I hold my phone, my back pressed against my headboard, waiting for the next snap. He snaps a few at a time, then takes a break and comes back usually about an hour later. I don't know why he likes Snapchat so much. Maybe he's doing it for the boyfriend.
Maybe he's just lonely.
He seems lonely to me. Not happy. I keep wondering why he never seems to drive. I see on his Facebook profile, in a picture that's not private, that he used to have a white Jetta. He's got eleven pictures public on his Facebook. It’s true I don’t know him, but I’m pretty sure he used to look a whole lot happier.
Maybe that's what I like about him. This started out with the MILLER on my arm, and it got more intense when I realized I have a stepbrother named Miller. But this obsession...it's more visceral. It's how he looks, yeah. He's hot. He's cute. I want to reach in through the screen and touch him. Also, he gives me that clenched-chest feeling—the weird one. Which may mean something.
But more than anything else, he looks alone. Like me. When the blond is around—Daniel—he smiles, but it's like he's just tolerating it. He posts a lot of snaps where he's smiling at his phone's cam with his cheek down on a bar's table. Or he's got his wavy hair ruffled, or he's rubbing at his dark brows like his head hurts.
The guy is self-deprecating. He'll get eviscerated at the bar and snap himself walking to class the next day with a light bulb icon above his head and the caption "genius." Below that, even smaller, "Van Gogh-style."
Van Gogh was a drunk. And so is Miller.
He snaps from his classrooms—blue desk chairs with pale beige desks. He always looks so big in them, as if he nearly doesn't fit.
Saturdays, he plays intramural soccer. He snaps his cleats and socks. One time, he snapped his red-cheeked face after a game. I try not to screen shot everything he posts, but I save that one.
My favorite snaps or Insta stories are the ones from his bed. Sleepy Miller with his head on his pillow. Eyes half shut, like he's already almost out.
I want that for him. I want him to close his tired eyes and sleep. The way that I can't.
It's not because of Alton anymore—there’s no denying that fact now. It's because of him.
I thought of going back to SP. Going back on their meds. I realize there's something wrong with me, but...I can't do that. I don't want to go back.
I can keep this secret, keep the weird feelings in my chest secret. I'm starting in the fall. I’m the starting QB at Alabama.
I deserve that. I deserve...something. To make me happy.
I might know this guy—Josh Miller. Maybe that's the reason that I cry the night he posts a snap of him getting kissed by some guy I don't know at 12:14 a.m.
I feel that panic feeling, take a walk. I smoke a cigarette. The first one in...I don't know. I picked up smoking the first time around at Sheppard Pratt. So I guess I quit during my senior year. It's so bad for running.
My hands shake as I stub the thing out.
When I get back up to my room, I log onto the fake Instagram account I made for this purpose and browse through Josh's main page pictures. It's the way I go to sleep every night. Imagining him...
Sometimes it makes me feel like breaking things—because I don't have him. But when I'm tired, I look at him smiling with his friends on the gram, and it puts me to sleep. Pretending. That I know him? That he loves me?
Maybe all I'm good for is pretending after everything that happened. That's the last thought I remember before I wake up with tears on my cheeks.
This time, it's a dream about him hugging me.
I want it.
Josh Miller is trying to kill his liver. I look at his snaps and try to ESP him to slow down a little, but he doesn’t listen. He’s out every night, cheesin’ with a bunch of different people—some of them in frat T-shirts, others wearing Chucks with their jeans rolled up at the bottom and nails painted. I watch as the blond guy starts to hang out more with a red-haired guy; Josh takes snaps of them both. I watch as Josh’s dark hair grows out longer, curling in the summer heat. As he perfects drunk poses like the one where he tilts his head back, smiling halfway like he might pass out before the smile can bloom.
I learn things about him. Lots of things I store in my head like a real stalker.
He likes cherry red Icees.
He likes Cheetos and that sugary kid candy called Fun Dip.