We go all the way up to the third floor. There’s an open door to a bathroom straight ahead, but Heaven stops in front of a door on the left. I pause a few feet behind her, absently patting one of the dogs on the head. Heaven turns to me, but before she says anything, I see the sign that’s hanging on her door. It’s one of those street parking signs. It’s pink.Princess Parking Only. All Others Will Be Toad.
Toad.
I look back at her and she glares at me, her eyes narrowing. “Be. Cool.”
“We’re good. I’m cool. I promise.”
She opens her door to her bedroom and lets the dogs in. I step in behind them and it’s like I’m transported to another dimension where it rains color and fun every day. I look around at her massive bed covered in a fluffy purple duvet and a mountain of different Squishmallows. She has white carpet like the rest of the upstairs, but there is a bigrainbow area rug taking up most of the floor. Star lights are draped around her window that overlooks the park. The window’s smaller than it looks from the street, but she can still push me out of it, so I keep my mouth shut about the magical wonderland she calls a bedroom.
There are a few toy cars still in the box on her desk. Her bright pink desk. On the other side of the room, she has a TV set up between bookshelves filled with books and a PS5 with some controllers. She has one of those big teal sac chairs on the floor in front of the TV. I resist the urge to be nosy and look closely at every single piece of art on her walls. I watch one of the dogs hop on the bed as the other one makes herself comfortable in the sac chair, letting out this adorable doggy sigh. It is the cutest thing I have ever experienced in my whole life.
I look at Heaven just to make sure she is truly witnessing this display of cuteness, but she’s already moved on. She’s messing with a tablet on her desk. She finds whatever she’s looking for then slides the desk chair over for me to sit in—the same one my mom got me for my vanity.
“This is a cool room,” I say, still in awe, a weird fluttering lighting off in my stomach. This is the real Heaven, I realize. She’s secretly nice, buying people gay cake and stuff, but she’s also a low-key pretty princess living up in her brightly colored tower room. How am I supposed to get over my crush? How am I supposed to stop myself from daydreaming about kissing Heaven on top of that purple duvet cover? We could get married in this room. It would be a small ceremony, but it would be so perfect.
“Thanks. Can we—I don’t want to tell my parents that you’re helping me with this,” Heaven says.
“What—oh yeah. Sure,” I say brightly. “I mean, you’re saving me from an almost guaranteed psychotic break that would be caused directly by my own mother. Also, it was my idea.”
“They just want me to put my big girl pants on and they just don’t understand how freaked out I am. I liked drawing because it was something quiet I could do alone, something I can do for myself.”
“But now you have to show everyone, and it feels like you have to prove how goodyouare,” I reply.
“That’s it exactly. I don’t—I don’t like attention. I don’t like being perceived, but I have to be comfortable putting myself out there or it’s going to be really hard to do the one job I actually want.”
“That is such a raw and honest thing to say and very good to know,” I tell her. “I think I’m the perfect person to help you. I hate my mom’s mode of embarrassing the absolute hell out of me, but I am too cute not to be perceived. I don’t mind it at all. You wanna see what I’ve come up with so far?”
“Yeah, lay it on me.”
I bite my tongue and keep all thoughts about kissing and being teenage lesbian wives to myself. Instead, I pull out my phone.
13
Heaven
Saylor pulls my chair over to my bed, and we spend almost an hour going through different accounts she’s found. All queer or female tattoo artists, tattoo artists of color, seeing what they’ve posted, what seems to get the most attention and what doesn’t. Clearly, I need to learn how to tattoo first, but I realize Miss Kelly was right. It’s a good thing I can actually draw.
I’ll admit—only to myself and never ever out loud—that I was a little nervous about Saylor coming over. I tried not to think too much about her last night, but man I screwed up. There’s nothing worse than letting an annoying, completely unhelpful thought take hold. But my brain has decided that it’s time for me to really notice a girl for the first time in my life and not in a metaphorical sense. My super-obnoxious and pathetic imagination definitely needs to get outside and touch grass, flowers, and some baby ducks. Because it thinks it’s a good idea to become really interested in Saylor Ford. And I just can’t let that happen.
It’s true, I don’t like attention. I don’t like to be perceived, and I’m pretty sure suggesting to Saylor that I’ve been thinking about her in any way outside of our newly establishedpartnership would do more than attract attention. She’d look at me like I’ve completely lost it and then I’d spontaneously melt or combust. She would very nicely tell me there is no way anuswould ever happen. Then a hole in the Earth’s crust would open and swallow me up. I can just picture it, the nice, polite way she’d let me down, telling me that I would never ever have a chance with her.
I haven’t known Saylor without a boyfriend. I’m sure once everyone at our school and the rest of Los Angeles County finds out she’s gay, every age-appropriate girl with a working phone will be in her DMs. If they aren’t already. I’m listening to her talk as we sit near each other and that nice, hypothetical rejection is all I can think about as my eyes jump from her phone screen, where she’s showing me TatsBiKat’s profile, to the hem of her shorts.
Saylor said it herself. She’s just an affectionate person. Kissing my cheek was the same as her breathing or ordering fries with her burger. Things were easier back when Jake and Axel were dateless too, but now they have serious girlfriends and they both know Saylor. I can’t talk to them about this. Axel would tell me to do something ridiculous like declare my love in the most dramatic way possible. Jake would just listen and be supportive, but then he would accidentally tell Bethany and then she would tell Saylor, and Saylor would preemptively reject me, and then we’re back to me being swallowed up by a hole in the Earth’s crust.
“Okay, so I think you should pick fifteen pieces from freshman year until now. People love progress content.”
“That makes sense.”
“Your first post can be something of an introduction, or you can post like your favorite piece and enter with a bang. Second post should be your first piece from freshman year, and third post should be one of the flash things?”
“Yeah, one of the flash sheets or part of one.”
“Yeah. I saw that DanielleSkylar person does like eight pieces per sheet so you can spread it out, one piece per post. Less work for more engagement,” she says. “Well, kinda. It’s still work.”
“Yeah, but I see what you mean.” I unlock my tablet and show her the sad-clown flash sheets I’ve been working on. She looks at them for longer than I expect her to and then she looks up at me and smiles. It’s really weird when she looks at me. Saylor’s eyes are roaming all over my face and she’s still smiling this soft smile. I ignore the weird jumping in my stomach and glance back down at my tablet screen.
“What?”