He held my face with both hands. “I love you,” he said. “I love you. I love you.”
I could hardly see him through my tears. “I love you,” I said. “I love you. I love you.”
“Isla,” the head says. “You’re going to meet many boys on this journey. You can’t let them distract you from becoming the woman you are meant to become.”
She’s wrong. There’s only one boy.
And who am I to become without him?
I stare at my fingers. The letters are fading, but the word still burns against my flesh.
Beside his mother’s waiting car, the letters were sharp and dark. We kissed desperately. Mrs. Wasserstein opened the back door and called to him from the inside. “We’re late. Let’s go.”
His hands gripped mine. “Thanksgiving.”
I nodded.
He kissed me again, but this time, it was quick. And then he dropped my hands as if they stung, as if he physically couldn’t hold them any longer, and he rushed into the car. The windows were tinted black. I couldn’t see him, but I watched his window anyway until the car disappeared from view.
The head of school clears her throat. My gaze had drifted towards her window.
“For one month of reckless behaviour? I’m giving you one month of weekday detention. I think you’ll agree that it’s a fair punishment. In addition, this gives you ample time to recommit to your classwork without any…distractions.”
“Josh wasn’t a distraction.”
The head looks me over carefully. “No,” she says, at last. “Perhaps, for you, that was the wrong word. Though I have my concerns about the other way around.”
It’s a cruel jab. How dare she suggest that I care more about Josh than he cares about me? What could she possibly know about our relationship?
I storm out of her office and into detention. For all of my time spent frequenting its threshold, I’ve never actually crossed it. But it looks like any other classroom. There’s only one other student here, a sophomore. He doesn’t look up from keying his desk. Professeur Fontaine – the computer-science teacher with the triangle-shaped head – is on detention duty. “Pick a seat, any seat,” she says. She sounds like a street magician.
I wish I knew where Josh used to sit. I try to conjure his image. A figure with rounded shoulders and a furrowed brow materializes in the back corner. He’s pencilling his life into tidy panels. I step into this shadow, wanting to believe in its reality, and take the desk. The window beside us has a view of the school’s courtyard, but everyone is gone for the day. Only the cobblestones and pigeons remain.
I never got to read those panels.
What if I’m the one who blew it? What if I can’t get into Dartmouth any more? Josh will still get into his college. All he needs is a GED. Perhaps he ruined this year, but I might have ruined our next four. If only I could hear his voice again. He made it back to New York this morning, where his mom granted him this single text: Miss you like crazy. Internet also confiscated. Don’t know when we can talk next. I LOVE YOU.
After detention, I walk straight to the Treehouse. The night air is freezing, and my coat isn’t warm enough. I remember Josh placing his own coat around my shoulders – right here on our first date – and cry for the hundredth time. I wrap myself in the blanket and place my hand on his mural. I press my palm against the house with the ivy window boxes and American flag. I press my palm against it so hard that it hurts.
Here, I think. He is here.
I try to be there, too.
“Turn that off.” Kurt barges into my room and points at my laptop. “You’re supposed to be studying. You need a perfect score on your physics test tomorrow.”
“This poll is saying Josh’s dad and Terry Robb are locked in a dead heat. It’s still too close to predict a winner.”
“Stop reading that stuff. The election isn’t for five more days.” And then he frowns. “Terry Robb. People shouldn’t have two first names.”
I’ve finally put in a request to get my door fixed. I’m tired of my privacy being violated. Our friendship is intact, technically, but an unpleasant tension cloaks every interaction. Kurt is unhappy that I’m unhappy. He wants our lives to go back to the way they were, pre-Josh. And I’m unhappy with Kurt. I know he didn’t mean for any of this to happen, but it did happen. And he could’ve stopped it.
As for Hattie, I haven’t spoken to her since she was a mugshot. She might as well be in prison, for all I care. I’ve been glued to the news. I downloaded an app that tricks my laptop into thinking I’m in America, because international restrictions were blocking too many important video feeds. Knowing what’s happening in the election, minute by minute, is the only way that I feel close to Josh. His dad has to win. And not just for the obvious reasons, but selfishly, I hope it might relax his parents enough so that they’ll give him back his phone.
“You,” Kurt says. “Physics. Study.”
“Don’t be such an assjacket.”
“Asswaffle,” he replies.
“Asspickle.”
“Asshopper.”
He looks pleased with that last one. My mouth twitches, but I’m still annoyed. To cap off this perfect week, I feel my period coming on. I close my laptop. “Fine. You win. But I’m going to the bathroom first.”
“Assroom,” I hear him say as I go down the hall. When I return, our game is over. “You missed a call from a two-one-two area code.”
“What?” I race to my phone. Someone from Manhattan has left me a voicemail. “Why didn’t you answer it?”
“Because that’s not my phone.”
“What if that was Josh?”
“Then your screen would have said ‘Josh’ instead of ‘unknown caller’.”
I barely muffle my scream of frustration. “His phone was taken away! If anyone calls when I’m not here, answer it. And if it’s Josh, tell him to wait until I can get here.”
Hey, Isla. My heart splits in two at the sound of his tired voice, which he’s attempting to raise above a jumbled commotion of shouting and ringing and clanging. It’s, uh, Thursday. I guess it’s already night in Paris? I’m calling from a volunteer’s desk at election headquarters. This is the first time that I’ve been left alone near a phone. It’s pretty bad here, but… I don’t know. None of it even matters. I miss you. I’ll try again as soon as I can. A pause. I hope you’re all right. Okay, bye. I love you.