I skip lunch and dinner and go straight to bed. Sleeping is the only way anything makes sense. I am sleeping so much, Benny genuinely asks if I need an at-home nurse to change my sheets and flip me over so I don’t get bedsores.

I work on “The Prince Who Captured Lightning,” but only on the parts that have already been workshopped and approved. I can’t seem to muster the energy to figure out an ending. Chloe and Sofía and Professor McPherson love the dimensionality I gave the Witch, but there’s still the question of how it all gets tied up, and for that, I have no answers. How can I, when any ending feels too raw to process?

Every day I struggle with the urge to shred every sketchbook, burn every drawing, and completely delete my project altogether because when I work on the Prince, all I see is Jack’s awe-full, beautiful face.

It takes two weeks before I see Jack roaming across campus, but I keep my distance. I try not to pass by his dorm if I can avoid it, but sometimes my feet just take me places, and I have no control over where I spot him, and when I do, I duck behind a barren tree. He’s completely unshaven, his hair has grown and pokes out beneath his dirty Red Sox cap, and he’s in a bathrobe, something Rhett told me Jack never seems to take off. I didn’t believe him until I saw it for myself. He’s wearing shorts and flip-flops despite the cold.

Do I say something?

Chase after him?

Pretend to run into him at the campus center?

Once upon a time, that might have seemed appealing or even endearing (in a desperate rom-com sort of way). Now, it just feels like twisting the knife he left in my chest.

Not long after that, I make the decision to start using the campus gym. Hard. I spend hours doing cardio and lifting until I feel like I’m about to pass out. I stop skipping meals at the dining hall, instead opting to binge-eat after working out.

Chicken fingers, waffles, French toast sticks, tacos, mashed potatoes, french fries. Anything I can get my hands on. And when my stomach feels about ready to burst, I find an empty bathroom, stick my fingers down my throat, and purge it all. Then, I wander into the bookstore and toward the pharmacy section to pick up a box of laxatives. Depending on the day and how easy it is to conceal from Xavier, Aaron, and Benny, I oscillate between purges.