Page 132 of Toxic Wishes

“Damn,” Colt says under his breath.

“And sometimes, the dreams come back.”

“What dreams?”

“It was worse when I was younger, but it’s the same dream over and over. It’s like I'm in this black square, and it gets smaller and smaller, suffocating me until I wake up. At first, I thought it was after watching Alice in Wonderland, but when the dream came back, even in my later years, I knew it meant something, but I had no idea what.”

“Maybe you should see if you can find answers in your zodiac books.”

I glare up at him. “Very funny. The subconscious mind and astrology are two different things.”

“Could have fooled me.” He says, sarcasm slipping between his lips

His phone rings in his pocket, and he walks off to answer it for a second.

I look back down at the paper with the quotes on it.

Some people have lives, and some people have music.

Written underneath that, Blake rewrote his own version of John Green's quote.

Some people have music, and some people have toxic wishes.

42

Abigail

“Without music, life would be a blank to me.” — Jane Austen, Emma

“Yeah, okay. That’s great news.” I heard Colt say as I continued to dig through all the papers when something caught my eye. It looked like a journal with a CD attached to it. I flipped through it, and there were notes and lyrics.

It was a music journal.

I rummaged through it and noticed some of the lyrics were from me, back when I would text him songs throughout the day. My heart skips a beat at the memory. It seems so far away now, but I still can feel the excitement in my stomach when I was just about to text him, thinking he would be so proud of the song I wrote.

When I come to the first page of his Journal, I nearly gasp.

My Toxic WIsh.

“What? No, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I look up and see Colt’s face morph into confusion, then anger, all within thirty seconds.

“Jesus,” he lets out a long sigh. “Okay, yeah. I’ll ask, but I don’t need the press showing up here. I don’t have a girlfriend.”

His words slice through me like a sword, and as he continues, I bleed out. I shouldn’t have eavesdropped, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know what the hell he was talking about.

Was it about Naomi? Me?

I sit rooted to the ground until he ends the call. He lowers his phone and starts searching for something. I’m not sure what, but it’s obvious he’s either looking for something or checking for something on his phone.

“Is—everything okay?” I ask cautiously. Not sure what his mood may be right now.

He doesn’t answer right away. After about a minute, he says, “Did you post that video of us dancing in the kitchen?” as he turns his whole body around to face me.

I felt like the wind had just knocked me out. I was finding it hard to breathe. I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked by his reaction to that video being out there or by how it got posted in the first place.

“What? N-No,” I say, blinking rapidly.

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