And very soon, without even thinking about it, almost forgetting that Jake was there, I was swept up in the sounds and the painting. I began painting Natasha’s face: big and colorful and huge across the whole wall. With each sweep of my can and paintbrush, I bought her face to life. The strokes flowed out of me, like they had before. This was so different than my usual, precise style of painting. There was nothing perfect and controlled about what I was doing now. It was messy and spontaneous and . . . could this be my voice? The one Imogen had spoken about?

I looked over at Jake a few times while I was painting. He sat on the bench, legs crossed, eyes fixed on me the entire time. And when I was finally done, when Natasha’s face was as large as I could make it, I wrote the words Find Me across the painting and tagged it. But as soon as I’d finished, I felt a tug on my arm. I took my earbuds out and swung around.

“Someone’s coming,” Jake hissed loudly. He gathered all the paints into my bag and then pulled me with him as he started running through the park. My heart was beating in my chest as we ducked behind a tree together. We peered around the trunk and my heart missed a beat when I saw who it was. A security guard, patrolling the perimeter. We slapped our hands over our mouths and stared in shock as he approached the freshly painted wall. He was going to see it at any second, only he didn’t. His walkie-talkie made a sound, and he walked off in the other direction.

Jake and I looked at each other, wide-eyed, still holding our breath. But when the guard was out of sight, we both burst out laughing. We tried to stifle the nervous laughter, which only made it worse, until we were both gasping for air. We stumbled to our feet and held on to each other’s shoulders for support. Oh God, it hurt! My ribs hurt. Finally, the laughter tapered off and we found ourselves standing opposite each other. We stayed like that for a while, until Jake broke the moment.

“What’s the time?” he asked.

I looked at my phone. “Eleven fifty-five.”

His smile grew. “That’s perfect. But we have to run.”

“Where?”

“Come!” And then he was running again.

I tried to keep up. I wasn’t built for running. My boobs were definitely not built for running, and I tried to cross my arms over them as I went, without being obvious. “Where are we going?” I asked, in-between big, unfit breaths that I couldn’t hide.

“Somewhere not boring!” he shouted over his shoulder.