I sit up and wrap my arms around my knees. “This’d better be good.”
Nash runs up the stairs two at time. I run my fingers through my hair to detangle its unruly waves. Count the beats of my heart until it steadies. Then I use the moment alone to check the stats on the latest OTP post. Kels’s hiatus is over, but besides keeping up with One True Pastry’s post schedule, I’m quiet online. My NYU app is in, my numbers are maintaining, thanks to Kels’s response to the Alanna drama being overwhelmingly well received. It’s never been better to be Halle, so it seems like as long as I’m actively posting engaging content, no one really cares if I reply to every tweet.
Every day I’m with Nash, Kels feels less and less real.
I almost forget I still have a very real problem. Almost.
The basement door swings open and I swipe out of all Kels content. Nash reappears at my side with his laptop and a sketchpad.
“Hey,” Nash says.
“Hi.”
He opens his laptop and swallows before turning the screen toward me.
I freeze and breathe because I need to react in a normal way, in a Halle way.
It’s REX—the very first panel he posted two years ago. I’m so invested in the current series, I’ve never gone back to the beginning. It’s good. Of course it’s good. But it’s also cool to see the improvement from the more amateur early work to his current stuff that, well, looks professional.
It has 454K views.
“I’ve never shown you …” Nash’s ears turn pink and he lets out a nervous laugh. “Um, yeah. This is kinda why I’m online so much. It gets better, I swear.”
“I know,” I say before I can stop myself.
Nash blinks. “You do?”
This is not an appropriate Halle reaction.
“I mean …” I stall, trying to grasp a logical explanation out of thin air. “I already read it. I found it the first day of school, after everyone was gushing about it at lunch.”
“Oh,” Nash says, closing the laptop and setting it on the floor beside him. “I forgot about that.”
I exhale.
“You never told me you read it! It’s because you hate it, right? Do you hate it? Sometimes I think dinosaurs are, I don’t know, juvenile, and no one is going to take me seriously and—”
“Nash.” I grab his hand and intertwine his fingers with mine. “It’s so good.”
He looks at me. “Really?”
I nod. “I never said anything because it reads so personal, you know? Like, especially once I knew about Nick. I guess I just figured you’d show me when you wanted to.”
“I want to.”
“I do have one question.”
“Oh?”
“Stevens?” I ask.
I’ve been wondering since the day I learned that Nash Stevens is actually Nash Kim—and I’m not about to waste an opportunity to ask.
“Oh.” Nash laughs. “Steven is my middle name. I don’t love it—not using Kim—but it’s the only way my parents would let me create a public profile to blog. Keywords from my digital youth include privacy and underage and safety.”
With everything I know about Andrea and David, that checks out. “Makes sense.”
“I’m changing it as soon as I turn eighteen, though,” Nash says.
“Even though everyone knows you as Nash Stevens?”
Nash nods. “Yeah. That’s not my name. It’s not like I haven’t thought about sticking with Stevens. A pen name is kind of a safety net, you know? But if I publish REX someday, it’ll be as Nash Kim. That’s who I want to be to the world.”
My pen name kind of feels like the opposite of a safety net right now, but I know exactly what he means. “It’s cool.”
Nash releases his hand from mine and reaches across me for his sketchbook. “This is cooler, I promise.”
He flips through the pages and opens to panels I’ve never seen before, upcoming REX pages. An establishing sketch of a skyline—oh, so Rex is going to look for Terry in New York City next. Rex tries to interact with pedestrians, but they’re all either indifferent or unhelpful or scared of the timid dinosaur.
I run my fingers over the pages because it’s amazing seeing the beginning stages of art. Each line is drawn with care and every word of dialogue is written by hand, with intention. Nash explains the process of creating REX. Every panel is hand drawn, scanned, and filled in with Photoshop. A single panel is a full day’s work from beginning to end. It’s why he only posts once a week now—he couldn’t keep up with it twice a