SIXTEEN

AND FOR A WHILE, we found ways to be us—hanging out IRL occasionally, but texting and facetiming almost every night. We’d found a way to be on a Ferris wheel without talking about being on a Ferris wheel. Some days I fell deeper into spirals than others, but changing the Band-Aid sort of worked, and the breathing exercises and the pills and everything else sort of worked.

And my life continued—I read books and did homework, took tests and watched TV with my mom, saw Daisy when she wasn’t busy with Mychal, read and reread that college guide and imagined the array of futures it promised.

And then one night, bored and missing the days when Daisy and I spent half our lives together at Applebee’s, I read her Star Wars stories.

Daisy’s most recent story, “A Rey of Hot,” had been published the week before. I was astonished to see it had been read thousands of times. Daisy was kind of famous.

The story, narrated by Rey, takes place on Tatooine, where lovebirds Rey and Chewbacca have stopped off to pick up some cargo from an eight-foot-tall dude named Kalkino. Chewie and Rey are accompanied by a blue-haired girl named Ayala, whom Rey describes as “my best friend and greatest burden.”

They meet up with Kalkino at a pod race, where Kalkino offers the team two million credits to take four boxes of cargo to Utapau.

“I’ve got a weird feeling about this,” Ayala said.

I rolled my eyes. Ayala couldn’t get anything right. And the more she worried, the worse she made everything. She had the moral integrity of a girl who’d never been hungry, always shitting on the way Chewie and I made a living without noticing that our work provided her with food and shelter. Chewie owed Ayala a life debt because her father had died saving Chewie years ago, and Chewie was a Wookiee of principle even when it wasn’t convenient. Ayala’s morals were all convenience because easy living was the only kind of living she’d ever known.

Ayala mumbled, “This isn’t right.” She reached into her mane of blue hair and plucked out a strand, then twirled it around her finger. A nervous habit, but then all her habits were nervous.

I kept reading, my gut clenching as I did. Ayala was horrible. She interrupted Chewie and Rey while they were making out on board the Millennium Falcon with an annoying question about the hyperdrive “that a reasonably competent five-year-old could’ve figured out.” She screwed up the shipment by opening one of the cargo cases, revealing power cells that shot off so much energy they almost blew up the ship. At one point, Daisy wrote, “Ayala wasn’t a bad person, just a useless one.”

The story ended with the triumphant delivery of the power cells. But because one had lost some of its energy when Ayala opened the box, the recipients knew our intrepid heroes had seen the cargo, and a bounty was placed on their heads—or should I say our heads—all of which meant the stakes would be even higher in next week’s story.

There were dozens of comments. The most recent one was, “I LOVE TO HATE AYALA. THANK YOU FOR BRINGING HER BACK.” Daisy had replied to that comment with, “Thx! Thx for reading!”

I read through the stories in reverse chronological order and discovered all the previous ways Ayala had ruined things for Chewie and Rey. The only time I’d ever done anything worthwhile was when, overcome by anxiety, I threw up on a Hutt named Yantuh, creating a momentary distraction that allowed Chewie to grab a blaster and save us from certain death.

—

I stayed up too late reading, and then later still thinking about what I’d say to Daisy the next morning, my thoughts careening between furious and scared, circling around my bedroom like a vulture. I woke up the next morning feeling wretched—not just tired, but terrified. I now saw myself as Daisy saw me—clueless, helpless, useless. Less.

As I drove to school, my head pounding from sleeplessness, I kept thinking about how I’d been scared of monsters as a kid. When I was little, I knew monsters weren’t, like, real. But I also knew I could be hurt by things that weren’t real. I knew that made-up things mattered, and could kill you. I felt like that again after reading Daisy’s stories, like something invisible was coming for me.

I expected the sight of Daisy to piss me off, but when I actually saw her, sitting on the steps outside school, bundled up against the cold, a gloved hand waving at me, I felt like—well, like I deserved it, really. Like Ayala was the thing Daisy had to do to live with me.

She stood up as I approached. “You okay, Holmesy?” Daisy asked. I nodded. I couldn’t really say anything. My throat felt tight, like I might start to cry.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Just tired,” I said.

“Holmesy, don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you just got off work from your job playing a ghoul at a haunted house, and now you’re in a parking lot trying to score some meth.”

“I’ll be sure not to take that the wrong way.”

She put her arm around me. “I mean, you’re still gorgeous, of course. You can’t ungorgeous yourself, Holmesy, no matter how hard you try. I’m just saying you need some sleep. Do some self-care, you know?” I nodded and shrugged off her embrace. “We haven’t hung out in forever just the two of us,” she said. “Maybe I can come over later?”

I wanted to tell her no, but I was thinking about how Ayala always said no to everything, and I didn’t want to be like my fictional self. “Sure.”

“Mychal and I are having a homework night, but I should have about a hundred and forty-two minutes after school if we go straight to your house, which just happens to be the running time of Attack of the Clones.”

“A homework night?” I asked.

Mychal appeared from behind me and said, “We’re reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream to each other for English.”

“. . . seriously?”

“What?” Daisy said. “It’s not my fault we’re adorable. But first, Yoda lightsaber battling at your house after school. Cool?”

“Cool.”

“It’s a date,” she said.

—

Six hours later, we lay on the floor next to each other, bodies propped up with couch cushions, and watched Anakin Skywalker and Padmé fall for each other in extremely slow motion. Daisy considered Attack of the Clones to be the most underrated Star Wars film. I thought it was kinda crap, but it was fun to watch Daisy watch it. Her mouth literally moved with each line of dialogue.

I was looking at my phone mostly, scrolling through articles about Pickett’s disappearance, looking for anything that might connect to joggers or a jogger’s mouth. I’d meant it when I told Noah I’d keep looking—but the clues we had just didn’t seem much like clues.

“I want to like Jar Jar, because hating Jar Jar is so cliché, but he was the worst,” Daisy said. “I actually killed him years ago in my fic. It felt amazing.” My stomach turned, but I concentrated on my phone. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Just reading about the Pickett investigation, seeing if there’s anything new. Noah’s really screwed up about it, and I . . . I don’t know. I just want to help him somehow.”

“Holmesy, we got the reward. It’s over. Your problem is you don’t know when you’ve won.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I mean, Davis gave us the reward so that we would drop it. So, drop it.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. I knew she was right, but she didn’t have to be such an asshole about it.

I thought the conversation was over, but a few seconds later she paused the movie and continued talking. “It’s just, like, this isn’t going to be some story where the poor, penniless girl gets rich and then realizes that truth matters more than money and establishes her heroism by going back to being the poor, penniless girl, okay? Everyone’s life is better with Pickett disappeared. Just let it be.”

“No one’s taking away your money,” I said quietly.

“I love you, Holmesy, but be smart.”

“Got it,” I said.

“Promise?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

“And we break hearts, but we don’t break promises,” she said.

“You say that’s your ‘motto,’ but you spend ninety-nine percent of your time with Mychal now.”

“Except right now I’m hanging out with you and Jar Jar Binks,” she said.

We went back to watching the movie. As it ended, she squeezed my arm and said, “I love you,” then raced off to Mychal’s place.