In for a penny, thought Daniella, in for a fucking pound. “I make these. I think Imogen knows that now. But here they are.”

Daniella cracked open her notebook and she started to show them her poetry, her drawings. She showed them her process. The space she had made for herself—so that even when she was stuck in a place she didn’t want to be, she still had a kingdom of her own to build and to conquer.

There were the early sketches next to later poems. The first couplets, the first sonnets that Daniella had ever tried. The attempts at odes. The starts of something a little bigger, a little more epic. Then the later stuff—the development of her style. The scratchy lines of her drawings became more prominent. Her poetry became surer. She was rolling out couplets with ease by the end of the notebook. But the work, it was all there, in this notebook. Every crossed-out line. Every poem she posted. Every one she didn’t. This was Daniella’s holy space. This was the one place where she’d let herself be free.

Rinn reached out and took the notebook in hand first. She flipped through the pages, reading. She smiled at a few places. She had this quiet, steady focus when she read. She stopped midway through, then she passed them to Imogen, who took the notebook reverently in her hands. Imogen held the book like it was sacred and precious, and Daniella wanted to turn her eyes away and not watch. But she was riveted by the sight that someone took such care with her work. That the words and the drawings that she put on the page meant that, even to one other single human. It was a revelation. A benediction.

Rinn picked up the discarded vape pen. She clicked it once. “I hated these things, you know.”

Daniella stared at her, trying to figure out what Rinn Olivera was doing, knowing how to even work a vape pen.

There must have been a look of total horror and confusion on Daniella’s face—the same look that was mirrored on Imogen’s face, too—because Rinn looked at her and said, “What, you think I don’t watch any videos but my own?”

But Rinn had said it with a smile, so Daniella knew it wasn’t a mean-spirited kind of teasing. And that’s when Daniella’s eyes must have totally bugged out of her sockets. Because Rinn Olivera, the most perfect of all the social media influencers—she was into books, for God’s sake—took a hit of the vape pen.

Rinn coughed for a solid minute. “Yeah, I still hate that thing.”

She passed it to Daniella. But Daniella was too stunned to take it.

“Why’d you do it, then?” Imogen accepted the pen next, took a hit, and blew out smoke. She offered it wordlessly to Daniella.