Wesley swings a confused glance toward my phone. “What’s that?”
“Maybell,”Gemma gasps. “I have a TON of stuff to catch you up on, oh my god oh my god oh my god. Where’ve you been? Howareyou? It’s been forever!” She doesn’t leave room for me to answer. “You won’t believe it when you hear about—” Her eyes grow enormous, jaw hitting the floor. “Holy shit. You actually went andfoundhim?”
“What—I—”
Wesley’s behind me, he and Gemma staring at each other over my shoulder. Gemma bounces up and down, squealing at a sonicpitch. “Holy shit! Holy shiiiiiiit! Did I actually connect you two? Did I make this happen?”
Wesley’s face wrinkles in confusion. “What’s she talking about?” he asks me.
My throat closes up. I can’t breathe, can’t think. My face is a furnace, so I know it’s turned red and I know it’s obvious. Adrenaline surges while my limbs weaken.Have to get out of here.
“You’re the picture!” she cries. “You’re the picture I used for Jack! This is just too much.”
He moves closer, eyes sharpening. “My picture?”
I need to say something, but I dropped my voice in the grass and can’t find it. It’s gone. This is it. My worst fear realizing itself out of nowhere, no warning.
“The picture I showed Maybell! When I was sending emails from the boyfriend I made up for her, which I was actually talking about with this guy I’m seeing earlier today, because good lord, wasn’t that a missed opportunity if you think about it? If I’d called Nev and Max from theCatfishshow, we could have gotten on TV. And they probably would’ve paid us. But it looks like you went investigating on your own.”
My pulse accelerates to a dangerous speed, face hot, ears on fire. I try to regulate my breathing but I’m broken, a vast panic of white, wordless alarm, and I’m paralyzed. Even with my mouth open, I draw in too little oxygen and the world begins to fuzz and fray at the edges.
Something wrong is happening to my body.
“Wait,” Wesley says.
She steamrolls right over him. “I still feel terrible about that, but if you—like, are youdatingnow? ’Cause if you are, it was kinda worth it I guess.” Her nose is an inch from her screen, trying tosee. “It’s getting hard to see you. Can you turn a light on or something?”
It’s getting hard to see her, too; I’ve got tunnel vision and Gemma’s a brushstroke of blurring colors. My chest is cold, a solid block of ice, even as unbearable heat radiates from my cheeks. I try to pin my focus on something—Look normal, look normal—but my mind blanks. I can’t focus because I’m panicking. I’m focusing on panicking. It makes the panicking worse.
“Maybell?” It’s Wesley, moving closer. I feel his presence at my back, towering over me, and yet I’m not here at all. I’m drifting and loose, sky expanding until it’s wider than reality, bending the earth beneath me into a ninety-degree curve.
“Um. Um.” I pick up syllables here and there, struggling to piece them together. “Hold on.” I hand him my phone, tuning out Gemma’s loud chattering. I don’t know why I hand him my phone.Got to get out of here.
I am walking away, to anywhere, it doesn’t matter. One foot in front of the other, breathing shaky, this unsteady new life I’ve been slowly building shattered. I can’t tell if I’m walking slowly or if I’m running, because I can’t feel my legs and I’m spinning outside of my body, up and away into the sky. My legs are too wobbly for the task of carrying me, so I sit down and work on putting my soul back inside my body.Come on, come down from there, get back inhere.
I’m a bog body now. They’ll find me in a thousand years and someone will look down at my shriveled remains and say, “Maybe she was somebody important.” The name and personality they cultivate for me will be my immortal contribution to this world.
I close my eyes, focusing on my breathing. It’s just me and thewildflowers and the wind, and if I am very, very careful about my movements, I might not be flung into outer space.
The wildflowers around me stir and sigh. The wind says,
Maybell?
Says,
Are you all right?
Just once, I wish the universe would give me something nice without throwing in unwelcome side effects. Wesleyjuststarted opening up to me. He’s being caring instead of broody, talking and listening. A friend. Now that he knows my secret, he’s going to slam a door on whatever this friendship might have elevated to, shifting back into the taciturn man I met at the beginning of April. He isn’t going to want anything to do with me. I’ve blown it.
And before you answer, it continues,just know that you don’t have to say yes.
I tilt my head back to see that the wind is moving closer. It has such gentleness for its size, soft as down, still waters running deeper than you’d think. It hides in trees to be alone and yet prolongs treasure hunts so as not to be alone. It gave its bedroom to a stranger and lets her wear its pendant, doodling her make-believe café with a few inaccuracies that have since grown to be canon.
“Hey.” He lowers to the ground, curving over my sprawled form. Haloed by the stars. “You going somewhere without me, Parrish?”
I watch him, heart ticking pitifully, the white, fizzling buzz settling as I come back to myself in increments. “I don’t know.”
He lies down beside me. “Have I ever told you about why I want an animal sanctuary?”
