Isla and the Happily Ever After(40)
Author: Stephanie Perkins

“Yeah.”

“Wow. I hope you feel better now. Because I sure do. I feel so much better knowing my boyfriend might be expelled because you were that impatient for a hair diffuser.”

Her stone expression falters. “I didn’t know I was gonna get you guys in trouble. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“Me, too.” I slam my door shut.

It pops open. Hattie looks at me with a startled hope until she realizes it was an accident. We scowl at each other as I slam it back shut. I push against it, hard, until I feel the click beneath my palms.

The party carries on all night. Josh never texts. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I startle awake around eight in the morning. There’s a swollen hush over the dormitory. Everyone is finally in bed. I was dreaming about the need to catch a train, but I couldn’t stop putting on make-up. I was helpless as I applied layer after sluggish layer, watching the clock tick closer and closer and closer to my departure time.

Two knocks, low on my door.

I jolt into a sitting position. That’s what woke me up. That’s his second knock. The sound is heavy and foreboding. I lurch out of bed, but I’m terrified to open the door. I press my ear against the wood.

“Josh?” I whisper.

There’s no reply.

I’m gripped by a new fear. He’s already gone. I’m hearing sounds that never existed. I tear open the door, but he’s there – of course he’s there – and he looks devastated. He falls towards the floor. I rush forward, and he collapses into my arms with a cry that’s primal. Screw the rules. Screw this school. I shut the door and lead him to my bed. I cradle his body as he slams and slams his fist against his own leg.

“It’s okay.” I have to be strong. One of us always has to be strong. “Everything will be okay.” I grab his fist and hold it between my hands. I kiss the crown of his head.

“It’s not okay.”

“You had the meeting?”

“I’m gone. She finally kicked me out.”

My bedroom spins. “And…when do you have to be gone by?”

“This is my last day. Today.”

The world goes black. There’s a loud buzzing in my ears. My eyes focus, refocus, refocus like an automatic camera that can’t get it right.

“One of the custodians took my mom to get shipping boxes. And then she’s coming back, and we’re gonna pack up all of my stuff.”

Refocus. Refocus. Refocus.

Josh pulls out his hand from mine to claw at me with all ten fingers. “But we’ll see each other soon. Thanksgiving. You’re still coming home for Thanksgiving, right?”

I nod robotically.

“And then there’s winter break. We’ll spend every day together, and on New Year’s Eve, we’ll meet at Kismet for a kiss. At midnight. Okay? And then we’ll have spring break, and then it’ll be summer again. It’ll be over.”

I swallow. “What will you do? Where will you finish high school?”

“My mom doesn’t want to talk about it until the election is over. They’re pissed. My parents are so pissed. I had to talk to my dad last night, and then my mom took away my phone. That’s why I couldn’t call or text you. I’m eighteen, and my parents took away my phone.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” I can’t stop saying it. “We’ll be okay.”

There’s another knock, and Nate starts talking without preamble. “Josh, I let your mom into your room so that you and Isla could have a few minutes alone. But you need to go up there now.”

Even Nate feels sorry for us.

My lie was more severe than I realized. Nothing – absolutely nothing – is okay.

Chapter twenty

The head of school sits behind a desk as intimidating as it is large. Its mahogany is polished, and it carries the scent of musk and wealth. Two flags on indoor poles rest on each side – one American, one French. An overstuffed leather chair sits behind the desk, and two diminutive leather chairs sit before it. I am in one of the diminutive chairs.

“Your grades are slipping,” the head says.

I stare at her.

“Not by much, mind you,” she continues. “But there’s enough of a difference in the quality of your work for more than one of your professeurs to have mentioned it to me. They’re concerned. Can you guess when they noticed the change?”

I’m not actually here. I’m still in Josh’s room. Yesterday.

We packed his life into cardboard boxes. His mom was angry at him, angry at me, angry at every call. And she received a lot of calls. There was nothing I wanted more than to be away from that awful room, but I wasn’t about to waste our final hours.

Josh took down the drawings from his walls. He laid them in a box – one on top of another, on top of another. He slipped the drawings of me from the Arènes de Lutèce into a separate, protective envelope. Compared with the number of drawings that he had of his friends, there weren’t many of me yet. We’ve only been together for a month.

How has it only been a month?

“A month ago,” the head says. “That’s when you stopped giving your homework the time and attention that it takes to maintain your position at the top of your class.”

She says this as if being school valedictorian is my singular ambition, when, really, it just happened. There are only twenty-four other seniors – twenty-three – and all of them have friends to hang out with and places to go and things to do. I’ve never had anything better to do than study. But for one month…I had something better to do.

Josh slipped the envelope inside his shoulder bag. It went on the plane with him.

Everything happened so fast. In one day, his room went from chaotic, bursting with art and food and life, to barren. We were only given five minutes to say goodbye. His mother left us in that empty space, and I cried again. Josh used his favourite pen to ink four letters onto the back of my fingers: L-O-V-E.

He held my face with both hands. “I love you,” he said. “I love you. I love you.”

I could hardly see him through my tears. “I love you,” I said. “I love you. I love you.”

“Isla,” the head says. “You’re going to meet many boys on this journey. You can’t let them distract you from becoming the woman you are meant to become.”

She’s wrong. There’s only one boy.

And who am I to become without him?