“Hnngh?” I say in my best I-was-asleep voice.
“That was the second time,” Nate says from the hall. “If it happens again, I have to report you to the head of school, and she will suspend you both.” He waits. “Just say ‘okay’, Isla.”
“Okay.” It barely leaves my throat. I’m dying. The junior in the room beside mine shifts around in her bed. I pray that she’s still asleep.
“What was that?” Nate calls out.
“OKAY.”
“Thank you. Goodnight.” Nate pads away, his door fwoomps, and the world is silent. I exhale. I’m shaking. And then I’m crying, but it’s not because I’m scared or humiliated. It’s because the most amazing moment of my entire life has just happened.
Josh loves me.
I trace the ink on my body. His beautiful illustrations are smeared with streaks of gooey chocolate. Reluctantly, I turn on my shower. The steam is already billowing when I climb in. The hot water hits me, and purple-black ink floods down my body.
It touches everything.
He is everywhere.
Chapter fifteen
Josh appears over my shoulder. “I thought we’d agreed you’re going to Dartmouth.”
His detention must have just ended. I’m working on an essay for Columbia University, so I finish my sentence, look up at him, and smile from my desk chair. “Remind me again where that’s located?”
“Four-point-nine miles from the Center for Cartoon Studies. Maybe. I’m not sure. I’d have to check.”
“She’s already filled out the application,” Kurt says, spoiling my surprise.
Josh freezes. And then he drops to his knees. “Is he serious? Are you serious?”
I slide out the hidden paperwork from Dartmouth. “We’re serious.”
He rips away the Columbia papers and throws them to my floor. “You don’t need those, you really don’t need those.”
I laugh as I pick them back up. “I do.”
“You don’t.”
“These are tough schools.” My smile fades as I gesture to the folders on my desk labelled LA SORBONNE, COLUMBIA, and DARTMOUTH. “You know I have to apply to them all.”
“And you’ll get into them all. But you’ll accept Dartmouth. And we’ll get a studio on the river – which will still be bigger than this – and a cat that looks like Jacque, but we’ll call him Jack. And we’ll get a crappy car, something that doesn’t even have AC, but it’ll have a great radio, and we’ll drive someplace new every weekend.”
“I want that,” I say.
“Me too.”
Kurt shakes his head in disgust. He’s sitting on my bed. “I still don’t understand why you’d alter your plans after all these years.”
I swivel around in my chair to stare him down. “My plans were never that planned.”
But it’s too late. Josh’s face has already fallen. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’d never ask you to do this if it’s not what you wanted.”
That makes me laugh again. “Yes, you would.”
His frown deepens. “No. I wouldn’t.”
“I do want it. You know I don’t know what I want to do with my life. So I might as well do whatever it is I’m going to do…there.”