fine deprive me of my entertainment
btw, I’ve got some really really good news to share.
I’ll tell you in person when you’re back!
Luke
news?! I can’t wait that long!
Talk later?
Sera
tomorrow—enjoy your night!
Mom comes up with soup and crackers. She takes my temperature and checks my vitals. Everything seems fine, the temp is low, and there are no erratic beats from my heart in the hour we sit together. I’m just tired.
“It’s just a cold, Mom. Also, look.” I show her the messages from Dr.Lee. Mom stares in disbelief for a moment while I grin, her lawyer eyes skimming the text to confirm meaning. “It’s real,” I say.
“Oh my god, honey!” She wraps me in a tight hug and won’t let go.
“Mom, you’re suffocating me,” I say, laughing. She pulls away reluctantly and a new email notification pops up on my screen. It’s from the fellowship in Paris.
“Oh—the fellowship just emailed me.”
“What does it say?”
I sit up and run a hand through my tangled hair. “This is nothow I pictured gettinggoodnews,” I say, looking down at the pj’s I’m still in.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mom says. “Open it!”
I open it.
Dear Mlle Watkins,
We are thrilled to welcome you to the 2028 Paris Artist Cohort! Your work shows great promise. You are exactly the kind of artist we like to nurture and support here at Le Jeanne Fontaine Collaboratif. The details of your acceptance and the timeline for your stay with us are attached. Please let us know your acceptance or your regrets by October 1.
“I’m going to Paris! I’m going to get a new heart and go to Paris!” This all feels so unreal in my stuffy head but no less delightful, even though having to decide by October seems impossible. I have to tell Iris. I have to tell Luke! And Maddy! I pull my mom into a crushing hug and start dialing Maddy before I remember she’s at work and text her instead. I text Luke too, a quick notice of more good news, asking him to call me. Maybe I can get him to come visit next summer too.
However, instead of all this good news calming my mom, it makes her a little more anxious.
“I wish you’d let me take you to the ER, just to make sure,” she says, smoothing my sticky hair off my forehead.
“I’m okay. Really. I don’t want to be in the hospital for no reason. It’ll make me worse. I just need to rest. Thanks for the soup, though.”
She leaves me alone, and when she comes back for my dishes later, I ask her to stay. We pull up old movies on my laptop and I fall asleep on her shoulder, the smell of her perfume in my dreams, the sounds of old Hollywood accents in my ear.
When I wake up, it’s dark and my phone is buzzing. Luke’s calling. I answer in the middle of a yawn and hit the video button.
“Hey,” he says. He’s outside somewhere, sitting against a brick wall. His hair is getting too long and keeps falling in his eyes.
“Hi.” I climb out of my bed. “Give me a second.” It’s almost midnight. I start digging around on the floor for more clothes.
“Where are you going?” he asks as I almost drop my phone while pulling on his baseball hoodie and heading downstairs.
“To the tree house. I’ve been inside all day.” He looks worried, and I tell him to stop. The latest dose of cold medicine kicked in hours ago, and I feel good right now. “I’m fine, it’s just a little cold. And I don’t want to wake anyone up. I can make it to the tree house just fine.”
Outside it’s humid and hot, the air heavy and still. I’m grateful Luke helped Adam and Oliver restore the regular ladder to the tree house so I don’t have to use the rope one. I heave myself into the small structure. They’ve redecorated a little, but it’s still the space Luke and I made our own, with a scratched-up painting of the night sky on the roof. I can see the ghosts of our kid selves snuggling up underneath it and talking about all the adventures we’d go on as we grew up. Always together.
