“You and Braeburn? Get out.”

“I will, thanks.” And Ink turned to leave.

Hazel dragged her back. “I was joking!”

“So was I. We’re not dating, girls, honestly.”

Gaige regarded her with an intense stare. “Ink, we’re not going to fall for that. You suddenly pick up a new guy friend after both Artifex and Mac have been crossed out, and you expect us not to think you two are together?”

Ink rolled her eyes. “First of all: Artifex and me? Never happened. Second of all: Mac? I don’t know what you’re talking about. And third of all: you said it yourself. A new guy friend. That’s Braeburn, no matter how you look at it.”

“Right.”

“It’s true. Look, I didn’t give you flack over Neon, did I? So how about you don’t give me any about Braeburn?”

Gaige threw up her hands. “Fine, fine.”

“What did happen to that guy, anyway?” Hazel asked.

“Dunno,” Gaige said. “Ragga probably tossed him after my story finished.”

“Uh huh.”

Gaige glanced back at Ink. “But back to the topic at hand: I have to say, Ink. You are looking a lot better now. Have you been putting on makeup?”

Ink shrugged. “A little, not a lot. I thought I’d try something new.”

“For Braeburn—ow!”

“I told you, cut it out!” Ink laughed. “God, you girls are the worst!”

She saw them both looking at her strangely. Her smiled remained. She hoped they wouldn’t see how strained it was.

It was the end of the school day, the middle of the week, a Wednesday like no other; and to say Ink was cheerful was an understatement. She had been positively glowing all throughout the week, today being no different, and this had been noticed by her friends almost immediately. Of course that brought speculation, and the moment she started talking about new developments, there came the teasing, and that brought them to here.

“Still,” Hazel sighed as they walked out of Canterlot High, “if we’re the worst, well, what does that make you, since you’re our friend and everything?”

“Better,” Ink said.

“Just as bad,” Gaige said at the same time. She gave the writer girl an appraising look. “Wow. You are stupidly cheesy. You sure it isn’t because of Braeburn?”

“It isn’t,” Ink replied. “I don’t know why I feel so cheery, honestly. Maybe it’s just one of those days.”

“Maybe,” Gaige said dubiously.

They approached and then exited the open steel gate and stepped out into the open streets while the throngs of students followed in their wake. They stopped outside of the wall there. The parking lot was filled with screeching tires as cars and trucks and buses came and went, and Ink noticed that Mac’s truck wasn’t there—but she noted this without enthusiasm, nor without dejection. It was a surprisingly warm February day, a sharp contrast to what previous days had offered, and this was reflected very much in the attitudes of the departing students.

Though not, of course, in the attitudes of Ink’s companions, who were still regarding her with looks of concern and incredulity. They could not be blamed, she knew, but she wished they would simply let her be.

“You guys have any homework?” Gaige asked them. “Because I don’t— not like Ragga would give his OCs homework just to fill a chapter or anything.”

“Not me,” Hazel said, and so did Ink. “Why are you asking?”

“Well, I’ve got nothing better to do,” Gaige said, shrugging, “so I thought why don’t we head to the mall and shoot the breeze?”

Hazel brightened. “Can we go dress-shopping? Can we get you a dress?”

“I will deck you—what about you, Ink? Wanna come?”

“I’d love to,” Ink said, “but—”

Vrroom, vvvvrrrr... “Eep!”

“Heya, Ink! You ready?”

Three pairs of eyes went saucer-wide as they regaled the boy who rode towards them. Braeburn had replaced his typical cowboy getup with a leather jacket and a red helmet. He took off the helmet, revealing a dazzling smile so white it reflected the crimson motorbike he was riding. It seemed to snort at them with black smoke coming out of the exhaust, glowing red eyes in front blinking as he came to a stop.

“That’s yours?” Hazel’s eyes might have fallen out of her head for how big they had gotten.

“Eeyup!” Braeburn said. “Now, come on, this thing ain’t exactly cheap on the gas!”

“But, Gaige and Hazel—”

“No time for them, baby. We got daylight to kill!”

Braeburn handed her the extra helmet, and she put it on before settling back behind him. She looked to her friends, managing another smile. “Sorry, girls. Maybe we can do the mall another day?”

“Sure, no problem,” Gaige said. But she wasn’t smiling.

In between Braeburn revving the bike and them leaving, Ink heard one girl mutter to the other, “What’s up with her?” And then, they shot off.

She was glad that they had left before the girls had seen her smile slip away.

She had visited her mother numerous times since that day. She has grown numb to the nothingness that comes with those hospital visits. Sometimes she is driven by others, such as Adagio or Sunset as of late, but she has always gone in alone at her own request. She cannot bear to let someone else see her in pain.

The hospital is always the same: cold, white, smelling of ammonia and sickness and stillness. She enters the ICU and is greeted, as always, by the same sounds. Beeping monitors, heart rates fluctuating. Once she heard someone flatlining, followed by the shock of defibrillators. That person was saved. Or was he? He was still in a catatonic state and the nurses now do not know yet of when he might wake up.

She goes alone, too, because a part of her thinks the reason her mother doesn’t recognize her is because she is surrounded by too many people. She thinks that if she can get her mother to focus solely on her it will trigger her memories and all will be well. It is a notion she shared with Nurse Golding, who frowned at that but didn’t refute it; perhaps she knew Ink needed this small smidgen of hope, however disbelieving and illogical it was.

It is also a smidgen that cannot be applied now. You see, Ink’s mother has fallen ill again. It is to be expected; her body is wracked by shivers, and though the hospital does its best to stay clean, there are small illnesses in the body that can surge up on a weakened person and make them worse. The medication she takes into her arm do nothing for her fever. They make her sleepy and that is good because it means she doesn’t need to exert so much energy and so she can recover passively, but that is bad because now she is sick with other things beyond brain damage and they take a physical toll on her. They cannot give her other medication for fear of creating further complications with the medication she already has, so her mother is forced to struggle alone against the fevers and aches.

The fevers, Ink reflects, are the worst. One time when she was at the hospital her mother had to wear an inflatable cold pillow over her face because she was so hot, but at the same time her lower body is constantly cold. So she wore two layers of hospital blankets, the kind that is like paper, but that made her uncomfortable and so she was thrashing about, moaning into her breathing apparatus. It was hard to watch and do nothing.

But Ink goes anyway to watch and do nothing because she hopes that her presence alone will bring her mother back to her, even though it never seems to work. Her mother remains in a sleeping state, and when she is awake, it is very brief and unfocused. She says nothing, moans and groans more. The medication is messing with her head to heal her but when had that ever made any sense?

Still she goes. She waits alone as the nurses do their best to make her mother comfortable, in a ward filled with the dying—reminders of what might be.

She does not tell and will not tell anyone of what she has seen, how her mother has gotten worse. When she is ready she will go into that room with others and they will see and perhaps that is a time that is shortly coming but she doesn’t know. Let them see nothing so that maybe she can believe nothing is wrong. This is not logic. It is desperation.

For how would her friends react when they learn her mother has suffered three other seizures since entering the hospital? How would they react knowing that her life continues to hang in the balance? And how would they react to knowing that Ink has become so numb to it?

What is important is to smile, she thinks to herself in private. Smile, because it’s a good mask. Don’t let them see the pain. Maybe if you give them hope that you are okay you will be okay. This is not logic either. It is desperation again.

There is a fine line between that and hope, Ink thinks. When does one become the other? Maybe when you have lost everything or have gained something. That is when desperation becomes hope or hope becomes desperation. How long can you last with either? How long can either work as masks or as farses or as illusions made in the other’s image? She doesn’t know. But she hopes and is desperate anyway and her mother worsens and Ink is smiling because she doesn’t want the world to know what of her pain but what does that matter anyway?

Not logic. Desperation.

“You’re kinda quiet back there, Ink,” Braeburn was saying. “Whatcha thinking about?”

Ink blinked from behind her helmet. They were in the acceleration lane, going past the sedans and SUVs. They were heading to the park, Braeburn had said while they had been driving off. She wondered what they were going to do.

“I was thinking about what Big Mac—” she replied, but he was quick to interrupt: “Ah, him, that brute? Yeah, I mean, after he basically throttled me— well, don’t you worry ‘bout your boy Braeburn. Mac might be big, but he ain’t too hard to topple, believe you me!”

She looked at him, confused. “... I was going to say, about what Big Mac had said.”

“Oh, right. The poster?” Braeburn, ever unphased, turned down the road.

She had seen the poster when Mac had barged into the home and lifted Braeburn off of his feet, but she hadn’t said anything. She had actually seen the poster before. It had even crossed her mind to enter, but the chances…

“Maybe you should enter,” Braeburn said. “The worst that could happen is that they reject you.”

She nodded, frowning. Mac had sort of said the same thing, but he’d shown a lot more faith in her, hadn’t he?

The chances were slim, though. When Mac had showed her the poster yesterday—it had been on his mind for a while, she had realized, when he been talking feverishly about it—she had told him this. “There are a lot of kids who want to write,” she had said. “A lot of them who aren’t in Canterlot but who are in those other cities. My chances of placing are low, Mac.”

She had seen the way his face had fallen, and she had felt guilty for saying it; she felt more guilty for believing it. Still, that hadn’t stopped him from hiding the poster on her laptop, which she had found this morning.

That was the Mac she had come to know: always so willing to believe much in someone.

But how could she explain to him that she had no desire to write anymore? Even if he thought she had a chance, the document was gone. More importantly, she hated it. If she hated her work then she would not submit it, because it was a hated thing, and you would not show the world something that you absolutely detested. Not unless you were crazy.

… yet she had taken the poster and had placed it next to her laptop, which she now left in the Apple home, unwilling to open it, but always keeping it close. Maybe… but also maybe not.

They passed the city and wound down the dirt trail that led to the park. Braeburn drove up the trail, then turned into the small parking lot at the side. He parked. The engine died down and they got off the bike. There were some cars here, and also a lingering food court down a ways.

“So,” Ink said. “What are we doing here?”

Braeburn smiled, wagging a finger. “Ah, ah! No questions! We’re just gonna walk around and let things develop naturally.”

God, that was cheesy. She didn’t say anything, just nodded and came off the bike with him.

They left the bike and began to walk the trail, following the dirt path as it wound around that the meadow. They approached the singular oak tree that stood in the middle of the park. Braeburn’s hand came out, but Ink didn’t take it, instead looking at that tree. There were still parts of the city—or rather the outskirts—that she had never really explored, and this was one of them. So they stopped their walk and looked at the tree in silence.

Braeburn was looking at her, though. She could feel it. She turned to him, an eyebrow raised. “What?”

He looked away quickly; he was blushing. “N-nothing. Uh… cool tree you guys got here.”

“Yeah.” She returned to looking at the tree. “I wonder who planted it?”

They were still standing there when the blue truck drove in, when two people got out, and even when those same two people came around the other side and saw them standing there.

Braeburn was the first to turn around. He let out a start. “M-Mac?!”

“Braeburn?!”

Ink turned next, saw Mac and Sugar Belle, and did not start. “Oh. Hello,” she said.

Sugar Belle waved, her smile small. Mac glanced at Ink, then at Braeburn. His eyes narrowed for a moment, before he let out a sigh. “Ah, well… I guess this place is a little popular, ain’t it?”

“It’s not like you own it, Cousin. I have half the mind to think you were here ‘cause of Ink.”

They stood there for a period of silence, the boys bristling, Ink quiet and confused, all of them beneath the shadow of that oak tree.

Then, suddenly, Sugar Belle clapped her hands. “Well!” she said, her smile coming off as forced. “I’m rather hungry. Mac, there’s a food cart down there; do you see it? Could you grab us something?”

“Uh—Eeyup?”

“Oh, and… Braeburn, right? Why don’t you get something for Ink as well?”

“I’ll ask her,” he snapped. He turned to her. “You mind if I go grab us something?”

“No, it’s fine, go ahead.” He didn’t appear like he wanted to leave her. She flashed him a smile. “I’ll be fine,” she said, though why that phrase in particular she didn’t know.

The two boys went, leaving the two girls beneath the shadow of the tree. Ink found Sugar Belle looking at her intensely. She had her arms crossed, and seemed intent on looking everywhere but her at the moment. Ink cleared her throat, mostly to fill the ensuing silence.

Finally, the other girl did look at her. In her eyes was an emotion Ink did not expect to see: trepidation. She opened her mouth, then closed it, and looked away once more.

Ink glanced over her shoulder. Mac and Braeburn were distant dots, haggling with the food cart and pooling their resources. They would be back soon.

She heard Sugar Belle sigh, making Ink look back at the other girl. Sugar Belle then giggled softly. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just… I want to say something but I don’t know how to put it.”

Her arms came away and dangled at her sides, before coming up behind her and locking fingers. “I feel as though we didn’t really get off to the best start,” she began, looking up at the leaves. “And I feel that’s partially my fault. I sort of did push you out, didn’t I?”

Ink thought about it. “A little, I guess. But I didn’t take offense, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“That’s good.” Another sigh. “I was worried, you know, because of… well, maybe you don’t know. Maybe that’s for the best.” Before Ink could question her, she pressed on: “You and Mac have known each other for a while now, haven’t you?”

“... yes.”

“A few months. Right?”

“Uh huh.”

Sugar Belle nodded. She still wasn’t looking at her. “I’ve known him for a few years. We met when I first came to Canterlot. We met right under this tree, actually.”

“Oh. So… this is kind of like an anniversary place for you guys, then.” Saying this brought a bitter taste to Ink’s mouth, a taste she tried to ignore.

“A little, sure. I… hope that isn’t a bother to you.”

“Why would it?” A quick response, but perhaps its quickness gave away its falsity.

Sugar Belle nonetheless didn’t pressure her to explain, instead choosing to step a little out to the side. She looked down the road, where Mac and Braeburn still were. Her mouth worked its way into a frown. “He cares for you, you know,” she said. Her voice was so quiet it was almost lost in the little breeze that made its way through the branches of the oak tree above.

“He… he does?” Ink asked.

Sugar Belle nodded. “Oh yes, he does. Don’t act like you haven’t noticed.” This came out biting, vitriol, and Belle winced. “Sorry. It’s just… it’s kind of obvious. The poster should have given you a clue, at least.”

“My mother—”

“I know.”

Sugar Belle turned to her. The look of uncertainty had passed from her eyes, now replaced with something else, something murkier. “He talks about you and your mother constantly,” she murmured. “He’s scared for her, for you. He truly, truly wants the best for you, Ink. You should count yourself lucky he pays attention to you that much.”

Ink stared at her. “Sugar Belle, are you saying—”

“I’m saying you hold a special place in his heart,” she said. Her gaze hardened. “I just don’t know how much space is in there, if there’s room enough for…”

She let the thought hang, but the implication was clear: room enough for the two of them.

At once, all of Ink’s confusing feelings returned. It was a terrific mix of apprehension, joy, bewilderment, and pain. She actually took a step back as they struck her at once. “W-what?” she could only say.

Sugar Belle nodded, and her gaze softened. “Listen. I don’t… I don’t want there to be anything bad between us. I’ve made enough mistakes as it is. I’m trying to own up to them, even now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, I guess you don’t. I guess that’s okay. It’s not something you’re supposed to understand.” She paused. “The point is, Big Mac is with me now. And… if that’s okay with you, I’d like it to stay that way, maybe for even a little while.”

She tried for a smile. “No, I see that also doesn’t really make sense. Maybe none of this does. You know, the heart is a finicky thing. Sometimes it wants things so badly that it hurts itself. But I suppose I don’t really have to be too worried. You’re with Braeburn now, anyway. He’s a nice guy.”

“I’m not… he and I aren’t…”

“Shh, now. Here they come. And thank you for listening, Ink.”

Listening to what? But Ink would not have her answer. The boys came back with their food, and when they saw the two of them standing there, one with a tired smile, the other with a shocked expression, they stopped.

“Something wrong, Ink?” Mac asked. Out of the corner of her eye, Ink saw Sugar Belle tense.

“I don’t think so,” Ink replied.

But in truth, she didn’t know what to think.