“Took me until I was fifteen to figure out he was gonna do it anyway. Because the problem wasn’t me. It was him.” Z shrugs, but his hands shake a little. “So like... some shit just happens, man. You can’t control it by being perfect.”
“Z...” Marie starts.
“It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine. But it’s not like... I’m not sharing for sympathy. I’m just saying. You can’t fix everything by being good.”
Silence settles over us. Heavy but not uncomfortable.
“I want to actually make art,” I blurt, because the quiet feels too raw. “Like, real art. Not just dicking around in notebooks.”
I keep my eyes on the stars.
“You should,” Caleb says immediately.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“No, seriously. I’ve seen your stuff. You’re good.”
My face heats. “I hide my real sketchbook under my mattress. Because if I show people and they think it sucks, then I don’t have anything left.”
“That’s...” Caleb trails off. “Actually, I get that.”
“What do you want?” I ask him. “For real. Not the Harvard engineer thing. What do you actually want?”
He’s quiet for so long, I think he won’t answer.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “Engineering makes good money. I’m good at math. I wanted to take care of Mom. But is that what I want? Or just what made sense?”
“You’ve got time to figure it out.”
“Do I?” His voice cracks. “What if she?—”
“Don’t,” I interrupt. “One crisis at a time.”
“But what if I spend my whole life being what everyone needs and never figure out who Iactually am?”
Nobody has an answer for that.
“Be whoever the fuck you want,” Z says eventually. “Start figuring it out now.”
“But I don’t know who that is. That’s the scary part.”
“I’m scared of everything,” Marie says quietly. “Like, genuinely. Everything terrifies me.”
“Same,” I admit.
“Same,” Z echoes.
We’re all quiet.
“So we’re all just faking it?” Caleb asks.
“Pretty much.”
“That’s weirdly comforting.”
“Right?” Marie laughs. “If everyone’s terrified, maybe I’m not actually broken.”
“You’re not broken,” I tell her. Then, because it feels too serious: “You’re just fucked up like the rest of us.”