PEARL

FOURTEEN

TRACK 14
BABY TEETH
FLOWER FACE

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NICOLE was as wide awake as she usually was on Wednesday nights (or any night, for that matter), sketching the same girl she'd been sketching for almost a month.

The near-start-of-spring breeze rustled the trees behind the hospital, and had Nicole's room had the rarity of a window like Rowan's, it surely would've blown the charcoal-smeared notepad pages off of the bed whose every starched inch they were covering.

Every crumpled page bore some part of Lily Rose in streaks of black to contrast the sawn ivory of her lake-glistening skin – some had her lotus-flower lips, some her dancing-daisy hands, and the luckiest had the ethereal entirety of her body, delicate and dove-white unlike the thick strokes of Nicole's precious gift from Ryan Emery.

Said strokes were usually Lily-soft, of course, although what had happened last Friday after visiting hours had embittered Nicole and put a little too much force into her drawing.

In other words, it had been five days since Ida and Nate had hooked up in the hospital bathroom and started having a lot (and Nicole meant a lot) of casual sex, and although she may have resigned herself long ago to forever pining for Lily's lily-white touch with only a romantic's hope of it ever coming to fruition, Nicole Harper was envious – not of the sex, seeing as touching herself (let alone the girl she longed for day and night in charcoal-dusted dreams) still made the white studio lights flash and the cold sweat gush and her legs snap shut tighter than any clam trying to protect its pearl, but because of the ease with which Ida and Nate had suddenly entered the most intimate part of a relationship.

They'd known each other for less than a day, for Christ's sake, while a month was on Highgate's red brick horizon since Lily had first called Nicole lovely and attempted to braid what was left of her hair.

Nicole knew that she was being selfish – Ida she didn't know that well, or like that much, but she knew Nate more than well and definitely liked him and he'd been the happiest she'd ever seen him for the past five days. Even another unexpected call from his dad on Monday night hadn't rained on his parade, so Nicole felt selfish and spiteful whenever a hickey on Ida's neck or some joke Micah made about Nate getting finally revenge for all the nights Ro's banging headboard had kept him awake made her hollowed chest tighten like a screw. She felt just like she had around Micah and Rowan for around two weeks after her arrival, when her love for Lily was first blooming and cynicism and white studio lights were setting in, and their textbook love story and its equal ease and their hands being in each other's palms or pockets had made her feel as bitter as most diet pills tasted until she'd managed to get herself to stop (well, mostly) by quietly asking Ro if Ryan could bring her some charcoal to attempt a sort of art therapy.

And drawing had been therapeutic, up until Friday, seeing as Nicole's envy-fuelled frustration since that afternoon had been threatening to tear holes in Lily's feather-fragile face.

Feeling such a black-hearted way not only made Nicole feel selfish and spiteful, but made her feel borderline psychotic, like a bunny-boiling madwoman who was one missed meal away from grabbing a scalpel from the store cupboard, killing everyone in the hospital and then kidnapping Lily – or something. It made her feel agonisingly lonely, too, to keep begrudging happiness to the few bright-eyed and bright-smiling friends she had while sitting on her narrow bed in a windowless room, bobbing in a sea of sketches of someone who'd likely never smoke weed or sleep with her in the pink-tiled bathroom or lie beside her nebula and naked in the group's secret grove.

In short, loving someone who she'd eternally sit at a distance from and watch sparkle in the water - who she would never be able to finally kiss by a bedroom window or cut straight to sex with in a filthy carnation-colored bathroom because Cupid had decided to copy her mother and never smile at her - made Nicole feel as isolated and island-like as being surrounded by swathes of paparazzi and Prada.