❝she was the girl, who bit the horizon, who peeled the stars from the sky and put them on her tongue, the girl who was hungry for the universe, who craved magic and saw the broken boy for who he truly was- a broken boy.❞
Beca...
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Chapter 16
Almost Anything Can Happen
Jem
"Jem?" was the deep quiver of a shudder that woke me up on two in the morning when my phone rang, it's high-pitched alarm piercing through the hollow silence in my house. Groggily, I swiped a hand over my sticky eyes and blindly reached out for the low buzzing emitting from my phone. Thinking Heath must've gotten drunk and was speed-dialing me to pick him up, I summoned my most annoyed tone and slammed on the button for Answer Call.
But it wasn't Heath.
"Ellis?" I groaned, as my eyes adjusted to the low lighting of my room. I switched on the night light on my bedside table, holding the phone to my ear as I shifted to sit up. I realised there was a cold air on my legs where my blanket should've been- all the sheets had fallen onto the floor overnight. "What's going on?"
There was a sniffle and for a long time I didn't hear anything, I began to worry- it wasn't like Ellis to stay quiet for an extended period.
"I didn't get in."
"Wha-" I blankly blinked, still half-asleep. "What do you mean?"
"I got my letter," she choked out, "I...I didn't get in, Jem. Harvard Medical rejected me." I swore to God I could hear all the pieces in her voice shatter and I didn't know where to start in healing her. "I'm not smart enough," she wailed softly, the note of helplessness and dejection so lucidly precise. Being smart was the only thing she knew, the only title she had and if she hadn't proved it to the world that being smart was her title, she didn't have any.
"God, Ellis," I sighed, with some difficulty because I kind of accidentally smoked through a pack of cigarettes without exercising any self-control."I'm so sorry. Have you told Calista and Astrid?"
"No, I...I can't, Jem. You don't understand. They're...they've always looked at me in respect...because I'm always Ellis the Genius. Ellis who will get an early acceptance into Harvard. Ellis who will become a doctor. It's not that they'll hate me but I figure that everything I do and say and..it's just so embarrassing." Her gentle sobs boring into my ear crippled and tugged on my heartstrings. Gentle; that was what Ellis was. I was not used to her gentle Chinese silk-material fingers on mine, clasped in my big and hulking, stubby grip.
She was so gentle, like satin or unravelling silk threads of a pearl white dress belong to a high-end store, crafted by delicate, nimble hands. Sometimes I wondered why the hell she wasn't wasting her time with somebody else, or why she chose to listen to me, or why she noticed me in the millions of gentler faces, or why didn't she go back to hating me, or why she's pouring her gentle fragile heart out to somebody who's only going to accidentally snap it in two.
"Do you wanna talk?" I prompted, offering solutions and remedies. I wasn't great at advice but I was great at giving alcohol to solve advice. "Why don't we go to Avenue Park?"
