“Yeah,” I say again, because I’ve been a little worried too. June has taken my attention lately, but I glance at Aeron in class and don’t like the way he’s carrying himself now. He’s alwaysbeen a little shy and someone who lingers on the outskirts, but now it’s like he’s carrying a darkness around everywhere he goes.
I wonder if things didn’t work out with that girl he had talked about dating.
“He was down at Food Truck Friday,” Carter goes on. “Quiet, even for him. Then he just got up and walked off. Didn’t say bye to anyone. I texted him after and got one word back. ‘Tired.’”
My phone buzzes with a message from June. She sent a photo of the canvas she’s been fighting for days, my green smear still in the middle of it. Along with the message:thinking of you.
I’m already smiling and responding:thinking of you too. Just paint it all green and call it Thoughts on a Forest.
June:lol dummy
“What do you think?” Carter asks.
I glance up, realizing he said something else I didn’t catch. “Aeron does that,” I say, searching for a GIF to send Jun. “He’s a deep thinker and goes off into his thoughts sometimes, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“He’s fine.”
Carter watches me tap away on my phone for a few minutes. Whatever he meant to say next about Aeron, he lets it go. “You’re a lovesick fool, you know?” he says, and there’s a grin under it.
“Is that how it is with you and Vienna?”
He gives a hearty laugh and holds his stomach. “Nah. Me and Vienna are friends with benefits, and we want to keep it that way.” He resumes the game.
I could never be that way with June. With her, it’s always everything.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
JUNE
Where the hell is my diary?
I’ve torn through every drawer in my desk, the pile of textbooks, the gap between my bed frame and the wall where things sometimes disappear to and collect dust. I even checked under the canvases leaning against the wall, which was pointless because I would remember placing it there.
The dusky rose bedspread is pulled back, pillows on the floor. My room looks like someone ransacked it, which was me. It’s like my diary grew legs and disappeared.
I know I had it last week. I wrote in it during Visual Studies while pretending to take notes. Aeron had missed class again, so I exchanged a worried look with Cinna and then wrote down my worries. I’m pretty sure I wrote in it the day after that, while studying alone in the library. And then…?
It grew legs and ran away.
I’ve been looking on and off, always telling myself it would turn up in some obvious spot and I’d feel stupid for missing it. But I’ve run out of obvious spots.
My frustration is bubbling in my chest. I need my diary. My name isn’t in it so if some stranger finds it, they likely won’tknow whose it is. Still, there are a lot of personal things on those pages, I was almost done filling it up so I could start a fresh one, and there are so many notes about Dorien I want to record. These early relationship moments with him are already fading because I can’t jot them down.
I let out a frustrated groan and then riffle through my bag. I pull out a school notebook, one with Visual Studies lecture notes on the first twelve pages, and flip to the back. This temporary diary will have to do until I find my lost one.
My cursive comes out fast and sloppy, my thoughts racing to get everything out.
Yesterday, it rained in the evening. Dorien was walking me home, and we ran for cover under a large tree because the sky split open and we were both too stubborn to run for a real building. His leather jacket was soaked through and he was laughing, rain plastered his hair to his forehead. I kept thinking,I need to paint this with the exact shade of his skin in the light: warm amber against the gray behind him.Then his mouth was on mine, and the rain was cold on my face yet he was warm everywhere else. I kissed him until my lungs ached and the ache felt better than breathing.
“The only art I want to make is of you,” he said. I’ve never felt such a full, passionate feeling. My heart felt like it’d burst.
I press the notebook against my stomach and let myself relive the moment a few more times. I never want to forget that moment.
Grinning in a way I can’t stop, I close the notebook, shove my feet into sneakers, and open my bedroom door. I’m supposed to meet Cinna for mocktail hour tonight.
Is tonight a good time to tell her about me and Dorien? God, what if she hates me?
