Chapter Fifteen

SUMMER FADED INTO fall as summers always do, and it was time for Joey to start her first college classes. Her biggest draw to this school was that she didn’t have to take the normal prerequisite classes but could instead dive right into her writing program. She and Taylor had been assigned as roommates, so they moved from their tiny dorm room into a slightly less tiny room, with two beds, which they immediately pushed together.

Taylor had already made a name for herself at the music school and finished her initial program by performing a solo piece at the end of summer show. As promised, Will’s parents had come up from Cornwall, and had even taken them all out to a fancy dinner.

Their weekends in Cornwall were some of the best of her life, and since she already felt lucky enough to be living two lifetimes, she worried she was somehow taking more than her fair share of joy. Because that was her main emotion: pure, radiant joy. Will’s parents commented often about how she and Liam must be heading down the aisle soon because Joey was basically glowing all the time.

They weren’t wrong about the glowing, but it was all for Taylor. Taylor, who walked her to work each day before heading to class. Taylor, who read her short stories and laughed in all the right places. Taylor, who sat up with her for hours when her brain wouldn’t shut down, talking through plot issues and helping her brainstorm new book ideas.

As eager as she was to start her writing classes, she couldn’t bear to wait and had already nearly completed several full manuscripts. Twenty years of stories she’d collected and filed under “someday” seemed to pour out of her as soon as she opened her laptop. She could write for hours unencumbered. If Taylor saw that she was in the zone, she’d quietly leave water and snacks nearby, and maybe gently kiss her on the head.

It wasn’t fair to compare, but everything was just easier with Taylor. Granted, they’d been lucky to make it through the summer by sharing Taylor’s school meal plan, but the World Series was only weeks away and Joey’s bet from May was about to pay off big time. The guy she’d placed it with had laughed when she’d done it, but she knew he was probably getting more and more nervous as the Angels made their way through the play-offs.

Not having to worry about money made it that much easier to focus on her writing, leaving all her spare time for Taylor. They found coats and boots at a local secondhand shop and looked forward to keeping each other warm through their first fall and winter in a non-desert climate.

As they walked home in their new cold-weather attire, Joey filled Taylor in on her newest manuscript idea.

“It’s another murder mystery, but I think I’ve got the perfect twist,” she said, ready to blow Taylor’s mind with her new idea involving vampires and werewolves. She didn’t think of it so much as copying Twilight, but more putting her own spin on a story that hadn’t been written yet. In this timeline.

“Why is everything you write so dark?” Taylor asked.

“Mysteries sell,” Joey said, taken aback. “Isn’t that the point?”

“Not for me. I’m not an artist to make money. I’m an artist because I want to put beautiful things into the world.”

“So, my stories aren’t beautiful?” Joey stopped in her tracks.

“No, no, sweetie.” Taylor pulled them both to the edge of the sidewalk so that people could pass. “I just think you have more in you than death and gore. I want to read the stories that are in your heart. You’re such a gifted writer and I know you can do any genre. If these are the stories that move you, keep going. I just think you can do more.”

Joey was thankful to hear this feedback as a grown-up in a teenager’s body, because she knew exactly how she would have reacted hearing this as a kid. She sometimes wondered which of them actually had lived an additional twenty years already, as Taylor constantly surprised her with her wisdom.

Thus, instead of crying and storming off, Joey guided them both back to the sidewalk to continue their walk home. And while she walked, she thought about what she’d just heard. Yes, she had stories she’d been thinking about for years, but they all felt too personal. Could she really put them down on paper? She wrote fiction, so there was always the option to shrug everything off and say it was just a character, but she knew the people who loved her would always hear her voice in her stories and pick out the parts that weren’t make-believe.

It was a weird dichotomy. She could write stories about serial killers and no one thought she might actually be one. But could she write a story about a girl from Arizona without people assuming everything on the page was a confession?

“You’re not talking,” said Taylor after a few minutes of silence. “Contemplating what I said or mad about what I said.”

“Contemplating,” Joey said. “And thankful that you care enough to challenge me.”

“The world needs your stories, Joey. Especially young girls at camp who aren’t sure who they can talk to about liking girls instead of boys.”

Joey squeezed Taylor’s hand and knew she was right.

When they got home, Joey sat down in front of her computer with a renewed sense of purpose. Then immediately chickened out. Maybe she could hide her stories in the middle of her mysteries? Two police officers who solve grisly murders, but then realize they’re in love? But what about the vampires and werewolves? She knew better than to stare at a blank screen. The words would come when it was their time to come.

She shut the computer and herself down for the night and opened one of her textbooks. She was supposed to read this chapter on plotting everything out ahead of time, but the words seemed to jumble on the page. Shouldn’t writing be spontaneous? Planning felt forced and seemed to remove all the artistry from the process.

She looked over at Taylor, who was curled up on her side of the bed, reading a novel. Their journey together seemed to point to spontaneity over planning. She looked back at the chapter. Part of her wanted to bomb the assignment, in silent protest, but she knew her school-minded brain wouldn’t allow that. And after all, part of this new timeline experiment was for her to learn all she could as a writer.

She grabbed a notepad and began to follow the model listed in the chapter. She took Taylor’s advice and kept it to a story she knew, using a character dissection and plot map as directed by the textbook. She used the prompts to fill in about five chapters’ worth of things for each person to do and started to hit her stride as Taylor turned out the light. She still preferred her method, but maybe a little planning could make her story even better.

As she joined Taylor in bed, she applied what she’d just learned to her future and smiled in her sleep as her character waited at the end of an aisle for Taylor. But somewhere in the dream, Dan showed up and screamed that she’d married the wrong person.

She woke up with a gasp around two a.m., vowing never to do homework so close to bedtime again.