When everyone’s straightened from using one another’s backs as makeshift tables, we send our folded notes around and collect them in turn. I retreat to the shade to unfurl them, one by one. I’m expecting more of the same comments about how I look, because what else is there for other people to say? But the notes take me by surprise:

Your voice is so soothing—like, this is going to sound super weird, but I’d listen to an audiobook narrated by you.

I love how you always smile at everyone when you see them in the morning.

Okay, so tbh, when I first saw you I kind of expected you to be really bitchy and stuck-up … but you’re actually incredibly thoughtful and humble and fun to be around? I’m REALLY, really sorry for ever assuming otherwise, and I hope we can be good friends!!

How are you so composed and elegant all the time?!

Then my breath catches on the next note. The ink is pressed thick in places, like the person had spent a few minutes too long deliberating over every word.

Leah. You remind me of the greatest sculptors, who can turn marble into the impression of billowing silk, the coldest stone into something soft. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that everything you touch turns beautiful. The world becomes beautiful, as long as there’s you.

CHAPTER TWELVE

For the first time in a while, I wake up smiling.

I can still see yesterday’s comments projected across the darkness of my eyelids. Feel them settling beneath my ribs, taking root and blossoming into warmth.

Your voice is soothing …

Thoughtful … Humble … Fun …

Everything you touch turns beautiful.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were describing somebody else, but the compliments were written for me. Maybe—and it’s a little easier, a little less embarrassing to let myself believe in the quiet of the hotel room, my blankets snug around my body—they’re genuine. Maybe I’ve finally done it. Shed my past selves and emerged, skin raw and new, into a life where I could be happy and make real friends …

But then I open my eyes, and I realize something’s wrong—mostly because I can’t quite open them all the way. The skin around them feels swollen and tight, and as my head spins and the early-morning light drips in through the hotel curtains, the itch creeps in. And, with it, the beginnings of panic underneath my sternum.

I flip the blankets off my stomach and shuffle into the bathroom, heart beating and blinking fast as the lights flicker on. Then I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, and I have to stifle a scream.