STELLA
I’ve been doing everything right.
Smiling when I’m supposed to. Nodding through conversations I don’t hear. Pretending that the ache curled under my ribs is nothing but leftover exhaustion. No one’s noticed. Not my father. Not my teachers. Not even Nikolai, whose flirtations I now let happen like background noise.
But Vivian?
She notices.
Of course she does.
“Are you gonna tell me what’s going on,” she says, “or should I start interrogating your sketchbook?”
It’s Saturday afternoon. We’re at that little café two blocks from school, the one Vivian insists has the only tolerable matcha in New York. I’m nursing a half-melted iced latte while she stares at me like she’s seconds away from yanking my soul out through my eye sockets.
She has that look again. Sharp, observant. The o
