him. My failure is humiliating. “A few days ago.”
“I’m so sorry. God, I wish you’d told me. I had no idea.”
“I got a letter from la Sorbonne, too. Accepted.”
Josh deflates with visible relief. “That’s great. You deserve it.” But there’s sadness, too, as his posture sinks further. Because if I attend la Sorbonne, there will still be an ocean between us. “So what if Dartmouth does accept you? Where will you go?”
“I don’t know.” And I realize I’m crying. “I haven’t decided.”
“But…I thought…I thought we had a plan.”
“No, you had a plan. You have plans.”
Josh shakes his head in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly who you are.” Tears stream down my cheeks. “You know how to be yourself, but you also know how to be a different kind of yourself on television and in society. And you’ve always had a passion for art, and you’ve always known where you’re attending college. You already even know what kind of apartment you’ll rent when you move there! Not to mention what kind of car you’ll drive, what kind of cat you’ll adopt, and how you’ll spend your weekends in the woods. I don’t know any of that. I’ve never cared about anything like you’ve cared about your work. I don’t even belong to a single country. I’m nobody. I’m nothing.”
“Isla…” My words have stunned him again. He has no idea what to say.
“And you’re right, maybe I am upset about your book for selfish reasons. I know you haven’t had the time, I know it takes months for you to draw them, but…eight pages. I was only eight pages.” My voice cracks, hollow and desperate. “I thought maybe I’d finally learn something if I could see myself through your eyes. But I wasn’t even there.”
Josh strains against his seat belt. He reaches for a hand, but I pull them both into my lap. “You’ll be in it,” he says. “Of course you’ll be in it.”
“I used to think so.” My chest is splitting in two. “Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? I’m a placeholder.”
“What do you mean?”
He’s trying desperately to get me to look at him, but I can’t. I’m in agony. “Your friends left school, and I was there, but I wasn’t enough to keep you there. You had to keep breaking rules. And then you left me.”
“It wasn’t like that. You know it wasn’t like that!”
“No,” I say. “It was. You tried really hard for a really long time to get expelled, because you couldn’t admit to your parents that you didn’t want to be there. Your plan just succeeded at the wrong time. And now that you’re gone – now that you’re here, and I’m not – sooner or later, you’re gonna realize that I was only a distraction. Something to keep your mind off your misery. Something to keep you going until the next phase of your very carefully planned-out life could begin. But I no longer believe that you’ll actually want me there. And” – I swallow loudly – “I don’t want to be around when you discover it.”