Page 85 of Nowhere to Hide
It’s a level of contradictory generosity that only Luca could pull off without seeing the problem. But the reference makes me ache for her all over again, so I sit and pull out my phone and confirm, with no real surprise, that she hasn’t texted me since this morning.
I scroll back through our thread, doing the thing I’ve been doing all week: looking for the exact place it changed. The texts from two weeks ago are long and scattered and full of her: jokes about a professor, plans to catch up, exasperation about Ivy…
But then the messages start to get shorter.
Then polite.
Lifeless.
I put the phone down on the bench and think about what Mason said about the birthmark. It seems to lean into my worstfear, but instead of calling Sloane or confronting Mason, I press my thumb down on the blister.
Because it hurts less than saying the thing I’ve been avoiding.
I don’t even know if I believe it. That’s the truth. I can’t tell anymore whether I’m reading the play or inventing it — I just know she’s pulling away, and Mason is smiling, and every hour I don’t ask, the questions get heavier.
Did you fool around with Mason in that kitchen that night?
Do you want to be with him, rather than me?
twenty-three
SLOANE
Professor Moreno doesn’t lookup from the draft.
Across the desk, the pen in her hand hovers over page three. She wrote one line on the first page and circled a paragraph on the second, and now she’s just sitting with page three open, not writing, which is somehow worse.
I’ve been sitting in this chair every Thursday since she gave me the RA position. That first week, I walked in with my hands shaking and nearly forgot to breathe between sentences. After that, I got comfortable with her and her style.
Until today, because that was a different girl, and this is a different Moreno.
“Tell me what this argument is doing,” she says now, to this girl.
The answer I give is clean, structurally sound. I hear myself saying the words, polished and neutral and unlikely to offend anyone, and saying them makes me want to crawl under her desk.
“Sloane.” She takes off her glasses, closes her eyes, and then squeezes the bridge of her nose. “I’m going to be honest with you because I think you can take it. Is that okay?”
“Yes.”
She opens her eyes, locks them on me, then taps the draft. “This is competent and well-organized.”
I wait, because I know the but is coming.
“But it’s lifeless.” She sighs. “It’s like you’ve prioritized clean sourcing and accurate synthesis of the views of others over daring to have an argument of your own.”
I keep my face the way I have all week. It’s the face I wore for the first few weeks at Halden, and the one I’ve been wearing with Rowan whenever he looks at me too long or asks too many questions.
“The girl who ran my seminar in September was quick-witted and interesting.” She tilts her head, eyes steady on me the whole time. “Do you remember that day?”
My eyes drift down to the desk. “Yes.”
“That fire I saw in you was the reason I offered you this position before I’d even seen your academic transcript.” She picks the pen back up, taps it once against the draft. “She connected narrative framing to something she’d actually felt: who gets to shape the story and who only gets to live inside it.”
She’s clearly not done, so I nod, eyes still on the grain of the desk.
“I don’t recognize that girl in these words, Sloane.” She sighs and sets her pen on the desk. “It’s all correct, but none of it is yours. I want your voice, and you should, too.”
My throat tightens. Because I know exactly when the girl she wants to see started to emerge, and exactly what made her run away again.
