Just like the thought of selling ads on the site, I think being the real life face of Graphic Grrl would change things more than I’m willing to let them change.

Some people would think I’m crazy not to come clean and admit to being Graphic Grrl’s creator. There have been times when I wanted to. Times when I wondered if the money and the fame and the opportunities would outweigh everything else. I have a blog post sitting in my drafts folder. It’s been there since the third issue of Graphic Grrl went live. I’ve rewritten it again and again, thinking that if I can just make it perfect I’ll finally tell the world. But I can never quite bring myself to click publish.

I can never quite bring myself to release this thing that only one other person in the world knows. Well, now two others. It’s hard to describe, but keeping the secret makes me feel…in control. Powerful. Special.

I don’t want to give that up.

My phone dings with a text message sound. It’s a reply from Mom, saying that she just got my message, and she’ll be home late with takeout.

“Same old Mom,” I mutter as I shoot back an ok.

“Raising parents is so hard,” Tru teases.

There is a smile on his face, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Right?” I slide my phone back into my pocket. “You’d think they’d be grateful we don’t just run away.”

His mouth lifts up into a halfhearted smirk. “Mine would throw a party.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“And not just any party,” he says. “An epic freaking gala.”

There it is again, that bleak emptiness I saw in his eyes the morning after he showed up at my window, drunk. The emptiness that his dad put there.

I don’t know if I should go there. I mean, we’re barely friends—or whatever we are—but I have to think that he doesn’t let slip even these tiny invitations into the inner Tru with just anyone. I can’t just let it slide.

“So,” I say, careful to keep my voice soft, “I guess things aren’t great between you and your dad?”

Tru lets out a sharp bark of laughter. “That’s the understatement of the millennia.”

“Has it always been bad?”

He shrugs. “Pretty much.”

What can I say that might even remotely come close to making it better? Nothing, probably, but I feel like I have to try. Tru did an amazing thing for me today. I have to do something to repay him.

“I think most kids have trouble with their parents some of the time.”

“Yeah, well—” Tru stares down at the nachos, his dark eyes vacant. “Most of the trouble probably doesn’t end with a bloody nose.”

It takes me a full three seconds to process the subtext of his words. His arguments with his dad aren’t just vocal…they’re violent.

“Yours or his, Tru?” I ask.

He looks up at me, smirking. “Does it matter?”

Damn right it does. “Yours or his?”

His gaze drops back to the nachos, and I know the answer even before he says, “Mine.”

I gasp and clutch my hand to my chest as my heart drops. How could Mr. Dorsey do that to his own son? I’ve been in their house. I ate at their table.

My stomach threatens to reject the nachos.

“You have to tell someone,” I insist, reaching out to take his hand.

“I just did.”

He rubs his thumb back and forth across my palm. Like he needs that point of touch, of physical connection. I need it, too.

“Someone like the police. Does your mom know?”

He whispers, “I can handle it.”

I don’t miss that he didn’t answer my question.

“Tru—”

“Really, Sloane,” he says, looking straight into my eyes, “it’s nothing I can’t take for a few more months.”

He means it. I can tell he means it. But that doesn’t mean I like it.

“I…I’m not okay with this.”

There is extra pressure as he squeezes my hand, leans forward across the table. Brushes his lips across mine in the briefest touch. A gentle friction. My lips feel like they’re raw, on fire. My eyes flutter, but I don’t let them close. I don’t want to miss a heartbeat of this moment.

This isn’t my first kiss, but it’s the first that sends lightning bolts through my entire body. That makes me feel lightheaded and powerful at the same time. That feels like so much more than a kiss.

I draw in a ragged breath, filling myself with his scent—warm skin with hints of woodsy spice. I want to sink into him, to wrap my arms around him and never let him go.

To protect him from something he shouldn’t have to face.

“Trust me,” he says. “I’ve got this.”

I don’t want to just let this go. He shouldn’t have to experience this. No one should.

“If it ever gets too bad,” I say, trying to blink my eyes back into focus, “you can always knock on my window. Day or night. I want to help.”

“You already have,” he says. “Just telling you makes it better.”

If that’s what he needs from me, then that’s what I’ll give him. But the moment I think it crosses a line into something he can’t handle, I’m stepping in. Whether he likes it or not.

When the nachos are gone, Tru dumps the plastic tray in the recycling.

As we walk to the door, he says, “How does this rank?”

“On a scale of what?”

He pushes the door open. “First dates.”

I almost trip over the doorjamb.

My breathing quickens, and I feel the surge of adrenaline flood my bloodstream. The surge of joy swell my heart.

This is not good. So not good. Tru Dorsey cannot make my heart flutter. Tru Dorsey cannot slip past my defenses. I can’t let this become more than it’s already becoming. I have too much at stake.

I have to recover.

“I don’t think it counts as a date if you kidnap the girl,” I retort.

“Don’t think of it as kidnapping,” he says. “Think of it as unexpected positioning.”

“So…kidnapping.”

When we get to the car, he circles around to my side and opens the door for me. “Fine, kidnapping.”

“On the scale of kidnapping”—I drop into the passenger seat—“it’s at least a seven.”

He laughs. “Then I’ll have to work harder next time.”

Next time. As much as I know I shouldn’t, I like the sound of that.

Chapter Thirteen

Aimeigh cancels Thursday’s ArtSquad practice so we can meet with Mrs. K to work on our scholarship portfolios. Putting mine together meant actually unpacking a box—Mom would shoot off fireworks if she knew—to find the external drive with all my digital archives.

A lot of my work is created digitally, but I’ve carefully photographed and documented even the analog projects. I have high-res pictures of paintings, collages, sculptures, even the lopsided vases I made in elementary school.

It’s all in there. It’s just a matter of pulling out the pieces that best suit the scholarship.

Mrs. K is projecting our portfolios on the whiteboard so we can participate in each other’s critiques.

“Oh, I like this one, Hannah,” she says, stopping on a digital painting of an eye. “There’s a lot of detail. It almost feels real.”

As I look around the room, I realize there are only four of us here. Hannah, whose portfolio is currently being critiqued; Liza, who is desperately trying to get her computer off the blue screen of death; Aimeigh; and me. There were seven of us at that first meeting with Mrs. K. Jaq has been expelled, but where is Jenna? And what happened to Mira?

Last time I saw her was when Principal Ben came and escorted her out of senior seminar.

Curious, I lean over to Aimeigh. “Where’s Mira?”

“Suspended,” she whispers.

“For what?”

Aimeigh shrugs. “I heard drug possession, but who knows?”

“That’s crazy.”

No, seriously. That’s crazy. Why would Jaq get expelled for cheating, but Mira just gets suspended for having drugs, which is legit illegal? It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe Aimeigh has it wrong.